If you put in the cheat code "girlnextdoor" you can play the game as Mary Jane Watson. At the end of the game, where Spider-Man and Mary Jane usually kiss, Mary Jane will kiss herself. This code was removed from later versions of the game, presumably because of the lesbian kiss in an E-rated game.
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Stellar Blade became rather controversial with critics in large part due to the sexualization of its protagonist Eve. They argued that the game's marketing leaned heavily into Eve's sexual appeal by focusing on elements such as revealing costumes and suggestive character designs for its promotional strategy. This got to the point where the South Korean version of the game received an "Adults-Only" rating due to suggestive images, nudity, and violence. Hyung-Tae Kim, the game's director, defended these design choices, stating:
"When it comes to the design, we put special attention on the back of the character because the player is always facing the back of the character when they're playing. That's what they see the most of, so we thought this was pretty important."
This controversy culminated when the game released with a Day 1 patch that patched out unintentionally offensive graffiti, and censored two revealing outfits Eve can wear in the game, the Holiday Rabbit and the Cybernetic Bondage, but these are not the only censored outfits left in the game. When the player finds their first unlockable Nano Suit blueprint on the overworld, a tutorial pop-up appears featuring a video that scrolls through a montage of the other Nano Suits you can unlock in the game, and among them is an uncensored version of the Moutan Peony, an outfit that features dark pantyhose covering Eve's skin up to her waist in both the base game and the Day 1 patch. It appears that the developers forgot to remove this video when changing the costumes during development, and it's currently not known if other outfits in this video were changed in the final game.
These changes are in contrast to a claim from the game's official Twitter account stating that all versions of the game worldwide would be released uncensored, leading to the changes being widely criticized by players on social media and speculation that the game's publisher Sony Interactive Entertainment mandated the changes after addressing the offensive graffiti. However, Kim addressed the matter during a Q&A at a launch event for the game, stating:
"Understandably we also recognize about[sic] the issue. However, the final costume that we wanted to show you is indeed the costume in version 1.0.0.2. I want to clarify that is our final product. However, I know this answer is not enough to convince our users. There is an internal discussion ongoing regarding this. So I think we'll have a chance to answer it soon."
The speculated tensions between Shift Up and Sony during development were actually highlighted by Drakengard and Nier: Automata creator Yoko Taro, a developer with a history of tensions with Sony, during a joint interview with him and Kim for IGN published a little over a week before the game's release:
Yoko Taro: "[...] Mr. Kim, I wanted to ask you if there were any fights with Sony Interactive Enteratainment (SIE), since they are publishing Stellar Blade."
Hyung-Tae Kim: "(Glances at SIE staff members in the room and laughs.) The people at SIE are... very, very nice!"
Taro: "SIE's staff members are pulling faces I've never seen before. I wish the readers of this article could see it!"
Compilation of outfits in base game before Day 1 patch (uncensored versions of Cybernetic Bondage at 2:30, and Holiday Rabbit at 4:52): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMT6z9xejeA
Compilation of outfits after Day 1 patch (censored versions of Cybernetic Bondage at 1:03, Holiday Rabbit at 2:19, and Moutan Peony at 3:02): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAcvYBGPoGk
Nano Suit tutorial pop-up montage with uncensored Moutan Peony costume (this is the only footage I could find of anyone sitting through this video start to finish): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHJhViruQKM?t=3761
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On April 24, 2024, when the game's review embargo lifted prior to its release, a reviewer tweeted a discovery made while playing through the game, that being an accidental reference to a racial slur through the game's graphics. This happened when a graphic of graffiti art spelling "Hard", a design which is reused in numerous places throughout the game, ended up being placed next to a neon sign pointing to the "R Shop", referring to one of the game's information brokers named Roxanne. Put together, this text reads as the "Hard R Shop", including a slang term referring to the racial slur "nigger". When IGN contacted Sony regarding this discovery, they released a statement claiming the game's developer Shift Up had no intention of creating offensive artwork or including the objectionable phrase in the game, and vowed to remove it before the game's release. The "Hard" graphic in that spot would be quickly replaced by a different piece of graffiti spelling "Crime" in a pre-release edit that also added New Game+ to the game, and would be added to the released game as part of a Day 1 patch. Interestingly, this entire span of events from the term being discovered to it being replaced occurred in less than 97 minutes, and the changes stand in contrast to a claim from the game's official Twitter account three days prior that all versions of the game in all countries would be released uncensored.
