Around six minutes of the Friends reunion episode was removed from its broadcast in China yesterday.
The hugely-anticipated show saw Jennifer Aniston, David Schwimmer, Courteney Cox, Matthew Perry, Matt LeBlanc and Lisa Kudrow reunite on the set of the comedy 17 years after the final episode aired.
In China, where Friends has developed a huge following in recent years, the episode was released on three streaming services - iQiyi, Youku and Tencent Video - but multiple scenes were removed from the original cut of the episode.
Appearances from music artists Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber and BTS were all dropped, as were viewer segments involving gay fans of the show.
Korean boyband BTS have previously angered Chinese nationalists for not mentioning Chinese soldiers who fought in the Korean War when they accepted an award for helping to develop Korea-US relations, despite the conflict having nothing to do with the decision to give them an award.
Gaga, meanwhile, fell foul of the Chinese government when she met with Nobel Peace Prize winner the Dalai Lama in 2016, while Bieber was banned from entering the country after photographing himself at a Japanese war memorial in 2014.
According to Variety, other removed segments include a talking head from gay German fan Ricardo, who says: "I was a gay man who wanted to have hair like Jennifer Aniston, so you can imagine how lonely I sometimes felt."
Another scene in which a female fan appears with her girlfriend is cut, as are a blooper featuring LeBlanc in his underwear and a classic clip in which Monica recalls having Joey and Chandler urinate on her after being stung by a jellyfish.
In the UK, meanwhile, early ratings figures have revealed that around 1.7 million viewers tuned in to Sky to watch the episode on the day of its release.
Follow us on Twitter @SMEntsFeed and like us on Facebook for the latest entertainment news alerts.
