Turns out the magic words are ****, ***, and *****.
Eleanor: I mean, somebody royally forked up. ...Somebody...forked up. Why can't I say "fork"?
Chidi: If you're trying to curse, you can't here. I guess a lot of people in this neighborhood don't like it, so it's prohibited.
Eleanor: That's bullshirt.
Chidi: If you're trying to curse, you can't here. I guess a lot of people in this neighborhood don't like it, so it's prohibited.
Eleanor: That's bullshirt.
You've had a terrible day, and you just want to forking swear a little to let off some steam. Wait, what? You know you just tried to say the f-word, but for some reason, it came out as "fork". Holy forking shirt, this is annoying. What the fork is happening?
When you find yourself in this place, you are unable to curse, no matter how hard you try. Something in the surrounding environment is magically censoring your ability to swear — the second the words leave your mouth, they're somehow instantly replaced with less offensive equivalents, bleeped out, overridden with silly sound effects, or simply silenced altogether.
A sub-trope of Curse of Babel and Enslaved Tongue, limited to swears instead of impeding conversation entirely. When this trope prevents someone from releasing a properly scathing insult, they might end up calling their target a Big, Stupid Doodoo-Head. Related tropes include Gosh Dang It to Heck!, where 'polite' swears are substituted for explicit ones, Narrative Profanity Filter, where curse words are described indirectly, and Curse Cut Short, where someone does start to curse, but doesn't get the whole word out. Can invoke Cluster Bleep-Bomb, but usually cannot invoke Cluster F-Bomb.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Comic Books
- I Hate Fairyland: Gert can't get out a fluffer-lovin' swear due to some magical anti-swearing property of Fairyland, though this is never remarked upon. It only comes to our attention once she escapes. Untold Tales revealed that there was a group of mages in Fairyland whose sole task was to maintain an enchantment to filter profanity into "cutesy crap."
Fan Works
- The Bridge: Destroyah discovers (upon accidentally dividing herself into a bunch of babies) that young Equestrians have a natural filter which prevents them from swearing. Which prompts her to furiously shout "FUUUDGE THIS BODY!!"
- The Conversion Bureau: Depending on the Writer, some continuities make newfoals unable to swear due to the effects of the ponification serum and only capable of using childish insults. In The Conversion Bureau: The Other Side of the Spectrum, the PHL take advantage of this and use obscene phrases for their passwords like "Fuck that Solar Bitch" and "Celestia is a cock loving whore" to prevent newfoals from being able to say them.
- ∞:∞: In the world of The Muppets, everyone is incapable of swearing, and when they do there's an actual bomb effect going off to hide the swear. Ienzo takes advantage of this to drop literal F-Bombs.
- Any character that becomes one of I Was a Middle-Aged Weretoon's titular creatures has their swearing censored by Pizza Tower's taunt sound effect.
- The Many Quirks of Phantom Thievery: While in the Metaverse, Futaba can use her Persona's hacking powers to replace the words her teammates say with other words. She uses this as a Gag Censor - though she can apply it to any word, and not just swearing.
- Midoriya Izuku. Quirk: Cuteness
: Izuku's Cuteness Quirk prevents him from doing anything that would not be considered cute, which also means he is unable to swear. When he tries to say "fuck", little pink and red hearts come out of his mouth.
Film — Animated
- Drawn Together: In The Movie, the characters discovering that the omnipresent censor they'd been used tonote was now absent, allowing them to swear and act as depraved as they wished, is what ultimately leads them to discover that their show has been cancelled, kicking off the plot.
Film — Live-Action
- Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: Julie cusses out Scott for being irresponsible and dating Ramona, despite being warned not to. Each swear, however, is bleeped out with a black box over her mouth. Lampshaded, as Scott asks how she does that with her mouth.
- Teen Beach Movie: Alluded to in the second film. During the song "Silver Screen", Brady and Mack are telling Leia and Tanner about all the benefits of living in their movie universe rather than the real world, one of which includes automatically-bleeped swear words. As the first movie made it clear that there is some sort of magic going on to make things conform to the movie's reality, it's implied that this is literally the case for characters in the movieverse.
Literature
- Mythic Misadventures: Alcestis is cursed to only be able to swear in fruit names. This allows the author to write a character who is both comedically foul-mouthed and PG-friendly.
- Pact: Maggie Holt traded away her ability to swear in order to gain the knowledge to bind superior goblins. As a result, she's stuck using G or PG-rated euphemisms instead.
- The Wish Giver: Polly wishes to be popular, but has a habit of gossiping about other children behind their backs. The wish causes her to start croaking like a frog whenever she says something rude about someone.
