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{{trope}}
* During Prohibition, there was a move to edit ''[[The Bible (Literature)|The Bible]]'' to remove ''all'' references to alcohol. Except, of course, the ones that discouraged overindulgence.▼
== [[The Bible]] ==
▲* During Prohibition, there was a move to edit ''[[
** Yes, they literally wanted [[Jesus]] to turn water into grape juice.
*** The strangest part of this is that the bowdlerizers reasoned that the translation must be wrong, since Jesus would never drink alcohol. This even though most of them were old enough to remember a time when it was ''necessary'' to drink fermented beverages because they wouldn't be infected by dangerous bacteria like plain water was. (And without modern sanitation and refrigeration, you simply can't keep freshly pressed grape juice from fermenting. Grape skins are coated in yeast.)
**** There are individuals who '''to this day''' maintain that when Jesus refuses ''οἶνος'' mixed with myrrh, or when Paul commands that a deacon be not given to ''οἶνος'', the word ''οἶνος'' means "wine"; but when Jesus changes water into ''οἶνος'', or when Paul (only two chapters after the previous reference) tells his friend Titus to avoid drinking water but use a little ''οἶνος'' for his stomach's sake, the word ''οἶνος'' means "unfermented grape juice".
* [[Terry Pratchett]] canceled plans for a movie of ''[[Discworld (Literature)/Mort|Mort]]'' when the producers told him they loved the story (about {{smallcaps| [[Anthropomorphic Personification|Death]]}} taking an apprentice) but wanted to lose the "Death" angle.▼
== ''[[Discworld]]'' ==
▲* [[Terry Pratchett]]
** That makes me die a little inside.
*** {{
** From what I know, the company which did that was most likely Disney. Go figure.
▲** in ''[[Discworld (Literature)/Feet of Clay|Feet of Clay]]'' actually uses the word; a common dwarfish saying in regards to height is "All trees are felled at ground level.", it is mentioned that this is merely an extremely bowdlerised version of the actual saying, which is "When his hands are higher than your head, his groin is level with your teeth"
▲** In ''Hogfather'', a choir sings "the red rosy hen greets the dawn of the day". A footnote explains that while it's usually not hens that would crow at dawn, a woman had thought that the original would offend listeners of a certain disposition and had rewritten it.
== Other works ==
* There exists a condensed, 'kid-friendly' pop-up book version of ''[[
** In fact, ''[[
* [[Rudyard Kipling]]'s ''[[
** Considering the etymology of "nigger", the original version is actually kind of [[Fridge Logic]]-y...
* Sometimes changing cultural standards can leapfrog over attempted Bowdlerization. Many early English translators of ''[[The Count of Monte Cristo]]'' tried to disguise the lesbian subtext of one of the sub-plots; however modern readers should have little difficulty [[Ho Yay|putting two and two together]] with the information left in the story (tomboyish woman abandons her fiancee at the altar, flees Paris with her close female friend, they're discovered sharing a room and a bed at a country inn). Translators also removed the part where a character takes hashish and has some rather vivid lusty hallucinations.
* The Oompa-Loompas in ''[[Charlie and
** A matter of opinion. Loompaland seems to be somewhere in the Amazon rain forest, which makes the choice of Deep Roy a lot more reasonable.
* Parodied in [[
* In Marie de France's poem ''Lanval'', the original story has the faerie queen ride in to town, and save Lanval from execution. He leaps upon the back of her horse as she rides away, providing a reversal of the traditional knight in shining armor archetype. In some translations/adaptations/what have you, [[Unfortunate Implications|people have had Lanval take the front of the horse, returning the archetype to it's "proper" form.]] This has the unfortunate side-effect of removing a huge chunk of what makes the faerie queen so mysterious and alluring (her beauty is ''so'' great that she holds sway over everyone around her, and one of Arthur's knights gladly takes the traditionally "feminine" place).
* [[Older Than Print]]: Gaius Vallerius Catallus' Carmen 16. Written about 50-100 years before the birth of Christ, it was considered so offensive that it wasn't openly published in English until the 20th century, and even then as a paraphrased version. It was written as a response to two poets who'd reffered to his work as soft and as a statement that though a poet is to act decently, he is by no means bound to write politely. The opening line is , roughly translated, "I will sodomize you and skull fuck you".