In the v.0.1.5.1 patch released at the end of February 2024, there were alterations made that were not listed in the patch notes, primarily involving censoring profanities and slurs. These changes apply even in single-player mode, where while players can still name things whatever they want, offensive words and names are replaced with asterisks. These changes were most likely made due to Palworld developer Pocket Pair's partnership with Microsoft, who agreed earlier that month to help develop the Xbox releases of the game and possibly the Steam version as well. Unlike Steam however, Xbox has very strict guidelines on what can and can't be said like other console platforms, suggesting that Pocket Pair was catering to Microsoft with this censorship, although neither company officially commented on these changes. While some players understand the need for such measures, others criticized the restrictions and advocated for optional toggles to allow individual customization.
In early February 2024, one month prior to the game's release, multi-time WWE World Champion Brock Lesnar was removed from the cover of the "Forty Years of WrestleMania" showcase edition of the game in response to a sexual assault and sex trafficking lawsuit against Vince McMahon and WWE. Although Lesnar's name was not directly mentioned in the lawsuit, his reported connection to the case led to his removal as part of a wider effort by the WWE to disassociate from him. The cover was updated to feature a larger version of John Cena, where Lesnar used to be.
Content creators who got early access to the game on February 23 confirmed that both Lesnar and McMahon were no longer playable characters in WWE 2K24. While the extent of McMahon's removal is unknown, Brock Lesnar’s data remains locked away in the game due to his matches with The Undertaker at Wrestlemania 30 and Roman Reigns at Wrestlemania 31 being featured in the "Showcase of the Immortals" Showcase mode, and it being too far into development to remove them.
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When the script for Darkened Skye was sent to Mars Incorporated, the only mandates given were to replace the word "damn" with "darn", remove an unspecified joke early into the game, and replace all snake enemies with "snake-like monsters".
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According to a BBC News article from January 2003, Sony agreed to edit The Getaway after they received complaints from British Telecommunications (BT). BT was concerned about the misuse of a transit van bearing its logo and asked the developers to edit the game to remove BT's appearance entirely. The section of the game that BT objected to was the "Filthy Business" mission, where the main character Mark Hammond must attack and steal a BT van and then raid a police station to rescue another character. BT did not want attacks on its engineers to be portrayed in the game, and they were also worried that the game might incite real-life attacks on them. The section was removed from future releases of the game 12 days after its release, and all following versions of the game have a plain light-blueish van in the mission, with the dialogue also being altered to refer to it as just "a van" rather than a "BT van".
Originally, the game was passed with an MA 15+ rating on November 22, 2002. However, it was resubmitted and banned just five days later due to a cutscene showing the character Johnny Chai being tortured in detail. Another version of the game which censored version of this scene was released weeks later on December 13 with the identical rating.
These censorship changes are documented by the different releases of the game, starting with the 1.03 European version. This version included the Johnny Chai torture scene and the Ford Transit van with full BT livery and Ford badge in the cutscene model. After the game was initially banned in Australia, the developers altered the camera angles of the scene, focusing more on the characters' facial expressions rather than the violence. The cutscene model of the BT van was also re-textured, and the Ford badges were removed. This version is known as the 1.1 European version of the game, which was followed by the dispute from BT, resulting in their removal from future releases of the game.
In the international release of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, every character's blood is colored red whereas in the Japanese release, all blood is colored white. Cyborg-based characters bleeding white blood in the Japanese release is consistent with the setting of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, where Raiden also used white blood. This also has an effect on Jetstream Sam's death scene, where he notably bleeds red blood compared to everyone else's white blood, revealing him to be almost purely human. An explanation of sorts for why every character's blood is red in the international version is provided in a codec call with Doktor during File R-01: Coup d'Etat:
"Organic muscle fiber which allows extraction of nutrients from the bloodstream does exist, but it requires artificial blood for sufficient power output. This so-called "white blood" requires dialysis, and was mostly phased out once cyborg technology became mainstream."
Extra clarification is added to Sam's death scene as well due to this.
