When a show is sold to a foreign country, things may well be changed for a foreign audience. That is, things apart from the obligatory dubbing or subtitling.
This is especially prevalent in anime exported to America and other Western countries for broadcast, though it's lessened over time.
Sometime in the '70s or '80s, television standards in America changed to include more commercials for financial purposes, so shows made before a certain point might be edited to add several extra minutes of commercials. US local TV and off-prime network TV always included more commercials than prime time network TV to begin with, so programs originally made for prime time are almost always trimmed for syndication to non-network stations, as well as non-prime time re-runs on the network. This might also happen to BBC shows exported to the US or Canada, unless shown on commercial-free public or pay television, or run in a longer time slot with adverts added to make up time.
Occasionally this is done where there is no clearance for footage to be re-used and an alternate clip may be shown.
A similar phenomenon where chunks of screen time are removed for other reasons falls under Bowdlerise, though some scenes which are "edited for syndication" — i.e., the ones that are cut for reasons not pertaining to length nor copyright and/or licensing issues — are cut because a scene is considered so violent, vulgar, blasphemous or sexually charged that it has to be cut or toned down in reruns on television, so bowdlerization and Edited For Syndication can go hand in hand, depending on the circumstances behind a given edit.
A Sub-Trope of Deleted Scene.
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Anime & Manga
- Syfy's former Ani-Monday block often made syndication-like edits for the anime being broadcast in order to fit in more commercials:
- When Noein was broadcast, some scenes were rearranged so that commercial breaks would seem more appropriate in certain slots in the episode.
- Instead of cutting scenes out, the Ani-Monday version of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann speeds some scenes up to fit in more commercial breaks, including both the opening and closing (the latter of which is impossible to hear anyway, as it's both crunched to the side and talked over by the announcer; even by adverts for itself). Most of the edits are surprisingly graceful, but some – especially in the last couple episodes (including Kamina's talk with Simon and Viral's family in the Lotus-Eater Machine and the Big Bad's impossibly huge explosion) – can really screw up important moments, as can some incredibly inappropriately timed commercial breaks. Though to be fair, there was almost nothing unimportant in the last couple episodes.
- [adult swim] has a practice of shortening anime openings/endings and removing every Eye Catch which allows more commercials than the original airing. Opening and ending themes in particular are cut out completely.
- The most jarring of opening/ending shortenings would be Durarara!!; its ending is a major Memetic Mutation, to the point that many people found out about the series through that ending. The opening meanwhile, is important due to the fact that it lists the main characters, and while it lists important characters like Celty, Shizuo, Izaya, Simon and Shinra, the Raira Trio (Mikado, Kida and Anri) are sadly left out.
- They also cut out the intros to Inuyasha, Trigun, Outlaw Star, and pretty much every anime they aired that wasn't Cowboy Bebop, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, or Bleach. (FLCL was exempt because it doesn't have opening credits, but the ending was still cut from the final episode due to time.)
- With the revival of Toonami, they've relaxed a little on cutting the openings and endings, especially for their more popular shows (they actually apologized when Attack on Titan was run with a shortened opening once after major backlash), but it still persists, with the aforementioned Attack on Titan still airing with a shortened ending, episodes one and six airing with the truncated opening during the second run, Bleach airing with no opening at all, and Beware the Batman having its opening cut down to five seconds. The current practice for most shows is to show the full opening during the premiere episode and then an edited one for the remaining ones.
- For a while in the UK, the CITV block had episodes of Pokémon the Series awkwardly split into two parts. The same happened in Italy on Italia 1. Not only Pokémon, but many other shows too were split in two parts in order to have more time for commercials, since Italian law forbids commercial breaks during cartoons. The last show that suffered this in Italy was the first season of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.
- A pretty acceptable manga example is Cannon God Exaxxion's Dark Horse Manga translation; the love scene between Hoichi and Akane veered pretty hard toward the "too hot for American publication" side of things, and so was neatly trimmed from it. While some fans were annoyed any editing occurred at all, others didn't mind it since they thought that scene probably went too far in the original and the edit still manages to keep the heartwarming and comedy intact.
- Wandering Son's last two episodes were shortened and mashed together for the TV release. The DVD release has the original versions.
- The Tech TV broadcast of Betterman has the ending credits used for the opening. A positive example of the trope, the ending was well animated, with haunting imagery and a memorable song. Contrast with the opening, which is just live-action footage of a tidal pool.
- Betterman was part of a larger anime block, Anime Unleashed, whose shows were trimmed to as short as 14 minutes per episode to make room for commercials. This resulted in the block's shows feeling like Random Events Plots due to so much material being cut out, most of which were emotional scenes or connecting plot points.
- The AB Group's French edit of Dragon Ball Z often cut more and more footage every time the episodes were rerun, with scenes rather jarringly fading to black. On some occasions, these versions were then distributed to other countries instead of the original prints — an example is episode 149, which cuts the big Cliffhanger-moment in the end and fades to black in the middle of Piccolo's fight with Android 17.
- Nelvana's dub of Cardcaptor Sakura in the early 2000s to create Cardcaptors is a rather infamous case of this.
- The version of the final episode of Tropical-Rouge! Pretty Cure that streams on Crunchyroll cuts out the post-credits scene with Yui Nagomi's cameo.
Comic Books
- Reversed in the case of Jalila: the Egyptian censorship board forced the publishers to cover up the title character's bare midriff, but the UK and US editions allowed her to go as originally intended.
Comic Strips
- The October 22, 2002 edition of Garfield originally quoted
◊ Robert Frost's "Nothing Gold Can Stay". Due to the poem still being under copyright at the time, it was replaced in book reprints with original "poetic" lines. In relation, the line "I doubt Robert Frost would have penned any loving odes to leaf blowers" became "I sincerely doubt that poets have penned any loving odes to leaf blowers." (The original poem has since lapsed into public domain as of 2019).
Films — Animation
- Airings of Batman vs. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on Nicktoons Network and Teen Nick tone down or remove some of the more violent scenes in order to give the movie a PG rating instead of PG-13. Strangely, the scene of Leo having a nightmare where his brothers die is kept in while the post credits scene of a mutated Shredder was cut out.
- Despicable Me: During television broadcasts of the movie on certain channels, a part of Gru's Establishing Character Moment where he pops a kid's balloon was cut. They also shorten the scene where the girls play a carnival game to the part where Agnes hits the spaceship.
- The Polar Express: In Freeform airings, the parts where Hero Boy first encounters the Hobo and when the Conductor explains the first gift of Christmas are cut entirely.
- TBS airings of Sherlock Gnomes remove the following scenes:
- Watson saying "Cheese and crackers" in reaction to kidnapped gnomes.
- Moriarty riding Reggie.
- Juliet crying over the loss of Gnomeo in the museum.
- Half of the "Stronger Than I Ever Was" musical number.
- The Maneki-nekos asking when to attack.
- On Cartoon Network's airings of Teen Titans Go! To the Movies the "My Superhero Movie" song was removed entirely, even in airings of the sing-along version. This might have confused some viewers, as some elements of it are referenced later on in the film. In addition, the Bat-Mobile movie trailer was cut from the scene with the joke trailers.
