15 Cartoon Episodes So Controversial They Were Banned

Not every banned cartoon episode on this banned list is even too controversial. Sure, some are. At their best, cartoons - like Professor Frink on The Simpsons - make us laugh and make us think. At their worst, they can inspire angry people to riot and kill. That's rare, though. Some of these censored episodes offended the very religious, some are hideously stereotypical in the nastiest way, while others have transgressions that are minor by today's standards. Many of these are from controversial shows, the kind you'd expect to be on here for their deliberately provocative nature, but certainly not all.

The list to one episode per show, or else this could have been entirely filled with incendiary South Park episodes or installments of  Beavis and Butt-head and Family Guy that kicked up dust and were pulled from the air. Those titans of toon trash-talk get their due, but they're far from the only shows to get episodes yanked, rejiggered, and in some cases never restored.

While the primary purpose of this South Park episode is to spoof street magician David Blaine, its band remains infamous, no matter how innocuous it was at the time.

The joke was that Blaine had become such a cult figure he had developed a religion around his tricks, and in order to counter his power, the South Park kids called on an alliance of deities that parodied the Super Friends, among them Jesus, Buddha, Joseph Smith, and a useless Aquaman-like member named Sea Man.

The attacks on September 11th, 2001, happened two months later. A few years after that, with the publication of the infamous Danish cartoons in 2005, the world would become aware that some Islamic fundamentalists consider depictions of Muhammed punishable by death. So while the animated version of the prophet of Islam in this episode is a heroic figure with the power of fire, the episode no longer airs in reruns and has been yanked from the online archive for fear of terrorist retribution, and is one of the three episodes (the other two being "200" and "201," both of which contain callbacks to it) that are not available on Hulu.

When you hear the name "Weinstein" followed by the word "banned," the natural assumption may be to assume that former Miramax movie mogul Harvey Weinstein has somehow used his considerable industry clout to bury a perceived offense. And given Seth MacFarlane's tendency to riff on his immediate pop-culture surroundings, it's amazing that this infamous Family Guy episode actually has nothing to do with Big Harv.

Instead, this Weinstein is an accountant named Max, whose intelligence and financial sense prompt Peter to try to convert his dullard son Chris to Judaism, assuming that the religion itself is responsible. Like so many other Family Guy episodes, it frequently crosses the line between laughing at stereotypes and laughing at the people who believe them. Unlike many others, however, it was refused by Fox, though it eventually surfaced three years later on Adult Swim and is available on DVD.

Cow and Chicken is a pretty weird and disturbing show if you think about its implications too closely: a cow and a chicken are siblings, born to human parents, and they are tormented by a naked devil. So what could get this show in trouble? Making fun of lesbians.

The featured "Buffalo Gals" are a biker gang led by "Munch Kelly." In a not even vaguely subtle line, one character describes them a gang that breaks into houses "and chews on their carpets." When they aren't comparing carpets to drapes, the Buffalo Gals are debating the merits of pitching versus catching as they play softball.

Cartoon Network bristled and the episode has not been seen since. When you're with Cow and Chicken, apparently, you will NOT have a gay old time.

Gargoyles is a surprisingly dark show for Disney, what with the giant stone monsters who come to life after sundown and help take on organized crime. However, it really pushed boundaries with this episode, in which one of the Gargoyles accidentally shoots their human ally Elisa, causing her to fall to the floor in a pool of her own blood, and prompting the other Gargoyles to seek lethal retribution on the criminal they mistakenly believe to be responsible.

Ironically, the entire point of the episode is that kids should not imitate the violence they see on TV and in movies, but Disney felt the blood was a bit too tough. After initially pulling the whole episode from the rotation, Disney eventually reinstated it, but edited out the blood for future TV airings. On DVD, however, Gargoyles includes the bloody original version.

When Ralph Bakshi, typically known for button-pushing animation aimed at adults, became co-producer of The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse, it was only a matter of time before somebody took offense. The somebody in question was perennial '80s pro-censorship busybody Rev. Donald Wildmon, who seized on an account by a Kentucky family of seeing Mighty Mouse inhale a flower as if it were cocaine or perhaps opium.

