Overshadowed By Controversy / Live-Action TV

Examples of Live-Action TV series that are considered Overshadowed by Controversy.

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• The Netflix series adaptation of 13 Reasons Why had been hit with this from the start, with many accusing its handling of the very sensitive subject of bullying and suicide among teenagers of being tone-deaf and potentially dangerous. The central plot revolves around Hannah, who has died by suicide before the series starts and left a series of cassette tapes detailing her reasons for doing so and the people she blames for pushing her to her actions. This has been harshly criticized for implying that bullying and external factors are always the cause of suicide, with no mention given to mental illness, as well as implying that reaching out for help to adults is futile and overall sending a message that one's mental well-being is in others' hands, and that suicide is an effective way of getting revenge. Additionally, the finales of the first and second seasons came under fire for their graphic depictions of Hannah's bathtub suicide and a secondary male character being brutally beaten and raped, respectively, with detractors stating that the former scene could inspire copycat behavior. People generally believe the series may have done more harm than good for the cause of suicide awareness. Shortly before the third season's release, they edited out the scene showing Hannah's suicide on the advice of child psychologists, which started its own argument over whether they should have done it (since it's not like the scene actually makes the act look desirable in the slightest).
• It's next to impossible to talk about 24 without arguments over whether it glamorizes torture by suggesting that the Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique^note It's the Trope Namer for a very good reason, to the point that it has its own page for it. is an ethical and effective technique and/or if said depictions of it fall into Torture Porn, including late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia notoriously citing the series when arguing that it worked.
• The 700 Club presents itself as a Christian news show, but is known less for its spiritual side and more for creator/host Pat Robertson's far-right political views and conspiracy theories made during the show and outside it. The most notable claims made by Robertson during the show's run were that tragedies such as 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina were the result of God taking revenge on people Robertson despised; including the LGBT community, feminists, liberals, and some non-Christians, as well as Christians who are slightly more liberal than him. Freeform, which airs the show, has no choice but to air it due to contractual obligations established when the network was called The Family Channel and was owned by Robertson; not only does Freeform refuse to promote 700, they air Content Warnings at the beginning and end of the show stating that Freeform does not endorse any of Robertson's views, which even end with them saying "Watch or don't watch. We're okay either way.", and removing any branding when the show airs, and there's no mention of the show on its website either. Ironically, 700 also airs on TBN and on local stations, but Robertson refused to let Freeform drop the show.
• A Concert for Hurricane Relief is a celebrity-hosted benefit concert for Hurricane Katrina victims that is mostly remembered for being the source of Kanye West's infamous quote "George Bush doesn't care about black people." However, this wasn't the only thing about West's appearance that generated controversy. Beforehand in a segment with Mike Myers, he went on an off-script rant about how black people are portrayed in the media and upon uttering his controversial quote, Myers stared at him in disbelief. Cut to co-presenter Chris Tucker, who is also visibly shocked.
• Ace Lightning, along with the animated series Stargate Infinity, suffered from this in the United States when the FCC complained about the shows being too violent to be considered educational, resulting in the shows being pulled from the DIC Kids Network block by the next season.
• The Africans was the most visible PBS program for the 1986-87 season primarily because of the controversy it garnered over its unfavorable portrayal of Americans. It got to the point where the National Endowment for the Humanities, which had sponsored the series, was permitted to take its name off the series in a rare exception to the rule that all sponsors should receive credit on PBS broadcasts, and PBS was forced to reevaluate how it approved its programming in the aftermath.
• America's Next Top Model was a rather popular reality show competition that showcased up and coming models who could win a modeling contract and was hosted by supermodel Tyra Banks. While the show still has its defenders, the majority of viewers now look back on the show with a more critical eye with its most infamous moment being when Banks critically berated losing Cycle 4 hopeful Tiffany Richardson for not being as upset about her elimination as she thought she should have been. Additional controversies include several problematic behaviors of both the competitors and the judges, dangerous situations and photo shoots that have actually lead to illness and injury to contestants, rampant Manipulative Editing that portrayed scenarios and people to be worse (or better) than what they truly were and the added revelation that the participants had to sign non-disclosure agreements that would legally bar them from speaking out on the experiences for over a decade, varying levels of success amongst the winners themselves (as a runner-up is usually more likely to be successful, as was the case of Cycle 3's Yaya DaCosta and Cycle 11's Lio Tipton), and questionable makeovers.
• Amos 'n' Andy was a very popular comedy radio show from the 1940s and 1950s starring two white people playing stereotypical, dimwitted, jive-talking blacks. Its incarnation as a TV show (which cast two black men in the lead roles) was one of television's earliest flops; viewers found the jokes significantly less funny when actual black people were telling them. (What this says about the thought patterns of Americans in the '40s/'50s is up for debate.) Due to Values Dissonance, it hasn't been broadcast in ages and is probably better known for the racial offensiveness than the actual comedy.
• The rollout for the fifth season of Arrested Development has been largely overshadowed by questions about whether or not it was a good idea for the show to retain Jeffrey Tambor in the wake of allegations about his behavior in Transparent. Jason Bateman and David Cross made things worse with an interview in which they both vigorously defended Tambor, even as co-star Jessica Walter made claims that Tambor had verbally harassed her. This happened during a group interview, so they didn't just contradict Walter, they talked over her as she related her own experiences with Tambor, putting a very public face on the issue of how entertainment industry people talking about the abuse they've suffered are often dismissed in media.
• Any discussions pertaining to the Netflix series Atypical will likely focus on its questionable depiction of people on the Autism Spectrum and the resulting allegations of ableism than the show itself.
• The Bachelor:
  • Season 25 was supposed to be remembered for being the first season with an African-American Bachelor, Matt James. Instead, it ended up getting hit with a racism scandal after it was revealed that contestant and eventual winner Rachael Kirkconnell had once posed with the Confederate battle flag and attended an Antebellum South-themed party^note Kirkconnell would apologize for this, with James accepting the apology. However, the biggest casualty of the scandal by far was Chris Harrison, who downplayed Kirkconnell's actions in an attempt to defend her and wound up calling her the victim of the "woke police." Harrison's actions ended up causing a bigger backlash than Kirkconnell's, and Harrison subsequently apologized and announced he was taking a hiatus from the show (which ended up becoming permanent). As a result, the anti-PC crowd cried "cancel culture" and began harassing both James and Rachel Lindsay (the first African-American Bachelorette) on social media for defending Harrison's decision to leave, even though neither of them said they wanted him "cancelled," leading to Lindsay leaving social media.^note This also impacted Harrison's appearance on the Celebrity Edition of Wheel of Fortune, as ABC delayed the episode, went out of their way not to promote it, and put disclaimers up to indicate that it was taped prior to the controversy.
  • The franchise also faced other controversies over race throughout its run. Notably, in the early seasons, non-white contestants would usually get eliminated first, while those who remained were either mixed race or had their heritage downplayed. It wasn't until 2017 and 2021, respectively, that the franchise saw its first Black leads in Rachel Lindsay and Matt James.
