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Ruder and Cruder

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"Ruler's Reach 2 — now with more swears!"
— King, The Owl House

Profanity is a curious thing — at least, insofar as the concept that some words are automatically "worse" than others. Words considered "profane" tend to have similar origins; almost all of them are associated with sexual or scatological subjects, taking a deity's name in vain, or wishing harm upon ("cursing") another person. Many people consider them both offensive and absolutely inappropriate for polite company and children (though what's considered "inappropriate" for children can be incredibly arbitrary).

Yet strangely, in fiction we also consider profanity's use a go-to means of showing extreme emotion; a signpost that a work is dark, serious, or "mature"; and, often, completely hilarious. These are a few of the reasons creators sometimes deliberately insert more profane language and/or ideas into works that may not have had much (if any) profanity before. When this happens, you wind up with an installment that is Ruder and Cruder.

Ruder and Cruder describes any work that contains a significantly increased amount of profane language and/or ideas than previous installments in its series or franchise. While "profane language" certainly does include the classic Seven Dirty Words and variants thereof, it's not limited to them alone. It also includes things like racist, sexist, homophobic, and/or (to a lesser extent) ableist slurs; offensive, off-color, mean-spirited humor; and references to subjects generally considered taboo such as nudity. While lewd speech and/or gags also tend to crop up in Ruder and Cruder works, they tend to be more geared towards insulting humor or shock value than actually titillating the audience.

Moreover, for a work to be eligible for this trope, the amount of profanity must be increased from prior installments, and that increase must be significant enough to be jarring or at least easily noticeable. Adding a few more curses into a film where everyone curses every other word is not significant. Adding just five curses into a series that has previously had none is quite significant.

While many Ruder and Cruder works generally tend to have a bad reputation, it's important to remember that execution is everything when using this trope. If used tastefully and with restraint, inviting edgier or more mature elements can herald a series heading in a darker more serious direction. While it rarely does so on its own, in the best-case scenario, it can play a small part in helping a series Grow the Beard.

On the other hand, there is a reason this trope has a bad reputation: it is much easier to do poorly than it is to do well, which tends to result in works that are simply vulgar and offensive for the sake of being vulgar and offensive. Works that do this poorly often end up poorly received by critics and fans alike. In some cases, it can even do irreparable damage to a series' reputation.

There are many reasons a creator might make a Ruder and Cruder installment in a franchise. They may do so in order to shake up a stale property. They may do it to appeal to a new audience, or hold onto an existing audience that is growing older and/or changing tastes. Occasionally, they may do it as a response to criticism that their previous works are "too childish." Perhaps the creator was restricted from doing so before, and this new installment is where they aren't working under such constraints. A more cynical creator may insert gross profanity and perverse speech into a franchise because they're convinced (rightly or not) that it will boost sales. In extreme cases, a Ruder and Cruder sequel may come about as a result of Creator Backlash or Creator Breakdown.

Subtrope of Darker and Edgier. It is a type of Tone Shift. It is the opposite of Kinder and Cleaner. It often involves Obligatory Swearing, a few Precision F-Strikes, and perhaps even a Cluster F-Bomb. Can cause Mood Whiplash, and very frequently accompanies Hotter and Sexier and Bloodier and Gorier. May be the result of attempts to Avoid the Dreaded G Rating, Pandering to the Base, and/or achieve Rated M for Money. It often shows up in The Movie of a TV series, especially if it's based off of a show that's on network TV. Took a Level in Jerkass and Adaptational Jerkass can be this trope, although not necessarily, applied to a single character.

For the purposes of this trope, please limit examples to works that are either new entries in a series or franchise, complete remakes of older works, or landmark examples of the trope in their respective genres. In other words, please don't flood this page with alternate versions ("Unrated," "Director's Cut," "Uncensored," "Explicit", etc.) versions of the same work.

Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime & Manga 

    Comedy 
  • As a general rule, Adam Sandler's stand-up, original songs, and comedy sketches are much more profane than his PG-13 rated films — some of them practically use swears as punctuation. If any of his sketches stand out for sheer profanity, "The Psychotic Legend of Uncle Donnie" stuffs a boatload of them into its 11-minute runtime.
  • In a biographical show, Jeff Dunham mentions having to do this early in his career to boost his popularity, much to the disappointment of his parents.

