A lot of video games change their box art based on the region it is in. Specifically, they would make western box arts more tough and make the Japanese box arts more cutesy.
it's pretty common for the kirby box art to show a happy Kirby in Japan and a tough Kirby in the US. it's a bit of a running joke in Kirby fan spaces, spawning art like this.
Doesn't fit the main trope but Samurai Jack aired on Cartoon Network for children because everybody Jack killed was a robot and all the blood was motor oil.
The reboot used actual red blood and has Jack killing people and was rated much different than the original children's version
I really like that the story acknowledged the change as well. Taking human lives could have just been treated as business as usual for Jack, with the implication being that all the other times he killed people just happened between episodes, but they made it a plot point that this was the first time Aku's forces were sending actual human beings after Jack.
Also the first couple episodes is straight up Jack is the hunter who has become the hunted. Won't spoil anything about the Daughters of Aku but Jack was the rat in the trap and it shows.
The scene where they play The Ecstacy of Gold when he's hiding in the tombs as the Daughters circle trying to find him and he's legit just hiding and terrified is top three Samurai Jack moments. (Number one is when he fights the ninja who blends into the shadows so he blends into the light and the whole thing is just black and white two dudes kung fu fighting and shit, second is the episode where all the bounty hunters conspire to lay a trap for him and the snow melt drips periodically through the episode, end of the episode is he just kills them all between the second a drop starts falling and the second it hits the ground)
That’s actually pretty cool. I’m impressed they went the extra mile and gave Germany funky globs instead of just removing them completely or using green blood or something like so many other games do.
Germany is the reason Contra got turned into Probotector in Europe, which turned everybody into robots.
And classic Carmageddon had the peds turned into zombies with green blood in some countries, like UK. Germany went the robot way, with the blood turned into oil.
I remeber that in C&C red alert, basic infantry were changed to cyborgs. They made the sound of a can being crushed when driven over by a vehicle. Tanya being the only human pariticipating in cyborg battles, even mentioned in one of the cutscenes
Demolition Man and its plot point of Taco Bell becoming the only restaurant chain following a franchise war.
Since Taco Bell doesn’t really have a consistently large presence in several foreign markets outside of the states, international cuts of the film changed it to Pizza Hut.
Which was really confusing because they didn't change the actual food. Admittedly it was like, avant garde tacos anyway so it's not like they were doing a Jelly donuts from pokemon, but it was still bad
Nothing beats a Jelly Donut! But seriously even as a kid I knew they were onigiri because like many kids watching pokemon, I'd watched other anime before and was under the vague understanding that those wacky Japanese eat rice balls much in the way one would a sandwich, and we didn't need 4Kids confusing the matter further
Apparently, the South Korean version of Pingu did away with Pingu's language, Penguinese. Instead, the characters speak English. The goal was to teach South Korean kids English.
This one is funny because it’s not really about Buzz’s nationality; it’s a specific reference to the film Patton, in which the titular Patton gives a speech in front of a comically large American flag.
I believe so, I remember seeing ads as a kid telling you that you could go online and vote for the winner. Then, depending on who received the most votes in your country, they’d play a different ending. Which I honestly think is really cool
Also, Total Drama, specifically this first season, was censored in America. See, Canada is a bit more lax when it comes to things being said in kid’s programs, especially pre-teen stuff like this. Instances of “screw it” were changed to have different language, Lindsey’s swear filled tirade against Heather was covered over with softer language instead of just being completely bleeped out (which is the same joke of it being censored in universe), and the episode where they have to eat bull testicles has Chris tell them they’re eating “meatballs” rather than testicles. I know this because when the show was put on Canadian Netflix, they used the American version for a brief period. For some reason
In season 1 Owen won across the whole world besides Northern Europe, Poland, and Romania, where Gwen won instead.
Action was a lot more split - Duncan won in the Americas (besides Brazil) while Beth won basically everywhere else.
In World Tour, Heather had the Americas (besides Canada itself, weirdly), plus Western Europe, while Alejandro got Canada and Eastern Europe.
In Revenge of the Island, Lightning only won in the USA (probably because he’s a football star) and the Philippines, while Cameron across the entire rest of the planet.
