History Main / FirstLawOfTragicomedies

* In ''The Muppet Christmas Carol'', Gonzo and Rizzo (the comic relief {{Narrator}} and the comic relief GreekChorus, respectively) disappear after the arrival of The Ghost Of Christmas Yet To Come... but not before a little LampshadeHanging:

* ''GoodMorningVietnam''
* ''InBruges'', although the tragic elements are there from the beginning, and there is still a bit of BlackComedy left towards the end.
* ''DoTheRightThing'': While not a total comedy, the film features many slice of life comedic moments peppered between racial tensions... [[spoiler: before a giant riot occurs over the death of a local black youth. Trash can flying ensues]].

* ''TheCableGuy'' (most notable for starring JimCarrey) starts out as a comedy about a man and his goofy cable guy, and [[MoodWhiplash evolves into a disturbing thriller]] about a man and his criminally insane stalker cable guy.

* ''[[WhosAfraidOfVirginiaWoolf Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?]]'' (a fairly faithful adaptation of an Edward Albee play of the same name) fits this. One troper has described it as "a movie that starts out as a dark comedy then gets darker and darker until it's not even a comedy any more." There are still ''jokes'' all the way through, but they get increasingly nasty and bitter.

* ''StrangerThanFiction''. [[NeverTrustATrailer The trailer lied]].

* Inverted by ''BeingThere'', which begins with serious scenes of a developmentally delayed man being evicted from his home when his employer dies, but it quickly turns to comedy once the main character is on his own.

* Creator/TylerPerry's ''HouseOfPayne'' has a tendency towards this which changes depending on which character is in the spotlight at the moment.

* ''CowboyBebop'' had Ed and Ein do a quick fade any time the plot took a dark turn -- their presence equaled comedy. [[spoiler:[[ShooOutTheClowns They left the show two episodes before the]] BittersweetEnding.]]

* ''SluggyFreelance'' tends to be especially obvious with this trope.

* The WalkyVerse usually follows this law to a T. Also subverted/lampshaded by the author, David Willis, by stating that "before we can proceed [with the excessive drama], this strip needs an EMERGENCY [[TheComicallySerious BATMAN]] INFUSION!"

* ''EverydayHeroes'' also plays this trope straight. The first few chapters showed a superhero treating crime-fighting like a regular 9-to-5 job, and his super-powered daughter trying to be a normal high school student. Then we get a flashback into Jane's past, and all of a sudden her boss is pure evil and her best friend gets StuffedIntoTheFridge. More recent chapters have lightened up and brought back the comedy.
* Present in Webcomic/BittersweetCandyBowl; [[{{Cloudcuckoolander}} David]] is seldom around when things get bad.

** The Doctor has been a naturally funny character since his second story, "The Daleks". Many stories throughout the show's entire run have exploited this along with his heroics - by having him mostly removed from proceedings that are supposed to be terrifying, then showing up and being hilarious when it's time for him to defeat the monster, defusing both the narrative tension and the in-story threat at the same time. The most obvious use of this is probably "The Christmas Invasion", in which the Doctorless and Doctor-heavy portions of the story differ in tone so much it's almost to the point of {{Lampshading}} this - note particularly how the TranslationConvention only switches on when the Doctor emerges, which immediately makes the Carrionites less threatening by making them more like - well - ''Doctor Who'' villains.

''In any work that has both drama and comedy, the drama will rise proportionally with the level of tension in the story. The comedy will do the reverse.''

''"In any work that has both drama and comedy, the drama will rise proportionally with the level of tension in the story. The comedy will do the reverse."''

A "tragicomedy" (better known as a "{{dramedy}}") is a mix of lighter and darker material that uses humor to lighten the tension and drama as a way to show the audience that something serious is going on. This is a difficult balancing act to carry out, and only a few shows have ever done it successfully.

* CowboyBebop had Ed and Ein do a quick fade any time the plot took a dark turn -- their presence equaled comedy. [[spoiler:[[ShooOutTheClowns They left the show two episodes before the]] BittersweetEnding.]]

* Similar to Cowboy Bebop's varying levels of Ed and Ein, ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'' used [[TeamPet Momo]]. If Momo is around, the plot is generally going to be funny, or at least lighthearted. When things go all life-and-death and serious, Momo is nowhere to be found.

* ''InBruges'', although the tragic elements are there from the beginning, and there is still a bit of comedy left towards the end.

* ''Disney/{{Frozen}}'' plays this pretty straight, with the funnier moments and musical numbers concentrated more in the first half while the harder drama coming into play more in the second half. Ironically, PluckyComicRelief character Olaf doesn't show up until the halfway point, which explains why his comedy is more limited than the [[NeverTrustATrailer trailers]] would have you believe. He does help counteract the increased seriousness of the main characters at that point, however.

** The Creator/StevenMoffat approach is somewhat more segregated. Unlike RTD or Holmes he doesn't use silly monsters at all, and while the Doctor can do comical things to defeat them (holding them up with Jammie Dodgers, etcetera) it's only temporary defeat, never his final solution for dealing with the monster, which is usually something much more serious. He also wrings a lot of drama and angst out of his characters. However, he likes to surround pure {{Horror}} and drama material with snappy sitcom-style dialogue, with pure comedy sequences becoming common (where RTD's would usually be bittersweet in tone) and WorldOfSnark supporting casts. The result of this is that MoodDissonance is avoided, and he lightens scenes that aren't meant to be scary and pumps in the darkness when they are - the traditional approach to this trope.

