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Kinder and Cleaner - TV Tropes

  • ️Sun Jul 05 2020

There are some dark and edgy films with tons of profanity and sometimes, certain installments remove some or all of the cursing in a future installment. Opposite of Ruder and Cruder. Sub-Trope of Lighter and Softer and Bowdlerize (with a bit of Distanced from Current Events for certain cases). Can result in Curse of The Ancients or Gosh Dang It to Heck! (since they both involve censoring profanity).

Some parents might be unhappy from the Ruder and Cruder or edgy installments and want something cleaner for their children or elders.

Younger viewers are more likely to watch movies with clean dialogue so their parents would enjoy it too. Some prefer to avert this trope with Avoid the Dreaded G Rating.

If this applies to a single character, then it's Adaptational Nice Guy or Took a Level in Kindness.

Examples:

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Films — Animation 

  • Bee Movie is considered this to Seinfeld. It helps since Jerry Seinfeld likes clean humor.
  • DreamWorks Animation kept the characters' language more or less clean after parents complained about the normalized use of profanity in Antz.
  • The Hotel Transylvania franchise is this compared to Eight Crazy Nights, both animated films starring and written by Adam Sandler. In the case of the former, the franchise is more family-friendly; it uses no profanity and few innuendos.
  • The Ice Age sequels which followed Ice Age: The Meltdown had no profanity, whereas the previous film used the words "ass" and "crap".
  • Kangaroo Jack: G'Day U.S.A.! lacks the dark humor and sexual innuendo of its predecessor.
  • Over the Hedge featured a completely different version of Ben Folds' "Rockin' The Suburbs" that changed the song from a profanity-laced tune about angry white boys in rock and rap music to a clean riff on suburban life in general which better suited the themes of the film.
  • The Shrek follow-ups after Shrek 2 use less profanity and innuendos. Many consider it one of the reasons why "Shrek 2" is the best Shrek sequel.
    • Shrek The Third uses a clean version of Matt White's "Best Days" with much more tame lyrics notably changing "lying naked under the covers" to "hanging out with one another."

