"I will no longer be allowed to cuss! Instead I will have to use 'television' curse words. That's right, you motorscooters! Now don't give me any of your bullfreak! This is some serious stuff right now! And if you think I'm some kind of sellout as-airhead for changing my format, then you... you can go pluck yourself!"
In some family-oriented works, instead of using completely made-up swear words, real but relatively mild curses such as "hell"note and "damn" will get promoted to the top of the swearing ladder. To make up for the situation, they may use a Bowdlerisation of it.
Contrary to popular belief, the words "damn" and "hell" are permissible in a G-rated film. For example, the 1971 movie Airport had both ("Where the hell are you?" and "You've always got some damn excuse!") and it still received a G rating, though movie-rating standards have changed since then. Planet of the Apes (1968) received a G rating, despite famous lines like "You damn, dirty apes" and "Goddamn you all to hell!" Even some G-rated animated features, such as Sleeping Beauty (1959), Ratatouille, The Secret of NIMH, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, have included mild swear words. It's worth noting, however, that "hell" can refer to the place and "damn" can mean to condemn to said place, and thus aren't swear words when used in that manner even if such concepts are a little heavy for children. "Bitch" (the official term for a female dog, from which the derogatory use is derived) and "ass" (an alternate name for a donkey) almost never get such passes, unless it is made explicit and obvious that the non-swear meaning is intended.
While "damn" is normally permissible, "goddamn" is considered blasphemous in many Christian sects and so historically could even be seen as being on par with "fuck", if not worse, resulting in literal examples of *Bleep*-dammit!. (This is particularly true in the US.) So, for instance, the M*A*S*H movie when shown on television has had Sergeant Gorman's catchphrase, "Goddamn Army", bowdlerised to "Damn Army". These days however, while many Christians continue to avoid using the term, it's rarely seen as an f-word level curse, and is mostly just treated as a mild-to-moderate swear word.
Some words are considered more acceptable in some contexts than others. For instance, in the UK, "bloody" is a PG-level swear word when used as an epithet, but is otherwise fine when used in a literal sense. The reverse can also be true; for instance, using "piss" literally is generally seen as more offensive than saying that someone "pissed" you off.
There can also be cultural differences in the relative severity of swear words. For example, the words "damn" and "hell" are seen as curse words in the US, but not in most other English-speaking countries. Conversely, most Americans wouldn't consider the word "crap" to be a proper cuss word, but those in the UK absolutely would.
The use of "Hades" as a substitute for "hell" is theologically correct in the proper context, but is often misused for any context in which "hell" would work. Using Hades for Satan is never correct, though. See The Underworld article for other terms that may be substituted in this manner in works based on other theological settings.
The kid-friendly variant of Bowdlerise. A favorite tool of the Badbutt, aka a G-rated badass. Another character type known for this is the Minnesota Nice. If the setting forces everyone to swear like this, you are looking at a Magical Profanity Filter.
Contrast Cluster F-Bomb which is the exact opposite. See also Big, Stupid Doodoo-Head, Curse of The Ancients, Mondegreen Gag, Never Say "Die", Parenthetical Swearing, T-Word Euphemism, Unusual Euphemism, Witch with a Capital "B", and the Wikipedia article on minced oaths.
This trope is about moments where swearing is deliberately censored or a replacement to a real-life swear word is used. The example subpages and folders below are not to list moments where you personally think that swearing would have looked cool, or for moments where you believe swearing would have improved a line.
Gosh darn example subpages:
- Fan Works
- Films — Animation
- Films — Live-Action
- Literature
- Live-Action TV
- Music
- Video Games
- Webcomics
- Western Animation
- Real Life
Other Examples:
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Advertising
- Orbit gum has had a few:
- This commercial for Orbit gum, guaranteeing clean mouths. The slogan "It cleans a dirty mouth!" applies to a scenario where a wife and her husband's mistress argue passionately using such insults as "you cootie queen" and "lint licker".
- There was an even older Orbit Commercial that used "Shut the front door!". Orbit commercials in general are known for their Unusual Euphemisms, including "Who are you calling a cootie queen? You LINT LICKER!", "What the French toast?", "Well, kiss my- ASHTON!", and of course, "I will pineapple slap your ASCOTS!" The whole purpose is to show that Orbit gum makes your mouth so clean that you won't say any dirty words.
- Speaking of Orbit, there's this ad with Sarah Silverman. "I've got your lipstick all over my rim" is quite the thing to hear in a business meeting.
- This commercial
- Travel site Booking.com loves copiously using "booking" as a sub for the F-bomb in their ads.
- The father turtle from one of the Comcast commercials says "fast" as a curse word, something his kid picked up. Stuff includes "Aw fast!", "What the fast?!", and "You're fasting kidding me!"
- This infomercial for the UK's Independent Television Commission about time-appropriate language on TV spoofs this trope, with gems like "Take that, Mr. Policeman!" and "these nasty handcuffs are really chafing, you know!"
- Nutra Nail Gel started airing this spot on American television in fall 2013. It promotes the quick-drying nature of the product by depicting the ptifalls of standard nail polish. A woman looks down and disappointedly says "Oh, smudge"note . The last woman wakes up, looks down at her bed and says "Oh, sheet."
- Fresh And Easy grocery chain had a commercial that stated "Get your food the F and Easy way." However how it was said clearly sounds like it was saying "Get your food the Effing Easy way". The posters made it even more specific: "It's so F'in Easy!" Maybe that's why they closed down in 2015.
