Profanity Police

The cat hasn't got his tongue, it seems.

Iron Man: SHIT!
Captain America: Language!

— Avengers: Age of Ultron

So the author thinks a series where nobody ever swears would be boring. They think that normal people curse under certain circumstances, and it would make sense that their characters do. But they are not that dirty either, and they want to remind the audience to Do Not Do This Cool Thing. The solution? When somebody curses, someone else will tell him not to.

A frequent Hypocritical Humor variant is for one character to swear, and another to respond with "Watch your fucking language" or a similar line. May be enforced with the help of The Swear Jar.

This is not a Curse Cut Short, as the curse is fully said (sometimes, however, it is said in Symbol Swearing). Contrast Sir Swears-a-Lot.

This is usually a single guy's reaction in the heat of the moment. See Moral Guardians for those guys who make it their lifestyle to actively seek and silence profanity, Culture Police when things go to dictatorship levels, and Magical Profanity Filter when the no-swearing rule is magically enforced.

Also see Grammar Nazi and Grammar Correction Gag for the other kind of language police.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt: Scanty and Kneesocks don't approve of Panty and Stocking's constant profanity.

Comic Books

• Ant-Man: In the 2020 miniseries, Ant-Man (Scott Lang) and Stinger (his daughter Cassie) are stopping a drug operation by AIM. Stinger attacks them with Symbol Swearing, and Scott objects "Whoa! Language!"
• Civil War (2006): Captain America makes a Super Window Jump out of the hellicarrier. He lands over a nearby soldier in a flying unit, who gets scared by this sudden event. "Keep flying, son, and watch that potty mouth!"
• Ultimate Power, a crossover between the Supreme Power and Ultimate Marvel universes. The Squadron Supreme appears at the top of the Ultimate Fantastic Four building and start destroying everything, and speak in a confusing gibberish. Eventually, they manage to speak English again, with the problem being because of the interdimensional travel. Nighthawk blamed Arcanna for it, so she told him transport people across dimensions himself, followed by Symbol Swearing. Ultimate Spider-Man protested by saying "Hey, whoa, language! I liked it better when you all sounded like Flipper!"
• The Dark Knight Returns has a hilarious and heartwarming moment where Batman cuts off a kid — whom he just rescued from gunpoint seconds ago — encouraging him to "kick [the Joker's] ass" with a "watch your language, son".
• Runaways issue #1 has Alex Wilder playing an online game about the Hulk, Daredevil and other famous heroes. Playing as Captain America, Alex breaks character to voice his displeasure with the campaign, saying that it's "totally retarded."
  Other player: And just so you know, it's not cool to use "retarded" in a pejorative manner.
• Hellions: Mutants have a perfect resurrection protocol in the age of Dawn of X: each time a mutant dies, those in Krakoa can grow him a body that is exactly the same, and upload his mind to it from the giant Cerebro database. Empath has been through this, and the Hellions discuss the whole concept. Is Empath alive again, or is he dead and replaced by a similar-looking, similar-thinking stranger?
  John Greycrow: Comes down to whose opinion is more important... a living person who can breathe and talk, or a corpse that can't say [Symbol Swearing] about [Symbol Swearing]?
  Nanny: Oh, the language is a shame...
• Ludmilla Habitat in Brink automates this - every time somebody curses, they are automatically fined one dollar. This ends up helping solve a murder case - Bridge makes the quite reasonable (and correct) assumption that the victim cursed a lot as he was violently killed, and they are able to trace where and when the fines were issued.

Fan Works

• All For Luz Reaction: Camila goes into Almighty Mom mode and warns Luz not to use foul language like her Alternate Universe counterpart, stating that she taught her better manners than that.
• In What a Strange Little Colt, Sandy Hills admonishes Gabriel when he says “shit, why not?” She has a bit of a grin, though.