* A number of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories were bowdlerized by his posthumous "editor" L. Sprague DeCamp. Sometimes it was for reasons of content, such as toning down perceived racism, other times it was for purely commercial reasons such as converting entire stories that weren't even written as Conan stories into Conan stories. A few changes are truly inexplicable though, such as wording changes to perfectly fine paragraphs that had already seen publication in magazines. Most serious REH fans despise DeCamp for these alterations.
* Modern retellings of the ''[[
** That may be less a case of Bowlderization and more of a [[Historical Hero Upgrade]]. Considering Scheherzade's marriage to the sultan is supposed to be her happy ending, it's hard to believe she'll be happy (or ''safe'') considering he's beheaded hundreds of women for no fault of their own.
* In the storybook adaptation of ''[[Who Framed Roger Rabbit?]]?'' the wild turkey beer is changed to soda pop and all references to the words kill and die have been removed.
* The ''[[Otherland]]'' series, set in the mid-late 21st century, lampshades the tendency for this to happen to fairy taleswith their version of the Red Riding Hood tale. Instead of being killed by the woodcutter the wolf repents, and ''everyone'' lives happily ever after. The incredibly old Mr. Sellars mentions that in the version he was told as a child little Red Riding Hood didn't survive herself, much less the grandmother and the wolf.
* In the original book of [[Lord of the Flies]] Piggy says to Jack "You all look like a bunch of painted niggers", reprints have him say "painted savages".
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* In the original prints of "Super Fudge," Fudge mentions his favorite TV shows are ''[[The Muppet Show]]'', ''[[Sesame Street]]'', and ''[[The Electric Company]]''. In modern reprints, the line was changed to "cartoons from Nickelodeon and [[Cartoon Network]]" due to a combination of licensing issues and an attempt at making the story less outdated <ref> As an aside, the Muppets had a movie out in November of 2011, Sesame Street is still on the air, and The Electric Company was revived in 2009 -- though it's not the same as it was back in the 1970s</ref>.
* Modern reprints of Enid Blyton's classic ''The Faraway Tree'' children's series rename the characters Dick and Fanny to Rick and Frannie because of the "sexual nature" of their names. The villainous school teacher Dame Slap, so named for the punishment she dishes out to students, is renamed "Dame Snap" and now punishes students by loudly reprimanding them instead of spanking them.
* In Edgar Rice Burroughs' [
* ''Are U 4 Real'', the American translation of Sara Kadefors’ Swedish young-adult novel ''[[Sandor Slash Ida]]'', suffered from this trope. The story was relocated from the Swedish cities of Gothenburg and Stockholm to San Francisco and Los Angeles, the teenaged protagonists’ names were changed from Sandor and Ida into Alex and Kyla and several parts of the book dealing with Ida’s sexual experiences were censored or removed entirely. The author was not happy and stated that the censored parts are necessary to understand why Ida acts the way she does in the story. The American translator defended the changes, stating that the original contained ”too much sex” and that it would have been hard to sell in American stores.
* ''[[
* The original edition of Book 6 of ''[[The Railway Series]]'', ''Henry the Green Engine'' used the phrase "as black as niggers" to describe a group of boys who have been showered with soot for dropping stones on trains. The newer versions use the term "as black as soot."
* The controversial ''[[Scary Stories to Tell In The Dark]]'' books have recently been re-released with [http://www.adventuresinpoortaste.com/2011/12/18/scary-stories-to-tell-in-the-dark-gammell-vs-helquist/ tamed down illustrations]...a fact over which many fans of the classic, [[Nightmare Fuel]] illustrations are ''very'' unhappy. And [[It Got Worse|to rub salt in the wound]] for those who were never able to obtain copies of the books with the original illustrations, said books have had printing discontinued by their publishers, and online prices are being inflated in correspondence with the tamed-down editions.
* Children's book [[Pastiche]] ''[[Go the Fuck
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