One ‘Herogasm’ Scene Almost Didn’t Make It Onto ‘The Boys’

Considering the highly explicit nature of 'The Boys' and the 'Herogasm' episode itself, it's hard to believe Amazon thought one scene involving an octopus might be too much. ...
Amazon Prime Video

The Boys has never been shy about its mature content. If anything, they push the envelope as far as they can to see what they can get away with every season. Amazingly, they seem to have been able to get away with a lot (season 3, episode 1, comes to mind involving a particular shrinking supe and particular part of the male anatomy). But it was season 3, episode 6, that made Amazon executives start tugging at their collars, according to showrunner Erik Kripke.

The scene in question takes place at the titular “Herogasm,” an annual orgy for superheroes. While that scene involved a tentacle-like penis and taser nipple clamps, it was a scene involving an octopus and Chace Crawford’s The Deep that made Amazon pause for the first time.

As Kripke told TV Line, “We had a lot of discussion this season about the scene with Deep and the octopus. For some crazy reason, Standards has a policy against bestiality.” Kripke added with a laugh, “They’re so uptight, really.”

This wasn’t an issue for just one Amazon executive but, hilariously, quite a few.

"The discussion of that scene and how we pulled off that scene actually triggered a lot of alarm bells at a lot of different levels at Amazon because you’re not supposed to show people f-king animals, and I get it.”

Kripke did manage to convince the executives by focusing on how ridiculous and absurd the scene actually was. “But my pitch to them was always like it’s so absurd [that] it wouldn’t be out of place in a Farrelly brothers movie. So it’s hard to call it prurient bestiality. It’s ridiculous. To my knowledge, I don’t even think octopi have orifices down there. So there was a lot of discussion of like what are the shots, and what can we do and what can we get away with?”

Funnily enough, The Boys is actually part of the reason that Amazon had to create a Standards & Practices department like a traditional TV network. “I’ll wear it as a badge of honour that I helped start their Standards department,” said Kripke.

However, this scene was the “first time it ever became conversation where they had to run it up the ladder,” which is hilarious.

The Boys is available to stream on Prime Video with the finale hitting screens on July 8.

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