- The Disney Channel premiere of Turning Red cut out or changed some of the harsher language or heavier movements. These include instances of "crap" and "drugs" being censored, and line changes, such as Abby's line about strip clubs being edited to say "strong music".
- Wreck-It Ralph: Several parts of the movie were cut when aired on Freeform; for example, Ralph telling Sour Bill to "stick around" after interrogating him.
Films — Live-Action
- Confessions of a... Series:
- Confessions of a Driving Instructor's first home media release was split into two parts on Super 8 film. As a result, the film is cut down to roughly 40 minutes and adds a Narrator to the second half to smooth over cuts to exposition. As a result, Mary doesn't appear until the second half of the film despite playing the main love interest, and 90% of the Lea family scenes are cut, including Bill Maynard's entire performance.
- When aired on Talking Pictures in 2023, Confessions from a Holiday Camp saw many now-insensitive jokes cut, as the channel was already on thin ice for racial content.
- Doctor in the House (1954): In later years, TV broadcasts of the film cut out the scenes with the nurse played by a white girl in Blackface.
- Evan Almighty: When the flood seemingly fails to occur, Joan suggests that God may have meant a metaphorical flood, "like a flood of knowledge". Evan's reply — "If that's true, I'm gonna be so pissed" — is usually removed from TV airings.
- Most modern-day TV airings of Harriet the Spy remove the final scene where Harriet's class dances to James Brown's "Get Up Offa That Thing", likely due to licensing issues.
- Modern airings of the film Hocus Pocus (1993) on ABC Family and later Freeform are subject to Credits Pushback, cutting out the entire post-ending section in the process.
- Home Alone:
- ABC annually airs the film on Christmas Eve in a two-hour time slot, resulting in several scenes being cut, including Kevin looking for Santa to wish for his family back, Kate constantly being transferred when calling the police, and the Wet Bandits learning that the McCallisters are not home after all.
- Disney Channel airings, while more complete than ABC's in terms of time, have almost all kid-unfriendly language cut (except for one use of "damn" by Harry and one use of "hell" by Kate). The scene where Kevin goes through Buzz's trunk (where he finds a Playboy issue, among other things) is cut entirely. Also, any shots of the character from the in-universe film Angels with Filthy Souls carrying a gun are zoomed in to not show the gun.
- Although the Santa scene is intact on Freeform and Disney Channel airings, both networks cut "Santa" complaining about a parking ticket before Kevin approaches him.
- When TBS aired Jingle All the Way on December 4, 2020, the last ten minutes were omitted in order to make time for an E-Sports tournament.
- TV airings of Mamma Mia! cut the part where an apron-clad Bill turns around and exposes his bare buttocks, along with Rosie's reaction.
- Jack Smethurst and Rudolph Walker's scene in Man About the House is often cut from TV showings due to George's racist language used.
- Mean Girls:
- On TV airings, all uses of the word "dyke" (in reference to Janis) are removed. The slur is digitally erased from Janis' page in the Burn Book and redubbed to "freak" when Gretchen reads it aloud. Damian reading the page later is cut entirely, along with Janis commenting, "That's original."
- When Regina discovers that the Kalteen bars she's been eating cause her to gain weight instead of lose weight (like Cady told her), TV airings cut her saying "Motherf—" before screaming.
- When two Vietnamese girls are arguing in the gym, one of their retorts is (inaccurately) subtitled as "Nigga, please." TV airings change this to "Girlfriend, please."
- Some TV airings redub Regina's line, "That is the ugliest effing skirt I've ever seen" to "That is totally the ugliest skirt I've ever seen."
- Most TV airings censored all uses of the word "retarded". E! airings leave it uncensored.
- On the Buses films:
- The opening sequence in On the Buses was cut down for TV airings.
- When Holiday on the Buses is shown on ITVX, the shot of Joyce's breasts falling out of her top is cut out.
- Depending on where you live, airings of Scooby-Doo (2002) might cut a certain flashback scene where the gang ditches Scrappy due to his obnoxiousness because it involves a character getting peed on; this was the case when the movie was shown on television in Jamaica. Unfortunately, that scene being cut resulted in the removal of a critical plot point, which meant that a later major reveal came out of nowhere for some viewers and thus made no sense.
- Sister Act:
- When the movie airs on Freeform, it is edited down to two hours with commercials. This results in the removal of multiple scenes, such as Delores Van Cartier sneaking a tomato from the garden and the nuns eating ice cream together, as well as shortening the execution scene near the start and some of the chase sequences.
- All TV airings of the movie also have a few edits to remove profanity. As Deloris is wrapping up "Heat Wave" at the beginning, her line, "You don't give a shit" is censored with microphone feedback. When Lt. Eddie Souther introduces her to the Reverend Mother Superior, her line "I don't give a shit what you say" is redubbed to "Don't give me that". During her first meal with nuns, her line "It tastes like sh--" is edited to remove the partial swear (Freeform airings cut the entire sequence).
- TV airings of Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit omit the credits sequence where the entire cast sings and dances to "Ain't No Mountain High Enough".
- Freeform airings of Space Jam mute a joke at the expense of Disney's The Mighty Ducks ("What kind of Mickey Mouse organization would name their team the Ducks?"), as the channel is owned by Disney.
- A 2006 ITV repeat of Up Pompeii! cut out all reference to Erotica's Bathtub Scene.
PBS Kids
Due to shows on PBS Kids having the luxury of not dealing with commercial breaks, they are often padded out with extra bits that would otherwise be used for such as a way to easily edit the show for syndication, mostly in foreign countries.
- Arthur:
- The show usually has "A Word From Us Kids" between the two segments. In Seasons 11 and 12, this was replaced by "Postcards from You!". Some episodes contain an additional segment after the second story, like "A Word From Marc Brown" and "Which Arthur Character Are You?".
- There's an isolated instance of an episode being given an alternate title. The episode "When Carl Met George" has the alternate title "George and the Missing Puzzle Piece". One could argue that the production team anticipated that the original title would be misconstrued as homoerotic, and wanted to be prepared. More specifically, they probably didn't want a repeat of the Postcards from Buster "Sugar Time!" fiasco. note
- Some of the dialogue in "Arthur Takes a Stand" was re-recorded for later broadcasts. The original version is still available on the Believe in Yourself DVD.
- Ladonna's line "He also wrote this really cool graphic novel called March. I have it at home" became "He was one of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s most important allies."
- Sue Ellen's line "Someone said you were protesting unfair working conditions" became "Someone said you were protesting for Mrs. MacGrady."
- Muffy's line "Fight the power!" became "Go, Mrs. MacGrady!"
- Owing to it originally running on Discovery Kids (the series later ended up on PBS because it was produced by their Boston affiliate - WGBH of Arthur fame and it had also first syndicated runs that were widely seen on Discovery Kids and PBS), Peep and the Big Wide World was produced with nothing in between the two segments of each episode. Instead, a short from Pocoyo would play after the program concluded its PBS broadcasts.
