Spider-Man was one of the best superhero cartoons of the 90s. Despite competing against the brilliance of Batman: The Animated Series and X-Men, the show managed to hold its own, preventing itself from being drowned out by the sheer magnificence around it.

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This achievement may be considered to be even greater when one becomes aware of the number of changes the creators had to make in order to please the Fox Kids censors.

Pigeons

One of the strangest decisions by the censors was the request that Spider-Man not be seen hurting any pigeons during his escapades on the New York rooftops and skyscrapers. This is, obviously a strange request.

It begs the question, why would the animators choose to show Spider-Man hurting pigeons? There is no prerequisite for this in the comics either, so it was a strange demand from the censors.

Breaking Glass

Perhaps requested to avoid headlines such as ‘Spider-Man cartoon made my son jump through a window’, the censors at Fox Kids thought it would be best to forbid the animators from including any scenes with broken glass.

While this sounds acceptable on the face of it, it’s also strange when one considers that Batman: The Animated Series could include broken glass. While this isn’t too big of an issue, it does ruin incredible moments where the hero bursts through a ceiling window.

Sinister

Doc Ock, Shocker and Mysterio in Spider-Man: The Animated Series

Censors will often ban certain words in order to prevent complaints. The most obvious banned words on kids' TV would be curse words and words that invoke graphic sexual content and so on.

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It is strange, then, that the sensors decided to ban the word ‘sinister’ from being used in the TV show. What makes this even odder is that the Sinister Six have been a supervillain group for decades without complaint. As a consequence, the Sinister Six were known as the Insidious Six in the show.

Blood

Arguably the first understandable decision by the censors, the creators of the show were unable to include any scenes in the TV show that featured blood (though blood in a test tube was acceptable).

This is almost certainly required in order to guarantee the show a certain rating. However, again, Batman: The Animated Series had scenes with blood during its airtime, though this isn’t to say that the Batman cartoon got carried away with its use of blood.

The Punisher

Punisher in Spider-Man The Animated Series

The Punisher is one of the most violent characters in the Marvel Universe. Frank Castle will not blink at the chance to snuff out some villain in order to prevent him from ever committing a crime again.

In the Spider-Man cartoon, however, The Punisher avoided the use of lethal force, only hinting that he would use it at some point against Spider-Man during his transformation into the Man-Bat.

Death, Kill, Murder

As said earlier in this list, certain words are obviously going to be banned by censors. Curse words are the most common, however, words that evoke violence mat also be banned. Consequently, the censors at Fox Kids banned use of the words Death, die, kill, and murder.

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Perhaps the most obvious example of this was in Carnage’s debut story. Rather than ‘killing’ people, Carnage had to drain the life energy from citizens.

Mary Jane’s ‘Death’

Mid-way through the series run, Mary Jane Watson was lost to Spider-Man. Watson fell through the Green Goblin’s interdimensional transporter and became stuck in some unknown dimension.

However, the only reason why Mary Jane was sent into another dimension was that the show was unable to kill any characters. That being said, sending Mary Jane into another dimension was a very creative way to get around the ‘no death’ rule.

Morbius

Michael Morbius is one of the most iconic Marvel characters, with the vampire even receiving his own movie starring Jared Leto. However, the character’s vampiric nature made it difficult for the creators of Spider-Man to adapt due to his bloodsucking nature.

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In order to get around the strict censorship requirements, shows featuring Morbius couldn’t show the character sucking blood, or even mentioning it. Consequently, the creators gave Morbius ‘suckers’ on his palms that he used to suck plasma from his victims.

No Punches

Spider-Man Venom marvel cartoon animated symbiote

Batman: The Animated Series was clearly able to get away with a lot when it came to censorship. The show could feature some blood, imply death, and even show some relatively violent fights between characters.

However, Spider-Man was unable to do this. The hero was forbidden from throwing any punches, meaning that most fights in the show were either wrestling matches or involved Spider-Man throwing people or webbing them up.

Laser Guns

Mark Hamill

Anyone who has seen Spider-Man will have been confused by this. Despite being set in 90s New York, with 90s fashion, and featuring 90s references such as the guitarist from Aerosmith, the police carried high tech laser guns that would be more suited to a Star Wars film.

The reasoning behind this is that the censors banned the use of bullets on the TV series, so the creators included laser guns in order to get around the censorship requirements. The issue with this, however, is that it is very jarring to see the NYPD firing lasers at criminals.

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