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"The Fruit Fucker made his prime-time television debut last Monday. Our friend Wil Wheaton was on Big Bang Theory sporting the FF shirt. I'd love to know what he told people when they asked him what was on his shirt. I'm guessing it wasn't "a fruit rapist.""
—Gabe, Penny Arcade
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While Mork and Mindy (or rather, its star) may be the Trope Namer, Getting Crap Past the Radar has been going on ever since the beginning of television and is unlikely to stop as long as the censors are around, writers willing to mock them by letting the crap slip by them, and viewers who notice and put the instances on this website.
- ANT Farm
- Arrested Development
- Babylon 5
- Big Time Rush
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer
- Doctor Who
- Glee
- Good Luck Charlie
- Hannah Montana
- Home Improvement
- I Carly
- Jessie
- My Babysitters a Vampire
- Power Rangers
- Sabrina the Teenage Witch
- Shake It Up
- Sgt Bilko
- The Suite Life of Zack and Cody
- Unnatural History
- Victorious
- Wizards of Waverly Place
- You Can't Do That On Television
- Prior to the late 1960s, there were very few (if any) network TV shows that got away with even the mildest of profanities. Even "hell" and "damn" would be bleeped if included in news reports, while scripts rarely (if ever) had those words. The only times "hell," "damn" and "ass" were allowed on TV were in religious contexts (such as, on a locally-produced TV program where a lay reader is quoting directly from the Bible, or a charismatic preacher referencing Hell in his sermon).
- Mork and Mindy, as noted above.
- My personal favorite was an episode ("Mork vs. the Necrotons") where Mork is hiding inside the couch and when Mindy sits down on it he explodes out of it with the line, "I can sit on my face but I don't think you can!"
- And for a visual example from that same episode, see the above picture. Hell, the censors must have been on vacation for that episode. It was so blatant, it even made Robin Williams, our beloved Trope Namer, uncomfortable.
- A good example of the "bland script/prurient execution" method was a single line in one early episode: "Wait 'til you see my end table." As always, context is king -- immediately before this line, Mork has just shown her a stool shaped like a giant foot, and had predictably identified it as his "foot stool".
- Another example is near the beginning of the series. When Mindy is explaining different types of love to Mork, she mentions her dad and says, "The kind of love a father has for his daughter." Mork responds, "I understand all about that - I read Lolita."
- The scene with Robin Williams in cheerleader uniform - Lightmare Fuel too.
- A not-quite-Bilingual Bonus occurs when one episode centers around dealing with their landlord Arnold Wanker and the cast seem to enjoy it just ever so much that you feel they were very aware of what the meaning of the word in the UK.
- Robin Williams is part Scottish, don't forget: he'd seriously know. And share the gag.
- These shows went out unbleeped in the UK. Granada Television used to screen it on Sunday afternoons, just before the religious God-Slot. People tuning in early for Holy Mass or communal hymn-singing were somewhat offended.
- My personal favorite was an episode ("Mork vs. the Necrotons") where Mork is hiding inside the couch and when Mindy sits down on it he explodes out of it with the line, "I can sit on my face but I don't think you can!"
- Game Shows: Lots of examples:
- Family Feud: Many times, becoming particularly prevalent during the Steve Harvey era that began in 2010.
- During the Harvey era, one contestant, when asked the Fast Money question "Name a word or phrase that begins with the word 'chicken'," replied, "Crap" (the answer was posted as "cra..."). Another contestant was asked, "We asked 100 men, name a part of your body that's bigger than it was when you were 16," to which she replied, "Your penis."
- Although sexual terms and innuendo-filled answers became far more common with the Harvey era, they have been possible or uttered throughout the show's history. Although "penis" was not necessarily an answer give by the contestant, one question during the Dawson era was "Name something you put in your mouth that isn't swallowed." A Fast Money question during the Louie Anderson era was "Name something a teenage boy can do for hours at a time," to which Los Angeles Laker forward Brian Shaw replied, "masturbate" (an answer that netted him two points!).
- Pyramid: Although categories and answers were fairly benign at worst, that didn't stop Sandy Duncan from suggesting "an erect penis" as a clue for the Winner's Circle category "Things that are stiff."
- Wheel of Fortune: Several puzzles have had mild profanity in them (e.g., "HELL-BENT FOR ELECTION") or, in their uncompleted forms have inadvertently had profanity (e.g., "DAVID HASSELHOFF" that had the A's and S's revealed but not the H's or E's). Pat Sajak, who has also uttered several mild profanities, was sure to point things out.
- Scrabble: In this game where contestants won cash prizes for completing fill-in-the-blank word puzzles, one word had two P's in its solution ... and the contestant wound up drawing two P's. The contestant slipped out, "Chuck (Woolery), I guess I'll have to take a P," resulting in extended audience laughter, Woolery making a few remarks to play off the guy's unfortunate choice of words ... and a spot on Dick Clark's Bloopers specials.
- Bullseye: Host Jim Lange was interviewing a female contestant about her hobby of golfing, when the woman remarked that she kisses her golf clubs for good luck. Lange remarked that he kisses his balls for good luck ... leading to uproarious laughter and Jim's belated realization of the unintended double-ententre. (He had meant "kiss his golf balls," but didn't think to clarify.)
- "Bullseye" (UK): On the episode broadcast on September 18th 1988, host Jim Bowen was speaking to a contestant about their hobby of keeping bantams. Despite the contestant trying to point out that he kept cocks "and" hens, Jim asked progressively blatant questions such as "Do you brush your cocks?" and ending with "How big is your cock?" Quite something at any time of day, let alone the 6pm on a Sunday when it was broadcast.
- "Pointless": During a round where contestants were required to name words ending in "zz", one contestant gave the answer "jizz". Though it counted under the definition of "a term for the total combination of characteristics that serve to identify a particular species of bird or plant", there was much sniggering and eyebrow raising.
- The Newlywed Game: The intention behind the word "whoopie" (a compromise word agreed upon by creator Chuck Barris and ABC network execs/Standards and Practices folks) was to avoid unintended double-entendre, but there were several off-kilter answers over the years. The most famous of the lot came in an episode from early in the 1977 syndicated run, and it was with the question, "Where is the weirdest place you've ever had the urge to make whoopie?" A contestant named Hank (who appeared with his wife, Olga) gave a rather mundane answer, "On the freeway." What did Olga guess her husband said? "In the (bleeped ass)!" Despite host Bob Eubanks' attempt to restore order to the studio (the audience was laughing in hysterical disbelief) and clarify the question, Olga persisted with the answer implying sodomy. (She eventually was unable to give an answer.)
- For years, Eubanks adamantly refused to acknowledge the incident happened, despite persistent rumors that it happened; indeed, Eubanks and producer Chuck Barris both insisted that either it never happened or that the question was replaced. Eubanks eventually gave in and allowed the clip to be aired during a special on game show bloopers. When fans realized that the incident they thought was lost was one they had seen before (due to frequent reruns on GSN and/or syndication), they were either disappointed or claimed that an even racier version of the "in the ass" question happened.
- During its NBC network run in prime time, The Gong Show gave a classic, if unintentional example. A skit originally titled "Have You Got a Nickel?" featured two 17-year-old girls in cutoff shorts sat cross-legged on stage, provocatively sucking and licking Popsicles, without music. Celebrity judges Phyllis Diller and Jamie Farr didn't get the joke -- Diller gave the act a zero, and Farr scored it a 2; however, Jaye P. Morgan awarded the pair a perfect 10, and inserted her own questionable comment: "You know, that's the way I started." The ultimate punchline was that the act was a case of reverse psychology - it was a non-competitive act (in other words, not eligible for the weekly prize money) intended to be a blatant homage to fellatio, with host-creator-executive producer Chuck Barris hoping that NBC's Standards and Practices executives would be more likely to allow the borderline acts that he actually wanted on the show. Not only did S&P not catch it when aired in the Eastern/Central time zones, the segment was abruptly censored elsewhere. The show was canceled shortly after the "Popsicle Twins" incident, and although the official explanation at NBC has been low ratings and a desire to bring a daytime talk-variety show to the time spot occupied by Gong, some have suggested that Barris' refusal to tone down his acts was the deciding (if not only) factor.
- Match Game The CBS version built its reputation on seeing how much they could get away with. The most frequent example comes with questions that involved a female and a pluralized blank, leading at least one member of the panel (but far more often, most of the six celebs) to respond "boobs."
- One of the most celebrated clips -- host Gene Rayburn, trying to comment on a pretty female contestant's dimples, but accidentally says "nipples" -- never aired on CBS ... but years later, Dick Clark saw plenty of comic potential by showing the clip on his Bloopers shows.
- Once, Brett Somers flipped off the audience when they vociferously booed an answer of hers.
- "I never saw the tip come off before...."
- A rare instance of having to use this to circumvent the ban on Product Placement in PBS shows, Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? had the chief take a bite from an apple to hint at which computer company was being referenced as being headquartered in the city that was the correct answer. Alas, all 3 contestants got the answer wrong, failing to pick Cupertino, CA.
- Family Feud: Many times, becoming particularly prevalent during the Steve Harvey era that began in 2010.
- The Bozo Show: An urban legend persists that a child used the phrase "Cram it, clown!" on the show, with a similar retelling having the mal-behaving child uttering harsh profanity. Each version of the story has the child uttering the "Bozo no-no" after playing a progressive-skill game for a cache of prizes -- called "The Grand-Prize Game," with increasing value depending on the child's success, with a high-valued grand prize offered for successfully completing all attempts) -- the child missing on one of his attempts (the point at which failure occurred varies, most often on the first try for the big prize, in which case nothing would be won), and the child venting his frustration after being handed an undesirable Consolation Prize, usually a towel with Bozo's likeness or a cheap balsa-wood airplane. Snopes.com doubts whether this happened, stating that the tellings vary widely and that because it aired live in most markets the footage of such an event would be lost.
- ER: In the eighth-season episode "On the Beach" (an episode documenting one of the last days of his life after suffering from an inoperable brain tumor), Dr. Mark Greene loses his balance while getting out of bed and falls over, after which he screams out a word that suspiciously sounds like "SHIT!!!" (Edwards was leaving the series, and his character dies in a later episode from the cancer, which has by now spread throughout his entire body.)
- That wasn't just a word that sounds like shit, that was him actually saying shit. Keep in mind that when the episode aired, network TV was considerably less prudish in regards to language. Case in point: NYPD Blue.
- Schindler's List: When the 1993 Academy Award-winning movie (the biopic on the German businessman who forsakes his Nazi Party leanings to save more than 1,000 Jews from death) first aired on NBC, it was aired unedited, unlike virtually all movies featuring harsh profanity, sex and nudity. Although a sex scene was edited, appearances of completely naked women (Jews who had been stripped of their clothing by Nazi soldiers) and utterances of the word "fuck" were left intact, marking firsts (if not one of the firsts) in American television. Although it gained a TV-MA rating by NBC, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) criticized NBC's decision to air the movie, contending at first that NBC had fallen to a new low by allowing the film to air with its nudity, violence and profanity, adding that airing the film was an insult to "decent-minded individuals everywhere" (he later relented on some of his comments, although he thought the movie should have been aired at a different time). PBS has also shown the movie in its original theatrical form.
