Every week there’s at least one weird story to come from the gaming industry and this has to be one of the strangest at its surface level. It’s hard to imagine that an entire country such as China would have a problem with a bear whose only real problem is that he has no real problems, but when you look a little deeper into Chinese President Xi Jinping and his relationship with the honey eating bear, this strange headline begins to make more sense.

Back in 2017 the Chinese government officially banned comments on any images of the bear due to a multitude of photoshops comparing Pooh to the Chinese President Xi Jinping and Former US President Barack Obama stemming back to 2013. 2 years later an image of Pooh bear superimposed over the Chinese president while doing a routine troop inspection became “the most censored picture of the year in China”. More recently the live action Disney film Christopher Robin starring Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) was also blocked in China for the same reasons as the memes from prior years. It’s worth noting that while it's not impossible to post an image of Winnie-The-Pooh online in China, as of now it's currently against the law to comment or distribute any images of the pantsless bear. You can view one of the cursed images here.

In the past week, a Kingdom Hearts 3 trailer surfaced online that heavily featured Pooh and friends in a mini-game setting as well as one of Sora's attacks. While the trailer seemed innocent enough, it was not suitable for Chinese audiences and press stills have surfaced on Chinese gaming site A9VG.com with extremely obvious edits removing Winnie-The-Pooh from the image. It is also worth noting that some images of Pooh weren’t scrubbed, possibly suggesting that these edits were made outside of developer Square-Enix’s control.

Pooh Bear is too hot for China

While no official statement has been made by the games publisher and developer Square-Enix its not too much of a stretch to believe that this version of Winnie-The-Pooh just might end up censored from the game in some capacity in order to appease the Chinese government. You can view the uncensored trailer below...unless you’re in China.

What do you think about Winnie-The-Pooh being banned from China? What do you think of Pooh being whited out? Let us know in the comments below!