Anime & Manga
- The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, REALLY Love You: Mimimi never uses any profanity, no matter how mild.
- Saiai Kinuhata from A Certain Magical Index. Justified in that while she was undergoing esper training, her mind was coded with Accelerator's thought patterns, who has a penchant for swearing. In her case, her mind automatically censors each swear, so instead of always cursing, she uses "super" or "ultra" as her default adjective.
- The MegaMan NT Warrior manga in the Viz translation.
- Mega Man Hub Style is about to die unless he can pick himself up off the ground and can only mutter "dang blang!" Bass who is simply incensed will preach about experiencing "Hell itself".
- This translation also uses vocabulary like "Pablum," "wanton"...
- The later game translations also had some odd euphemisms such as "Pit Hockey". Even "heck" at least would've been alliterative. Zero: Curses! Dang! Rats!
- Fruits Basket: In certain Internet versions they took out the line "What the fuck?", which they said at least seven times in a row, and put in various other lines. Natsuki Takaya doesn't usually do this, but the translators apparently wanted to make it cleaner.
- Slayers:
- In the anime, "damn," "bastard" and "hell" are thrown around semi-liberally (a given, because "hell" is a part of the name of one Big Bad, Hellmaster Fibrizo), but they never go beyond. The biggest blurb is when the word "bitch" has the opportunity to pop up, but it doesn't, leaving many instances of awkward uses of "you son-of-a...". It is mentioned in an episode of NEXT, but only once and not in the aforementioned context. It's pretty clear that they go far beyond that in the Japanese version, if one knows the local profanity.
- Even though the translated Light Novels series had some censorship, they avert this trope and throw "shit" around frequently.
- Dragon Ball Z: The Funimation dub and the Viz manga have used this trope.
- We hear a brutal tyrant like Frieza saying "Oh my gosh".
- Goku is watching something horrible happen and responds with "Guh...Darn it!" in Sean Schemmel's voice, no less.
- They even went so far as to change the writing on the T-shirts of demons in the afterlife so that instead of Hell (as in the place), they said HFIL, stating it was an acronym for "Home For Infinite Losers."
- "Darn" is said in several places.
- The uncut dubs of DBZ and Dragon Ball Z Kai use both this trope and uncensored swears, often within the same episode. The dub of Dragon Ball Super then turns this trope on its head by almost only using actual swears, with neutered neologisms ("darn", "heck", etc.) being very rare if used at all.
- All of the English Dubs of Dragon Ball omit any swearing whatsoever for the neologisms. It’s especially notable in the Funimation dub DVDs that market themselves as Uncut and Unedited.
- Eyeshield 21: Hiruma's charming nicknames for people and things get this treatment in the Viz editions.
- Soul Eater averts in the Hungarian dub. The teen heroes use a rich vocabulary of swears and profanity that would make even the creators themselves hide under the table, whenever they're seriously pissed. The fact that it's airing after ten PM may have something to do with it.
- In Fullmetal Alchemist, after Al and Ed's battle at the 5th Laboratory, Winry comes to visit Ed at the hospital and tries to force him to drink his milk (which he hates). Al then tells Ed to "Shut up and drink the dumb milk." Entirely in-character, seeing as Al is a very polite young boy trapped inside a giant suit of Animated Armor.
- Hetalia: Axis Powers: Canada instead of swearing, squeaks "Maple hockey!"
- In the Cluster F-Bomb fest that is the dub of Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt, the Daemon sisters' dialogue is far more refined in comparison. Notably, Kneesocks is the only major character that doesn't swear. (Scanty normally doesn't, either, but seeing the Mayor go One-Winged Angel was a bit too much for her to bare.)
- One Piece: In a scene from the 4Kids Dub, we have Dracule Mihawk cut down Zoro in a very broad diagonal stroke to his chest. Then we cut to Luffy who, in turn, screams "DARN YOOOOOOOOOOOU!!!" at Mihawk.
- Molester Man: Downplayed, but Molester notices that Loli actually says "gosh", one of the only times he's heard a girl say that IRL.
Comic Books
- Alt★Hero: Shiloh's reaction to the police car signaling her is "Well, fudgesticks!"
- Several members of the Archer family in Archer & Armstrong speak like this. Even during a battle to the death they won't utter anything stronger than "goshdangit" or "flippin' bullcorn".
- Atomic Robo doesn't swear, tending to make use of more esoteric terms like "horsefeathers!" and "Cheese and Crackers!" Justified, since Robo was created and "grew up" before World War II.
- Batman: The Robins usually used interesting lingo in place of swears, until Tim took up the mantle as he generally just used cuss words instead (though milder ones, like saying "Crap squared"). Damian makes no attempts to avoid cussing either.
- Give 'Em Hell: The literally angelic Celeste refuses to swear, no matter how bad the situation gets or no matter how much Ember tries to egg her on.
- The Irredeemable Ant-Man lampshades and justifies this trope: S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives are trained to say "Blast!" instead of "Damn!" to avoid offending anyone in the field.
- Captain America: The Cap, being traditional American values on legs, never swears, though he sometimes uses this trope.
(Captain America jumps onto an F-15 and smashes the cockpit; understandably, the pilot expresses his surprise)
Pilot: Jesus!
Captain America: Keep flying, son. And watch that potty mouth! - Hitman: The series uses a fair number of minced oaths, including "frigging" and "motherlover." As Tommy is downright mortified after using one in front of Superman in issue #34, the implication seems to be that they're using the full words.
