A number of scenes mainly involving violence had to get small cuts. A lot of these scenes were involving extended shots of Xenia choking, a headshot, and when Xenia shoots people at the lab. It's kind of weird thinking if they weren't cut that Goldeneye could have been an R rated Bond. Usually when I think of a movie that pushed the envelope in the Bond series I think of License To Kill. Even Campbell's other entry Casino Royale got some cuts. Mainly the staircase fight was considered too brutal. I found all of this because I distinctly remember seeing a PG rated Goldeneye on VHS at one point. I was looking to see if it had been edited down for a re-rating. I just find censorship, how ratings boards classify movies, and different versions to be interesting at times.

From IMDB:

" The film had some cuts to qualify for a PG-13 rating in the US. To name a few: In the scene when 006 is shot, one originally clearly saw the impact of the bullet to the head. When Xenia shoots the workers at the Severnya station, there were originally several more shots of the people being killed. Xenia's death was trimmed. The shot of her choking was longer. The rabbit punch by Bond on Xenia is missing, but this was because of the BBFC, not the MPAA. The BBFC objected to it and Martin Campbell saw no need in making two versions of the scene for the US and UK, so it was cut from both."

Edit: Edited headbutt because I was confusing it with other edits. Added headshot in the description.