• Batman (1966): The two-parter "An Egg Grows in Gotham"/"The Yegg Foes in Gotham" introduced recurring villain Egghead, but it's hard to talk about the episodes without discussing Egghead's accomplice: the very stereotypical Native American antagonist Chief Screaming Chicken, whose portrayal got the episodes banned from airing on the Hub when it was showing the series in reruns. ^note  Interestingly the actor who played Screaming Chicken, Edward Everett Horton, played a similar Native American character several years earlier on F Troop.
• The short-lived Irish revival of Blind Date was struck twice with controversy. It was first struck when it turned out that one of its contestants was a criminal who had previously served jail time in Australia for assault on a civilian. The second time was when host Al Porter was accused of sexual harassment by two male colleagues, which caused the show to immediately be binned by TV3 (now Virgin Media One).
• The one thing everybody remembers about Richard Bacon's brief stint on the legendary British children's show Blue Peter in 1997-1998 is that he was fired from the show for cocaine abuse. For his part, the man himself will Never Live It Down even 20 years later and with his television career fully recovered from the incident. Even Amazon Alexa wanted to tell the tale to Bacon's children, much to his embarrassment.
• Bridget Loves Bernie was a short-lived 1970s sitcom that is nowadays better remembered for the massive controversy surrounding its premise of an interfaith marriage between a Jewish man and a Catholic woman and the subsequent campaign of harassment against the series' creators by Orthodox Jewish groups.
• Brookside had an infamous storyline featuring Sibling Incest between fully related (and raised together in a normal family) siblings Nat and Georgia Simpson. It was even a plot point that the family goes to a therapist, who discovers that the two didn't have a traumatic childhood or anything else that would explain it. Ultimately, they get a happy ending and move away to live as a married couple. Channel 4 ended up issuing an apology for the storyline and even the creator expressed regret that it had gone too far. It aired in the mid-1990s but is still remembered as one of the most controversial storylines ever to be featured in a UK soap opera.
• The CBS series Bull was accused by guest star Eliza Dushku of fostering a highly toxic misogynist environment, mostly perpetrated by lead star Michael Weatherly who was constantly harassing her with jokes about rape, shortly after she'd gone public about having been sexually abused at age 12. The network execs also attempted to cover it up by offering her a lucrative NDA, though she managed to game the process so that she got the money and was still legally able to talk about it. The show was still renewed for another season after the story broke to much controversy, though Steven Spielberg cut all ties with it.
• The Chair (2014) was a short-lived reality show with a unique concept: two novice filmmakers from different creative backgrounds would each have to make a movie using the same script, with the series documenting their efforts and the winning movie being determined by online poll. Nowadays, it's best remembered for how said online poll allowed the highly controversial Shane Dawson to win even though his film, Not Cool (itself covered on the films page), was universally agreed to be the worse one; his bad behavior on the show was also brought up as the controversies surrounding him caused his popularity to implode.
• The Chop: Britain's Top Woodworker was a 2020 reality show on Sky History which had an innocuous premise of a woodworking competition series... which exploded in controversy right after the first episode aired due to one of the contestants having several face tattoos of white supremacist symbols. Following a disastrous attempt to dispel the allegations^note Sky defended the contestant's "88" tattoos by claiming that they were not a code for "Heil Hitler", but instead a personal memento to commemorate his father's death in 1988; which was immediately debunked when said father revealed he was still alive., the show was cancelled after a single episode, with the incident being the only thing it's remembered for.
• Comedian Dave Chappelle's 2021 Netflix special The Closer features jokes about the LGBTQ+ community (in particular transgender people), which some members of the community strongly criticized as being offensive, as well as him expressing support for trans-exclusionary radical feminism. Since then, it's become nearly impossible to discuss the special without bringing up Chappelle's stance on trans people.
• CN Real was a commercial dud, and you probably don't remember much about the actual shows themselves. You probably do remember the backlash it got for being a block of live-action reality and game shows on Cartoon Network, a channel associated with anything but live action. It doesn't help that the block came out after Out of Jimmy's Head, another ill-regarded attempt by the network to branch out into live action.
• It's pretty difficult to talk about the Community episode "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons" today without mentioning the fact that Netflix pulled it from streaming due to complaints about the scene where Chang appears in what looks like blackface when trying to cosplay as a Drow Elf. This also started a conversation on the Drow themselves and if they are acceptable or should be altered to prevent incidents like this.
• The Cosby Show, a once beloved African-American family sitcom, has likely had its merits overshadowed by the multiple sexual assault accusations against Bill Cosby coming to light in the latter half of The New '10s (the impact on Cosby himself is covered in more detail on the Real Life page).
• Discovery Channel and its associated networks have been particularly prone to this, especially in later years as they've moved away from a pure documentary format.
  • Clash of the Dinosaurs was one of the first Discovery Channel series to generate significant controversy, when it was revealed that one of the show's consultants, sauropod researcher Matthew Wedel, had been quote-mined by the production company to make it sound like he was saying the opposite of what he actually was.^note Wedel was talking about a discredited theory that sauropods had a second brain in their hindquarters to help them control the back half of their body; the documentary made it seem as though he was supporting the theory, even though he wasn't.
  • Mermaids: The Body Found was a decent Speculative Documentary about how aquatic hominids might actually evolve, but today it's mostly remembered for tricking thousands of viewers into believing that mermaids were real. The only indication that it was a work of fiction was a very small disclaimer visible briefly during the opening, which many people watching it missed.
• Doctor Who has been hit by this on a number of occasions over the years:
  • The 1966 story "The Celestial Toymaker" would generally be remembered as a middle-of-the-road Missing Episode once previously upheld as a classic thanks to faulty reviewers, if not for the fact that it contains a scene where a minor villain, played by a white actor, utters the n-word during a game of "eeny meeny miney moe." The BBC have had to go out of their way to censor the offending word in official releases of the story's surviving audio recording, but despite this the slur still dominates it, in part because while the Classic Series is no stranger to Values Dissonance, this is by and large considered the most blatant example by both fans and analysts. There has also been some discussion about whether the story has anti-Chinese content or not, as the Toymaker dresses in stereotypical "old China" clothing and the word "celestial" is an obscure derogatory response to Chinese people and culture in British English, although there is no actual yellowface make-up. When the character returned in "The Giggle", the word "celestial" was not used to refer to him in dialogue or credits (apart from one indirect Mythology Gag), he mostly acted in a stage-German way (with briefer imitations of French or American), and he was depicted as somewhat racist.
  • The 1977 story "The Talons of Weng-Chiang" was considered by received fandom opinion for years to be one of the greatest ever, but starting from the beginning of the 21st century it became far more notorious for its Yellow Peril content, some of which is subverted or possibly ironic, but some of which is played very straight; the main Chinese character being played by a white actor in Yellowface doesn't help. As a result, practically any public mention of it nowadays will start a Flame War about whether it is racist or not, and whether the racist content outweighs the good things about the story to the point that it shouldn't be praised or recommended any more.
