We think of animated shows as harmless kids' fare, but that isn't always the case.
Each of these cartoon episodes were so raunchy, so stupid, or so downright confusing that
they were denied an audience entirely.
From its 1994 debut, Gargoyles gained a devoted fanbase for its complex plots, fluid animation,
and serious storytelling.
As an action-adventure series chronicling the lives of gargoyles who come to life at
night to protect the places and people they love, the series explored themes including
frustrated love, urban crime, and corporate greed.
This willingness to go to intense places made Gargoyles an enduring hit that lives on in
cosplay and tie-in comics to this day — but in the minds of network executives, it also
crossed the line.
The season one episode "Deadly Force" is a compassionate, albeit stern story about gun
safety, in which fun-loving gargoyle Broadway accidentally shoots human detective Elisa
with her own gun.
She is badly wounded and barely survives emergency surgery, and Broadway goes on a frantic, guilt-ridden
crusade against guns.
Ultimately, a very important lesson is learned about the safe handling of firearms — but
not before several seconds of Elisa with a bullet in her belly filled the screen.
“Oh,"
"Deadly Force" was pulled from rotation for a while, and subsequent airings on spinoff
channels Toon Disney and Disney XD re-cut the scene so that only Elisa's anguished face
is visible.
Regardless, the Gargoyles team remains proud of the message they sent about gun violence
in this episode, and stand by it as a thoughtful examination of firearms and their mishandling.
Dexter's Lab was one of the biggest successes of 1990s animation, an irreverent send-up
of everything from midcentury space-age ambition to Marvel action heroes.
At the heart of it was Dexter, megalomaniacal child genius with a secret lab behind his
bedroom bookcase, and Dee Dee, his goofy, tutu-clad sister.
Their clashes defined many episodes of the show and typically went to bizarre extremes,
as when Dexter sought to grow a beard to display his manliness after Dee Dee's teasing, or
when Dee Dee inspired a crush in Dexter's arch-nemesis, Mandark.
That sibling rivalry reached new heights in "Dexter's Rude Removal."
In this infamous episode, Dexter develops a "rude removal system" to remove Dee Dee's
more irritating qualities.
This backfires, and Dexter ends up creating two versions of himself and his sister: a
polite, vaguely British pair, and a pair whose every other word is censored by profanity
bleeps.
"Where the f--k are we?”
“Beats the f--k outta me!"
Despite its completion, "Dexter's Rude Removal" never aired.
Series creator Genndy Tartakovsky mentioned it from time to time, growing its legend,
until finally, it surfaced on late-night programming block Adult Swim's website.
Despite the fact that no curse word is ever actually uttered uncensored, the mere fact
of their existence was too much for delicate ears.
Tiny Toon Adventures was known for its wry attitude towards cartoon conventions.
Babs, Buster, and the rest of the Acme Looniversity gang regularly poked fun at the expectations
and tropes of the medium, from subverting slapstick gags involving mallets and banana
peels to the contrasting iconic jokesters like Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck with genteel
mortar boards and academic robes as the Looniversity's professors.
From the cartoon's setting in a town called "Acme Acres" to character names like "Mary
Melody" riffing off Warner Bros.' legendary "Merrie Melodies" cartoons, the whole cartoon
rests on a foundation of meta-textual ribbing.
But that went a little off the rails with the infamously banned "One Beer."
Plucky Duck, Hamton J. Pig, and Buster Bunny go on a whirlwind bender when they drink beer
for the first time, quickly plummeting from wide-eyed kids to stubble-chinned lowlifes.
"You babes wanna hang, or what?"
Despite the fact that Buster opens the escapade by outright saying "in this episode, we're
showing the evils of alcohol," and ending it by asking if they can do a "funny episode
tomorrow" now that they've lectured the kids, "One Beer" was banned until 2013 when it was
finally included in a DVD release.
Let that be a lesson to animators across the globe: don't try to teach valuable lessons!
Cow and Chicken never pretended to be anything but crass.
