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What UK censors wouldn't accept from Cartoon Network's Regular Show
William Salyers, who plays Rigby on Regular Show, explains what Cartoon Network had to change when recording the show for UK children.
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Making a cartoon for international markets isn’t nearly as straightforward as you might think. Different countries have different censorship issues, which can be as simple as changing a line of dialogue or as complex as changing the entire name of the show. For the Regular Show cast, they found that there were some things that the UK took more seriously than the censors in the US… like driver safety.
At Emerald City Comic Con 2026, Janine Haddad Tompkins, Minty Lewis, Sam Marin, and William Salyers all joined Popverse’s own Grant DeArmitt to discuss the show and drop some deep lore for fans who might not know about it already. William Salyers, who played Rigby on Regular Show, explained that the cast had to change certain lines of dialogue depending on where the show was airing. “I don’t remember exactly which way it went, but in one country it was okay to say ‘idiot’ but not ‘moron’ and in the other country it was okay to say ‘moron’ but not ‘idiot,’” he said. “So we would have to change up stuff like that.”
However, the biggest difference between the UK and US versions of Regular Show actually wasn’t down to language or even sex, but the idea of kids imitating what happened on the screen.
“In Great Britain, they didn’t really care so much about sex or even violence, per se, but what they call imitative behavior. Like I can remember one time, there was an episode where Muscle Man puts a cinder block on the gas pedal in a car, and it goes off a cliff. That apparently was a problem in the UK.” Saylers then added in a faux British accent, “Because we don’t want our children doing that! What a terribly bad idea you Yanks had.”
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