5 Times Kids' Cartoons Told Completely Inappropriate Jokes

Most of the jokes in children's cartoons are, you know, for kids. Sometimes, though, the gags are a little more grown up. These are the jokes for the parents in the audience; the more sophisticated viewers who'll chuckle at a reference to something that would otherwise go over a kid's head. Every once in a while, however, these grown-up jokes go a little further. 

The people making these children's cartoons were obviously adults themselves, and they would sometimes amuse themselves by sneaking in a joke that only an adult should be able to understand. As "Rocko's Modern Life" creator Joe Murray explained in an interview with Polygon, "We did things that we thought were funny, and we tried to be discreet about it."

The following five jokes were not so discreet that they went without notice, and they're often celebrated as some of the best inappropriate humor hidden in kids shows. If any impressionable young minds were harmed by any of these jokes, well, perhaps it was worth it — they are quite funny, after all.

"The Powerpuff Girls" was full of allusions to pop culture, many of which would have gone unnoticed by kids in the audience — like a character referencing the 1974 song "Billy, Don't Be a Hero" by the power pop band Paper Lace, for example. The most adult joke in the series, though, wasn't a reference, but a surprisingly blunt bit about unplanned pregnancies.

In the Season 4 episode "Superfriends," the girls become friends with Robin, a new neighbor whose family just moved into the neighborhood. When they introduce her to Professor Utonium, he explains that he created the Powerpuff Girls in an accident in his lab. Robin cheerily responds that she was an accident too, rendering the Professor speechless.

This gag isn't necessarily offensive, but it's fair to say nobody was expecting Robin to reveal the circumstances of her conception. (The Professor certainly wasn't.) The joke also implies that Robin's parents told their kindergarten-aged child that she was an accident — which was certainly a choice.

"SpongeBob SquarePants" was full of humor that was as much for grown-up viewers as it was for the kids watching. Heck, the name of SpongeBob's hometown is "Bikini Bottom."

In the Season 2 episode "Your Shoe's Untied," SpongeBob is watching TV — and getting really into a video of a live-action sea anemone flopping around. Like, perhaps too into it. When his snail, Gary, crawls in on him, he's clearly embarrassed and quickly changes the channel. "I was just looking for the sports channel," he stammers out, only making his viewing habits all the more suspicious.

The implication, of course, is that SpongeBob was watching something inappropriate — why else would he be reacting like this over footage of a dancing sea critter? Still, while we don't know what floats SpongeBob's boat, the rest of the show portrays SpongeBob in a very asexual way, so we probably shouldn't read too much into this one-off gag.

Many of the Cartoon Network shows from the '90s pushed the boundaries of what was appropriate in a children's cartoon, and "The Amazing World of Gumball" carried on that risqué spirit into the 2010s. In the Season 2 episode "The Storm," Alan, a talking balloon, is despondent because he and his girlfriend Carmen (a big cactus) have broken up.

Feeling guilty for his role in the breakup, Gumball tries to encourage Alan to date somebody else, but Alan's too deflated — literally — to leave the bathroom stall where he's wallowing. He needs to be blown back up, and so the scene cuts from Alan limply lifting his droopy balloon appendage while sitting on the toilet to the two of them exiting the bathroom. Alan's floating cheerfully, but Gumball looks truly grossed out by what he's done ... suggesting that the connotations of the word "blow" were not accidental.

"The Animaniacs" was packed with racy innuendos, to the point where the fan wiki has a long, detailed page of all the many jokes that were not intended for kids. ("The stuff they're getting away with on kids' shows these days," Yakko even remarks in a Season 1 episode.)

Perhaps the raunchiest example of adult humor in "The Animaniacs" came in "Hercule Yakko," a segment from the 25th episode of the first season. In a parody of Agatha Christie novels, Yakko is trying to solve a mystery and instructs his sister, Dot, to "dust for prints." She mishears him, however, and returns holding the musician Prince in her arms. When Yakko clarifies that he meant "fingerprints," Dot mishears him again and says: "I don't think so."

This joke wasn't actually scripted, which might explain how it made it into the episode. Dot's voice actress, Tress MacNeille, thought Rob Paulsen's line reading sounded sexual and improvised her reply accordingly. Moments like this were so common in the recording booth, in fact, that Paulsen made a habit of blowing a kiss and theatrically saying "G'night, everybody!" after an accidental double entendre.

Perhaps no show got more past the network censors than "Rocko's Modern Life." As Charlie Adler, a voice actor on the cult classic series, explained to Bustle, it was easy to sneak dirty jokes in because the censors were "micromanaging what they were looking for." They couldn't say the word "stupid," for instance, but they got a lot of mileage out of being able to say "balls" instead of "eyeballs."

Considering "Rocko's Modern Life" is a children's show that once had the main character take a job at what was clearly an adult hotline, there are tons of contenders for the best — and most — inappropriate joke. The winner, however, must go to the Chokey Chicken, a restaurant that appears throughout the series whose name is a slang term for, well, you know. And in this instance, the censors apparently brought it on themselves. Series creator Joe Murray had intended to call the restaurant Chubby Chicken or Chewy Chicken, only to be told no. "So as a joke I said 'What about Chokey Chicken?" he told Bustle.

Rocko visited the Chokey Chicken multiple times over the first several seasons of the show's run, though presumably somebody at the network got wise eventually — because the name changed to "Chewy Chicken" during the fourth season. In the 2019 "Rocko's Modern Life" revival special, the restaurant returns to its original name, which makes sense: By then, the nostalgic viewers tuning in were old enough to take a dirty joke.