Banned In China / United States

Since about the 1960s and 1970s, the U.S. federal courts have been fairly consistent in interpreting the First Amendment as, essentially, a blanket prohibition on banning anything that isn't real child sexual exploitation material or snuff films, on the basis of its content. This means that when some piece of media is "banned" in the United States, it usually means that whoever owns the copyright has voluntarily ceased distributing it or that outlets like retail stores, theaters, or public libraries have refused to make it available to the public.

The one exception is the Federal Communications Commission, which supposedly has the right to censor over-the-air television and radio because it "owns" the airwaves and licenses them to broadcasters. Even then, actual bans are rare because networks generally avoid anything they think the FCC would find obscene (the actual rules are, in fact, not available to the public, as the FCC generally regulates issues of obscenity in a quasi-judicial manner, by following precedents set in adjudications, rather than by quasi-legislative rulemaking; the only way to know what the FCC prohibits is to break its rules, which is why Defying the Censors, Getting Crap Past the Radar and a knowledge of what freaks out the Moral Guardians are useful skills to have if you want to get involved in movie, TV, or book writing).

Of course, the above only applies to media. Physical objects can be and often are banned as risks to public health and safety (see, e.g., lawn darts, below). This is particularly common respecting imported items, as American safety standards on practically everything are notoriously strict (America may not regulate as many things as Europe, but when it does regulate, it regulates the shit out of it).

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Examples:

Automobiles

• Due to the differences in crash standards used by the United States' NHTSA and those used in the rest of the world (such as NCAP), certain car models importing to the States need to have different modifications to meet the standards and vice versa. Thus, cars not meeting NHTSA requirements are mostly barred from sales, or being limited to private importations under a separate Show and Display law^note For a car to qualify for Show and Display it must be out of production, have a production run of 500 units or less, and have some sort of "historical or technological significance". As that last one is subjective, an application must be filed with the NHTSA and if they approve it you can then import the car. Here's a list of all the cars that have been approved so far (once a car is approved other cars of that exact same model can be imported without the application). That list also shows all the cars that have been rejected, anything not on either list that meets the criteria just hasn't had anyone submit it for approval. Once a car turns 25 years old (from the date it was made, not when the model first went on sale) it's exempt from these laws and can be imported at will, though it will still have to meet any NHTSA regulations in place at the time it was made (along with any state regulations) to be driven on public roads. Certain vehicle categories such as Japan's kei-cars were completely banned after a fiasco surrounding Subaru 360 early in The '60s.
• Car models imported to the States must have other modifications to meet US equipment regulations (most notably headlamps), which differ significantly from those in the rest of the world. Canada lies in a middle ground, mostly matching US regulations line-for-line but also recognizing most ROW standards.
• Due to the infamous "chicken tax"^ContextA 25% tariff levied against imported light pickup trucks. The name comes from the fact that it was created in retaliation to European tariffs on U.S. chicken exports which cratered chicken prices there. Prior to World War II, chicken was an expensive luxury food, and still was in Europe in the 1960's, but had begun large-scale production in the U.S. following the war, itself a consequence of meat rations during the war. The tariff originally also included brandy, dextrose, and potato starch, but these were later dropped. imposed on imported commercial vehicles since the 1960s, non-domestic, imported pickup trucks are non-existent in the US, with manufacturers trying to circumvent the law by having their vehicles built there. This paved the way for American-specific pickup trucks from foreign companies such as Toyota Tacoma and Nissan Titan, though some recent pickup trucks (such as Ford Ranger) are now the same vehicle designs as the international models.

Comic Books

• Downplayed example with Second Coming, a religious satire about Jesus Christ coming back in a superhero universe. Vertigo Comics cancelled it at the last minute due to protests by censorious Christian groups, but they eventually returned the rights, letting the creators publish it through Ahoy Comics.
• Gender Queer: A Memoir: It's been banned in different school districts of Florida and Virginia, while South Carolina governor Henry McMaster has urged the state Department of Education to do the same for having sexual and LGBT+ content. This is one part of a trend in banning LGBT+ books or other material from the public schools in more right-wing US states.

