Sony refused to let Jonah Hill’s character in ‘Superbad’ use a Playstation, Seth Rogen says

Superbad, a 2007 coming age of comedy film starring Jonah Hill and Michael Cera and produced by Judd Apatow was a movie known for its awkward situations, raunchy humor and drunken debauchery. From buying alcohol with a McLovin fake ID, to shooting bottles with police officers to crashing shady house parties, Hill’s character Seth and his friends go through a hilarious and vulgar chain of misadventures.

Surprisingly, one thing that didn’t make it into the movie was a scene where Seth was playing a Playstation 2. According to Seth Rogen, who wrote the movie alongside Evan Goldberg, and played the incautious Officer Michaels, Sony outright rejected the idea of Seth interacting with their products because he was too “vile” of a character.

“They were like, ‘We can’t have him interact with our products as a character, because it’s too vile a character.’ And I was like, ‘It’s based on me, that’s very insulting,’” Rogen told RottenTomatoes on TikTok on the red carpet for the SXSW premiere of his new Apple TV+ series “The Studio.”

Rogen added, “Sony made the movie and we were told that Jonah Hill’s character, Seth, was so reprehensible to the studio. There’s a scene where they’re playing video games and it was like, ‘Jonah can’t touch a PlayStation.’”

Rogen says that the filmmakers acquiesced to Sony in the end, although there is a scene early in the film where Cera’s character Evan plays the Playstation 2 game The Getaway: Black Monday.

Superbad also starred Emma Stone as Jules, Seth’s crush who asks Seth to procure alcohol for them for a party; Christopher Mintz-Plasse as Fogell, best known for his hilarious McLovin fake ID scene; and Bill Hader as Officer Slater, the partner to Rogen’s Officer Michaels who also befriends Fogell, Seth and Evan.

Are you surprised that Sony refused to let Jonah Hill’s character in ‘Superbad’ use a Playstation? Do you think Hill’s character was reprehensible enough for this to be an issue or did Hill accurately represent the average Playstation 2 player during the time period? Or was Hill more indicative of an Xbox user (we kid)? Let us know in the comments or drop us a line on Twitter/X.