Basic Trope: Unnecessary censorship makes something sound even dirtier than it should.
- Straight: Alice says "Look at the big pile of clothes!", but the word "clothes" is censored out, making it sound as though she said something worse.
- Exaggerated: Alice says a long sentence that is censored by cars driving past, but due to the context it sounds like she released a Cluster F-Bomb.
- Downplayed: Alice says "Son of a gun", but the word "gun" is censored, making it sound like she said something stronger.
- Justified:
- Bob thought she was going to swear, and due to in-universe censorship, that can't happen.
- "We really need to get new…" BEEEEP "… for the smoke detector."
- Inverted: Alice actually did swear, but everything except that is censored.
- Subverted: Alice's casual line of "heading into town to pick up ***" sounds like unnecessary censorship. Until it was revealed the word wasn't milk or bread.
- Double Subverted: ...It's actually "groceries".
- Parodied: Alice and Bob watch a Show Within a Show that is essentially the Fictional Counterpart of "Wheel of Fortune". A puzzle has the phrase "_UCK _E _N THE A__ TON_GHT", which is later revealed as "LUCK BE IN THE AIR TONIGHT", only for Alice and Bob to remark that they guessed horribly wrong.
- Zig-Zagged: ???
- Averted:
- Censorship doesn't occur.
- Any censorship is for scenes that would require it.
- Enforced:
- Rule of Funny
- Alternatively, it was done by mistake; Moral Guardians wanted a scene with Alice swearing to be censored, but the creators of the work accidentally or, more likely, deliberately censored either the wrong scene or too much of the scene.
- The production used period accurate radio transceivers for the radio communications and threw in the heterodyning that happened during scene 33, take 12.
- Lampshaded: "You just meant "clothes"? I thought you meant something else..."
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: ???
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: "I wonder why some works use censorship for comedy."
Back to Censored for Comedy
