History Bowdlerise / RealLife

* Movie fans living in Barbados in the 1980s were treated to newspaper advertisements for ''Film/DoctorDetroit'' with the tagline "He's got five personalities. And they've all got a one-track mind" crudely changed to "[[CompletelyMissingThePoint He's got five lovely women]]. And they've all got a one-track mind." The (literal) scissors came out even further for ''Film/TheBestLittleWhorehouseInTexas'', with one part of the title - no prizes for guessing which - being cut out and replaced with "Fun."

* The subtitles on Netflix seem to censor some of the swearing. For instance "fucking" was changed to "kissing" on an episode of Series/UnitedStatesOfTara

* Before Thomas Bowdler got a reputation one would have refered to this trope as the ''castration'' of stories. This means that the term "bowdlerization" is itself a bowdlerization.

* The big grand way with which a history teacher usually will teach the use of censorship in media is by showing a picture of Vladimir Lenin and/or Leon Trotzky and then show the same picture under the regime of JosephStalin, which will usually show the entire picture, but with the bodies of Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotzky erased from it. This is followed by the line that since Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotzky were controversial figures at that time in that place that the picture without Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotzky would be the one who would get widespread release in Russia, while they would attempt to erase the original from existence, which is what censorship is all about.

* The ''{{Pirates of the Caribbean}}'' ride at DisneyThemeParks suffered this over the years. The Pirate that originally was looking for a young girl whose underthings he snatched was commenting how spry she was -- with her head poking out from the barrel behind him. His lines were toned down, underwear taken away. Then it got changed to the pirate looking for Jack Sparrow.

* The ''{{Pirates of the Caribbean}}'' ride at DisneyThemeParks suffered this over the years. The Pirate that originally was looking for a young girl whose [[UnfortunateImplications underthings he snatched]] was commenting how spry she was -- with her head poking out from the barrel behind him. His lines were toned down, underwear taken away. Then it got changed to the pirate looking for Jack Sparrow.

* The subtitles on Netflix seem to censor some of the swearing. For instance "fucking" was changed to "kissing" on an episode of {{UnitedStatesofTara}}

* Movie fans living in Barbados in the 1980s were treated to newspaper advertisements for ''Film/DoctorDetroit'' with the tagline "He's got five personalities. And they've all got a one-track mind" crudely changed to "[[CompletelyMissingThePoint He's got five lovely women]]. And they've all got a one-track mind." The (literal) scissors came out even further for ''Film/TheBestLittleWhorehouseInTexas'', with one word - no prizes for guessing which - replaced by "Fun."

* Before Thomas Bowdler got a reputation one would have refered to this trope as the ''castration'' of stories. This means that [[{{Irony}} the term "bowdlerization" is itself a bowdlerization]].

* The discontinuation of lingerie for {{Barbie}} dolls in the late 2000s.

** [[UnfortunateImplications So...Barbie now goes commando?]]

* Actor Creator/BenedictCumberbatch invoked this on the fanbase, the [[FanCommunityNickname Cumberbitches.]] After Benedict express some discomfort at that name, his fans, out of respect (and since some of them didn't like calling themselves "bitches" in the first place,) have started using the more benign "Cumberbabes" more and more.

* General of the Armies[[hottip:*:Note the plural; this is technically the American Army's highest rank, held only by Gen. Pershing. The only higher rank, General of the Armies of the United States, note the added words, was invented specifically so they could posthumously promote George Washington so he'd hold a higher rank than any active-duty general.]] John "Black Jack" Pershing, whose original nickname now requires NWordPrivileges.

* After TheSecondGoogleIncident, commands from the advertising that keeps the site afloat mandates that ThisVeryWiki either eliminate trope pages for more sexually explicit works or find new (much less family friendly) sources of funding. A number of works the sexual explicitness of which is debatable (most prominently {{Lolita}}, which has since been restored, and {{It}}, which does feature underage copulation in one scene but otherwise contains little explicit sexual content) have been caught in the mass deletions.

* General of the Armies[[hottip:*:Note the plural; this is technically the American Army's highest rank, though it's never been(nor is it likely to be) held by someone on active duty. It was invented specifically so they could posthumously promote George Motherfucking Washington so he'd hold a higher rank than any active-duty general.]] John "Black Jack" Pershing, whose original nickname now requires NWordPrivileges.

* Bowdler's reasons for editing Shakespeare bear examination. It was once common for well-bred women and girls not to be allowed to read Shakespeare (or any secular author, for that matter), as it was thought that exposure to robust prose would render a lady "coarse" and "unfeminine". Bowdler's edited versions were the first serious non-religious fiction many young women were allowed to read. Although Bowdler hoped that his target market would eventually be permitted to read Shakespeare unfettered, it was only until the 1930s that daughters of noble families were generally allowed full access to the Bard's works.

* After TheSecondGoogleIncident, commands from the advertising that keeps the site afloat mandates that ThisVeryWiki either eliminate trope pages for more sexually explicit works or find new (much less family friendly) sources of funding. A number of works the sexual explicitness of which is debatable (most prominently {{Lolita}}, which has since been restored) have been caught in the mass deletions.

** Ronald Reagan, after finally pushing legislation through Congress permitting the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US/Saudi_AWACS_Sale sale of AWACS to Saudi Arabia]] (the Congress and the pro-israeli lobby were strongly against it), said, "Thank God!" according to his Deputy Chief of Staff. What he actually said, according to someone in the room, seems more in line with his personality: "I feel like I've just crapped a pineapple."

* A similar example: a cardinal once had plaster leaves placed over the genitals of a collection of naked Roman statues in a musesum. In order to make them fit, he actually had to go through the museum and chisel of parts of their penises.

* When Japan was originally opened to the West, there came a serious interest among Western intelligentsia for Japanese literature and mythology. What they got didn't always sit well with them--in particular, the "Kojiki", perhaps the most important collection of Shinto stories. The way in which Izanagi and Izanami created the gods and islands of Japan [[spoiler:(sex)]] was far too vulgar for the Victorian audience, and was excised from the first English-language translations.

* An unacknowledged, but widespread, term used off-the-record by biologists to describe otherwise-monogamous birds which engage in covert extra-pair copulation, or male animals (salmon, cuttlefish, etc) that use deceptive coloration and behavior to approach females without the dominant male noticing them, is "[[spoiler:sneaky fuckers]]". Not something you'd ever see in a ''Nature'' article, but notations of "SF" turn up in a lot of field notes.

* A rather funny one from the UK, a council in [[OopNorth Yorkshire]] attempted to rename a local land mark from ''Tickle Cock'' to the rather less funny Tittle Cott and were [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome forced to change it back]] by the Elderly residents committee (usually the [[MoralGuardians demographic that forces]] these changes). Read the story [[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/7263162/Tickle-Cock-Bridge-returned-to-original-name-after-row.html here]].