Film

• Porn actress Traci Lords infamously lied about her age, leading to the discovery that she was under 18 when she was in several pornographic works, all of which are illegal for being child pornography. This led to two interesting side effects: first, being kinda related to an important Supreme Court case regarding the First Amendment, and second, for one of those works being an issue of Penthouse magazine which was already infamous for a nude pictorial which got Miss America winner Vanessa L. Williams stripped of her title.
• Titicut Follies, a 1967 documentary about a mental ward, was banned from public release for several decades. Officially, the state of Massachusetts thought the film infringed on the privacy of the patients in the film; the real problem, though, was that it showed how the state of Massachusetts treated the mentally ill in its care (suffice it to say, not well). It remains one of the most embarrassing moments for free speech in the US, but weirdly, the ban had a positive effect; the state of Massachusetts was forced to acknowledge people had a right to privacy on the state level. The ban was lifted in 1991 by the state due to the supposed privacy concerns becoming less important as many of the inmates featured in the film passed away in the intervening years, though it ordered that a disclaimer explaining that conditions had improved at the mental ward since 1967 be added.
• The Tin Drum was banned for a short time in Oklahoma County, which includes most of Oklahoma City, due to being considered obscene. Naturally, this only increased interest in the film until the ban was lifted via an injunction.
• A broad obscenity sting in Orange County, Florida (home to Orlando), managed to claim Pink Flamingos, among other films.
• A lot of pre-Hays Code films were banned by the Catholic Legion of Decency and the Motion Picture Association of America between 1934 and 1968, including the first film adaptation of The Maltese Falcon. They were unbanned only after the ratings system supported by then-MPAA leader Jack Valenti came into place, though it would be years before they ever got released Stateside again, mainly due to practicality issues.
• The 1936 version of Show Boat was banned for many years after star Paul Robeson landed on Red Channels and was issued a travel ban.
• Friday the 13th caused a furor which led to the MPAA being much more aggressive with its X rating. This was tantamount to a ban, as not many theaters wanted to show them, and not many stores wanted to carry them. The X rating was also stigmatized as being only for porn films. (This furor, by the way, is the only conceivable reason why Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, which has minor nudity and just a few short scenes of violence and/or genuine menace, was rated R in 1984, after it had carried a PG rating for 15 years; today, the film would probably be rated PG-13 if resubmitted.) The NC-17 rating was introduced in response, but it didn't do much to slow the alleged "chilling effect" on such movies.
• Under Idaho state law, establishments licensed to serve alcohol are prohibited from exhibiting "acts or simulated acts of sexual intercourse" or "any person being touched, caressed or fondled" in their nether region. This law is ostensibly meant to prohibit alcohol at strip clubs, but authorities have threatened that they would enforce this law against cinemas serving alcohol if they receive complaints surrounding films containing such content, and that even some R-rated films would fall under this restriction. In January 2016, a theater was threatened with revocation of its liquor license for daring to let undercover investigators drink before watching Fifty Shades of Grey, so it decided to challenge the law under the First Amendment. Among other things, they pointed out that despite the existence of other R-rated films that contain sex scenes, the only other film they seemed to be cracking down on was The Wolf of Wall Street. This, combined with cinema chains refusing to screen NC-17 films at all, prevented Blue Is the Warmest Color from being screened almost anywhere in Boise, Idaho.
• Utah had a very similar law, among its many bizarre alcohol-related laws (such as one requiring alcoholic beverages at restaurants to be prepared out of sight, and only given to patrons with an "intent to dine"). It's no surprise, given the high degree of influence that the LDS Church (which prohibits alcohol consumption by its members) has in the state. A cinema that received similar threats to the Idaho theater after screening Deadpool also decided to fight the law, and won, having it struck down as unconstitutional. The film's star Ryan Reynolds was a major backer of their crowdfunded legal action.
• Until the early 1960s, many films in which white and black Americans shared screen time, or in which one black actor was seen, were subject to censorship in the American South. They were usually shown uncut in the rest of the country. Examples are:
  • The scene in The Little Colonel (1935) where Shirley Temple dances on the stairs with her black butler, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, was cut.
  • Lena Horne's singing "Stormy Weather" (1943) was cut during screenings in the South.
  • Glenn Miller's two movies, Sun Valley Serenade (1941) and Orchestra Wives (1942), both featured a song and dance routine by the Nicholas Brothers (with Dorothy Dandridge joining them in the former). Their performances were set up so they could be easily cut out of the films without affecting continuity.
• If You Love This Planet (1982), a National Film Board of Canada documentary short film about a lecture given at SUNY Plattsburgh by Australian anti-nuclear activist Dr. Helen Caldicott. Essentially An Inconvenient Truth but about nukes, the film was formally declared to be "foreign political propaganda" by the Reagan administration under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The US government attempted to suppress distribution of the film and required all venues showing the film to file paperwork with the Department of Justice. All the notoriety actually helped to make the film more popular. It went on to win the 1982 Oscar for Best Documentary (Short Subject), and the director thanked the US government for the free advertising in her acceptance speech.
• From 2001 to 2004, ABC was known for broadcasting Saving Private Ryan nearly uncut on Veterans Day with a TV-MA rating. However, in 2004, in the wake of the Super Bowl Wardrobe Malfunction and the FCC's shifting stance towards indecent content on broadcast TV, 65 individual ABC affiliates refused to air the film out of fear that the FCC could fine them over its content. Although ABC offered to cover any fines issued to affiliates on their behalf, the FCC ultimately received no complaints at all. The Moral Guardians even praised ABC's decision to continue airing Saving Private Ryan, because after all, it is a patriotic film. That said, ABC has never aired the film since and future airings have been relegated to cable where standards are more lenient compared to broadcast TV.
• Due to its longtime No Export for You status, a persistent rumor claimed that the film adaptation of Battle Royale had been banned in the US due to the Columbine massacre. While there never was an official ban in place (as noted above, America doesn't have a Censorship Bureau capable of banning films^note Congress did mull creating one because of the perceived lewdness in films, a series of celebrity scandals (notably Fatty Arbuckle), and the ensuing media circus that rocked Hollywood in the 1920s. Even before this, the Mutual Film Corporation v. Industrial Commission of Ohio decision essentially stated that movies are not subject to First Amendment protections as they lacked artistic merit, while several states and cities created their own censorship boards. To prevent government censorship, Hollywood opted for self-regulation via The Hays Code, ostensibly proving to Congress that the movie studios "cleaned up" their act), with the original novel and the manga adaptation both being translated and published stateside, squeamishness over the film's subject matter did cause many American distributors to back off from it out of fear of a backlash. Reportedly, when Toei screened the film in 2005 for the lawyers of a prospective American distributor, they were warned that they'd go to prison for releasing it, and so they created a series of ridiculous conditions^note Namely, they demanded that the film be given a wide theatrical release with an advertising campaign to match — something that virtually no foreign film, let alone one violent enough to qualify for an NC-17 rating, receives in the Hollywood-dominated US market. in order to dissuade potential distributors and avoid any headaches from American Moral Guardians (the film having already been controversial enough in its native Japan, with its lack of school shootings). An American remake of the film was briefly discussed, but fell into Development Hell after the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre. It wouldn't be until 2009, when the success of The Hunger Games demonstrated that one would be able to sell a story about teenagers murdering each other following the aftermath of Columbine, that Anchor Bay Entertainment got Toei to soften its stance and gave the film an American release.
• missing. (1982) and the book on which it was based went missing in the United States for a couple of decades due to a libel lawsuit over the way the State Department was portrayed.
• In The Adventures of Mark Twain, the segment based on The Mysterious Stranger has garnered this reputation, going viral on YouTube as a cartoon purportedly banned from TV. As it turns out, a lot of the networks that aired the movie simply chose to cut that scene out because they understandably considered it too creepy for young audiences (similar to what some networks did with the infamous tunnel scene in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory).
• Ingagi had its distribution suppressed by the Federal Trade Commission over the misrepresentation of its subject matter for exploitive purposes. Its infamy was so great, in fact, that it didn't see a home video release until 2021.
• In 2011, Bob Iger said that Song of the South would not receive future distribution in the United States to avoid controversy over its depiction of black people in the Southern US during the Reconstruction era. In March 2020, this was revealed to be an outright ban, as Iger told people at a shareholders event that the film would never get a release on Disney+, not even with an added disclaimer at the beginning, as long as he was in charge.
• The Care Bears: Adventure in Wonderland has this reputation due to American Greetings allegedly refusing to allow a Region 1 DVD release over how badly it and the previous film were received. Not helping its case is that even Nelvana co-founder Michael Hirsh admitted after its release, "It was just one sequel too many."
• On account of its sympathetic depiction of the CCCP (for context, the film was made during World War II, when relations between the US and USSR were much warmer), United Artists refused to release Mission to Moscow for television broadcast until the 1970s.

