10 Times Marvel Was Forced To Change Spider-Man
4. Violence Was Extremely Limited In The Spider-Man Cartoon
Considering how many restrictions the 1994 Spider-Man cartoon had, it's a miracle the show turned out as well as it did. According to the producer, John Semper, the censors banned Spider-Man from punching characters in the head or the gut, forcing most of Spidey's fights to consist of shoving and wrestling. Throughout the 65 episodes, Spider-Man only punches someone three times.
The censors also banned the usage of guns, meaning every police officer in the series was armed with a laser instead of a pistol.
Because bloodsucking vampires were a big no-no in children's cartoons, Spider-Man was in a bit of a pickle when it introduced Morbius the Living Vampire. Although Morbius is a pretty traditional vampire in the comics, he was rewritten so he feeds off plasma in the cartoon instead of blood.
It doesn't stop there. Words like "kill", "death", and "sinister" were considered too... sinister so they were also cut. Even though Spider-Man obtained his powers from a radioactive arachnid, the producers decided to censor the word "radioactive", worried that young viewers would get scared of radiation-based technology like microwaves and satellites. To get around this, the word "neogenic" was coined to substitute for "radioactive".