History Main / GrayingMorality

* While WesternAnimation/SheRaandthePrincessesofPower stablishes important gray characters from the start, the more the story is developed, more characters are shown to be surprisingly ambiguous . Major villains thought to be one-note like Hordak and Shadow Weaver are revealed to be much more complex and heroic characters like Glimmer take some morally questionable choices. Characters often switch sides or take extreme measures to win the war for the side they're on, and this is logically explained by the individual development they have.

* The first ''Franchise/StarWars'' trilogy (IV-VI) had this. ''Film/ANewHope'' was like a comic book, with mostly clear-cut heroes and villains (except for LovableRogue Han Solo). In ''Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack'', we learn that Obi-Wan [[JediTruth lied]] to Luke about his father, leading to ''Film/ReturnOfTheJedi'' where Luke is told that he must kill his own father or the Emperor will win. The prequels end up being much greyer than the originals, with the heroes using ChildSoldiers and a slave army.

* Canadian columnist Eric Nicol has the story of '' literature/TheWhiteKnight'', who rides off in search of the Black knight, whose path is marked by a string of thefts and seductions, and who gradually transforms into the Black Knight. [[/folder]]

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[[folder:Anime & Manga]]

[[folder: Western Animation]]

** The sequel, ''VideoGame/NierAutomata'' treads a similar path. Originally, 2B and 9S are YorHa androids fighting against machines that invading aliens had left in their wake, trying to reclaim earth for the humans that had retreated to the moon. Shortly into the story, it's shown the machines aren't as basic as they seem. Some acting weirdly emotional, and others having broken off the main antagonistic force to live in peace, becoming uneasy allies with the protagonists. Then [[spoiler:you learn all the invading aliens on earth were killed when their machines turned against them.]] "Adam" and "Eve" turn out to be entirely sentient machines, largely indistinguishable from the [[RidiculouslyHumanRobot YorHa androids]] physically. But they lack any actual moral compass, still threaten humanity (mostly out of curiosity) and you [[spoiler:kill Adam to save 9S, and kill Eve to save the continent after he freaks out due to Adam's death.]] Subsequent playthroughs get considerably more gray from every direction [[spoiler:except for maybe the entity controlling the hostile machines, which is entirely malevolent.]] When rebooting from YorHa's mainframe after having his physical body destroyed fighting Eve [[spoiler:9S stumbles upon classified information revealing humanity isn't living on the moon. It's extinct (likely due to the events of the first game), and what's on the moon is just a server with humanity's genetic information. In short, it turns out even the Commander didn't know exactly who was pulling the strings, it turned out YorHa was actually being puppeteered by the entity controlling the machines in what was essentially a wacky sociology experiment. 9S ends up on the fringes of sanity, barely able to tell the difference between friend and foe, and simply fighting whatever is in his way, and 2A largely continues to fight just because that's all she can do, but is now haunted by 2B's memories, that she gained when she took 2B's weapons.]]

* In the ''VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublic'' you are mostly either fighting unquestionably evil villains or being needlessly evil yourself and the Jedi are portrayed without much moral ambiguity to them. TheReveal blurs the line between good and evil a little bit, but aside from [[spoiler:your character having done a lot of bad things in the past and the Jedi Council pulling out a BrainwashingForTheGreaterGood on them]] things are still pretty clear. Then [[VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublicIITheSithLords the sequel]] comes and changes things ''[[DeconstructorFleet completely]]''

* WesternAnimation/StarVsTheForcesOfEvil is introduced as a typical [[BlackAndWhiteMorality good against evil story]] but by season 3 establishes the good guys as flawed with some FantasticRacism issues where the characters assumed to be antagonists are actually just like the protagonists.

* ''Franchise/PiratesOfTheCaribbean'' already starts off as GrayAndBlackMorality, but includes distinctly white characters such as Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann. These characters gain shades of gray throughout the [[Film/PiratesOfTheCaribbeanDeadMansChest second]] and [[Film/PiratesOfTheCaribbeanAtWorldsEnd third]] movies. On the opposite side of the spectrum is [[spoiler:Barbossa]], who was mostly black in the [[Film/PiratesOfTheCaribbeanTheCurseOfTheBlackPearl first film]] but is just as gray as the other protagonists [[spoiler:after his resurrection by Tia Dalma.]]

