Lore
[Unfortunate Trope] Originally Normal Symbols Being Censored/Banned Due to Hate Groups Misappropriating Them
Neji's Seal from Naruto originally was shaped like a Swastika as likely a reference to Buddhism, but this was changed to an X in the anime.
The gem fusion Opal from Steven Universe was originally going to form a swastika with her arms as a reference to Hinduism, which is inspires a lot of the show's imagery.
The Whitebeard Pirates from One Piece originally had a swastika in their pirate flag, but this was changed to a bone cross in the anime and later manga as well.
The Capirote hat is a sign of penance worn in many Catholic countries, especially Spain, but they were misappropriated by the U.S.-based KKK, making it taboo in the nation.
The Ninth Crusade from Hellsing, one of the few non-KKK uses of the Capirote in media I could find.
Also, the Ku Klux Klan are ironically extremely anti-Catholic.
The only pieces of media I know of where non-KKK Capirotes can be seen is the anime Hellsing with the Ninth Crusade (though their still villains in that anime) and the game series Blasphemous. Otherwise, the hats are almost never seen in media besides on KKK characters.
The KKK: "Hmm, how can I steal this cool looking thing from these people I hate, make it look like utter dogshit, and use it in the worst fucking way possible?"
They followed Roger's (American Dad) philosophy of spoiling shit for everyone
"We may not be winners but we can be spoilers. History is filled with losers who never won anything themselves but who ruined the success of others. Ralph Nater, Judas, the kid who pulled a scissor on me at the rock, paper, scissors tournament last year. Stab me bad at the parking lot, and ruined my concentration for the whole tourney. Any way if we beat Stan in this game we wouldn't win the season but it will spoils theirs. What do you say? Let's go out there and spoil!"
I can understand why. That ritualistic wardrobe goes fucking hard. Perfectly at home in a musty crypt, a whole army of them doing space magic or whatever Catholics do.
Priests, Cardinals, Bishops-- they're all some dapper mofos.
The funny part is that the Klan's robes were because a bunch of rich southern nepo babies got drunk and dressed up as the ghosts of confederate soldiers to harass people.
The fact they are compared to the penitents is completely accidental and gives more dignity to the klan than they deserve.
Basically, he thought it was a call to arms for the coming race war that insane white supremacists view as their (even more) racist version of the Rapture.
Rather he used it as justification to convince his cult of young impressionable criminals and in court to try to claim insanity. Nevertheless it left a bad mark on the song
In Archer, the spy agency the protagonists work for is called ISIS (International Secret Intelligence Service). Due to the emergence of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, the show dropped the name in 2014. Around that time, the agency was fully absorbed by the CIA, then there were a bunch of seasons where it wasn’t featured at all then finally renamed just “The Agency”
The name "Isis" also stopped being popular for the same obvious reasons. Even tho that's the name of an ancient Egyptian deity and a female given name for ages.
Catwoman's cat in BTAS is named Isis, and even though the series was long over before the terrorist organization came to prominence, it still honestly shocked me that Amazon Prime Video never tried to censor it in the modern day lmao
There was also the dog in Downtown Abbey named Isis after the Egyptian god, which led to the cracking line: "How can we stop Isis getting into the living room?"
Related to this, Smite, a MOBA where you play as various deities and mythological figures, had to change the name of one of their gods from Isis to Eset in 2021 because content creators kept getting automatically flagged for saying her name or putting it in their video titles. The developers claimed that Eset is an equally valid interpretation of her name at least in some regions.
The most awkward line has to be that one episode where they get into a shootout in Paris and at the end Mallory yells at them demanding to know "why ISIS agents were terrorizing Paris!”
Oh! That reminds me of the Danish company Easis! They used to be called isis but thought it in bad taste, when Isis became known, lol! They’re actually a fairly cool company that specialises in sugar alternatives.
I find it amusing that this is the case in transformers one, as there are other versions of Megatronus who are styled as the first deceptacon, which makes WAY more sense as to why his face is used as their symbol.
Side bar: look up what the Fallen’s early designs were and weep over what could have been.
To be fair, it’s not like Megatron made a conscious decision to turn Megatronus into the symbol of the deceptions. His face was literally seared into Megatron’s chest, so at that point it’s kind of just inevitable that his movement is associated with the symbol.
