Cerebus Syndrome / Western Animation

Examples of Western cartoons getting progressively more serious.

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• 12 oz. Mouse started out as an immature comedy that appealed to stoners and middle-schoolers, and quickly became something that defies description. The first couple of episodes are just Fitz wandering around getting hit by cars and stuff like that. Afterward, the show started taking on Mind Screw elements, continuity, characterization and became the Cult Classic its fans loved. If we had to pinpoint the exact moment this happened, it would be in the end of episode 3, when Fitz asks where Skillet is, before cutting to Skillet, tied to a chair with a ballgag in his mouth, in a building filled with pictures of him, and the new guy standing over him.
• Adventure Time: The back half of the series, after Ward stepped down as showrunner in favor of longtime writer Adam Muto, in addition to focusing more on the Back Story Horror that is the Mushroom War, had its episodes heavily explore themes of existentialism and introspection, with characters maturing, learning to confront their pasts, and reexamining their identities.
• While the structure of the series downplays this somewhat, Amphibia nevertheless undergoes this in its third season. Following the events of the season two finale, the show's final season sees it shift from what had been assumed to be the series goal of getting Anne and her friends back to Earth. Instead, with Anne having returned to Earth and Sasha still in Amphibia, they must stop the machinations of King Andrias who wishes to conquer the multiverse with the help of his master, The Core who is controlling Marcy's body and using her as a puppet.
• Relatively minor example, but although Season 8 of Archer (subtitled Dreamland) is still more comedic than dramatic, it does have a mostly serious Film Noir mystery at its core, and contains lengthy scenes without a single joke. In Season 11, despite Archer waking up from his coma, the show still doesn't completely return to pure comedy, instead exploring what would happen when the main character has been in a coma for a few years, as well as analyzing and occasionally deconstructing his social maladjustment and dysfunctional relationship with his coworkers (and their own dysfunctional relationships with each other).
• BoJack Horseman did this so hard it became infamous for it. Beginning in a similar vein to other adult animated sitcoms such as Family Guy, just with a focus on critiquing Hollywood, the media, and celebrity culture, the show at first received mixed reviews for its formulaic approach and lack of compensation in humor. Around the midway point of the first season, however, the series takes a more decisive turn into Black Comedy and at some points straight up depressive drama as Bojack begins to realize the type of person he has become and wonders if it is too late to try and be a good person again and pursue happiness, and his colleagues also start to question who they are and whether they can be happy. This Tone Shift was so severe that it permanently changed the way independent media review website IndieWire reviewed seasons, as it had given the season a lukewarm review based on its first six episodes.
• Codename: Kids Next Door began as a show that took mundane kid issues (such as going to school) and blew them up into devices in an ongoing "kids vs. adults" war. The show was fairly comical with no serious plots emerging until the conclusion of the first season (during "Operation G.R.O.W.U.P."). However, as the larger KND organization began to be revealed (initially the show only showed the five members of Sector V), the stories took a turn into deeper and darker territory with backstabs and some much more serious villains (early episodes featured gimmick villains like Count Spankulot but later on you get the very driven KND defector Cree Lincoln who has a vicious vendetta against the organization). The story still dealt with kids problems blown up eleventy-billion fold (such as teens being jerks to little kids being reinterpreted as teenagers acting as highly-trained field agents for adult villainy) but the plots were less comedy and more action and dramatic.
  • Especially the ending, where Numbuh One is separated from his friends.
  • "Operation A.R.C.H.I.V.E." seems to show this with a parody of very dark "The Second Renaissance" from The Animatrix.
  • "Operation: T.R.E.A.T.Y." delves into the deeply complicated relationship between the protagonist Nigel Uno/Numbuh 1 and his former mentor/commander Chad Dickson/(Former) Numbuh 274. Along with playing heavily into the Myth Arc (which was resolved in the series finale), it examines the idea of betrayal in its entirety, as showcased by Nigel and Chad's irreparably broken friendship. To say nothing of the Bittersweet Ending, which barely counts as much considering how much of it is on the bitter side.