Foodstuffs

• The production, sale, and distribution of alcoholic beverages from 1919 to 1933. This era is famously known as Prohibition, and gave rise to speakeasies and the age of gangsters, with such mob bosses as Al Capone, Frank Costello, Carlo Gambino, and Lucky Luciano.
• A law dating back to the 1930s bans the sale of any foodstuff that contains a "non-nutritive object" embedded within. This means that Kinder Surprise, and any product like it, cannot be sold or imported into the U.S. While Ferraro did launch Kinder Joy^*a spin-off product consisting of an egg split into two halves, one with a milk and cocoa filling with wafer balls, and the other containing a toy; while it was first conceived as an alternative to Kinder Surprise in warmer climates, it happens to be in compliance with said law in the United States in 2018, the original Kinder Surprise remains banned.
• For a time, the live-culture dairy product kefir was unavailable in the U.S. due to import bans on the "grains" by which milk is converted into this beverage. This wasn't because the "grains" - actually lumps of microorganisms, living in clusters - were harmful, but because not all the microbes comprising them had been identified by science as yet, and importing unknown bacterial and fungal strains into the United States was prohibited.
• Blackcurrants were banned federally from 1911 to 1966 and still banned at the state level in most areas for a few decades more; as of 2020, they are still illegal in four states. This was because the plant is the other host of the white pine blister rust, a fungal disease caused by the invasive rust fungus Cronartium ribicola which targets five needle pines (including the white pine), and can transmit it to white pines, making them a major threat to the timber industry; the federal ban was lifted when science figured out that blister rust transmission only happens when both plants are in close proximity in moist conditions. The ban had the effect of making blackcurrant an obscure fruit in the United States, in contrast to its popularity in the United Kingdom and Europe.
• Authentic Scottish haggis is banned in the USA as it contains lung meat, which in the USA is not considered fit for human consumption.