- Monty Python's Flying Circus has topless women appear uncensored many, many times. Add to that all the dirty jokes. But in one of Terry Gilliam's animations, the word "cancer" was considered too offensive and was, rather obviously (the narrator's voice changes dramatically) changed to "gangrene".
- Interestingly, they did not remove Smoke-Too-Much's racial epithets (the "tiny emaciated epithet" and the "epithet waiter named Manuel").
- This editor can't remember if this appeared in the TV version, or only in the live show, but they also did this in the Travel Agency sketch. Mr. Smoke-Too-Much is pathologically unable to say the letter "C", replacing it with "B". When the travel agent points out that he could just substitute "K" for the "C" in those words, Smoke-Too-Much muses to himself, "What a silly bunt." I'll leave that to you to work out yourselves.
- It was in the initial television broadcast... and there were complaints afterward. The BBC responded by editing the punchline out of the master recordings, so it's nowhere to be found on the DVD release. The punchline was put back into the sketch on Monty Python's Previous Record and was used in live show, as heard in Live at the Hollywood Bowl.
- The following exchange from episode 35 probably only got past because the audience's laughter obscured it so much:
Mr. Robinson: Come in. |
- The "How Not To Be Seen" sketch introduces one character as "Mrs. B.J. Smegma."
- Then there's the beginning of the "Still No Sign of Land" sketch, which reminded this troper why he loved Monty Python so much...
Michael Palin: * All are starving in a lifeboat* Still no sign of land...how long is it? |
- At the end of one movie, they say 'and now for some pictures of penises to enrage the censors'. Incidentally, it was more surreal than sexual.
- Sometimes they used words that were the erudite form of foul language.
- "Ohhh, intercourse the penguin!"
- "Oh, coitus!"
- "One of our lads, with a fair training in the black arts can scare the fertilizer (sh*t) out of them."
- "It's a real pain in the sphincter!"
- "I don't care how excrementally runny it is."
- And in the Summarise Proust competition, a contestant lists his hobbies as
Golf; strangling small animals; and masturbation. |
- The word "masturbation" was bleeped out by the BBC, thus suggesting the corporation condones and promotes garroting small animals. Lipreaders, however, could still get the joke.
- The Pythons were so infamous with the censors that the censors began attempting to censor things that weren't even meant to be dirty. A notable example is a sketch in which John Cleese holds a severed leg through a door, and that was misinterpreted as a penis.
- The censors would, on occasion make things sound much dirtier than they actually were written. For instance, an animated bit with two men in a bathtub had the last two words censored from this dialog: "They washed their arms and they washed their legs and then they washed their naughty bits."
- In the first part of the Stargate Atlantis season 1 finale, Dr. Zalenka tells Dr. McKay that he is a nasty 'little' man, while holding his right hand in such a way that we can tell exactly what part of McKay is 'little'...
- Arguably, Firefly's Chinese obscenities.
- And occasionally subverted, in that some of them aren't actually obscenities, but are said so that the audience assumes they are.
- Also, gorram is used for Goddamn, and rut for fuck.
- Cockney rhyming slang is often used on British TV due to censors not noticing it. One ITV miniseries about holiday reps in Ibiza was called "Is Harry on the boat?". Not getting it? Harry monk on the boat race.
- This troper still had to go and look it up.
- In a flashback on The Odd Couple, Felix tells Oscar he has to marry Gloria. "You have to marry her? A man who covers up every piece of furniture with plastic, and you have to marry her!?"
- Similarly, on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the Ferengi have these giant ears that act as erogenous zones. They love to have women rub them while they're holding conversations, and at times they even rub them themselves. While they're not quite sex organs as such, the effect is much the same. And let's not forget the times women have grabbed Quark by the ear to use the intense pain as a motivation for cooperation. Plus, all the times they use "[person] doesn't have the lobes for [task]" as an insult.
- They call the ear massage "Oo-mox". Apparently it can't be translated into English.
- There's also an offhand reference to the "old wives' tale" that performing Oo-mox on yourself too much might make you go deaf.
- The only reference to masturbation in the entire Star Trek universe comes from Rom in Deep Space Nine, after he got sick from a near-fatal ear infection.
Rom: I forgot my bi-monthly ear scan. And besides, I've probably been getting too much oo-mox. |
- Also, the head Ferengi is the guy with the biggest ears, and his valet even spends time combing the ear hair.
- This is probably a reference to (if the internet is to be trusted) human ears being made of erectile tissue, the same tissue as human... well what do you think?
- The Internet is NOT to be trusted on this.
- Yes, only the lobes swell, as does every other well perfused body part.
- The Internet is NOT to be trusted on this.
- This is probably a reference to (if the internet is to be trusted) human ears being made of erectile tissue, the same tissue as human... well what do you think?
- Farscape does the same thing with Rygel's eyebrows.
- And Deep Space Nine is far more...adult oriented than TNG or Voyager, so there are several other risqué references by the other characters:
- Also, the head Ferengi is the guy with the biggest ears, and his valet even spends time combing the ear hair.
Dax: Don't worry, I have a light touch. |
- In one Voyager episode, Seven of Nine has been stalking Tom and B'Elanna to find out more about dating. B'Elanna isn't happy when she finds out and reads the pad on which Seven took notes. One of the notes reads something like "300 hours, couple resumes intimate relations," leading to this exchange...
B'Elanna: "How the hell do you know when we're having intimate relations?" |
- Well, given what we know about Klingon sex...
- That's nothing to do with the KLINGON ancestry, that one's all human.
- Well, given what we know about Klingon sex...
- Speaking of Farscape, the show had more alien swear words than anything else. Off the top of my head: frell (fuck), dren (shit), schlock (shit), mivonks (balls), hezmanna (hell), trelk (slut/whore), and many, many more.
- Parodied in the episode "200" of Stargate SG-1.
- If memory serves, when John was trapped in a time warp and aged fifty years, he returned to Moya to hit the Reset Button. Time started to slow and only John (in his eighties) could move. It sounds like he says "I'm too old for this shit," but I'm sure the official transcript insists he says "ship".
- Then there was the case of Zhaan's blue ass at one point, probably not a big deal in some circles, but the first station the show aired on in Canada was the kids station, YTV.
- In the beginning of the TV movie, Crichton has a conversation with the Scorpius clone in his head in front of a blackboard. At one point, he very obviously chalks "FUCK OFF" in large capital letters on the board, but you never get to see the entire word at once.
- Back in The Sixties, U.S. TV networks, particularly NBC, wouldn't allow women to show their belly buttons, most famously affecting Jeannie on I Dream of Jeannie. In the original Star Trek episode "Mirror, Mirror", Uhura's mirror outfit included a bare midriff and her navel is visible in several shots. The producers achieved this simply by having someone take the Standards guy out to lunch and lowering the bottom half of her costume while he was gone. The shots with her bare navel were edited into the episodes and evidently no one caught it.
- Veronica Mars became almost infamous for the number of double-entendres and even single-entendres that the censors somehow missed. Even on UPN.
Veronica: They give trophies for stealing hubcaps now? |
- Veronica Mars had another good one: Veronica has a flat tire, and she's trying to fix it. A young man named Troy, hoping to learn more about her and possibly score a date, comes up to her.
Troy: Flat? |
Logan: (to a bathrobe-clad Charisma Carpenter) Can Dick and Beaver come out to play? |
- Another notable example is that several characters in different episodes use a hand gesture known as "the shocker", whose meaning is commonly summed up with the phrase, "two in the pink, one in the stink". Veronica even tries the gesture, but messes it up, and Weevil corrects her. "Shocker." "No, that's scout's honor. You have to--" "Never mind."
- Battlestar Galactica in all its iterations, is frakking famous for doing this. Robot Chicken parodied this here, with the majority of the cast to boot.
- The Britcom Open All Hours does this all the time. It happens so often that the show is immensely devalued if not able to understand it. Since the main character, Arkwright, is a somewhat mean, miserly old grocer, "large white loaves" and "Granville's two friends" have in particular become Unusual Euphemisms for his fiancée's breasts.
- An episode of Eastenders had Dirty Den addressing a pair of police officers as "cuntstables" with just enough emphasis on the first syllable to get it on the air while still being obvious. However, although it got past the Censors, it didn't get past the British viewing public, who complained vociferously.
- The gang on That '70s Show seems to be smoking an illegal drug on a regular basis. The writers keep it ambiguous by never referring to it directly. The most common reference is scenes called "the circle" in which characters sit in a circle in a smoke filled room while acting unusually peppy and stupid. There are also "the circle" scenes without smoke suggesting that they don't always get high in "the circle".
- That or they're getting high by other means...
- Like that batch of "special brownies" Red once ate by accident...
- That isn't entirely accurate. In the early seasons, the gang was shown sitting around a circle without smoke, saying stupid things. Later, the characters started making references to what they were actually doing. Even later, the smoke was added. The smokeless circles weren't implying they weren't getting high, or that they were doing some other drug. The writers just didn't think censors would allow such obvious drug use. Apparently, either the writers got bolder and the censors didn't care (or were really stupid), or the censors changed their tunes.
- Most likely they didn't care. One episode revolved around the gang painting a pot leaf on the water tower, and said leaf was clearly (if crudely) depicted. Naturally, Kelso fell off the tower.
- I think early on they didn't want to overstep it with the censors. There were plenty of references later on, but in the first season especially, they tended to beat around the pot bush:
- That or they're getting high by other means...
Hyde: I can't believe they're gonna waste all their money on a stupid disco when they could buy a really big bag of *Looks at Red* ...caramels..." |
- And sometimes they went overboard with the clueless parent routine for further emphasis:
Kitty: I put some sandwiches in your duffel bag. Now, umm, why do you need such a big bag of oregano? |
- A more specific instance occurred in a Father-Son competition that Red and Eric were taking place in, with Kitty and Donna observing. When competing in a cow-milking contest, Eric turns out to have a real knack for it, which causes Kitty (who's drunk more than her share of cider at this point) to remark to Donna, "Oh, good for you, honey!"
- Let's not forget Buffy's spinoff, Angel, which sure as heck got more than its share of crap past the radar -- and Joss (and other writers) comments on it in several episode commentaries. Examples include:
- The scene in "Waiting in the Wings" where Angel and Cordy get trapped in a room that has a... somewhat erotic effect due to ghostly presences. When they leave, Cordy makes a comment to the effect of "Thank god the effect only lasts in that room..." whereupon Angel glances down, agrees with her, and hastily whips off his tux jacket and drapes it to cover... certain areas.