Live-Action TV
- The Good Place: Anyone who attempts to curse in The Good Place will find themselves saying words like "fork," "shirt," and "son of a bench." Late into Season 3, when Michael and the humans escape the afterlife's accounting department through a mail delivery chute, Eleanor tries to say "Where the fuck are we?" and it comes out as "Where the fork are we?", tipping her off that they're in the real Good Place.
- Legends of Tomorrow: When the heroes find themselves on the reality show from hell (literally), the censor bleeps out any reference to God or Christianity, as shown when Gwyn attempts to say grace at dinner.
Video Games
- Borderlands: Mr. Torgue from Borderlands 2, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!, and Borderlands 3 has a digital censor in his voice box that automatically censors his swearwords with a Sound-Effect Bleep.
Torgue: LOTTA PEOPLE BEEN ASKING ME WHY MY VOICE BEEPS ALL THE F*CKIN TIME. 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 HALF MY F*CKIN' VOCABULARY, IT'S GODDAMN BULLSH*T.
- Guardians of the Galaxy (2021): Rocket and Star-Lord try to curse each other out in an alien prison, only for each of their curses to be replaced by the words "woof" and "bark." It turns out momentarily that they're actually in some sort of trance created by the telepathic dog Cosmo.
- Saints Row 4: One of the first indications to the Boss that something is wrong when they awaken in a 50s-styled Steelport is when they see a glitch in the Simulation and utter an explicative only for it to be bleeped out (as in the word is literally replaced with BLEEP), which causes the simulated people to turn on the Boss. Later on, when the Boss has to return to the same scenario to rescue Kinzie, they know they've successfully broken her free when they can swear again.
Boss: What the *BLEEP*...
Cop: We don't use that kind of language here in Steelport.Boss: Kinzie, let's get the fuck out of here!Matt Miller: Hey, you swore! - Sam & Max: Freelance Police: One department of hell is in charge of censoring everyone's speech. This being a point-and-click adventure game, messing with the list of censored words is a puzzle.
Web Animation
- The Amazing Digital Circus: Since the titular setting is for all ages, all swears in the simulation are bleeped out with wacky cartoon sound effects, as Pomni quickly discovers. This also applies to rude gestures, as shown when Zooble flips the bird.
- Best Fiends: Howie has a very bad cursing problem, and for the sake of Kwincy, he has the ability to self-censor himself. This means a lot of censor bleeps in his vocabularity.
Webcomics
- Erfworld: Erfworld magically censors profanity. When Parson, who is from Earth, tries swearing, it comes out as "boop".
Parson: What the boop is going on? Wait...what is this "booping" boop? I can't say "boop?"
- Forever After: Robin swears a lot in the first chapter but winds up in the G-rated land Forever After, which turns her swears into kid-friendly words like "folk", "elf", "lamb", and "wish". When she tries Flipping the Bird instead, a bird flies in and obscures her hand from view.
- PS238: Zodon, a foul-mouthed kid genius, has a "Barry Ween chip" that censors his swearing. Individual swearwords are replaced by random words, long rants by show tunes.
- Skin Horse: Nick, a Hikikomori turned helicopter, also has a profanity filter between his brain tank and the chopper's speakers. It's also adaptive — he can swear in foreign languages or use terms that specific groups find offensive (in fact, the filter itself can do the latter via unfortunate choices of replacement words), but if he keeps doing so then it figures it out and starts censoring them.
Web Videos
- In Scootertrix the Abridged, the show's Editor is a recurring character, and mostly uses his editing powers to keep the ratings low. Usually he does this by ending the scene mid-curse, so the characters don't even notice they're being censored. But if the characters cuss enough that he can't edit around that, he will just bleep them out—and they definitely notice then.
Pinkie Pie: Whoa! What was that?Rainbow Dash: I don't know! I just said [bleep] and— It did it again!Pinkie: Oh my god! You got bleeped!Rainbow: Bleeped? Like, censored bleeped? How?Pinkie: Oh my god, that's hilarious! I've never seen that done before!Rainbow: Can you not say [bleep] here?Pinkie: Apparently not!
- Sword Art Online Abridged: Kirito notices shortly after logging into Alfheim Online that his swearing is being censored into non-offensive language. He tries to ask Leafa about it, and she gives a Hand Wave that there's a magical spell cast on the land that prevents swearing. When Kirito presses her further for an actual explanation, she finally breaks character and just tells him that, as a kids' game, Alfheim Online has a profanity filter.
Western Animation
- The Amazing World of Gumball: In the episode "The Safety", Darwin somehow is able to put a Magical Profanity Filter on the show's entire universe (on the grounds that "words can hurt"). However, he sets it so strict that even Gosh Darn It to Heck! is censored, and Darwin himself has to resort to pictures showing up on the screen to call Gumball a "mother-forking-ass-clown..."
- Holy motherforking shirtballs. You guys, don't you get it!? This is the Bad Place!