- The Magic School Bus has a phone segment at the end of each episode where the producer will have a discussion with any number of viewers on all of the improbable aspects of the episode, where he would justify its usage for education. These are cut when the show is aired on commercial television in the US, though interestingly they went through the trouble of adding fades for Commercial Break Cliffhangers while the show was still on PBS, where they look rather out of place. TLC and Discovery Kids also showed the phone segments, as Ready Set Learn!, the block it re-ran on, was commercial-free.
- When Liberty's Kids was put into syndication after its PBS run concluded, the "Liberty News Network" (LNN) breaks were cut.
- Dragon Tales has the "Dragon Tunes" songs that separate each episode. However, an odd example of this trope happened when PBS Kids Sprout aired the show: not only did the Dragon Tunes segments get removed, but some airings, along with the On Demand prints, omitted the show's theme song.
- Clifford the Big Red Dog has a "Speckle Story" between the two segments and "Clifford's Big Idea for Today" at the end of the episode.
- Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat has the "What About You?" segments between each story, which has Sagwa and Fu-Fu talking about the different cultures from both China and around the world. In addition, a number of networks, such as TVOntario in Canada, only aired one short from each episode.
- Cyberchase has the "For Real" segments at the end of every episode, where a real-world application is given to the math topic in the episode proper. Like Magic School Bus, some episodes even had commercial break fade-outs, leading some to believe it wasn't originally produced for PBS.
- Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood has live-action segments where children discuss the theme of the episode, such as showing kids how to make a birthday cake, how toilets at school work, and how baby animals are fed at zoos. Netflix prints of the show omit these segments. Oddly enough, unlike most PBS interstitials, these segments did show up on international Disney Junior feeds.
- For the actual show itself, the specials Meet The New Baby and Tiger Family Trip each have two versions: the original Three Shorts cut with the titular episode of each special and the two eleven-minute episodes that are a part of the special's plot, and a two-part cut with the main story and the eleven-minute episodes that support the plot being two separate episodes. Amazon offers both versions of Meet The New Baby note while they have the first version of Tiger Family Trip, for instance. While the hour-long version of "The Baby Is Here" has rarely been aired, the way Tiger Family Trip airs on PBS stations tends to depend on the scheduling of the local station airing the episode. note
- Shining Time Station suffered a few cuts, mostly to the Jukebox Band segments, when it was aired on Fox Family and Nick Jr. The former also cut some scenes in Thomas segments on Storytime with Thomas to make room for music videos and Magic Adventures of Mumfie segments.
- Shining Time Station itself is an edited for syndication version of Thomas & Friends, modified so that the episode would run half hour by throwing in real human characters and music that was otherwise absent in the original, for the US market.
- Ready Jet Go! has live-action educational segments featuring NASA astronomer Dr. Amy Mainzer, who teaches the viewers about various things, such as the Voyager space crafts, infrared light, electromagnets, or how big the solar system is.
- When aired on Sprout, the funding credits and website plugs for most PBS Kids programming were removed for interstitial content and ads. Two exceptions happened when season one episodes of Dragon Tales aired on The Good Night Show, as they kept the Corporation For Public Broadcasting and U.S. Department of Education plug at the beginning of the show. Some Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat airings on Sprout are also known for retaining their funding credits. Oddly enough, if closed captioning was left on during airings of Zoboomafoo, one could briefly see the caption "To learn more about Zoboomafoo" from the website plug before the Credits Pushback came on, despite it being cut.
- Caillou has two different versions: one with the shorts strung together with extras (such as films narrated by kids and music videos tying into the theme of that day's show, performed by a children's group known as the "Caillettes") and puppets in one long 30-minute episode, or as five-minute (later 10-minute) shorts. In Canada, where both versions are available, the 30-minute episodes are marketed as Caillou and Friends while the five/ten-minute episodes are marketed as just Caillou.
- From 1999 to 2001, the BBC aired two versions of Noddy's Toyland Adventures: one that was just the 10-minute shorts by themselves (which was the original show that premiered in 1992, running in repeats), and the other being the 30-minute Canadian version of the show, The Noddy Shop (an edit originally meant for the North American market).
- In Malaysia, it was more clear-cut- the original Noddy's Toyland Adventures aired on Metrovision as one of its original launch lineups in 1994. In 2000, long after Noddy's Toyland Adventures had ended (and one year after Metrovision declared bankruptcy and ceased broadcast), government-owned RTM-TV2 brought in The Noddy Shop.
- The Polish dub of The Noddy Shop made the Anything Can Happen At Christmas special a two-part episode.
- Sesame Street:
- Some episodes had some film segments replaced with others during summer reruns in the '90s; in more recent years, some segments (mainly the Spanish language related ones) have been removed or replaced on prints made available on services like Hulu and HBO Max.
- Thirty-minute episodes feature Elmo's World episodes cut down to half their original length.
- When the spin-off Play With Me Sesame aired on PBS Kids Sprout, Prarie Dawn's art segment was cut out and instead replaced by the one for The Sunny Side Up Show.
- Back when Noggin was co-owned by Sesame Workshop, all of Sesame Workshop's programming that aired on the channel (including Sesame Street, The Electric Company (1971), and Square One TV) would be edited to make room for commercials (those shows were originally broadcast on the commercial-free PBS).
- To make room for live segments, PBS Kids Sprout would only air one segment of a Two Shorts show during their hosted blocks like The Sunny Side Up Show or The Goodnight Show.
- Some international airings of Barney & Friends cut out or shortened at least one song from each episode to make room for ads.
- On the US side of things, in later seasons where episodes follow the Two Shorts format, the show is split in half, with each segment airing as a 10-minute show. In those seasons, there was usually a music video that aired in-between, most notably Barney's Music Box.
- Curious George has segments after each story in which children do activities related to the episode that was just broadcast.
- Let's Go Luna! has segments in between each episode about a folktale or song from the country of the day. For example, during "What's The Big Idea / Day of the Dead", the Mexican song "De Colores" plays.
- Molly of Denali has live-action segments where kids demonstrate Alaskan Native culture.
- Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum has segments where Berby hangs out with one of the main cast members. There are four variants - Berby helps Brad draw a comic, Berby and Xavier race around the world, Berby and Yadina play hide and seek, and Berby and Dr. Zoom hang out while the song "It's You" plays.
- Hero Elementary: These segments are played after the episodes instead of in-between them, but the show has segments starring live-action kids demonstrating a "Superpower of Science", accompanied by a song.
- Martha Speaks has segments of Martha and her friends doing a funny skit. At the end of the show, they recap all the words they've learned through the episode that just aired. When the show finishes airing, as of 2020, PBS broadcasts the Elinor Wonders Why minisode series, That's So Interesting!
- Elinor Wonders Why has segments where Senor Tapir sings about a famous scientist or Ms. Mole reading true stories about science with Elinor, Olive, and Ari.
- When DragonflyTV was put into commercial syndication as a cheap E/I-compliant program, the host segments were cut, all of the copyrighted songs were replaced with generic music, and the theme song was changed (likely due to rights issues with the samples used).
- Averted with Donkey Hodie, which has no in-between segment, likely so that it could be easily sold to other countries without editing anything out. However, to fill time, a short airs after the show ends. Depending on the episode, this is either That's So Interesting or Through the Woods.