  • "The Horror of Fang Rock" seems, even on this very wiki, to not get by without an obligatory mention of the November 22, 1987 "Max Headroom" broadcast hijacking incident in Chicago that interrupted a showing of the serial's first episode for 90 seconds. In fact, the incident has become so intertwined with the episode that the article on the episode on the Doctor Who Wiki itself has a lengthy section discussing the incident.
  • The entirety of the Sixth Doctor's run (1984-1986) is generally considered the absolute nadir of the show from a qualitative standpoint, but is far better known for the chaotic behind-the-scenes atmosphere during this period, marked by copious staff dysfunction and Creative Differences that led to Colin Baker becoming the only actor to be fired from the role of the Doctor and directly contributed to the show's eventual cancellation in 1989. To this day, the Sixth Doctor's tenure stands as a cautionary tale for later showrunners and British television producers as a whole, and among both Whovians and laypeople it's difficult to discuss seasons 22 and 23 without touching upon just how turbulent their production was.
  • In terms of specific material from Six's era, the non-canon special "A Fix With Sontarans", created as a crossover with the then-popular Jim'll Fix It, was previously remembered as a hokey one-off story done to appease the wishes of a young Whovian who was eager to appear on Doctor Who, but since 2012 has become primarily known for the close involvement of Jim'll Fix It presenter Jimmy Savile, revealed after his death to be one of the most prolific celebrity child predators in British history. The revelations motivated the BBC to ban the episode from official circulation for a solid decade before ultimately releasing a recut on the Season 22 Blu-ray with Savile's scenes replaced.
  • The 2014 Revival Series episode "Kill the Moon" is remembered less for its content or its status as a linchpin in the Doctor and Clara's character dynamic, and more for the huge Flame War that ensued among American fans and analysts over whether or not its premise was supposed to be an allegory for the abortion debate, which had picked up renewed steam around the time of the episode's airing, whether or not the story was "pro-life" or "pro-choice," and how well it seemed to handle its message. The show's staff denied any intentional connections to the abortion debate, and the controversy never quite hit the European side of the show's fanbase (due to the debate being nowhere as heated over there), but among US viewers the Accidental Aesop remains a defining element of the episode's perception.
  • The first series with Jodie Whittaker as the Thirteen Doctor, the first female Doctor, have been overshadowed by the backlash caused by the casting (similarly to how many female fans protested the casting of Peter Capaldi as the Twelfth Doctor back in the day, when it was expected that the Twelfth Doctor would be female). The second series caused even more fan arguments due to the major retcons made to the mythos and backstory of the Doctor, most notably the Doctor's new and world-changing origin story and how it contradicted and invalidated what came before in the eyes of many fans. The showrunner during Whittaker's tenure, Chris Chibnall, while initially welcomed when he was first announced as showrunner following the success of his previous show Broadchurch (which also featured Whittaker), soon became a very controversial figure in the Who fandom after people started to recall that he had written earlier Who episodes that had been criticized for their less-than-stellar writing, alongside the first season of Torchwood. It got to the point where he began being scapegoated for every single aspect people didn't like, from the lack of Christmas specials to the reduced funding, with even the fact he said that the BBC didn't tell him who the next showrunner would be being taken as proof that he didn't care about the future of the show.
• Duck Dynasty has become far better known for the antics of its stars, most notoriously family patriarch Phil Robertson, who is known for his extreme far-right views. His most infamous manifestations thereof are of his two rants on the subject of atheism and homosexuality, and suggesting that African-Americans were happier as slaves, which caused many networks to take the show off their rotation, and at one point actually caused production to be temporarily suspended.
• It's impossible to discuss The Dukes of Hazzard without bringing up the Confederate battle flag on the roof of "General Lee", the protagonists' car. The flag controversy really came to light after the 2015 Charleston church shooting, prompting TV Land to pull the show from its lineup and Warner Bros. to pull merchandise bearing the flag, including "General Lee" miniatures.
• Empire got hit badly with this in February 2019 when one of the main actors, Jussie Smollett, was apparently attacked by a pair of Donald Trump supporters in a racist and homophobic hate crime. There was a huge outpouring of support for the actor from the entertainment industry and politicians who decried the attack. Then the case took a turn for the bizarre when, two weeks later, the attackers were discovered to have been a pair of immigrants from Nigeria who worked as extras on the show and said Smollett paid them to pretend to attack him, resulting in a swift and angry backlash from former supporters. This hit the show's (already declining) ratings hard, and ultimately it was announced that the sixth season would be the last one. See the Music page for how this has affected Smollett himself.

F to K

• Discussing any of the live-action The Fairly OddParents! movies (A Fairly Odd Movie: Grow Up, Timmy Turner!, A Fairly Odd Christmas, and A Fairly Odd Summer) to fans of the series will cause them to start ranting about how they retconned the much beloved Distant Finale ending to Channel Chasers in favor of the future depicted here, which is the main reason why most fans vehemently refuse to acknowledge them as canon.
• It's hard to talk about The Fairly OddParents: Fairly Odder, the live-action Sequel Series/reboot to the original series, without mentioning it winning the award for "Favorite Kids TV Show" at Nickelodeon's 2023 Kids Choice Awards, which many people felt was an undeserved win due to the show being met with overwhelmingly negative reception, plus the fact that Fairly Odder was removed from Paramount+ and Nickelodeon's website less than a year after it premiered.
• The short-lived 1993 game show Family Secrets is best remembered for a "family" of contestants consisting of a father-daughter pair and a live-in girlfriend who posed as the father's wife. When the daughter's real mother found out about this, she got in touch with NBC and got the episode pulled before its broadcast date. The father and girlfriend did not receive their cash or their grand prize which would have been a cruise (although the daughter got to keep her prizes: a camera and a CD player). Already not helping its case, Family Secrets was eventually cancelled because not enough contestants were meeting eligibility requirements. It's also remembered as being one of NBC's last daytime game shows with the network giving them up for good one year later.
• Ghostwatch, the one-off Halloween Special drama shown on BBC 1 in 1992, is better known for the controversy caused when a sizable chunk of the viewing audience thought it was real and the ensuing argument over whether this was the creators' desired effect than the fact that it's a damn fine ghost story. It makes frequent appearances on 'Underrated Horror Films' listicles as a result.
• Growing Pains will forever be known for its Troubled Production, where its star Kirk Cameron demanded that the show be clean of everything even remotely obscene, including having series regular Julie McCullough fired for appearing in Playboy, after becoming a born-again Christian. This behind-the-scenes drama permanently tarnished his reputation; not even an apology could repair it. Since then, Cameron has become far more famous for his extreme views on religion, starring in the infamous Left Behind film series, and being the lead star, producer, and co-writer of the equally infamous Saving Christmas.
