When the Spider-Man animated series debuted in 1994, parent groups everywhere were complaining that the children’s fare on TV was too violent. Power Rangers was the main target of this parental outrage but Batman: The Animated Series was also called out, since its adaptations were seen as too “adult.” When you combine that concern with the fact that Marvel saw this cartoon series as one big commercial to sell Toy Biz action figures, producer John Semper was in a tough bind. He wanted to tell compelling stories in the cartoon, but that often clashed with the objectives of the decision makers higher up than him, particularly when you consider these ten crazy rules.
1 No Sinister. In the comics, a team made up of Spider-Man’s villains is called the Sinister Six. For the TV series, though, that was considered too provocative of a name. Instead, they were called the Insidious Six.
2 No guns with bullets. Guns were allowed on the show, of course, but only if they fired beams or other sorts of projectiles. No one ever shot a gun with bullets on the series in its five seasons and sixty-five episodes.
3 Punching is a no-no. Spider-Man only throws three punches in the entire series: once in the season two finale, once in the season three finale, and one other time during season three.
4 No killers. When they adapted the character of Carnage, the serial killer who gained a symbiote similar to Venom, the character could no longer be a killer and now had to be just some crazy guy.
5 No fire. Yes, there could not be any fire on screen!
6 No breaking glass. Again, I don’t even know where to begin with the logic behind some of these rules.
7 No use of the words “death,” “die,” or “kill.” At least you can understand the theory behind this a bit more than breaking glass and fire. The term “destroy” got used a lot as a result of this.
8 No blood. Pretty logical if you abide by the other rules.
9 No real vampires. The whole “no blood” rule really put a damper on the introduction of Morbius, who is a vampire. You can’t show blood. You’re not even supposed to reference blood. So how do you show a vampire? Well, in the case of Morbius, he has tiny mouthlike things in his hands that he attaches to people’s faces and he sucks “plasma” from them through their skin without breaking the skin. Yes, this looked as insane as it sounds.
10 Don’t hurt the pigeons! The most inexplicable of the bunch: “When Spider-Man lands on the rooftop, be sure that he doesn’t harm any pigeons.”