- On TV Ontario and Canal Panda, the show airs as one 10-minute segment, though the latter channel tends to show two episodes back to back.
- Dinosaur Train: In between the episodes, Dr. Scott Sampson the paleontologist explains facts about the dinosaur featured in the episode.
- Odd Squad has a few different ones. "Teaming up with Teamwork Together as a Team" and the Gadget Guide segments, to name a few.
- Nature Cat has plenty: a music video by the In-Universe band Dog Gone, a product placement parody about things in nature, and a disclaimer that "Nature Cat and his friends are cartoon characters, and not real animals."
- Splash and Bubbles has "Get Your Feet Wet" which features kids asking questions about the ocean and marine biology that are occasionally followed up by a musical number.
- Pinkalicious & Peterrific has segments where real kids visit artists and learn about the art featured in the episode.
- The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That!: Multiple. There's a comedy skit with Thing 1 and Thing 2, a music video, and a pop quiz courtesy of Fish.
- Wishbone: When some PBS stations started airing reruns of the series in the mid-to-late 2000s, some of the "Tail End" segments were either shortened or cut completely, and the credits music changed from an instrumental rearrangement of the theme song in a higher key, to a regular instrumental of the theme song.
- When they aired Elliot Moose as part of the "Bookworm Bunch" block, the episodes would have 5 segments, with 3 of the segments being animation and 2 being live-action. But on other places like Amazon, Treehouse Direct and reruns on Qubo, the show would only have 4 segments, with half being animation and half live-action. In addition, PBS, Amazon and Treehouse shortened the theme song to only the "Elliot Moose is on the loose" sections, while Qubo aired the full theme.
- ZOOM:
- The first two seasons underwent a remastering on some stations in 2002, in order to update the show's sponsors. This led to the original "ZOOM a Cum Laude" segments being replaced with the "ZOOM Into Action!" ones that had been used since Season 3.
- When the show aired on originating station WGBH's sister station, WGBY in Springfield, Massachusetts, the segments that didn't feature the ZOOMers, such as What Zup and ZOOM Guest, were re-shot with kids from the Springfield area.
- Alma's Way, like Donkey Hodie, doesn't have segments in-between episodes, but after them - the short series Jelly, Ben and Pogo.
- Like Alma, Donkey, and Hero, Rosie's Rules has no in-between segment, but the end of each episode includes a short where Iggy plays with Gatita.
- Carl the Collector also has no in-between segment, so instead a What Can You Become? short plays after the credits.
- Work It Out Wombats! has a 90-second music video in between each episode.
Puppet Shows
- The Muppet Show:
- The original U.S. airings had one skit per episode cut out; the DVD releases that have the trivia subtitles point this out by saying "This was the UK Spot for this episode".
- When reruns aired on Nickelodeon, the UK spots were included in most broadcasts, but other material had to be cut to allow for it.
- The DVDs themselves contain a few episodes cut down due to licensing issues. Seasons 2 and 3 came to DVD uncut.
- The first Italian dub of Thunderbirds was cut so that each episode lasted only 20 minutes. The series was later redubbed with full episodes, but for some reason this new dub was taken down and replaced with the old one, with subtitles for the missing parts.
- When Big Bag was reduced from an hour-long timeslot in the second season to a half-hour, the first season episodes got hit with this pretty badly to be rerun in the half-hour slot. Several parts of the framing story and half of the short cartoons would be cut, though on each episode, two versions of the rerun would exist: one with Troubles the Cat, Samuel and Nina and a Big Bag Beat music video, and another with William's Wish Wellingtons, Slim Pig and Koki. As part of this, Tobias Totz and His Lion was completely dropped from the reruns.
- Noggin airings of Eureeka's Castle shortened the show to half its length, likely due to rights issues with the shorts used in the show. This is also the version used by Paramount+.
Radio
- The Star Wars Radio Dramas adaptation of A New Hope had this done to it twice:
- First when it was broadcast by The BBC shortly after its original run (they didn't carry the other two series), and edited by them for timing. Most of the cuts are just nips and tucks to long bits of dialogue, but there's a particularly egregious one in Episode 13, not only losing the scene where Motti conspires with Tarkin to overthrow the Emperor, but violating the show's format whereby major scene transitions are always accompanied by music.
- Second when NPR decided to lengthen the closing credits. The cut material includes a rather touching scene in Episode 2, where which Leia tells her father about a pleasant stroll she took on Alderaan. Unfortunately most of the home audio releases use the cut version.
- Inverted with The BBC's dramatization of The Lord of the Rings. The series was originally broadcast as 26 half-hour episodes, in practice about 27-28 minutes in length. A couple of years later the show was re-run as 13 hour-long episodes. Each of these needed to run at least 57 minutes, necessitating the reinstatement of some material previously cut for timing. The reinstated material was kept for home audio releases.
- In the 1950s, radio comedy such as The Goon Show was written and timed to occupy the whole of a half-hour slot. Come the 2000s, the BBC had a dilemma on broadcasting the shows whole and unabridged: as in this decade, radio shows are routinely timed to occupy twenty-five minutes or less of a half-hour slot so as to allow for trailers to be played at either end: the BBC's self-advertising that simply did not exist in 1954. Also, like many other BBC shows, The Goon Show was cut for overseas transcription versions, losing a good deal of politically incorrect material and gags. For many years, these were the only versions of most episodes that were available for broadcast, but subsequent CD releases have restored almost all of the cut material from various sources.
- The Navy Lark:
- Several episodes had a few minutes trimmed to be sold overseas for The BBC Transcription Services. Due to the loss of many early episodes' original recordings, several only exist in their shortened versions todaynote .
- The first repeat of "Back from the Antarctic" was edited to remove almost a minute of a parody of the folk tune "Widdicombe Fair".
- Three episodes have seen cuts in recent years to remove poorly aged lines:
- "Jigsaws and Jemmies" cuts Second Officer Maclootie's line, "It's not the Yellow Peril", when Captain Povey is panicking about a Chinese spy.
- "The Police Drop In" had Goldstein's lines about calling Chief Detective Inspector Sharpe (at the moment covered in soot and sitting on his lap after being blasted out of a funnel) a golliwog and not knowing which one is supposed to be the ventriloquist cut, as well as a later line from Lieutenant Murray once more referencing the ventriloquist's dummy. Also cut is Commander Wetherby's line asking the Detective if he was in The Black and White Minstrel Show.
- "Sir Willoughby's Party" loses two references to Jimmy Savile, who was exposed after his death to have been one of Britain's most prolific predatory sex offenders.
Web Animation
- RWBY is a web-original series with 15-minute episodes, but when it was licensed for Japanese television, it had to be recut into more standard 22-minute episodes. This was especially a problem for Volume One, where the episodes ranged anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes. As such, the first Japanese episode actually covers the events of the first four webisodes, and in the process cuts the character-establishing scenes for most of Team JNPR, who serve as secondary protagonists to the titular Team RWBY. The sole exception is Pyrrha Nikos, seemingly because her first scene further establishes Weiss Schnee's initial Ice Queen personality.