    Comic Books 
  • Doom Patrol started out devoid of profanity of any sort like most comics that originated in the 1960s and in most subsequent iterations didn't use any words ruder than "crap", "damn", "hell" or "ass". This changed in Grant Morrison, Rachel Pollack and Gerard Way's runs, which were explicitly labeled as being for mature readers and in accordance featured frequent utterances of words like "fuck" and "shit".
  • The Scary Godmother comic stories are somewhat more adult than the original storybooks, which were suitable for all audiences. In particular, Count Max at one point says "hell" and Bloody Valentine has Ruby annoyed by male vampires hitting on her with saucy pickup lines.
  • Wonder Woman '77 is a comic book tie-in for Wonder Woman (1975). While the original television show had no profanity to speak of, the comic has occasional uses of "bastard" and in the crossover with The Bionic Woman there are several utterances of "hell".
  • Gravity Falls: Lost Legends has the characters saying stuff like "Thank God" and the word "Hell", having much looser language restrictions than the original show, which by contrast was so beset by censorship that the S&P crew hounded the creator for lines that vaguely rhymed with swears.

    Fan Works 
  • Living in a Frog World is a T-rated story, thus there is a lot more adult language than one would expect in Amphibia or any other Disney cartoon.
  • Liberi Fatalis The Therianthrope Chronicles features stronger profanities than those used in the three franchises that appear in the fic: Albedo: Erma Felna EDF, Katmandu and Ace Combat. Still, how this is handled varies depending of the setting or the species of the characters:
    • Just like in their original canon, the characters from Katmandu doesn't say anything more crude than "crap" or "damn", including changing some incongruent earlier scenes from the comic when either Liska, Flint or Markree used "bitch" in a setting with no canines, anthropomorphic or otherwise, appears, being replaced with either "whore" or "harlot" instead.
    • The characters from Albedo: Erma Felna EDF, aside of the already mentioned swearing, also use "shit" at times, but they don't use anything stronger like "fuck". Unlike the Katmandu ones, they don't have problems on using "bitch", for obvious reasons, being a more diverse society, through they avoid using worse insults like "cunt".
    • And finally, both the humans characters and the ones from Ace Combat can swear without any kind of restrain.
  • In The Loud House: Revamped, characters regularly say "fuck", "shit", "bitch", and tons of other swear words, something that never happens in The Loud House, or many of the properties represented here for that matter.
  • The Stalking Zuko Series undergoes this process over time. The original was relatively tame and had an E rating on Fanfiction.net, but the sequel, Not Stalking Zuko has a T rating and Narrative Profanity Filter, with Katara mentioning people using the word "puck" when they say "fuck." The third entry, Not Stalking Firelord Zuko has an M rating and uncensored profanity, such as Hahn saying to Bato, "You can fuck her and leave her," in reference to the Fire Nation Original Character Bato is in love with.
  • BlazBlue Alternative: Remnant has this in comparison to both its home series, BlazBlue and RWBY. While characters such as Ragna, Luna, and Terumi were already incredibly vulgar to begin with, their most profane language was usually cut short due to BlazBlue being a T-rated series. Here, they're taken up a notch with frequent f-bombs that aren't cut off.

    Films — Animation 
  • As you might expect, Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theaters uses more profanity compared to its televised source material, but it goes all in on hard profanity, sexual slang, and even a homophobic slur or two.
  • Batman and Harley Quinn and Justice League vs. The Fatal Five take place in the DC Animated Universe, but feature mild to moderate rude language (i.e. "ass", "damn", "hell", "crap", "shit", "goddamn", "dick") and sexual situations (Harley and Nightwing have sex), neither of which were present in the other films and animated series in the DCAU.
  • Batman: Assault on Arkham contains words such as "shit" and "asshole" that were never used in the Batman: Arkham Series video games, which only contain mild profanity. It also contains scenes of Harley Quinn and Killer Frost nude (albeit with Barbie Doll Anatomy) as well as exploding heads, and there is no gore (aside from a blood spatter here and there) or nudity in the games.
  • Ice Age: The Meltdown has a deer saying to Manny that a burro is called a "wild ass", making the other kids laugh. There is also a scene that mentions literal "crap". It is the only installment to use profanity, or at least the closest it can get to actual profanity.
  • Incredibles 2 has Evelyn Deavor use mild rude language — mostly "damn," "hell," "crap," and "sucked" — when the original had none. In fact, at the time of its release, Incredibles 2 was the only Pixar film to contain any profanity stronger than "hell." Mr. Incredible also gives a Shout-Out to Rocky using a "crap" in the same film.
  • The Lorax (2012) has O'Hare say "damn it" twice by the end, which is the only reason the film got a PG rating. Naturally, the Dr. Seuss children's book on which the film is based had no such language.
  • Shrek uses mild profanity, whereas the children's book upon which it's very loosely based had none. Oddly subverted, however, in that the titular character was uglier, meaner, and cruder in the book than in the film.
  • The Simpsons Movie featured some content that the show couldn't get away with showing on TV, such as showing Bart's penis and having Homer give the finger to an angry mob. Downplayed, as outside that and a use of the word "goddamn", there's no harsher language or cruder content than that on the show.
  • The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run: The movie stands out from the previous two, given that they get away with SpongeBob actually using the word "crappy" twice, and they did not bother to censor it with dolphin chirps. Squidward also says "freakin'" at one point.
  • South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut: It's the only animated film to ever earn an NC-17 rating on language alone — although its creators managed to get it reduced to an "R" rating through sheer attrition.
  • The Transformers: The Movie features one debatably necessary use each of “shit” and “dammit”, clearly only inserted to secure a PG rating. May not seem like much, but considering it’s based on a a squeaky-clean '80s kids show...