- From the same episode, Fred happily telling Cordy that her first sexual dream was about the Mouse King.
- A lot of the stuff with Lilah and Wesley -- they practically beat out S6 Buffy and Spike for most mutually destructive, self-loathing couple, but that's a whole 'nother trope. As far as this one goes, there's Lilah dressing up in the schoolgirl outfit and her and Wesley having phone sex!
- Oh, come on, can we forget how Wesley sexually controls Lilah on the phone, telling her to take off her panties during a meeting?
- It wasn't a schoolgirl outfit, it was a Fred outfit. Still, how role playing made it past the radar is amazing.
- Everything involving c'amshacking with the Groosalug.
- Especially if you consider that in one episode, in order to prevent the visions (Wink) from passing to Groo, Cordelia wonders if they can c'am without the shucking.
- When they take out Angel's soul to try and get information from Angelus, he spends all his time taunting and manipulating them. There's so much squicky dirty talk.
- Speaking of squicky dirty talk, Hell Bound. Pavayne seems to be torturing Spike in an unusually, er, playful way. It's gone from sadistic vibes to outright rape vibes. Were Spike female, I doubt they would have gotten away with having a domineering older man strip him naked, cut him up, and talk about the naughty things Spike's done.
- When Wesley, Cordie and Gunn try to escape the castle, Gunn wonders how Cordie's gonna get her booty (the treasures she's taken) out the door.
- In the episode Deep Down, Lorne says take care of Fluffy to Fred. Fred say to Gunn, "You don't think he's referring to anything of mine that's fluffy, cause that would just be inappropriate."
- And in the same episode
Fred: Don't let it go to your head. |
- Faith gets a few good ones in during "Salvage"
Wesley: (watching her stake two vampires) Feel natural? |
- Kate Lockley is nervous about giving a speech for her father's retirement party. Angel suggests she try to Imagine the Audience Naked. Kate's eyes flick downward to check out Angel's body and she mutters "Way ahead of you."
- Angel sleeps with Darla and feels a lot better afterwards.
Gunn: "So, you had an epiphany, did you? So, what you just wake up and 'bang'?" |
- Kenny Everett was forbidden to call his giant-busted, air-headed, sexually exploited starlet character by the spooneristic name "Mary Hinge" on the grounds that it was too rude, but then got away with calling her "Cupid Stunt".
- Beakman's World comes close a couple of times, many of those occurring in the final episode, where they tackle flatulence. One memorable moment is when Lester the Rat confuses "desert" with "dessert". His response? "Well, I've certainly made an 's' of myself." Another one was when he was shown on the phone with a woman telling her that "I can keep the nose on if that's what you like..." The penguins also provide a few examples:
Herb: Turn Beakman on. |
- Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In managed it sometimes by burying it in a hail of less offensive humor, and to a lesser degree by developing their own code words.
- An episode of Thirty Rock saw Liz Lemon's father, named Richard, announcing that "It's not a Lemon party without old Dick!"
- When the TGS writers were tasked with naming GE's latest microwave, Frank tried to sneak some dirty names under the radar, but the legal department couldn't be fooled.
Frank: They knew what a Hot Richard was? |
- Also there's a sub-radar Bilingual Bonus there, as the name Jack needs the writers to replace (the Bite-Nuker) actually does sound naughty in both French and Dutch. "Bite" is French for "dick", while "neuker" is Dutch for "fucker".
- House, in the episode "Ugly" of season four, House and Wilson sneaked into a locked room. The conversation is as follows:
Wilson: Where did you get those keys? |
- Another example from House: in the Season Seven episode "Two Stories," House suggests to Cuddy that they go get lunch:
House: I'd like to start with a small. Tossed. Salad. |
- S Club 7 had a few examples of this. There was, I think, four jokes made about the size of Rachel's breasts. "Backs straight, chests out... not so much the last one, Rachel.", and when complaining about having to wear a stupid costume involving bikini tops the line "If Rachel dances in that, it'll sound like a stampede." was used. In another episode, Jo and Bradley get into a fight, leaving her with a black eye and him severely injured in order to point out how hitting a woman is seen as worse than hospitalizing a man. Then there was a scene in which what was believed to be a suicide attempt was used for laughs. In the movie however, there was a very unexpected scene in which a woman is taking things out of her bag and giving it to them "Passport, wallet, vibrato--" at which she looks awkward and puts it back in the bag. And a twelve-years-old child trying unsuccessfully to chat up one of the female members, who naturally isn't interested... until he reminds her that he is rich. And then who later gropes Linda Blair, with the line "You're only as old as the woman you feel."
- This video on YouTube contains a montage of moments on I Love Lucy that could be interpreted as this. On another episode not included, Lucy informs an old woman that she is conducting a poll to which the lady replies (shockingly for a show on which the word "pregnant" was verboten), "Your name ain't Kinsey, is it?"
- In one episode of Robot Wars, Craig Charles referred to Robochicken as a "clucking good robot!"
- The Demon team wore hats with devil horns, leading JP to quip that they're feeling "horny, horny, horny"
- In one episode of Supernatural, Dean's confronted by two fantasy hookers who are offering him a massage and says this immortal line -- "You know, I'm a sucker for a happy ending. Really. But I'm going to have to (pauses, disappointed) pass."
- See also Dean's line in a different episode: "Hand of Glory? I think I got one of those with my Thai massage last week."
- Not to mention in 7.12, Sam asking Dean if he was looking at "More anime? Or are you strictly into Dick now?" (Regarding his obsession with Richard "Dick" Roman.)
- In Phil of the Future, Keely has a Did I Just Say That Out Loud? moment:
Keely: What in the world are two teenagers going to do in a dark room alone with no adults? |
- An episode of That's So Raven ostensibly addressed the horrors of junk-food. However, it included a scene of Raven spending at least a minute of screen-time trying to get her mouth around a huge hot-dog. Her friend Eddie may well have been talking about the effects of the cafeteria menu on his girth, but that's not what it sounded like when he watched her performance and said "I think my pants are getting tighter!"
- In another episode, Tanya tells Cory that she has a surprise for him. He begins guessing and his last guess is "an inflatable--". Tanya cuts him off with a loud "NO!"
- It's amazing how Scrubs got away with this particular prank The Janitor plays on J.D.:
The Janitor: (trying to solve a crossword puzzle) Five letters, showing vulnerability... a "blank" in one's armor... |
- Then again, a good portion of the episode involved Asians being mean to him, so the writers would have had to rewrite a good portion of it if it had been censored. The Janitor is a jerk.
- One episode involving a botched surgery by Turk (the patient, Harvey Korman the local Hypochondriac, was fine but for some potential effect on his tennis serve) had Mr. Korman yelling unclearly enough that it would be difficult to tell whether he meant "Mangler!" or "Mengele!"
- He clearly said Mengele. That's why Dr. Cox said Oh God and left the room. A much better example would be when Jordan was talking about her divorce from Dr. Cox:
- The episode "My Chief Concern", one of J.D's Imagine Spots has the hospital swarming with women and the Janitor in a box, with stunted speech, mostly likely due to being shut in a box when he's not allowed to clean. When he's brought out to clean up some pudding, he asks if he can eat it, which J.D says he's only allowed to clean. He then looks towards the crotch-area of a nearby woman and says "Janitor eat?" Probably not as subtle as many other examples listed in this section but still, how often can someone say something of that magnitude on television?
- Don't forget this line from Elliot: "I started an "I Hate Cox" chatroom. Hasn't really worked out the way I planned - it's me, two interns, and 14,000 lesbians."
- When Carla is pregnant, Turk and JD want to be the ones to tell her about it and plan a surprise party. However, Carla says that she would want to be the one to tell everyone and she'd kill anyone who stole the moment from her, so Turk hurriedly messages JD, who is at the party:
- The episode "My Chief Concern", one of J.D's Imagine Spots has the hospital swarming with women and the Janitor in a box, with stunted speech, mostly likely due to being shut in a box when he's not allowed to clean. When he's brought out to clean up some pudding, he asks if he can eat it, which J.D says he's only allowed to clean. He then looks towards the crotch-area of a nearby woman and says "Janitor eat?" Probably not as subtle as many other examples listed in this section but still, how often can someone say something of that magnitude on television?
JD: Oh no. We got a glitch. Abort the plan! Abort the surprise! Abort the babies! (pops baby-shaped balloon, turns and sees a priest staring at him in shock) EVERYBODY RUN!! |
- In Arrested Development, George Sr. thinks he has devised a way to get past the sensors (that are keeping him under house arrest). Buster replies "When mother sees this, she will blow a cow." The creators have claimed this was unintentional.
- And of course that's just one of a billion instances. "Get rid of the Seaward" also comes to mind. Especially later when Gob got a new yacht, the C-Word.
Michael: Get rid of the Seaward. |
Tobias Fünke: country-music loving lady!
- Nearly every word that ever came out of Tobias Funke's mouth.
- Drew Carey had one memorable line in the American version of Whose Line Is It Anyway??:
- (And the joke worked, because Laura Hall is very attractive.) Whose Line did a lot of that sort of thing. One great example is this sketch from the Richard Simmons episode.
- There was also a game that had everyone replace the letter "b" with "f". Most of it consisted of discussion of Wayne's "fig futt" and hunting "male deer"...
- Pushing Daisies is displaying a warped genius for this. So far we've had "Jock-off 2000", "Well, I'll be dental-dammed...", "Simone had come... and gone", and so forth.
- It would be a crime not to mention the Norwegians' Mobile Investigative Lab Facility, which they refer to as "mother" throughout the entire episode.
- Also:
Louis Schatz: I choked on a tongue! |
- There was also the time when Young Emerson was brought to the principal's office for "inappropriate intentional Double Entendre in the science fair": "SEE THE RINGS AROUND URANUS - SCIENTISTS PLAN TO LAUNCH PROBES".
- The Daily Show likes to play games with the censors. Recently, California banned gay marriage. Interestingly, they also created new legislation ensuring that chickens in slaughterhouses were not being mistreated.
Jon Stewart: (picture of rooster appears on screen) So clearly, California voters are still amenable to some [bleep]. |
- When former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens made his infamous "series of tubes" speech, he claimed that "Your message can be delayed by anyone who puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material." Jon responds with the best way ever of saying that someone is full of crap.
Jon Stewart: There's apparently an enormous amount of material... clogging Ted Stevens' tubes. |
- "Perhaps some fiber... optic cable..."
- On that note, we also have "Yes, liberals... shove values down America's throat. So, America, open wide, and relax this part here." - indicating the throat, a few clips from Fox News plays - "Swallow it! Don't spit it out, don't you dare spit it out!"