Films — Live-Action 

  • Batman & Robin: Since it is more campy than the first three films of the 'Batman Film Series'', it naturally uses cleaner language although there is still some swearing, especially "hell".
  • Blade II and Blade: Trinity use less frequent profanity than the first two films.
  • Bumblebee: Compared to the Michael Bay movies, it is the cleanest live-action Transformers film. The closest it gets to Toilet Humor is them throwing toilet paper and Charlie briefly considering how to explain the purpose of them to a robot before just giving up.
  • Casper: A Spirited Beginning and Casper Meets Wendy: Compared to the 1995 film which has moderate profanity, the direct-to-video prequels have no profanity.
  • Coming to America was rated R due in part to several uses of the F-word as well as a scene featuring nude women. Coming 2 America is rated PG-13 and has no F-words or nudity in it at all. Though it's a downplayed example due to there still being frequent uses of mild and moderate profanities.
  • The Dark Knight Trilogy: Compared to Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises use less prominent profanity.
  • Deadpool 2: The recut, Once Upon a Deadpool, drops most of the profanity for a PG-13 rating, although much of the intense violence remains intact. The In-Universe reason for this is that Deadpool is telling the story of the second movie to a little kid… or what he thinks is a little kid… Fred Savage was hardly little in 2018.
  • Evan Almighty: Compared to the film from which it spun, Bruce Almighty, there is little to no profanity.
  • Downplayed with The Expendables 3, which was edited to obtain a PG-13. Downplayed even moreso in The Expendables 2, which retained the bloody violence from the first movie but dropped most of the harder profanity at the request of Chuck Norris as a condition for him to appear in the film; most fans considered this to be a pretty fair trade.
  • Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer: The first film had some mild to moderate profanity, while it is dialed down for the sake of a PG rating.
  • Garfield: The Movie used God's name in vain and featured an utterance of "damned", while A Tail of Two Kitties had none.
  • Ghostbusters II: While the first film uses mild to moderate profanity regularly, the sequel dials it back to just mild profanity. The first film's ubiquitous smoking didn't appear in the sequel, either.
  • The Godzilla films do this every time the series gets rebooted:
    • King Kong vs. Godzilla is arguably the first film to start this trend (depending on how you look at it). In contrast to the bleak, gloomy, and downright depressing tone of the first film, this entry is much more Lighter and Softer with sillier characters, fewer horror elements, and a nonsensical plot that this genre of films were known for.
    • All Monsters Attack is largely considered to be the friendliest film in the series as it focuses mostly from a boy's point-of-view, all the monster action is either Stock Footage from previous films or largely goofier than any other entry in the series, and no one gets killed (which even the most child-friendly films in the series are known to not shy away from).
  • Gremlins 2: The New Batch: The first film used moderate profanity while the sequel limited it to just mild profanity.
  • Last Action Hero: In-Universe with Jack Slater 4 — the film happens to be PG-13 instead of the R of the series' previous installations. As a result, when Danny Madigan enters the film and tries to prove to Slater that it's a movie, he tries to make Slater say the F-word (or some other "hard" insult) and then points out Slater's reluctance as proof (PG-13 movies by law can only say "fuck" 4 or less times, but it's an unwritten rule in the industry that it must only be uttered once). In the final act, Arnold Schwarzenegger himself appears in the world premiere of the film and cheerfully reassures some reporters that this movie has a smaller body count than the previous entry in the series.
  • Downplayed with Live Free or Die Hard, which was edited to obtain a PG-13 rating and is the only film in the Die Hard franchise not to be rated R, thanks in part to censoring John McClane's catchphrase with a Sound-Effect Bleep. Otherwise, it is still a violent movie with several onscreen deaths (including one resulting from a Deadly Rotary Fan).
  • Looney Tunes: Back in Action: Compared to Space Jam which used some swearing, the second full-length live-action Looney Tunes movie uses none. Also unlike Space Jam, it prescinds from fanservice.
  • Mean Girls (2024): Several of the 2004 film's more controversial moments are scrubbed for the 2024 film. Lines are changed to remove uses of "slut", "whore", "retard", "social suicide", and the N word. The minor subplot of the gym coach's predatory relationship with two students is removed. And the plotlines around Janis' sexual orientation and Regina's weight gain are recontextualized to fit a more LGBTQ-friendly, body-positive time.
  • Osmosis Jones: The original version of the movie used more profanity, but due to Executive Meddling, the profanity was replaced by euphemisms and/or dubbed over.
  • RoboCop 3: The movie dialed down on the profanity compared to the first two films.
  • Scary Movie: The theatrical versions of the third, fourth and fifth films use less profanity and crude humor than the first two films as they were whittled down to obtain PG-13 ratings.
  • Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed reduces the innuendos and profanity to distance itself from the first film.
  • The Scorpion King only used an instance of "piss" compared to The Mummy Trilogy it originated from.
  • Son of the Mask uses mild profanity compared to The Mask, which had moderate profanity.
  • Spider-Man 3 uses less and milder profanity compared to both Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2. 3 has one use of “hell”, “damn” and “ass” each. The first one had some mild swearing for a PG-13 rated movie, 2 at least used three hells, two craps, one piss and one ass. Despite this, all the three movies are rated PG-13 due to violence and action.
  • Star Wars
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III had no profanity as a response from Moral Guardians being offended by the constant usage of "damn" from the first movie. There was also more cartoon-style violence after complains about some of the more brutal fights in the original.
  • Terminator Salvation and Terminator Genisys use less frequent profanity than the first three films and have few to no F-bombs.

Literature 

  • Many of the first six or so Diary of a Wimpy Kid books pull jokes from Jeff Kinney's earlier college newspaper comic, Igdoof. Being aimed primarily at college kids meant Igdoof had more sexual humor and things that wouldn't fly now, so the jokes were toned down. For example, while most of the "Late Nite with Remedial Ralph" comic was recycled as "Creighton the Comedian" in the Do-It-Yourself Book, the ending punchline where Ralph says he only liked the parts of a Michelle Pfeiffer movie where she was naked ended up being cut. Other crude jokes, such as Igdoof calling in a bomb threat to get out of doing a test or about to show his penis to kindergarteners, never made it into Wimpy Kid for obvious reasons.
  • Ghostbusters: A Paranormal Picture Book: The movie it was based on had a few swear words (notably "piss", "ass", "shit", and "dick"). This book, due to being a kids' book, has no swearing at all.
  • Go the Fuck to Sleep is full of profanity, as it was written as a joke for parents. However, there is a kids' version called Seriously, Just Go to Sleep, which was written because kids had mistaken the original for a real kids' book.
  • In the Russian literary tradition there is the case of the Second South Slavic Influence (14th to 16th century). While before that, even hagiographic texts could easily include informal language and swear words, the Second South Slavic Influence-era rewrites got rid of the swearing and turned the language into Purple Prose whenever possible.