Its titular siblings, excitable second-grader Cow and hot-tempered fifth-grader Chicken,
regularly got into trouble that made it clear they were there to make kids laugh, not provide
moral guardianship.
"Chicken, that's a good way to lose a beak.”
“Ah, shut up, Cow.
Mind your own beeswax.”
Take, for example, their enemy Red Guy, who might have actually been the devil but was
most notable for not wearing pants: Among his many aliases were Officer Pantsoffski,
Mrs. Barederriere, Major Wedgie, and NoPants DeLeon.
No joke was too crude for this cartoon to indulge.
There was, however, a limit the censors did not want crossed, and Cow and Chicken found
it with "Buffalo Gals," seven solid minutes of lesbian jokes.
Unsurprisingly, it faced resistance from network executives — although it lives on through
the magic of the internet.
Dudley Do-Right's "Stokey the Bear" was intended in the spirit of fun.
Canada is roundly, if kindly parodied in the episode as the home of trees, lumberjacks,
the firewood industry and… well, not much else.
Snidely Whiplash is doing his diabolical deeds to better barbecue his hot dogs.
Stokey was meant to be very much a parody of Smokey of "Only You Can Prevent Forest
Fires" fame, but hypnotized by Snidely into setting fires.
All in good fun, right?
Wrong.
The U.S. Forest Service wasn't too pleased with the spoof of their beloved mascot, in
no small part because Smokey was created with a very particular purpose in mind — one
the episode was deliberately muddling.
Understandable, perhaps, especially given that the episode's final gag implies Stokey
was responsible for the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.
The episode was yanked, Stokey was snuffed, and it never saw airtime again.
Batman: The Brave and the Bold was a self-conscious tribute and recreation of Silver Age DC Comics:
bright, funny, and unabashedly nonsensical.
From the retro aesthetic to capers with titles like "Invasion of the Secret Santas!," Brave
and the Bold was all about having a good and goofy time.
Mostly, this resulted in kid-friendly hijinks of the laser-guns-and-magical-truth-serums
variety.
But in "The Mask of Matches Malone!," Brave and the Bold got downright naughty.
When they're caught sneaking into a nightclub, Huntress, Catwoman, and Black Canary think
fast and perform "Birds of Prey," a throwback toe-tapper about the men of the DC universe
that stuffs an innuendo into every other line.
This ranges from Catwoman purring "what a weapon, what a bang" about Batman, the implication
that Green Arrow doesn't always "shoot straight," and a complaint about the Flash being "just
too fast."
but what got the episode booted off the season 2 DVD collection was the suggestive finger
waggle Huntress deploys when discussing Aquaman.
"His little fish, less outrageous."
With a bit of reanimation to remove the telltale finger, it was included as a bonus episode
on the season 3 DVD, and thus everyone now knows all about the male members of the Justice
League and their prowess — on and off the battlefield.
Cast your mind back to 1987, and recall the Garbage Pail Kids trading cards.
Their success rested entirely upon the fact that they were utterly disgusting little artifacts
of childhood grotesquerie — a perfect parody of the apple-cheeked goodness of the Cabbage
Patch Kids.
With such characters as Adam Bomb, Oozy Suzy, and Snotwich Sandra, they were pulling no
punches when it came to grossing kids out and cracking them up.
But the 1987 Garbage Pail Kids cartoon went too far for the U.S. viewing audience.
Starring Split Kit, Clogged Duane, Elliot Mess, Terri Cloth, and Patty Putty, the eponymous
kids used their disgusting powers to save the day.
Groups including Action for Children's Television and Christian Leaders for Responsible Television
protested, however, and the show was yanked from the airwaves mere days before release.
Though it did go on to air in other countries, it never saw the light of US viewership.
The Garbage Pail Kids were, to be frank, dumped.
The English-language dub of anime megahit Sailor Moon cut and censored so many things
from the original Japanese version, it merits a video of its own.
