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Roblox censored/avoided the number 4 because "four" and "death" have a similar pronunciation in Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Cantonese (The Sublanguage of Chinese), Hakka, Min Nan (Hokkien), Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese. Tetraphobia is a fear of the number 4 originated as a tradition in Japan.
In Japan, many apartment houses and car parks skip 4. Many hotels skip the 13th floor, similar to some western hotels. There is also much wordplay involved such as 24 can become ###### aka double death ##### 42 can become shini, aka "death" ## ### death” ##### 43 can become ###### which sounds like ####### aka stillbirth ##### 45 can be ###### or “after death” ##### 9 is also skipped, especially hospitals, due to the sound "ku" being associated with the word "to suffer" (「苦しむ」 "kurushimu"). 49 is considered to be an especially unlucky number as it is evocative of the phrase "To suffer until death." (「死ぬまで苦しむ。」 "Shinu made kurushimu.")
In South Korea, Tetraphobia is less extreme, but the floor number 4 is almost always skipped in hospitals and similar public buildings. In other buildings, the fourth floor is sometimes labelled "F" (Four) instead of "4" in elevators. Apartment numbers containing multiple occurrences of the number 4 (such as 404) are likely to be avoided to an extent that the value of the property is adversely affected. The national railroad, Korail, left out the locomotive number 4444 when numbering a locomotive class from 4401 upwards. Example: 6F
In Taiwan not using house numbers ending in 4 without remembering to occasionally skip numbers on the opposite side too, often results in the two sides of a street getting more and more out of sync as one advances.
Chinese is a tonal language with a comparatively small inventory of permitted syllables, resulting in an exceptionally large number of homophone words. Many of the numbers are homophones or near-homophones of other words and have therefore acquired superstitious meanings.
The Chinese avoid phon#####b####### addresses with fours, especially when they’re combined with another number that changes the meaning. Example: “94” could be interpreted as being dead for a long time.
The Chinese government does not display tetraphobia by having military designations for People's Liberation Army with the number 4, for example, Dongfeng-4 ICBM, Type 094 Nuclear Submarine, Type 054A Frigate, etc. However some speculate that it does for aircraft (just as the United States generally skips the number 13 for their aircraft), seeing that it begins aircraft and engine destination with 5.[5] But the Taiwanese and the South Korean navies do not use the number 4 when assigning Pennant numbers to their ships.
In Hong Kong, some apartments such as Vista Paradiso and The Arch skip all the floors from 40 to 49, which is the entire 40s. Immediately above the 39th floor is the 50th floor, leading many who are not aware of tetraphobia to believe that some floors are missing. Tetraphobia is not the main reason, but rather as an excuse to have apartments with 'higher' floors, thus increasing price, because higher floors in Hong Kong apartments are usually more expensive (see 39 Conduit Road). In Cantonese-speaking regions in China, 14 and 24 are considered more unlucky than the individual 4, since 14 sounds like "will certainly die" (實死), and 24 like "easy to die" (易死). While in Mandarin-speaking regions in China, 14 and 74 are considered more unlucky than the individual 4, since 14 sounds like "wants to die" (要死) and 74 like "will certainly die" or "will die in anger" (氣死).
Where East Asian and Western cultures blend, such as in Hong Kong, it is possible in some buildings that both the thirteenth floor and the fourteenth floor are skipped, causing the twelfth floor to precede the fifteenth floor, along with all the other 4s. Thus a building whose top floor is numbered 100 would in fact have just seventy-nine floors.
When Beijing lost its bid to stage the 2000 Olympic Games, it was speculated that the reason China did not pursue a bid for the following 2004 Games was due to the unpopularity of the number 4 in China. Instead, the city waited another four years, and would eventually host the 2008 Olympic Games, the number eight being a lucky number in Chinese culture.
In Hong Kong, They prevent tetraphobia from skipping 4. They just want the 4.
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