Disney+ Censored a Random Symbol Out of Every Episode of Gravity Falls

Disney+ has been making waves this week with its strange censorship tactics, using a patch of CGI hair to cover a nude butt in Splash. Yes, that’s really a thing and it looks even weirder than you’re imagining. While this edit is making the rounds at the moment, it’s far from the only change Disney+ has made to its seemingly-innocent content. One of the most bizarre forms of censorship on the streaming service comes in the award-winning animated series Gravity Falls, where Disney has removed a symbol from every episode for seemingly no reason at all.

Great Uncle “Grunkle” Stan, one of the main characters in the show, wears a fez atop his head throughout all of Gravity Falls, a unique piece of headwear for an incredibly unique person. In the version of the show that aired on Disney Channel from 2012 to 2016, Grunkle Stan’s fez has a yellow symbol on the front. It looks like a fish eating a dot, a la Pac-Man. In other words, the symbol doesn’t mean a whole lot of anything at all. That doesn’t change the fact that the symbol is edited out of the episodes on Disney+.

If you watch Gravity Falls on the streaming service, you won’t see the symbol on Grunkle Stan’s fez. However, it does still appear in the thumbails and intro credits for each episode. This edit is truly baffling, especially to series creator Alex Hirsch, who also voices Grunkle Stan.

“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 in November.

Hirsch followed that up with another tweet about the intro appearing in the opening credits of the show, proving that the censorship really doesn’t make any sense.

“Lolll the symbol is still in the intro to every episode,” he added. “(PSSST- apparently Disney doesn’t know about the subliminal messages-no one tell them!)”

Disney+ is doing everything it can to make the service as family-friendly as possible. Perhaps it’s just doing a little too much?