Gosh Dang It / Video Games

• The Borderlands Series.
  • Played Straight with Angel from Borderlands 2. Despite being in her late teens/early adulthood, she is reluctant to swear and is quick to correct herself if she lets a cuss word slip. This is mostly because her father, Handsome Jack, doesn't really like it. She later proceeds to defy this trope as just before she dies, she calls him an asshole.
  • Enforced with Mr Torgue as he can swear. But whenever he does, it's constantly bleeped out
    THE TORGUE SHAREHOLDERS WIRED MY VOICEBOX WITH A DIGITAL CENSOR SO I CAN'T SAY STUFF LIKE SH*T, C*CK, OR P*SSY-F*CKIN' D*CKBALLS!! THAT'S LIKE HALF MY F*CKIN' VOCABULARY!! IT'S GODDAMN BULLSH*T!!
• Guild Wars Nightfall has one mission: Drakes on the Plain. A lot of people think it's worth it just for this line:
  Koss: Enough is enough! I have had it with these Balthazar-blasted drakes on this Balthazar-blasted plain!
• Hiveswap: Despite being surrounded by Trolls who throw around words like "cunt" and "slut" like "hellos" and "goodbyes", Joey herself is fairly averse to any cursing. To the point that when quoting other characters, she usually replaces the curse words to more G rated verbage, such as saying "poop" instead of "shit".
• The Inazuma Eleven games, which is aimed at children, have some generic lines of dialogue for fail scenarios (such as letting in an opponent goal) where players use minced oaths. Commonly they are variations on things such as, "Blast it!", "They're making it heck for us!", and "Darn you!".
  • Notably subverted within the narrative dialogue for Inazuma Eleven 3, and strikingly so for a franchise that is supposedly aimed at children:
  Jude: Dark...Damn you!
• In the first Splatoon, at the end of the "Callie vs. Marie" Splatfest, Marie won and she sprouts "Holy Carp" as her reaction.
• In Skullgirls, Annie, Girl of The Stars, says in one of Beowulf's Story Mode scenes "God dam- dang it!" Justified as she's the lead actress in a kid's show. Gotta set a good example! Her own story mode shows that she literally can't swear due to the wish that gave her eternal youth.
• In Noitu Love, the evil robot hordes are called "Grinning Darns". Played for Laughs in that members of the Darn Army have no problem using slightly more severe curse words, the army itself is created by Dr. Darnicus Damnation, and one enemy type is a zombie enemy called "Darn Piece Of Crap."
• Parodied in The Mark when the two player characters, Steve and Austin, finds out the nukes are active.
  Steve: You're shitting me!
  Austin: I fertilize you not. Same missile you and Sandy inspected a few years back...
• In Mega Man X: Command Mission
  • X yells "Ooooooh Shoot!" when he's critically hit.
  • Massimo's curse is cut short in a cut scene:
    Massimo: Feeble Massimo? Grrrrrrrrrrrr! You sunnova— (That's how it was spelled in the subtitles)
• Earthworm Jim villain Evil the Cat lived on Planet Heck, where he unleashed Cool and Unusual Punishment (like banging your shins on table corners and going to the DMV office) upon The Darned.
• The Monkey Island series:
  • There's a spoofing of this tendency by referring to the once-again-resurrected LeChuck as a "Zombie Demon Ghost Pirate From Heck" in the third and fourth games. This is purely for the Rule of Funny because they're clearly allowed to use the word ("Alright then, 'ROLL! ROLL through the gates of hell.' Must you take the fun of out everything?").
  • You can also make Guybrush do this in Escape from Monkey Island if you have him examine a "No Cursing" sign in a school.
  "Fiddle-faddle!"
  "Watch your mouth, young man!"
  "Monkey knuckles!"
  "Watch your mouth, young man!"
  • Averted in Act III when Guybrush tells Herman Toothrot, "How do I get off this [bleep] island?"
• Bionic Commando (1988):
  • In one of the "neutral zones", talking to a certain enemy agent would result in him telling you to "Get the heck out of here, you nerd!"
