10 Mind-Blowing Facts You Didn't Know About The Office
4. Cut That Out
Comedy shows are breeding ground for unusable film footage or deleted scenes. Actors corpsing, breaking character or messing up their lines is a common theme among any situational comedy show, especially one that featured the talent of The Office. Some things however were edited for much darker or more sensitive reasons.
The "cold open" (where a show begins midway through some part of its story) of the episode "Koi Pond" was deleted for syndication, DVD release, and streaming. The intro involved the office throwing a Halloween party for children in the "haunted" warehouse. During this scene, Michael performs a mock hanging in front of the children, to which they act understandably terrified.
You can still view the full clip on YouTube, and you can see why the executives at NBC didn't want to brandish such a thing, especially with the greater social awareness of mental health and depression over the last few years.
Also, in syndication of the "Performance Review" episode, Dwight's use of the word "boning" is changed to "doing" when referring to Michael and Jan, and Michael's use of a similar word in the "Sexual Harassment" episode is changed to "shwing".