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Following the success of Batman: The Animated Series, several more superhero action shows were produced during the 1990s. One of the most successful was Fox Kid's Spider-Man: The Animated Series, led by John Semper Jr. Working closely with Stan Lee, this show introduced a new generation to the adventures of the wall-crawler and is still fondly remembered for its creativity, memorable voice-acting, and terrific intro.

The show also experienced a fair amount of behind-the-scenes censorship and notes from Fox executives, which resulted in some questionable writing and editing decisions. Nowadays, these choices can be looked back on as a product of over-correction in the '90s and provided moments of comedy upon re-watches.

Spider-Man's rogues gallery includes some of comic's most popular villains. Early in the comic run, six of them teamed up to defeat Spider-Man and called themselves the Sinister Six. The idea of villain team-ups continues to be popular, and many shows and video games have had their own version of the six.

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The animated series was no exception, but along with swapping members out, they also changed the name from Sinister to Insidious. Allegedly, this is due to the word Sinister being considered too scary for the target audience. All it really did was ruin the rhyming compound of an iconic name that's existed in comics for decades.

There has been a long-standing debate regarding the level of violence in children's shows, especially when guns are involved. To avoid making things seem too replicable to children, shows tended to exaggerate their action scenes. One way this is done is by changing their weapons into weapons usually found in sci-fi epics like Star Wars.

Spider-Man was not the first show to do this, but it is one of the funniest examples. While real guns make sporadic appearances and are never fired, the majority of weapons are laser-based and range from the size of a rifle to a bulky bazooka. It'd be one thing if the criminals were the only ones to use them, but the NYPD is also shown to carry a futuristic arsenal.

One of the reasons for Spider-Man's enduring popularity is how relatable of a protagonist he is. Many fans are able to identify with his struggles, and younger fans can easily imagine themselves with his powers when playing pretend. Unfortunately, some censors were scared kids might emulate him too much and thus acted accordingly.

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To prevent children from swinging through windows, the show was banned from showing broken glass, especially if it came from a window. As such, most villains entered buildings by breaking holes in the walls or ceilings. Even on the rare occasions when windows were broken, like in the episode "Tombstone," the hole just magically appears offscreen with no shattered glass in sight.

Censorship is sometimes done to make a show more accessible to international audiences. One example is the depiction of blood, which can get a show bumped up in ratings depending on the country, and moved to a time slot where it might not be viewed by its intended audience. As such, Spider-Man's characters could never be shown bleeding from any injury.

While this is understandable from a marketing standpoint, it's rather confusing in-show, since the characters could be put through all sorts of physical trauma and not suffer a scratch. It also limited the abilities of some heroes, such as Wolverine (Cal Dodd), who couldn't use his claws to injure people. Blood did appear in the show, but only in test tubes and needles.

Decades before the MCU was a thing, Spider-Man was the center of a shared Marvel television universe. This was due to Marvel shifting its focus to television shows at the time due to poor comic sales. Along with crossing over with other shows like X-Men: The Animated Series, and Iron Man: The Animated Series, Spider-Man also teamed up with the likes of the Punisher (John Beck) and Blade (JD Hall).

While this show did grant kids an introduction to these characters, they sadly got watered-down versions due to censorship. Blade is forced to trade his signature katana for a discount lightsaber, and the Punisher avoids lethal force unless it's a last resort. Their backstories were also altered or had certain details omitted that might be considered too heavy for young viewers.

Language is probably the most censored aspect of kids' shows. Usually, this is reserved for curse words and sexual innuendos, which forces writers to get creative in order to sneak adult jokes into episodes. For Spider-Man, the censors also went after any word that sounded too violent, such as death, die, and kill.

As a result, bad guys said they were going to get rid of or obliterate Spider-Man instead of killing him. There are a few times characters come close to saying the dreaded "D" word, only to get comedically cut off by another character. The best example of this censorship comes from the episode, "Turning Point," where Mary Jane Watson (Saratoga Ballantine) and Green Goblin (Neil Ross) fall into alternate dimensions instead of kicking the bucket.

Web-swinging is probably the most iconic trait of Spider-Man. It allows him to stay mobile in fights and provides a great excuse to showcase the beauty and size of New York City. The animated series capitalized on both when it has Spidey swing by, but the censors gave the creators a particularly strange request.

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Writers and animators were told that, if Spider-Man lands on a building, he can't harm any pigeons. This request has baffled people for decades since the only way a pigeon would be in the scene is if an animator intentionally drew one, and why would they do that? Even Spectacular Spider-Man took a jab at this, with several episodes featuring Spider-Man startling pigeons as he passes or even getting tossed into caged pigeons (though none are hurt).

Carnage is one of Spider-Man's most popular modern villains, but also notoriously difficult to adapt. Being a serial killer who merges with the offspring of the Venom symbiote, his stories are known for their gratuitous amount of death, destruction, and anarchy. Given all the censorship already present in the show, it seems odd to try and adapt Carnage, but they did.

Although offhanded mentions are made about Cletus Kasady's (Scott Cleverdon) offscreen actions, he is never shown killing anyone, even when he gains his powers. Instead, he sucks the souls from their bodies as part of a ritual to summon Dormamu (Ed Gilbert), and the souls all get returned to their owners when he is defeated. Also, while the show kept his ability to generate weapons, he could really use them due to the limited violence.

While the show was an action series, the censors were very strict about what could or couldn't happen during fights. The biggest limitation came to punches: while heroes and villains could throw punches, they pretty much never connected. This forced the team to get creative.

Most fights in the show instead involve characters kicking, body-checking, or wrestling with one another. Villains like the Lizard could get away with swinging his tail like a club, and Spidey could always fall back on his webbing. If a character possessed super strength, they might pick up objects and throw them at their opponents as well.

No character is as affected by censorship as Michael Morbius (Nick Jameson). A foreign exchange student from an Eastern European country, he comes to American to study medicine in the hopes of curing his homeland of a deadly plague spread by bats. An accident involving a bat results in him becoming a vampire, but due to the blood embargo, couldn't be seen biting people.

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To get around this, the writers gave Morbius suckers on his hand and hunger for plasma, the liquid component of blood. In some ways, the image of Morbius draining his victims just by grabbing them is a terrifying sight. On the other hand, the show's theme song has the lyrics "radioactive spider blood," so why couldn't Morbius say the word?

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'Spider-Man: The Animated Series' 10 Most Confusing Examples of Censorship - Collider