    Films — Live-Action 
  • The Live-action Addams Family films are much darker and more vulgar than the Lighter and Softer 1960s TV series that came before it. While more similar in tone to the original comic strip, the films are still more crude than even it.
  • DC Extended Universe:
  • Though Casper the Friendly Ghost is generally aimed at younger children, the 1995 live-action movie Casper is rated PG for including Toilet Humor and swearing such as "hell," "damn," "piss off" and even "bitch."
  • Live-action adaptations of Dr. Seuss' books — brief, whimsical children's books — have had issues with this treatment clashing with the spirit of the source material. In How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, the Grinch gets away with saying "hell" and "bitchin'". Despite this, however, it's a masterpiece compared to The Cat in the Hat, which was even worse and earned a negative reception for being much cruder than the source material, with its abundance of innuendo, mild swearing and toilet humor. One of the most infamous jokes in the latter film revolves around the immediate predecessor to the S.L.O.W., the Super-Hydraulic Instantaneous Transporter (though the Cat cuts the kids off before they can say the acronym out loud).
  • Fantastic Four (2015) has stronger and more prominent expletives compared to the Tim Story film duology. The Story films had very little in the way of profanity, and it was mostly mild. The 2015 incarnation adds in multiple uses of the word "shit," but still no F-Bombs.
  • Harry Potter around the fourth film embraced the fact that they didn't have to pander to a child audience too much (the books had been relatively clean on language), and would have the characters drop occasional curses like 'piss off' or 'ass'.
  • Hellboy (2019) has much saltier language than the two Guillermo del Toro films, with greater numbers of hard swears and religious exclamations.
  • While nothing too severe, Inspector Gadget (1999) features some minor sexual innuendos as well as a "balls" pun, which sticks out compared to the squeaky-clean cartoon.
  • Joker (2019) is the most profane film featuring the Joker, featuring no less than 25 F-Bombs. Most of the other films featuring him have one or two, tops.
  • Josie and the Pussycats is cruder than the source material with jokes relating to the word "pussy" heard in the film. It's a sharp turn from the comic, which was an all-ages title from Archie Comics.
  • While his films don't necessarily constitute an ongoing series, Martin Scorsese's films deserve a mention under this trope. Scorsese is the only director to have three of top 20 films with the highest usage of the F-bomb in film history: The Wolf of Wall Street is the third highest with a whopping 569 uses, Casino is sixth with 422 uses, and the profanity-peppered classic Goodfellas, is ranked 16th at 300 uses.
  • The Matrix Reloaded has overall cruder language compared to both The Matrix and The Matrix Revolutions thanks to the Merovingian saying a colorful variety of swears in French.
  • Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie has cruder jokes and two uses of the word "shit". Best Brains, Inc. felt embarrassed they were pressured to stoop to it and consider the movie a Disowned Adaptation (the TV episodes are movie-length anyway).
  • Pokémon Detective Pikachu uses the first instances of profanity found in English-speaking media based on Pokémon. Most notable was Pikachu screaming "GET ME THE HELL OUT OF HERE!", but he also says "damn" later in the film, and there are a couple of barely-censored uses of "shit".
  • Scarface (1983) was one of, if not the, most profanity-laced films of its time, and its popularity and acclaim helped to normalize the use of frequent profanity in film.
  • Scooby-Doo (2002) has usage of mild crude language and sexual slang ranging from "whoopass", "crap" and "biatch". Mild as that is, it's still far more than the squeaky-clean cartoon that inspired it.
  • Smokey and the Bandit Part 3 features multiple scenes of topless women even though there was no nudity in the first two films. And for some reason, it is still rated PG in spite of thisnote .
  • Spider-Man: Homecoming is the first Spider-Man film to use moderate to strong profanity, and it has more swearing than the previous films combined — which, all told, is still pretty mild compared to most action films.
  • While nothing too harsh, the Star Wars sequel trilogy features more profanity than the both the original trilogy and the prequel trilogy. The Last Jedi in particular even contains words that hadn't been used in the franchise before such as "ass" and "bastard" (prior to this, the swears were limited to the occasional "damn" or "hell".) This is particularly amusing considering that these films were made after the Disney acquisition, and many feared that they would take the franchise in the opposite direction.
  • Power Rangers (2017) is a slightly Darker and Edgier version of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers — a show aimed at children, while the film is PG-13. Jason says "bullshit", Kimberly says "crap" and Trini says "shit" at one point.
  • The Spiderwick Chronicles: Downplayed. The books are aimed at a younger audience, but the film is PG and contains uses of the words 'hell' and 'dammit'.
  • Swearnet could be called this to the entire medium of film, as it has over a thousand uses of profane language, making it the most profane film of all time. In fact, it's so hard to find sentences without swearing.
  • While Adam Sandler has been involved with very few works that could be called "squeaky clean", Uncut Gems, his most profanity-laced film, contains 408 uses of the F-word, the seventh highest usage in film history. And it's not even a comedy.
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014) uses casual profanity compared to the previous movies, which are mild.
  • X-Men Film Series: While every film starting with X-Men: First Class has at least one Precision F-Strike, it is not the case with Logan, which is not only the darkest and most violent X-Men film to date, but also the most profane (outside of the Deadpool movies), with about 55 usages of the F-word.