Films — Live-Action

• Avengers: Age of Ultron
  • First, Tony Stark says "Shit!" after bouncing off a Deflector Shield during the fight. Steve Rogers simply says, "Language!" This leads to a Running Gag where the rest of the team tease Cap about it.
    Cap: That's not going away anytime soon.
  • Later on, when Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. show up to Sokovia in a helicarrier as Big Damn Heroes, Steve can only remark, "Fury, you son of a bitch!" in amazed disbelief, to which Fury teases him with "Ooh, you kiss your mother with that mouth?"
• In The Blues Brothers, Sister Mary Stigmata, the nun who raised the two protagonists, smacks Jake with a ruler when he curses in front of her, then smacks him again when he curses in pain, then smacking Eldwood when he says "Christ Jake, take it easy-", and eventually escalates into her breaking the ruler on them and beating the two of them with a wooden stick as they continue to curse in pain.
• Daredevil: Jack Murdock tells Matt to not curse in front of him, even though he said "shit" a few seconds later.
• In Demolition Man there's the verbal morality monitors, machines that give out a small citation for breaking the no swearing law in San Angeles. When he's first thawed out, John Spartan, not knowing how to use the three shells, curses out a storm near one to get a quick supply of toilet paper.
• The actual police in Hot Fuzz have a swear jar in their station, making them a literal version of this trope.
• Ted: Donny's Berserk Button is other people swearing in front of his kid, as Ted finds out when the former screams at him for doing so.
• Deadpool: Colossus does this to Deadpool during the former's climactic fight with Angel Dust. Deadpool is less than obliging.
  Deadpool: Finish fucking her the fuck up!
  Colossus: Language, please!
  Deadpool: Suck a cock!
• In Monty Python's Life of Brian, when an argument broke out in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount and a certain big-nosed man is getting annoyed at someone making insinuations about his nose...
  Mr. Bignose: One more time, mate, and I'll take you to fucking cleaners!
  Mrs. Bignose: Language! And don't pick your nose!
  Mr. Bignose: ... I wasn't gonna pick my nose, I'm gonna thump him!
• In Pulp Fiction, after his Heel–Faith Turn, Jules tells Vincent to stop committing blasphemy (though he's still fine with obscenity).
  Jules: For here on in, you can consider my ass retired.
  Vincent: Jesus Christ.
  Jules: Don't blaspheme.
  Vincent: Goddamnit, Jules...
  Jules: I said don't do that!

Literature

• The Dresden Files: Michael does this a lot.
  Harry: Holy shit. Hellhounds.
  Michael: Harry, you know I don't like it when you swear.
  Harry: Oh, sorry. Holy shit. Heckhounds.
• In Going Postal, Moist reacts to a press release from Reacher Gilt with a sweary tirade (of apparently non-English swearwords like "the Y-word") he didn't realize was completely audible to everyone. Miss Maccalariat reacts to that with "I hope never to hear such language in this building again!" She relents when she finds out it is about Reacher Gilt, and tells Moist that "Murdering conniving bastard of a weasel" was acceptable.
• Reign of the Seven Spellblades: Played for Laughs after Oliver and Nanao's aborted first attempt to consummate their relationship (they only got to third base before Oliver's Trauma Button went off). Oliver is appalled by her unladylike description of the event after the fact.
  Nanao: Practice makes perfect! Try every means that avail us, offer sufficient supplications to the divine, and soon—or in due time—we shall manage to get the pole in the hole.
  Oliver: Uncouth! Nanao, that was uncouth! (she cackles)
• Taken to its most literal extreme in Shimoneta where in a dystopian future, Japan passed laws banning anything obscene. This includes all forms of swearing, pornography and lewd gestures. Even the correct medical terms for certain... “obscene” anatomies are forbidden!
• The Wheel of Time: Played for Laughs when Nynaeve travels with the Sir Swears-a-Lot Old Soldier Uno and tries to forbid him from cursing in her presence. Seeing how badly he's straining, she compromises on one profanity every other sentence, and he starts using exactly that.

Live-Action TV

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: In the third season, the Mayor doesn't tolerate profanity and berates people who use it. In the season finale, however, he used the word "whore".
• On Resident Alien, the alien who has taken on the persona of Harry Vanderspeigle tends to swear a lot around Max Hawthorne and Sahar, the only children he knows personally. (This being because Max can see through to his alien form and Sahar because she's Max's best friend.) Max is bothered by it and calls him out for it, but eventually more-or-less just gets used to it. Sahar, however, is highly religious, and therefore tends to be even more upset by it than Max.

Puppet Shows

• A literal example in the Dinosaurs episode, "License to Parent"; when Earl tries unsuccessfully to bribe Officer Bettleheim out of his citation for yelling at Baby, he says "Smoo", a form of dinosaur profanity that was the subject of a previous episode, "Baby Talk". Officer Bettleheim gives Earl another citation for this.
• A G-rated example in the Wimzie's House episode "Please Don't Say That!": To teach Wimzie and her friends that calling people "stupid" hurts people's feelings, Yaya institutes a "charity cup", with one cent going into the cup every time somebody says "stupid". Every time Wimzie says "stupid", Yaya makes her pay one cent into the cup. This results in Wimzie being unable to afford a red box she wants to buy from a Garage Sale for fifty cents. The only time Yaya doesn't hear Wimzie say "stupid" is when Wimzie chooses to stay at home while her friends and Yaya go to the garage sale, though she does confess what she did to Yaya when her friends buy the red box for her. Only Wimzie's younger brother, Bo is exempt from the charity cup because he doesn't know any better due to being only one and a half, and he doesn't have any money.