• MTV's Daria was originally mostly about the title character and her friend facing the stupidity of high school with a half-smile and a snarky comment, always beating the system, though the serious side of it was always beating under the surface of the comedy. The show started delving into the deeper issues faced by high school students, ending the first season with an episode where the girls deal with the death of someone they both loathed and Daria's attitude is both a blessing and a curse. The second season largely dealt with things from a more comedic perspective again, but spent more time on looking at the goals of the individual characters and the final episode was again a serious examination of Daria's attitude and whether that was what she wanted for her entire life. Season 3 started into this full bore and ended with the first real conflict between Daria and Jane. The final two seasons entirely covered the turbulence of the two girls falling for the same guy, Daria's own confusion over handling her feelings for crush Trent and boyfriend Tom, and the reality of the end of high school and what it would mean for herself, her family, and her friends. It's debatable whether or not this went too far in the final two seasons, but even the staff copped to setting out to do this in Season 3 (though the rather serious finales of the previous two seasons set the stage for the eventual shift into full-on Dramedy).
  • It could also be counted as a meta example when you consider that Daria was a Spinoff of Beavis And Butthead. Watching later seasons, it can be hard to tell that the show spun off from something containing the line "I am the Great Cornholio! I need TP for my bunghole!"
• The Family Guy episode "Screams Of Silence: The Story of Brenda Q.", where Domestic Abuse, once used for cheap gags, is played straight and serious for once. It's much scarier than it sounds.
  • The show itself has been through this not once or twice, but six times. The first season was more of a lighthearted, slice of life comedy show in the vein of The Simpsons and Baby Blues which featured storylines focusing on mainly the family as a whole. The second season continued this formula but shifted it a little in favor of focus on other characters and started to find its own voice away from The Simpsons. The third season is when the show began developing the characters but focused more on gags and jokes than the previous seasons and became edgier in tone. Seasons 4 and 5 had most of the character's personalities altered and became a show exclusively for telling jokes and gags but retaining some of the heart that the previous seasons had. This was altered again in Seasons 6 and 7 (mainly because the crew members that worked on Seasons 4 and 5 went to work on Phineas and Ferb and the majority of the "charm" those seasons had went straight to that show), where the show became a venue for jokes with very little heart in between and became a little more serious as some episodes had Brian voice Seth MacFarlane's political views. They shifted this again in Seasons 8 onward in exchange for nothing but mean-spirited humor and taking a Darker and Edgier tone to the point of where an episode featuring heart now is very rare.
  • Special mention should go to the 150th episode "Brian and Stewie", which gradually becomes less comical as the episode goes on.
• Final Space: The series starts off as a comedic sci-fi animated sitcom, where a space prisoner befriends the Cuddle Bug alien Mooncake and the Cat Folk bounty hunter Avocato. The series soon gets darker when the evilness of the Big Bad Lord Commander is made clear, Avocato is desperately trying to save his son and the corruption of the Infinity Guard is brought to light. Avocato's death to save his son ultimately seals the deal and at the end, outside of Plucky Comic Relief KVN's appearances, the show is close to devoid of jokes and full of tragic moments.
• The fourth (and for about four years, final) season of Futurama dipped in this territory. While still overall episodic and comedic, "The Why of Fry" revealed that there had been a subtly done "arc" all along, and episodes like "Jurassic Bark" and "Leela's Homeworld" were outright tear jerkers.
  • Starting with the movies, and continuing with its return to a regular series format on Comedy Central, the show has maintained itself as a comedy series, albeit with some changes in tone. It has begun to address socio-political issues in a more overt way than it previously had, and the humour has become noticeably darker and more mature. However, there is still plenty of comedy to go around.
• Gravity Falls started out as a lighthearted Fantastic Comedy about twins exploring the supernatural in the titular town, but as more of the town's mysteries were unveiled, the show became more of a Black Comedy, including heartbreakingly realistic broken relationships, copious body horror, multiple instances of torture and actual demonic possession, and the apocalypse. What's more, there are so many cerebus retcons that even the lighter bits of the first season can't be seen the same way after the second.
• Invader Zim, of all things, went through some of this right towards the end of the show. Being an episodic comedy with a fair bit of negative continuity for its first season, the second season began to have running continuity, most notably involving Tak's ship. While it still didn't take itself too seriously, the greater focus on sci-fi elements, the war against the Irken Empire, and other facets of the Universe promised something beyond the original scope. On the commentary, the creators mention that they had been planning more stuff with epic space battles, and it was just as well the show ended because Nickelodeon execs insisted that kids weren't interested in that, they wanted comedies in school.
