I think usually there’s more crude humor, possibly words like “damn”, “hell”, or “ass”, and it can be a little scarier/darker in PG movies versus G. But I agree that it seems pretty arbitrary and there’s no public list of what’s allowed in each that I’ve been able to find.
The reason there’s no public list is the MPAA literally has a secret team called CARA (Classification and Rating Administration) who review works and assign ratings to them. The members of the CARA team are kept secret to prevent studios from bribing or otherwise influencing the panel members. CARA members are generally given a ton of leeway to assign ratings as they see fit, so while there might be a general practice of one swear word in a PG-13 film for example, this isn’t a hard rule. There’s also notable examples of CARA assigning ratings that were unexpected
I think usually there’s more crude humor, possibly words like “damn”, “hell”, or “ass”, and it can be a little scarier/darker in PG movies versus G. But I agree that it seems pretty arbitrary and there’s no public list of what’s allowed in each that I’ve been able to find.
The reason there’s no public list is the MPAA literally has a secret team called CARA (Classification and Rating Administration) who review works and assign ratings to them. The members of the CARA team are kept secret to prevent studios from bribing or otherwise influencing the panel members. CARA members are generally given a ton of leeway to assign ratings as they see fit, so while there might be a general practice of one swear word in a PG-13 film for example, this isn’t a hard rule. There’s also notable examples of CARA assigning ratings that were unexpected