Theatre

• Mayor Shin's catchphrase in The Music Man is "Watch your phraseology!" Notably, he says this in response to his daughter's catchphrase, "Ye Gods", and again to his wife's catchphrase, "Tempus Fugit".

Video Games

• Typing in a swear word in Valhalla would result in the message "Mary is not amused..." and the character dashing onto the screen to punch the player.
• Typing a swear word for a save file name in Spider-Man (2000) will result in Spider-Man punching the word, turning it into a random non-swear word
• During the Epilogue for Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, Cassie Drake (daughter of Nathan and Elena) says "Shit" a couple of times, prompting Nathan and Elena to say, "Language." They seem to be okay with her saying "Crap" instead.

Web Animation

• How It Should Have Ended took Captain America saying "Language!" in Avengers: Age of Ultron and turned it into a running gag, with Cap saying that line while hurting anyone who is about to curse.

Web Original

• SF Debris: In his review of "Darmok" from Star Trek: The Next Generation, Chuck jokingly reprimands Captain Picard for bad language. Picard is stranded on a planet with another alien captain and those two have a major Language Barrier between them. The phrase that sets him off is an sh word.
  Alien captain: Shaka, when the walls fell.
  Picard: Shaka indeed.
  Chuck: Language, Picard!

Web Videos

• The Angry Video Game Nerd: During the confrontation with the devil possessing the Super Mario Bros. 3 cartridge, the Hypocritical Humor example is used:
  Nerd: Holy shit...
  Super Mecha Death Christ: [shoots the Nerd] WATCH YOUR FUCKING LANGUAGE!!
• On both the Dream SMP and the QSMP, BadBoyHalo prefers to keep his content family friendly, using the words "muffin", "muffinhead", or even "ragamuffin" as replacement for swears (extending to "fudge" on the QSMP), while saying "Language!" whenever his server-mates swear around him. As a result of this, on the Dream SMP, TommyInnit and Quackity often mess with him by openly cursing in front of him or getting him into swearing through chat.
• Honest Trailers: Deadpool (Captain Deadpool) himself shows up in his own Honest Trailer. At one point, he starts discussing with Epic Voice Guy...
  Deadpool: And what the fu[BLEEP] is with these bleeps?
  Epic Voice Guy: You know, kids watch these videos, Mr. Pool.
  Deadpool: (Cluster Bleep-Bomb)
• JonTron: In his Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop video, Jon watches one of her product demonstrations where she says the product "is the shit" with the profanity bleeped out. Jon tells Gwyneth not to curse while a loud train passes by his house, Jon abruptly yells at the train to "Shut the fuck up!"
• On Day 59 of the Rats SMP, Krow accidentally curses loudly in front of several family-friendly streamers, mistaking its mic to be muted. Trying to get back into character, the Magical Squid threatens to kick Krow out of his maze (which the rats have to go through to obtain a Plot Device) if it curses again, an option which Krow would very much prefer due to Company Cross References.
  Magical Squid: Hey! Language! Language! If you swear, I kick you out of maze!
  Krow: Please do!

Western Animation

• Aqua Teen Hunger Force: In "Allen Part 2", Allen is a literal example. He kills people who swore (with the exception of "damn") with lightning bolts.
• The Simpsons:
  • In "Bart the Lover", Todd Flanders hears Homer scream, "Damn it!" and "To hell with this!" in the backyard, leading him to repeat the offensive words at the dinner table. Ned is shocked at his son's behavior and pointedly reprimands Homer upon finding out he was the source of the swears.
  • In "Cape Feare," Sideshow Bob is rebuked at his parole hearing after he refers to prison as a "dank, urine-soaked hellhole." He takes it well, though:
    Officer: Uh, we object to the term "urine-soaked hellhole" when you could have said "peepee-soaked heckhole."
    Bob: Cheerfully withdrawn.
• In SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Sailor Mouth", SpongeBob and Patrick learn a word that sounds like a dolphin chirping. Mr. Krabs tells them both not to say it or they'll be in big trouble, as it's apparently a swear word on a list of thirteen bad words (while there's generally thought to be Seven Dirty Words, Mr. Krabs says that technically there's thirteen, but only a sailor would know the words 8-13).

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