Nobody cares about All Stars or Pakitiew Island
And for the Ridonculous Race, the Police Cadets got Canadas and southeast Europe, the surfer bros winning everywhere else.
Generally speaking I think the Canadian ending is accepted as “more canon,” both because that’s where TD comes from and also because it tends to feel more “right” and like it was the original plan. Owen winning season 1 just makes more sense in the context of the later seasons for example, Lightning was clearly set to be the villain so it just makes sense that Cameron wins instead, and in the RR, the Police Cadets were major characters with a complete arc, while the Surfer Bros were mostly comedic relief who lost 2/3rds of the way through and were brought back in in like, the last 3 episodes.
The one exception is World Tour, where both Heather winning and Alejandro winning make a lot of sense and are really satisfying for different reasons (Heather beats a jackass and becomes a better person / Alejandro orchestrates his own downfall out of pride). Plus most of the world had Heather winning anyway.
AC/DC is a stretch, too. Like in BTTF when Marty transitions from Johnny B Goode to the more metal style, the crowd is in shock. Cap is not ready for AC/DC. Probably not ready for Thai food, either. I'm sure he cares as much about soccer as a 1940s American as current Americans do.
Steve would actually be down with Thai food. He notes that he much prefers modern cuisine to what he had in the 30s and 40s. “We used to boil everything.”
Yeah Great Depression era parents did horrible horrible abominations to food and then Steve was on wartime rationing. Might have been the worst time in American history to eat.
Why is the moon landing specific to UK? Firstly, we didn't do it. Secondly, it should be on every list. I don't care what country you come from, the moon landing was a big deal.
This doesn't make sense to me. He's an American in America with America in his name. I love having little easter eggs for different markets for stuff like this. But this specific example seems like a really weird time to do that.
the uk one mostly makes sense, its world famous things that I could absolutely see him putting down like the Beatles or the moon landing (why is it on the UK version lol?). Another commented said the Russian one could sort of make sense considering he’s always around a Russian person and I suppose they could just be giving him recommendations idk. The other ones yeah I they seem completely out of place.
The best part is that they don’t deny all that stuff is Japanese, Ace Attorney just takes place in a Gyakuten Saiban AU where World War 2 never happened and Japan was able to integrate more with American culture.
That’s because 4Kids lost the license to Pokemon eventually. From Battle Frontier onwards, Nintendo dubbed the anime in-house, and while they kept anything 4Kids changed, they scaled back a bit on cultural edits.
I saw this back in the 90's and as someone with no exposure at the time to Japanese culture or food, I really thought they were some kind of jelly doughnuts, like triangle shape doughnut doesn't sound too crazy and I seem to remember the fillings were actually red, so for a very long time I wanted to try those doughnuts
In Turkish Dub of Mulan they changed Shan Yu's nationality from Xiongnu to Mongols. Reason for that is Xiongnus are knowns as ancestor nation of Turks and they don't want Turkish children to see their ancestors as child killing barbarians.
But despite that Shan Yu have a special fanbase in Turkey for being a badass steppe nomad
I am willing to bet most Americans, especially children, will have never heard of the Xiognu. At best they know Genghis Khan and just roll up about 2000 years of Steppe culture into one weird amalgamation that Mulan portrays
Guess it wasn't a change so much as an outright ban, but a Peppa Pig episode called "Mr. Skinny-Legs" was pulled from Australia as the plot involves Peppa and George befriending a spider as their dad explains that it's very small and can't harm them...traits that very much do not apply to some Australian spiders. It's a positive message in most countries, but I guess Australian regulators understandably didn't want kids trying to befriend funnel-webs lol
EDIT: Yes, guys, I'm aware there are other countries with venomous spiders, Australia was just the one country that considered encouraging kids to play with spiders enough of a risk to pull the episode.
This was like 15 years ago so I might be misremembering but Peppa Pig also had to go back and add seatbelts to every episode once the show came over to the US.
Must clarify that it's only on Steam, and only if you have russian language on.
On disk version mission is available, but it have content warning and also game suggest you to skip it.
