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Unusual Euphemism

They're talking about screwing, right?

"I apprehended the accused and advised him of his rights. He replied, 'Why don't you ram it up your pimhole, you fusking clothprunker.'"

— A Bit of Fry and Laurie

The characters are talking about an embarrassing issue by using a rubber-ducking euphemism that the scriptwriters just made up.

Many Science Fiction shows make up such curse words so as not to offend Standards and Practices, probably because these expressions can pass as Future Slang.

Can sometimes even be the result of censorship: see the Bowdlerization: Film subsection of this page.

Rather than being used to talk about an embarrassing issue, may be used to discuss something of questionable legality without attracting attention. If used to talk about one's personal body parts, the trope is I Call Him "Mister Happy".

Contrast Unusual Dysphemism. Compare to Smurfing, Never Say "Die", Foreign Cuss Word, Pardon My Klingon, Gosh Dang It to Heck!, Curse of The Ancients, Hold Your Hippogriffs, Getting Crap Past the Radar and Informed Obscenity.

A Date with Rosie Palms attracts a lot of them. See also Lampshaded Double Entendre. If a character interprets an innocent phrase as one of these, you have Is That What They're Calling It Now?. Intercourse with You songs and, of course, bawdy ones sometimes have a lot of these.

Examples (straight):

Examples (Bowdlerization):