    Literature 
  • Aliens (Steve Perry Trilogy): While the Alien films were never light on swearing, these novels really up the frequency, if not creativity, of profanity. As a for instance, Ripley in Aliens calls the Queen a bitch once. In The Female War, Android Ripley calls the Queen Mother a "bitch" nearly once a sentence.
  • Alternaversity, Rob Renzetti's Web Serial Novel sequel to My Life as a Teenage Robot, has swears that would be unthinkable in the original 2000s show, such as "Sucky" and even "Bollocks".
  • The Ship Who... is a short series where every entry is co-written with Anne McCaffrey and a different author and is largely independent of the other entries, though callbacks abound. The City Who Fought, written with S. M. Stirling, is the longest, darkest, and most sexually explicit. Notably, while the book that preceded it, The Ship Who Searched, had characters say "decom" for "damn" and a hard-bitten military character said "heck", The City Who Fought has people constantly call Channa a bitch or a slut, which she resents and resolutely tries to ignore. Much of the cast often says "Oh my Ghu!" for playful expressions of surprise, but they switch to "God" when things are more serious.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Continuing the trend set by the Star Wars sequel trilogy, Andor features the first use of the word "shit" in the franchise. It almost featured the first "fuck" as well, and it was even filmed, but it was dubbed over with "fight" in post.
  • Black Lightning (2018) has overt sexuality and swearing, and the showrunners even fought the network for the right to use the N-Word in order to drive home how racist BL's enemies can be. The original comics were created back when the Comics Code Authority still had considerable teeth, and thus were much tamer.
  • The Boys (2019): In the comics, Starlight refused to swear, spelling out naughty words if she was required to repeat them. In the series, she will swear of her own volition, though still noticeably more rarely than other characters (such as Butcher, for whom "cunt" is a punctuation mark).
  • In Cloak & Dagger (2018), Ty and Tandy engage in sex with respective love interests and Tandy is a recovering drug addict. There's also a fair bit of cursing. In the original Cloak and Dagger (Marvel Comics) comics, the titular heroes have a reputation for being both Chaste Heroes and teetotalers.
  • The Degrassi franchise: Not only did they not swear in Degrassi Junior High and Degrassi High, but they invented epithets such as "narbo" and "broomhead" for characters to hurl at each other. In School's Out, the post-high school graduation TV Movie finale for Degrassi High, they say "shit" and "fuck", most notably when Caitlin finds out Joey cheated on her with Tessa: "You were fucking Tessa Campanelli?"
  • Fate: The Winx Saga is a slightly Darker and Edgier reimagining of Winx Club, a children's cartoon. While there's no nudity, the profanity is increased. Bloom calls her adoptive mother a "basic bitch", Beatrix curses in front of the headmistress and characters use "paedo" as an insult.
  • The iCarly revival for Paramount+ is more adult-oriented than the original, featuring mild profanity, sexual situations, and one of the new main cast members being pansexual.
  • The Inbetweeners already had copious amounts of swearing for a TV series, but its film adaptation added female nudity (Male nudity from Simon and Neil had already occured in the series).
  • Interview with the Vampire (2022): The Interview with the Vampire novel doesn't contain a single f-bomb, but Season 1 has several in each episode.
  • The original Party of Five aired on a broadcast network, and thus subject to relatively strict rules about sex and profanity. Party of Five (2020), on the other hand, airs on Freeform, which is a cable network, and thus is allowed to get away with more overt sexuality and swearing.
  • Powerpuff: The pilot, based on The Powerpuff Girls (1998), was written as a show for older teens and adults, resulting in the cast using coarser language and scenes like Buttercup joking about releasing Bubbles' nudes.
  • The original Runaways had occasional strong language and sexual themes (it was created by Brian K. Vaughan, after all), but was otherwise marketed towards young adults. Runaways (2017), on the other hand, had much more profanity (at one point, Molly, of all people, calls another girl a bitch) and sexual themes, and an attempted date-rape scene in its first episode.
  • Spartacus: Blood and Sand compared to the film from 1960 (although that was quite edgy by the standards of the day). Put it this way - a common saying from characters is "Jupiter's Cock!" and it's extremely rare for a scene to go by without a curse word in there. They're not shy about using the C-word either, although mostly in reference to the actual body part. Lesley-Ann Brandt happily describes it as "very rudie and nudie".
  • Most of the Star Trek series don't have any profanity stronger than "hell" and "damn," however, Star Trek: Enterprise has "ass" and "son of a bitch," and Star Trek: Discovery even occasionally gets away with "shit" as well as the franchise's first F-bomb. Star Trek: Picard fires off the profanities like photon torpedoes (including multiple F-bombs). Aside from the publicity factor, this can be accounted for by the fact that while previous installments aired on CBS proper (Star Trek: The Original Series), broadcast syndication (Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, or UPN (Star Trek: Voyager, Enterprise), Discovery and Picard are on the Paramount+ streaming service, and thus free from FCC broadcast standards.
  • The Wheel of Time (2021): The strongest profanity in the books is "flaming". In the series, characters say "shit" and "prick".