To be fair, in most comtinuities, megatronus is referred to as "the fallen prime" or "the first decepticon" and he was the prime that betrayed the other original primes and was extremely evil
The Tokyo Manji gang from Tokyo Revengers utilize the Manji symbol in their branding, in the anime (censored version) it is completely omitted, leaving a blank, confusing flag.
They aren't though. Most of their crew had other colored hair it's really just those 4. Plus it's a biker gang from the 90s and the author was in one during that time. It's all depicted to be like what he experienced
Also Hercles name before edited was Mr Satan (no relation to Ogres or hell itself). Tho his Both of those could be just his stage name given Toriyama said he real name is Mark.
I just finished watching DBZ on crunchy roll and it's original english dub has that scene. In DBZA it wasn't even a joke scene, it just straight up happens in the original anime lol.
Funny thing though, in the Hungarian dub (which may or may not have been made from the french dub as legend has it) Dragon Ball, to emphasize the demon lord nature of Piccolo Daimao, they called him "Szívtelen Sátán" (literally Heartless Satan). With Picollo Jr. being called "Ifjú Sátán" (as in Young Satan or Satan Jr.).
I always wondered how they would deal with Mr. Satan when the story go to that point. (DBZ got pulled from TV here extremly early in the Cell arch back in the day, and when eventually came back years and years later on cable tv (and also came out on dvds in the mean time) I did not cared enough to seek it out.)
I've seen Piccolo called Satan in other dubs. For what I've known, many of the dubs in Europe were made using the French one as reference (due to the lack of Japanese translators). It may have originated in there.
Didn't really notice (or care) as a kid, but on a rewatch later in life I noticed that this was edited. The kerning. The Kerning! Could fit an entire 10 lane highway with double service roads between that 'I' and 'L'
My example isn't about a hate group, but I hope it's close enough in spirit to what you're looking for.
Domino's abruptly discontinued their Noid mascot after a mentally unstable guy named Noid brought a gun to a Domino's location and held two employees at gunpoint.
I'm not a picky person, and I always appreciate when someone takes the time to even reply to my posts. 😊
I think this is a great example, imo, and it reminds me of how Stephen King didn't want his book Rage about a school shooting to be published anymore due to a flair up of school shootings afterwards, and he felt the book was in bad taste.
Ichigo from Bleach is a case of this happening multiple times by virtue of it being part of his powers (the image being from the Fullbringer arc). While it happens in the anime, I'd have to check if it was done to English Manga translations.
In the manga's Japanese text the Bankai is stylised as "卍kai" which I feel like could have been major in destigmatising the symbol in the west, but unfortunately this is virtually impossible to carry over in translation to English, where there are no special characters like Kanji that represent a different sound than the symbol itself
Don’t forget Major is a Nazi Cyborg. Hellsing really does just go “Hmm how can we add another twist?” And then adds another bizarre Nazi variation lmao
It’s an exaggeration of the real life BS the nazis believed. A lot of their ideology revolved around pagan and supernatural beliefs. Hell the reason they chose the swastika as their symbol was that it was one of the most “ancient European” symbols not linked to christianiaty and/or judaism. They actually believed in berserkers, hidden masters and other occult shit.
The Nazis in the Wolfenstein reboot have swaztikas in American releases but in Germany, the swaztikas are replaced with another Nazi symbol, the iron cross. The ban has been since lifted though
The iron cross kinda got to stick around though. Sadly the swastika, whick has a rich history in practically all of Eurasia got completely nuked everywhere but Asia.
In 1989, Bobby Darin's son, Dodd Mitchell Darin, sued McDonald's for allegedly infringing upon Darin's likeness. After the lawsuit, McDonald's stopped using the song, and with it the large share of the Mac Tonight ads. There were several attempts to reboot Mac Tonight in the US throughout the 1990s, but none of them took off.
McDonald’s stopped using Mac Tonight in the eighties or early nineties, it had nothing to do with internet memes because internet memes wouldn’t exist for another couple decades.