* In the World Wrestling League the feud between La Rabia and Los Rabiosos initially appeared to socially active, charitable, sacrificing TrueCompanions vs whiny, greedy GangBangers. This was by [[NobleDemon Los Rabiosos' design]]. As [[HiddenHeartOfGold it turned out]], Los Rabiosos were as socially active and charitable as La Rabia. What this feud was, was a splinter in a large PowerStable over one side(Los Rabiosos) feeling the other had become [[PretenderDiss posers]]. That and the fact there were only three tercias belts; everyone couldn't be hold one and Los Rabiosos refused to be overshadowed(yeah, WWL had plenty of other belts but Los Rabiosos weren't patient enough to wait on La Rabia to help them get those). La Rabia were still the better group but Los Rabiosos ended up being {{face}}s against anyone who wasn't La Rabia.[[/folder]]

* It's difficult for ''Manga/SoulEater'' fans to believe that the series used to be a comedy. Inclusions of MindRape, [[RapeAsDrama actual rape]], [[DealWithTheDevil deals with the voice in your head]], etc aside, the most triumphant example of this would have to be the point in the series where the Grim Reaper decides to wipe out a whole town because the Kishin just might be hiding there. [[GodzillaThreshold Eventually the Kishin could wipe out the whole world]], but the situation at just halfway through the story is that dire.

* The first ''VideoGame/AceAttorney'' game was somewhat black and white. While the victim may turn out to be an AssholeVictim and the killer may turn out to be somewhat sympathetic, there's never any doubt that your client is innocent. Then ''Justice For All'' drops a bombshell that [[spoiler: Phoenix's final client of the game, Matt Engarde, is indirectly the culprit via hiring a hitman to kill the victim. Worse than that, he also got the hitman to kidnap Maya and hold her hostage to ensure that Phoenix continues to defend him, forcing Phoenix to frame an innocent person until he can figure out how to both save Maya and get Matt convicted.]]

* The first ''VideoGame/AceAttorney'' game was somewhat black and white. While the victim may turn out to be an AssholeVictim and the killer may turn out to be somewhat sympathetic, there's never any doubt that your client is innocent. Then ''Justice For All'' drops a bombshell that [[spoiler: Phoenix's client, Matt Engarde, is indirectly the culprit via hiring a hitman to kill the victim. Worse than that, he also got the hitman to kidnap Maya and hold her hostage to ensure that Phoenix continues to defend him, forcing Phoenix to frame an innocent person until he can figure out how to both save Maya and get Matt convicted.]]

* Up until ''VideoGame/DynastyWarriors 5'', fans seems to be fine with how Koei set it up that 'Shu = Good guys, Wu = Inbetween, Wei = CardCarryingVillain'. By ''6'', thanks to ''VideoGame/WarriorsOrochi'', the Wei forces instead started taking swings into [[AntiVillain anti-villainy]]. And then in ''7'', Shu's darker side started to show: After Wuzhang plains, Jiang Wei turned into TheFundamentalist, a fanatic to Zhuge Liang's old idea of 'world of benevolence' and continuously and futilely drains his country's resources just to fulfill that dream even if the country would rather him to just keep quiet and be at peace. And in that series' ''Xtreme Legends'', they introduced Wang Yi for Wei, a woman extremely consumed with vengeance against Shu's resident [[JusticeWillPrevail justice-bringer]] Ma Chao who slaughtered her clansmen in his campaign of vengeance against Cao Cao, [[ButForMeItWasTuesday and he wasn't even recognizing her for that]], overall painting a dark side to the 'Justice' he preaches.

* The original ''VideoGame/MegaMan'' series is fairly [[BlackAndWhiteMorality Black And White]]. The [[VideoGame/MegaManX sequel]] [[VideoGame/MegaManZero series]] get less and less so.

[[folder:Videogames]]

* WesternAnimation/StarVsTheForcesOfEvil is introduced as a typical [[BlackAndWhiteMorality good against evil story]] but by season 3 establishes the good guys as flawed with some racism issues where the characters assumed to be antagonists are actually just like the protagonists.

* ''Manga/AttackOnTitan'' starts off with humanity having been driven to the brink of extinction by terrifying, NighInvulnerable, man-eating giants, so the conflict between humans and [[HumanoidAbomination Titans]] initially seems fairly straightforward. However, the series quickly becomes increasingly morally complex. Almost everyone is forced to take [[HeWhoFightsMonsters drastic steps]] to ensure humanity's survival, while several factions [[DividedWeFall struggle for power]] in the midst of the war against the Titans, which themselves turn out to not be what they seem.