    Music 

    Professional Wrestling 
  • WWE as a whole during the Attitude Era of The '90s. Wrestling had historically been family-friendly, and the early to mid 90s was even one of the lightest periods in the company's history. It's telling that the era is recognised as beginning with a Precision F-Strike in a Stone Cold promo ("Austin 3:16 says I just whooped your ass"). Although in spite of this, really offensive or rude words wouldn't be used too often; mostly 'bitch', 'ass', 'crap' etc. If proper F-bombs were used, they were normally bleeped out. Around the late 2000s, WWE went the opposite direction until eventually it switched to PG.
  • WSU was a women's wrestling promotion that formed as a more adult alternative to the family-friendly SHIMMER, and indeed WWE (who were switching to PG). As it broadcast internet PPV and DVDs, they had no need to appease sponsors or censors, and the wrestlers had free reign to say whatever they wanted. Promoter Amy Lee cursed in every other promo, Annie Social and Kimber Lee formed a team literally called C U Next Tuesday, and Jessicka Havok freely used racial and homophobic slurs to get heel heat. This backfired on her years later when she was at a WWE tryout, and fans uncovered posts she'd made in character and stopped WWE from hiring her.
  • Irish wrestling was primarily family-friendly in the 2000s and 2010s out of necessity, but promotions would run occasional over 18's shows, and they made two attempts at exclusive such promotions. The first was Full Throttle Wrestling, which had to shut down after only two shows due to excessive use of homophobic slurs, Slut-Shaming and two matches involving Black Comedy Rape. The second, Over the Top Wrestling, was far more successful and is still running to this day. OTT's success convinced other promotions to do so too, and Celtic Championship Wrestling went exclusively Over 18's shortly after until it shut down in 2018.
  • Following on from the above, several Irish wrestlers used this to create new gimmicks utilising this trope.

