Nickelodeon is pretty clean and family friendly these days, but those of us who were kids in the 90s remember a time when Nick was more subtle and mature. Showrunners rode the line hard between kid-friendly and inappropriate, cleverly weaving in innuendo and themes meant for older audiences. So, it should come as no surprise that there were many times in Nickelodeons history when episodes of your favorite shows crossed the line and got pulled from TV screens.
It wasn’t all just “too hot for tv” moments, though. Sometimes, backstage politics run amok, and episodes get pulled for spite. Showrunners, even kids' program showrunners, are artists. Networks are run by suits and executives who, traditionally, do not mix well with artists.
Other times, it’s pure bad luck when an episode gets banned. Real life events occur or times change, and suddenly those episodes mean something much different. Writers can go forward with a seemingly innocent episode, only to be left cursing their luck as crowds of people are suddenly mad and offended. Fickle and sensitive audiences can get episodes banned just as fast as inappropriate content.
So let’s take a look back at the Nickelodeon of days gone by. We’ll check out some of the episodes that you’ll never get to see on TV again.
20 Let’s Get Wrecked
Starting off with a classic, Tiny Toon Adventures was a show on Nickelodeon that starred kid versions of known Looney Tunes characters. Plucky was a kid Daffy, Buster was a young Bugs, and so on. It seems pretty squeaky clean on paper, but this is the Nick of the 90s. The episodes often touched on some pretty serious stuff, so it was only a matter of time until they went too far.
In one episode called Elephant Issues, the show tries to tackle social issues, but it didn’t go quite to plan. In a segment called One Beer (seriously), Buster, Plucky and Hamton (mini Porky) get inebriated off the titular one drink after they peer pressure each other. They then go driving and drive off a cliff. It may have been an honest attempt to keep kids off the hard stuff, but the comedy and death didn’t do them any favors.
19 How Much Racism? All Of It
Speaking of Looney Tunes, that crew has not one, but 11 whole episodes banned from TV. They star a wide range of the classic characters like Bugs and Daffy and were mostly from the 30s and 40s. Times were… different back then, and not everything was so great. These episodes were banned from TV because of their blatant and glaring racism and stereotypes.
Some of the episodes have titles like, Uncle Tom's Bungalow, Angel Puss, and Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs. Jeez, even the titles are racist. The episodes depicted black persons in classic “blackface” get up and often portrayed them as jive-talking simpletons. It wasn’t all racism though! Some parts are good, like the boy in Angel Puss getting paid to… drown… a cat... wait, really? Never mind, these were terrible. Not surprisingly, Warner Brothers and Nick want these episodes to go away and stay away.
18 Rocko My World, Baby
Ah, Rocko’s Modern Life, how did any of your episodes avoid getting banned? This awesome show from the 90s (which got itself a comeback recently) constantly pushed the envelope with violence and adult themes wrapped in clever gags and biting satire of the modern world. The ideas got a little too adult in one episode, and I’m actually glad this one got banned.
The episode titled Leap Frogs saw Rocko’s next door neighbor, Mrs. Bighead getting a bit…lonely. She invites Rocko over to her place to “fix a few things up around the house.” She spends the rest of the episode trying to get into Rocko’s pants by doing things such as “accidentally” turning on a TV show about the mating rituals of toads. She’s a toad, by the way; I suppose I should have mentioned that. Also, Rocko is a Beaver. Anyway, she even tries to get him to zip up her dress causing it to rip and him seeing all of her toadly glory. Yeah, Nickelodeon didn’t think kids should be exposed to so much sensuality, much less adultery, and it got banned.
17 Double Dang!
Double Dare helped put Nickelodeon on the map. It was a game show that saw families fail miserably to answer simple questions and make fools out of themselves on an obstacle course full of Nick’s trademark slime. Why would a game show episode get banned? A combination of bad luck, a dumb kid and “my dad is totally a lawyer and will sue you.”