• The single thing to be talked about Heathers (2018) is what many consider to be the offensive undertones of the Heathers' casting as a fat girl, a gender-queer person, and a biracial girl, while casting Veronica and JD as white, conventionally attractive and cisgender, which was widely criticized for giving the series the appearance of being a paranoid alt-right fantasy (especially since it wasn't done as social satire or a what-if scenario) and which many saw as completely missing the point of the original film. In fact, no online review of the show goes by without mentioning it and no site featuring it is without this debate. Making matters worse was the show's glorified portrayal of school gun violence in an era where mass shootings were rampant across the United States. The Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, made this premise rather tasteless, forcing Paramount Network to delay the premiere of the series — which itself got cancelled after another high-profile high school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas, and permanently got the series dropped from the network. Paramount ultimately reversed course and it was shown in an edited form almost half a year later — just days before a white nationalist stormed into a synagogue in Pittsburgh and killed eleven worshippers, forcing Paramount to make even more edits.
• House of Cards was irreparably tarnished by its executive producer and lead star Kevin Spacey's sexual misconduct allegations in 2017. Not helping was Netflix's questionable response to it, shutting down production while still leaving the door open on finishing it, and also keeping the option for continuing the series without Spacey on the table. And then no fewer than eight crew members came forward stating that they had complained to the crew about Spacey making advances on them, only to be brushed off.
• The IT Crowd episode "The Speech" is mostly known for its negative portrayal of a trans woman, including the suggestion that it was OK for her boyfriend to beat her up upon learning she was trans; which creator Graham Linehan defended and refused to accept criticism of. Many feel that the backlash the episode received resulted in Linehan becoming a virulent anti-trans activist, resulting in Channel 4 banning the episode from syndication. Linehan's anti-trans views have also affected the legacies of his earlier series, Father Ted, and to a lesser extent Black Books (as he only worked on the first series).
• Insatiable was overshadowed by the controversy surrounding its premise, in which a fat girl (played by average-sized actress Debby Ryan in a fat suit) experiences dramatic weight loss after a case of Bully Brutality results in her jaw being wired shut, and carries out a plan to get revenge on her bullies. The series was accused of promoting dangerous myths about weight loss and a petition to cancel it gathered 120,000 signatures before the series even aired. And once the reviewers actually got to see the series, it was panned even further for its tone-deaf handling of the subject matter.
• Jeopardy!:
  • The October 12, 2009 episode was the third game for 5-time champion Terry Linwood. However, one of his opponents was Jeff Kirby, who violated eligibility requirements as he had already competed on the show in 1999. The producers hadn't realized this until someone on the show's message board pointed out that he was wearing the same tie he had worn in his 1999 appearance. Because of him, this episode has been banned from reruns.
  • The "Kids' Week" games, which started in the late '90s, gradually fell victim to this. On July 31, 2013, a player absolutely owned the game to the tune of $66,600, then the fifth-highest one-day total in the show's history. What do people best remember about this episode? One of his opponents was penalized for misspelling "Emancipation Proclamation" for his Final Jeopardy! response. In the days that followed, angry posts flooded the show's Facebook page, claiming that since children were playing the game, the judges should have been more lenient. Journalists and news websites also chimed in on the issue, with the contestant claiming he was robbed because of his spelling error. Never mind that he would've gotten only second place regardless and the controversy over the misspelling completely overshadowed the winner's huge haul. They tried another Kids' Week in December 2014, but a Stage Mom caused a stir with host Alex Trebek when she demanded that an act be re-shot. It didn't help that the Sony hacks exposed the latter fiasco. Because of this, Jeopardy! hasn't done a Kids' Week since, and the series has all but distanced itself from them. However, it isn't immune to the occasional reference.
• It's practically impossible to talk about Joy Junction nowadays — a Christian puppet show that aired during the 1990's — without mentioning the fact that series puppeteer and cast member Ronald Brown was sentenced to 20 years in jail in 2013 for not only possession of child pornography but also planning to cannibalize a child.
• Kamen Rider:
  • The lead actor of Kamen Rider Super-1, Shunsuke Takasugi, who popularized the title role, ended his career when he scammed 50 million yen (about US $450,000) from his fans and didn't pay them back, and had to sell his Super-1 henshin belt prop to some Yakuza to earn some money. He failed to appear in court and has been missing and on the run ever since.
  • Kamen Rider X is often remembered in Japan for tabloid reports of the lead actor's affair with the wife of a producer on the show.
  • Tetsuo Kurata, main lead of Kamen Rider BLACK and its sequel RX, received allegations of making money off his Kamen Rider popularity by scamming fans and blocking them, only to later turn a 180 and state in his livestream podcast that he wouldn't talk about Kamen Rider anymore, around the time of its 50th anniversary no less. He has since apologized for his actions.
  • Kamen Rider Hibiki: The series is known for its Troubled Production in the second half due to Executive Meddling by the higher ups because of poor toy sales. This was also indirectly responsible for Kamen Rider Kuuga himself, Joe Odagiri, not anymore open to reprise his titular role since one of the producers for both seasons, Shigenori Takatera, got fired during that season, since Odagiri was willing to reprise his iconic role if Takatera was around. But since they fired Takatera, it means no reprisal for Odagiri anytime soon.
  • Kamen Rider Build: In Japan, the Cross-Z V-Cinema is remembered poorly, partly because of its content (unpopular new characters and complaints of a formulaic plot) but also because promotional material gave the false impression that it was suitable for young children to be taken to. Official social media channels shared photos of children cosplaying at screenings of the movie - who would then have been treated to graphic scenes like Ryuuga being tortured onscreen and Yui burning to death. This is likely to be why subsequent V-Cinemas have largely toned down the gore, while the Bloodier and Gorier Trio of Deep Sin movie included some of the worst scenes in the trailer as a warning of what to expect.
• Karamo was a talk show similar to Maury and wasn't really popular, but now it's remembered for when Tiktok Chef Pii of the infamous Pink Sauce brought on a critic and proceeded to insult and gaslight her for the entire segment without letting the woman really defend herself. Making things worse, Karamo stood by her side and condemned the critic as well, accusing her of ruining the woman's life and complaining for no reason. Pink Sauce is actually known for misleading information, the chef's incredible inexperience in sauce making, not knowing what the FDA stood for, and the fact many sauces have been delivered spoiled or damaged. The critic in question wasn't just complaining to complain, and it was clear there was either some miscommunication or no research at all here. Comments even brought up why they didn't bring on people who actually lied about what the sauce did to them compared to someone with legitimate critiques. The audience cheered on the chef as well, making the critic feel like a pariah, and even when she sadly had to concede and say this should make everyone think, Karamo threw it back on her and said it was her problem and her fault before ending the segment there. This backfired for everyone except the critic; Chef Pii's reputation sunk further, and Karamo was lambasted online for his poor research and gaslighting, with people accusing him of showing favoritism to black women guests over the white ones. This culminated in him leaving a nasty tweet online calling these critics haters before deleting it, and his show scrubbed the video itself from the internet, with reaction and commentary channels being the only evidence of what happened in that episode. Many comments on newer videos continually bring up that Karamo should apologize to the critic; he did eventually contact Ally, four months later, and he still showed no real remorse to gaslighting her and, as comments pointed out, the apology felt half assed and that he was simply saving face because people were still posting comments begging for him to apologize to Ally. He even seemed to use her own words against her. Karamo went from the helpful guy on Queer Eye to a gaslighter.