- I Hate Fairyland is filled with Cluster "Fluff" Bombs. You heard that right. Among other swears, "fluff" serves as a cutesy replacement for "fuck", despite its Gorn-filled Sugar Bowl setting. The revival series shows that even after leaving Fairyland, Gert still uses "fluff" instead of the F-word. She claims it's force of habit. In-universe, this is justified with wizards whose job is to magically censor profanity.
- Knights of the Dinner Table usually spells "God" as "Gawd". They also frequently use amusing outburst like "Firk-Ding-Blast!" and "What the SAM FRICK?"
- Luke Cage: Luke promised his Momma he wouldn't swear. He just says things that sound kinda like usual swears, like "Sweet Christmas" and "Holy Spit!". This was averted in his later incarnations (SWEET F**KING CHRISTMAS!), but then was exaggerated in his most recent Heroes for Hire series (where wife Jessica Jones has him control his language after the baby starts cussing in imitation), and this carries over to his missions with Iron Fist.
Cage: This guy is a bad Knick-Knack-Paddy-Whack!
Iron Fist: A bad what? - Madman: The titular character can't bring himself to curse even in the most dire of circumstances.
- No one swears in Marvel Adventures, the all-ages version of the Marvel Universe, but cursing is alluded to...
Captain America: For the record, I didn't say that.
Storm: What did you say?
Captain America: I can't say with ladies present. - "Marvel What-The..." parodies the trope to hell and back, as usual. Executive Meddlers take offense at "Son of Satan" and change the character to "Son of Santa". Hilarity and a hailstorm of bad X-mas puns ensue.
- Nova: Nova never swears. Neither does his dad. "Blue Blazes!" is about the hardest they're willing to go with their profanity.
- The Powerpuff Girls:
- In the story "Smart And Smarter" (Cartoon Network Block Party #59), Blossom alienates her sisters by trying to show how intellectually inferior they are to her. When she asks Buttercup what her motivation for fighting Mojo is, Buttercup replies, "Usually it's to beat the puckey out of him... but right now it's to get you to shut up!!
- In "Spare Tyrant," Princess Morbucks buys her own country and makes herself dictator. When the girls ask what's to keep them from stopping her, they are zapped with a ray of a chemical that neutralizes their powers. Blossom says she'll try to think of something, but in the next panel the girls are in a cage fused with the neutralizing element. All Blossom could say is "Oh, poop."
- Project Superpowers: Hero Killers: Sparky, the Token Good Teammate on the Hero Killers, never swears.
- PS238 has Zodon, an evil genius attending a school for superpowered children. The staff janitor is a technical genius himself though and implants a chip into Zodon which forces him to replace swear words with harmless random words. If he tries to go into a stream of profanity he will begin speaking out the lyrics to show tunes.
- In the 2017 Comic-Book Adaptation of Rocko's Modern Life, when Rocko's Deal with the Devil takes him to hell, there's a "Welcome to Heck" sign with the "ck" being written on a piece of paper that's covering what's likely to be two "l"s. The sign also reads "Mind your manners. This ain't a barn! We got families here!"
- Rogue Trooper uses hell! as its curse of choice. This continued even after 2000 AD started to use proper swearing. In some parts of the world (America specifically), it is still proper swearing (albeit very mild).
- Shazam!/Captain Marvel is, if anything, even milder than Supes himself under most writers, justified in that the Big Red Cheese's alter ego is a kid several years too young to drive.
- The Sensational She-Hulk:
- While falling down in issue #11, She-Hulk utters a string of g-rated "profanities" such as "ear wipe", "dog shingles", "death pokes" and "pig strings".
- Issue #13 features an entire town full of people who talk like this because they've been terrified into being as ludicrously wholesome as possible by an alien-possessed priest.
- Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW):
- Amy drops a child-friendly F-bomb in issue #70 after Belle's detached hand grabs onto her face like a jumping spider.
Amy: (with Demon Head) "So why it'd jumped on my freakin' face, huh?!"
- Amy drops a child-friendly F-bomb in issue #70 after Belle's detached hand grabs onto her face like a jumping spider.
- Spider-Man:
- Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane has its teenage girl protagonists replace relatively mild "Omigod!" with "Omigosh!" whenever they get excited.
- J. Jonah Jameson in most incarnations has an impressive vocabulary of mild swears ranging from "Poppycock" to "What in the dad-blamed Sam Hill?" Although in one comic by Peter David, when he gets repeated notes signed "F.N.S.M." (Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man), he mutters "I hate that F-n' S.M."
- Squadron Supreme: Mark Gruenwald's Justice League pastiche series did this constantly, being released before Marvel began releasing comics without Comics Code approval. The result is a dark and cynical take on the Justice League with no insults harsher than "Son of a fish!"
- Squirrel Girl seems incapable of anything harsher than "Good golly gosh!" During the GLX-Mas Special, she warned the readers that the comic contained inappropriate use of the word "flock." Partly justified because the use of the word "flock" involved Mr. Immortal screaming Flock You!, as a substitute for, you know. Partly because Mr. Immortal was flocking with a flocking gun...
- Super Dinosaur being an all ages series uses this crud all the time.
- Superlópez: ¡Mecachis en la mar! (a family friendly "Holy crap!")
- Superman:
- If Superman utters even the word "hell", you know you've pissed him right off. He's nice and polite enough to avoid curse words, so if you've made him mad enough to start actually swearing at you, you are in trouble. (See Darkseid in The Supergirl from Krypton (2004)).