One kid contestant on the show failed to disclose that he had a medical condition that caused his bones to be exceptionally weak and brittle and made it on. He must have really wanted to get slimed for some weak prizes. The kid promptly broke his arm while running an obstacle course in front of a live studio audience. Instead of telling the lying little punk to get lost, Nickelodeon paid him a small prize anyway and banned the episode from airing because his dad was actually a lawyer and they were fearful of a lawsuit.
16 Ending It All
It’s hard to imagine an episode of Ren and Stimpy getting banned. I mean, it was all so ridiculously violent and all-around inappropriate it seemed at times like the showrunners had a blank check. In actuality, they had to do a lot of sneaking around the censors and employed subtlety to not “technically” be inappropriate. There weren’t able to win every time, though, and some episodes got banned.
One, in particular, Ren’s Retirement, seemed innocent at first, but by the end was just too much for kids. Ren begins to lament that he is old upon reaching his 10th birthday. After all, as a dog, he is 70. He gives up on life and eventually buries himself alive to end it all. A worm then eats the flesh from their bones. Yeah, hard to make ending it all and being devoured while living subtle.
15 Knocking Down The Wall
Angry Beavers was, in my humble yet superior opinion, one of the last great shows Nickelodeon put on. It was smart in ways not many shows have been able to replicate. Like all good things, though, it ended. The showrunners got tired of the disagreements with the studios, and they were over budget and behind schedule so they decided to go out with a bang.
The final episode was titled Bye Bye Beavers and broke the fourth wall so many times there’s hardly anything left of it. They referenced the fact that they were cartoon characters, that they were getting canceled and even referred to each other by their voice actor’s names. The episode got banned by Nick because of all of the metatalk, and because it explored the nature of existence and meeting one’s maker. A bit too heavy for the kids and bit too much of a resistance to the studio.
14 Nope Nope Nope
For those of you who are potty trained, Peppa Pig is a show about a two-dimensional pig living life and teaching kids about the world. Pretty standard Nick Jr. fare. But not all lessons translate across borders and cultures. This banned episode wasn’t banned for cultural or language reasons, though; it was because of biology.
In the episode called Mr. Skinny Legs, Peppa learns about how spiders are friendly and helpful to humans and how we should be their friends. A good lesson for kids; spiders are mostly harmless and balance the ecosystem. There is one place, however, where spiders are never your friends, and you should flee screaming if you ever see one. Yep, Australia. The episode was banned down under because the government didn’t want kids befriending the eight-legged killing machines they got down there. If that’s their logic, they ought to ban all depictions of animals; everything wants you dead down there.
13 You Really Can’t
Way back when on Nickelodeon, before the sponges and the slime, one of the most successful TV shows they acquired and aired was You Can’t Do That On Television. It was a sketch comedy show, starring teenagers and marketed towards them. Think All That, but in the 80s. Because it touched on topics related to teens, you might think they got an episode banned for being too adult, but it was actually worse than that.
The episode Adoption featured, predictably, an adoption of a young boy by terrible parents. The boy is worked hard by his foster parents and shown no affection. At one point, the dad even tries to return the kids once the chores are done, and also says the “D” word! Oooooooo you said a swear, I’m telling. That’s something you really can’t do on TV (in the 80s). No moral, no lesson, just treating adopted kids like garbage. Nick felt that life had already been bad enough for some adopted kids without their show making it worse, and they righteously dropped the ban hammer.
12 Explain This!
You guys remember Melissa Joan Hart, right? The teenage witch that liked to explain it all? No? I think I remember that wrong. Anyway, this one isn’t about her shows; it’s about some wacky slasher movie she hosted the airing of. Yeah, really. She’s an odd mix of wholesome and occult. It starred a bunch of nobody kids but also the very somebody Frank Langella and Jim Gaffigan.
