History Main / BlackComedyBurst

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Madagascar}}'': When Skipper and the penguins return to Madagascar on a ship they took over, Gloria asks where all the people are, and Skipper gives a surprisingly dark answer for a family film.

* In the '"WesternAnimation/{{Bluey}}'' episode "Unicorse", when Bluey asks Dad's Unicorse puppet what his favorite food is, he goes up to Bluey's face and quietly says "[[ChildEater children]]". Bluey barely responds, but Unicorse immediately goes back to being annoying instead of dark when he gives his real answer of fried chicken.

* ''Series/TheFreshPrinceOfBelAir'' episode "Where There's a Will, There's a Way", where Hilary's boyfriend dies on ''live television'' when he proposes to her while bungee-jumping. The LaughTrack plays, and if that wasn't jarring enough, the scene becomes a RunningGag in a show that would normally treat the death of a character and the psychological effect it has on their widow very seriously.
** Not to mention the part after his funeral where Hilary somehow brought home someone else's ashes (her boyfriend ''wasn't even cremated''), with Geoffrey nonchalantly "showing him (the urn) out".
** Notably, during a ClipShow [[BreadEggsMilkSquick this scene is included during a series of clips that otherwise highlighted Hilary's usual melodramatic reactions to vain inconveniences like her fashion not being to her liking or other usual Hilary-centric humor.]]

** In "Bubble Buddy", the titular character, Bubble Buddy, is left by [=SpongeBob=] to dig a fish out of the sand. He doesn't, and the fish is killed by high tide. What suddenly makes it more horrifying is that it turns out that [[spoiler:Bubble Buddy was, in fact, alive and sentient all along]]. What suddenly makes it less horrifying is that 1) the said fish's ghost seems to be happy that he "experienced high tide", 2) the fish [[NegativeContinuity is alive in later episodes]].

'''Rhodes:''' [[KickTheSonOfABitch It's]] ''[[AssholeVictim Thanos!]]''

* In the ''Anime/{{Pokemon}} [[VideoGame/PokemonSunAndMoon Sun & Moon]]'' anime, the introduction of the Ghost Pokémon Mimikyu introduced a RunningGag where Meowth appears to almost die and get DraggedOffToHell. This is in all likeliness the darkest joke the series has ever done by a wide margin, and it sometimes (though [[InconsistentDub not consistently]]) gets edited in the English dub (particularly an instance where Meowth is shown face-down in the water).

* ''TabletopGame/{{Pokethulhu}}'' is a goofy game that mashes up ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'' with the ''Franchise/CthulhuMythos'', with things like the Team Rocket analogues being named Derleth and Bloch, ''Franchise/ScoobyDoo'' references, and entries about episodes of the Pokethulhu anime with names like "The Yutz from Yukky" and "In the Future, Everyone Will Be Squamous For Fifteen Minutes". Then you get to the Chaos Cards, which can be used in play to do things like summon rains of fish or cause a PottyEmergency. The triggers for these are all references to one version or the other of the anime, requiring you to quote [[note]]since the anime is entirely fictional, you're supposed to just improvise something[[/note]] various scenes: the Kadath Belch-A-Riffic anthem, for example, or performing the Mister Sweetslush jingle, or Randy's way of talking Derleth out of killing herself at Waite's point--''[[DoubleTake wait what]]''?

** [[OnlySaneEmployee A-chan]] frequently makes jokes about being in a SoulCrushingOfficeJob or hololive being a black company[[note]]a company (usually a Japanese one) that only follows the bare minimum in terms of labor laws and treats its employees terribly[[/note]], with all the depressing conditions that that implies.
** Sakamata Chloe, the resident PerkyFemaleMinion of Secret Society [=HoloX=], has two: In a segment featuring her, Marine, Pekora and Luna doing a [[https://youtu.be/BxGTbKuOVQw guillotine quiz]], Chloe introduces herself before making an offhanded remark about how the world would be incensed if you killed an orca (which Chloe is) with a guillotine. Then, in her debut episode of ''[[WebAnimation/HololiveHoloNoGraffiti Holo no Graffiti]]'', she suddenly drops this line while daydreaming about going on a tropical retreat:

-->-- '''[[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/3179812/South-Park-episode-angers-viewers-with-scenes-of-Hollywood-titans-raping-Indiana-Jones.html Catherine Elsworth]]''', on [[Recap/SouthParkS12E8TheChinaProbrem "The China Probrem"]]

--->'''Squidward:''' [[spoiler: ''([[MoodWhiplash ecstatically]])'' [[CrossesTheLineTwice You heard him, everybody!]]]]