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In September 2021, Neopets attempted to enter the budding Non-fungible Token market with a project called the "Neopets Metaverse", predictably sparking major backlash from the Neopets fandom citing pre-existing criticisms and negative stigmas surrounding NFTs. However, much less predictable were the string of controversies that followed, which involved using the fansite Dress to Impress to make their NFTs (notably signified by one of the tokens having a glitch only present on Dress to Impress and not the official Neopets site), promotion of an R-rated NFT collection titled "Horny Hedgehogs", banning the word "gay" from their Discord server but permitting homophobic slurs, portraying those opposed to NFTs as the "Soyjak" meme, and in secret planning to get the main game developers to implement long-requested features so fans would "shut up" about the NFT project.
When the project first spread, the Neopets Twitter account stated in a direct message that it was a scam, putting doubt on its legitimacy, but the main brand would later would endorse the project. The most infamous endorsement came when the winner of an art contest ended up being an anti-NFT protest image, which they removed and - after being called out - subtly censored it by compressing it so hard that it couldn't be read without extremely close observance.
After two years, Neopets ultimately announced in July 2023 that it would be completely shuttering the Neopets Metaverse project after former CEO of the Metaverse division Dominic Law brokered a "management buyout deal", and that the game would no longer have any cryptocurrency or NFT elements.
Instead of a chicken who gets pushed backwards when run over, Freeway was originally going to feature a human protagonist who turns into a splatter of blood when killed. This version of the game is referred to by fans as Bloody Human Freeway.
In support of the New Game+ dungeon and Sindar Ruin connection, Suikosource user and dataminer JiN88 explored the Japanese demo to support the idea that Sindar Ruin underwent some major changes during development:
• In the entrance between White Deer Inn and Sindar Ruin, there are 2 statues that are generic. In the demo, those statues are gendered with pronounced breasts, and appear snake-like, resembling the Greek mythical monster Lamia. The generic statues exist in the demo, so there is no reason the developers would go out their way to make a different pair.
• At the last puzzle where you put the plate in, the plaque that you would normally read is there instead of in the room next ahead.
• The two statues of the Double Head are absent.
• In the boss room of Sindar Ruin, there is a weird sprite that isn't seen anywhere else (it's a bit grainy so to see it you will need to zoom in). The position looks like it's supposed to be for an arch, but notably it has three heads. Double Head is the boss you would normally meet here only with two heads, suggesting there was originally a boss here with three heads.
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Um Jammer Lammy character designer Rodney Greenblatt expressed disappointment in the US print marketing campaign for Um Jammer Lammy, which highlights the midriff of a live-action human Lammy and has copy text describing how players "might even score groupies out of this", particularly due to what he perceived as a double standard in how this commercial was allowed in the US, but the level in which Lammy goes to Hell had to be censored into an island for that same demographic. He would say and reiterate in an interview:
"I don't like it. I think it's just Sony trying to torture us. Sony told us we couldn't have the hell part of the game for the US market (seen in the final level), and then they bring out these ads, which totally flaunt, well, you know. They're just torturing us."
The game's co-creator Masaya Matsuura had a more muted response to the ad, calling it "a little too sexy".
During the development of the NES Barbie game, Mattel didn't want Barbie to be depicted fighting or dying. The development team worked around this by having the game take place in a dream, with the game over screen simply depicting Barbie waking up, and Barbie's enemies being swapped for allies she could prompt into clearing obstacles or opening paths.
Traveler's Tales had intended to slide a Christian Easter egg into Toy Story 2: Buzz Lightyear to the Rescue!, inserting a sticker on a suitcase reading "JOHN 3:16", a citation for a Bible verse reading:
"For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life"
When Disney saw it, they insisted that it be removed, so in the final game the sticker simply reads "NY CITY".
It has been implied that Garfield's neutral special in Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 (where he transforms into the original, fatter 1970s version of the character) was originally going to feature him smoking a pipe, in reference to an internet meme based on a 1978 Garfield comic, where the last panel of a different Garfield comic is replaced with a panel of Garfield smoking a pipe with the same design. It is unknown if this was removed by the developers' choice, at the request of Nickelodeon, or at the request of the ratings board, but either way it was likely done to make the game more appropriate for its age demographic.