Film

Repo Man, a cult movie which was broadcast on network TV with the expression "motherfucker" repeatedly dubbed as "melon farmer." The voices are done by the original cast members, and the choice of words was made by the director as a humorous commentary on censorship.
The Big Lebowski contains a scene where an enraged John Goodman smashes up a car and repeatedly yells "Do you see what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass?" On TV, it becomes "Do you see what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps?" and "...When you feed a stoner scrambled eggs?" This is quite funny, because it makes absolutely no sense story-wise, and leaves one wondering why they didn't simply bleep the offending words out. That's because the Coens themselves apparently wrote the new lines for Goodman to read.
- One that isn't added later on is when The Dude calls The Big Lebowski for a "human paraquat".
The UK's ITV network was pretty infamous for this in the early 1990s. Probably the worst example was their dub of Robocop, though the film was shown late at night. Clarence threatens to shove a cocaine operation "so far up [the drug lord's] nose that he'll be sneezing snow for a week." It'd help if the two dubbed words sounded remotely like the original actor (or if cocaine wasn't supposed to go up one's nose to begin with). The immortal line near the end that "Dick Jones is wanted for murder" became "Dick Jones is an imposter" — this author had no idea of this until receiving the DVDs several years ago.
- There's a scene where Robo interrupts an armed robbery in a mom-and-pop store. The robber watches as his bullets bounce off and backs away, exclaiming "Why me? Why me?" which seems to work better, and be funnier, than the original version.
The Eddie Murphy remake of The Nutty Professor is a strong example of this, including numerous instances of "face" replacing "ass".
There is the infamous Die Hard censorship of John McClane's immortal line "yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker".
- And Samuel L. Jackson calling him a "racist melon farmer" in Die Hard With a Vengeance.
- Variations include the popular "yippee-ki-yay, Mr. Falcon," which makes very little sense, and "yippee-ki-yay, Kimosabe".
- Thank goodness in Italian it still came off as "yippee-ki-yay, piece of shit".
Ghostbusters: At the end of the Onionhead sequence, Venkman's "We came, we saw, we kicked its ass" inexplicably becomes "What a knockabout of pure fun that was!".
- Feeling quite proud that in Italian that was if possible made more grating by having Venkman state triumphantly: "We came, we saw, we totally raped its ass!"
- According to the commentary, that scene and others were ad-libbed several times in a row until they came up with something they liked. The replacements may be alternative takes.
- And one in all versions that's either an overdub or a Last-Second Word Swap, to avoid a higher rating — "Mother pusbucket!"
  - This is lampshaded in the audio commentary. But I believe it was in the script to begin with.
- Also, in the scene where Stantz refers to Obstructive Bureaucrat Walter Peck as "Dickless" and Venkman follows it up with "It's true, your honor... this man has no dick", the lines were changed to "that weasel" and "It's true, your honor... this man is some kind of rodent," respectively.
  - Another dub of the same scene turns "Dickless" into "Wally Wick." Unusual to say the least. "It's true," cuts off there without a punchline.
  - In the Italian dub Stantz doesn't call Peck 'dickless' so Venkman's following remark ("this man has no balls") comes off as another instance of his offbeat humour.
- According to commentary and other sources (IMDB), they actually shot some scenes twice just in case they needed to be toned down for re-rating or whatnot. So they aren't re-dubs, they're alternate takes.
The Mask: "Margaret! You son of a bitch!" (during the scene where Kellaway and Doyle search The Mask and find weird objects, one of which is a picture of Kellaway's wife in lingerie with the words "Call me, lover" written at the bottom) becomes "Margaret! You son of a pig!" or "Margaret! You son of a witch!" Other edited versions just cut off after Kellaway shouts, "Margaret!"
- Even without any Bowdlerization, The Mask is full of Unusual Euphemisms, especially in the park scene with The Mask trying to seduce Tina as a French lover.
  The Mask: "Kiss me, my dear, and I will reveal my croissant. I will spread your p�t�. I will dip my ladle in your vichyssoise."
Who's The Man? had a TV Edit where Ed Lover calls someone a "Lousy motherLIAR!".
- And another character utters the immortal, "Motherfunny please, motherfunny please."
The DVD releases of Shaun of the Dead and its follow-up Hot Fuzz have among their special features a compilation of clips where they were forced to replace words — the replacements are mostly nonsense, and very much played for laughs, especially when lampshaded by being brought together. They range from simple letter substitution (What the funk?) to the downright bizarre (You stupid barstool). And the outright hilarious (peas and rice!).
- The related "bar-steward" is a common humorous euphemism for bastard in the UK.
- On the Hot Fuzz commentary, director Edgar Wright expresses his surprise that Timothy Dalton, even at sixty, can still cause "ladyquakes."
- Another Hot Fuzz commentary has Edward Woodward talking about using "Baskets!" on a show he used to work on back in the day, and then continuing to use it through the rest of the commentary.