- Parodied in The Killers of Krypton:
Supergirl: You're a strong, independent young woman. Heck, you're a superhero. Cousin of THE superhero. And he must have rubbed off on you. Why else did I just use the word "heck"?
- Parodied in The Hunt for Reactron when Lois Lane utters "Oh Snap", eliciting an incredulous reaction from Lana Lang. Lois mutters she got it from Jimmy Olsen.
Lois Lane: "Oh Snap![...]"
Lana Lang: "Did you... Did you just say "Oh Snap"?
Lois Lane: I heard Jimmy saying it. - This Is Not My Life (2011): As exploring a tunnel work spreading beneath Stanhope College, several students find a weird flooded chamber, prompting a student to exclaim an unusual euphemism, and another to suggest her to let out a normal swear.
Shirley: "What...the...hay...?"
Student: "What the Hell. You can say Hell, Shirley. They say it on TV."
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: In the early black and white issues, the characters' swearing was limited to heartfelt cries of "Dung!"
- Tintin:
- Tintin himself would use "Great Snakes!" or "Crumbs!"
- As a sailor Captain Haddock's stream of abuse is, if not rude, then certainly inventive. His trademark phrases are "Billions of blue blistering barnacles!" and "Thousands of thundering typhoons!" When particularly angry, "billions of blue blistering barnacles in a thundering typhoon!" is heard. When Hergé originally designed the character, he wanted him to swear, well, like a sailor. However, the publishers wouldn't let him, so he came up with a bunch of creative euphemisms instead. It became one of the Captain's defining and most memorable character traits.
- In The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye, "damn" and "hell" are now considered as passable curses. However "frag" and "scrap" are also thrown in for variety. Most notably though, there is the occasional use of the word "frikking" — it translates to "freaking" which is itself a potential replacement for "fucking". So far Whirl is the only one to have used it to imply that he is particularly foul-mouthed.
- Ultra Magnus is particularly polite, and when he does attempt to curse it's usually via some euphemism from decades past. The closest he's gotten to a real curse word is when he yelled "Screw Getaway!" and them promptly apologized for his language.
- Wonder Woman Vol 1: Etta Candy uses "goldurned" (as a substitute for god dammed) on occasion, though Bobby's "Cataleptic Cats!" exclamation takes the cake.
- World War Hulk had this exchange between The Incredible Hulk and his father-in-law.
General Ross: Hulk! Why won't you die already?!
Hulk: That's your job!
Ross: Not ding-dong likely, you crazy monster! - In an issue of X-Force, Psylocke gets fed up with Marrow swearing constantly, and messes with her brain so that she's saying random words or gibberish instead. But Marrow still thinks she's swearing and doesn't understand why people keep giggling at her.
Marrow: Aw, croutons.
- X-Men: Wolverine, whose vocabulary likely includes a lot of words The Comics Code would have looked askance at, has generally settled on "flaming" as a compromise. He once prepared to fight Sabretooth by announcing it was time to open a can of "kick-butt." Seeing as, in more modern times, "flaming" can refer (often in a derogatory way) to flamboyant homosexuality, the change makes it worse. Instead of being a potty-mouth, now Wolverine sounds like a homophobe.
Comic Strips
- This Doonesbury strip:
Sarah Palin Doll: After all, we're not just the party of "No" - we're the party of "Hell, No!"
My Little Pony: <Gasp!> What did you say?
Sarah Palin Doll: Oops... Sorry, My Little Pony - I meant "Heck, No!"
My Little Pony: Shouldn't that be "Heavens, No"?
Mister Potato Head: Who the hell cares? - Dilbert: Playing with the trope through exaggeration, it features a demonic character, Phil, who is the "Prince of Insufficient Light" and "Supreme Ruler of Heck." Armed with a giant pitch-spoon, he is empowered not to damn people for eternity, but to "darn" them, usually for 15 minutes, or with an annoying, sometimes ironically appropriate, fate. Scott Adams claims he came up with the concept when the syndicate didn't allow him to use Satan as a character in the strip and that he is more pleased with the end result.
- Also, this strip.
- From Scott Adams' dilbertnewsletter:
I received an emotional letter of complaint after a strip in which Dilbert used the expression "jeepers cripes." The writer chastised me for using the Lord's name in vain. I can only pray that the almighty Gosh will not darn me to heck for offending his son, Jeepers.
- In a 1996 strip, Dogbert tells the Pointy-Haired Boss just how unqualified he to evaluate Dilbert's engineering proposal, and concludes by yelling at him: "NEVER QUESTION AN ENGINEER'S OPINION, YOU THUNDERING MORON!" Dilbert reacts in the following panel: "Nicely done, but I wouldn't have said 'thundering.'" Whether this means Dilbert would have preferred milder or stronger language is ambiguous here.
- Also, this
- Calvin and Hobbes:
- Calvin uses minced oaths, like "by golly" or "darn". He states that this is because he doesn't know any swear words.
- In a Christmas comic strip, Calvin's dad stubs his toe and yells, "Slippin'-rippin'-dang-fang-rotten-zarg-barg-a-ding-dong!"
- The Far Side:
- One cartoon has Satan declaring to his minions, "To heck with you! To heck with all of you!" Justified, they are presumably already in hell. The "joke" of that cartoon was, he had overheard them calling him a wimp. Since he wasn't willing to say "hell", he kind of proved them right.