Literature

• Blood and Chocolate (1997) got banned from a few high schools in the US (mainly in Texas), primarily over the sexual content. Annette Curtis Klause even had one mother call her to try and get the book removed from her daughter's school library. Klause recalled finding it strange that the thing the mother most objected to wasn't the graphic violence present in the story, but teens talking about and engaging in sexual behavior.^note for the record, the sexual content is pretty PG-13 and there aren't actually any sex scenes in the book
• Quite a large quantity of literature was banned in the city of Boston between the mid-1800s and the mid-1900s. Naked Lunch was the last major work to get its ban removed.
• Many of the books in the Earth's Children series have been banned from libraries in a few of the American states, including Texas, due to the explicit sexual content and depiction of unconventional sexual practices, the depiction of a nature-based, goddess-worshipping prehistoric society living alongside Neanderthals (along with other mentions of evolution), and scenes of rape involving a pubescent child in The Clan of the Cave Bear. Between 1990 and 1999, the series was collectively listed as the 19th most challenged book in the US by the American Library Association.
• An In-Universe example in Flight of the Swan. It takes place in 1917 in Puerto Rico, less than 20 years after it became a U.S. territory. Madame watches poet Manuel Aljama recite one of his poems ("Last Requiem", about the death and resurrection of one's homeland) at a school. The police take him away because under the American government, any display of Puerto Rican nationalism is forbidden.
• Or at least Banned in Texas in the case of young adult vampire series The House of Night. A few schools in Texas banned the books for sexual content and nudity involving teens; one junior high school went as far as banning even books in the series that hadn't yet been written or published.
• A Series of Unfortunate Events: Daniel Handler was hoping for some of this, and was disappointed in how little it happened. His one real "victory" was that the books were banned from a school in Georgia due to Olaf's plan to marry his distant relative Violet in book one, to which he responded "I'm at a loss as to how to write a villain who doesn't do villainous things."
• The famous novel Ulysses was banned from 1921 to 1933 since one of its chapters contained a passage about a character masturbating. Like the rest of the book, the passage was written as a stream of consciousness and thus rather oblique; nevertheless, people thought it was the product of a diseased mind. In 1933, the Supreme Court^note in a case literally called United States vs. One Book Called Ulysses ruled that sexual content in literature is fine as long as it doesn't promote sexual activity. However, Judge John M. Woolsey's opinion regarding the absurdity of censorship (which not many people agreed with at the time) is very well-known and can be read here.

