10 Moments Edited Out Of Your Favourite TV Shows
5. The Phone Sex Line Number - Animaniacs
Hulu's new Animaniacs revival has received mostly warm reviews from critics and fans alike, though in addition to a most unexpected controversy involving Johnny Depp of all people, the show came under fire for a quick gag involving a phone number.
The series' sixth episode features a Pinky and the Brain short called "Close Encounters of the Worst Kind," where Brain (Maurice LaMarche) posts a phone number to the screen hoping that alien invaders will use it to contact him.
Unsurprisingly, fans actually dialled the number to see if it led to anything - perhaps a pre-recorded message from Brain? - only to discover that it was actually the real number for a phone sex line. Oops.
Word quickly spread online, with fans even posting footage of their calls, and so sensing an impending PR catastrophe, Hulu quickly pulled the episode for re-editing, before restoring it with all of the accompanying text removed.
It's fair to assume that the number was likely a fake when the show went into production back in 2018, yet removing the text entirely means that the gag no longer makes any sense at all to those not in the know.
It probably would've been smarter to just replace the number with one that literally couldn't exist.