** The same thing applies to ''Theatre/IntoTheWoods'', also by Sondheim.

* ''ComicBook/ArtSchoolConfidential'' was billed as a comedy, and it holds to this for about a half hour, after which point it finds it has exhausted its source material and can no longer sustain anything resembling humor. Then, it just becomes more and more depressing as it tries to become a subversive MindScrew, without really understanding some of the fundamental trappings of the MindScrew (for example, first you must acknowledge that your audience ''has'' a mind before you try to mess with it).

** The Doctor has been a naturally funny character since his second story, "The Daleks". Many stories throughout the show's entire run have exploited this along with his heroics - by having him mostly removed from proceedings that are supposed to be terrifying, then showing up and being hilarious when it's time for him to defeat the monster, defusing both the narrative tension and the in-story threat at the same time. The most obvious use of this is probably "The Christmas Invasion", in which the Doctorless and Doctor-heavy portions of the story differ in tone so much it's almost to the point of {{Lampshading}} this - note particularly how the TranslationConvention only switches on when the Doctor emerges, which immediately makes the Shakri less threatening by making them more like - well - ''Doctor Who'' villains.

* ''Series/DoctorWho'' is a good example. It relies a lot on witty dialog and funny jokes, but it also knows how to make things serious in particularly epic and/or sad moments.

* Tyler Perry's ''HouseOfPayne'' has a tendency towards this which changes depending on which character is in the spotlight at the moment.
* Joss Whedon's raison d'etre: ''Series/{{Buffy|The Vampire Slayer}}'' and ''Series/{{Firefly}}'' contain frequent switches in tone between comedy and drama/tragedy frequently - some episodes will be extremely comedic in tone, some almost completely without humour and terribly bleak. Almost every episode of both shows will generally contain elements of both. Whedon particulary delights in cutting straight from comedy to tearjerkers and vice versa (for instance, in Firefly Mal tells Simon that Kaylee is dead. Cue slow-mo run to her bedside, accompanied by desolate strings on the soundtrack. Kaylee's fine. Mal's psychotic. Everyone splits their sides at Simon's expense). In Buffy, in keeping with the trope described on this page, the lighter subplots and snappy dialogue tends to fall away a lot as seasons near their climax.

In the worst cases, however, over the course of a series of books, films, television episodes, or other media, the subject might start out mainly comedy, switch to dramedy at about the halfway point, then continue to become [[DarkerAndEdgier darker and less comedic]] until [[EverybodysDeadDave beloved characters start]] [[KillEmAll getting wiped out with frightening regularity]]. Fans are then more justified in complaining that the series JumpedTheShark with a genre BaitAndSwitch.

* ''{{Nier}}'' is a generally grim adventure with what can only be described as [[WhamEpisode Wham-packed]], but it also has a vast number of optional sidequests with truly hilarious developments and resolutions. Even during the main plotline, the banter between the main character, DeadpanSnarker Weiss, and foul-mouthed Kaine can get riotously funny.

* Inverted by 'BeingThere', which begins with serious scenes of a mentally-ill man being evicted from his home when his employer dies, but it quickly turns to comedy once the main character is on his own.

'''Gonzo:''' When you're right, you're right. [[NoFourthWall (Turning to face the audience:)]] You're on your own, folks. We'll meet you at the finale!

* The musical ''Theatre/{{Camelot}}'' with Richard Burton does this amazingly well. The movie starts out as a light-hearted comedy, then very gradually gets darker leading to an inevitable, heart-wrenching conclusion. The high point is Burton/Arthur's reprisal of the lighthearted title song from the beginning, now sung dramatically, and his agony at the line, "For one brief shining moment!"

* ''ArtSchoolConfidential'' was billed as a comedy, and it holds to this, for about a half hour, after which point it finds it has exhausted its source material and can no longer sustain anything resembling humor, and then it just becomes more and more depressing as it tries to become a subversive MindScrew, without really understanding some of the fundamental trappings of the MindScrew (for example, first you must acknowledge that your audience ''has'' a mind before you try to mess with it).

* Similar to Cowboy Bebop's varying levels of Ed and Ein, ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'' used Momo. If Momo is around, the plot is generally going to be funny, or at least lighthearted. When things go all life-and-death and serious, Momo is nowhere to be found.

* Similar to Cowboy Bebop's varying levels of Ed and Ein, [[WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender Avatar]] used Momo. If Momo is around, the plot is generally going to be funny, or at least lighthearted. When things go all life-and-death and serious, Momo is nowhere to be found.

* {{Trigun}} notably was very light hearted in the first half, and barring some of the really deeper moments such as episode six's ending never really loses its humor. Things took a deeper turn when the main plot kicked in during the second half but still threw in an occasional gag, usually in the first half of the episode. Then during the final 5-6 episodes the comedy was all but dropped. In the case of the manga it was mostly averted: while the main, more dramatic story kicked in much earlier, the humor, while a little more sparse, never completely disappeared even as things got even more serious. For an example: [[spoiler: take the following events after Wolfwood's death. In the anime, the episode after we see Vash breaking down at the beginning of the episode and [[FromBadToWorse it goes downhill]] from there for him. In the manga, the chapter after Wolfwood's death has Vash connecting with his new ally Livio and there's a humorous breakfast scene with the two eating to get their strength back up.]]

* ''TheRoom'' actually follows this pretty rigidly. The first half is mostly baffling moments of comedy and meandering subplots, while the second half cuts away all the subplots in favour of the main infidelity storyline, before the protagonist is DrivenToSuicide.