The movie, Cry Baby Lane, is not in fact about Pennsylvania Avenue but based on an urban legend from the Midwest. So yeah, it’s dumb and boring. But! The movie was apparently scary enough to rile up parents to the point of Nickelodeon never airing the film again. Some employees even went so far as to deny the movie’s existence. For a time anyway. When they internet found the movie somehow in 2011, interest picked up. Nick smelled money and aired the movie again, claiming to have “forgotten” about the film that ironically became its own internet urban legend.
11 We Can Kind Of Understand This One
If you’ve never heard of Kablam!, then climb out from under that rock and watch it. It was an animated sketch comedy show that also employed stop motion and claymation. It was a beloved show that was part of the avant-garde wave of entertainment that Nickelodeon led in the 90s. It had a lot in common with the other edgy shows of the era, so there are a few episodes that got the ax.
In one episode called Not Just For People Anymore, several suggestive moments within the episode got it withdrawn from reruns. Just little things, like a superheroine hitting on a French foosball player and ferrets doing inappropriate things; you know, 90s stuff. Some episodes got banned by coincidence, like the episode I Just Don’t Get It, where an attack on the capitol closely resembled the 9/11 attacks and was withdrawn.
10 Shell Shock
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles got a reboot in the early 2000s, and it was... okay. The show, which is now owned by Nickelodeon, actually went slightly back towards the franchise’s roots as a darker, more mature show. It didn’t go that far, however, and one episode was just too dark for the kiddies.
Insane in the Membrane was that episode, and it wasn’t banned because of the Cypress Hill reference, since those guys are good clean family fun. It was banned because the villain, Baxter Stockman, transfers his body to a new clone, only to have his body decompose rapidly in a horrifying manner. He then hallucinates about his single mother trying to raise him who dies because he can’t save her. Graphic body deterioration and PTSD are totally not radical.
9 No, I Can’t Dig It
The western world is no stranger to censoring LGBTQ characters and people in the media, but Africa takes it to the next level. There are many hardline groups on the continent, some of them Christian, some Muslim, and all extreme. In the country of Kenya, homophobic groups have pressured media companies to ban all depictions of anything LGBTQ related which they deem to be “propaganda.”
Everything from The Legend of Korra to a Kids Choice Awards event has been banned by the broadcasting company responsible for airing Nickelodeon shows in Africa. Apparently, even the very presence of Ellen Degeneres or a so-subtle-it’s-barely-there same-gender relationship implication is enough to turn all of Africa’s youth into gay devil worshippers.
8 Really? That’s The Word?
Like we talked about earlier, it’s crazy not all of Ren and Stimpy’s episodes got banned. They weren’t, but that doesn’t mean Nickelodeon didn’t try. Multiple episodes of the legendarily inappropriate show felt the sting of the ban hammer. However, despite Ren and Stimpy leading the charge of the “gross-out” humor wave, not all of their episodes got banned for being disgusting or adult-themed. Some of them were just downright offensive. They ran the whole gauntlet of bannable offenses.
The title says it all. Circus Midgets was an episode that made liberal use of the derogatory term “midget.” For those of you who don’t know, the word is offensive. For those of you upset that you can’t use that word anymore, grow up and get a thesaurus. The episode was banned from re-running until the NickToons channel aired it again in 2004. After watching it once, someone presumably said, “Oh yeah, that’s why we banned this one,” and it promptly went back in the vault.
7 And Yet, The Name Didn’t Get Banned
Interesting fact, I had forgotten about this show until I researched for this list. When I discovered it again, the wave of locked away memories put me in a nostalgia-induced coma, and I needed a Mondo and some Dunkaroos to snap me out of it. The show had the very 90s title of Weinerville and featured some crazy puppets and cartoons. If you grew up in the 90s with Nickelodeon, go back and watch it, just have some Bubbletape ready to fend off the nostalgia vapors.
Despite having a suggestive name, that wasn’t what got the show banned. Nickelodeon lost the rights to the cartoons aired along with the show and rather than pay royalties they stopped its broadcast, withheld the reruns, and quashed any attempt to release the episodes. Some of them have leaked online, but around half remain lost due to Nick’s spite.
