Rock Band/Radar

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


In-Game Elements

  • Non-musical example: A lot of the outfits (especially the female ones) could be seen as GCPR, including male bondage gear, Absolute Cleavage, and a strategically placed snake. How does that get in a T-rated game?
  • The achievement "Kickin' the Tentacles" in Lego Rock Band sound like something else? In a kid's game, too.
  • The arcade cabinets in the arcade venue have government warnings saying "Weiners don't use drugs".


Lyrics - T-Rated

  • How did a T-Rated game get away with "Hungry Like The Wolf"?
    • Shrek got away using that song in a singing contest (although sung by the Big Bad Wolf}. It's a family movie. It's not surprising in a T-Rated game.
      • You might not know from browsing the play list, but explicit lyrics are censored out.
        • And speaking of that, just how explicit are the lyrics of this song?
          • Honestly, not very; it's an extended metaphor more than anything and if it weren't for the first verse you could claim it's about an actual wolf. The most explicit line is "woman you want me, give me a sign".
  • And in a different vein, how family-friendly are songs like Megadeth's Good Mourning/Black Friday (about demonic possession) or Metallica's Ride the Lightning (about (almost) dying in the electric chair)?
    • And why does the song "This Aint A Scene It's An Arms Race" By Fall Out Boy has "God" censored, but not "Damn"?
    • Those songs are DLC, but Down With The Sickness is not (though there is some censorship in the former).
      • Although you still get the child abuse segment. You just don't get to sing it. Heck, the vocals for that section is rendered in the background, and you only have precussion notes!
  • Forget all those. The PSP version makes you press buttons to Jack Black saying "Drop trou, and squeeze out a Cleveland steamer on my chest."
    • And as of release on Rock Band 2, you can are told to actually SAY IT (Granted since it's a talky). But please try not to laugh too much.
    • And they didn't even bother to edit the preview track, possibly chronicling the only moment in video game history where a game can say "shit" twice and still avoid the M rating. That didn't just get past the radar, it blew right through it painted rainbow colors.
  • Even more curious, Iron Maiden's "2 Minutes to Midnight" is heavily censored in Guitar Hero 5, but not in Rock Band. Namely the phrase "to kill the unborn in the womb" (the first two words are censored on the GH disc).
    • Perhaps it being very much an anti-war song helps.
    • Or the fact it's optional in RB, not in GH 5.
  • Heck, Stupify by Disturbed actually leaves the swearing in because you can't understand what they're saying anyway. It's rendered in the lyrics as random yelling.
  • "The Beatles'" "Girl" they actually charted "Tit" in the harmony vocals!
  • ...HAMMER SMASHED FACE, people! Sure, it may be DLC and have indecipherable, growled vocals, but this is the original cover art (the game uses censored art). And here are the lyrics. In case you didn't know, they're about a psychopathic killer... With a hammer!
    • So is Maxwell's Silver Hammer in The Beatles: Rock Band, and they got away with that too. Then again, they are The Beatles.
    • Just the fact that they have Cannibal Corpse in their catalogue is a ton of shit past the radar.
  • In Green Day Rock Band, all the songs have 'swear' words, save for the words 'fuck' and 'shit'. Example: In 'Letterbomb', you get to sing 'Where have all the bastards gone?' at the beginning. Fun! Also, 'masturbation' in Longview, and so on.
    • Also, Longview contains the line "And I smell like shit" a few times, with the "shit" being drawn out for a while. The game reads this as "And I smell like shiiiiiiiiiii..." (it's actually written "shih" in the lyrics highway).
  • There are actually well-listed rules for content of songs for Rock Band Network entries, which align pretty well with what HMX has officially put out, though rely on peer reviews to verify are acceptable.
  • In Rock Band 3 (and Guitar Hero 6 for that matter), you've got "Been Caught Stealing". If you've wanted to sing about shoplifting, now's your chance. Bonus points if you stole the game [1]
  • "ZTO" by Devin Townsend, which at one point has the singer (taken over by Ziltoid) shout "Balls! Balls! BALLS!"


Lyrics - E-Rated

  • The kid's game, Lego Rock Band, which is rated for ages 10 and older. It still encourages singers to use the word "hell" and the phrase "willing to please" (in non-innocent context), plus Summer Of '69 for what that's worth. and allows DLC featuring an evil overlord who makes a half-pony half-monkey monster ("using" "too many" monkeys and ruining the pony by his own admission). That said, quite a few fairly non-offensive songs aren't allowed in, such as Caprici Di Diablo which has no lyrics at all.
  • Songs that are "family friendly" as labeled on the online song list are the only songs you can play on Lego Rock Band. So tell me, how exactly is Duran Duran's "Girls On Film" family friendly?
    • It commonly goes under the radar because the song can be interpreted to be about female models.


But if that bothers you, there's a number of Lighter and Softer clothes and songs, so you can avoid singing about suicide and the like.

  1. TV Tropes does not condone the cooool crime of robbery