• The Kevin James-led sitcom Kevin Can Wait is better known for its ill-fated attempt to shake the show's dynamics up in its second season, thanks to CBS' decision to fire Erinn Hayes, who played Kevin's wife on the show, and replacing her with James' King of Queens co-star Leah Remini in an attempt to sell it as a Spiritual Sequel to the earlier show. Hayes' character was subsequently killed off, and any attempt to address her death was poorly handled, with it only being mentioned in passing at the beginning of the Season 2 premiere episode. The subsequent backlash gave the show some very negative publicity and may have played a factor in the show not getting renewed for a third season, as well as helped to spawn the critically acclaimed and venomous Deconstructive Parody series Kevin Can F**k Himself.
• The reality show Kid Nation is more well-known for accusations of child endangerment and being an Immoral Reality Show than the actual content of the episodes. While the only onscreen injuries were some minor bruises and burns, JonTron's interview with former contestant Jimmy revealed that the controversies and issues the detractors had weren't exactly unfounded. Additionally, the same interview revealed that there were several offscreen injuries that caused the producers to call an ambulance, such as some of the kids unintentionally drinking bleach and needing to get their stomachs pumped, and another one burning her face while trying to cook.

L to R

• The second season of Lethal Weapon was undermined by reports about the constant dysfunction behind the scenes, with Damon Wayans and Clayne Crawford being at each other's throats and Fox being overly hesitant to rein in its stars' behavior. In the end, Crawford was fired, his character was killed off, and Seann William Scott was brought in to replace him in the third season. Unfortunately, said season was also its last.
• Canadian teen sitcom Life with Derek is less known for the merits of the show itself than for the popular fan theory that lead characters Derek and Casey are in love with each other despite being stepsiblings, thus leading to tons of Incest Yay Shipping amongst its fandom.
• During its run, Live PD was accused of sensationalizing low-level crimes, particularly ones committed by minorities, and glorifying the use of excessive police force. This resulted in A&E canceling the show in June 2020 shortly after the infamous death of George Floyd, the immediate aftermath of which also caused the more popular COPS to go on a hiatus. Not helping was the revelation that the show had destroyed a tape showing a black man being killed in police custody after being arrested for a broken headlight.
• The Man in the High Castle was one of Amazon Prime Video's earliest successes, running for 4 seasons from 2015 to 2019 and receiving tons of critical acclaim. However, it will always be remembered for a P.R. mishap that covered a New York City Subway car with Nazi and Imperial Japanese imagery as part of its advertising campaign.
• The Masked Singer, despite being beloved as it is, has come under fire several times regarding some controversial celebrities on the show. These include Republican politician Sarah Palin, infamous YouTuber Logan Paul, and former NYC mayor and attorney to Donald Trump Rudy Giuliani (the latter of which actually prompted panelist Ken Jeong to leave the set at the end of his unmasking episode due to his personal dislike of him).
  • Giuliani's stint on the show is a special case, as his involvement was revealed by entertainment news sources over a month before his unmasking was scheduled to air, owing to the celebrity's very contentious nature. It got to the point where, after the unmasking was made public, the show began to pretend that he was never on the show to begin with.
• Maude ran for six seasons and was a ratings hit throughout its run. These days, however, it's remembered for an episode where the titular character got an abortion and little else. This was especially evident when Bea Arthur died, with reporters mentioning virtually nothing else about the show.
• The character of Max Headroom was a popular character of a cyberpunk future and would become a pop culture icon of the 80's. These days, he's mostly remembered for two things, one being a homage in Eminem's music video for Rap God, the other being the Max Headroom broadcast intrusion, in which a man in a Max Headroom mask hijacked the signal of two broadcast channels in Chicago. Many clips of the character on YouTube often use quotes from the hijacker.
• Megan Wants a Millionaire was a very short-lived reality show, in which a former Rock of Love contestant had seventeen wealthy men compete for her love. If the show is remembered at all today, it's for the fact that one of the finalists turned out to be a suspected murderer who would later take his own life eight days after the remains of the victim (his wife, Jasmine Fiore) was found, which caused VH1 to suspend and then cancel the show.
• Million Dollar Extreme Presents: World Peace became overshadowed by the fact that the comedy troupe that created the show have been accused of having ties to white supremacist and alt-right groups. As a result, a number of [adult swim] employees threatened to quit unless the show was cancelled, which it ultimately was.
• Million Dollar Money Drop is mainly associated with a controversy surrounding the question in one episode on which product was sold in stores first. The couple that participated in the episode, Brittany and Gabe, had bet $800,000 of their money on the Post-It Notes answer, but the money fell down the trapdoor, despite Post-It Notes actually being the correct answer.^note Post-It Notes were first sold in 1977, albeit named as Press N’ Peel, and in limited stores in 4 cities. They were renamed to Post-It Notes in 1979, when the Walkman was released in Japan, which the show considered as the answer to the question. Post-It Notes were first sold nationally on April 1980, while the Walkman was first sold on July 1980. The producers of the show apologized for the incident, and asked the couple to return on the show to play again. The couple, however, declined to go back on the show, and stalled until the show was cancelled.
• Minipops was a 1983 TV series in the UK that featured children performing pop songs, dressed up as the original artists. Although intended to appeal to kids, the show is almost exclusively remembered for accusations of sexualizing the child performers - particularly an episode where a five-year-old girl wearing nightclothes and heavy makeup sang Sheena Easton's hit "9 to 5", with lyrics including "Night time is the right time, we make love".
• A couple of Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes have this attached:
  • The Sidehackers was selected early in the second season, before anyone on the crew thought it might be important to make sure the films would be suitable for television. The film's first half with its goofy motorcycle races and cheesy romance scenes got them to commit to using it, only to discover that after the point no one had watched past, the hero's girlfriend is graphically raped and murdered, with the film shifting into a gritty revenge flick from then forward. The scene was awkwardly cut from the episode, and from then on they made sure to always know a movie from beginning to end before deciding to use it.
  • The disfigured villain of The Brute Man is played by Rondo Hatton, who suffered from acromegaly. This condition was the cause of his disfigurement and eventually the cause of his death eight months before The Brute Film belatedly premiered. Many fans (and Mary Jo Pehl, who nowadays looks back on this episode with embarrassment) felt uncomfortable that the show was inviting them to laugh at his condition.
  • The show's fan base is also notorious for one of the biggest and nastiest flame wars from the early days of the World Wide Web, over the change in host from Joel to Mike. It was so devastating to the online community that the topic was banned almost everywhere until several years after the show ended.
  • The show was made at a time when homosexuality and other related issues were largely considered acceptable to mock, which has resulted in quite a few jokes that suffer from serious Values Dissonance now. The biggest offender is the short Mr. B Natural, in which the title character is played by a woman whose sexiness is very much played up, resulting in many, many lines that can now come off as transphobic. It didn't help at all that the short became one of the most popular things the show ever did thanks to just how bizarre it is, and Mr. B even became an occasional drop-in character, causing it to maintain a very high profile among fans and likely one of the first things a new viewer will check out.