Used with great success in the "Edited For TV" short by LoadingReadyRun. It featured the characters' swear words blatantly dubbed over by the narrator.
Ash: [GOSHDARNIT], I can't believe you guys are still arguing over that [BLOODY] piece of [POO] jacket!
Morgan: This [MELON FARMER] thinks it's his [FRUITY] jacket! I had it way before [FREAKIN'] he did!
Seen in the TV broadcast of The Matrix, where Neo's cry of "Jesus CHRIST, that thing's real?!" is toned down to the rather more comical "Jeepers creepers, that thing's real?!".
- Alternatively, "Judas Priest, that thing's real?!".
- Or how about when he offers to give Smith "the flipper"? Cutting out the gesture itself is understandable, but their renaming of it is... confusing.
- And the security guard's reaction to seeing Neo armed to the teeth becomes "Holy smokes!"
A TV broadcast of The Usual Suspects included the immortal line "Hand me the keys, you fairy godmother."
- YouTube link. A commercial for Showcase (Canadian TV network) also had a Take That against movie censorship, turning it into "fuzzy socksucker".
The for-all-ages trailer of Being John Malkovich, which can be found on the DVD, has a fairly glaring example of changing a seemingly innocuous word into something that makes the context weird. In the trailer, Maxine says to Craig -
And fifty other lines to get into a girl's hands.
The TV broadcast of Liar Liar cleaned one of Fletcher's rants quite adeptly by avoiding unusual euphemisms:
Fletcher: ...so what I'm gonna do is [piss becomes whine] and moan like an impotent jerk, and then bend over and [take it up the tailpipe becomes take it like a grown man].
- Earlier on, twice even, "Son of a BITCH!" becomes "I'm such a SNOT!", which sorta cancels out the well-handled rant.
In the censored version of The Faculty, every use of the word fuck is replaced by "fooey." The hilarity of Elijah Wood and Josh Hartnett hopping up and down over aliens with the stream of dialogue "Fooey fooey fooey! What the fooey just happened? Fooey you!" had me in fits.
One of the funniest is the censorship of network broadcasts of Scarface, the two best being "This city is like a big pussy waiting to be fucked" changed to "This city is like a big chicken waiting to be plucked", and "Where'd you get that scar? Eating pussy?" to "Where'd you get that scar? Eating pineapple?" Also "I only tell you once. Don't fuck me, Tony. Don't you ever try to fuck me" to "I only tell you once. Don't fool me, Tony. Don't you ever try to fool me."
- There's even a DVD featurette about this censorship.
In Forrest Gump, the scene where he invents "shit happens" is edited in an unintentionally funny way ("Whoa, whoa, you just ran through a big dogpile right there!" "It happens" "What? It!") The bumper sticker gets censored too.
The VH-1 broadcast of Ferris Bueller's Day Off changes the line "Pardon my French, but you're an asshole!" to "Pardon my French, but you're an idiot!" (Since when was "idiot" a cuss word? It can be taken as rude and insulting since it denotes lack of intelligence, but it's not a curse word!) Likewise, in the AMC version it cuts to the next scene before Cameron can finish his sentence.
An NBC broadcast of The 40-Year-Old Virgin dubbed over the term "fuck buddy" with "sex buddy" (which isn't much of an improvement, but whatever...) though the character's lips make it obvious that the line was redubbed. Most other profanity not suitable for over-the-air broadcasts was simply muted.
"Did you shampoo my wife?" as heard on Saturday Night Live's "The Joe Pesci Show." Lampshaded when Joe Pesci (played by Jim Breuer) stated that the original dialogue wasn't suitable for TV broadcast, so they had to use euphemisms.
Snakes on a Plane: The censored version makes a complete hash of its most famous line "I've had it with these monkey-fighting snakes on this Monday-Friday plane!"
- The Agony Booth pointed out many more highlights.
Shark Attack 3: Megalodon: What do you say I take you home and*
"...I lick your pussy?"
we watch I Love Lucy ?"
Scorcese's Casino gets a great many of these. See any line of Joe Pesci's dialogue, and this great one from Sharon Stone: "Oh, freak you! Freak you, Sam Rothstein, Freeeak youuuu!"
When Fast Times At Ridgemont High is broadcast, a cashier at a fast-food restaurant is mad at the customer who has become somewhat demanding because the meal is supposed to be "100% guaranteed", so he says, "If you don't shut up I'm going to kick 100% of your ass!" When the film is broadcast, it's changed to "100% of your face," and the customer complains because of his comments. Later his boss asks him "Did you use profanity or threaten this customer?" Since he didn't use profanity, they should have deleted that line from the manager's comments (or at least shorten it to "Did you threaten this customer?" Even if the cashier didn't use profanity, he still threatened the customer by saying he was going to kick him in the face).
When aired on ABC Family, Better Off Dead gets an edit that results in making no sense at all. In the scene where French-speaker Monique says "testicles" when she means "tentacles," the offending "testicles" is overdubbed with "tentacles." So it's very strange that she says, "tentacles," and Lane corrects her, "No, you mean 'tentacles.'"
The DVD version of Crank has a "Family Friendly Audio" feature that replaces all the spoken swears (even minor ones like "damn") with tame versions. However, the full unedited video is still present, so the movie starts by showing a DVD with the words "FUCK YOU" written on it, in which the villain talks about how he "just freakin' killed you" with "synthetic Chinese stuff".