  • It's also averted where Master D mentions the word "damn", and since this is followed by a gory animation of you shooting him in the face, it gives the impression that the creators of this scene don't care about censors.
• Secret of Mana - The original English SNES version translated hellhounds as "heck hounds" even though 'hell' wasn't being used as a swear word. Sword of Mana for the GBA set its tolerance for swears several levels below "darn." This leads to a certain character's death resulting in the hero screaming "Blaaaast iiittt!!!" at the top of his lungs.
• In the first Devil May Cry title, Dante tells a boss to "flock off". It sure sounds like a tame version of a certain other expletive that starts with "f" and ends with "ck". On the other hand, he just could have been punny, since said boss is a giant bird.
• Bayonetta uses "Flock off, feather-face!" line. It's a rare occurrence considering the number of times the F-bomb has been dropped by that point, and throughout the rest of the game. Like Dante, however, her "flock off" also has some basis, namely, her chief enemies are angels who often have avian wings.
• Super Smash Bros., a family-friendly Mascot Fighter series, uses this trope quite a bit, mostly in trophy descriptions. In terms of in-game dialogue, two M-rated characters - Colonel Roy Campbell and Bayonetta - were hit with minor instances of this trope, due to their swearing in their home series; the Colonel uses the word "heck" in a codec conversation, and Bayonetta's "Don't fuck with a witch" line is censored as "Don't mess with a witch". Ironically, downloading Bayonetta also adds a notable aversion of this trope to the game, with Rodin's trophy mentioning his bar/shop, "Gates of Hell". Also, the remix of the DK Rap from Donkey Kong 64 changes the line "this Kong's one hell of a guy" to "one heck of a guy."
• Fire Emblem:
  • Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance - Seeing as the game's plot involved genocide, racism, and a touch of implied homosexual lust, it seems odd that characters would use "dang" and "crud", when the line was very clearly written to use "damn" and "crap". It is particularly jarring when the commander, in danger of being slaughtered along with his friends and family at the hands of the villain, growls "dang it!". However, the word "damned" is actually used in one instance, and if Ike dies on the last chapter, he also says "damn". The character Marcia, who under most circumstances would probably be a Madam Swears A Lot, pretty much runs with this idea as if the translators were aware and making fun of this fact, with the Unusual Euphemisms she has used as expletives including, but not being limited to: "crackers", "chestnuts", "mutton chops", "horsemeat", "sponge-head", "jerky", and "barnacles". This is also parodied in one line completely original to the localization, in which a random NPC soldier shouts "Eat rock!", only to start giggling and ask if his joke was clever.
  • Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn averts much of its predecessor's use of this trope by using "damn" instead of "dang". However, the game still uses Unusual Euphemisms from time to time, e.g. the guard after the second mission that shouts "Moldy onions! Where'd they go?!".
  • On a fan-translation note, Sigurd's final words in Genealogy of the Holy War/Seisen no Keifu have (in)famously been translated as "Arvis! You dastard!". Naturally, this line has enjoyed abundant circulation as Memetic Mutation, to the point that starting from Fire Emblem: Awakening, 'dastard' has officially became the go-to word to replace 'bastard'.
  • Many of the games in the series overall somewhat famously make common usage of archaic words in their English releases, including slurs, like "cur", "blamed", "dastard", and "mooncalf", which almost always induce some degree of Memetic Mutation due to how utterly silly or strange and unfamiliar they sound in modern times. Some of the more famous examples include the aforementioned "You dastard!", and Eliwood of all people shouting "Craven cur!" at a boss. Considering the fantasy medieval sitting, they're actually rather appropriate, and most fans find it quite charming.
  • In Blazing Blade, Hector, one of the three main characters of the game, uses "blast!" quite noticeably often; considering his character, it wouldn't be a stretch to assume that if this weren't an E-rated game, he would be throwing out swears liberally.