• Even supposedly family-friendly shows such as Canadian "tween" drama The Next Step (and by extension, its Spin-Off Lost and Found Music Studios) are not exempt from this. The actress Jordan Clark (who some people watch the show for — she is considered a Ms. Fanservice) caused controversy with her slightly raunchy act in◊ Dancing with the Stars, which caused no end of ire with Moral Guardians and Think of the Children!-type groups. Word of God is she did it to avoid Contractual Purity.
• Nickelodeon's Nick Studio 10 block is better known for the fact that it randomly interrupted the middle of a show, causing viewers to miss part of the episode, than for anything else about it.
• Palace has attracted controversy because notorious plagiarist Yu Zheng wrote it. Tong Hua, author of the novel adapted into Scarlet Heart, accused him of plagiarising some of her work for Palace — which makes the comparisons between the two series Harsher in Hindsight.
• The most remembered facet of The Pat Sajak Show, other than the fact that Americans got to see the host of Wheel of Fortune cut his teeth in the talk show industry, was the March 30, 1990 episode. At this point, the show was employing guest hosts on Fridays, and Rush Limbaugh happened to be the guest host that night. He entered the audience to gauge feedback on an anti-abortion bill in Idaho, causing him to get heckled for several minutes, to the point that he had to cut to commercial and conduct his interview with the next guest in another studio. He then began to speak on affirmative action in the next segment, but once again had to cut to commercial due to further heckling, and conducted the final segment with the audience cleared out. Limbaugh later claimed that the hecklers were planted as a publicity stunt. The show also ended up being cancelled while Sajak was on vacation overseas.
• If people don't remember Press Your Luck for the Whammy, then they remember it for Michael Larson's infamous memorization of the Big Board's light patterns, resulting in him getting a huge haul.
• The Price Is Right:
  • Dennis James' controversial incident with the Cliff Hangers game during a nighttime syndicated episode of The Price Is Right in 1976, when he shouted out "There goes Fritz!" when the contestant lost the game and the mountain climber fell over the cliff, unaware that Janice Pennington's husband (whose name was also Fritz) had vanished while mountain climbing in Afghanistan. Janice ran off and remained backstage crying for the rest of the episode.
  • Despite his 35-year run as host, Bob Barker's tenure was marred by a myriad of controversies. These include a large number of models being fired from the show for spurious reasons (including Holly Halstrom and the aforementioned Janice Pennington), announcers no longer appearing on camera (something that Fremantle Media tried to cover up), and an embargo on rerunning any episode that sold furs or other animal-derived products. Most of these decisions came in the 1990s and early noughts, by which point Barker was also executive producer.
  • Terry Kneiss' perfect bid during the December 16, 2008 episode will forever be tainted by accusations of cheating by the production staff and host Drew Carey before they decided Kneiss should keep the prizes. Kneiss was aided by a fan from the forum golden-road.net, who had recognized the prizes in Kneiss' showcase from previous episodes, shouted the exact amount to him (unlike most shows, Price allows the audience to shout possible bids or other gameplay advice at contestants)... and, after having done so, said fan was banned from the studio.
• The quiz show scandals of the 1950s mean that multiple game shows of the decade have had their reputations permanently tarnished due to revelations of behind-the-scenes rigging. 21 was particularly hit by this, since the scandals started when former contestant Herb Stempel revealed that he'd allowed his opponent Charles Van Doren to win at the request of producer Dan Enright.
• Netflix series The Ranch was affected by this when the company seemed to be in no hurry to remove Danny Masterson after multiple rape accusations (and later convictions and 30 years to life prison sentence). This came to a head with a jaw-dropping moment from former Netflix executive Andy Yeatman, who was questioned about it by a woman at a soccer game and blithely replied the company didn't believe the accusations, only for her to reveal that she was one of the accusers. This is why Yeatman is now a former Netflix executive. Also if you type in his name, the first thing that comes up is an article HE wrote discussing the life-destroying incident! The upshot was the number of people just plain confused at how you can possibly say anything to that question beyond "Legal has advised us not to talk about it." Masterson himself would be written out, with Dax Shepard being hired to replace him as a new character.
• NBC's Rise (2018) was nominally based on a non-fiction book about a gay man (albeit closeted at the time) who revolutionized a high school theater department. His equivalent in the show is straight, which wasn't helped at all by producer Jason Katims making what he later regretted as an extremely poor choice of words when he said he wanted to "tell my own story," which many LGBTQ advocates took as him saying he couldn't possibly relate to a sexuality outside of his own, when in fact he was just commenting on how the original book was just a jumping off point for the show's fictional story (enough that Katims has a "created by" credit rather than "developed by"). The show did feature several prominent non-straight characters and got the blessing of GLAAD for their positive portrayal, but many had a hard time getting past that initial impression. This is likely why the show only lasted one season.
• Ronan Farrow Today managed to get hit with controversy twice in just its first few weeks on the air in 2014. First, he was overshadowed by his sister Dylan publicly reiterating her allegations that she'd been molested by their estranged father Woody Allen, reigniting the scandal it caused when they first went public in the '90s. Then, three days after his show premiered, he was awarded the Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism and Exploration. While the award was unrelated to his work on his show (Farrow had previously worked for years in a variety of roles, any of which might justify his getting the award) the fact that the award came so soon after the premiere of his show made him look like an over-privileged celebrity scion, an image that he wasn't able to shake, particularly not after someone released a memo to the press declaring that Farrow would not take "off-topic" questions during the pressers for the Cronkite Award ceremony. Incidentally, his show suffered from chronic low ratings and lasted only a year. In a happier note for Farrow, he would be lauded years later for his Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting of the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse scandal, which in turn led to the #MeToo movement (which itself got the allegations against Allen taken much more seriously by the public). By 2019, Farrow was one of the most respected journalists in the United States, with Ronan Farrow Today barely being remembered, so it seems that he was ultimately able to shake off the fallout from it.
• Afton Williamson quit The Rookie (2018) after one season, accusing the show runner of completely ignoring her complaints about the racism she was subjected to by crew members, and sexual harassment from an unnamed recurring guest star until he outright tried to assault her.
• Roseanne had the distinction of having this happening both during its original run and its revival:
  • The series' original run is more famous for how gimmicky its last season was, before the twist of the series finale, where it was revealed that the entire series itself is actually a story written by the title character about her life, and the whole final season was outright invented by her to cope with the death of her husband, who died between seasons. It says something that the revival completely undid said reveal. Even before the last season, the show was no stranger to controversy, thanks to a Sweeps Week Lesbian Kiss and a widely condemned rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner" by the show's star Roseanne Barr at a baseball game, something the show lampshaded more than once afterward.
  • Its revival is more known for Barr's tweet directed at Obama administration advisor Valerie Jarrett, in which she compared her to a character from Planet of the Apes, and her subsequent firing. This led to the cancellation of the revival and the creation of an After Show, The Conners.