Webcomics
- Parodied by Square Root of Minus Garfield strip #1275, "Square Root of Minus The Arbuckle Family in Reruns", which consists of a previous Square Root strip, with a panel removed.
Web Video
- Scott The Woz airings on G4TV repackage several episodes together into hour-long time slots, so some scenes are cut short and any copyrighted video game music (which makes up most of the background music in the series) is replaced with a more generic track. It also replaces the censor bleeps with longer ones to obscure the curse words better (but, at least a couple times, they took out the bleeps while forgetting to add new ones), and replaces some footage with stock footagenote .
Western Animation
- The version of South Park that aired in over-the-air syndication and on WGN America is rated TV-14. You might ask, "How do you tone down a series like South Park to TV-14 levels?" Simple: extensive bleeping of curse words, trimming scenes for offensive dialogue that can't be bleeped, and in scenes vital to the plot, replacing them with black screens with humorous short descriptions of the offensive scene (e.g., "Red Hot Catholic Love"'s Running Gag of people defecating from their mouths). Furthermore, due to Parker and Stone having final say over the "censored" cuts of their episodes, certain episodes (such as "It Hits the Fan") were withheld from the syndication package. Ironically though, certain other episodes with questionable content have been heavily featured in syndication, including: "Jared Has Aides" (formerly banned from Comedy Central for mocking AIDS, as well as Butters getting physically abused by his parents for making a crank call) and the seldom-broadcasted "Death" (formerly banned by Comedy Central for the subplot about Stan's grandfather badgering Stan to assist him with suicide, as well as the gang talking about huffing gasoline, smoking crack, and watching porn).
- Inverted when [adult swim] had the rights to air Family Guy, as they were fine with having content not seen in the network cut. This means they include unedited versions of scenes that were cut or altered for being too disgusting, long, or raunchy for FOX broadcasts. Generally, the Adult Swim version is the same as the one included on the DVD. On the other hand, the network syndicated versions (at least the ones that air between 5:00pm and 7:00pm on local affiliates) are FOX cut episodes that have episodes cut even further to remove content that was okay to air on FOX, but not on whatever local affiliate is airing the show. Even if it's a FOX station.
- While the [adult swim] version is mostly uncensored, the TBS broadcast of Family Guy altered between being the same as the [adult swim] version or just a little bit more censored. Sometimes it is cut for time as [adult swim] has less commercial time than TBS but sometimes it's for content as Family Guy aired much earlier on TBS.
- FX, FXX, and Freeform got the rights to air the show from Adult Swim and TBS in September 2021, and sadly, FX and Freeform both use the free-to-air syndication prints (the ones seen on local broadcast stations) of the show's first 15 seasons, which are even more censored than the versions used for their initial broadcasts on Fox. Freeform even speeds up those butchered prints. However, just how much of the series gets edited on FXX, the main new cable home for the series, depends on what time of the day the show airs in: they also use the syndication prints if the series airs in the morning or afternoon, but air the original Fox broadcast prints (and on a few rare occasions, even the completely uncensored version of the show used for Adult Swim and the DVD releases) when the network airs the show in prime time.
- "The Movement" features an exaggerated parody of this trope in-universe. Seinfeld and The Jeffersons are shown for about a second each before abruptly jumping to the credits because of how much stuff was cut out during syndication.
- Certain scenes in DuckTales (1987), such as a scene in the pilot where Dewey breaks apart a robot's power cord and scenes where characters use or threaten others with guns (such as Scrooge attempting to shoot Fenton in the "Super DuckTales" serial), were cut when shown in cable syndication such as on Toon Disney. These scenes are thankfully restored on the DVD sets.
- The same is mostly true for other Disney Afternoon shows that were edited in reruns (such as TaleSpin and Darkwing Duck). There are many lost commercial break fade-in/outs, but the only actually censored episodes are "Dirty Rotten Diapers" and "Double Darkwings".
- Disney's streaming of Disney Afternoon shows unfortunately seem to have taken a step backwards regarding this. DuckTales (1987) and TaleSpin appear to completely be the Toon Disney cuts; Chip N Dale Rescue Rangers seems to be completely uncensored, except for "Puffed Rangers" (which was heavily redubbed from its original airing to avoid Chinese stereotypes and jokes).
- On Network Ten airings of All Grown Up!, some scenes were cut, shortening the show to 20 minutes. An example is in "Saving Cynthia": Network Ten cut out a scene with Angelica, Susie and Harold at the thrift shop looking for Cynthia, which they can't find, and the scene also mentions the fate of Susie's old toy stethoscope. Susie mentions Angelica teasing her about the stethoscope at the end of the episode, but that dialogue is left intact on Network Ten, leaving viewers confused.
- Daria's run on The N suffered from this, removing any and all scenes of cursing, sex references, or darkly humorous content — and episodes that couldn't be cut without turning the episode into a lopped, cropped, and chopped mess were simply left unaired (i.e., "My Night At Daria's", where everyone thinks Daria and Tom slept together after they both fell asleep while studying in Daria's room). One episode, "The F Word", was even renamed "Fail". The three worst parts were that the cursing was cut on a random basis (one character might say "damn" in one scene and then cut in the next scene or even later in the same scene), some cuts ended up causing plot holes, and that The N would air Degrassi, which has a content level higher than Daria (Daria is TV-PG with Degrassi at TV-14) uncut. Reasons are unknown, but it's speculated that it only happened to Daria because it's a cartoon and networks don't treat animated shows as fairly as live-action shows — at least in America.
- Reruns on Logo replace the original music with soundalikes like the DVD release. The N's repeats (2002-2006) kept the music due to the music rights being different for both the broadcast and retail releases of the show. By the time Logo got the show (2010), all of the rights had lapsed and cut out the ending credits, instead opting to run them over the last minute of the episode, which seems to to be the norm for most Viacom owned networks as of recently. However, all of the content The N had cut was retained.
- The home video version of Is It College Yet? removes several lines and an entire scene from the original MTV broadcast.
- When Clone High first aired on MTV, Genghis Khan wore a T-shirt that said "Screw Tibet", and in the scene where Abe Lincoln and Cleopatra kiss in front of Joan of Arc, "I Don't Want to Wait" by Paula Cole plays instead of "Standard Lines" by Dashboard Confessional.
- Hanna-Barbera shows from 1971 and 1972 had a portion of episodes made but not screened during their first season runs (i.e.: in the Hair Bear Bunch episode "Closed Circuit TV", the Slap Jack card game with the bears and Bananas the Gorilla being broken up by Peevly). They were added in during their second-season airings, but the scenes have not been shown in subsequent syndication and cable/satellite airings. Some scattered episodes have had scenes removed because, according to Warner Home Video, the scenes either no longer exist or their physical status is in question.