• Metalocalypse started out as a total screwball absurdist comedy (in typical Adult Swim fashion) involving the world's most popular metal band with a loose at best thread of plot. Then characters started getting fleshed out, things like child abuse and parental neglect started popping up, and in the second season finale the band is attacked in their own compound, Mordhaus, by a small army of soldiers brainwashed into killing them and anyone who stands in their way. An epic battle ensues, the band's home is set ablaze, and their manager may very well have been killed.
  • Subtle character development even there. The band had spent the finale verbally abusing Toki, concluding that helping him out would be interfering with his life, and arriving to the fact that they had to be jerks by some insane logic that only makes sense to them. As usual. As Nathan is saving Toki, he says that he doesn't want to interfere, but Toki has been "way too drunk" lately. At the end, they rescue Offdensen from torture at the psychotic mass murderer's hands stating, "That's our bread and butter you're fucking with." They had previously barely noticed Offdensen, besides the fact that he made them do work. They even thought he was their butler.
  • Season 3 has delved into this in subtle ways too. While it is still pretty much Played For Laughs and sprinkled with the show's typical sadistic humor, many of the band members get some pretty heavy Character Development. Skwisgaar temporarily quits with a desire to find his father, Pickles gets into the root of his substance abuse issues (and sings about it), and the rather depressing reason why Toki is so enamored with Doctor Rockzo is revealed.
    • Not to mention everything that happened with Offdensen. His "death" hit them all very hard, even though they wouldn't talk about it because "admitting sadness makes you gay." Even when he came back, by the season finale, it's obvious that the band was screwed up without him and they definitely consider him a part of the group in some way.
    • While "Church of the Black Klok" (or the last three or four episodes of season 4, period) gave the Offdensen fans a serious case of emotion while he describes the deep, terrible details of his own death in that usual calm monotone, the prize for perhaps most emotional show of how important Charles really is to his bread and butter shows itself in "Doublebookedklok". Between the boys being legitimately upset at the idea that their manager may hate them after he is furious over the simultaneously booked gigs in Syria and Israel respectively and their running away as a result (culminating in the second snowbound manhunt of the episode when Toki actually hugs Offdensen) and the emotional speech he gives to his assistant about how his job is "something worth dying for"...you really get the feeling that Dethklok and his job are the closest things to a real family he has.
  • And then season 4 happened. Holy shit. Let's do a sorta recap, shall we? Going back to fifteen minutes in length, we now have downright Mood Whiplash as we bounce between our usual jokes, an oncoming freight train of the Myth Arc plot, all while the interpersonal relationships between the band become more deeply explored. It doesn't go well for the "Friender Bender" buddy duo of Nathan and Pickles, by the way. Even worse, the very lovable Toki gets stabbed in the season finale by the former bandmate, Magnus, in his mad obsession with revenge, and his fate (as well as Abigail, the band's new producer, who Pickles still had feelings for) is still as of yet unknown.
• The Lion Guard underwent this early on in its second season, beginning an overarching plotline where the hyenas summon the spirit of Scar who plots to take over the Pride Lands. This extends into Season 3 where Kion and the Guard manage to defeat Scar, but must leave the Pride Lands to search for the legendary Tree of Life which could heal Kion of the poison in his soul. Said season also marks the first show in Disney Junior history to show an onscreen death.
• Moral Orel started as a goofy and over-the-top parody of shows like Davey and Goliath. They slowly became much darker, focusing less on more lighthearted and humorous plots and delving into the character drama that comes from living in a community where everyone hates each other and are only loosely held together by a religion many of them secretly resent.
  • The third season episodes are frequently just downright depressing (with only a couple jokes made), with episodes dedicated to fleshing out secondary characters and showing how messed-up everyone's life (especially Clay's) is. The commentary bits before the episodes even have one exec saying they cancelled the show because they didn't want Dino to do anything worse to Orel. On the other hand, some episodes can be quite uplifting, like "Dumb" which ends with Nurse Bendy getting rid of her weird teddy bear family and spending time with her real son Joe (specifically making weird face all throughout the credits) and "Closeface" which ended with Orel and Christina enjoying a dance while Reverend Putty helps Stephanie (his daughter, who reveals he knew was gay) get over a girl that didn't really like her and they decide to go look for dates together.