- Subverted in another comic, where a jungle explorer cursing out his colleague manages "curse you to hell" and seems pleased with himself for it.
- The Wizard of Id once had the King tell Sir Rodney to "go to heck."
- In Queen of the Universe, Spaniel Man can't even do punctuation swearing.
- Dan Dare and his friends liked to employ alliterative space-themed curses like "Jumpin' Jets" and "Great Galaxies".
Eastern Animation
- In Kapitan Bomba, Torpedo sounds like this, especially in comparison to the titular character. This is yet another reason for Bomba to accuse him of being homosexual.
Professional Wrestling
- A tell tell sign that Sting is talking, even if you can't see him, is that he doesn't cuss. The closest he comes are "hell" and "pissed off". This persisted even when "Asshole" became a common Crowd Chant.
- Due to being on TBS in prime time on Thanksgiving Night, the worst threat Ric Flair could throw at Nikita Koloff during their Starrcade '86 match was "I'll kick your butt you son of a gun!"
- Kurt Angle during his initial pro wrestling debut for the World Wrestling Federation, during its "Attitude Era" no less, though it would later be averted in TNA.
- Matt Sydal was known for his tirades of G-rated cursing, even in the explicitly "Adults F-N Only" shows of Gateway Championship Wrestling, where profanity otherwise flowed freely. His reasoning was he wanted to do as little as possible to offend anyone who might otherwise buy his products.
- Stevie Richards wanted to enforce this and other forms of censorship during his "Right to Censor" run and succeed when he recruited former porn star Val Venis and former pimp The Godfather, who starting going by "The Good Father". Ivory had already talked in such a manner before and after Right To Censor though, while Venis and Godfather quickly reverted to their former ways after it was done.
- At the Chikara event From Zero to Hero (& Castagnoli), November 12, 2006, Delirious ended Incoherence (himself and Hallowicked)'s promo by parodying Booker T's infamous botched promo from WCW Spring Stampede 97, saying, "Chris Hero, Claudio Castagnoli, we coming for you, n-word!". That is, Delirious actually said "n-word," not the actual word Booker T had mistakenly said nine years earlier.
- CHIKARA's commentators would call Delirious' top rope splash to his opponent's back, which was normally called Shadows Over Hell, "Shadows Over Heck" or "Shadows Over Hades."
- Mary Elizabeth Monroe (Ring of Honor's Kelly Klein) was very reluctant to use any words considered swears and would never initiate them in conversation, in an effort to maintain a "rated G" image.
- The Peacock Party Boy Dalton Castle swears with long outdated swears like "deuce" and "dickens".
- A trait displayed by those who joined Drew Gulak's Campaign For A Better Combat Zone, including Kimber Lee, who around the same time was dropping cluster f bombs in WSU (It Makes Sense in Context, sort of).
- Heidi Lovelace almost always stops her cussing at the word's first letter, even in front of what are supposed to be adult audiences because children could still be watching, d-word! Most commonly with the b-word, which when asked she insists is "broad". So you know it was a big deal when she started cussing at the referee to end a match in Absolute Intense Wrestling as Shayna Baszler destroyed Annie Social.
- Similar goes for Lovelace's Buddy System Tag Team partner Solo Darling. "Cheese And Rice!"
- Pretty much enforced in CHIKARA, since the fans will actually boo wrestlers who curse, as Tommy Dreamer found out at King of Trios 2010 Night III, April 25, 2010. He cut a promo where he praised the CHIKARA wrestlers and said that he wanted to face Dragon Dragon since "that shit was awesome!" The crowd booed him for this and Dreamer apologized, saying, "that stuff was awesome!" The event was held at the former ECW Arena in Philadelphia, where Dreamer made his name, and which had seen its share of Cluster F-Bomb promos.
Puppet Shows
- Fraggle Rock: "Fiddlesticks" is apparently a naughty word to Fraggles, as when Mokey says it in "The Finger of Light", the World's Oldest Fraggle admonishes her for swearing.
- Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock:
- In the episode "The Giggle Gaggle Games", an overwhelmed Mokey says "Gosh" in the manner of a Precision F-Strike and Gobo and Boober express surprise at hearing her, of all Fraggles, say it.
- In the episode "Fraggle Up", Gobo shocks a crowd of Fraggles by remarking "It's heavy duty tutti fruitti!" about the missing radishes situation.
- Notably averted in The Noddy Shop music video "Special", where Johnny Crawfish sings the line "You don't give me heaven, and I'll give you hell". This is downplayed a bit, as the song never appears in the actual show. note
- In The Muppets (2015), Scooter considers "good grief" to be "swearing like a sailor".
Radio
- The very title of That Gosh Darn Hippie Show. It came from an incident where a friend of the host called jokingly called her "the goddamn hippie", which was subsequently bowdlerised for radio suitability before it was adopted as the title of the show.
Stand-Up Comedy
- Tim Hawkins' routine on "Christian Cuss Words" combines a crowd-sourced list of family-friendly swears with a bit of Motor Mouth for extra chuckles.
- Lenny Bruce, while at a show where he was being watched by cops waiting to arrest him for obscenity, replaced the word "cocksucker" with "blahblah." He then proceeded to do the entire routine using this euphemism, somehow making his bowdlerisation seem even ruder (and funnier) than the thing it replaced. This included asking the entire audience "including you cops at the back... have you ever had your blah blahed?"