- The 1977 syndicated package series Fred Flintstone & Friends featured episodes from Pebbles & Bamm Bamm, The Flintstone Comedy Hour, Yogi's Gang, Jeannie, Goober & the Ghost Chasers and Partridge Family: 2200 A.D. (renamed here as The Partridge Family in Outer Space). In Atlanta GA, the station airing the program (then independent WANX) omitted Jeannie and Goober as the station was owned by Pat Robertson's CBN outfit and those shows violated their broadcast standards. They were replaced with elements from Magilla Gorilla and Peter Potamus. Similarly, the Fun World of Hanna-Barbera package aired on that station and they omitted The Funky Phantom. To accomodate the rest of the package, the station ran the Jackson Five cartoon Mondays and Fridays, The Perils of Penelope Pitstop Tuesdays, Wacky Races and The Amazing Chan & the Chan Clan on alternate Wednesdays, and Dastardly & Muttley Thursdays.
- When episodes from The Smurfs (1981) cartoon show started appearing in the syndicated Smurfs Adventures show, there were not only cuts from the shorter episodes to make two of them fit within a 30-minute showing time, but there were also episodes where the audio was noticeably sped up, resulting in the Smurfs and even Gargamel sounding more helium-ish. Some of the season set volumes of The Smurfs that were released in Australia and the United Kingdom even featured the episodes that were edited for syndication instead of their original unedited versions.
- When He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983) aired on CITV in the United Kingdom, several scenes were removed so that it would fit in a 20-minute slot.
- Rocky and Bullwinkle has had a variety of edits over the years. There were two primary syndication packages, the 15-minute "Rocky and His Friends" and the more common "Bullwinkle Show", the later of which, ironically, only includes Rocky and Bullwinkle segments from the last season that was titled The Bullwinkle Show, but all of the segments that originated on Rocky and His Friends. Cut from syndication as well as the VHS releases are the Bullwinkle puppet sequences (some were included on DVD as bonus material as opposed to part of the main program) and the commercial intros (which were included on the DVDs).
- In the original broadcasts, the show's structure was: Rocky and Bullwinkle, Fractured Fairy Tales/Aesop and Son, Bullwinkle's Corner/Mr. Know-It-Al/Bullwinkle Fan Club, Peabody's Improbable History/Dudley Do-Right, and Rocky and Bullwinkle. The Bullwinkle Show syndication package follows this format a little, but also includes either Bullwinkle's Corner, Mr. Know-It-All, or the Fan Club at the end, before the credits. Last season reruns actually include three Rocky and Bullwinkle segments and only one non-Bullwinkle supporting feature (though all four parts of the last storyarc, Moosylvania Saved, are shown in the same half hour). Additionally, installments of the various supporting segments are often not the same as originally paired together on television, with them usually being shown out of order (Mr. Know-It-All and Fan Club segments were added in Season 3, but this syndication package includes those segments in earlier episodes).
- Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network both aired reruns with their own special opening sequence (both of which reuse animation from the show). Nickelodeon's reruns featured episodes from both syndication packages but also showed three Rocky and Bullwinkle segments an episode, while Cartoon Network's broadcasts titled it "The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show", cut out the opening for the first "Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle" segment in the episode, but was otherwise the same as the "Bullwinkle Show" syndication package.
- The Buena Vista Home Video releases don't include the Rocky and His Friends or The Bullwinkle Show openings (instead starting with the opening used for "The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle" segments), and at least two chapters of each "Rocky and Bullwinkle" storyline are edited together into one, cutting the next episodes "titles" and the recap at the beginning of the next episode. In some cases entire chapters were omitted for time.
- The ChalkZone TV movie The Big Blow Up would later be split into two parts for reruns and on Amazon Instant Video and the PlayStation Store.
- The music video for "Comin' To Life" at the end of the episode "The Wiggies/Rapunzel/Hair to Stay" had the audio sped-up slightly when the show began airing on Nicktoons. Despite this, the version with the audio at the correct speed was intact on Nickelodeon.
- When KaBlam! went into reruns on Nicktoons, the Lava segments were cut due to Nickelodeon losing the rights to them. International broadcasts omitted them as well. Despite this, a few episodes that aired on Nicktoons had the credits for the short intact (others cut it out with a noticeable audio jump and others were from episodes that never aired on Nicktoons).
- Occasionally, [adult swim] will air slightly edited versions of Robot Chicken in order to fit it in earlier timeslots. The edits include extra bleeping of strong language/sexual slang, and further obscuring some of the stronger sexual & scatological content.
- Syndicated episodes of The Simpsons are often butchered. Mostly these cuts are for time constraints, though there have been times where episodes were edited for content. In "Marge Gets a Job", references to Bart having Tourette's Syndrome [and Bart's subsequent barking and snarling of "Shove it, witch!" to Mrs. Krabappel] were redubbed with "rabies". Show creator Matt Groening expressed disdain for this practice on the show's season one DVD set.
- The opening credits of most syndicated episodes are also cut down, usually deleting Lisa's sax solo and Bart's chalkboard punishment gag and skateboarding through town the cutting straight to the "couch gag" (in most syndicated episodes, the couch gag used is the one from Season 5's "Rosebud"note where the family rush to the couch, only to find an exact clone of them already on the couch).
- When Mike Scully was showrunner, he attempted to avoid this by using the full, extended version of the show's lengthy opening sequence (which by that point was only ever used when an episode was running too short) in every non-Treehouse episode, hoping that syndicators would opt to edit that down and leave the episode itself untouched. This included episodes like "Kill the Alligator and Run" where the writers had to make drastic cuts to fit the story into 22 minutes but still didn't touch the intro, and "Behind the Laughter" which was a gimmick episode where the traditional opening didn't really mesh well with the format. This gambit didn't work, unfortunately, as episodes would still frequently have edits made to them.
- Re-runs of the episode "The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show" use a completely different couch gag. The Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band cover pastiche in the original is replaced by The Flintstones gag from a few seasons prior, although the audio from the Sgt. Pepper one remains.note
- The FXX version of The Simpsons (first seen on the "Every Simpsons Ever" marathon) airs the episodes the way they are on the DVD (with a lot of scenes that were edited on free-TV syndication returned after years of being omitted). However, a lot of episodes that had content cuts haven't been reverted back to the way they used to air note , meaning that Burns says "I guess there's nothing left for me to do, except kiss my sorry ass goodbye" while Bart says, "Bad influence, my butt" on "Homer, Defined"note , the original "Tourette Syndrome" line on "Marge Gets a Job" is replaced with the "rabies" line (yet Bart's faking his Tourette-style twitching and muttering "Shove it, witch" and muttering "Tourette syndrome" are still there), Mr. Burns still calls Smithers "Chinese" instead of a "Chinaman" on "New Kids on the Blecch" and Homer remembers that Barney's birthday is on the same day as Lassie the Dog's (July 15th) instead of Adolf Hitler's (April 20) on "Viva Ned Flanders". note Interestingly, just how much of an episode FXX will cut seems to be dependent on the day and time its airing: when the channel plays marathons of the show on Sundays, the episodes are almost always uncut and feature every joke from the original Fox airings, while they use the syndicated versions when the show airs on weeknights.
- One channel in Ireland cut out the famous Land of Chocolate sequence from "Burns Verkaufen der Kraftwerk", but it was brought back later. It's unknown if this was either intentional or a mistake.
- "Lisa Gets an A" was edited to cut from Homer yelling, "Why, you little—" at Pinchy to Ms. Hoover distributing the test scores. What it skips over is a pivotal moment where Homer goes from raising Pinchy with the intention to eat him to truly bonding with him. ("I Can't stay mad at such a helpless little mammal.") Of course, the DVD/FXX version retains the full scene.