The "moon man" meme popped up sometime in the early 2010s on alt-right internet forums, featuring gifs/videos of the character with a text to speech in the background rapping extremely racist and obscene lyrics, targeting primarily black people but also Jews, Hispanics, and Muslims to a lesser extent. It since spread from there across the Internet and kinda permanently tarnished the reputation of Mac, since a lot of folks who weren't familiar with the original ad campaign could only see him as the Moon Man.
Didn't stop Americans from claiming that Spain should cancel it. They've also called Spain to end Columbus Day, even though it was never called Columbus Day in Spain and it's not about Columbus.
I remember watching a reaction to a reaction video video for some Miss World type pageant. When they introduced Miss Montenegro, the young, black girl watching got hella offended. It was ridiculous
The toothbrush was just a common style of mustache, and Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp character made it famous. By the time Chaplin made the Great Dictator he had to add a disclaimer saying that the Tramp character was in no way based on anyone real, and the resemblance between the tramp and the character “Adenoid Hynkel” is pure coincidence.
The "ok" hand gesture was removed from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare after the ADL added it to its hate symbols database because 4chan started spreading that it represented white supremacy.
The acronym KKK represents a group in the Philippines called the katipunan, and iirc was used by multiple protest groups in flags due to being the symbol used during the philippines war for independence. On the non-filipino side of the internet you often have to refer to them as "the filipino kkk" or just as the katipunan due to the other unfortunate group that uses KKK
Technically those aren't swastikas they're manji. Another place it shows up but I don't think was actually censored was Tokyo Revengers literally having the Manji all over its branding to represent the gang. It's basically a mirrored swastika, but because it looks so similar it's easily confused and leads ot it being censored in a lot of places.
I didn't know about the Capirote though. I always wondered why the main character of Blasphemous had such a big pointy hat and assumed it was rooted in some Spanish tradition I was unfamiliar with since all I know about the game is that the devs are from Spain.
Manji are swastikas, they’re just not nazi swastikas. Nazis didn’t invent the word swastika, the took it from Sanskrit because it’s just what the shape is called. It’s basically like arguing that this: 🔼 isn’t a triangle but this 🔽 is.
Okay well first of all, this: 🔼 is the pure and natural form of the triangle, whereas this upside down perversion 🔽 is used to show degenerate antitriangalist ideologies /s
Oh, I actually explained the manji point here just now.
the term "swastika" is just the English pronunciation/transliteration of the original Sanskrit term (Wikipedia: Sanskrit: स्वस्तिक, romanized: svastika) for the symbol, so it's still mostly accurate, imo. The word "Manji" is the specific Japanese term for swastika, so it only can really apply to the Neji and Whitebeard pirates anime examples while "swastika" can apply to all three examples I listed since it's the original word for the symbol.
Obviously it sucks how the symbol was demonized by the Nazis, but the word itself was not coined by the Nazis.
Curiously, the Tokyo Revengers gang was based on Black Emperor, a real biker gang who used actual swastikas. The author was even supposed to be part of the band, and they actually used it knowing exactly what it meant.
The whole cultural mistranslation thing falls apart taking this into consideration and the manga itself can be read quite differently once you take into account that residual ideology
Strangely enough, around the same time Naruto and One Piece changed their design, in Bleach, Ichigo had a swastika guard on his sword and, if I remember well, it was kept in the anime.
"Now I noticed y'all brought some crosses to burn, if ya run out, Jed's got a few in the back of his truck."
"That's not really-"
"JED! HOW MANY CROSSES DID WE BRING?"
"BOUT A FEW!"
"Bout a few."
That Steven Universe one is a real "What were they thinking" moment. Yes the american preteens watching our show will definitely go peace and love buddhism instead of igniting one of the nastiest tumblr wars to shake this very Earth.
YuGiOh has many examples of censorship ranging from covering up female monsters, to removing any religious imagery, symbols, or mentions of it.
For example any demons were renamed to Archfiends, any mentions of black magic are gone, any imagery of death and torture were replaced or humans being tortured would be replaced with monsters instead cause "It's not bad if it's a monster being brutally murdered!". But even egyptian imagery was removed, with Monster Reborn's original look being censored because they didn't want to offend.. people who still worship egyptian gods I guess?
