There’s a long, and some would say proud, tradition of popular shows managing to offend viewers. In the case of “The Simpsons,” for instance, the show managed to have episodes outright banned in multiple countries for its supposedly insensitive treatment of certain cultures (although as creator Matt Groening once put it in a BBC documentary, “It’s just a TV show, it’s a cute little cartoon”). Other times, pulling episodes from the air is perhaps more warranted. Following the Columbine killings in 1999, for example, The WB made a controversial choice to shelve several “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” episodes that featured a school shooting storyline (which turned out not to not really be a school shooting storyline). While the choice to pull those episodes was heavily criticized at the time, you can at least understand the mentality of the network.

More recently CBS had to pull a scene from “The Big Bang Theory” in syndication because it aged badly. Similarly, a particular scene from “The Office” was scrubbed from future airings and releases of the episode due to what some regarded as the highly-inappropriate actions of Steve Carrell’s Michael Scott.

“But Michael Scott is known for his inappropriateness,” I hear you say. True, but it seems NBC drew the line at simulated suicide. That is to say, the network drew the line at one particular simulated suicide. In season 3, Michael had already pretended to jump from the roof of his office block to teach the staff about safety. But in season 6, he evidently took things too far by pulling a similar stunt in front of kids.

The cold opens for “The Office” rank among some of the funniest moments on the show, and have become almost as beloved as the series itself. From Michael, Dwight, and Andy’s foray into Parkour to the fire drill sequence that opened one of the best and most chaotic episodes of “The Office,” the pre-title sequences have been responsible for some legendary moments across the series’ nine seasons. One cold open that surely would have become just as legendary was never allowed to build such a legacy, however, after it was pulled from the show following its first broadcast. Why? Because Michael pretended to end his own life in front of a group of children.

The season 6 episode, titled “Koi Pond,” originally began with the Dunder Mifflin staff putting on a haunted house event in their warehouse for local Scranton kids. The sequence starts with Michael welcoming the children while wearing a costume modeled on those worn by Andy Samberg and Justin Timberlake in the classic “Saturday Night Live” digital short “D**k in a Box.” You might think donning an outfit designed to entice an individual to open a gift box placed over one’s crotch in front of children would be enough to have some viewers up in arms, but Michael saved the real controversy for the final moments.

After promising to “scare these kids so bad,” the Dunder Mifflin boss disappears while the children are led through the warehouse by an uninterested Darryl (Craig Robinson). At the very end, just as the kids are promised candy, Michael reappears, this time hanging from the warehouse rafters with his neck in a noose. The image of a man squirming in a noose while wearing a gift box over his crotch as children scream at the sight was, believe it or not, just a bit controversial. So controversial, in fact, that NBC basically scrubbed this entire cold open from the “Office” history books.

Once the haunted house cold open aired back in 2009, it never saw an official release again — unless you count the official “The Office” YouTube channel briefly uploading then removing the sequence following its initial broadcast. Not only did NBC pull the cold open from subsequent airings and DVD releases, back in 2021 Peacock began releasing “Superfan” episodes of “The Office,” complete with missing and deleted scenes. But when it came time for the season 6 “Superfan” episodes of “The Office” to hit the streamer, the haunted house cold open was nowhere to be seen. It can still be found online, however, and has popped up sporadically on various websites ever since the first airing.

So, what was the issue? It seems there’s never been any official explanation, but the AV Club claims to have spoken to a “former producer” who asked to remain anonymous. According to the mystery producer, the decision to pull the cold open in question wasn’t just a result of viewers taking offense. Apparently, then wife of NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker, Caryn Zucker, took issue with the sequence due to having worked in suicide prevention. The producer claims that Zucker put pressure on her husband to have the cold open pulled, causing the episode to be “re-cut and re-delivered, with the original HD-SR delivery masters collected back from NBC and thrown into deep storage.”

Ever since, certain “Office” fans have called for an official re-release of this lost scene. Redditors have wondered why the cold open has been languishing in the NBC vaults when the show has featured “way crazier things and way edgier jokes.” Others were grateful just to be reminded of the whole thing, with one user writing, “I knew I remembered this but I thought I was just making it up in my head!” Elsewhere, multiple users claimed that, bizarrely, the scene lives on in the VUDU version of the episode, but nobody’s going to see that, so NBC can rest easy.