S to X

• Saturday Night Live:
  • The December 17, 1977 episode was hosted by Miskell Spillman, who won the "Anyone Can Host" contest, where an average person gets to guest host SNL, also becoming the oldest person to host the show at age 80 (a record that stood until Betty White hosted on May 8, 2010 at age 88). However, this episode is more well known for musical guest Elvis Costello's performance, where he started out playing "Less Than Zero" before hastily going into "Radio, Radio", defying his record company's demands. Costello spent several years being banned from appearing on SNL before being invited again in 1989, 1991, and at the SNL 25th Anniversary Special in 1999, where he recreated the song switch.
  • After a rough start, the Jean Doumanian-produced season 6 (1980-81) actually had some decent episodes as the year went on, but that all went out the window when Charles Rocket made his Precision F-Strike, which became what both that season and Rocket himself were best known for. Only hardcore SNL buffs even remember who hosted that particular episode (Dallas's Charlene Tilton).
  • The Tim Robbins episode from season 18 on October 3, 1992 is remembered almost exclusively for being the notorious episode in which Sinéad O'Connor ripped Pope John Paul II's photo and screamed, "Fight the real enemy!" after a cover of Bob Marley's "War", in protest of the Catholic Church's child abuse, which was mostly unknown at that time. NBC has never rerun the on-air performance; they use the dress rehearsal version where she held a photo of an impoverished child, and clips of her on-air performance are only ever shown during segments on SNL's most controversial moments.
  • The episode hosted by Alec Baldwin and his then-wife Kim Basinger on February 12, 1994 will forever be remembered as the episode that had the "Canteen Boy Gets Molested" sketch.
  • The February 19, 1994 episode hosted by Martin Lawrence, which immediately followed the Alec Baldwin/Kim Basinger episode, will be remembered for Martin's raunchy monologue about women's hygiene, which was so tasteless, it nearly got everyone on the show fired and is often cut in reruns and replaced with title cards explaining the gist of the monologue and why it can't be shown on TV anymore.
  • Donald Trump's second hosting gig in season 41 on November 7, 2015 is infamous, as this time, Trump was a frontrunner in the 2016 presidential race, and had already made many inflammatory statements that led to massive protests outside NBC's studios. There was the strong implication that both sides were using each other to promote themselves and that neither camp truly wanted to be there, and the SNL performers later admitted that they were uncomfortable working with him in this situation. After Trump won the presidential election the following year, to the shock of everyone around the world, SNL would spend his presidency skewering him, though at that point, it seemed like too little too late for some.
  • Elon Musk's hosting gig in Season 46 on May 8, 2021, will forever be remembered for the intense backlash the announcement of his appearance received on social media, including from a few of the show's cast members, with several users comparing it to the show's infamous decision to let Donald Trump host in Season 41. The actual episode itself was generally seen as inoffensive, with Musk doing a serviceable job as a host who wasn't an entertainer and being a good sport who allowed himself to be the butt of many jokes, unlike Trump.
• Seinfeld:
  • The series got in major hot water with the Puerto Rican community when "The Puerto Rican Day" featured Kramer burning the Puerto Rican flag, despite it being an accident. The DVD set features interviews of everyone lamenting how the joke was blown out of proportion, and cast such a pall over the show right as it was ending.
  • The final episode is notorious for being a Clip Show that ends with the main characters imprisoned for not intervening in a crime, after having all their worst aspects laid out in detail. The clip show aspect was made worse by how the original airing of the last episode directly followed another clip show.
• The Secret Government: The Constitution in Crisis, a Bill Moyers documentary, was the subject of a very serious controversy to the point where it painted a bright red target on PBS's back even well into the '90s, with Republicans using the documentary as an excuse to call for zeroing out funding for the network.
• Sexy Tanaka-san, a Japanese manga series focusing on belly-dancing, is more known for the live action adaptation that the author publicly criticized the screenwriter and producers for butchering the story on her blog. She retracted the post and apologized for causing trouble, only for her to commit suicide not long after. News of the suicide lead to massive backlash against the screenwriter, Nippon Television (the TV channel responsible for producing the live action version), and Shogakukan (the publisher of the manga); with Nippon TV issuing an apology the following month.
• The Shakespeare Plays is best known for its Troubled Production, which saw two changes in producers and several delays, reshoots, and edits. Among the individual plays:
  • Romeo and Juliet, the series premiere (and the third episode to be broadcast in North America), attracted some unwanted attention when female lead Rebecca Saire was banned from being interviewed over harsh comments about director Alvin Rakoff.
  • The Taming of the Shrew, in addition to the controversy mentioned in the Theatre section, has the distinction of the character of Petruchio being altered from a slapstick character to more of a psychological Puritan type at the insistence of male lead John Cleese, and being a production perfect for the coming of the neoconservative '80s, something which was not lost on critics.
  • The Merchant of Venice, with the baggage mentioned in the Theatre section, attracted a lot of protest from Jewish groups in the United States, including the Anti-Defamation League. Some even went so far as to try to pressure PBS to pull the broadcast from its schedule. It didn't work; using lessons learned from the Death of a Princess controversy the year before, PBS went ahead with the broadcast, citing a need for both sides of the issue to be heard and also pointing out that both producer Jonathan Miller and the actor playing Shylock, Warren Mitchell, just so happened to be Jewish themselves.
  • Othello is best known as the episode that was delayed because producer Cedric Messina had tried to cast African-American actor James Earl Jones in the title role, resulting in the threat of union action. It took two seasons before Messina's replacement, Miller, was able to produce the play with a different actor in the role; curiously, the casting of a white man as Othello wasn't met with as much controversy as the uninitiated would expect. One thing about the final product that did attract controversy, at least in the United States, was allegations of a bad sound mix triggered by a conversation between Honest Iago and Cassio.
  • Titus Andronicus is best known for being broadcast well after the rest of Series 7 due to union action. The fact that it's Bloodier and Gorier than the rest of Shakespeare's ouvre led to rumours that the BBC got a little squeamish about its ultra-violent content and got into disagreements with producer Shaun Sutton about censorship.
• Allison Mack's 2018 exposure for her involvement in a sex cult within the multi-level marketing company NXIVM brought a lot of controversy to the series Smallville. As a result, many people have either been turned off of the series or can no longer see Mack's character, Chloe Sullivan, as an adorable or well-intentioned girl.
• Star Trek: Discovery:
  • Most discussions about the series are destined to be overshadowed by CBS' highly unpopular decision to make it exclusive to their paid streaming service CBS All Access, meaning that Star Trek fans have to pay a monthly subscription fee to watch it, even though CBS is a broadcast network. It doesn't help that the network aired the pilot episode on regular TV to entice viewers, only to end it with a cliffhanger; prior to that first episode, most trailers for the show downplayed the fact that it could only be watched online, leading many viewers to feel cheated.
  • After the show actually started airing, it developed a reputation for killing off minority characters. Especially notorious was Michelle Yeoh's Captain Georgiou being killed in the opening two-parter, after the network themselves had spent months patting themselves on the back for having a badass female Asian captain in the show, as well as one half of the franchise's first confirmed gay relationship, Dr. Hugh Culber. While both characters actually came Back from the Dead in various ways, several people had already lost their jobs — including someone who tried to handle the Bury Your Gays element by spoiling the fact that Culber would return.