- Another classic moment occurred in an episode Jon related a story about pilots being allowed to keep guns in the cockpit. The accompanying graphic was titled "Glock Pit". Jon then segued into a story about a flight stewardess who, while bringing the pilot and co-pilot some paper towels caught them both naked flying the plane. You can guess the title of the graphic. And no, they didn't write it as a single word.
- In an instance of "The Radar Was Asleep", Jon actually said "fuck" on the show and it was left in for broadcast (it's usually beeped out). Still not clear whether it was intentional or accidental. This was several years ago, at a point when censorship was a particularly hotbed issue. He went on the air the next night pointing out that he "didn't get a fax, an email, a warning or anything" from the FCC! Obviously the word has been bleeped since then.
- The FCC doesn't actually have authority over cable (just over broadcast television). Comedy Central could uncensor every Daily Show, and the government couldn't do much to them. Cable maintains censorship under fear they will be dropped by cable services, not out of fear of government intervention, as can be seen by the uncensored late-night movies that Comedy Central used to show weekly.
- Actually, it has more to do with advertisers than it does with cable companies. Some companies do not want the widget they're selling associated with shows that use saltier language. If a cable network relaxes their S&P rules, some advertisers will walk.
- It goes out uncensored in the UK. That one time a week they show the Global Edition.
- Recently, Stewart began a routine on Iran's supposed-secret nuclear test facility, and the joke quickly became clear as the name of its location, Qum, sounds exactly like a slang term for semen. Stewart proceeded to beat that fact right into the ground.
- Actually, it has more to do with advertisers than it does with cable companies. Some companies do not want the widget they're selling associated with shows that use saltier language. If a cable network relaxes their S&P rules, some advertisers will walk.
- The FCC doesn't actually have authority over cable (just over broadcast television). Comedy Central could uncensor every Daily Show, and the government couldn't do much to them. Cable maintains censorship under fear they will be dropped by cable services, not out of fear of government intervention, as can be seen by the uncensored late-night movies that Comedy Central used to show weekly.
Jon Stewart: If something goes wrong, there will be an explosion of hot Qum! |
- They only got away with it because the name "Qum" was displayed the entire time. And the fact that it was Truth in Television.
- There was also a North Korean missile that not only sounded dirty, but the chemical it was filled with also sounded dirty.
- Mystery Science Theater 3000, episode 519, "Outlaw" contained the song "Tubular Boobular Joy." Which contained this doozy of a verse:
- You really have to hear it to get the full effect.
- And let's not forget the short where Joel's response to a narrator's insistence that "skiing" is pronounced "shiing" was "Yeah, well you're full of skit."
- Which is also a great Bilingual Bonus if you're Swedish...
- "It was very kind of you to come." "Well, I didn't mean to but... the new seatcovers and all."
- From The Day the Earth Froze: a man enters the house with a dead goose.
Tom Servo: I'm not a pheasant plucker, I'm the pheasant plucker's son, and I'm only plucking pheasants 'til the pheasant plucker comes. |
- "Let's talk about shrinkage shall we."
- "How to simplfy my daily masturbation ritual."
In Gamera Vs. Zigra when the zigra woman says where she is from Celestial Body 105 or something they say "I know!" really loudly and the line Space is curved is answered to "And so am I".
- From Squirm, when a young woman is expecting a visit from her male friend/
Mother: I just don't want you to be disappointed if he doesn't come. |
- In Agent for H.A.R.M., when the bond babe invites the so-called hero out for some skinny dipping:
Eva: Are you coming, or do I swim alone? |
- Games Master took this far. It even parodied its constant use of innuendo in a couple of episodes.
- Just take a look at this segment: [1].
- While there was a lot of innuendo, arguably the most blatant attempt to actually get something inappropriate past the radar was during a news segment about bedroom coding, where in the voice-over Dominik announced that "in bedrooms up and down the country, young people are coming up with new games...". He actually pronounced the sentence in a way that seemed to divide it into two, so it sounded more like, "In bedrooms up and down the country, young people are coming! Up with..."
- A recent episode of Bones does this very well. A father and son are ice fishing, and as the son is now eighteen, the father is letting the son drill the hole for the first time. As he hands the son the drill, he says something to the effect of "Make sure you use proper protection when drilling holes... and this doesn't just apply to ice augers." Then, as the son is drilling the hole, he hits the episode's case/victim, causing blood to spurt up, and shouting, "It's bleeding!" And they spend the whole discussion referring to the auger as "she"?
- In "The Maggots in the Meathead", the team has to look at a series of text messages between the murder victim and a suspect, but the messages are riddled with confusing abbreviations. One of the younger people on the team (Dr. Lance Sweets) translates most of it, but dismisses "4Q" as self-explanatory.
- Sesame Street: In an "Elmo's World" segment all about socks, when Elmo watches The Sock Channel, the announcer says: "Next up, Socks and the City." Hmmm...
- A sketch featuring Katy Perry and Elmo singing "Hot and Cold" that was uploaded on YouTube before its TV debut was pulled from the Sesame Street episode it was going to appear in after complaints about Katy Perry's dress that she wore in the sketch, since it showed a lot of cleavage. The complaints about the sketch also caused a doll based on this particular Sesame Street segment that was going to be in stores to be canceled, and the segment was also parodied in the Halloween 2010 episode of Live With Regis And Kelly, featuring Regis as Elmo and Kelly as Katy Perry.
- Another sketch had Neil Patrick Harris as The Shoe Fairy. This is a reference that would totally go over the heads of the younger audience.
- Late in the miniseries The 10th Kingdom, Virginia and Wolf come back from a frolic in the grass that started as a search for firewood. Returning, they pass Virginia's father Tony, who asks where the wood is. Virginia claims they couldn't find any. A moment later, he demands of Wolf, "I suppose you don't have any wood either?" to which Wolf replies with a goofy smile, "Not any more."
- Saturday Night Live once featured a sketch with Joe Pesci playing his "Goodfellas" character buying a pinkie ring. He goes to the mirror to try it on and begins miming a conversation which ends as an angry argument full of F words. Today, censors would pixillate his mouth and no one would get the joke.
- And who can forget the Schwetty Balls sketch which pretty much lampshades the trope?
- Reprised later with Pete Schwetty's other culinary concoction, his hot dogs... a.k.a. wieners.
- Later reprised again by Betty White, with her muffins that, despite their age, were surprisingly moist.
- There was also the SNL skit "Jingleheimer Junction", a parody of children's shows with characters personifying Friendship, Unity, Caring and Kindness. With their initials written on their shirts. They never get into that order... but come surprisingly close. The best part is the "togetherness song" that's sung toward the end: "You can do it anywhere, in the park or on a chair... in and out, in and out..."
- Then there was the "Sofa King" commercial from the season 32 episode hosted by Shia La Beouf with musical guest Avril Lavigne [1]. Say it fast.
- And the conclusion of one of its Celebrity Jeopardy skits which had Sean Connery's final answer being "Buck Futter". In fact, Connery would often invert this trope with his insistence on reading the genuinely mundane categories as something obscene.
- One memorable sketch featured guest host Christopher Walken as Colonel Angus. Say it out loud.
- And who can forget the Schwetty Balls sketch which pretty much lampshades the trope?
Once a lady's been introduced to Colonel Angus, she'll settle for nothing less! |
- It gets better. When Colonel Angus gets drummed out of the service, he's forced to go by his real name: Enal.
- The racial slur job interview sketch with Chevy Chase and Richard Pryor from 1975, culminating in:
Interviewer: Jungle bunny! |
- The many times "fuck" (and its variants) has accidentally been said on live TV (i.e., the 100th episode where then-cast member Paul Shaffer plays a medieval musician who says "flogging" to mean the actual f-word -- and naturally screws up, Charles Rocket's "I'd like to know who the fuck did it" during the Charlene Tilton episode from season six [2], Norm MacDonald muttering, "What the fuck was that?" after botching a joke on Weekend Update, and Jenny Slate playing a biker chick with her own talk show and peppering everything she says with the F-word substitute, "freakin'". However, after getting an ashtray hurled near her head by her co-host (played by Kristen Wiig), Jenny says, "You know, you stood up for yourself, and I fuckin' love you for that!" Look closely and you can see Jenny's face briefly read, "Oh Crap!" just before the camera cuts to Kristen Wiig).
- A lot of Saturday Night Live's humor (for better or worse) is either Getting Crap Past the Radar or Refuge in Audacity (and sometimes Vulgarity).
- One case where a musical guest got crap past the radar in their performance was the appearance by Fear (which was infamous for other reasons). Drummer Spit Stix had "q-fa" written on his bass drum, and when censors asked about it before they went on air, he merely replied that it was a chant. If you don't get it, try saying "q-fa" aloud a few times very fast.
- In a recent appearance by Wayne and Garth, where they discuss the 2011 Oscars, they mention Natalie Portman, and Garth says "I could make Mila Kunis out of her Kunis!" Even Wayne was shocked.
- One of the Weekend Updates in the first five years was sponsored by "Pussy Whip, the first dessert topping for cats."
- Janet Jackson [3] visiting a wine bottling plant, where everyone is busy soaking corks. The entire sketch has every character mentioning this in their lines, every single one.
- The many times "fuck" (and its variants) has accidentally been said on live TV (i.e., the 100th episode where then-cast member Paul Shaffer plays a medieval musician who says "flogging" to mean the actual f-word -- and naturally screws up, Charles Rocket's "I'd like to know who the fuck did it" during the Charlene Tilton episode from season six [2], Norm MacDonald muttering, "What the fuck was that?" after botching a joke on Weekend Update, and Jenny Slate playing a biker chick with her own talk show and peppering everything she says with the F-word substitute, "freakin'". However, after getting an ashtray hurled near her head by her co-host (played by Kristen Wiig), Jenny says, "You know, you stood up for yourself, and I fuckin' love you for that!" Look closely and you can see Jenny's face briefly read, "Oh Crap!" just before the camera cuts to Kristen Wiig).
Male visitor: Can I try soaking corks too? |
- The Brady Bunch sorta-kinda got away with "hell" on the air ... twice!
- In one episode, Mike walks into the room and says "Alice, I need your hel--" and cuts off when he sees Carol standing there. When Carol asks why he was asking for help, he responds "No, I said 'hel', as in 'helmet'."** In the climatic scene of "Father of the Year," Mike walks into the living room, surprised to see a TV and newspaper crew set up along with the Brady children dressed up, and says, "What the hell is going on here?" (Of course, all works out well as Mike is bestowed the 'Father of the Year' contest honor, winning it on stepdaughter Marcia's nomination.)
- There was also another instance of "hell" being uttered, this time by Peter in 1988's A Very Brady Christmas.
- In one episode, Mike walks into the room and says "Alice, I need your hel--" and cuts off when he sees Carol standing there. When Carol asks why he was asking for help, he responds "No, I said 'hel', as in 'helmet'."** In the climatic scene of "Father of the Year," Mike walks into the living room, surprised to see a TV and newspaper crew set up along with the Brady children dressed up, and says, "What the hell is going on here?" (Of course, all works out well as Mike is bestowed the 'Father of the Year' contest honor, winning it on stepdaughter Marcia's nomination.)