Live-Action TV

• Used In-Universe in M*A*S*H: The protagonists are trying to get their hands on The Moon is Blue, a film so racy that it was banned in Boston. The movie itself was disappointing; the Moral Guardians had overreacted, and the most inappropriate part of the film was a character saying the word "virgin".^note The Moon is Blue was the first mainstream film since the enactment of The Hays Code to use the word "virgin", as well as the words "seduce", "mistress" (in a sexual context), and "pregnant"; it was, however, less the language and more the characters' casual attitude toward sexual topics which roused the ire of the censors. The "virgin" thing is probably also a reference to an instance much earlier in M*A*S*H's run when the CBS censors wouldn't let them say the word "virgin". Of course, they had been warned by the Boston native Major Winchester, who pointed out that Boston would ban Pinocchio.
• Utah's NBC affiliate, KSL-TV, is owned by Bonneville International, a company controlled by the LDS Church. As such, the station has a history of being run by Moral Guardians who pull or pre-empt programs that offend their sensibilities (in most cases, the pre-empted shows were picked up by the local The CW affiliate KUCW or MyNetworkTV affiliate KMYU). Coincidentally, most of the programs KSL has censored wound up being short-runners, but there are exceptions:
  • Picket Fences (when the station was a CBS affiliate): In 1993, the series was pulled after an episode involving a Mormon who still believed in polygamy, despite the mainline LDS church disavowing the concept in 1890. Polygamy is still a very controversial issue in the Mormon faith. It returned that fall, but was moved to 11:00 p.m. on Saturday nights.
  • Coupling: KSL objected to its sexual content. It was ultimately cancelled after four episodes due to poor reception.
  • NBC's late-night poker programming: The LDS Church is opposed to gambling; as such, there has never been any form of state-sanctioned gambling in Utah (including either lotteries or casinos). These programs were canceled following the U.S. government's indictment and shutdown of the online poker sites which sponsored them.
  • The Playboy Club: KSL did not want to associate itself with Playboy because they participate in an education campaign against porn addiction. It only lasted three episodes due to poor reviews and viewership.
  • The New Normal: It featured two men in a relationship trying to care for a surrogate child; the LDS Church doesn't like homosexuality. That said, there was some outcry over KSL's refusal to air it, with many accusing them of homophobia and signing a petition to get them to air it. It didn't last that long anyway.
  • Hannibal: Pulled after four episodes, "due to the extensive graphic nature of this show." Executive producer Scott D. Pierce didn't like this, and he went as far as to compare KSL to Soviet propaganda newspaper Pravda. This one lasted for three seasons before getting the boot, the longest of any KSL-censored primetime series.
  • The Book of Daniel: KSL did not refuse to air that series, even though eight other NBC affiliates - mainly located in the Bible Belt refused to do so over their objections to its content.
  • Days of Our Lives: Punted to the middle of the night in 2011; scuttlebutt is that they objected to the show featuring a gay relationship involving the characters of Will Horton and Sonny Kiriakis, who previously became the first gay couple in daytime television to wed onscreen. Why KSL elected to put in on 1:05am, rather than punt it to their usual dumping ground for shows deemed objectionable by LDS beliefs is unknown.
  • KSL also did not air Saturday Night Live when it switched to NBC, but only because it did not want to pre-empt its popular Saturday night sportscast. SNL began airing on KSL in 2013 after said sportscast was canceled.
• Two other stations known for censorship of network programming are WRAL, an NBC affiliate which covers the Raleigh-Durham area in North Carolina, and sister Fox station WRAZ. They're more or less run by Moral Guardians who are very hostile toward programming they consider to be "anti-family" (which is more or less a side-effect of WRAZ's construction permit having been originally owned by Reverend James Layton, a Christian minster); when affiliated with CBS, they pre-empted one of the Victoria's Secret fashion show specials, and under NBC, they censored the November 12, 2016 episode of Saturday Night Live hosted by Dave Chappelle.
• On WRAZ, reality shows like Temptation Island, Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire?, Married by America, Osbournes Reloaded, and Who's Your Daddy? were either heavily pre-empted or not aired at all. Most of these shows (aside from Temptation Island) got canceled pretty quickly.
• WNDU-TV, the NBC affiliate of South Bend, Indiana, was formerly owned by the University of Notre Dame. Much like KSL, they also pulled shows that offended their religious values, including the aforementioned Coupling and God, the Devil and Bob. They've since been sold to a more conventional owner in Gray Television, which has not engaged in such practices.
• WSET-TV in Lynchburg, Virginia, pulled an episode of Once and Again that contained a lesbian kiss, replacing it with an infomercial. The station provided no official explanation, but a few critics did react to the decision. Similar to KSL's curse, Once and Again was cancelled literally a month after the lesbian kiss episode aired.
• In-Universe example from 30 Rock: "Liz, do you know how hard it was growing up gay in Methenburg, Pennsylvania? The local TV station edited Will & Grace down so much that it was just called Karen."
• A Masterpiece Theatre serial, titled "Private Schulz", is banned for trying to make light of Nazi extermination camps. (On the other hand, the only other work to try that, Life Is Beautiful, is not banned at all.)
• The CBS documentary film The Reagans, which was critical of Ronald Reagan, drew intense criticism from right-wing groups who called it a hit piece. CBS bowed to the pressure and decided not to air it; it did air on cable on sister station Showtime.
• The Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Plato's Stepchildren" in which the white Kirk kisses the black Uhura wasn't shown in several states, according to this article.
• In April 2004, ABC affiliates owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group censored a Nightline episode in which Ted Koppel read the names of soldiers killed in the 2003 Iraq war, claiming that it was "motivated by a political agenda designed to undermine the efforts of the United States in Iraq" (Sinclair is known for having a heavy Republican slant). Sinclair, however, did not censor the two later episodes of Nightline where Koppel did a reading of soldiers killed in Afghanistan (2004), and both Afghanistan and Iraq (2005)
• "Living In Harmony", the particularly bizarre Cowboy Episode of The Prisoner (1967), was rejected for broadcast in the USA for reasons that remain unclear. Suggestions put forward include:
  • That it was just too much of a Bizarro Episode and executives found it incomprehensible.
  • That the episode's focus on pacifism was considered too controversial during the Vietnam War.
  • That the references to the Village's use of hallucinogenic drugs to help create Number Six's illusion of being in a Western setting were too explicit and in breach of Standards and Practices rules about depiction of drug use.
  • That the climax of the Western plot, in which Number Six's character kills the Kid in a gunfight, breached Standards and Practices rules about the depiction of shootings by having both characters in shot when the gun was fired - supposedly rules at the time stated that such killings could only be depicted by cutting from the killer firing the gun to the victim falling.
• NBC's Connecticut station WVIT did not air the July 18, 2017 episode of Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly because it featured an interview with Alex Jones, who is extremely unpopular in the state for his claims that the Sandy Hook shootings were staged.
• The Xena: Warrior Princess episode "The Way" was edited after its initial airing due to the threat of a boycott in India. The Moral Guardians turned out to be an American splinter group from the International Society of Krishna Consciousness. The splinter group objected to the depiction on-screen of the god Krishna, among other things, plus their perception of the two leads as lesbians (a matter kept deliberately ambiguous by the producers). The only significant change: a scene in which Xena attacks the monkey god Hanuman was shortened so that Hanuman immediately restrains Xena instead of passively accepting several blows from her first; this was actually an improvement. A disclaimer was added to the beginning, and a nod to India's history and culture at the end. The splinter group was given a free advertisement during the first rebroadcast; they used it in part to say that they were not mollified. The edited version is now the official version. Meanwhile, in India, where the series also aired, there were no objections to either version; the most popular series in India at the time was a live-action telling of the Ramayana.
• Following a messy screwjob involving the hosting position for The Tonight Show, NBC withheld the entirety of Conan O'Brien's work for the network from distribution for nearly a decade.
• Mississippi's PBS station banned Sesame Street for a month in 1970 due to its multi-racial cast.
• While fairly mild compared to many of the examples; when Norfolk, VA CW affiliate WGNT-TV 27 was known as WYAH under the ownership of Pat Robertson; at one point the station skipped two episodes of Gilligan's Island reruns due to the episodes having plotlines related to ghosts and vampires. The station, as one would expect from a station owned by a prominent television preacher, would also mute any profanity used in reruns it carried.
• The Law & Order episode "Sunday in the Park with Jorge" was inspired by sexual assault incidents during the NYC 2000 Puerto Rican Day parade. Advocacy groups complained about the portrayal of Puerto Ricans. That and the graphic content made this the only episode in the entire franchise to be banned from broadcasting for over a decade.