* In unusuall way ''Franchise/AceAttorney'' fic ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10143440/118/Just-a-Note Just a Note]]'' does it to canon through AlternateCharacterInterpretation. One of canon cases involved death of Interpol agent who was tracing smuggling of cocoon which can be used as medicine or poison, and whose taking out of it's origin country is illegal. The culprit wanted to sell cocoon to a buyer whose son needed said medicine to survive. The fic presents the culprit as WellIntentionedExtremist who never wanted any deaths and wanted to get the cocoon to a buyer not for money but to save kid's life, and the victim as someone whose sticking to the rules resulted in child's death.

* ''Literature/TheSagaOfDarrenShan'' series developed along these lines due to the CharacterDevelopment of the protagonist and narrator. While most of the adult vampires would admit that there was some good in themselves and the rival vampaneze, the story is told form Darren's point of view. The effect was that the act of taking blood went from a horrifying abuse of other people to everyday routine, vampire culture went from rigid and savage to traditional but noble, and even the Vampaneze, a branch of vampires who serve as the main antagonists, killing every time they had to drink blood and killing several of Darren's friends, went from being regarded as monsters to seen with a respect almost similar to that between diffrent countries or rival political parties.

* ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'' had much more black and white moral system in the first, with the heroes hunting and killing monsters in order to preserve life. Then, the main characters started to fight demons, which required them to murder innocent human hosts, the supernatural creatures stopped always being evil due to their race, and they started to make deals with demons in order to survive. After a few series, the brothers wouldn't even bat an eye when forced to kill a room full of demons with human hosts, made moral decisions which trod the line between dangerously irresponsible and wilfully evil, and constantly traded away the safety amd wellbeing of huge numbers of people. At this point, it's hard to say whether or not the Winchesters still count as good or even chaotic neutral.

* ''VideoGame/NieR'' started with a father/brother (depending on your version) trying to get medicine for his daughter/sister, while dealing with Shades mindlessly attacking them. Then the "Shadow Lord" kidnapped the sickly relative and gave you an antagonist for the rest of the game. Then it's revealed the Shadow Lord's objectives aren't entirely malevolent, just directly opposed to your objectives. Subsequent play throughs show that [[spoiler:the Shades are the spirits of what was left of humanity after White Clorination Syndrome drove them all to put their souls (gestalts) into synthetic bodies (replicants), which eventually rejected the souls, causing the "Black Scrawl" disease that the daughter/sister was dying from. The Shades you fought were mostly defending themselves against the man carving through hordes of them for no reason they could ascertain. The player's actions in trying to save the daughter/sister lead to the last remnants of the project trying to find a solution to humanity's woes failing, dooming humanity.]]
** The sequel, ''VideoGame/NierAutomata'' treads a similar path. Originally, 2B and 9S are YorHa androids fighting against machines that invading aliens had left in their wake, trying to reclaim earth for the humans that had retreated to the moon. Shortly into the story, it's shown the machines aren't as basic as they seem. Some acting weirdly emotional, and others having broken off the main antagonistic force to live in peace, becoming uneasy allies with the protagonists. Then [[spoiler:you learn all the invading aliens on earth were killed when their machines turned against them.]] "Adam" and "Eve" turn out to be entirely sentient machines, largely indistinguishable from the [[RidiculouslyHumanRobot YorHa androids]] physically. But they lack any actual moral compass, still threaten humanity (mostly out of curiosity) and you [[spoiler:kill Adam to save 9S, and kill Eve to save the continent after he freaks out due to Adam's death.]] Subsequent play throughs get considerably more gray from every direction [[spoiler:except for maybe the entity controlling the hostile machines, which is entirely malevolent.]] When rebooting from YorHa's mainframe after having his physical body destroyed fighting Eve [[spoiler:9S stumbles upon classified information revealing humanity isn't living on the moon. It's extinct (likely due to the events of the first game), and what's on the moon is just a server with humanity's genetic information. In short, it turns out even the Commander didn't know exactly who was pulling the strings, it turned out YorHa was actually being puppeteered by the entity controlling the machines in what was essentially a wacky sociology experiment. 9S ends up on the fringes of sanity, barely able to tell the difference between friend and foe, and simply fighting whatever is in his way, and 2A largely continues to fight just because that's all she can do, but is now haunted by 2B's memories, that she gained when she took 2B's weapons.]]