6 Out Of Luck
The Amanda Show was an All That spinoff that flourished because of the star’s popularity. She was a Nickelodeon golden child, at least until she went crazy and started setting fires in peoples driveways. But that’s neither here nor there. We’re here to talk about her banned episodes, meteors, and terrorism.
In a sketch called The Lucklesses on her show, the titular family is devoid of luck as misfortune continuously befalls them. The end of the sketch sees a meteor fall from the sky and crash into their home. Not exactly bannable, until you take into account that the episode aired six months before 9/11. The similarities proved too close, and the episode never saw daylight again. Is there nothing that terrorists won't take from us!?
5 Not Quite All That
Nickelodeon’s major popularity in the 90s owed a lot to All That. It was immensely popular and helped jump-start the careers of many stars like Kenan Thompson and Amanda “The Firestarter” Bynes mentioned above. Besides having well-written and performed sketches, there was often musical guests that were popular with the teen demographic. These performances proved to be harmful to the show’s legacy, however.
When it came time to rerun or re-release the episodes, Nick found that they no longer had the copyright to the musical performances. Instead of paying up, they blocked several seasons from being rerun and heavily edited others, gutting the performances and the sketches used to introduce them. The first season hasn’t aired since 2005. Luckily, dedicated internet sleuths can still find unedited episodes on the internet.
4 Wait, Who’s That?
Drake and Josh may not have been my cup of slime, but there’s no denying its popularity. It helped launch the live-action takeover of the post-slime Nickelodeon era. You might think that this squeaky clean and family friendly show couldn’t have committed a bannable offense. And you’d be right. An episode got banned for a much different reason.
Many viewers believe that the pilot episode of the show was the first one, but that’s actually not true. The show had an earlier pilot that starred a different actor as the dad of the family. The weird part is that the plot was virtually the same and only the actors were different. Not many people would have cared until Nick tried to hide it and deny its existence. That weirdo Dan Schneider once tweeted about it, but the screenshots he posted were soon taken down, adding to the episode's mystery.
3 Not Very Friendly
I could fill an entire list with just banned or censored Ren and Stimpy episodes, and I still might. The show is just that good. But for now, we’ll stick with the hat trick. So, what was it this time, mature themes? Offensive words? Excessive male body parts? Nope, it was good old fashioned brutal violence.
Ren is, despite his rat-like appearance, a dog. In the episode Man’s Best Friend, Ren finds himself with an owner. Things get weird as they often do with this show, and Ren becomes displeased with his owner and beats him, and not in a fun cartoony Wile E. Coyote way, either. Then they all have a cigar. Nick was so shocked that they banned the episode and fired the show’s creator.
2 Out For Blood
Invader Zim was past my time, but it has a rabid following of edgy Hot Topic regulars. I wouldn't know anything about that because I've never shopped at a Hot Topic; for real, don't look in my closet or ask my mom, she’ll just lie. The show drew a lot of inspiration from the violent cartoons of the late 90’s, and like those shows, Invader Zim got into some hot water with the suits.
The showrunners wanted to have a scene in an episode with one of the characters covered in blood. Nickelodeon said it was too violent and put their foot down. This was more of a concept that got banned because it got blocked before it made it into an episode. Or did it? Instead of tossing the image, the showrunners spliced single frames of the image throughout the show as Easter eggs for the fans and as an “up yours” to their censors.
1 This Took A Turn
Imagine your favorite cartoon characters swearing like sailors. Dropping every weapon in the alphabet arsenal. Pretty funny, right? Who wouldn't want to see wholesome role models cursing up a storm? That’s what the showrunners of Hey Arnold thought, and they wanted to bring the joy of profanity to their viewers.
In an episode called The Big Bleeper, the kids of P.S. 118 discover cussing and really get into it. I think it would have been hilarious... but apparently Nick didn’t think so and pulled the episode from TV after airing only once. The showrunners tried to argue that the episode was a commentary on censorship, and SpongeBob got away with a similar heavily censored episode, but Nick wasn’t having it.