Music

• The Kinks were banned from performing in America from 1965 to 1969 because their concerts got too rowdy. Many, including the Kinks themselves, believe this ban actually stemmed from a dispute the band was having with the American Federation of Musicians at that time.
• Nick Bertke, better known as Pogo, was banned from performing in (or even entering) the United States until 2021, after it was discovered that he did not have a proper work visa during his September 2011 American tour.
• The Grateful Dead were banned from performing in certain cities or at certain arenas, not because of the content of their music, but because venues simply couldn't handle the size of the band's traveling Deadhead fanbase. The Newbie Boom that stemmed from the success of their 1987 "Touch of Grey" single brought an unwanted, violent, party-animal element into their fanbase that also resulted in the band being asked to not play in some cities again. There was also an incident in 1982, where the Dead were banned from playing at the Boston Garden because arena officials caught the band grilling lobsters on a fire escape before a show. That ban was lifted in 1991, and the band played there regularly until frontman Jerry Garcia's death in 1995.
• Phish were banned from playing at the Red Rocks Amphitheater in Colorado in 1996, when a large group of unruly fans, who did not have tickets, decided to gatecrash one of their concerts there. This resulted in a violent confrontation with local police, which escalated into a small riot outside the show that the band and their paying fans were completely unaware of. Fans accused Denver police^*Although Red Rocks is well outside the Denver city limits, it's owned by the city. of ignoring the band's request to only allow people with tickets to take the dedicated highway exit to Red Rocks, and if they had followed the suggestion, the riot would have never happened. Adding to this was the fact that the nearby town of Morrison couldn't accommodate the band's large fanbase, which regularly traveled with them in a similar fashion to the Deadheads. The ban was lifted in 2009.
• Rock music as a whole was banned from Red Rocks by the mayor of Denver in 1971 after a riot outside of a sold-out Jethro Tull concert. The ban was lifted in 1975, after it was ruled to be unlawful.
• The German band Rammstein was banned from performing in the United States, mostly due to their performance antics (which got them arrested once as well). Though their BDSM-themed songs and political views definitely didn't help. They, and many of their fans, considered this a point of pride, even though the band is much more popular in America than they are in their native Germany. The ban was lifted in 2009. They briefly caught the limelight in the US with an MTV spot, then disappeared from popular consciousness again.
• The city of San Francisco temporarily banned the Lorde song "Royals" in October 2014, due to the San Francisco Giants playing the Kansas City Royals in the World Series. Kansas City, on the other hand, played the song every hour on the day of Game 1.
• The novelty song "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" was briefly condemned by the Archdiocese of, you guessed it, Boston. This was enough to get it pulled from radio rotation in places, until the song was explained to them. Evidently Don't Explain the Joke doesn't apply to the Catholic Church.
• In 1973, Redbone released "We Were All Wounded at Wounded Knee", a song about the massacre of Lakota Sioux Indians by the 7th Cavalry Regiment in 1890. Also in 1973 Oglala Lakota activists and members of the American Indian Movement occupied Wounded Knee, South Dakota to demand that the US government comply with 19th and 20th century treaties. Several radio stations in the US banned that song. However, it charted in several European countries and it topped the Belgian and Dutch music charts.
• The Germs were informally banned by nearly every Los Angeles music venue in the late '70s. Not so much because of their music, but because they and their audiences would often riot during live shows and the venues (including famous places as the Whiskey-A-Go-Go and Troubadour) were tired of cleaning up the mess and being on the hook for damages. It didn't stop the Germs, who toured as "GI", or "Germs Incognito", and even named their only album "(GI)" in reference to the name.

Pinball

• No history of pinball would be complete without mentioning the bans many municipalities imposed on pinball machines in the first half of the 20th century. New York was first, calling pinball a form of gambling that led to delinquency. The ban stood for over 30 years; it ended when Roger Sharpe testified in 1976 that pinball was actually a game of skill, demonstrating his point by playing pinball in the courtroom, ending with him launching a ball exactly where he said he'd send it.

Theatre

• While stage censorship in New York City during the early 20th century was never so strict as The Hays Code, a law was passed banning plays about "sex degeneracy or sex perversion." Affected dramas included Mae West's The Drag and The Pleasure Man.
• Many plays had to be censored for Boston productions in the same general period. A few were banned altogether, such as Strange Interlude, which therefore was performed in neighboring Quincy instead.