In prototype versions of McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure, the shops were McDonald's restaurants, and all the meters and power-ups in the game were McDonald's products. McDonald's burgers as health items in a game could be seen as endorsing them as a healthy food, so it was likely changed for the final game to avoid this perception, and while at the time Ronald McDonald was still seen holding or eating McDonald's in advertising, in later years he would be mandated against doing either. Additionally, a developer from the game has claimed that McDonald's were opposed to the collectibles because they didn't want hamburgers being left on the ground.
At one point in the game's development, SpongeBob's strong dash attack was intended to involve him running with scissors. This was vetoed by Nickelodeon, with community manager Thaddeus Crews suggesting that Nickelodeon may not have wanted a character many children view as a role model partaking in an easily-imitable dangerous activity. The scissors exist in the game files, attached to SpongeBob's model, but in an untextured form with no bones for snipping.
In the final game, SpongeBob's strong dash attack was a slip and fall based on a single frame from the episode "Krabs à la Mode" that became a meme.
When a full screen spell is performed, an image flashes on-screen for a few frames. In the Japanese and World 900623 revisions, it's a hexagram, which the symbols inside of it being astrological symbols for Saturn, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, and possibly Jupiter; the symbols on the outer circle are unknown and possibly made up.
The other two revisions (USA and World 900725) feature a lightning bolt instead.
If the player lands a lethal blown with Captain Commando's flamethrower or similar fire attacks the enemy will burn until they turn into ash. This does not happen in the SNES version, where the burned enemies stay on the ground before dissapearing.
If you put in the cheat code "girlnextdoor" you can play the game as Mary Jane Watson. At the end of the game, where Spider-Man and Mary Jane usually kiss, Mary Jane will kiss herself. This code was removed from later versions of the game, presumably because of the lesbian kiss in an E-rated game.
In early February 2024, one month prior to the game's release, multi-time WWE World Champion Brock Lesnar was removed from the cover of the "Forty Years of WrestleMania" showcase edition of the game in response to a sexual assault and sex trafficking lawsuit against Vince McMahon and WWE. Although Lesnar's name was not directly mentioned in the lawsuit, his reported connection to the case led to his removal as part of a wider effort by the WWE to disassociate from him. The cover was updated to feature a larger version of John Cena, where Lesnar used to be. 
In support of the New Game+ dungeon and Sindar Ruin connection, Suikosource user and dataminer JiN88 explored the Japanese demo to support the idea that Sindar Ruin underwent some major changes during development:
Superfrog was originally going to gain powers from drinking Newcastle Brown Ale, but this was changed to Lucozade in the final release.
It has been implied that Garfield's neutral special in Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 (where he transforms into the original, fatter 1970s version of the character) was originally going to feature him smoking a pipe, in reference to an internet meme based on a 1978 Garfield comic, where the last panel of a different Garfield comic is replaced with a panel of Garfield smoking a pipe with the same design. It is unknown if this was removed by the developers' choice, at the request of Nickelodeon, or at the request of the ratings board, but either way it was likely done to make the game more appropriate for its age demographic.
In prototype versions of McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure, the shops were McDonald's restaurants, and all the meters and power-ups in the game were McDonald's products. McDonald's burgers as health items in a game could be seen as endorsing them as a healthy food, so it was likely changed for the final game to avoid this perception, and while at the time Ronald McDonald was still seen holding or eating McDonald's in advertising, in later years he would be mandated against doing either. Additionally, a developer from the game has claimed that McDonald's were opposed to the collectibles because they didn't want hamburgers being left on the ground.
At one point in the game's development, SpongeBob's strong dash attack was intended to involve him running with scissors. This was vetoed by Nickelodeon, with community manager Thaddeus Crews suggesting that Nickelodeon may not have wanted a character many children view as a role model partaking in an easily-imitable dangerous activity. The scissors exist in the game files, attached to SpongeBob's model, but in an untextured form with no bones for snipping.
When a full screen spell is performed, an image flashes on-screen for a few frames. In the Japanese and World 900623 revisions, it's a hexagram, which the symbols inside of it being astrological symbols for Saturn, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, and possibly Jupiter; the symbols on the outer circle are unknown and possibly made up.
If the player lands a lethal blown with Captain Commando's flamethrower or similar fire attacks the enemy will burn until they turn into ash. This does not happen in the SNES version, where the burned enemies stay on the ground before dissapearing.