  • In Fire Emblem: Awakening it's not uncommon to see strange half-vulgarities uttered by characters, such as Sumia's "pegasus poop" (or, as uttered by Frederik not even a few lines into the first chapter, "pegasus dung"), and the return of the infamous "dastard". However, minor swears such as "damn", "hell" and "crap" are not uncommon. Sully in particular, unlike Marcia before her, constantly uses as many actual swears at the highest intensity the T rating will allow her to, outright saying "bastard" quite a few times; including her voiced love confession cutscene if Robin S-supports her.
  • Fire Emblem Fates has Kiragi, Takumi's (possible) son. While all his critical hit lines are childish and funny, this one takes the cake.
  Kiragi: War is heck!
• In God Hand, demonic guitarist Ravel yells "Rock off!" after getting trashed.
• Space Quest:
  • In Space Quest IV: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers, Roger is held captive by the Latex Babes of Estros.
  Roger: "Let me go, b-buh-wuh... witch!"
  • In Space Quest VI: Roger Wilco in the Spinal Frontier, the Narrator complains that the censors made him say a line this way:
  "You were supposed to see Quazar Live in Concrete with Beatrice. Of course, that was before you got busted back down to Janitor and assigned to this dad-blasted heckhole of a mother-talking spaceship!"
• Star Fox 64: Only characters like the brash Falco ever went as far as "heck". Assault had more swearing, but just as minced.
  Fox McCloud: [after Pigma escapes with the Aparoid Core Memory they've been trying to get] Stop! Pigma! [Beat] Dang! [kicks the ground]
• Final Fantasy:
  • Final Fantasy IX - Zidane is prone to using 'heck' a lot in the English translation.
  • Final Fantasy X has a wonderful example. Rikku has just had her hometown blown up and The Team is flying away in an airship. Wakka tries to comfort her by saying 'Boom! Like happy festival fireworks, ya?'. Rikku says 'You can cram your happy festival, ya big meanie!'
  • Final Fantasy X-2 has its share of swearing; "ass", "damn", "bastard", from everyone except Yuna. The closest she gets to swearing is, "Oh, poopie". Rikku scolds her for saying something so vulgar. Yuna was copying Rikku! In Kingdom Hearts II, Yuna gets even more polite: "Oh, foofie".
  • Final Fantasy Type-0 - Mostly averted, since it's the only M-rated game in the franchise. There are plenty of "damns" and "hells" from various characters. But in a few jarring scenes, the word "frick" is used to replace all instances that "fuck" could be used.
    Aria: You frickers just got done telling me that I could 'speak freely'? Why don't you try keeping your damn word, frickin' cadets!
• Friday Night Funkin' community uses "funkin' " as the f-word in situations that call for it.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • In Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days, after your first (and only) mission with Larxene, when you talk to Demyx, he says "Man, why's Larxene gotta be such a witch all the time?" We all know what he meant at that point, but apparently Demyx is so lazy, he can't even bother to swear.
  • It's averted in the Game Boy Advance version of Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories where Axel says "It's about time you gave me one hell of a show!"
• Spyro the Dragon: The series has these expressions. Such as Moneybags's gem after you chase him down: "Drat! *pant pant* Double drat! *pant pant* Drat drat drat drat drat drat!"
• Initially, most of the classes in Team Fortress 2 did not swear very much in-game, at most using "damn" and "hell" ^note Which is quite appropriate, given that the game is both set in the '60s and utilizes several '60s media tropes (such as Film Noir for the Spy). The Pyro (as far as we know) and Medic still do not swear. Class updates have provided at one line for the other classes in which they swear, usually some form of "ass" or "son of a bitch." Some class-specific examples:
  • The Engineer used to be notable for going on G-rated blue streaks involving words like "damn it", "dagnabit" or other similarly mild phrases in keeping with his educated Southern Gentleman personality. In Meet the Engineer, he comes up with euphemisms like "structurally superfluous new behind" and "motherhubbard." After his update, he started swearing for real ("I'm wolverine mean, you son of a bitch!" "I just beat on your sneaky ass like a mule, boy!").