Though he compared Wildmon's complaints (and subsequent petition to have him removed) to McCarthyism, Bakshi agreed to snip the scene from future airings, explaining, "Mighty Mouse was happy after smelling the flowers because it helped him remember the little girl who sold it to him fondly. But even if you're right, their accusations become part of the air we breathe. That's why I cut the scene. I can't have children wondering if Mighty Mouse is using cocaine."

The scene was ultimately restored for DVD.

When Futurama initially debuted the character of Robot Santa, a killer Kris Kringle whose naughty/nice meter was so off the charts it drive him to try to kill everyone, Fox standards and practices people were somewhat shocked. The following year, when the character returned, decided his new episode was "inappropriate" for broadcast at 7 PM.

So this one was not banned from any particular format, but from a timeslot. Maybe the fact that Bender joins Santa on his rampage this time was deemed problematic; at any rate, Fox finally allowed the episode to air a year later in the 9-10 p.m. slot instead. Because when it comes to cartoon murder, two hours makes all the difference.

Deep in the massive archive of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts are a handful that have been deemed so racist that no amount of editing for TV or modern audiences can redeem them. Eleven were withheld from syndication in 1968, and that ban has generally been upheld. Still, most are available in one form or another, and eight were screened in 2010 for their historical value.

While many are indeed inexcusable by any moral standard, ironically there are a couple in the group that, like the stories of Uncle Remus, were considered progressive at the time for capturing authentic black voices that weren't otherwise being heard. Specifically, the Snow White parody "Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs," created as a response to criticisms that there were no black cartoon characters, featured an all-black cast and caricatures of jazz and blues musicians of the day.

They're Tiny, they're Toony, they're all a little loony, but in one infamous segment, Buster Bunny, Hamton, and Plucky Duck got drunky, funky, and more than a little skunky. To impress upon viewers the evils of alcohol, and perhaps also make fun of the exaggerated anti-drug PSAs of the day, the Toons drink a beer. Following a psychedelic trip, they reappear instantly unshaven and dressed like homeless vagrants. First, they just repel women with their slurred speech and bad breath, but then they decide to steal a cop car, drive drunk, fall off a cliff, and die.

On the plus side, they do become angels and go to Heaven. And then they take off their angel costumes to reveal that the whole thing was an in-universe public service announcement the characters were filming. Still, according the the legend, Fox was not amused and ensured that it would never air on the network after its first time around.

Numerous Beavis and Butt-Head episodes have been memory-holed, both by MTV and creator Mike Judge, who had a chance to revive lesser-seen episodes for the DVD collection, but declined in some cases, apparently out of embarrassment. Suffice it to say, before evolving into hapless morons who mostly fall victim to their own stupidity, the duo began as more malevolent juvenile delinquents whose adventures included stealing credit cards, sniffing stove gas to get high, and going to Sea World in hopes of choking the dolphins to death with balloons.

The two-part "Way Down Mexico Way," however, wound up being perhaps the most extreme, and not just for Butt-Head throwing slurs at Mexicans or the two mugging a kid for fireworks. No, the real forbidden material here is Beavis and Butt-Head agreeing to be drug mules and swallowing condoms full of narcotics. Failing a basic citizenship test due to being both high and stupid, they're granted access back to the United States for obviously being Americans. Like all the episodes mentioning fire, it was purged from MTV when the show was accused of inspiring real-life kids to burn their houses down; unlike many of them, it has not resurfaced on others formats since.

You've probably heard the jokes about Pokemon causing seizures; South Park even riffed on it in the spoof episode "Chinpokomon," in which a seizure kills Kenny. That was a real thing, and this was the Pokemon episode. When it aired various Asian markets, a strobing blue-and-red explosion caused around 685 children to pass out, feel sick, develop seizures, or even go temporarily blind, forcing the show to go off the air for four months as everyone tried to figure out what went wrong. The episode has never been shown again, and it's uncertain whether it was ever even dubbed into English.

It's also why you see warnings now at every venue that uses strobe-light effects, or before any show that may similarly trigger. Precautions have been taken to no longer use similar effects in future episodes; if the show still makes you feel sick, that just means you're a perfectly normal parent.