Photo: Nickelodeon
There are thousands of episodes of animated shows for kids airing each year, and nearly all of them are perfectly fine for young, impressionable minds, but from time to time, some are deemed inappropriate. It once happened due to a vulgar image on Maya The Bee, as well as over a questionable theme in Bluey, and it also occurred because of a scene in an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants that wound up getting the episode pulled off the air and banned, but the remvoal didn't come until 15 years after the episode was released.
It happened to a 2003 episode titled "Mid-Life Crustacean," which sees Mr. Krabs going through a mid-life crisis. To help him out, SpongeBob and Patrick take Mr. Krabs out for some fun in Bikini Bottom. Among their activities is breaking into a woman's home to steal her underwear in a panty raid. However, the woman whose panties they took was none other than Mr. Krabs' mom, who then punishes her son by sending him to his room.
In 2018, Nickelodeon decided to completely remove the episode. A rep explained the decision to IGN, saying it came "following a standards review in which we determined some story elements were not kid-appropriate." Since then, it has been fully off the air, except for a blip in 2023 when the episode came back on Paramount+ due to a technical error, but it was quickly removed again.
Interestingly, "Mid-Life Crustacean" wasn't the only SpongeBob ep to get pulled. Another, called "Kwarantined Krab," also wasn't shown since it centered on a contagious illness called Clam Flu. The episode was originally scheduled to air in 2020, but it would have been in very poor taste to show it on account of the COVID pandemic.