  • In contrast, the Scout has always been foul-mouthed, making liberal use of "ass" and "dumbass" even before the class updates. Even though he usually says "freakin'" or "frickin'" in-game, he uses "fucking'" in Meet the Scout and Meet the Pyro (although censored).
  • The Spy, generally, didn't swear except for one instance of "shit" (in French). He's become more foulmouthed after his update, and also uses "fuck" in Meet the Spy (censored like in Meet the Scout).
  • The only class who has used curse words from the beginning is the Sniper who, in keeping with his stereotypical, vulgar, impolite, knife-wielding behaviour, frequently used swear words such as 'wanker' and 'piss' even pre-update.
  • The worst the Medic has called anyone is "Dumpkoff", which translates to "Stupid Head".
• Wolfenstein: The New Order has Probst Wyatt III, the New Meat soldier who joins B.J. in his raid on Deathshead's compound. Throughout the entire game and the sequel, he goes out of his way to avoid cussing. In his appearances in the series, he only ever swears once.
  "Leave him alone, you damn ugly fuck!"
• In Darkest of Days, your CO/buddy Dexter breaks out the following whilst you flee from a German Prison:
  "Time to make like shepherds and get the flock outta here!"
• In EarthBound (1994), a few of the Happy-Happy Cultists do this when engaged. One of them gives you the curse "Don't go to heaven!"
• Mass Effect's: Depending on how you've role-played Commander Shepard, s/he can be a hard-bitten ruthless mass-murderer, but will keep their dialogue PG. Squadmembers, on the other hand, have no restrictions whatsoever. Shepard is a Commander after all. In the sequel s/he and everyone else got more liberal with their language they were dealing with a lot of criminal scumbags, and Udina. Guys like Anderson were still quite clean about their language.
  • In Mass Effect 3, Jack (provided she survived the previous game) becomes an instructor at Grissom Academy. In order to maintain a visage of professionalism, she's had to tone down her cussing quite a bit. Even she has her limits, though.
  Joker: What, does she have a swear jar? I bet we could empty that out and have enough to buy a new cruiser!
  Jack: ...hey, kids, cover your ears. Hey, Joker! F[loading screen]
• Rome: Total War measured your popularity. One was, "When a plebeian greets you on the street, the second word is usually 'off'."
• In many SNK games, the English translators tend to use "Hades" instead of "Hell" even in the Samurai Shodown series with Far Eastern warriors. They should not have any knowledge of Greek mythology whatsoever. By the same token, they shouldn't have any knowledge of Abrahamic religions either.
  The King of Fighters: Rugal says, "Even with my new power, I lost. What? My body...????? No... to meet such a fate! But I'll be back... you jerks!"
• Chrono Cross: Kidd uses "bugger" liberally and in place of "ass" as in "I'll kick your ass so hard you'll hit the moon!" she uses "arse" instead.
• Command & Conquer is almost completely swear-free but in Red Alert 2, the occasional "Sam-hill" slips in courtesy of Carville.
• In the 1st Degree presents Inspector Looper, who tries very hard not to swear. When Ruby put a Lampshade Hanging on it, Looper had to explain that her tyrant of a mother told her to stop swearing. Then she says "And I don't want any crap this time" to Tobin when she was interviewing Tobin. Does "crap" count as a minced oath or not?
• Call of Duty: United Offensive is an odd example of taking an already mild instance and further "G-rating" it.
  Sgt. Moody: "Ender, I'd find that funny if I wasn't freezing my can off!"
• The XBLA re-release of Guardian Heroes features such gems as "Holy schnitzel", "Mother bucket", and "Son of a cyclops".
• Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War has P.J. shout "DANG IT!!" just before he gets shot down. Unusually for this trope, he sounds genuinely furious, and this is the only time P.J. really loses his cool.
• Drippy in Ni no Kuni has quite the obsession with the word "flipping," which he uses extensively in the same ways one would vigorously use that other word that starts with F. "En flipping garde!"
• One of the courses in SSX On Tour is called Son of a Birch (although it can be argued that for snowboarders birch trees are just as bad, especially running into them in game and real life).
