Stupid Question: Why Are Urinals Left Out of some Cartoons?

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A strange and stupid question to ask but I am curious: Why do many cartoons/animated shows not show urinals when some do, even when they're not shown being used?

Some cartoons besides adult cartoons like The Simpsons, King of the Hill, and Family Guy, that show urinals are

Ren and Stimpy
Doug, (at least Disney's Doug)
The Looney Tunes Show*
Rocko's Modern Life
Arthur (seen in Season 5, never again after that)
Rugrats All Grown Up
2 Stupid Dogs*
The Fairly Odd Parents
The Loud House
Clarence*
Braceface
What's With Andy?
Kids from Room 402
Phineas and Ferb
Duck Tales (2017 series)
Earthworm Jim
Batman the Animated Series
Pinky and the Brain
Capitol Critters
SpongeBob SquarePants
Hey Arnold*
Recess*
Fillmore

And some other cartoons as well as anime shows I can't think of or can't remember the names of.

* Means urinals were shown being used onscreen.

But yes, even the PBS Kids cartoon Arthur showed urinals in a couple episodes, "Double Dared" and "The Lousy Week," both in Season 5, but after that they stopped showing urinals in that cartoon for whatever reason. No other PBS Kids cartoon I know shows them.

So why do some cartoons even kids watch include urinals and why do some exclude them?

Feel free to list other cartoons that I didn't list (adult cartoons don't count.) Also, this was not meant to be inappropriate.

Could be that they show stalls instead to give a gender-neutral atmosphere since both gendered bathrooms have stalls. Difficult to really say though.

Well thanks for answering anyway. I never actually thought of it that way.

I thought it was for content. I mean I thought maybe it was inappropriate for some cartoons, especially for very young children. Or maybe the creator or producers thought it would be inappropriate or too graphic. Maybe even cut down on sexual speculation.

Personally I don't see anything wrong with including urinals in any cartoons, even preschool cartoons, I would include them in my cartoons even if the cartoon was aimed at preschoolers! Probably better not show them being used but at least show they exist in the cartoon (showing urinals being used or any stand-up-to-urinate situation) is probably better for cartoons for older children, TV-Y7 and up, not for TV-Y. From what I've seen, in many cartoons, especially for preschoolers, characters, including male characters, are either shown sitting down or not shown using the bathroom at all! Or maybe they do stand, just not onscreen, they probably feel that's inappropriate to show. I mean they once showed Caillou sitting on a toilet. Other times he had to use the bathroom and he probably stood some of the times, he was hidden, like in that episode where Caillou and his family were on a road trip and Caillou had to go and shortly after, so did his dad, they probably stood since they were outdoors and completely hidden behind something! And in Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, whenever the characters are shown using the bathroom, they sit, including the males. Sometimes the characters are hidden or off-screen so it's anyone's guess what they're doing!

Or maybe showing urinals in certain cartoons is just not a good idea, maybe inappropriate, even if no one is shown using them, so they're excluded altogether! That I guess I can understand. I mean it takes away from the realism, to me, and makes it less true to life, but if it's safer and more appropriate not to show urinals or make any references to them, I can understand and respect that and I don't want cartoons, especially aimed at children, cancelled or cartoon companies and producers getting in trouble or fired for that and I want kids to be safe.

Going off-subject, what also takes away from the realism in cartoons are characters with dotted eyes, having four fingers and four toes, having big heads and small bodies, lack of eye lashes, especially on male characters, and lips more obvious on black characters, and also black characters having all-brown hands and feet, not white palms or soles.

But that's only one answer. I'd like to know exactly why urinals are left out of many cartoons even if they're not being used onscreen. More comments welcome but please stay civil! And preferably actual and official answers (probably should have asked this on answers.com or another question asking website!)

Toilets weren't showed for ages in popular us media at all until sometime in the late '60s.

As far as the question, it's most likely due to contrived angle it would take to show the urinal and the lack of narrative reason to justify its inclusion.

It's not a urinal but I always enjoyed this background joke in Adventure Time. The toilet here is in a castle populated by lemon people.

Strange toilet! The toilet looks like it has a broken seat (that's because it does have a broken seat, at least that's what I think you'd tell me!) And it looks like there's a juicer inside the toilet bowl! Since you said "lemon people," and lemons and other citrus fruits are put on juicers, maybe that's a toilet made for the lemon people!

^You got it! The suggestion here is that lemon people sit on toilets and juice themselves.

It's a kids show, but they put in lots of weird stuff like that for people who are paying attention.

The episode of Rocko's Modern Life where Rocko has his house remodeled, and every room was a bathroom, was one of my favorite episodes!

I once heard that many years ago in cartoons they wouldn't or weren't allowed show an udder on a cow. I guess it might have been a Hayes Code thing.