- There are occasional syndication cut-induced plot holes, such as Marge having a hole in her hair for one scene during "Sideshow Bob's Last Gleaming", attributed to part of a megaphone blasting through her hair.
- Two versions exist of "The Great Phatsby": the original hour-long version and a two-part version. Notably, Disney+ had the latter version on launch day before switching to the hour-long version in January 2020.
- Towards the end of "Team Homer", Homer tells Marge: "We were so close to winning the championship. Now, thanks to Burns, it's never going to happen. And I spent so much time building that trophy case." The scene then cuts to the trophy case with an Academy Award in it that Homer has stolen, with Don Ameche's name being crossed out. In the original broadcast, it was Haing S. Ngor's name who had been crossed out. Ngor was murdered between this episode's original air date and the subsequent syndicated broadcasts (including cable, streaming, and home media releases), and his name was changed to Ameche's because the producers were afraid it would be implied that Homer may have murdered Ngor to steal his Oscar.
- In the episode "Take My Life, Please", a man says that he is going to "think of all the women [he] could've talked to but didn't". The syndicated version cuts out the part where we actually see him doing so, in the form of a poem.
- The original American premiere of the episode "Springfield Up" featured a trailer for The Simpsons Movie. Because of this, the opening sequence and the song that ends the episode were removed. The Canadian premiere had the episode uncut, as did American reruns.
- The initial Fox and Hulu broadcasts of "The Fall Guy-Yi-Yi!" completely remove the scene of Bumblebee Man and Homer at the East Springfield Swap Meet for timing reasons.note This is where both Claudia Motta and Patricia Acevedo guest star, and it also establishes Bumblebee Man's movie script, which ends up coming out of nowhere in the edited version, as well as explaining how Homer got that dent in his forehead in the next scene.
- "Bottle Episode" is edited between releases. When this episode premiered on streaming, either Hulu in the US or Disney + internationally, the scene where Marge and Smithers encounters the prisoners of the Wine Jail is played at the start of the third act instead of the beginning of the end credits. Whereas the end credits in streaming versions plays out like normal, complete with music straight from the episode. The reason why they placed the prisoners scene during the end credits on Fox airings is to make more room for commercials.
- While "Men Behaving Manly" originally premiered uncut on Fox and Hulu, in January 2026, streaming services re-released an edited version of the episode (comparison here). (The edited version was first noticed when the episode released on Disney+ in Spain, but the Hulu edit in America was made around the same time, so it's unclear which came first.) In the edited version, the scene of Moe mentioning Maya near the start of act 2 is removed, plus her and Moe reuniting at the end of the episode. (The shot of them hugging in the credits was unedited.)
- When episodes of The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! were released on DVD, many of the songs that played during action sequences were replaced by others due to licensing issues. Meanwhile, the third season's Club Mario continuity has never seen any home media release, excluding the episode "The Unzappables", due to its live action segment, "George Washington Slept Here", having the same licensing issues. Infamously, the episode where Milli Vanilli guest stars has their music replaced by a generic instrumental, even though the singers' mouths are still moving.
- American airings of The Amazing World of Gumball severely shorten the opening theme sequence to only showing the title card, eliminating the psychedelic visuals. This was done in order to fit more commercials (which is normal for modern broadcasting practices) to maximize profits. Several times, though, re-runs of the first season episode "The Quest" showed the full opening, but consequently eliminated the episode title card. Several other American reruns have had the full opening shown, usually due to a movie on Cartoon Network running short and needing as much filler as possible to pad out the timeslot.
- Similar to Gumball, The Mr. Men Show in the American and Japanese airings have the short theme song. The European airings have the whole intro. However, it comes with a price that one of the segments on the episodes would be cut out (eg. Mr. Lazy's segment in "Chores", Miss Calamity's in "Movies".), so they would either pick the whole intro or the whole episode depending on the situation.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
- The Japanese broadcasting of the first two seasons (which are all Japan got at first until the Channel Hop from TV Tokyo to Dlife) had a longer intro and closing credits, plus a short segment hosted by Suzuko Mimori before the end credits, meaning that episodes had to have entire scenes and sequences cut out in order to fit these new additions.
- The initial Italian airing of Season 1 had every episode split into a two-parter to fit more commercials in, as Italian law forbids commercial breaks during cartoon episodes and each episode of the series is 22-minutes long.
- The original Croatian dub that airs on HRT 2, while otherwise not heavily edited, similarly has every episode split into two parts, possibly to accommodate the "Juhuhu!" block made for younger children that airs early in the morning. The newer dub by RTL Kockica - on the other hand - evades this due to commercials always taking place inbetween shows (not counting movies).
- When the first 13 episodes of Magic Adventures of Mumfie came to home video in North America, they were edited into a Pilot Movie, removing quite a few scenes and songs, with the most notable being the removal of "Friendship is a Circle", which is one of the more popular songs.
- X-Men: The Animated Series: A few episodes had retakes and were rebroadcast with different and corrected scenes. "Night of the Sentinels Pt. I" had three versions: 10/31/92, 1/9/93, and 4/3/93. "Night of the Sentinels Pt. II" had three versions: 11/7/92, 1/9/93, and 4/10/93. Both episodes aired as a one-hour special on 1/9/93. "Enter Magneto" had two versions: 11/27/92 and 1/16/93. "Slave Island" had two versions, the first on 2/13/93 did not have the cliffhanger ending with the X-Mansion wrecked.
- SpongeBob SquarePants:
- The first airings of Season 1 in Italy removed the singing scenes from "Ripped Pants" and other episodes. They were kept in DVD releases and in later reruns.
- A thirty-minute version of the hour-long special SpongeBob's Birthday Blowout, which cuts most of the animated scenes, was aired in October of 2019.
- The official SpongeBob YouTube channel features several five-minute edits of some of the show's most popular episodes, mostly from the early seasons.
- Since 2014, all the episodes from Seasons 1-3 are sped up slightly, to make more time for commercials. This did not affect its Nicktoons airings, however.
- Later prints of the You Wish! version of "Shanghaied" (which was also released for The First 100 Episodes DVD boxset) cover up the phone number used for voting on the original airing with a disclaimer reading "Yikes matey! Original 800 number as aired has been retired to Davy Jones' locker!" and cuts out Patchy reading the number. This is because Nickelodeon let the number go after the original version of the special aired, and probably didn't like the idea of younger fans of the show seeing the original version of the episode and calling the number only to end up hearing something inappropriate (a lot of retired 1-800 numbers have ended up being used for things like adult entertainment lines once the original owners let go of them), hence why they covered up the number on screen and excised Patchy mentioning it.
- The original airing of "Atlantis SquarePantis" had the Patchy Framing Device removed to make room for the "Behind the Pantis" featurette which aired immediately after the special. The special aired in full for the first time on November 23, 2007, one week after.
- Nina Needs to Go!'s Italian dub, "Mi Scappa La Pipi"note , has some of its episodes shortened to half their length. "Snow" was the only episode that was the same length as the original version .