    • The show reaches its arguably most dramatic and depressing moments in the episode "Numb" which has nary a joke in it. The whole episode centers around Bloberta realizing that she cannot achieve sexual pleasure from the various power tools she uses to masturbate with. Being absolutely repulsed by her husband at this point, she goes on an unsuccessful quest to find a man in town that she can have an affair with. The episode ends with a drunken Clay returning home to witness Bloberta break down in tears after Orel asks her why she married him. After noticing him, she immediately freezes up and returns to her cold, distant persona and the two climb into their separate beds without a single word. All of this while The Mountain Goat's song "No Children" plays. Remember when this show used to be about accidentally resurrecting zombies?
  • No mention of Moral Orel and Cerebus Syndrome is complete without the episode "Alone", an episode that doesn't even have Orel in it (bar a voice only cameo) and deals with topics such as abuse of the physical, mental, and sexual kind, rape, abortion, and delusion. How bad was this episode? The execs had asked for Cerebus Syndrome, and when they saw this episode, experienced buyer's remorse and cancelled the series.
  • Though it does manage to end on a high note: The last thing you see in the series is a Flash Forward to Orel's adult life where he's Happily Married to his childhood sweetheart Christina Posabule and has a loving and stable family of two children and a puppy.
  • The pictures of the happy couple's brothers, Shapey & Block, show them as seemingly well-adjusted adults. Shapey goes on to become a Police Officer & Block a Fireman.
• My Dad the Bounty Hunter: The second half of the season becomes much darker as the truth about Dad’s bounty and the Consortium come to light and the tensions between father and daughter boil over.
• The Owl House may have accomplished beating the aforementioned Gravity Falls on this, being one of, if not the darkest Disney show ever released. The first season of the show, though loaded with horror elements, is mainly episodic, and any traumatic experiences that the kids go through are Played for Laughs, and get brushed off by them by the next episode. The show, however, gets steadily darker, even by the time of season 1B, with the reveals of broken friendships, Abusive Parents, and sibling treachery. In season 2A, Luz's Guilt Complex plays a critical role in the first episode of the season and the mid-season finale, Eda and her sister, Lilith and Amity, Luz's Love Interest and later girlfriend have visible parental issues brought to the forefront. But things really take a darker turn in season 2B once it is revealed that Luz's father died before the series and especially so once it's revealed that the Emperor Belos' (aka Philip Wittebane's) plan entails full-on genocide, which is shown in the season finale, and that he's been cloning Hunter, his supposed nephew repeatedly and has killed each one so far, and is implied to have murdered his brother, Caleb, for falling in love with a member of the local Mage Species By the time of season 3, the events of the previous season have left Luz in a depressive state implied to be bordering on suicidal ideation, and the Belos ends up possessing and nearly killing his aforementioned nephew again in one of the show's most horrifying scenes. And this is supposed to be a Disney show!
• Starting with "Dr. Blowhole's Revenge", The Penguins of Madagascar has become a little less cartoonish, playing up the sci-fi elements (mostly from Kowalski) and the technology a bit more. It's started to reverse a little bit in the latter half of season 2, though.
• The Raccoons is on the "done right" side of this syndrome. Over time, it shifted from by-the-numbers and cartoonish before evolving the characters into more distinct, realistic (by cartoon standards) personalities and more story-driven episodes.
• ReBoot was originally about computer components protecting their town in a mostly comical fashion. When Bob was lost in the Web at the end of Season 2 and Megabyte begins an active battle for control of Mainframe, the series got much more serious, but still retained its adventurous charm. For the 4th season, it starts off with the Daemon Wars only to conclude that and turn sharply back into a more comedic show. THEN Megabyte is still alive and using his new Trojan powers, tricks everyone into thinking he is Bob. He almost marries Dot, infects Mainframe and seems to have won. The series is like a mood yoyo.
• Rick and Morty: The even season finales are this trope while the odd season finales end on positive conclusions. And then the beginning of each season undoes any character development as Rick uses extreme hijinks to undo any permanent changes.
• The fifth and final season of Samurai Jack fell under this thanks to the show Growing with the Audience upon moving to [adult swim]. The very first episode of the season set the tone with an R-Rated Opening that showcased how our hero Jack has become a cynical, possibly suicidal, Shell-Shocked Veteran who has grown tired of his never-ending battle with Aku.