- Drake and Josh gets away with multiple references to Drake's girlfriends being capable of giving Drake a whole lotta pleasure, and I don't mean through kissing, including putting their entire fists in their mouth, tying a cherry stem in a knot -with their tongue... Drake can also do the latter.
- That one episode involving Drake's concert getting rained out. Drakes friend asks if he has any sunblock, because they were playing outside. After confused remarks from Drake:
- Drake and Josh kiss ON THE LIPS twice over the course of the show. I love you, Dan.
- In the episode where Drake accidentally marries a pretty blonde girl from a foreign country that Josh has been corresponding with online, the girl's parents use the word "Boosha!" to express their anger at Drake; the word sounds almost exactly like "bullshit" if you say it fast enough.
- In the same episode, Drake asked the girl if she needed help getting a SHOWER to work.
- In Friends, after getting a strong handshake from Monica, Phoebe remarks that she's glad she's not Chandler (Monica's boyfriend). Awkward looks follow. At this point, the show probably wasn't allowed to say "penis".
- Another episode discusses fore/afterplay, specifically the importance of keeping the intimacy going.
Chandler: Yeah, I think kissing is, for us, like an opening act. You know, like the comedian you have to sit through before Pink Floyd comes out. |
- There was also the time the friends practically read aloud an extremely explicit pornographic story rendered harmless by Rachel's mad computer skillz:
- There's also the time that Monica drew an (unseen) diagram of the female erogenous zones and numbered them all, then began to describe what order they should be touched by referring to the numbers:
Monica: ...three, five, five, six, two, four, seven, seven, seven, seven, seven, seven, SEVEN!! |
- And the time that Rachel went on an independence kick after reading a heavily metaphorical book about female self-realization (which referred to not letting men "steal your wind", i.e., independence/power.) She eventually has a fight with Ross about this which is hilariously misinterpreted:
Ross: Your...wind? |
- When Monica tries buying and selling stocks:
Monica: Get out before they go down, that's my motto. |
- When Ross has an allergic reaction and his tongue swells up, Joey is the only one who can understand what he's saying:
Joey: My uncle Sal has a really big tongue. |
- Ross keeps annoying his ex-wife Carol on her anniversary with her new wife, Susan. When she comes to the door, she is seen to subtly pull something away from her mouth, and retorts "Uh, no!" when Ross asks if she had been sleeping.
- After Chandler has swiped Monica's bran muffin and Phoebe is talking about her new boyfriend, who's in the Navy and has just returned from submarine duty:
- When Monica and Chandler are planning to adopt and they meet Erica, she says she doesn't know who the biological father of her child is, but it's definitely one of two guys, one of whom killed his father with a shovel (causing Chandler to dub him "Shovelly Joe"). At the end, however, Monica figures it out:
- In "The One with Joey's Bag":
- In one episode Chandler spent all day playing Pac Man and putting in dirty words for the high scores screen. The words are never shown, but they are commented on.
Monica: That one's not dirty. |
- When Rachel was helping Ross move his new couch.
Rachel: Chandler, can I borrow your tape measure? |
- Quite a few pretty how-did-they-get-away-with-that scenes slip by in Frasier. For example, in one episode, when the doorbell interrupts Niles and Daphne's passionate makeout session at the piano, Niles gets halfway up, pauses, looks down, and then scoots his bench closer to the piano meekly saying "Er...Daphne, could you get that?" And then when forced to greet the person at the door, does so holding a sheaf of sheet music in front of his crotch, but in a very casual way, so that it could be seen as just a coincidence...although the Studio Audience wasn't fooled for an instant.
- Hannah Montana has a strange example: One episode features Miley Stewart's brother being mistaken for her alter ego's boyfriend and they keep up that charade for a while, mostly because the brother didn't want to end the "relationship," (because of all of the, ahem, perks). At one point, Miley says, in disgust, something to the effect of, "You're enjoying this way too much."
- There's another episode where Miley's dad is making fish puns, and quips that he "did it for the halibut".
- In one episode, Lilly gets jealous because Oliver has a girlfriend. At one point, Miley and Lilly are at the beach, when Oliver and his girlfriend (whose name I forget) arrive. I can't remember the preceding conversation exactly, but eventually the girlfriend says she and Oliver should leave, to which Lilly says:
Lilly: Yeah Oliver, didn't you read the sign? <glares at girlfriend> No dogs allowed. |
- In Blossom when Six LeMeure was asked about her unusual name, she replies that, according to her father, "that's how many beers it took".
- Other's memory is that her reply was "That's how many it took", which is open to far more Under The Radar interpretations...
- This troper remembers an answer to the question referencing the Richter Scale. Had to be during the show's original run, and it might have been a behind-the-scenes tv thing with the actress.
- In another episode the father walks in on Anthony and Six and, well, I'll just let him sum it up: "My recovering alcoholic son is teaching our underage neighbor how to make drinks. Why does this bother me?"
- Life with Derek has a few of these; in one episode, a kid hastily shouts in response to whether he was listening or not, "I was looking at your eyes, not your chest!" Derek also says in response to boys being different from girls, "Yeah, I learned that the fun way on the old couch."
- And in another one, a character is accused of liking someone else solely because of her chest. A few seconds later, they actually use the word "breasts". This is a show on the Family Channel.
- And in yet another episode, Nora says something along the lines of "we're the next-door neighbors from hell".
- And in another one, a character is accused of liking someone else solely because of her chest. A few seconds later, they actually use the word "breasts". This is a show on the Family Channel.
- The All That 10th Anniversary episode had this particular line...
Coach Kreeton: And even though I'm a seventy-five, and you're NINETEEN! AHAAAAAAAAHAHA! |
- (And to drive the whole point home, he even starts rubbing Abby Rhode's legs while he's laughing.)
- Either they were Accidental Innuendo or Freud Was Right, but you have to really have to wonder how they managed to get some of Pierre Escargot's lines in the show. Some notable lines include "Keep your hands off my chicken nuggets!" and "May I jump up and down your sausages?"
- Makes perfect sense, seeing that Dan Schneider worked on this show.
- Recently on MSNBC, there has been mocking coverage of the "Tea Parties" advertised by conservative groups. Cue a volley of Double Entendre about teabagging with comments about swallowing, etc.
- The video's gone down the memory hole, but TOW has fairly comprehensive coverage. 'Teabagger' later became runner-up for the Oxford English Dictionary New Word of the Year, for which Keith Olbermann is claiming some responsibility.
- There once was a science TV show for children (it was either Feed Your Mind or Popular Mechanics For Kids) where they were visiting a recycling center. They are standing next to a conveyor belt with paper trash getting ready to be processed until suddenly a kid picks up from said conveyor belt an issue of Playboy. The adult standing next to him immediately goes "Hey! Put that down! This is a family show!"
- It was PMK. The joke flew over my five-year-old head at the time, but I remember it now.
- In an episode of The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, London mistakes Maddie's command to strip the bed as a request to strip.
- There was also an episode where the mother was trying to get a raise and Zack was acting as her agent. He tells Mr. Moseby the restaurant was only doing so well because "you have this glamor puss up there shaking her goodies." That certainly gave me pause ... and special creepy bonus points because he was referring to his mother.
- In another one, the twins' mom jokes about Cody's identity crisis when he dresses up in hip-hop clothing, using the phrase "Fo' shizzle, my nizzle!" This troper cringed at its use on a Disney program.
- In another episode, a twin convention is being held at the Tipton. The sign reads, "the Tipton welcomes twins". Before the theme song, the sign and Mr. Moseby fall. He then picks up an "A" and comments on how he landed on it. It took a while for this troper to realize that there weren't any "A"s on the sign!
Mr. Moseby: Oh, I landed on my "A"! |
- It works, though. The sign says in full, "THE TIPTON WELCOMES TWINS PLEASE ENJOY YOUR STAY"
- Another episode has the twins doing themed parties. Cody lists the next three weeks worth. The first two are countries, the third is A Night In Paris. As if that weren't obvious enough, who is London Tipton based on?
- The Suite Life On Deck has London refer to Bailey's alarm clock, which is shaped like a chicken, as a "chokey chicken".
- Another episode has Cody tell Zack, "Then use your turn signal, and not the one you used when I told you to slow down."
- Another episode has Bailey and Cody acting all lovey-dovey as part of a school assignment to simulate marriage, and Zack told them they should be spayed and neutered.
- Another episode has Bailey dressing like a cow and Cody asking her for milk.
- "Senior Ditch Day" has Ms Tuttweiler fantasising about being the heroine in a dirty romance novel. As she is about to be kissed, she is interrupted by Bailey.
Bailey: Ms Tuttweiler, I finished my art project! |
- The crossover arc with Wizards of Waverly Place and Hannah Montana has a couple. Best known is the one where Alex is hiding in Zack's room and Moseby, blaming him for a prank she pulled confines him to quarters and tells him to entertain himself with whatever's in his room, followed by his giving Alex a leering look. However there's also this line from Hannah to Cody"
"I remember you! I ate cake off you!" |
- How I Met Your Mother
- Had the following exchange in "The Goat":
Ted: Hey Barney, do you want my X-Box? |
- In Little Minnesota, Robin announces that "She used to play FQ all the time back home!"
- In-universe example when we see the "kids' show" Space Teens that Robin used to star in. The Main Characters are two buxom teenage girls who are sent jiggling in slow motion when their spaceship hits an asteroid field, have pet beavers they talk about in ways that can oh-so-easily be taken out of context, and pilot their ship by stroking a giant joystick and answering math questions like "What's 23 x 3?" As Lily puts it, the show is a "veritable pornocopia".
Alan Thicke: If Robin's beaver devours six inches of wood every half hour, and Jessica's beaver devours eight inches of wood every forty-five minutes, how much wood will I need to keep both of these beavers well fed all weekend long?" |
- Not limiting themselves to naughty language, one episode slips a nipple into a bedroom scene between Robin and Barney with subliminal speed. If anyone found themselves strangely concerned about the couple, now you know why.
- From the episode "Moving Day":
Bar This is our last night together as "bros". Tonight, we are having a no-holds-barred celebration of bro-hood. A bro-ing away party. A bro-lebration! A bro-choice rally! Bro-time at the Apollo! |
- The Benny Hill Show period, when it wasn't Refuge in Audacity.
- In the second season of Knightmare, the dungeoneer (a girl in her early teens) slides down to the second level, knocking over Bumptious the Dwarf and accidentally causing an explosion. Gretel the maid then says, "See what you get for playing with his plunger?" It gets worse/better. Gretel is sent off for bandages and returns shortly screaming, "I'm coming, Bumptious! I'm coming!"