Live-Action TV 

Music 

  • Alicia Keys had some profanity in her first album and has been clean in every album since.
  • The Ninety Eight Degrees Stevie Wonder collaboration "True to Your Heart" has sexually suggestive parts of the lyrics reworked to fit Mulan's theme of following one's heart so it could be inserted into the film.
  • The same thing was done with Jesse Mc Cartney's "Right Where You Want Me" so it would be better suited for its application to Ethan and Marnie' joyride date scene in Return to Halloweentown.
  • Elton John recorded some profanity-laced tracks such as "The Bitch is Back", but reverted to his naturally clean music.
  • When Kanye West became a born-again Christian in 2019, he refrained from swearing or making sexual references in his music, namely in his gospel record Jesus Is King.
  • Eminem:
    • After being criticised for the homophobia, violence, drug abuse and belligerence of The Marshall Mathers LP, Eminem toned down the shock content on The Eminem Show - in part to prove he didn't need to rely on it to sell records, but also because he'd been forced to get therapy and stop using drugs as a result of his assault conviction. There's only a handful of appearances from Slim Shady on the record, and these are mostly mischievous Boastful Raps with Slim doing gimmicky accent and vocal work and portrayed as a heroic (!) Smug Super figure. The Black Sheep Hit "Without Me", intended as a Stylistic Callback of The Marshall Mathers LP, obligingly checks off the album's only assault threats against celebrities, only homophobic slur insult, one of only two references to Slim's abuse of drugs, and is introduced by Marshall dropping character to grouch about people only wanting him to be Slim Shady nowadays. Slim's only the shocking, horrible Villain Protagonist of previous albums in the Misogyny Songs "Superman" and "Drips" and - more cutely - when rampaging with his adorable daughter in "My Dad's Gone Crazy".
    • Encore uses more shock humour than The Eminem Show did, but uses Potty Humor rather than jokes targeting minority groups. The album opens with a song ("Evil Deeds") in which Shady begs forgiveness for the awful things he's done and claims he doesn't want to be "Satan-spawn". There's no homophobic slurs on the album, and the few times the subject comes up, it's to satirise Shady's own insecurity. There's also no drugs (other than references to his Junkie Parent and to Kim's use of cocaine), and only some relatively gentle Masochism Tango and Break-Up Song misogyny. The album contains a track ("Like Toy Soldiers") in which he extends an olive branch to everyone he was beefing with, a sincere apology for a racist rap he did as a sixteen year old ("Yellow Brick Road"), several songs in which he states his love for Kim, and a song in which he insults Kim in a way far too stupid to take seriously.
    • The Marshall Mathers LP 2, with the concept that it's a second chance to make things right after the horrible things he said on the first album, contains more shock, violence and drug content than The Eminem Show and Encore and uses more homophobic slurs than either, but also deconstructs it, with songs considering his legacy, admitting that he wants to be kind but his act is based on being nasty, and apologising to his Muse Abuse targets.
    • After facing backlash for using a homophobic slur to describe Tyler, the Creator on his song "Fall", Eminem apologised and pledged to stop using the word from then on. He has a little bit of fun with this on the first song he released after the pledge, "Killshot" - "leave my dick in your mouth and keep my daughter out it, you fuckin' - oh."
  • Guns N' Roses still had angry and bitter lyrics in Chinese Democracy, but the peppered swearing from other albums was absent (the F-word only appears twice, sung by Axl in the first verse of "Riad N' the Bedouins" and spoken in a Mississippi Burning sample featured in "Madagascar").

Stand-Up 

  • Jeff Dunham started with explicit comedy but decided to make his work cleaner as a result of his mom being horrified from the profanity.
  • Tim Allen started with profane comedy tours, but after the family-friendly Home Improvement and Toy Story came out, his tours became squeaky clean.

Theme Parks 

Video Games 

Web Animation 

Western Animation