• Nobody ever thought any incarnation of Scooby-Doo could pull this off. Welcome to Crystal Cove, the Most Hauntedest Place on Earth! On a franchise level, it looks at the people in monster costumes and decides to treat someone that started causing havoc while wearing a costume like a legitimate danger. In the series itself, the first season finale has the gang split up in light of several betrayals of trust, and while they get back together quickly, the damage had been done.
  • And then the second season comes up and, without spoilers, let's just say it just beat Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island as the darkest incarnation of Scooby-Doo ever.
  • This was the first attempt at the series being that serious, but let's not forget as early back as the 80s in the 13 Ghosts seasons, one of those ghosts managed to easily conqueror the world and turn it into a mechanical wasteland where Shaggy is the last rebel on Earth. Sure he might still be able to be used in comedy, but that's still very heavy an event for a Scooby-Doo cartoon, long before Professor Pericles was a thought.
• While South Park is still very much a comedy, its tone has changed significantly over its run. Early seasons were silly and sitcom-like, with a sense of humor reminiscent of Monty Python's Flying Circus and The Simpsons; later seasons became increasingly topical, with most episodes featuring recent political or social issues, while the Black Comedy became even blacker with numerous Downer Endings and increasingly common and graphic violence. Needless to say, fan opinions are divided regarding when the show was (or is) at its peak.
  • "You're Getting Old" definitely avoids the Status Quo Is God rule by ending with Stan ending up a "cynical asshole" and his parents separating. The episode's lighthearted beginning did not last.
  • The sequel episode to "You're Getting Old" has Stan learning a lesson at the end along the lines of "Change might be unpleasant or scary but accepting it is the only way to move forward and enjoy new experiences". Cue his parents driving up in a moving truck to reveal they patched things up and everything can go back to normal. So while "You're Getting Old" averts Status Quo Is God, the follow-up episode subverted the aversion. (Though this is treated as a Downer Ending.)
  • Starting in season 18, there's been a steady building of actual continuity and season-long arcs; with season 19 on, this usually includes several dramatic twists. Previously the show was basically episodic and relied a lot on Negative Continuity.
  • South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut is a lot heavier than the earlier seasons and a foreshadowing of what the show would do in recent years.
• SpongeBob SquarePants after the movie things got a lot darker and a bit depressing. This also started before the movie. Such episodes include "SpongeBob Meets the Strangler" (where he is pursued by a sadistic criminal) or "Dumped" (where the episode begins quite cheerful but the development of the episode is pretty Tear Jerker).
  • The series get enough of this, but deserves special mention "Have You Seen This Snail?", the episode begins quite cheerful, but the closer the main plot is quite serious and get several Tear Jerker moments, too.
  • Also the infamous episode "One Coarse Meal", when Mr. Krabs exploits Plankton's fear of whales by dressing up as Pearl and scaring him. Sounds funny enough, but the kicker is how Plankton takes it.
• Star vs. the Forces of Evil was originally a lighthearted, if occasionally dark, comedy about a "magical princess from another dimension" who was exiled to Earth in order to learn how to control her powers. Then came the introduction of Toffee halfway through the first season, who pushed aside the show's Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain to become a major threat to magic itself by the end of the second season. The final two seasons would then pull a realistic twist on the show's fantastic racism, examine the politics of Star's home dimension, and explore the various romantic relationships between the characters, with even the comedy fully shifting away from the energetic slapstick of the first half in favor of more dry, dialogue-based humor.
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars was hit by this, though due to the show's initial use of Anachronic Order, things were lot bumpier. Generally, the first season is lighthearted fun, with a tinge of drama. Then comes the season one finale, ending with a terrorist attack. This sets the tone for most of Season 2, which featured massive scale combat chock full of Family-Unfriendly Violence, suicide, zombies, and child soldiers. Despite this, it still managed to stay kid-friendly and have its fair share of lighter moments. Then the middle of Season 3 gave us the Nightsisters and Brothers arc and the Mortis arc back to back, and the Cerebus Syndrome fully settled in. While Season 4 had a few lighthearted episodes where C-3PO and R2 had fun adventures, the rest of the season was filled with violent deaths (one character breaks a mook's neck, for Pete's sake), scenes of war, and racism towards clones, all capped off with a restored Maul beginning a galaxy wide murder spree (no children spared) in pursuit of vengeance. And Season 5 didn't let up on this, all the way to the conclusion which featured Ashoka framed for a terrorist act, slated for execution, and then leaving the Jedi Order upon her name being cleared. The next two seasons only get darker and darker by continuing to show more violence, more conflicting ideology, and more story arcs (including the final arc of the series) ending on a tragic note. The final season is generally more light-hearted for its first two arcs, until the third and final arc brings back Maul and runs up against Revenge of the Sith, after which, all bets are off.