- And it keeps on in later seasons, with a number of female characters getting chained up, tied up and put in stocks (although, to be fair, the last one happened to Merlin as well), not to mention the "magic pills" marked "Uppers" and "Downers".
- Not so much a case of getting crap past the radar as the radar having a total and absolute fail: At one point in an early season when the team messes up and their dungeoneer isn't sure what to do, the 11-year-old boy helping command it clearly and audibly says "Fuck." We then cut to the team where said child has covered his mouth and is looking guilty. This was BROADCAST.
- Also, it may have been a case of English accents in play, but there were a couple times when characters said words like "ship" and "Regina" that sounded a lot like... other words. And in the case of another team when their dungeoneer is killed, one of them goes "Shi.." before cutting himself off.
- In season 7, Lord Fear turns his henchreptile into a tavern wench and then comes on to him/her!
- And it keeps on in later seasons, with a number of female characters getting chained up, tied up and put in stocks (although, to be fair, the last one happened to Merlin as well), not to mention the "magic pills" marked "Uppers" and "Downers".
- Psych: in the episode "Rob a Bye Baby", Shawn makes tea related jokes about a man who was murdered after coming home and drinking tea. The last joke he made used the phrase "tea bagging".
- The episode "Let's Get Hairy" has a newspaper with an add for "Dee's Nuts" which gets tossed around a few times.
- The writers enjoy using the phrase "three-whole punch".
- In the episode "We'd Like to Thank the Academy" Shawn has this exchange with Lassiter after pulling him over during his academy training:
Lassiter: You couldn't beat me on the field, so now you're going to try to beat me off? |
- An episode of Smallville, "Unsafe", had Lionel walking in on Lex fencing with a hot blond chick, leading to the following:
Lionel: Too busy playing with swords to speak to your father? |
- And the time Chloe found Clark looking at Lana through his telescope and told he can either finally talk to her or stay there and play with his telescope.
- Someone had to know what the song, "One Toke Over the Line" was about. Lawrence Welk apparently didn't.
- The Goodies were understandably upset when Mary Whitehouse cited them as an example of good, clean television - so they wrote an entire episode making fun of her and censorship in general. Under the guise of an apparently child-friendly silliness, they wrote (and aired) episodes candidly satirising police brutality, military testing, the British Post Office, even Apartheid (one of their less successful attempts), but it took Tim Brooke-Taylor donning a pair of briefs emblazoned with a cartoon carrot in a Saturday Night Fever parody to earn Whitehouse's condemnation. The BBC then axed their show.
- No, the Goodies just switched to ITV. The above-mentioned Whitehouse episode was however not shown in Australia, presumably due to its violence.
- Even if she knows it wasn't a children's show, this troper's mind still baffles when she wonders how they got past Graeme, very casually, say "You berk!" to Tim. 'Berk' was short for 'Berkeley hunt', which was, in turn, rhyming slang for...uh, Country Matters. Also, from another episode, we get this:
Tim: I remember when England's hills were green...but look at it now...scarred! Defaced! ...Raped! |
- They got away with it because basically no one really remembers that 'berk' is rhyming slang. It's a pretty PG rated insult. It also doesn't sound anything like the words it's slang for- 'berk' is pronounced as written, 'berkshire' is pronounced 'barksheer'. Americans always cite it as a British obscenity, when it really isn't.
- Star Trek: The Next Generation had a scene with a naked ten year old Alexander in a hot tub with two naked Betazoid women, the idea that the censors didn't stop that frankly boggles the mind.
- Well, it was a hot tub filled with mud (which may be a problem in other ways) that couldn't be seen through, nothing is shown from the neck down, and while Luxwana and Deanna may have been naked when they were in the tub earlier in the episode, it is perfectly reasonable to assume that they (and Alexander, for that matter) were wearing swimsuits out of courtesy for the underage, opposite-gender child.
- ST:TNG also got a number of obscenities under the radar by having Picard swear in French.
- In "True Q", Q is getting frustrated with Dr. Crusher and turns her into a literal bitch - or a dog at least. Amanda switches her back.
- And while we are discussing Star Trek, many slashers base the legitimacy of the Kirk/Spock pairing in Star Trek: The Original Series on a score of subtle character moments (the legendary "back rub scene", the hand holding, several glances and smiles, Spock's hands placed possessively on the back of Kirk's chair...) that, on their own, would not amount to much, but which slashers insist is proof of canon Ho Yay. Since this was the gay-bashing (well, more gay-bashing) sixties we are talking about, and Star Trek wasn't above slipping into controversial subtext, the theory is not entirely unreasonable. But, of course, Your Mileage May Vary.
- Lots of fans see signals in the first Star Trek movie - especially the scene in sickbay following Spock's EVA - that the UST from the original series got ... resolved ... between the first five-year mission and the V'Ger incident.
- Repeatedly, Bones would say the phrase, "Are you out of your Vulcan mind?" to Spock (with the same inflection you'd use to say "out of your fucking mind").
- Then of course is the immortal line from an angry Scotty to Spock in "Day of the Dove". "Take your Vulcan hands off me". Classic.
- "A Private Little War" has a witch-woman on a primative planet cure Kirk by writhing over his body and moaning her way to a climax.
- This. And they did things like that all the time.
- The Muppet Show was (in)famous for not being a kids' show, but one significant example was Petula Clark dancing around the feet of a Bossman whilst singing The Boy From Ipanema. At the line "when he passes, each one he passes, goes 'a-a-ah'", she's standing between his legs and looking up for the last few syllables.
- In the Muppet's video for the song "Kokomo", Kermit gets in trouble because Miss Piggy catches him checking out the asses of a pair of hula dancers.
- The double entendres fly fast and free on Dirty Jobs, but a real jaw dropping "He said what?" moment comes when Mike Rowe guest starred on Sesame Street to interview Oscar The Grouch. Oscar invites Mike in his trash can using the back door entrance, to which Mike says off-handedly "I always wanted to go in the back door". Not that the kids would pick up on it, but judging from the way the editing cuts him off in the middle of "door"...
- Then there's the episode where Mike visits a dairy farm. He's introduced to a flamethrower used to harmlessly singe the hair off of a cow's udders before milking. He is eager to volunteer his own hand, and they just as eagerly give it a quick burst of flame. Without flinching, he takes one look and says, "It took all the hair off my palms! (Emphasis this troper's)
- Merlin. The chicken. Can be viewed here at 00:36.
- In Season 4, when Gwen is in exile and her village is attacked, Helios chooses to save her, even though the rest of the villagers are all killed. His reason? "There's still some pleasure to be had here." She is later seen in his den, dressed in a harem girl outfit. He asks her to dine with him. When they enter the room where the food is laid out, she gets noticeably agitated -- as the shot widens, we see that there is a bed near the table.
- Not to mention that the Badass Damsel in question milks the part of the submissive, willing eyelash-batter because she knows it's keeping her alive.
- Then there's Helios's line "I thought I said we were not to be disturbed." and her line "I had thought we'd be alone" when Morgana is about to arrive on the scene.
- ... and "But we've barely begun to know each other." Cue flirtatious look. "I'm sure there will be time enough."
- And then Helios and Morgana pretty much have an entire subtexty exchange about how they'll be sleeping together once he helps her take the throne.
- In Season 4, when Gwen is in exile and her village is attacked, Helios chooses to save her, even though the rest of the villagers are all killed. His reason? "There's still some pleasure to be had here." She is later seen in his den, dressed in a harem girl outfit. He asks her to dine with him. When they enter the room where the food is laid out, she gets noticeably agitated -- as the shot widens, we see that there is a bed near the table.
- British children's sitcom My Parents Are Aliens had an episode which centered on a female alien shapeshifter, disguised as a woman, experimenting with breasts and, having inflated them to a meter long, using them to seduce various men for her adopted children's advantage. A scene contains her expanding them in front of her adopted son and squirting him with milk.
- The name of one Dollhouse episode ("Belle Chose") is a slang term used by Geoffrey Chaucer meaning 'vagina.'
- Granted, the episode did have a lot to do with sex and Chaucer.
- An episode of the UK Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? had Chris Tarrant saying to a contestant, straight faced, "so you're into pegging, then?" before going on to say that she'd mentioned in her application that she enjoyed doing laundry. This Troper almost fell out of her chair.
- On one episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Will takes his nephew to the mall to see Dougie the Whale (read: Barney). Dougie goes diva and stops the show early, and Will confronts him backstage, calling him a "big, blubber-filled, Moby Dick," in such a way as to make "Moby" sound like an adjective.
- There's this one episode of kids' show Rainbow, filmed as part of a Christmas Tape to amuse the people who worked for the production company, which really does need to be seen to be believed.
- "Cluck you! Cluck you!"
- They did that one on Married... With Children years ago.
- Gossip Girl played with this a bit- "Damn that motherchucker!"
- How about Blair's fantasy in a season two episode? She is shown sitting in Chuck's limo while he kisses his way down her body. Eventually he disappears below her waistline and we get a close-up of Blair's face in complete exstacy. All while the song "Going Down" plays. And then Dorota walks in and comments "Remember, God always watching."
- One early episode has Gossip Girl referring to the situation as a "fustercluck."
- Chuck has made many references to performing oral sex on Blair. Such as:
Chuck: Marie Antoinette. Blair's favorite role-play. And I was always eating her cake. |
- There has also been a couple of references to Chuck being well-endowed.
Georgina: Blair locked me out. And judging by the size of the sock on the doorknob I didn't want to knock. |
- In the season 2 finale for Chuck, Casey says "Chuck me."
- It may seem comparatively tame these days, but in 1964 The Addams Family was getting away with murder on a weekly basis; the show somehow managed to amass enough Weirdness Coupons to allow Morticia and Gomez to be very, very obviously sexually active, not to say kinky. (The scene where he lassos her with a bullwhip and twirls her over to him...)
Gomez (about the new neighbors): It's our turn now. They won't see US for three days. |
- Simon Groom on Blue Peter : 'What a beautiful pair of knockers'.
- There's an episode of Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide that focuses on Ned's itchy privates due to a fungal or bacterial infection. While the advice given is quite useful, it is still an interesting premise. The episode features Ned running into the bathroom multiple times with a frenzied scratching sound (possibly a jackhammer? It's been a while since this troper's seen it).
- In a fake parenthood class experiment, Ned and Cookie are partnered together. Mr. Monroe even pushes two male dolls together to represent the relationship.
Mr. Monroe: You can be the alternative family! |
- There is also a rather interesting moment during the first episode of season 3:
Cookie: Do you think that Lisa Zemo is hot? |
- Is This Troper the only one to hear Martin say PMS (in reference in the school's name, P'olk Middle School) in the Season 1 episode, Guide to Talent Shows? The school's full name is James K. Polk Middle School, but he definitely said PMS.