Theatre
- In Paint Your Wagon, "They Call The Wind Maria" includes the line, "And now I'm lost, so goldurn lost." The same character (followed by others) sings "who gives a damn" in another number with less potential to become a song hit.
- The Odd Couple: Spoofed in the play and the movie version when Oscar complains about a cryptic note that Felix left for him, which was signed "F-U". "'F-U' meant 'Felix Ungar.'"
- Played for laughs in The Book of Mormon. Being Mormons, the missionaries can't swear at all; in I Believe, Elder Price belts "And dang it!" and "By Gosh!". (The Ugandans, by contrast, swear copiously.) Then at the end we have the payoff. Price announces "You know what, guys? Fuck him!"
- From West Side Story, one gol-darned tough street gang:
Here come the Jets, yeah, and we're gonna beat
Every last buggin' gang on the whole buggin' street,
On the whole ever-mother-lovin' street! - In "Without You" from My Fair Lady, Eliza tells Henry to "go to Hartford, Hereford and Hampshire!" (This is actually a Call-Back to Henry's diction exercise about pronouncing aitches.)
- In the play Rain, Sadie Thompson calls the Reverend a "psalm-singing son of a—", ending her sentence in an Angrish scream.
- In Man of La Mancha, Aldonza tells the leering Muleteers, "I spit in the milk of your 'little bird.'" This is a minced rendering of a common Spanish insult for which "spit" is one letter removed from the correct translation.
- In The Music Man, Tommy Djilas frequently says "Jeely Kly." The movie version makes it "Great honk!"
- In The Mikado, Ko-Ko's sarcastic echo of Nanki-Poo's "The flowers that bloom in the spring" features the line: "Oh, bother the flowers that bloom in the spring." (The Captain's "I Am" Song in H.M.S. Pinafore mentions "Bother it" as an acceptably mild form of cursing, in contrast to the "big, big D" which he does later use explicitly.)
- Altar Boyz: Matthew replaces the word hell with H-E double hockey sticks. It's important to note that Mark DOES use the word hell in Rhythm in Me, and the word hell is used many times during Number 918.
Theme Parks
- In Back to the Future: The Ride at Universal Studios, Doc's "Damn. Damn damn!" is changed to "Darn. Darn darn!" in the queue video when Biff cuts the power.
Web Animation
- The Amazing Digital Circus: Surprisingly, Jax is second to Gangle in swearing the least. Notably, even when he's genuinely furious at Gangle and Zooble for putting him in a maid outfit in episode 5, he only shouts "WHAT THE HECK!?" Subverted at the end of Episode 6, where he gets so worked up when arguing with Pomni that he starts shouting out two f-bombs out of sheer anger and exasperation.
- David from Camp Camp plays this very straight.
- David: What the gosh-darn-heck happened here!?
- In the Cartoon Hooligans episode "What If Superman Got Sick?!", when the Justice League starts beating Superman up for peeking into the women's locker room of the JLA headquarters, Green Lantern says "What the frog, Superman!"
- Moxxie from Helluva Boss swears less than the rest of the cast. He usually says "Oh, crumbs" when something bad happens.
- Homestar Runner: The Chapman Brothers purposefully avoid harsh language in because they think "cute flash cartoons shouting obscenities" are a tired cliché. However, they still make hidden references to profanities in some of their work:
- They attribute Strong Bad's popularity to his trademark overuse of the word "crap". "Crap" was almost the site's trademark word for awhile before they got sick of it and stepped it down.
- There is liberal use of "freaking" and "hella" when appropriate.
- Strong Sad said "damn" in one Halloween episode, but it was used in the religious sense ("... and if you answer wrong, you get eternal damnation, but if you answer right you get a Twizzler?").
- One they forgot to remove is in the SBEmail "comic". In the Used 45's box is a copy of Mudhoney's "You Stupid Asshole", which got censored in the DVD release. This is the strongest swear word to appear on the site proper.
- At one point in the DVD commentary of the sbemail "Winter Pool", Strong Bad talks about liking a story about a woman who had a student named "Shithead".
- Played for Laughs in "Cheat Commandos - Commandos in the Classroom": The Cheat Commandos are getting ready to watch "Pony Fights 2", but Gunhaver is concerned that all the swearing will be too much for Reynold to handle. Reynold attempts to prove him wrong, and utterly fails:
Reynold: Oh, I can handle it. Why, I can even swear a cuss myself! Ahem. Diaper biscuits!
- The Brothers Chaps have been getting increasingly creative with this, inventing expressions like "Sweet genius!", "What the sense-make?" and Peacey P habitually calling people "biscuitheads".
- Yahtzee is Playing with a Trope in his Zero Punctuation reviews. What he says is much dirtier than what appears on the screen. His comment on Halo Wars's mission timers was written as "What arbitrary silliness", contrasting with "Bull fucking shit." A rebuttal to Moral Guardians decrying videogames is captioned "No, and I consider your argument misinformed," but he says "No, and go fuck yourself, you ignorant scaremongering cockbags."
- This is used to make a point in his review of Bayonetta 2: "I like my swearing, but in the wrong place it brings down the whole gosh-darn tone. You cunt."
- This is used to make a point in his review of Bayonetta 2
- Pimp Lando has its title character's catchphrase, "What the foo?!?"
- DEATH BATTLE!:
- Invoked for humor by Deadpool in his match against Deathstroke. "Now where is that son of a gun, I'm going to show him what-for, I swea— *gets shot in the head* —OW!" Death Battle (and Deadpool) generally have no problems swearing elsewhere in the video.