• Conker's Bad Fur Day apparently wasn't allowed to use the F-word, despite the game being rated M, and tries to work around it by having a sign reading "FECK OFF CROWS" and a Terminator-like killer robot choosing to say "buff you, asshole" over "f*** you, scum" (asterisks sic).
• Used in the chapter 28 of Criminal Case: Pacific Bay where one of the murder suspects call the victim a "gosh darn motherfudger" in place of "goddamn motherfucker".
• Time Crisis 3 contains a hilarious instance where your partner says "F—!" One might think it's a Curse Cut Short from reading it here, but no; she really does yell out the letter F. There's also numerous grunts in part 2 who holler "Shucks!" when hit by gunfire and not in a pained way, either, making it sound as though they're embarrassed to have been shot.
• Grand Theft Auto (Classic) had "screw" in place of "fuck". A cheat code allowed for the dialogue to be replaced with more traditional swearing.
• Lampshaded in LEGO Marvel Super Heroes: one sidequest involves some snakes on the helicarrier. The agent who gives it to you says that Director Fury wants the snakes off this goshdarn helicarrier. He then says, "I'm paraphrasing".
• MacCready in Fallout 4 has a habit of avoiding swearwords or substituting them for another word ("Those assho—those idiots...") due to a promise he made to his son. This is in stark contrast to the foul-mouthed brat that he was in Fallout 3. The only time he does actually swear is if you piss him off enough to leave you.
• Averted in Mega Man & Bass, in which Bass refers to Proto Man as a "prick".
• Hitman (2016): Guards will occasionally say "What in the fargly HE double hockey sticks is that doing there?" when they encounter a suspicious object.
• In Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, at the beginning the protagonist gets attacked by Pokémon. When Professor Kukui questions them on it, one of the replies is "Scared spitless".
• In Persona 5, Ryuji will often substitute "fuck" with "eff". This is hilariously jarring since he's a Sir Swears-a-Lot who says curse words like "asshole", "shit", or "goddamn" a lot. To make it worse, he does say "fuck", but only in unvoiced dialogues. And not to mention, Kaneshiro has one of his goons in the car actually say "fuck" fully voiced.
  • Which is why the one time he said "fuck" voiced in Persona 5 Strikers such a special moment.
• Invoked in Town of Salem. The game's word blacklist intentionally changes things to make the characters say "milder" and "Puritan"-like swears whenever a bad word is uttered. While it can be turned off, most people find it hilarious and part of the charm.
• Not for Broadcast: In the Telethon level, what sounded like mild profanity in today's modern times such as "fart", "crap", "pervert", "baloney", and "fudge" is strictly taboo as it was in The '50s, and you have to make it enact the "Censored for Comedy" with the censor button.
• Clementine in The Walking Dead:
  • If Lee reins in his language around Clementine in the first season, she talks like this in the second.
  • Averted in Season 2 Episode 2. No matter what you do, Clementine will cuss at least once. Given that she's now spent years surrounded by adults who tend to cuss like sailors around her, this shouldn't be that surprising.
  • Back to using substitute swear words in Season 2 Episode 3. (She says "Dang it!" If Troy knocked her out with his rifle.) It's possible the previous unavoidable instance merely "slipped out" on accident due to being surprised by a zombie coming up on her.
  • Averted in Season Three, where Clementine, now more mature and hardened, cusses like a sailor.
  • Season 4 can have her pass this trait on to AJ.
• Wizard101: King Thermidor complains about being trapped by "the dratted eels."
• Baba is You: The character BADBAD is "allowed to say darn three times a day".
• Xenoblade Chronicles 3: The characters will often say “snuff” or “spark” to substitute for swear words.
• Brain Guzzlers From Beyond: Parodied throughout. Characters use expressions like "Holy cow!", "Oh my gosh!", and "Jeepers, what a pickle!", no matter how horrible the stuff they're witnessing is. Double subverted when you get the chance to "actually say the F word" because you're so shocked: that word being "FIDDLESTICKS!"

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