Toys

• Clackers were banned in the United States in 1976 following the US government declaring them hazardous; a legal battle ensued, with the government prevailing.
• Lawn darts have been banned in the US since 1988, following the death of seven-year-old Michelle Snow from a dart to the head the previous year.

Video Games

• The PS2 and Wii versions of Manhunt 2 was originally given an "Adults Only" rating by the ESRB, which greatly limited the number of retailers who would carry it. It was eventually censored enough for an M rating. The PC version was released uncut.
• As of 2018, Valve stated that it would only outright reject games that were blatantly illegal or "trolling" from being sold on Steam. However, in 2019, it rejected a game over "costs and risks" associated with its controversial subject matter. In other words, Valve catches that if such game was allowed, Valve will have tremendously negative publicity. It doesn't help that the aforementioned game was made by a troll who wanted to test how far Steam allowed sensitive subject matter to go (as hentai and school shooting games had previously been released on Steam due to Valve's notoriously lax policy).
• For various reasons^note (The U.S. arcade industry is vastly different from the Japanese industry. One major difference is that most games are rigidly networked via online platforms with profile card systems and software updates, which are typically tied to revenue-sharing agreements. By contrast, most U.S. arcade games, besides certain titles such as Golden Tee, are not as rigidly networked, if at all, and for the most part, arcade cabinets are typically bought outright or leased from a distributor, rather than as a service), Paseli — Konami's digital payment currency for its arcade games, isn't used outside of Japan, and can't be added to an e-Amusement account not registered as being in Japan. This causes issues with Round1's official imports of Konami's BEMANI games in the United States, as they have increasingly included paywalls (including subscriptions and specific types of "premium" credits, intended to create additional revenue to make up for changes in Japanese tax laws) for specific in-game features. Plus it is pretty much standard for Japanese arcades to use cash (usually via coin slots or contactless payments), while most North American arcades now tend to use tokens — either physical, or stored on a arcade-specific card not unlike Paseli. DanceDanceRevolution averts this since A and A20, as the North American build removes these paywalls, and makes the "Premium" mode accessible via coin mode. Round1 did initially set their machines to have Premium require two credits worth of tokens, but this was quickly changed.^note Non-Japanese Asia-Pacific builds have similar changes, although they still typically use cash, or U.S.-style token or card systems.
• Dance Rush in the U.S. gets a double whammy: it is divided into "Light", "Standard", and "Premium" credits — light only consists of two songs, standard allows an Extra Stage to be unlocked, and Premium allows users to play one song and record/edit a video of themselves playing it with the built-in camera and save it to their e-Amusement account for download. However, Standard is unavailable in the U.S. because of the aforementioned Paseli (even though the game supports multiple languages, it is still based on the Japanese build rather than the Asian builds, which allow Standard to be played via coin mode for two credits), and Premium is blocked in the U.S. due to concerns surrounding the internet uploads and a U.S. law regarding online privacy of children (the same reason a lot of services just make it a bannable offense to even jokingly admit that you're under 13).
• The adult-oriented trivia game The Guy Game (which featured women on the street during Spring Break being forced to remove their tops if they answer questions incorrectly) was pulled after a 17-year-old girl in the game sued over the use of her likeness in promotion (not helping was the fact that she was, you know, underage). The remainder of the game's FMV footage was compiled into a DVD game titled The Guy Game: Game Over, which was sold exclusively on the developer's (now-defunct) website.

Websites

• The US state of Montana was set to ban the video-sharing website TikTok beginning in January 2024 although the law was blocked in November 2023 by the state's District Court on constitutional grounds. Attempts to ban the app would not end there as the US House of Representatives would pass a bill in March 2024 that, if passed through the Senate and signed by President Biden, would force TikTok's parent company ByteDance to divest completely or face a total ban across America.
• Inverted with PornHub and the State of Virginia. PornHub actually blocked access in Virginia to protest against the age verification law that was put in place.
  • A similar age verification law was also passed in North Carolina around December 2023, prompting PornHub as well as the Yiff art website e621 to block access there.