** After several seasons of mostly lighthearted cop comedy, Season [[spoiler:4]] opens with several episodes of [[spoiler:Rosa and Jake]] in prison, where the comedy stems from such [[SarcasmMode light and airy topics]] as guard corruption, prison politics, and [[spoiler: Jake's]] cellmate's [[WouldHurtAChild child]] [[ImAHumanitarian cannibalism]].

* ''Series/TheOfficeUS'' accounted for the departure of [[spoiler: their main character, Michael Scott]], by bringing in a replacement [[spoiler: boss]] [[StuntCasting played by]] Creator/WillFerrell named Deangelo Vickers, who is a [[JerkAss huge prick]] and a [[HeManWomanHater passive-aggresive sexist]] to boot. However, the show needed to get rid of him after one episode, so they write him off by having him [[spoiler: fuck up a basketball dunk (on a dare from Jim) and receive a massive brain injury that hospitalizes him and leaves him as a babbling vegetable, with a later episode confirming the effect to be permanent. [[FridgeHorror This presumably orphans his four children as well.]]]] It served as the vanguard of the mean-spirited humor and [[DenserAndWackier annoying cartoonishness]] present in every episode afterwards.

* ''Series/StarTrekDiscovery'' overall has a fairly serious tone, especially in the first season with a plotline involving the Federation in a pitched war with the Klingon Empire. [[spoiler: Once ''Discovery'' travels to the Mirror Universe, where things are even bleaker than they were before, the mood tends to get lightened with punctuated bursts of BlackComedy, like when Burnham ends up stabbing [[SmugSnake Captain Connor]] to death in [[KlingonPromotion self-defense]], only for his senior officers to respond with a SlowClap.]]

** "[[Recap/SouthParkS5E4ScottTenormanMustDie Scott Tenorman Must Die]]" (And viewers can't even pretend it didn't happen, because Cartman likes bringing it up). It starts out normally enough, with the teenager Scott scamming Cartman out of money by convincing Cartman to buy Scott's pubic hair. Cartman soon tries getting a refund, but Scott either tricks him again or outright refuses. It continues to escalate until Cartman is intent on publicly humiliating Scott with absurd ploys, like training a pony to bite off Scott's penis. Scott keeps outsmarting Cartman at every turn, until the climax, where [[spoiler: Cartman reveals the cartoonish plot he told his friends about (that they told Scott about) was actually a misdirection, and Cartman's actual ploy, which he only reveals after it succeeds, was to kill Scott's parents, mix their flesh into chili, and feed it to Scott]]. To take this to 11, in "Episode 201", it turns out [[spoiler:Scott's father was also Cartman's father, meaning Cartman killed his own dad and fed him to his half-brother.]]

** "Stanley's Cup" is particularly infamous for this. The episode is a merciless Deconstruction of SportsStoryTropes, where at the end [[spoiler: a pee-wee hockey team coached by Stan gets beaten into a bloody pulp by a team of adults, one of the children says to Stan that he hates him, Stan's father's dream is destroyed, and a child who was rooting for the team dies of cancer. The point is that children trained by Stan were just an OpposingSportsTeam in another team's story]]. Seems like this was too much even for the South Park's usual target audiences.

** In "Bubble Buddy", the titular character, Bubble Buddy, is left by [=SpongeBob=] to dig a fish out of the sand. He doesn't, and the fish is killed by high tide. What suddenly makes it more horrifying is that it turns out that [[spoiler: Bubble Buddy was, in fact, alive and sentient all along]]. What suddenly makes it less horrifying is that 1) the said fish's ghost seems to be happy that he "experienced high tide", 2) the fish [[NegativeContinuity is alive in later episodes]].

