If you talk to basically any showrunner on TV, they will have horror stories about working with network standards and practices. That goes double for anybody working in family entertainment, since network executives are often afraid of scaring kids or offending parents, who generally are more easily offended and louder about their objections than other viewers. Gravity Falls series creator Alex Hirsch has gone on the record talking about some of the stranger changes Disney has made to his show in the past — notably, removing a logo that doesn’t actually mean anything from every episode, but leaving it in thumbnails and opening credits — but to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the series, he unleashed a supercut of as many bizarre and absurd requests standards as he could find.
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After sharing a bunch of other behind-the-scenes materials from the series, he said this was “one last treat,” and the internet certainly agreed. Fans, other creators, and everyone in between jumped in with additions and commentary.
“Ever curious about the fights I had with the censors on Gravity Falls?” Hirsch asked fans on Twitter. “I probably shouldn’t share this buttttt here are some REAL NOTES from DISNEY S&P and my REAL REPLIES. You are not prepared #10YearsOfGravityFalls”
You can see his tweet below.
Some of the observations, while silly, have some validity to them (worries about rhymes with “Kentucky” in an unfinished limerick), while others are outright absurd, with the suggestion that a line about “about dressing as a giant teddy bear” could be construed to be about furry fetishists.
“I have literally *thousands* of these. Each one still haunts me,” Hirsch wrote in a follow-up tweet, suggesting there are probably some pretty funny ones that will never see the light of day — as well as some valid ones, because nobody gets it wrong all the time.
Hirsch pushes back against some of the censorship here, which isn’t surprising given how openly he mocked Disney over the removal of the logo on Grunkle Stan’s fez.
“Lol apparently the geniuses at Disney+ decided to remove Grunkle Stan’s fez symbol for no reason, but then accidentally left it in the thumbnails because even they can’t keep track of what they’re pretending to be concerned about this week,” Hirsch wrote in tweet when Disney+ launched, adding in follow-ups, “Lolll the symbol is still in the intro to every episode….(PSSST- apparently Disney doesn’t know about the subliminal messages — no one tell them!)”
You can find the squeaky-clean Gravity Falls on Disney+.
h/t The AV Club