    Video Games 
  • The 2008 Alone in the Dark reboot is much more profane than to previous games in its franchise, as it transforms the protagonist from a quiet, unassuming individual into a foul-mouthed and angry Amnesiac Hero.
    Edward: I don't have your stone! And fuck you anyway!
  • Later trailers for Beyond Good & Evil 2 use considerable amounts of swearing, compared to the clean script of the first game.
  • Borderlands is usually light on cursing despite being an incredibly violent series. The third installment, however, isn't afraid to use some stronger expletives, even dropping a solid "fuck" courtesy of BALEX.
  • Crash Bandicoot:
    • Crash Tag Team Racing is this compared to the rest of the series. While it's a tamer example than others on this list, it is far more rife with toilet humour, innuendos, and a generally darker sense of humour than is usual with the franchise, with even mild language such as "damn" being used. As such, it is the first Crash title to have an E10+ rating rather than the usual E.
    • Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time noticeably has more profanity than previous entries, with Lani-Loli using the word "putz" several times, Dingodile saying several Australian curse words as well as "bastards", and the 100% completion epilogue mentioning Coco participating in e-sports events as "Kickass Coco".
  • Conker started out as a family-friendly franchise. Conker first appeared as a racer in Diddy Kong Racing and had a Game Boy Color game called Conker's Pocket Tales, both of these games being E-rated. Conker was also planned to have his own Nintendo 64 game, Twelve Tales: Conker 64. However, when critics were accusing Rareware of making games for little children, Rareware scrapped the game and retooled it into Conker's Bad Fur Day, which was aimed at mature audiences. It uses tons of profanity to distance itself from Banjo-Kazooie. Its remake, Conker: Live & Reloaded used even more profanity for the multiplayer maps, although it's censored until the player completes the campaign mode.
  • The first two Dead Rising games weren’t the cleanest games around, with characters frequently saying “damn”, “hell”, sometimes "bastard" and "asshole", and even a few instances of “screw” and “Jesus”, the third and fourth games ramped up the amount of profanity, with the stronger words being more common, and F-bombs getting included in the series.
  • Deltarune isn't necessarily more profane than Undertale, but the swearing is certainly more frequent. While Undertale's profanity was fairly rare and used mostly for emphasis, Deltarune has a Sir Swears Alot as a near-constant main character, and random NPCs are more prone to using rude language as well. Granted, the worst anyone says is "ass", but it's still a bit jarring. In Chapter 2, it's even more visible with Spamton, who has very clearly dropped more than one f bomb throughout his screen time, even if he is censored by Symbol Swearing.
  • Devil May Cry: DmC: Devil May Cry takes this to an extreme, in which practically every character is a complete Sir Swears-a-Lot. The best example is Dante's encounter with the Succubus, which quickly devolves from standard trash-talk into the two characters yelling "Fuck you!" at each other. Devil May Cry 5 still has more and harsher profanity in dialogue than other games in the original canon, but it's downright restrained in comparison.
  • Final Fantasy: Final Fantasy VII is this on two levels:
  • Despite being Lighter and Softer in tone as well as Tamer and Chaster, God of War (2018) contains more profanities than the previous games.
  • Grand Theft Auto has all of the characters, if they are talking, speaking largely like professionals, with only instances of "shit" doesn't even reaching 30 for the whole game minus non cutscene repetitions. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas however, went overboard and off the wall with swearing, with Cluster F-Bomb galore, and since then the series never goes back.
  • The House of the Dead: OVERKILL has more profanity compared to the games that came before it, most of it coming from one of the game's protagonists Issac Washington. The game had so much dirty language that it won the Guinness World Record for most swearing in a video game...only to be dethroned by Mafia II a year later.
  • Jak II: Renegade uses moderate to severe profanity compared to the first game, and the trend continued into Jak 3 and Jak X.
  • The unreleased Legacy of Kain: Dead Sun, even though the previous games were rated M, contained profanity that is much harsher than the mild expletives were only allowed, namely 'damn', 'hell', and occasionally 'bastard'. In one cutscene, a vampire hunter actually blurted out "F—k you, vampire". No, not "Go to hell, filthy fiend", "F—k you, vampire". Needless to say, the fans of the previous games were not happy with this game changing from Flowery Elizabethan English to modernizing and spicing the dialog, among other reasons, and were glad that it was cancelled.
  • Mafia II is significantly more profane than its predecessor Lost Heaven with over 200 F-bombs dropped in the game from nearly every character.
  • Mass Effect 2 uses stronger profanities than Mass Effect with the infamous "Don't fuck with Aria" quote attached to players' memories.
  • The Metal Gear series is, as a whole, very light on profanity, though there was a noticeable increase in its use as it went on. Snake Eater featured EVA cursing out Volgin, but only in Japanese. English fans would have to wait until Guns of the Patriots to hear the franchise's first Precision F-Strike. Revengeance fully embraces this newly-discovered freedom to have multiple F-bombs throughout its dialogue, and even has its main villain be Sir Swears-a-Lot. The Phantom Pain dials it back to being used extremely sparingly in incidental dialogue, with most of the swearings are in foreign language.
  • Mortal Kombat X and its successor Mortal Kombat 11 have more profanity than all of the prior MK media combined. Notably, the profanity in these games comes exclusively from mortal Earthrealmers. Non-Earthrealmers and non-humans also have their own share of profanity, but it's either obfuscated, or archaic curses are used instead of modern ones.
  • Despite both having a Teen rating, The World Ends with You has almost no profanity at all, while NEO: The World Ends with You has infrequent but quite strong language (e.g. Rindo's repeatedly says his Replay ability only works when "shit gets serious"; Kubo is called "an old asshole"). Likely because only the former was originally an exclusive for a Nintendo system.
  • Parsnip is a deconstruction of Point-and-Click Edutainment Games, featuring an optimistic, seemingly innocent World of Funny Animals whose hand-drawn, watercolor facade hides some rather unnerving details; apart from a minor Precision F-Strike you can find in the form of an in-universe dating website in the local artist's laptop, the game's content and dialogue is as clean as you'd expect from a game pretending to be kid-friendly. However, the sequel, The Testimony of Trixie Glimmer Smith, is a more grounded, cynical, Darker and Edgier Visual Novel that doesn't bother to hide its darker elements. To drive home the contrast between the two games and their respective protagonists note , the second's dialogue is peppered with a lot more F-bombs, along with more explicit references to sex and raunchy fanfiction.
  • Resident Evil:
  • Shadow the Hedgehog is a downplayed example; it is the only game to use profanity regularly in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, but never uses any expletive stronger than "damn" to avoid the T rating.
  • Splinter Cell: Conviction and Splinter Cell: Blacklist have a lot more casual swearing and stronger expletives than the previous games in the Splinter Cell franchise. In the former, the gratuitous amount of swearing the enemies do tends to be a common point of mockery of the game.
  • Stupid Invaders gets away with a lot more than it did compared to the cartoon its source material derives from. In addition to more explicit (albeit comedic) violence, there's a lot of sexual and scatological humor in the game.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles X and Xenoblade Chronicles 2 are already bluer than the original game, where cursing is mild and rare. But the fact that they have consistently strong language at all qualifies them as this when compared to other Nintendo games, which at their most vulgar only use words on the level of "damn" or "hell." XC2 especially—not only is it the first first-party game in the company's history to use the word "shit" in its English script, there's also a drastic upswing in sexual references and humor. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 dials things back from its immediate predecessor, but is still more profane than the first game.