* ''Manga/AttackOnTitan'' starts off with humanity having been driven to the brink of extinction by terrifying, NighInvulnerable, man-eating giants, so the conflict between humans and [[HumanoidAbomination Titans]] initially seems fairly straightforward. However, the series quickly becomes increasingly morally complex. Almost everyone is forced to take [[HeWhoFightsMonsters increasingly drastic steps]] to ensure humanity's survival, while several factions [[DividedWeFall struggle for power]] in the midst of the war against the Titans, which themselves turn out to not be what they seem.

* ''Manga/AttackOnTitan'' starts off with humanity having been driven to the brink of extinction by terrifying, NighInvulnerable, man-eating giants, so the conflict between humans and [[HumanoidAbomination Titans]] initially seems fairly straightforward. However, the series quickly becomes increasingly morally complex. Almost everyone forced to take [[HeWhoFightsMonsters increasingly drastic steps]] to ensure humanity's survival, while several factions with varying ethical codes emerge to [[DividedWeFall struggle for power]] in the midst of the war against the Titans, which themselves turn out to not be what they seem.

* ''Manga/AttackOnTitan'' starts off with humanity having been driven to the brink of extinction by terrifying, NighInvulnerable, man-eating giants, so the conflict between humans and [[HumanoidAbomination Titans]] initially seems fairly straightforward. However, the series quickly becomes increasingly morally complex. Not only is almost everyone forced to take [[HeWhoFightsMonsters increasingly drastic steps]] to ensure humanity's survival, several factions with varying ethical codes emerge to [[DividedWeFall struggle for power]] in the midst of the war against the Titans, which themselves turn out to not be what they seem.

* Early on, the conflict in ''Manga/AttackOnTitan'' is fairly [[BlackAndWhiteMorality black and white]], since humanity has been driven to the brink of extinction by giant, ravenous [[HumanoidAbomination Humanoid Abominations]]. However, the series quickly develops into GreyAndGrayMorality, as several factions struggle for power in the midst of the war against the Titans, which themselves turn out to not be what they seem.

Compare CerebusSyndrome, DarkerAndEdgier and {{Grimmification}}, which can all sometimes involve this. However, plenty of works go through those tropes without shifting their basic moral scale. It may sometimes overlap with GenreDeconstruction if Black and White Morality is one of the key assumptions of the genre which the work is deconstructing. Contrast DebateAndSwitch, where a morally challenging issue is made into more of a Black And White one, or ignored.

* In the ''Franchise/MetalGear'' series, [[VideoGame/MetalGear1 the first game]] is very straightforward: you are to stop the leader of Outer Heaven to prevent war. [[spoiler:Even though the leader turns out to be your commanding officer, it's very clear that you're supposed to stop him anyway]]. As the series goes on, it becomes less and less clear who, if anyone, is actually evil and not just a WellIntentionedExtremist.

* Each iteration of the ''Franchise/StarTrek'' franchise seemed to get a bit "grayer" than the one before it; ''[[Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration The Next Generation]]'' was grayer than the unabashedly utopian [[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries original series]], ''[[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine Deep Space Nine]]'' was grayer than ''TNG'', and by [[Film/StarTrek the 2009 film]] Kirk's originally heroic archetypal traits straddle the line between heroic strengths and serious personal faults.

* ''VideoGame/Nier'' started with a father/brother (depending on your version) trying to get medicine for his daughter/sister, while dealing with Shades mindlessly attacking them. Then the "Shadow Lord" kidnapped the sickly relative and gave you an antagonist for the rest of the game. Then it's revealed the Shadow Lord's objectives aren't entirely malevolent, just directly opposed to your objectives. Subsequent play throughs show that [[spoiler:the Shades are the spirits of what was left of humanity after White Clorination Syndrome drove them all to put their souls (gestalts) into synthetic bodies (replicants), which eventually rejected the souls, causing the "Black Scrawl" disease that the daughter/sister was dying from. The Shades you fought were mostly defending themselves against the man carving through hordes of them for no reason they could ascertain. The player's actions in trying to save the daughter/sister lead to the last remnants of the project trying to find a solution to humanity's woes failing, dooming humanity.]]