All the shows and movies Netflix removed at the request of world governments

Netflix is known for giving its subscribers a huge amount of content to choose from. Between their own originals and all the content they’ve licensed, the collection is vast.

And while most viewers value this abundance of choice, not everyone is comfortable with what’s on offer, including some world governments. For example, let’s take Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj, a comedic news show starring the stand-up comedian. He did an episode on “why the world should reassess its relationship with Saudi Arabia,” and it did not go over well with the Saudi Arabian government.

Saudi Arabia requested that Netflix make the episode unavailable to watch in the country, and the company complied. And that’s not the only time the streaming service has honored such a request from a government. Earlier this year, Netflix released a report on “Environmental Social Governance” where it broke down which shows and films they had removed from their service, and who made the request. Along with that Patriot Act episode, Netflix took down eight other shows and movies, with most of the requests coming from Singapore:

• Singapore: Disjointed, Cooking On High, The Legend Of 420, The Last Hangover, The Last Temptation Of Christ
• Germany: Night Of The Living Dead
• Vietnam: Full Metal Jacket
• New Zealand: The Bridge

Three out of the five requests from Singapore were about shows or movies having to do with pot, and two that mocked Christianity. Vietnam banned an American-made movie about the Vietnam War, and New Zealand a movie about suicides in San Francisco.

The real-head-scratcher is Germany banning Night of the Living Dead, the original zombie movie. Does Germany ban all the other zombie stuff on Netflix? Cause there’s a lot. What about this movie makes it special?

Obviously, content standards vary wildly across the world, which puts global streaming services like Netflix in a complex position. There’s some content that Netflix hasn’t had to take down because it never made the film or show available in a given country in the first place, knowing it’s banned. And the service has never managed to catch on in China, in part because of that country’s strict content restrictions.

We don’t know if Netflix has a blanket policy to address issues like this; it sort of feels like it’s a “handle it as it comes” situation. Moral of the story? Watch as many things on Netflix as you can, because one day it may be gone forever.

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h/t The A.V. Club, Variety