- There is Suzie's habit of wanting to share lockers with whoever her current boyfriend is, which is treated akin to moving in together as adults.
- From Leave It to Beaver, how the hell did "Beaver Cleaver" make it past the censors?
- Shockingly, slang has changed since the 1950s.
- Except the slang goes back to at least the twenties.
- The BBC talent show The Slammer (which, as with many CBBC programmes, is written more for adults than children) gets a few adult jokes past censors. One of the acts was a young Michael Jackson impersonator, and one of the viewers was approached by the presenter for his views on the act's dance moves. The child replied, 'exotic', leading the presenter to ad-lib as a reference to one of the fake prison's guards, 'Exotic dancing? Mr. Burgess likes exotic dancing.'
- Kids in The Hall's song sketch "Running Faggot" was allowed to air because it used the term in the classic Davy Crockett-era usage: back then, the term "faggot" referred to a bundle of sticks used for kindling, and the Davy Crockett types were called "faggots" because of their unbreakable spirits and fire in their bellies. The fact that our title character is played by openly gay Scott Thompson is your problem.
- That and the fact that shows produced for the Canadian market are far less censored than those produced for the US market.
- An episode of The Real Hustle did this unintentionally. Offensive language is usually bleeped or cut from the programme so it can be broadcast before 9pm. The first series had a con in which two of the presenters played a couple arguing so a third presenter could steal from a jewellers'. One of the arguing presenters slapped the other, swore and walked out. The scene was then shown another twice as the voiceover explained how they'd stolen a watch, on each occasion the censors failed to realise what she said. The 'best of' episode which showed the scene again did bleep it.
- The Season 3 finale of Eureka has a real gem. Sheriff Jack carter interrupts Fargo having sex because he needs Fargo's help with the latest disaster.
Carter: Martha, Fargo, come. Er, with me!. |
- Ashes to Ashes usually doesn't have to get past the radar, being a post-watershed drama, but the Sport Relief special (which was rebroadcast on daytime television) got away with this after a reference to a golfing foursome:
- Similar to The Slammer above, CBBC's Little Howards Big Question (already loaded with non-sexual Parental Bonus thanks to the writer being a comedian) got away with a scene where the main character's sidekick (played by the writer) announces his excitement at the chance to 'go up Big Ben'. The main character replies, 'Won't he mind?'
- In one episode, Big Howard says of his Girl of the Week, "...win her hand, and possibly a few other body parts, in marriage."
- At the start of the episode about sleep, Big Howard is reading Little Howard a bedtime story. It is called "Fizziwink and the Wrong Mushrooms" with an Amanita muscaris on the cover, and the ending we hear is "And they all lived happily ever after, except for the littlest rabbit, who was thrown into prison until the end of his days."
- In Sonny With a Chance, due to her mother's failed attempt at advice, a confused Sonny says something along the lines of "you want me to punch her in her headlights?!"
- From the episode where Sonny learns about Chad's stunt double, she says in response to him "At least the Titanic got a nice meal before they went down."
- Saccharine as the show was, Full House did this occasionally. In one such instance, Jesse is freaking out over his band mate Viper dating DJ. She protests "If you'd just get to know him you'd see there's more to him than long hair and rock and roll!" to which Kimmy chimes in "I know! Have you seen him in tight pants?"
- Home Improvement did this quite a bit.
- For example:
Al: She's the producer, and I don't think she wants to do another show about sheetrock. |
- On the Discovery Channel game show Cash Cab, the two passengers used a Shout Out to correctly guess the answer to a question about Shiatsu massage. When they answered right, host Ben Bailey said "and a happy ending for all!"
- One Dharma and Greg episode revolved around a plastic duck which was given as a trophy to the couple who had sex in the most public place. At the end, someone points out that the duck looks more like a goose. Dharma agrees that it is a goose, but "goose doesn't rhyme."
- In The Supersizers Eat... The Eighties, foodie Giles Coren tries to create a "Cement Mixer" cocktail by taking swigs of Baileys and lemon juice and swilling. Co-presenter Sue Perkins gleefully squeezes his cheeks, causing him to squirt little jets of milky liquid.
- The show Victorious has its own page, so we won't list the examples on this page. We will, however, point out that it needed a page of its own after just two episodes.
- Towards the end of the Neverwhere miniseries, one of Richard's co-workers says she'd bet he got his finger caught in a door (it was injured), and it immediately reminds him of Door, The Not Love Interest.
- The Sarah Connor Chronicles managed to have a sex scene on-screen without having one at all. John on top of a mostly-naked Cameron, with his hand inside her, feeling up her insides. The context is that Cameron had him slice open her stomach so he could check her power core to see if it was "hot" - therefore leaking radiation. This didn't necessarily require her to be topless or lying back on the bed with him on top of her, but, well....
- The Big Bang Theory gets away with a lot of surprising jokes. For instance, "You will be my C-Men." (They were trying to figure out what they would call themselves when helping Sheldon.)
- And the time when Leonard's team's outfit for the physics bowl had "PMS" emblazoned on it. (It was an acronym.) Not to mention that on the back, they said "We can go all night". I laughed myself silly.
- This happened.
- MythBusters has a lot.
- "...but that girl refuses to take Adam's banana. No surprise there." A giraffe refused to eat Adam's Fundamentally Funny Fruit.
- "Get the vibrator ready!" Jamie, pouring concrete in Newton's Crane Cradle.
- An episode of cooking show David Rocco's Dolce Vita has a closeup of a table with two full wineglasses on a table. The contents shake almost in time with a woman's cries. As the camera pans out, it's revealed that it's not what it sounded like, as there are actually three people (including the woman) playing foosball.
- Subverted by Vince Neil of Motley Crue, who didn't bother trying to sneak crap past the radar. Rather, he took advantage of circumstances -- a New Year's Eve countdown broadcast, which by its nature couldn't be run on a few seconds' delay -- to wish America "Happy Fucking New Year!" in flagrant defiance of the censors.
- Occasionally used together with Gratuitous English in Japanese dramas and variety shows.
- For example, in TV drama "Yume Wo Kanaeru Zou", the main character's email address would never be allowed on TV in most English speaking countries: while you don't see the whole address, it begins with "stupidcunt@...".
- In a recent episode of Top Gear, the three presenters were each driving a different old sports car, and Jeremy Clarkson noticed how the letters in Richard Hammond's number plate were an anagram of 'liar', and those in James May's were an anagram of 'gosh'. As he said "Lots of anagrams going on today", the camera cut to an external shot of his car, number plate CTU 131N.
- I swear on Everybody Hates Chris I heard "Get the fuck out" at one point.
- Also, in the episode "Everybody Hates Greg", Greg talks about his bad home life and says that "the last thing his mom cooked on the stove got her 3 years probation".
- Bill Nye the Science Guy got a way with a parody of "Semi Charmed Life" by Third Eye Blind which is about meth addiction and sex.
- Degrassi the Next Generation generally doesn't get anything past the radar in the States. In Australia, nothing past season 2 has been shown.
- Emma's molester feeling her up.
- Cursing is regularly deleted. Even words like "ho-bag".
- The episode about ecstasy was deleted from season 1, added to season 2 so we get to see Ashley's friends rejecting her for doing drugs, was extended so we make it sure we know nothing happened between Ashley and Sean, and instead of replacing X with aspirin, Sean replaces them with vitamin pills. What?
- Craig's attempted suicide was deleted from his abuse episode, along with, in the B plot, Spinner making a comment about how JT's date with Paige was a wet dream.
- The rape episode became a three-parter, so we know Paige went after her rapist...Oh wait, as of season 4, he's found not guilty.
- Spinner's erection in the episode where Spinner gets an erection.
- A Male Gaze shot of Sean's bare chest in the first gay episode, interspersed with shots of Marco licking his lips. Also, Sean calling Marco a fag immediately afterward.
- Three words: Accidents Will Happen.
- Eventually, The-N stopped editing the episodes. But they're even more butchered on other networks to qualify as "educational and informational".
- In an episode of Due South, the detectives are puzzling over the codename 17FOC76.
Huey: (sounding out FOC) Foke. Fook. |
- A comparatively minor example: the 2010 Primetime Emmy Awards did a Glee parody where the Y in "EMMY" was replaced by a hand making a backwards peace-sign.
- Which doesn't mean a damn thing in North America, where both Glee and the Emmy broadcast originate. Doesn't really count.
- Which is why I started with "comparatively minor". Regardless, it's a gesture that has a hidden, insulting meaning that most viewers wouldn't notice.
- Pee-Wee's Playhouse was a kid-friendly version of his adult-oriented live show, but still snuck in things like Cowboy Curtis telling Pee-Wee "You know what they say - 'Big feet, big boots!'"
- Then there was Pee Wee singing "Milk, milk, lemonade, 'round the corner fudge is made!" And, of course, Miss Yvonne's horse ride...
- In the Christmas Special, Miss Yvonne walks in wearing a sprig of mistletoe on her hair. When she invokes the "standing under the mistletoe" tradition, Floory (a talking "face in the floor") chimes in, "Hey, Miss Yvonne, come stand over me!"
- In "Conky's Breakdown," Pee-wee is searching for the Conky manual in the bathroom. He opens a magazine and pulls out the fold-out in the middle. He makes an "ooh!" face, then shows us what it is: a bicycle similar to the one he rode in Pee-wee's Big Adventure. The inference is obvious, but younger viewers might assume that he's just very impressed with its craftsmanship.
- The Colbert Report: Apparently, Stephen Colbert refers to his Australian Formula 401 cans' contents as crock juice. He himself finds it so funny that immediately afterwords, he has to pause to regain his composure and NOT laugh.
- There is a series of segments dealing with Arctic issues called Smokin' Pole.
- On Community, the study group wins a school flag design contest with a flag featuring a stylized anus. Jeff was so exasperated that the dean kept not noticing it, that he spilled the beans.
- City College is worse. It shows 3 buildings with the middle taller than the others (iIi), get it?
- The Vampire Diaries Caroline and Damon meet and are flirting. Caroline feels Damon is being over-confident and asks him "Cocky much?" Damon raises his eyebrows and replies "Very much"
- The George Burns And Gracie Allen Show did a seriously vulgar joke for it's era that still shocks this troper. In one episode, another couple comes to visit and tells George and Gracie that they are planning on visiting the Alps for their honeymoon. George asks the woman a series of questions to make idle conversation, but the disinterested woman just answers every question with "Yes." After several times, George has one of his segments talking to the audience, and discussing the previous scene he says "They sound they'll have a perfectly boring trip, what kind of fun can you have with a girl who just says 'Yes, Yes, Yes.' all night long?" There's a pause for a good minute and a half before the audience bursts into uproarious laughter, and George just chomps on his cigar as if to say "Yep, I just said that."