In Kill Bill Vol. 1 the 'Pussy Wagon' was turned into the 'Party Wagon' for the edited-for-TV version with the word "Pussy" digitally altered to read "Party" on the back of the truck (even though the license plate still read "PSY WGN").
- Which became even funnier in Vol. 2 when Esteban brings up why The Bride isn't driving the 'Party Wagon.' When she explains that the truck broke down, Esteban utters, "The Party died."
In a TV edit, one of the best lines from Back to the Future was edited with... very poor enunciation. Poor Doc Brown goes from "excited" to "hyperactive teenage girl".
Doc Brown: When this baby hits 88 miles an hour, you're gonna see some serious STUFF!!
- In some TV runs, Biff's line "You cost 300 bucks damage to my car, you son of a bitch" is changed to "...you son of a butthead."
- Marty's numerous uses of the word "asshole" are frequently changed to "idiot" - resulting in a full-on Hong Kong Dub effect - for TV runs.
In The Ninth Gate, a woman who just slept with Johnny Depp's character tells him "don't fuck with me," to which he responds, "I thought I just did." The TV edit changes "fuck" to "mess" making Johnny Depp's response unintentionally bizarre.
When TBS and the Hallmark Channel aired The Breakfast Club, Bender's line "Eat my shorts" (which wouldn't become a popular insult until Bart Simpson made the scene in the late 1980s; The Breakfast Club came out in 1985) was inexplicably changed to "Eat my socks." Any "Fuck you!"s were replaced with "Forget you!" Another network's version had them dubbed with "Thank you!"
The network TV airings (and Cartoon Network's airings) of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?? contain several instances of this. Most notably, when one of the weasels reaches down Jessica Rabbit's dress and gets his arm caught in a bear trap, Eddie Valiant's line "Nice booby trap" was re-dubbed as "Nice going, Jess".
- Despite it being, unquestionably, an actual booby trap? That is one uncrapgetpastable network...
Tv broadcasts of Smokey And The Bandit replace the sherrif's memorable "sumbitch" to "scum bum". That almost fits the lips, too. According to many fans of the films, "scum bum" actually fits the character's persona better.
In a TV broadcast of Up in the Air, when Alex tells Ryan, "Just think of me as you, only with a vagina" into "Think of me as you, only with a miffler." Uh...what the hell?
One of Sam Jackson's earlier roles with a gun was also for language edited on the BBC. In Coming to America, Mr Jackson is heard to say "Why me, why me!" as he rushed out of an aborted robbery. However, you don't have to be a versed lip reader to tell exactly what he said instead of "why".
In a rather amusing TV edit of Adam Sandler's movie Mr. Deeds, every instance of "shit" or "bullshit" was dubbed over with "spit" or "bullspit", resptively. It's rather amusing when a raging football player screams that he wants to renegotiate his "bullspit contract", and Adam Sandler's character immediately tells him to watch his language in the presence of ladies.
- Unfortunately, one of the most hilarious lines in the movie, where Sandler exclaims "Buh-buh-buh-BULLSHIT!!!", was changed to "Buh-buh-buh-bullspit". It wouldn't have been so bad had the dubbing over not toned down the intensity at which Sandler had said the final word. Originally he was nearly screaming the last word in rage, but in the edit it seemed like he was just using the word dismissively.
In Caddyshack the famous final line by Rodney Dangerfield was "Hey everybody, we're all gonna get laid." In television it's changed to, "Hey everybody, let's all take a shower," which doesn't sound like anything Czervik would say (and actually makes the line more sexual than what was originally there. Nice going, censors.
The quote on the Quotes page from The Lonely Guy is a subversion, in which Steve Martin's character is writing a romance novel. It's supposed to illustrate how awkward he is at romance in general.
In A Christmas Story, when Ralphie's father is fighting with the furnace, or about anything else, he utters a string of gibberish which could sound like curses. Evidently, they listened to those bits over and over, slowed down and speeded up, to make sure there weren't any dirty words sounded out by mistake or otherwise.
In The Tinkerbell Series much strange fairy slang is used. Including, but not limited to: "Who gives a pile of pebbles?", "Flitterific!", "Splinters!", "Teetering Teapots!", "By the second star!". And from the book: "Fly with you", "I'd fly backwards if I could" and the popular slur for humans: "Clumsies."
In 10 Things I Hate About You:
Kat: Well, now that I've shown you The Plan, I'm gonna go and show The Plan to someone else.
- When asked later by Patrick how she distracted the teacher, she replies that she dazzled him with her "Wits". There's also the brilliant TV-edited "the squid hath hitteth the fan."
In one edited-for-TV version of Pulp Fiction, Jules's line "English, motherfucker! Do you speak it?!" is changed to "English, little sucker! Do you speak it?!"
- Not to mention:
  Jimmie: Do you wanna know why you didn't see that sign? Because storing dead African-Americans ain't none of my rooty-toot-tootin' business, that's why!
Forgetting Sarah Marshall: "asshole" is changed to rascal
Spy Kids: They felt the need to do this to Carmen's infamous "Oh, Shiiiiiiitake mushrooms!" quote for the TV broadcast. They muted out the first syllable, completely ruining the joke by turning the line into "Oh, —take mushrooms!" instead.