Despite Seinfeld regular dabbling in edgy subject matter, two controversial episodes involving a gun and a salad never made it to air on TV.
Although the sitcom was known for tackling edgy subjects, Seinfeld had two episodes that were deemed too controversial by cast and executives alike. This is surprising because, generally, creators Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David seemed like they were able to make jokes about anything in their "show about nothing". Among some of the envelope-pushing comic situations across Seinfeld's nine seasons were Jerry being caught making out with his date during a screening of Steven Spielberg's Holocaust drama Schindler's List, and George Costanza (Jason Alexander) getting into a fight with an immunocompromised "bubble boy".
Larry Charles, who wrote, among others, the classic George Costanza-centric episodes "The Bubble Boy" and "The Fire", wrote two Seinfeld episodes that were scrapped prior to filming. Larry Charles is known for his darker sense of humor, but it didn't always make it through to the finished script. In the case of Seinfeld's "The Airport" episode, a dark joke was removed entirely. However, in the case of "The Bet", the episode was scrapped entirely. The plot of the episode revolved around Elaine Benes (Julia Louis Dreyfus) buying a gun from a criminal associate of Cosmo Kramer (Michael Richards).
Both Dreyfus and Richards objected to the storyline, with Dreyfus citing a joke about dead US Presidents as the reason for her refusal. The network and director Tom Cherones backed up the cast, and the episode was scrapped. Reflecting on the episode in an interview with Screen Crush, Larry Charles stated that including such a controversial storyline in what would have been Seinfeld's ninth-ever episode would have been "maybe too much too soon." According to the book Seinfeld Reference: The Complete Encyclopedia, another episode involving a Seinfeld's George Costanza was also scrapped by the network, over concerns about racial insensitivity, due to it "joking about the dietary habits of African-Americans".
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