- And again by Deadpool in his match against Pinkie Pie. When he notices a army of Pinkie Pie clones rushing towards him, goes "Oh, what the—", then notices the TV-Y7 logo, before finishing off with "-heck".
- Gridiron Heights has Philip Rivers constantly doing this while trying to act tough. He averts this with a Precision F-Strike when attacking a vision of Eli Manning from 2004.
- If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device: While the Emperor is certainly not shy about cursing up a storm under normal circumstances, the vox-hailer equipment used for podcasts has a built-in censor that bleeps out anything rude with an excessively loud truck horn. Thus, to keep up his swearing streak and vent his anger he needs to resort to this instead, which amuses both his Custodians and Rogal Dorn.
- Something About: Parodied in "Something About Donkey Kong Country", where King K. Rool attempts to say "you damned dirty ape!", only for his "damned" to be replaced by a "darn" said by a text-to-speech device that doesn't match the voice from the rest of the sentence. A picture of Kirby shows up on the bottom with the text "Kirbo Says; There will be no swears in my Christian channel!"
Web Videos
- Help Meowt: Mew would come off as rather vulgar if it weren't for the fact that they sprinkle their dialogue with deliberately bowdlerized curses.
Mew: [to Brent Sievers] Good on you for being so gosh darn responsible! We're gonna work out lil tushies off at the gym and make this year a great one!
- In the review for Noitu Love, Hadriex just can't say things like "that Darn army of robots" or "that darn creator" aloud with a straight face.
- From Channel Awesome:
- That Dude in the Suede doesn't use then because he is never angry enough (and possibly because of his religious upbringing).
- Linkara of Atop the Fourth Wall. Downplayed in that he does curse, he just doesn't use the "more colorful four letter words" to prove that he doesn't need them to be funny. He has, however, played around with it a bit by occasionally dropping an F-bomb here and there, though they usually are delivered in the form of Curse Cut Short. His only complete F-bomb comes in The Movie, where he responds to the Big Bad's Motive Rant with "Yeah? Fuck you too!"
- The Angry Video Game Nerd:
- An aversion in the Lester the Unlikely review, but only at the cave stage in the game.
- In his crossover with Captain S, the Nerd was forced to tone down the language due to The New Adventures of Captain S being a G-rated show. Needless to say, it's weird as hell hearing the normally foul-mouthed Nerd saying things like "What a buttload of crud."
- He does get to swear normally at the end of the episode, though it's bleeped out.
- He makes up for his lack of profanity in his next review, within the first sentence.
- An aversion in the Lester the Unlikely
- Ashens does this as he stops himself swearing in his "Sonic Man" (a RoboCop rip-off) toy review. This was due to YouTube becoming much harsher with their monetization-appropriate content rules, although Ashens adds that he doesn't need to swear to make his videos funny. Subverted. Ashens defies thus trope immediately afterwards by describing the toy as a "Mother-fucking piss-faced lump of wanky twat shit."
- "Scarface School Play" demonstrates this trope to a hilarious extreme.
- Several Let's Play members, particularly those not associated with Something Awful, do this. Examples include the Linkara-esque DeceasedCrab, the Badbutt Manchild Sir Ron Lion Heart, and Auto-Tune NBA2K fan Chris Smoove.
- raocow swore a lot more in some of his earlier videos, and still at times lets a swear past when stressed (usually in French), but even when that happens, they're generally not that strong. Any other time, however...
raocow: Oh, pumpernickel.
- Kikoskia often says "Fiddlesticks" and the like. Out of hundreds of videos, he's sworn twice.
- raocow swore a lot more in some of his earlier videos, and still at times lets a swear past when stressed (usually in French), but even when that happens, they're generally not that strong. Any other time, however...
- Stuff You Like's Sursum Ursa, seeing as the show normally carries a PG rating.
- SlimKirby tends to avoid strong swear words. He drops a Precision F-Strike from time to time, but it's a rare occurrence.
- A Very Potter Musical parodies this trope. In the canon of the first musical (set in the "second year" for Hogwarts students), every character swears, our hero even dropping the F-bomb once. However, in the sequel (or really the "prequel," seeing as it's set in the FIRST year of the students at Hogwarts), when Professor Lupin swears, the children cover their ears and gasp until he replaces it with something less obscene.
- Olan Rogers never uses a more vulgar word than "crap", and his videos are much funnier for it.
- This CollegeHumor sketch makes fun of excessive TV re-editing.
- The language on Eat Your Kimchi is kept pretty clean most of the time.
- Egoraptor from Game Grumps has a habit of combining this with genuine swearing.
Egoraptor: What the fucking gosh dang!?
- PeanutButterGamer doesn't use swearing in his videos, he has said he doesn't swear because he doesn't feel he needs to.
- Roahm Mythril has only gotten to "Bastard". Later videos never use the word, and even when the game swears, he will not.
- Parodied in Third Rate Gamer. In the Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers (Capcom) "review", he starts awkwardly shoehorning in G-rated curse words alongside the typical fare, in response to how the The Irate Gamer suddenly started to inconsistently tone down the cursing in his videos.
- This is a mandate whenever Pooh's Adventures tackles a mature movie or TV show. They would censor the "inappropriate content" when it involves language. The other stuff is left alone.
- Darkmindedsith tries to do this for his videos. He claims that he wants to be kid-friendly on his channel.
- Despite the team at Rooster Teeth being able to swear like sailors, there are a number of times where they have averted it.
