Getting Crap Past the Radar/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: Content which is not appropriate for a work's intended audience makes it in anyway.

  • Straight: In one episode of the TV series "The Adventures of Bob", which is targeted towards 10-year olds, Bob makes a Double Entendre.
  • Exaggerated: Refuge in Audacity: the creators let in content that would be more at home on a more adult show, and the censors either object to small things (i.e., "Don't have the hero say, 'I wanna get in your pants' as he's mounting the heroine from behind'" or "Don't linger on a shot of Bob's mutilated corpse for more than a minute so as not to traumatize younger audiences or make impressionable viewers think that violence is being glorified.") or are so stupid that they can't see the big picture.
  • Justified:
    • The creators use Censor Decoys to get the censors to bend to their whims.
    • The show airs on a channel whose censorship standards are notoriously flimsy or non-existent (i.e., NBC, Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, FOX, Teletoon, Comedy Central, etc).
  • Inverted: The Adventures of Bob is an allegedly adult show with little to no risque content.
  • Subverted: Executive Meddling in the form of catching the raunchy jokes before they go on air.
  • Double Subverted: The censored joke is replaced by another inappropriate joke that doesn't get caught.
  • Parodied: The Adventures of Bob features an episode where Bob starts an anti-indecency brigade against a kids' show that's notorious for its racy content.
  • Averted:
    • The show's content is actually age-appropriate.
    • None of the writers try to go too far with risque content.
  • Lampshaded: "It's a good thing the network censors don't care what we say or do -- within reason. Any other channel would have canceled us by now."
  • Invoked:
    • The creators of The Adventures of Bob believe in Defying the Censors and use many tricks to get the producers to let risque content through.
    • The producers want The Adventures of Bob to have a Periphery Demographic (read: appeal to older viewers as well as younger ones), and they find that the best way to do this is to use this trope.
  • Enforced: See "Justified" #2
  • Exploited: What? The censors are asleep? Oh, hell yes!
  • Defied: See "Subverted."
  • Conversed: "Wow. The things they're getting away with on kids' shows these days. I counted ten sex jokes, five counts of Ho Yay, a Family-Unfriendly Death, a possible reference to marijuana smoking, and a joke about dogs using trees as bathrooms.
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