** Although the show runs on BlackComedy, one scene in the [[AdventuresInComaland Dreamland]] season is worth mentioning. It depicts the origin story of the Dreamland version of Kreiger, where it reveals that [[spoiler: he was a Jew in World War II who faked his death and came back as a Nazi Scientist. He hindered the Nazis by sabotaging programmes to make cyborgs by killing his patients and wasting as much of their money as possible. He and his nurse had also fallen in love. Then Kreiger is confronted by Nazi scientists, and he sends cyborg dogs to maul them to death.]] This scene is three minutes long, and in contrast to the show's [[RapidFireComedy usual style]], it's played completely seriously...until the nurse says that she hates Kreiger for being a Jew, and Kreiger casually has the dogs maul her to death.

* WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants: In [[Recap/SpongeBobSquarePantsS3E9KrabBorgRockAByeBivalve Rock-A-Bye-Bivalve]] there's a sudden burst of really dark humor in an otherwise lighthearted episode when SpongeBob feeds a sentient, talking worm to a scallop as it begs for its life.
-->Talking Worm: "Hello sea creatures, I bring you greetings from apple world!" *gets grabbed and lowered into scallops mouth* "Wait! We will bury you!" *gets eaten*

* In the early ''WesternAnimation/FostersHomeForImaginaryFriends'' episode "Seeing Red", before Terrence gets the idea to conjure an imaginary friend to distract Bloo so he can bully Mac, he decides that he needs pizza and accidentally conjures a talking slice, whom he promptly eats as it screams in agony.

** In "Sandy's Rocket", Sandy initially refuses to let [=SpongeBob=] ride with her on her rocket trip to the moon after he apparently caused a mishap with her helicopter that led to the death of many civilians, evidenced by a large graveyard outside her treedome.

Since I [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Who_concert_disaster went to see]] Music/TheWho!"

* WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants: In [[Recap/SpongeBobSquarePantsS3E9KrabBorg/RockAByeBivalve Rock-A-Bye-Bivalve]] there's a sudden burst of really dark humor in an otherwise lighthearted episode when SpongeBob feeds a sentient, talking worm to a scallop as it begs for its life.

* WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants: In [[Recap/SpongeBobSquarePantsS3E9KrabBorg/Rock-A-ByeBivalve Rock-A-Bye-Bivalve]] there's a sudden burst of really dark humor in an otherwise lighthearted episode when SpongeBob feeds a sentient, talking worm to a scallop as it begs for its life.

* WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants: In Rock-A-Bye-Bivalv there's a sudden burst of really dark humor in an otherwise lighthearted episode when SpongeBob feeds a sentient, talking worm to a scallop as it begs for its life.

-->Talking Worm: "Hello sea creatures, I bring you greetings from apple world!" *gets grabbed and lowered into scallops mouth* "Wait! We will bury you!"

** Notably, during a ClipShow [[BreadEggsMilkSquick this scene is included during a series of clips that otherwise highlighted Hilary's usual mellodramatic reactions to vain inconveniences like her fashion not being to her liking or other usual Hilary-centric humor.]]

** Notably, during a ClipShow [[BreadEggsMilkSquick this scene is included during a series of clips that otherwise highlighted Hilary's usual mellodramatic reactions to vein inconveniences like her fashion not being to her liking or other usual Hilary-centric humor.]]

* ''WebAnimation/HomestarRunner'' is a fairly light-hearted series, (for a web-cartoon standards at least) but everyonce in a while will crack a dark joke, for example, in one WebAnimation/StrongBadEmail while Strong Bad is listing off Cereals named after sound effects, the [[BreadEggsMilkSquick last one]] is "Gunshots in a Crowded Mall".

* ''WesternAnimation/DCSuperHeroGirls2019'': In "[=#SoulSister=]," Katana is stripping criminals' souls from their bodies, leaving them comatose. Babs's response is a casual, "So we have to hide a body? Big deal! I'm from ''Gotham''!"

* WesternAnimation/TheCupheadShow:

* ''WesternAnimation/DcSuperHeroGirls'': In "[=#SoulSister=]," Katana is stripping criminals' souls from their bodies, leaving them comatose. Babs's response is a casual, "So we have to hide a body? Big deal! I'm from ''Gotham''!"