- Geoff Ramsay will not swear around his daughter and the times where he's on camera with her or doing a Let's Play, he refrains from doing so.
- During their Extra Life '15 livestream, they got Lindsay Jones to read an excerpt from Fifty Shades of Grey as Ruby Rose from RWBY. However, she doesn't like the idea of having her character cuss, thus invokes this trope by having Christian telling Anastasia "I don't make love. I truck. I truck hard."
- Fighting Leaf does not swear at all in his reviews. He tries to be as kid-friendly as possible because of the types of movies he reviews.
- joshscorcher is not very fond of swearing. When he DOES swear, it's usually censored.
- Zig-zagged on The Bowling Otter Show. Both hosts are pretty good at keeping their own language within a clean range, even if the games they play have significantly harsher profanity. But on occasion they'll let a Precision F-Strike slip, usually when startled during a horror game.
- Timothy Mcgladden, who would rather go by the name PK (short for the nonsensical name PksparxxDathotneSS) will always exclaim "YOU SON OF A BISCUIT!" or just "SON OF A BISCUIT!!" rather than cuss. He will also say "You rooney-dooney!" from time to time. In that PK generally wants to keep things family-friendly (and was commented on positively for that in at least one of his videos for showing class), and if he accidentally curses, he will go back and edit it out (at least one time doing so rather humorously with the coin get sound effect from Super Mario Bros. 1) However, his livestreams are not subject to this rule, as people he plays with can let curses fly because he has no control over what they say, and PK himself has been known to let his own tongue slip, especially when somebody really pissed him off by saying something so rude PK directly addressed them by explicitly saying "shut the fuck up".
- rSlash had to start censoring himself with euphemisms in an attempt to keep his videos from being demonetized. It's easy enough with standard swear words, as most of them have a family-friendly substitute. However, more explicit content requires him to get creative. The most common is using "hugging passionately" or variants thereof in place of "sex".
- Dream and his collaborators generally try to keep his main videos clean of profanity, though streams have been known to involve some spicier language. Bad in particular likes to use "muffin" as a curse substitute. Once when killing George in a Manhunt, Dream very clearly almost drops an f-bomb, but manages to morph it into "flipping".
- Meanwhile, over on Dream SMP, while Dream, Technoblade, and especially Bad tend to not swear often, Tommy and Quackity very much do that a lot, which has led to several comedic moments such as Tommy and the rest of Pogtopia trying to scare away Bad by swearing at him.
- Bad also recently started to use "fudge" as another substitute for swearing on the QSMP, as a result of the server having a much more mature atmosphere with several cuss-happy server-mates regularly swearing alongside with the addition of Spanish-, Portuguese-, and French-speaking content creators on of the server.
- The 8-Bit Drummer explicitly avoids cursing on his Twitch streams. This is parodied in a bumper where he explains "alternative swearing", in which any word can sound like a swear with the right inflection.
- However, he used to use the word "shite", believing it to be a euphemism when it was actually a different swear entirely. He dropped this word when his chat pointed it out.
- YouTuber NerdECrafter has lots of cuss-word substitutions, the favorites being "holy carp" and "holy shrimp."
- Action Button: As with his other works, the host, Tim Rogers, avoids swearing on principle, even when he is directly quoting the game he is reviewing. This leads to some rather hilarious moments such as when he calls a Final Fantasy VII enemy a "Heck House". Tim even censored Cyberpunk 2077's profane dialog with the Imp death sound from Doom.
- Implied in FoxTale2614's "GET ACRONIXED" music video. The song uses "LMBO" in place of "LMAO", which seems like a typo, but it likely means "laughing my butt off" instead of the usual "ass".
- In SMPLive, Travis doesn't swear much, if at all, instead opting for words that many would see as more childish. Somewhat downplayed, as Travis isn't above being vulgar in other ways, especially in regards to sexual humor.
- Highcraft:
- Travis doesn't swear, unlike the others.
- All of the captions are censored, replacing swear words with other words that sound similar.
- Textify: In some of their videos from late 2024 to early 2025, the word "fuck" is replaced with "flip", and "hell" replaced with "heck".
- Mukluk: Even if the game Muk is streaming is a higher rating, he does his best to keep the stream PG. In games that don't have voiceovers for the dialogue windows, he simply doesn't read profanity out loud. He's also been known to substitute "mukking" for "fucking", and "skritt" for "shit".
Web Originals
- Cryssi of Diva Dirt got in a fantastic one in one editorial (and note that the website doesn't have a policy against swearing):
"What the H-E-double hockeysticks?"
- Lampshaded/directly quoted in Volume 8 of My Opinions On Every Pokemon Ever.
- Bonesaw of Worm speaks like this, and chides other characters for swearing, which is actually a plot point when she's impersonating Tattletale to an amnesiac Taylor.
- Maggie Holt in Pact is unable to swear, having traded the ability away to a goblin. She gets caught out by this several times during the Toronto arc, which is a sign that all is not as it seems. When she later loses her name and regains the ability to swear, she uses it fairly often.
- In this submission to Not Always Right, an irritated customer switches to saying "poo-poo caca" when he notices that there's a young child standing nearby.
- This is the reason behind the "Let [That Guy] Say Fuck" meme. When a fandom finds out that a character frequently never swears or uses minced oaths, they usually make jokes about the giving that character the chance to launch a Precision F-Strike.
- What, no stinger on this page? Aw ffffiddlesticks!!