• Star Wars Rebels went this way as well. It started with Ezra's first steps into the Rebellion, and went to Kanan being permanently blinded with a lightsaber strike from Darth Maul, Ezra having to face corruption from the Dark Side, and Ezra and Ahsoka having to face Darth Vader.
• Star Wars Resistance: The first half of the first season, while hinting at the then-future events of The Force Awakens, is mostly lighthearted with many comedic moments, showing that the galaxy has had decades of peace after the downfall of the Galactic Empire. Then came the mid-season trailer, which reveals the heroes having to fight back against the First Order after they succeed in getting a foothold on the Colossus, Tam getting captured by them, and, most strikingly, Kaz and Torra watching a broadcast of the speech General Hux gives just before Starkiller Base is used to destroy the Republic's capital system. Well, that mood changed really quickly.
• Steven Universe began as a Monster of the Week show, with the only major developments beyond the first two episodes being the introduction of Steven's best friend/love interest Connie, his pet lion Lion, and the concept of fusion. However, starting with the first season's midseason finale "Mirror Gem"/"Ocean Gem", the show grew more serious: episodes started delving into character relationships and the emotions that come with them, with revelations such as Pearl having unresolved feelings towards Steven's deceased mother, Amethyst being a defective Gem created on Earth who resents herself for being part of a large-scale alien experiment, the general nature of the Gem Homeworld beginning to trickle in, and Steven started growing from Tagalong Kid to an equal member of the team.
  • The sequel movie and epilogue season Steven Universe: Future, features a now-teenage Steven, having ended the war between his adoptive family of Crystal Gems on Earth and the fascistic Diamond Authority on the Gem Homeworld and brought peace to the universe, struggling to find purpose and meaning in his life, watching his formerly close-knit family and peer group grow apart and move on with their lives, and the creeping realisation that his adventures as a Kid Hero have left lasting, unresolved emotional trauma and PTSD, which manifests as Steven losing control of his powers.
• Tangled: The Series starts out as one might expect a Disney Princess spinoff TV show to begin, with Rapunzel & co. going on miscellaneous adventures in Corona and learning life lessons. Then comes the season one mid-season special, "Queen For A Day." After Frederic and Arianna are nearly killed in a blizzard, Pascal almost dies from trying to fix the invention to save the day, and Varian loses his father, thus swearing vengeance upon Rapunzel and every other person who stands in his way...it becomes pretty obvious the show is no ordinary sweet and light princess story, and from that point on the main overarching plot involving the Black Rocks and the mystery behind them becomes the forefront of the series.
• Inverted with the second Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles animated series, which begins by almost perfectly mirroring the original comic's dark, serialized story arcs (though with more overt humor), but then goes through an entire tonal shift in season 6, becoming more like the older cartoon series.
  • By contrast, the first series got slightly darker starting with the eighth season, painting all of Manhattan under a dark red sky, having the entire city unite against the Turtles thanks to Burne's propaganda blitz, adding a story arc of the Turtles still mutating, and replacing Shredder with a more sinister alien Big Bad named Dregg.
• The first few episodes in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012) seemed fairly tame, not unlike the original cartoon. However, "The Gauntlet" was where the lightheartedness came to a complete stop with April's father giving up his potential freedom to help save the city, Bradford and Xever becoming mutants, and all capped off with the Shredder's first encounter with the Turtles and engaging them in a completely one-sided fight, resulting in the four barely escaping the battle and certain death.. It lightened up a little afterward, but one can still feel the damage was done and that now the series will almost always have some lingering darkness to it. It's only a matter of time before it reaches its predecessor cartoon's level of dark moments.
• This is the formula for most Teen Titans (2003) seasons; they start out light-hearted and comedy-driven, then become really dark near the end. The most extreme example compared to the rest of the show (the arc itself starts dark and stays there) is season 4, when Raven is used as a portal for her demonic father Trigon and he takes over the world in a hellish apocalypse where all humans except the four remaining Titans turned to stone. (This lasts for three episodes.) It's worth noting that the silliest stories usually came after a particularly dark or scary episode.