Many of these changes have become infamous: Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune, originally
lovers, were changed to "cousins," and multiple instances of implied nudity were scrapped.
Before many of these now-infamous choices were made, however, was "Day of Destiny,"
the finale to season one.
Originally a two-parter, "Day of Destiny" sees Sailor Moon and company storm the evil
Queen Beryl's arctic fortress.
Her henchman attack, and the battle quickly goes south: Sailors Mercury, Mars, Jupiter,
and Venus all die on the ice, and Sailor Moon is forced to fight the supercharged Beryl
on her own.
Given that the original Japanese title of the first episode is "Death of the Sailor
Guardians: The Tragic Final Battle," it is perhaps unsurprising that it was cut, and
the finale reduced to one cobbled-together episode for the U.S. market.
While it wasn't outright banned, the original version was just too much for kids.
1990s playgrounds the world over found themselves beset by a new fad: It was called Pokemon,
and it still has yet to release its grip on young minds.
Kids just can't get enough of Pikachu, Squirtle, and the gang.
But a rumor haunted the franchise early on, mutating as it passed from kid to kid.
There was an episode, they whispered, that was banned.
The internet was in its infancy and no one had ever seen the fabled episode, and so the
tales grew unchecked.
Even today you might hear a child whisper about a killer episode of Pokemon that no
one has ever seen.
Unlike other kid-spread legends, this one really did turn out to be true.
"Electric Soldier Porygon" is the episode in question, and it was indeed banned from
the airwaves for reasons of public health.
Hundreds of Japanese children were rushed to the hospital after it aired in 1997, suffering
from seizures, convulsions and vomiting.
It turned out that a brief moment of bright, strobing animation induced this illness and
set off a generation's favorite bit of gossip.
Twenty years later, it still fascinates us — though luckily, those prone to seizures
know to keep well away.
The Powerpuff Girls was never a show content to be normal.
The very premise itself — man combines sugar, spice, everything nice, and a mysterious black
ooze, creates triplets — is bizarre, and episodes hinged on everything from elaborate
Beatles parodies to the sinister effects of glue consumption.
But in season five's "See Me, Feel Me, Gnomey," this was taken to new heights: in an homage
to rock operas like Tommy, the episode is a sung-through musical in which the girls
meet a magical gnome who promises to vanquish all evil in exchange for their powers.
They take his offer, and he makes Townsville into a cult.
Eventually, the day is saved, Townsville is restored, and the gnome is defeated.
So why did Cartoon Network keep the episode off U.S. airwaves?
Questions swirled for years until show creator Craig McCracken finally provided some answers
via his Tumblr:
"They banned it because they claimed that the metal beams in the destroyed buildings
looked too much like crosses and one of the hippies looked like Jesus."
The staff was surprised and the fans were deprived, but it all worked out in the end:
the episode is now available to anyone who wants to watch it on Hulu, iTunes, or on the
original series DVDs.
Anime exploded in popularity in the late 1990s, and Toonami, a Cartoon Network programming
block aimed at the action-hungry after-school crowd, was a huge part of why.
From Sailor Moon to Dragon Ball Z, Toonami aired the coolest, edgiest, often weirdest
cartoons Western kids had ever seen — and it kept them glued to their TVs.
New episodes appeared daily, movie-length specials were hyped for weeks prior to airing,
and occasionally, Toonami even pushed the boundaries of what was considered acceptable.
Action was tougher, faster, and more intense on Toonami, and jokes were a bit more edgy.
Outlaw Star, a spacefaring action series, often pushed that line.
But one whole episode was deemed unacceptable, impossible to edit into suitability, and unceremoniously
dumped.
It's no surprise as to why: "Hot Springs Planet Tenrei" sees hero Gene Starwind sent to world
of beautiful saunas filled with even-more-beautiful — and always unclothed — ladies.
In the end, kiddie viewers just had to deal with the lack of continuity — until, many
years later, it aired on the late-night reimagined Toonami, intended for just those kids who'd
loved it the first time around.
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