Informed Obscenity: Difference between revisions

== Anime and Manga ==

* In ''[[Hanasaku Iroha]]'', Tsurugi Minko uses the word "horibon" (meaning [[Foreign Queasine|"balut"]]) as an insult towards Ohana as a replacement for the more harsh insults that she'd been using, as per Ohana's request.

 

== Comic Books ==

* In ''[[Nodwick]]'', one issue revolves around the word "Krutz", a fictional swear word {{spoiler|, intentionally created by a cabal of villains hoping to resurrect a powerful warlord,}} that ends up being a one-issue [[Berserk Button]] to Piffany. It even comes with its own marketing campaign!

* Sweary Mary of [[Viz]] invents a new swearword. "Fitbin" is bot (we are informed) obscene, and also obscure enough to put on the front page of a comic.

 

== Film ==

{{quote|'''R2-D2:''' (electronic beeps)

'''C-3PO:''' You watch your language! }}

 

== Literature ==

{{quote|"Are we talking," said Arthur, "about the very flat country, with all the EEC and the fog?"

"What?" said the girl.

** Oddly, though, the entire gag originated in the radio series, but was added only to the US edition of the book. The prize in question in the UK version was just for the most uses of "Fuck" in a serious screenplay, and passed uncommented upon.

* At one point in [[Diary of a Wimpy Kid]], Manny starts calling Greg "pootie" out of the blue. Thinking it is a "little kid bad word", Greg asks their mother about it, though she is clueless and does nothing about it—freeing Manny to use the word wherever and whenever he wants. Later, while the family is in church, Greg uses the name on Manny to get him to stop bugging him, and Manny becomes hysterical—only then does the word become obscene in their mother's eyes.

* At one point in ''The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I Mean Noel)'' by Ellen Raskin, Mrs. Carillon is jailed and protesters gather outside the prison. Because the signs the protesters are using were painted over and reused after a grape farmers' strike, one sign that was evidently left unfinished inadvertently reads "GRAPE MRS. CARILLON". Nearly everyone who sees the sign comes to the conclusion that "grape" means something horribly offensive, culminating in a bystander attacking the sign-holder and yelling "Grape Mrs. Carillon? Grape ''you''!".

* Harry Harrison's ''[[Bill the Galactic Hero]]'' introduced 'bowb' as a made-up all-purpose swear word to substitute for the rich variety of vulgarities in use by soldiers (in order to keep the book from being censored):

* In one of the [[Land of Oz|''Oz'' books]], in a moment of great rage, the Nome King exclaims "Hippikaloric!" The narrator helpfully notes that this "must be a dreadful word because we don't know what it means."

 

* The [[Trope Codifier]] is ''[[Monty Python's Flying Circus]]'', where, after a sketch filled with naughty words, [[Michael Palin]] appears to show us a list of words that will not be tolerated on the program. After a list of (decidedly British) dirty words, the word "Semprini" appears. A woman then comes on screen and says, "Semprini?" prompting Michael to throw her out. Incidentally, the word is the last name of composer [[wikipedia:Semprini|Alberto Semprini.]]

* ''[[Dinosaurs]]'' had one episode in which a great controversy erupted over the word "smoo".

* ''[[A Bit of Fry and Laurie]]'' had a man on trial for public obscenities, all of them bizarre.

* "Smeg" and its variants from ''[[Red Dwarf]]'' was ''supposed'' to be this trope, but the writers came up with it in apparent ignorance (or so they claimed later) of the rather unpleasant (male) bodily secretion [[w:Smegma|smegma]].

 

== Music ==

* [[System of a Down]]'s not particularly subtly named "Vicinity of Obscenity" uses object and visual imagery to suggest sexual and scatological themes without saying anything even remotely dirty in a literal way.

{{quote|''Banana banana banana banana terracotta banana terracotta terracotta pie!''}}

 

== Newspaper Comics ==

* In a brief arc in ''[[Bloom County]]'', moral guardians were cracking down on the strip for the use of "inappropriate language", citing frequent uses of "the four-letter H-word, the four-letter D-word, and the fourteen-letter S-word". After heavy speculation as to what this latter word is, one of the characters announcing this can only think of "Snugglebunnies?" (the former [[Trope Namer]]).

** In the next strip, the two remark on how somehow saying "Snugglebunnies" is bad enough to get the strip cut. Their response: "We have one thing to say to that. Snugglebunnies! Snugglebunnies! Snu-" and the strip gets cut mid-word. Interestingly, later in the strip's run, the word started showing up frequently.

 

== Oral Tradition ==

* There is a [[Shaggy Dog Story]] about a man who repeatedly gets into progressively worse trouble (culminating in a courtroom case) for uttering the phrase "blue flower", because he keeps saying it when asking people what it means and getting into trouble instead of getting an answer. The punchline involves him getting hit by a truck or something and suddenly dying just as he's about to find out. Other variants involve a boy getting kicked out of school for a similar infraction. The word/phrase varies with each telling, with examples including "two pink elephants", "purple passion", and "branchwater".

 

== Radio ==

* In [[Adventures in Odyssey]] episode "War of the Words", two kids overhear Eugene call Connie a [http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/maladroit "maladroit"], which they don't understand, but like the word anyway. They proceed to call various people "millijoit" before they get in trouble. The episode ends with [[An Aesop]] about speaking respectfully, regardless of what words are used.

 

* In ''[[Aquapunk]]'', "cet" is the Sennan catch-all profanity and expletive.

* A ''[[Penny Arcade]]'' strip showed Microsoft using the Precog-system from ''[[Minority Report]]'' to [http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/7/22/ predict words that are ABOUT to become profanity]. The word that gets pulled down is 'Ham Doctor'.

* One ''[[Ugly Hill]]'' strip reveals that the word "wink" is used as a [[Fantastic Racism|racial slur against one eyed monsters]] in the strip's universe.

 

== Web Original ==

* A [[Something Awful]] [[Let's Play]] of ''[[Quest for Glory]]'' stars a hero with the pseudonym "Nike von [[Hitch Hikers Guide to The Galaxy|Slartibartfast]]"; when questioned, the hero explains that he chose nonsense words that most people would think sounded dirty. Douglas Adams came up with the name Slartibartfast by working backwards from a string of obscenities ( {{spoiler|Phartiphukborlz}}) to come up with a name that sounded very rude but could be read over the air for the original The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio series.

 

== Western Animation ==

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:These Tropes Should Watch Their Language]]

[[Category:Censorship Tropes]]