So, my brilliant (and totally not "in progress" at all) suggestion about uncensored version of games has just reached 10'000 votes exactly. Let's celebrate :

I'm offering a $5 gog game to a random poster in this thread - who just has to give a fun, ridiculous or interesting historical exemple of state-based censorship or marketing-based censorship, such as, for instance, the classical statue's tits covered aboard the queen mary II, or the american censorship of robin hood in the 50s, or the ex-cigarette of lucky luke...

Marvellous exemples abound, because humans=lol. Let's enjoy some spectacular, famous or little known, exemples of it.

10001 lol :D

If I understand the thread correctly, Chinese censorship, specifically internet and Google.

And looking up more on China, they've censored Winnie the Pooh, Django, lots of ridiculous things that people in a free society take for granted.

Not in, and I do not fit the criterias of this giveaway, but I am reminded about George Bernard Shaw

"Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads."

This recent example is rather silly. Systembolaget is a state-owned company and the only one allowed to sell stronger alcohol here in Sweden. Recently there were a few new types of beer released here, named after 3 of the 7 deadly sins, namely Pride, Lust & Envy. Systembolaget removed the image from "Lust" though.
All 3 can be seen if you follow the link (Safe for work!)

Nintendo makes a good candidate?
Like, when it censored the blood on Mortal Kombat, or took Poison (and her sister, can't remember the name) from Final Fight because she had a penis?

Here is one of the Chinese government. After a train crash the media started asking if anything could have been done. The government's response... tear up the newspapers lol

http://journalism.about.com/od/trends/a/Rebellious-Chinese-Journalists-Covering-Train-Crash-Get-Brief-Taste-Of-Freedom.htm

My country is rife with idiotic censorship, compounded by the belief that violence is healthy entertainment but sex will mess you up for life. However, my personal favourite example of blind censorship is from years back. The cable network Bravo aired the movie version of 1984 (the one with John Hurt), and cut it all to Hell. If you're familiar with 1984, you'll know how many flavours of wrong that is.

Many years ago when my sister and I were living in Saudi Arabia because my father had a job there, she bought a Whitney Housten cassette. However, the cover looked a little strange.

It wasn't until a short while after that we realized that her bare arms had been covered in what looked like sleeves, using a black marker pen!

I have a story about Struense from He became the de facto ruler in Denmark (there is a film out that was nominated for an Oscar about him called http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1276419/ A Royal affair.) He decided to lift the censorship on written publications in the name of enlightenment only to find that the majority of published material thereafter was satire about himself and the Queen so he had to enforce some sensorship again to ward it of. in Please +1

I always thought it lame how the cigarets in One Piece were censored into lollypops.

Thanks for the giveaway, and count me in :D

Thomas Bowdler made censored versions of Shakespeare's plays. That's right, the motherfucker censored Shakespeare! Pretty funny, considering nowadays Shakespeare seems tame compared to, I dunno, American Psycho :P

There is an episode of the police drama "Hill Street Blues" wherin a man rapes a goat. Unsurprisingly, this raised the eyebrows of some censors. What is surprising is that, rather than have the scene or the episode dropped altogether, the censors wanted the goat to wear a bow and be identified as female, making it clear that the bestiality was heterosexual.

I can't find the original article where I read this, but I swear I didn't make it up. I've never even seen "Hill Street Blues"

Hmm, +1 for the giveaway and count me in.

Well, I only know that some anime characters in some mangas appear as girls when they are actually transsexuals for example, Tekkaman Blade (Japanese name) or Teknoman (English name) a character called Maggie appears to be a girl in the English version, however, the Japanese version it is obviously a guy dressed as a girl.

To be fair to him, he wanted to make it ok for children to read so they could appreciate him at an early age, and then read the uncensored texts as they grew older. Still a stupid idea.

As for my favourite censorship, I'd have to go with the network showings of Showgirls. Apparently it's about 30 minutes long and all the naked ladies have underwear painted on.