Back when I was a wee lad, I would watch all kinds of cartoons and movies with my parents. In many of the cartoons we watched, there were often jokes or ideas that my young, innocent mind didn't quite grasp. Now, not all of these jokes were dirty or vulgar; many of them were just jokes about people or events that happened before I was born and, not knowing the importance or historical scale of the reference, slipped right by me.

So, I thought I'd cover some of these today in an effort to bring us all back to that innocent time when Bugs Bunny dressing up like a woman, causing the antagonist's hat to become stiff upon their heads, was a simple diversionary tool and not a joke about male anatomy.

Rocko's Modern Life was one of my favorite shows growing up as a child. It had the usual slapstick jokes that most children love to laugh at, and the antics of Rocko and Heffer provided many of these moments, with some help from Dilbert and the Bigheads, of course.

However, it was also notorious for slipping things by the censors, which is odd because most of the really awful stuff they had in the show wasn't even close to subtle. Of course, the censors DID crack down on some of the stuff they did. There's the infamous Road Rash episode that got pulled after airing only once. There were other jokes, however, that managed to get through despite how unbelievably obvious they were. Watch as Rocko looks for and tries out different jobs. Someone at the censor's office was slacking off that day.

Of course, probably the cartoon most well-known for getting by the censors was The Animaniacs. One of the most genius cartoons of the nineties, The Animaniacs was possibly the dirtiest cartoon on the air at the time. When they weren't out singing the Nations of the World or teaching us about the Presidents, they were using their brilliant detective skills to slip the filthiest joke on a kids' show imaginable.

I'll end this entry on a non-dirty note. Back in the late nineties, the Powerpuff Girls were one of the original Cartoon Network "Cartoon Cartoons". While one of the cleverest jokes was naming the brains behind the city of Townsville "Ms. Sara Bellum", one of the greatest episodes was titled "Meet the Beat-Alls", an episode in which four of the main villains team up and combine their evil minds to become the Beat-Alls, or the Bad Four. The entire episode was rife with Beatles references, and at one point had the four evil-doers beating up what looks to be a Beatles tribute group. And, as was bound to happen, the "band" was broken up when a screeching chimp came in and ruined everything.

I hope you've enjoyed our little trip down memory lane. I will do my best to do a follow-up later on,  but there aren't any guarantees. That's all for now!