Western Animation

• A lot of Golden Age cartoons from Warner Bros., Disney, and MGM have been banned from airing due to racist depictions of minority groups due to Values Dissonance. Cartoons of the time were not shy about insensitive portrayals of marginalized groups (particularly black people, Mexicans, Jews, and Asians), and they could be incredibly sexist as well. Some of their Wartime Cartoons could be particularly nasty. Warner Bros. has a collection of cartoons called the Censored Eleven; they have been banned from airing on TV since 1968 mostly due to pervasive black stereotyping. However, most of them have received unofficial home video releases, particularly the ones whose copyright holders didn't bother renewing the copyright. You can also find them online, and some even have legitimate DVD releases.
• The Arthur episode "Mr. Ratburn and the Special Someone / The Feud" was banned from Alabama's PBS network due to the first short focusing on Mr. Ratburn's marriage to another man.
• Postcards from Buster, a spin-off of Arthur, had the episode "Sugartime!" banned from broadcast due to featuring a family with, in Buster's words, "a lot of moms!". While the episode focused mostly on the production of maple syrup in Vermont (aside from a short segment focusing on the fact that the children had a mom and stepmom), PBS was forced to pull the episode after the Secretary of Education threatened to pull the network's federal funding for showing a same-sex couple (keep in mind, this controversy happened in 2005 - at the time, only one state recognized same-sex marriage (Massachusetts), and it wouldn't be legalized across the U.S. for a full decade). WGBH did distribute the episode to individual members who wanted to air it, and some PBS affiliates aired it alongside a Companion Show discussing the controversy.
• Seven episodes of Caillou were not shown in the United States until Cartoonito got the rights to the show. They are:
  • "Big Brother Caillou": Banned because Caillou pinches Rosie. It should be noted that this is a Bowdlerised version of the book that the episode was based on, where Caillou instead bites Rosie.
  • "Caillou Walks Around the Block": Banned because Caillou's mom leaves him unattended and Caillou wanders around the neighborhood by himself.^note Due to the increase in reports of gun violence and child abductions, many neighborhoods in the US discourage or even outright bar Free-Range Children, and certain counties can charge parents with neglect for allowing a child close to Caillou's age out of the house on their own.
  • "Caillou is Getting Older": Banned because of the subject of death, fear of getting older, and a dead bird appearing on-screen could be too dark for the target demographic. This did air several times on PBS before being pulled.
  • "Caillou Makes a New Friend": Banned because Jim's bullying was considered to be too realistic for the show.
  • "Caillou's Quarrel": Banned because Clementine was being bossy and Caillou was fighting with her.
  • "Rosie Bothers Caillou": Banned because Caillou talks back to his mother, shoves Rosie out of his room, and Rosie hits a book against a door repeatedly.^note Contrary to what was posted on TV.com, Caillou didn't hit Rosie with the book - had this actually been the case, the episode likely wouldn't have made it to air in the first place. The ban was later lifted, and the episode showed up on the PBS DVD release Caillou's Kitchen in 2018 under the contrived title "Recipe for Fun."
  • "Caillou's Crossword": Banned because of the excessive use of the word "stupid", despite the usage of it being part of the episode's aesop.^note  Despite other preschool shows such as Peppa Pig, Stanley and Franklin having used the word "stupid" and gotten away with it, those shows only use the word once per episode - this episode uses it ten times. While this may sound like an odd reason for an episode to get banned, since "stupid" is not a curse word, many preschool cartoons do treat it as a somewhat-mild curse word (compare it to how "crap" is treated in shows for older children).
• The Legend of Calamity Jane, a "kid's show" that was rife with Family-Unfriendly Violence like guns, people being shot and hanged, and overt mentions of things like death, the Civil War, and slavery, was heavily hyped by The WB and then barely made it to three episodes before the Moral Guardians made quick work of it. However, north of the border, it aired in its entirety on Teletoon owing to Canadians being considerably laxer in censorship laws where kid's shows are concerned.
• Parodied in Animaniacs (2020) in a Couch Gag line of the theme song for episode 8 with Yakko singing that the show is "Illegal in Bahrain-y", complete with a no symbol superimposed over a flying flag of Bahrain.
• A few episodes of Pingu aren't aired on television in the United States:
  • "Pingu's Lavatory Story" isn't aired on television due to on-screen depictions of urination, though it is available on Amazon Prime.
  • "Pingu's Dream" is banned due to the frightening design of the walrus in the eponymous dream.
  • "Pingu Quarrels With His Mother" isn't aired in the U.S. because of a scene where Pingu's mom slaps him. Like "Pingu's Lavatory Story", it is available on Amazon Prime.
  • "Pingu and the Doll" is banned due to Pingu sticking a feather on his head and acting like a stereotypical Native American.
• Several episodes of the Canadian cartoon 6teen never aired in the States, although you can easily watch them on streaming platforms like Pluto TV:
  • "Enter the Dragon" was banned due to talking about menstruation.
  • "It's Always Courtney, Courtney, Courtney!" was banned due to the gang making fake IDs claiming they are twenty-one.
  • "The Sushi Connection" was banned due to the "ASS. MAN" joke.
  • "Bicker Me Not" was banned due to Gracie Bickerson being called a rude word (a "harpy"), and for including a gay character (a big no-no in American children's media at the time).
• Bluey: The episode "Dad Baby" is banned from both Disney Junior and Disney+ due to the game being Bandit pretending to be "pregnant" with Bingo (complete with him doing a fake water birth).
• Thomas & Friends: There were two episodes that were never aired on Shining Time Station, the spinoff that introduce the American viewers to Thomas: "Daisy" and "Percy's Predicament". This was due to producer and co-creator Rick Siggelkow's disapproval of Daisy's design being overly sexist and her lazy, stubborn personality. The two episodes were only banned from airing on Shining Time Station, but were allowed to be release on home video in 1993 as Britt Allcroft wanted to re-record the first two seasons with George Carlin. The only episode featuring Daisy that was aired was Season 4's "Bull's Eyes", but this was after Rick was done working for the show. Daisy and Percy's Predicament wouldn't be broadcast on TV until Fox Family's Mister Moose's Fun Time aired them in 1998.

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