    Visual Novels 
  • The Danganronpa series has always had profanity, but they were occasional and relatively mild in the first two installments. But Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony is much more offensive, with explicit sex jokes and harsher, constant swearing thanks to Miu and Kokichi.

    Web Animation 
  • Bravest Warriors originated as a short included on Nickelodeon's Random! Cartoons. When Frederator Studios chose to make Bravest Warriors an Internet series for Cartoon Hangover after Nickelodeon rejected the pitch, it really shows that they took advantage of not having to keep the content appropriate for children, as swearing is more frequent and Danny Vasquez even flips people off (albeit with his middle finger blurred) on occasion.
  • The works of one DevilArtemis are quite possibly the raunchiest pieces of Dragon Ball media ever produced, containing many overt drug references and Camp Gay stereotypes.
  • Helluva Boss is cruder than the series it spun off from (Hazbin Hotel), and the profanity is more frequent. And since Hazbin Hotel itself was extremely profane compared to other independent animation, that's really saying something.
  • Lobo (Webseries) uses profanity relatively often, at least compared to the rest of the DC Animated Universe.
  • McBusters consists of a mash-up parody of Ghostbusters and McDonaldland and noticeably features much stronger language than either property, with the three videos featuring frequent utterances of "fuck" and "shit".
  • Migraine Boy is an Emo/Grunge comic strip that became famous worldwide thanks to a MTV-produced series of 30-second shorts that aired around the end of The '90s. At the Turn of the Millennium, however, a Chilean Dark Parody of Migraine Boy was made as an Adobe Flash web animation that had more swearing, Gorn, and Sex Comedy. Yet it was also funnier than the original shorts, which led it to become a Cult Classic in its native Chile.
  • RWBY: Downplayed. During the first few volumes, there was no swearing at all, not even minor cursing. Slowly, the profanity began to be added as the teenage characters became older and the stakes of the plot became higher. Initially, very mild profanity like 'damn' was slipped in at key moments until the fight between Tyrian and Qrow in Volume 4; the fight ends with Tyrian snarling 'You bitch' at Ruby. Since that fight, it's become a normal part of the show for characters to use mild cursing such as 'bitch' or 'bastard' when the situation becomes emotionally charged.