• The 39th Season of Survivor titled Island of the Idols is primarily remembered for the inappropriate actions of contestant Dan Spilo against fellow contestant Kellee Kim, where the show did not boot him off immediately and let him stay, allowing him and other contestants to use the situation to vote out Kellee. It took an inappropriate action against a producer despite being reprimanded already for him to be booted off, but by that point the damage was done. Nowadays almost nothing about the season apart from this incident talked about, with the island twist and winner becoming afterthoughts to fans.
• The Made-for-TV Movie Tears and Laughter: The Joan and Melissa Rivers Story is remembered primarily for its controversial premise - a dramatic re-enactment of Joan Rivers and her daughter Melissa's struggles to come to grips with the suicide of Edgar Rosenberg, Rivers' husband and Melissa's father - with the lead roles being played by Joan and Melissa themselves. While Joan argued that the film was her and Melissa's way of coping with their grief and rebuilding their relationship, critics saw it as a ghoulish attempt to wring publicity out of a very personal tragedy.
• Takalani Sesame, the South African version of Sesame Street, is best known for featuring Kami, a HIV-positive character. This makes sense, since HIV is a major issue in South Africa, but it was unfortunately misinterpreted by some people as the character being added to the American Sesame Street, which sparked outrage from homophobic Moral Guardians who associate HIV and AIDS with homosexuality. If it weren't for this controversy, it's unlikely many people outside of South Africa would even know this show exists.
• Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms attracted controversy when there were reports that author TangQi blatantly copied the story from a danmei novel from author Dafeng Guaguo called Taohua Zhai 桃花债 ^note lit. Debt of Romance or translated as Peach Blossoms Debt and other novels like the Chinese love novel Fei Wo Qingcheng 非我倾城 ^note translated as It’s Not Me: The Prince Wants to Leave His Concubine while ridiculing the original author in many ways to ruin her reputation, which led to a lot of famous authors and fans to boycott TangQi. Unfortunately, due to how successful the drama is,^note and the fact that danmei novels were still underground at the time so Chinese laws won't favor the original author if it's taken to court the drama's production team doesn't acknowledge the novel's plagiarism allegations or take any action against TangQi and is caught helping to scrub the controversy off Weibo and other Chinese Social Media.
• As of 2021, the 2018 Korean drama Time is becoming more known for the on-set mistreatment of lead actress Seohyun by male lead Kim Jung-hyun during the filming than the drama itself, such as refusing to scene romantic scenes with Seohyun, as well as using wet tissues after touching Seohyun in scenes, which caused her to cry. The scandal was further complicated when Dispatch revealed that Seo Ye-ji, Kim Jung-hyun's then-girlfriend, may have been the reason for his behavior on the set of Time.
• Tomorrow's Pioneers, is only known for being known for allegedly being an anti-semitic propaganda children's show based in Palestine and the biased reporting in the West that came from pro-Israeli sources, leaving a lot of the show's content becoming mistranslated and the claims of bigotry questionable at best. Some have seen the mistranslation as an excuse to dehumanize and justify violence against Palestinians and the claims of propaganda have also been contrasted with Israel's use of propaganda that came into light during the 2023 war in Gaza.
• Even non-fans of Top Gear are familiar with the many accusations of misogyny and racism in the show, particularly at the hands of former host Jeremy Clarkson.
• The BBC's pop music showcase Top of the Pops ran from 1964-2006 (with annual Christmas specials continuing to this day), and its performances (both "live" and recorded) included numerous cultural landmark moments. Unfortunately, it's nearly impossible to talk about the series today without mentioning that its most frequent presenter, Jimmy Savile, was revealed after his death to be one of the most prolific sexual predators in British history, and that at least 19 of the incidents of which he was accused happened during taping of Top of the Pops; Dave Lee Travis, a regular presenter in the 1970s and 1980s, was likewise hit with multiple accusations of sexual assault, one of which led to a conviction. All episodes presented by Savile and/or Travis have been permanently pulled from reruns, and numerous TV critics continue to question the sensitivity of airing even the episodes with other presenters.
• Donald Trump's remarks about Mexican immigrants in his opening campaign speech for the 2016 presidential election led to such backlash that it resulted in both the Miss Universe pageant and his show The Apprentice taken off of NBC. His continued remarks, controversial views, unexpectedly successful election as the President of the United States in 2016, scandal-ridden career, campaign, and presidency, in which he became the first President to be impeached twice has resulted in the programs that were once his largest direct contribution to pop culture becoming just mild footnotes in his story.
• Two and a Half Men was already a divisive show amongst viewers, but it will likely forever be linked to the often bizarre and sometimes even dangerous personal behavior of its star Charlie Sheen, including but not limited to numerous drug and alcohol-induced tirades, his views on 9/11, and allegations of Domestic Abuse and rape. He eventually proved so difficult to work with that he was unceremoniously fired and his character killed off and replaced by Ashton Kutcher.
• The premise of the sitcom United States of Al revolves around an Afghanistan War veteran and his Afghan best friend who served as an interpreter for him overseas. The show was already seen as controversial for making light of an ongoing war as well as having the Afghan character be played by an Indian man with an inauthentic accent (and not being funny enough to make people look past these issues), but after the United States withdrew from the country and the Taliban retook it in 2021, reruns of the show were pulled from CBS's schedule and the writers were forced to rewrite the second season to address the topic more sensitively. Because of the controversies and low ratings, the show would be cancelled after its second season.
• The 1980s sitcom Valerie will forever be known for its controversial firing of lead Valerie Harper after season two (she later sued NBC and the producers for wrongful firing and won), leading to her character getting killed off and replaced by Sandy Duncan, subsequently leading to the show being retitled Valerie's Family and later The Hogan Family. The show managed to last four seasons without Harper, producing enough episodes for reruns, but has otherwise been unsuccessful in syndication. The controversy even overshadows the fact that the series was a Star-Making Role for Jason Bateman, who played one of Harper's sons.
• The Walking Dead:
  • The Season 10 episodes "The Tower" and "A Certain Doom" are regarded as good in their own right, but they will always be remembered for the unexpected hiatus between their airing caused by the COVID-19 pandemic shutting down post-production on the latter, forcing the former episode to serve as the quasi-season finale for the better part of a year. Reviewers and fans had to check their expectations to try to avoid judging the former as a season finale, and whether or not the latter was worth the unintended wait.
  • The bonus episodes of Season 10 are nearly impossible to watch without having the pandemic in mind due to them being created due to the pandemic. Only two episodes received positive acclaim, while the others are regarded as average at best and pointless at worst.
• In 2021, the Ukrainian version of The X Factor had a clip from the 2017 season shared of one of the judges, Dmytro Shurov, breaking a contestant's guitar all because he didn't like his audition. The guitar was allegedly a gift to the contestant from his late father. Shortly after, several people found out about Shurov's social media and started harassing him to the point where he had to limit comments on his profiles.

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