- When Futurama moved to Comedy Central, many of the earlier episodes had scenes cut, or moved around, presumably to make room for more advertisements. Most notably, the four post-season-four movies were cut into four episode-length segments each (also cutting out scenes in the process), creating a fifth "season" of sixteen episodes for Comedy Central to broadcast, which is the version of the movies available on Hulu. Occasionally this cuts out plot-important elements (for example: "Less Than Hero" cuts down the scene of Bender joining the team and giving Fry and Leela their outfits and the scene of Leela warning Fry not to give away their secret identities in case their loved ones get hurt, the latter of which sets up the main conflict of the episode).
- When Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain aired on Nickelodeon, their intros were edited to include the Nickelodeon logo at random points in the intro. It was extremely bad with Animaniacs, where the intro was shortened to 20 seconds and the Couch Gag was changed to show Dot holding a crystal ball with the Nickelodeon logo inside it while saying "Nickalaney!".
- From the 1960s through to the early 1990s, anyone watching the first two seasons of The Flintstones in syndication saw opening and closing credits sequences featuring the theme song "Meet the Flintstones", which was not introduced until Season 3. The original "Rise and Shine" opening and closing sequences were not restored until the series was relaunched in syndication in the 1990s and subsequently released to DVD. And even then edits remain; all references to sponsorship (especially by the cigarette company that sponsored early episodes) remain excised. When MeTV started broadcasting the series in September 2019, they originally used "Rise and Shine" to open and close the first two seasons, but in October 2020, they switched over to using the "Meet the Flintstones" intro and closing credits as well.
- The Comedy Central run of BoJack Horseman shortens the theme song, and cuts a few lines short (for example: in the premiere of "Our A-Story is a D-Story", they cut the second part of Bojack saying, "That son of a bitch. That literal son of a bitch," regarding Mr. Peanutbutter, as well as the second half of the Aryan gang member telling Todd, "You dance like a white man, and I love it." The jokes still work without the second half, though they become more subtle). Occasionally this weakens the impact, however, especially for dramatic lines; in "Horse Majeur", when Mr. Peanutbutter talks about the dream where Diane is suddenly gone and his life goes on without her, they cut the part where he admits he feels relief in the dream.
- Italian airings of Baby Looney Tunes for years kept everything as it is, but since 2017 they started removing the songs that are usually played between each episode, repacking every 10-minute short as a standalone episode with opening and closing themes in order to cram more advertising in between (again, this is another way to circumnavigate the law forbidding commercial breaks during cartoons). This was also how the series was first shown on Cartoonito in the United States when the American version of the block in September 2021, with five of its standard segments airing together to make a 75-minute broadcast of the series. However, on November 2, 2021, the block started airing the show in its original format so that it can run on the clock, and the series stayed that way until leaving Cartoonito the following April.
- Discovery Family, who got the broadcast rights to the series in May 2023 following the Warner Bros. Discovery merger, not only cuts out the music videos, but also speeds the video and audio up in order to increase the show's commercial break length. This thankfully doesn't affect Boomerang's concurrent airings of the series, however.
- When Garfield and Friends aired in syndication from 1993 to 2007, only the second opening ("We're Ready To Party!") was used, and only one quickie was used per episode, with said segment being shown before the credits came on, omitting all the U.S. Acres quickies and Screaming with Binky segments note .
- The international prints omitted 15 quickies.
- The Boomerang channel's run of the remastered version speeds up not only the credits, but the theme song as well.
- The international prints omitted 15 quickies
- In 1986, the first two My Little Pony TV Specials edited out the original title sequences and ending credits, as well as two songs (one song from each special) when aired as part of the My Little Pony 'n Friends series.
- Rainbow Brite: The first five episodes, which originally aired as specials, were later edited to be part of the syndicated TV series, which not only changed the opening and ending but also included cuts for time. Since all DVD releases use the syndication cuts, the only way to get the original broadcast is to hunt down old VHS tapes. This video contains a comparison for the episode "Peril in the Pits."
- Johnny Test: Season 1 featured a unique, fast-paced rock theme performed by Aaron Molho. But For Seasons 2 through 6, a new theme song was introduced that famously shared a striking resemblance to Green Day's "American Idiot." Because the Flash-era episodes made up the vast majority of the show’s run, this "ripoff" theme became the one synonymous with the show in syndication, leading many fans who grew up with reruns to be confused when they finally encountered the original Season 1 intro.
- The Teen Titans Go! "Super Hero Summer Camp" arc initally premiered as five 11-minute episodes, which is also how they air on international Cartoon Network feeds. When re-ran, the arc is aired as an Extra-Long Episode. Island Adventures and The Day the Night Stopped Beginning to Shine and Became Dark Even Though it Was the Day also aired like this. Beginning in 2020, the US feed also airs these specials as 11-minute parts in reruns.
- A strange example happened with Beast Boy: That's What's Up!. This Multi-Part Episode was produced as 4 11-minute shorts, but the US feed of Cartoon Network has only ever aired the 40-minute long version.
- In reruns of Danger Rangers aired on commercial television, at least one song is cut out to make room for advertising.
- An infamous example of this occured when VeggieTales aired on NBC's qubo block in 2006. Aside from cutting various scenes for time, all references to God were removed. Parental complaints led to such references being reinstated in the second and third seasons.
- A particularly egregious example from this version of VeggieTales occurs in the episode "The Toy That Saved Christmas". In addition to trimming some scenes, they also cut to the ending straight after Mr. Nezzer's Heel–Face Turn, completely leaving out the entire climax.
- Whenever ABC aired the Peanuts specials alongside one of their in-house holiday specials, some sequences would be cut to accomodate both ads and time to show whatever special was playing before or after. For instance, in It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, the scene with Schroder and Snoopy at the piano was cut.
- The Cleveland Show's airings on channels owned by ViacomCBS (specifically Comedy Central, BET, and VH1) usually shorten the intro down to 14 seconds, with the theme song cutting straight to the final line ("This is The Cleveland Show!") after the verse "Right back in my hometown, with my new family". The final word in the aforementioned verse is also slightly pitched up to make the fact that the theme has been shortened seem less obvious. The full theme song still occasionally played on those networks, but only if a movie shown right before it ran short and the network airing the show needed something to fill up the empty gap in its scheduling.
- The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin:
- In international airings, the "Protect Yourself" segment is cut. This is how the show was released to home media as well. Oddly, it appeared on Teletoon's run of the show.
- The Arabic dub removes all of the songs.
- When The Alvin Show aired on Nickelodeon, they only included one song segment per show, instead of the usual two.
- The Doug Disney episode "Doug's Chubby Buddy" originally ended with a voiceover PSA from Patty about eating disorders and mental health resources. In reruns, this part was removed and replaced by Skeeter and Roger's in-episode dialogue.
- The Nickelodeon debut of the Unicorn Academy Pilot Movie cuts out the extended theme song that plays in the end credits.
- Chuck's Choice: There are two versions of the farewell message from UD at the end of episodes. On YTV airings, he tells the viewers to go to the (now defunct) section of the show on the YTV website. In international versions, he tells the viewers to keep watching the show.