    Web Original 

    Web Videos 

    Western Animation 
  • Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake is a sequel/spinoff to Adventure Time, but it's now rated TV-14 rather than TV-PG, so there's a lot more actual swearing rather than using Gosh Dang It to Heck!, on top of also being Bloodier and Gorier.
  • American Dad!'s move from Fox to TBS resulted in the show having more frequent and uncensored usage of "goddamn", "asshole", and "shit" due to FCC regulations being much looser on cable TV than on free-to-air TV.
  • Aqua Teen Hunger Force had its early seasons use mild to moderate profanity, but the later seasons use stronger language. It's bleeped, of course, given that this is basic cable TV, but context makes it clear enough what they're trying to say.
  • The Boondocks TV show is this compared to the newspaper comic it was based on; featuring a massive shipload of profanity in almost every episode, occasional bits of sexual humor, and (albeit rarely) some bloody violence.
  • Castlevania (2017), on top of being Darker and Edgier than the video game series, features lots of profanities including many f-words. The next series Castlevania: Nocturne follows suit.
  • Dexter's Laboratory had "Rude Removal", in which Dexter and Dee-Dee are split into their good and evil sides, with the latter swearing roughly every five seconds. After being shown at the World Animation Celebration in 1998, it was banned until [adult swim] broadcast it in 2013. This is an inverted case though, as "Rude Removal" was the pilot episode, the rest of the series has no swearing at all unless an utterance of "crap" in an early episode counts.
  • Family Guy, while always crude and offensive, became even more vulgar when Fox brought it back in 2005, with much cruder sex jokes and even more offensive humor than ever before. There's also more profanity, although not to South Park-levels of profanity due to Fox having to follow FFC regulations, unless it's the uncut DVD version.
  • Harley Quinn (2019) uses a lot more profanity, violence, and mature themes than any other DC animated series or film, with lots of uncensored F-bombs and other such words that warrant its TV-MA rating.
  • The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder, the Sequel Series to the TV-G original, sees its rating bumped up to TV-PG as a Disney+ original. While not too vulgar, the show is allowed to get away with slightly cruder content that they could never have on Disney Channel. Instances like Penny feeling her chest, implied sex, alcohol references, and Oscar even saying "damn".
  • Ren & Stimpy "Adult Party Cartoon" is, as the title suggests, a mature-rated follow up to Ren & Stimpy. While the original series already had a ton of demographically inappropriate humour, this series indulges in much more explicit foul language, violence, nudity, sexual themes, and gross-out humor. It wasn't very successful.
  • Samurai Jack: The sixth episode of the final season is the only episode, outside of deleted scenes, to use any profanity at all.
  • While South Park has always been a very vulgar show, harsher swears like "fuck" and "shit" were used less frequently in the first three seasons than in later seasons.
  • Space Ghost Coast to Coast ramped up the drug use and profanity after moving to [adult swim].
  • Spider-Man: The New Animated Series when compared to the Spider-Man Trilogy, uses more profanity. Although, when the animated series came out, only the first movie had come out, which had some mild swearing, Spidey himself mostly stuck to Gosh Dang It to Heck! language for the most part (initially anyway, in Spider-Man 3 he drops a “damn” and in Spider-Man: No Way Home he says “ass” once), whereas the animated version has Spider-Man audibly say “Damn it” when the police open fire on him in an episode. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
  • The third season of Young Justice features a sudden jump in curse words, body count, and instances of explicit violence over prior seasons. Justified as the first two seasons were released on Cartoon Network, which had strict policies regarding what content was deemed inappropriate. Since the third season was released on DC's own streaming service, these rules no longer applied, allowing the creators to produce a much darker and more mature show.

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