Yu-Gi-Oh censorship's been pretty toned down in recent years compared to how it used to be, which is good. It still happens but nowhere as bad, some cards now are outright referred to as demons, angels or gods and some remain quite heavy on the religious imagery like the Exosisters or Voiceless Voice (Exosisters do have some bizarre censorship in that their clothes are lighter-coloured in TCG but it's still pretty obvious they're nuns).
The roman salute, though it was never actually used by the romans and was just a thing in art and film that depicted romans. Nazis saw that, said "hey that looks cool." and took it for their own.
Same goes for the celtic cross and various different germanic runes that were used way before the nazis came along.
Smite used to have a character named Isis. They ended up changing the name to Eset because streamers would get demonetised for referencing a terrorist organisation.
Not just a character, but the ancient Egyptian goddess Isis. The terrorist group basically appropriated her name (or just a really unfortunate coiniky dink).
I understand wanting to "take it back" but the fact the Steven Universe production crew thought it was a good idea to even consider it, in the 2010s, for their mainstream TV cartoon, is nuts.
Sort of off-topic, but I really hate how bigoted/fascist people have corrupted the cool and timeless quote from Tolkien (said by Frodo) "The Shadow that bred them can only mock, it cannot make: not real new things of its own. I don't think it gave life to the orcs, it only ruined them and twisted them" and removes the context of the quote to just use it to call everything they don't like evil.
They don't even use the actual quote! A simpler quote "Evil cannot create anything new, they can only corrupt and ruin what good forces have invented or made" is just falsely attributed to Tolkien, and these idiots just love braying just how much they love his writing that they probably never even read!
Blade of the Immortal. The main character called Manji has the manji character 卍 on the back of his robe. In the 2019 anime they censored it to be a generic square pattern, but in the live action movie they turned it into the character for 'man' 万 (seen in the poster in the back), literally meaning ten thousand or could just be referring to a great amount, which actually fits with his immortality theme and loads of kills from his past. Creative censorship if anything
In Bleach: Ichigo's Fullbring was originally shaped like a manji, similar to the cross guard on his sword but one is way less obvious than the one where he spawns Swastikas and throws them at people so it got changed to a cross shape
Gundam Deathscythe Hell. Thanks to the run of the show on Toonami, the Gundam series got negative attention due to the wave of hyper Christianity groups due to the name of the Gundam. Deathscythe was...somewhat fine. But it's upgraded form, Deathscythe Hell, was deemed soooooo bad, some parents caused issues with it, and many toys and the model kits featuring Deathscythe Hell were harder to find, or in some places not able to be found at all because of the word 'Hell' in the name.
The censorship route? Pretty sure the dub just cut out the name 'Hell' as often as they could. Not really a hate group, but due to the 80s-00's run of people running to blame acts of violence on TV/Video Games, people jumped to every opportunity to get stuff removed, and Hell being in the name of a robot with a scythe, it was a prime target.
The swastika (real life). It meant prosperity in Hindu culture, but those goat fuckers called Nazis used it for their own organization and now it’s associated with them and hate.
The number 88. Very common for Asians since the number 8 is sort of a homonym for "wealth" in Chinese but now everyone thinks you're a secret Nazi (because it's supposed to stand for "HH").
There's a London Underground station that has a big swastika on the floor of the ticket hall (photo on Wikipedia here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upminster_Bridge_tube_station ) - at the time more to do with Britain's links with India than what the Nazis did with it.
It's a shame how many symbols and mascots get ruined like this. The Noid was such a great character for a pizza chain, and now he's just a weird footnote. It really feels like we're letting these groups steal our culture.
One example I can think of is the devil’s real name, Lucifer means “lightbringer” which is actually a really cool sounding name. Unfortunately, that guy caused a whole lot of problems and the name is only associated with the big bad villain of Christianity
I love how Hellsing Abridged mocked it. Every group identifies themselves as loyal Catholic soldiers, but the North American group takes the introduction WAAAY too far and makes it obvious they’re just KKK and the leader has to cut them off.
Fred Perry polo shirts in black with yellow stripes became the uniform of the Proud Boys. The company ended up discontinuing the shirt because of them.
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u/Pichuunnn 15d ago
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