Raunch Reviews is a series about profanity. Not real profanity, but speculative swearing. Authors often try to incorporate original, innovative forms of profanity into our own fantastical works as a way to expand the worlds we build. Sometimes we’re successful. Often we’re not. In this series, I examine the faux-profanity from various works of sci-fi and fantasy, judge their effectiveness, and rate them on an unscientific and purely subjective scale. This is Raunch Reviews, welcome.

---

The Author: Garry Marshall and Dynamix

Work in Question: Mork & Mindy/Starsiege: Tribes

The Profanity: “Shazbot”

It’s rare for a fictional profanity to transcend its original source material and find new life in other properties. But that’s what we find with 1978’s Mork & Mindy’s “shazbot.” The word serves as a stand-in for a vulgarity; first uttered in the show’s opening credits but used occasionally throughout the series. Like “frak,” its generational cousin, “shazbot” first reads as a wink to the audience and a slip around the censors. But it has a silly quality—”frak” is intended to sound like the word it’s replacing. “Shazbot” isn’t. It’s nonsense for nonsense sake. A joke. With his performance as Mork, Robin Williams did a phenomenal job playing up the silliness and as a result, “shazbot” never resonates as profanity.

Decades later, the word would be revived making an appearance in Dynamix’s Starsiege: Tribes game series. Either emoted by the player or uttered automatically when a player’s character is killed, the word was so beloved by the fanbase it quickly became a meme. But, like on Mork & Mindy, the word remained a gag; it was a punchline, and largely unoffensive.

As a faux-profanity, “shazbot” is lacking. It has no bite and lacks any weighty resonance. While “shazbot” has been found charming by multiple generations, it’s certainly not offensive nor does it feign as being offensive, as a result, it works much better as a goofy joke.

Score:  (2.0)

---

🤬 Previous Raunch Reviews

• “Seven Hells” from George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice & Fire/Game of Thrones
• “Mudblood” from J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series
• “Frak” from Glen A. Larson’s, Ronald D. Moore’s, & David Eick’s Battlestar Galactica
• “Jabber” from China Miéville’s Bas-Lag series
• “Storm it”/”Storms”/”Storming” from Brandon Sanderson’s The Stormlight Archives

---

Have a suggestion for Raunch Reviews? It can be any made up slang word from a book, television show, or movie. You can email me directly with your recommendation or leave a comment below. I’ll need to spend time with the property before I’ll feel confident reviewing it, so give me a little time. I have a lot of books to read.

---