  • Within the arcs themselves, both the season one and two arcs start out very light and end up very serious; the precise turning point in each is about when Slade decides to step out of the shadows. Also inverted with the season five arc, which isn't nearly as dark, ominous, or serious as the season 4 arc which preceded it.
• Transformers:
  • Certain events in the third season premiere of Transformers: Animated, most notably the whole Blurr crushed into a cube and the Autobot High Command thinking that ethical guidelines are optional thing, indicate they're going that way.
    • It did, mostly due to Darker and Edgier kicking in, but even from the second episode of the first season, it was fairly clear the show wasn't going to be totally fluffy.
  • The original series did this starting with The Movie, which bumped off Optimus, Starscream, and several other major characters. It got darker still in the Japanese-only Headmasters season, where Optimus, Ultra Magnus, and Galvatron were Killed Off for Real.
  • Season 1 of Beast Wars started as light, comedic, and episodic. As the season went on, darker story arcs began to appear. By the time the show got to season 2, there was considerably less (though still a decent amount of) comedy, and season 3 was just plain dark. And don't even get started on Beast Machines, which is so dark the sky might not have even ever turned light.
    • This is another case of Tropes Are Not Bad, however, in that for many, season 2 of Beast Wars is the high point not only of the show in specific, but of Transformers media in general.
    • Especially the episode "Code of Hero", which ends with the Heroic Sacrifice of Dinobot and is generally regarded as the best episode of the show, and can sit with the best stories across the whole 30-year franchise.
  • Though not particularly sunny to begin with, Transformers: Prime has now been hit by this, starting with Unicron's debut appearance and never looking back, particularly in "Crossfire" when Breakdown (one of the most sympathetic Cons) gets violently murdered by Airachnid. It's difficult to say if there's an actual Knight of Cerebus, but the prime candidates might be Unicron or Airachnid, as neither have many funny traits or any redeeming ones.
    • Agent Fowler, oddly enough, might be a non-villainous Knight of Cerebus. Fowler's position as a government agent and former soldier allows the show to highlight just how destructive the fight with the Decepticons is, and many of his appearances signify a situation getting worse. The human kids have been getting much less screen time in the second season, while Agent Fowler has been getting much more, at least partly because they can do things to him that would jack the rating way up if they happened to children. Even when the kids do appear, they are purposefully being put into much more dangerous situations than in the first season, and crack far less jokes.
    • By the way, ask Jack, Raf, and Miko about what this show feels it can and can't do to children. Especially Raf.
• The latter half of Trollz was darker than the first, with story arcs about the two remaining Ancients, the girls accidentally causing magic to disappear, and Simon taking over Trollzopolis briefly via brainwashing 4 of the girls to become evil.
• TRON: Uprising was never the cheeriest of shows to start out with, but halfway through things started getting dark, with characters dying left right and centre (often in gory ways), torture and mutilation cropping up more and more, the full extent of Tron's tortured past becoming apparent, and the uprising continuing to fail. And to top it all off, in the season finale CLU comes to Argon City with a big army in tow, and the show hasn't been renewed, so we have a Doomed by Canon Bolivian Army Ending.
• Interestingly subverted by The Venture Bros.. The plot does get deeper and darker, but the comedy just gets blacker. Even utterly serious scenes don't stop with the jokes, the subject matter just shifts. Really, there is much more hope for the characters now than at the beginning.
• Wakfu is a goofy and lighthearted French children's cartoon that takes a screaming left turn into darker territory during the last couple of episodes, in which a major protagonist is killed, The Bad Guy Wins, and the bad guy loses again and commits suicide. There's also the special episode depicting the villain's Start of Darkness, which was directed by maestro of Deranged Animation Masaaki Yuasa.
  • The third season has a much more serious tone and, being shorter and taking place in a different dimension, doesn't have any filler episodes like the first two seasons had, instead being more plot-driven. Also, that same major protagonist is killed again at the hands of one of his former allies, who also kidnaps his pregnant wife and one of their children after their home is invaded and destroyed... and that's just the first two episodes. He gets better again, but still. Additionally, another main character's father is ill and implied to be dying in the first episode.
• The second season of Wander over Yonder undergoes a dramatic Retool which drives away from its comedic and episodic formula to a more serious and sequential nature, introducing an overarching storyline that introduces a Viler New Villain who is out to destroy the galaxy.

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