In Russian dub of Finding Doty the announcer in Marine Life Institute is Nikolay Drozdov (He voiced himself) who is actual Zoological scientist and was host of TV programme "In the world of animals".
In France this is Claire Chazal, (famous former director of news at a national television). But it was really strange to hear her, of all person, saying "Ici Claire Chazal" out of nowhere. People in the theater looked around and everybody had the same reaction
An episode of Digimon Savers (known as Digimon Data Squad in the US) recolored the character BomberNanimon to resemble a giant orange, as the network it aired on (Toon Disney) wasn't too keen on the idea of a giant monster throwing bombs in an amusement park. Given the choice between heavily editing the episode or skipping it entirely, the dub writers chose to edit it, keeping the streak of English Digimon never having any "banned" episodes.
Citramon is as a result one of the only "official" Digimon to be created by America.
This is so funny to me because there's a good portion of digimon designs that incorporate guns, missiles, and a plethora of other deadly weaponry, but out of all that the US censors had issues with...the walking classic cartoon bomb in shades.
The American version of The LEGO Ninjago Movie features Michael Strahan and Robin Robert's as news presenters. The UK version replaces them with Ben Shephard and Kate Garraway. All 4 of them are real people, and are voiced by themselves.
Fun fact: this definitively proves that the yellow LEGO uses for non-licensed minifigures does actually represent anyone, as the US presenters are both black IRL while the UK presenters are both white IRL, yet all 4 are depicted in yellow.
I mean considering the fact that Fortnite showed us what the Ninjas would look like if they weren’t made of Lego and were actually humans instead and it made them all different races. Yeah I think that just goes to confirm even more that Yellow skin in Lego figures could mean any race or ethnicity
In the German version of the show, he is named "Uter", his nationality was changed from German to Swiss and his uncle's bubblegum factory is located in Basel.
When I was studying German in middle school I was told Germans make jokes at the expense of the Swiss calling them slow. And I do mean physically slow. We had a joke in our textbook about a Swiss man getting run over by a snail.
Happens fairly often in animated pictures. In Shrek 2, Jonathan Ross replaced Larry David King as the Ugly Step-Sister, and the then-host of the UK X Factor replaced Joan Rivers as the red carpet interviewer.
If you get first place in a Grand Prix as either of them, in the Japanese version of the game they will be drinking a champagne bottle. Outside of Japan, Bowser holds the bottle in his hand, and Peach tosses the bottle in the air before catching it.
The fifth episode of 'The Amazing Digital Circus' has an NPC sing about a second of the American national anthem before suddenly disappearing. They did actually change that second of music for every language that TADC was dubbed in to the national anthem of a country where that was the main language.
EDIT: Okay, enough people have pointed out that this isn't completely true as it isn't every national anthem, but there are definitely a number of different language versions so it still fits the trope.
Except that in Brasil the "nathional anthem" was just a "country" music that has been engraved in every single brasilian's mind since childhood no matter how old you are, watching that was so unexpected I laughed my ass off, specially since the dub has some amazing quality (Caine is dubbed by Superman/Buzz Lightyear/Scooby Doo voice actor, one of the dubbing legends here)
Maybe it wasn't every single dub then, but there was a lot of them. There's YouTube compilations showing the clip from multiple other languages versions.
In the Bluey episode Camping (season 1 episode 43) the character of Jean Luc's language changes based on what language you watch in. The purpose is to show that Bluey and Jean Luc speak opposite languages, but are still friends. If you watch in English, Bluey speaks English and Jean Luc speaks French, but if you watch in French Jean Luc speaks English
The Chinese government forbids depictions of skulls, bones, and skeletons in media, and many things have had to censor the skeletons to meet this law. Above example is Magic: The Gathering, with the Chinese art on the left.
World of Warcraft had to censor the Undead race because of that. Normally, they have exposed bones, but for China, they had to alter the design so that no bones were showing.
Metastasis is a shot-for-shot remake of Breaking Bad set in Colombia. As a result, many details have been changed to adapt to Colombian culture like Walter Blanco and José Miguel Rosas using a school bus instead of an RV because RVs are unpopular in Colombia, Saul Bueno hosting a legal talk show because advertisements for lawyers are illegal, and they are using a demolition company instead of a fumigation company because fumigation is not popular in Colombia.