- Ebert and Roeper of all shows was able to do this in one segment where the titular critics got into an argument over the movie Laurel Canyon, leading to this priceless exchange:
Richard Roeper: ...this is also a very sexy movie--I'm sorry, when Kate Beckinsdale's in a swimming pool with Frances McDormand, it's got my attention. |
- Midsomer Murders, of all shows, has a particularly good example in its first episode, 'The Killings at Badger's Drift'. Local pall-bearer Dennis Rainbird comments to DCI Barnarby about his sergeant, Troy, and his lack of bedside manner - "I see you've got a right constable there." Not much on paper, but note that Rainbird puts much emphasis on the 'CUN' in 'constable' in the delivery..
- An old kids' show called Soupy Sales had several rumored instances, although none of these have been substantiated due to the episodes being lost (because they aired live). The most memorable of the lot is Sales and Fang (one of the recurring puppet characters) teaching kids the alphabet. Sales would point to each letter, and Fang would say the correct letter ... until they reached the letter "F," when Fang kept saying "K." Sales kept correcting Fang, but Fang would insist that the letter was a "K," finally leading an exasperated Sales to say, "How come when I say "F," you see "K"?" (Another rumored-but-never-proven instance had Sales sing a song called "If You See Kay" (the ditty coming more than 40 years before Britney Spears' infamous and similiarly titled "If You Seek Amy"), while another had the joke of "What word starts with "F" and ends in "U-C-K?" with the benign answer, "A fire truck!")
- That said, Sales did show up on one of Dick Clark's Bloopers shows with a clip where Sales opened a door at Fang's behest ... only to see a strip-tease act in progress. (Sales shut the door just as the young woman was beginning to take her shirt off.)
- On MASH, in a Season 3 episode, The Trial of Henry Blake, Hawkeye tells Margaret, "I've always said, behind every great man is a woman with a vibrator." This was in the mid-70s.
- The ITV 2 Reality TV/documentary program The Only Way Is Essex:Totally Vajazzled is one example that literally gets past the radar, given what "vajazzled" is a slang term for (not worksafe to mention here.)
- Though as it's a deliberately lowbrow show on a famously lowbrow station, sticking it right upfront (so to speak) is arguably not so much Getting Crap Past the Radar as You Have Been Warned.
- A 60 Minutes piece about Lady Gaga included film from her concert, and it appears that no one noticed a "WHAT THE FUCK HAVE YOU DONE?" sign in the background (or at least hoped it'd be too blurry to read).
- Bethenny from Real Housewives Of New York City mentioned not being into social networks, like "Twatter".
- In the second series of STARStreet there's two moments that come to mind. First, when Becky, Sandi and Ashley have been shrunk and decide to play a trick on Sam and Thaila. They whisper in their ears that the other fancies them. One of them whispers in Sam’s ear that Thaila’s pupils are dilated and Sam looks down at her chest. The other three have to remind him the pupils are in the eyes.
- Second is when Sam mentions Ashley should be getting ready to have a shower and Becky starts running up to his room.
- Done blatantly in the X-Files' second season episode "Excelsius Dei". The episode itself started out in an convalescence home, with two old men hitting on a stern young female nurse. She enters a room, when she is pressed down and strapped to a stretcher by an invisible force. We later learn that she was actually RAPED by this invisible force.
- In the same episode, Scully and Mulder ask one of the older men from earlier if he raped the nurse. He is offended, and(he's getting a shower, from the looks of the scene), throws open his towel and flashes the two, insisting that his plumbing is 'older than the plumbing in this building....and probably works just as well'.
Scully: What do you think...? |
- In the episode 'Signs and Wonders', Mulder and Scully go to a church that practices snake handling and the following conversation takes place...
Scully: Snake handling... didn't learn that in Catechism class. |
- In the season 4 episode "Tunguska", Krycek calls Mulder a "son of a bitch". When Mulder asks, "What did you call me?" Krycek responds with some rather colorful Russian phrases.
- The MTV Movie Awards 2009 had a theme of swearing, and also had a TV-14 rating. F-bombs slipped through occasionally, though most were pretty catchable. Then came the Twilight cast, in which the censors were totally asleep, because, y'know, it's Twilight. Bet they were surprised when they began putting "fucking" before everyone's name they were thanking.
- In "What's Happening" in one episode, the kids father Bill Thomas is trying to reconnect with them with a sleepover. When Mabel, their mother, tells him she's had to be both mother and father he replies "Well I can be a father AND A MOTHER." To which Mabel replies "You said it" implying the term motherfucker and the censors didn't notice or let it slide.
- In one season of Greek, Rusty gets himself an FWB. He describes her as his "funbuddy" to several people, and is invariably met with, "Funbuddy? ...Oh." This continues for a large part of the season.
- Police, Camera, Action! somehow gets this trope, with this driver in Maine supposedly being an example of the trope.
- On the Disney show "So Random", one of their skits involves the rapper MC Grammar, the only grammatically correct rapper. After the line "You'll have to learn to conjugate if you want to graduate", you hear one of the background rappers say "how about I conjugate my foot up---"
- Santeria chants on prime-time television in the Eisenhower era? Every time Ricky Ricardo yelled "Babaloo!" during musical segments in I Love Lucy, he wasn't using a Funny Foreigner phrase, he was invoking the name of the Santeria deity Babalu. That's a common element in traditional Cuban music, but there's no way the censors would have permitted it if they'd known what was going on.
- In one episode of kids' show Press Gang ('Un Xpected'), Julie and Sarah, visiting Frazz in hospital, comment to Lynda that they can't understand why men get hot under the collar for nurses' uniforms, given how ugly they are. "And so uncomfortable!" replies Lynda absent-mindedly...guess we know what Lynda and Spike got up to on Lynda's infrequent days off from the Junior Gazette, then!
- Ja zuster! Nee zuster!, a Dutch musical show of the 1960s, had a song that turned the word “fuchsia” into something bilingually obscene. Years later, the songwriter admitted it was quite deliberate.
- This exchange from The Office when Michael is avoiding to fill out important forms by doling out pointless busywork:
Michael: My contact is Packer... Todd F. Packer. You know what the 'F' stands for? |
- Dave Chappelle's sketch about a family from The Fifties named Niggar certainly qualifies. So you have a white girl dating a Niggar boy, references to their famous Niggar lips, and they're well-to-do, so they're Niggar rich (which, by the way, is the opposite of niggardly).
- Did Slings and Arrows have a radar?
- From What I Like About You when Val shows Holly a rack of dresses.
Jeff: I don't suppose there's anything on that rack for me? |
- Law and Order SVU: A college student is accused of causing his girlfriend to have a spontaneous abortion by mixing a particular drug with his lubricant. His lawyer claims he used the drug to cure his erectile disfunction, to which the DA responds: "Do you really expect us to believe this limp cock-and-bull story?"
- Law and Order UK: A member of the forensics team is describing the evidence that he found on a victim as "stuff you might find in your mattress". The gorgeous DS Matt Devlin promptly cracks "Not in my mattress" while giving the equally gorgeous Alesha Philips a smoldering Held Gaze, indicating that he's got ideas and plans that involve her and that mattress.
- Boy Meets World had this sometimes, although as the series went on and its audience grew up there was less of a radar.
- From season 2, after Shawn gets through making out with a girl:
Shawn: Remember in health class that section on the movement of blood? I understand it now. |
- Also from season 2, when Shawn briefly lives in a No-Tell Motel after his father leaves:
Shawn: Why don't you come over tonight? We can skateboard in the pool, and they got cable." |
- The Sarah Jane Adventures: Luke sends Clyde and Rani the instructions they need to save the day in Morse code, which Mr Smith reads out slowly:
Mr. Smith: Grab Harrison's P... E... N... full stop. |
- A darker example on Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. After rescuing Dr. Mike from the dog soldiers who had kidnapped her, Sully gently asks if they "hurt" her. She just as gently tells him "no". His relief indicates that he was actually asking if they'd raped her, obviously not a topic a family show airing at 8PM could blatantly address.
- According to David Jason, when Del called Rodney a "dipstick" in Only Fools and Horses, BBC execs thought this was a refence to Rodders being tall and thin, like an actual car dipstick. "If they'd known cockney rhyming slang, it might not have got through."
- One of the Basil Brush shows broadcast on CBBC contained a conversation along these lines:
"I'm not very good with getting girlfriends. I was in a relationship once, but she soon cut it off." |
- In the English version of Takeshi's Castle, Craig Charles, as commentator, seemed to make this trope his primary mission. Not only were there multiple innuendoes thrown in on the fly in every episode, but a number of double-entendres actually became informal catchphrases in the show, such as in Bridge Ball (black soft 'cannonballs' are fired at contestants to knock them from a bridge) where Craig often calls attention to the "big black balls bouncing off of his/her backside", and the Final Showdown (where contestants try to tear paper circles with water guns), where Craig would announce how somebody would be "preventing their ring from being penetrated". The end of most episodes often ended with a bizarre nonsensical and often innuendo-laden anecdote, such as, "As my old dad used to say: 'you try and get that out of the carpet; I've got to go pay the nun'."
- Boulder Dash: "He got the balls right on the chin!"
- Bridge Ball: "He's lost his balls!" Obvious this one as you only hold one ball in this game.
- Sumo Rings: "Look at this little streak of... [extended pause] ...snot!"
- An episode of Dad's Army was titled Round and Round went the Great Big Wheel, a line from a song about " a woman with a cunt so wide/she could not be satisfied" except by a "prick of steel/Ten feet long and driven by a wheel".
- An hour-long documentary about Gary Oldman that aired on regular cable included footage of his performance of My Way from Sid And Nancy, including the line "You cunt, I'm not a queer" completely unbleeped.
- In one episode of Modern Family, somebody calls Phils and, thinking that he's running an escort service selling his wife and daughter, asks if "the carpet matches the drapes". Phil, thinking he's talking about buying a house, responds accordingly.
- A re-run episode of rock music show The Old Grey Whistle Test from 1978 opens with BBC music presenter Annie Nightingale sitting at a desk. Pinned to the wall behind her are a multiplicity of rock posters and gig flyers. She is smiling happily. All we can see above and to the right of her head is the one word, in masive font, "COCKS". She maked the show introduction as if nothing had happened, and straight to a live set by Siouxie and the Bandshees. The camera returns to the presentation desk and pulls out a little, revealing the full word is a band name "THE BUZZCOCKS".
- Back to Getting Crap Past the Radar
- ↑ This was the episode that had the "Dear Sister" digital short that not only became a Funny Aneurysm Moment two days later with the Virginia Tech shooting, but became Memetic Mutation following the video's deletion from YouTube for copyright reasons
- ↑ Which cost Charles Rocket his job -- along with everyone else on the show, save for Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscopo. Denny Dillon and Gail Matthius were brought over for Dick Ebersol's first produced episode, but after that, they were fired
- ↑ whom SNL brought on the show in 2004, despite the Wardrobe Malfunction fiasco that happened months before