Gary Larson, creator of the Far Side, said in his 10th anniversary book that in the 80s he wasn't allowed to show an outhouse in his comics, no matter how delicately it was handled.
He also really wanted to make a comic about dung beetles, but he knew just the name dung beetle might offend people, especially since they'd be carrying a ball of dung. I think he did make a dung beetle cartoon eventually, where they were wearing filthy dungarees. Newspaper comics were a lot more strict, it seems.

I guess they don't show urinals in some kid's cartoons because of the fact they're called urinals, and they thought saying the word "urine" was too much, even though it's what doctors call it. If doctors call it by its proper name then how can the word be bad? But then again, who would really care? Only few hundred million fanboys, that's what.

Censorship is weird. And what might be perfectly fine in one culture might be highly offensive in another. Just look at all the anime released in North America, when they used to censor really trivial things, like rice balls. But it's all just perception and most of it isn't really right or wrong.

Thanks for more of your responses, and I've learned some new things too.

Speaking of Rocko's Modern Life, in the episode where Rocko and Heffer are in a movie theater, urinals are shown but Rocko and Heffer accidentally sit in them thinking they're seats in a dark theater room, at least until someone comes into the room and turns on the light! No wonder the seats were wet, those were urinals and that was a bathroom! Talk about embarrassing! Poor Rocko and Heffer!

I did notice they didn't show any or a lot of bathroom things like toilets and urinals in many cartoons before the 1980s or 1990s. There was a cartoon urinal shown in the movie "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," but I overlooked it until I was like 13 or 14. But my first notice of urinals in a cartoon was in Ren in Stempy and in 1993. Two years later I saw one being used in 2 Stupid Dogs (the episode about the Substitute Teacher) and that if not the Animaniacs episode where Wacko had a Potty Emergency, which I saw a few months earlier that year, showed me that cartoon characters can and do urinate standing up like us real males do, I used to think they really didn't and that cartoon characters only sat on toilets and seeing them urinate standing was something that could only be imagined! But I don't remember seeing any toilets in cartoons made prior to the 1980s or 1990s!

Some cartoons actually have the word "urinal" mentioned, like in Fairly Odd Parents, What's with Andy?, and Recess, and two characters in one of those cartoons actually said "urinal cake!" If there were other cartoons (not counting adult cartoons) that used that word I don't know or can't remember! In an episode of SpongeBob, they were called "heads," and SpongeBob was shown cleaning one of them! I think the only time a urinal was shown being used within the SpongeBob franchise was in the original SpongeBob Movie.

But I guess I can see why some things were left out of earlier cartoons though they were added in later cartoons or rebooted older cartoons. I mean before, they showed storks bringing babies to their families, now they show pregnant women (I read this was shown in The Flintstones but I don't remember seeing that episode but somebody told me on Reddit.) So I guess I can understand why udders, which aren't sex organs, and outhouses were left out. Not sure why they put udders on some male cows like in Barnyard/Back in the Barnyard.

And I agree censorship is weird. Some of it, and I mean SOME of it to me is unnecessary! But some cartoons are going to do things and others won't. And one cartoon may do one thing but not another thing while another cartoon includes what was excluded in first cartoon but include what was left out.

Like I said, I would put urinals in my cartoons if I made cartoons, even TV-Y cartoons, but of course not in every single episode, that would be weird and stretching it and questionable! And maybe in even fewer episodes show them being used, but delicately like they did in Hey Arnold, Clarence, The Looney Tunes Show, the SpongeBob Movie, and Recess, and I would even leave the urine stream out! I'd only show the characters from behind or from the waist up, I would not show anything no one would want to see or anything children really shouldn't see, also wouldn't show any bare bottoms though that's how many real people urinate standing up, mostly males under 7, but be that as it may I wouldn't show even that onscreen, trousers must be up and bottoms must be covered unless it's a cartoon character that's not required to wear pants (I mean anthropomorphic animals!)

And don't be surprised if more or future cartoons, at least in networks that don't or rarely show them like PBS Kids, Nick Jr, Disney Jr, etc, start showing urinals. I mean now kids cartoons show same-sex couples, something else I thought would never happen! Other things that weren't shown in cartoons before are now appearing in some or starting to appear in cartoons that didn't previously show them! Strange and unexpected things have happened! Some things that weren't allowed before are or seem to be allowed now, and some of what's not allowed now may be allowed later (hopefully not actual swear words used in kids cartoons and heard by real audiences, keep that in adult cartoons, don't spread it to kids cartoons, some of which actually use the words "dang," "crap," and even "freaking," the last of which was used in Hey Arnold and the SpongeBob movie! I kid you not! The C-word was also used in Hey Arnold and even Dexter's Laboratory!)

I just remembered one more cartoon that showed a urinal: Kid Danger (that animated version of Henry Danger!) Also the second Angry Birds movie!