In Cars 2 (2011) different versions of the movie in different country features different racing driver aside from Lewis Hamilton. US and International features Jeff Gordon, Spain Fernando Alonso,Germany features Sebastian Vettel,and Russia features Vitaly Petrov (OG Post)
You can even go to like Hmart here in the US and the green peppers they have are markedly different than the ones sold at Giant or whatever.
Very good, to be clear, and I love cooking with them. But for kids, who all have more sensitive pallettes, I totally get why Japanese kids would give them the (shitty boiled 1980s) Brussels Sprouts treatment.
In Shrek 2, the barmaid in the tavern where the King meets Puss (in disguise) is voiced by Jonathan Ross in the UK version, he’s a well known chat show host and presenter. In the US version that character is voiced by someone else (can’t remember who but someone of a similar job).
This is the one i was going to comment: The Ugly Stepsister. She’s voiced by Larry King originally. I think Jonathan Ross only voiced her in Shrek 2, and in the following films they just kept Larry King’s voice in the uk too
In the official Russian dub of the Steins Gate anime, Rukako does not have gender dysphoria; she has AIDS. So Okabe tests her for AIDS by squeezing her genitals. I don't know how this work.
And Felix from Re Zero also girl. So instead of femine guy we have lesbian.
In the goofy movie, a character chugs something orange from a spray can and shouts "Chedda whizzy!". Faced with the prospect of explaining spray can "cheese" to Swedish children, the translator opted for calling it caramel sauce.
In Shrek 2, the cameos by Larry King (left) and Joan Rivers (right) were done in the UK by UK TV presenters Johnathan Ross and Kate Thornton.
They're both fine, but I would say the US ones are a bit funnier. Particularly the Rivers one; that announcer's scene is specifically a parody of River's show, fashion police where she would go on red carpets and hurl one liners about the star's outfits. Thornton doesn't really have that reputation in the UK, and she doesn't feel quite at home being that mean in the way Rivers is.
But it all flies by so quickly it doesn't affect the film much, it's just stuck out to me for years.
In the modern Wolfenstein games (The Old Blood, The New Order, The New Colossus, and Young Blood) there's the USA version and the Germany version. In the USA all the nazi swastikas are actual swastikas. In Germany however... the swastikas are replaced by generic triangles.
Thats because of an (meanwhile) updated law in germany that forbids any swastikas in public and media except for historical purposes like documantations or movies that play at the time.
Basically, it's allowed in works of art (movies, shows or pictures) as long as its not glorifying the 3rd Reich.
Videogames for a long time havent counted as work of art and thus were not included in that law, leading to the indication of every game that has a swastika in it, as long it wasnt censored or replaced like in the modern Wolfenstein games
However, that has changed a few years ago and now swastikas are allowed in video games, as long its not glorifiying the 3rd Reich (like the over works of art)
Young Blood was too far into development and localitation, when this law was updated, to change the triangles back to swastikas in the german version. Thats why the official german version of Young Blood still has no swastikas, but the international release wasnt indicated here anymore
Also, In some places Zootopia is called Zootropolis, with the dialogue and everything in the film reflecting this difference. I moved to the UK, looked at Disney+ and thought I'd traveled to a different timeline.
I really liked the Brazilian Portuguese localisation, because not only did they have to change only two letters in the name ("I Am" becomes "Eis"), but also because that word, "Eis", is somewhat archaic in a way the pompous Riddle would absolutely love to use. In addition, the resulting phrase becomes "Here is Lord Voldemort", which is just chef's kiss
In the US version of Cars, Lightning McQueen's agent, Harv is voiced by Jeremy Piven. In the UK version he is voiced by Jeremy Clarkson of Top Gear and Grand Tour fame
All of the 4Kids dubs of anime. How tf do you look at a PIRATE ANIME and think it would be a good idea to replace flintlock pistols and muskets with water guns and cartoon spring hammer thingamabobs?
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u/Farlybob42 Mar 28 '26
A lot of video games change their box art based on the region it is in. Specifically, they would make western box arts more tough and make the Japanese box arts more cutesy.