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See also Dark Fic.

Ace Attorney

  • The AU fanfic The Great Ace Detective portrays Klint surviving his duel with Genshin as spawning an overall worse timeline. Accordingly the fic is darker than the game's tone despite several instances of levity, featuring more violence and psychological thriller elements rather than courtroom antics. To cap it off, Sholmes wears an all-black outfit rather than his canon classic Holmes garb.note 

Arrowverse

  • In To Hell and Back (Arrowverse), Barry and Kara are much darker than their canon counterparts, being hardened killers like Oliver. Ironically, Oliver himself inverts this trope by being (to a certain extent) Lighter and Softer, having had a Family of Choice with him on the island and with the League of Assassins.

Atomic Betty

Avatar: The Last Airbender

  • Blood Moon: Katara is taken and imprisoned by the Fire Nation at the age of eight. In prison, she is forced to learn bloodbending from Hama, who uses it to punish her if she questions the elder's authority. Several years later, they break out of the prison, with Hama using bloodbending to its fullest potential to kill the guards who had kept them and the other Southern waterbenders captive, and finally Katara is forced to use bloodbending to kill Hama after the latter threatens to take leadership of the escapees by force.
  • Imprisoned (This Time for Real): The story basically explores what happens when Katara is imprisoned in the Waterbender Prison for several months. She's completely broken by the time she's freed.
  • Still Stand in the Sun: One of the darkest AUs for Avatar: The Last Airbender as a whole. Katara, a character associated with hope, is taken away from her home as a child and locked up in a horrible prison, forcing her to endure a pathetic and torturous existence. Her situation gets more and more hopeless throughout the story, and even when she finally escapes, she's still pretty miserable by the end.

Bleach

  • Winter War takes the darkest elements of Bleach and runs with them. Bleach can get pretty violent, but it's usually contained in one-on-one duels, the only people who die are villains, and no matter how badly a good guy is hurt, they're unlikely to suffer any lasting consequences to it. Winter War throws that all out the window. Heroes die. Heroes will fight dishonorably or gang up on opponents if they have to. There are limits to what healers can do, and lingering injuries complicate daily life and battle alike. Aizen's Hollowfication experiments are shown as horrific and dehumanizing rather than being used as a source of power-ups. And the authors don't pull punches about the likely states of mind of people who've been on the front lines- or taken captive, or waiting back home for loved ones who are probably dead- for months.

Calvin and Hobbes

Channel Awesome

  • While it's true that the Channel Awesome fanficcers love their smut, fluff and crack beyond reason, they've also spawned several Darker and Edgier fics, including HookerVerse, That Guy with the Glasses in Space and several other AU's that will make you lose your sleep.
    • Special mention should go to the "Rotten Dirty Bastard" fics. The special was Black Comedy dedicated to going to extreme lengths describing how much The Nostalgia Critic makes everyone's lives suck. The fics will either point out the flaws in these "happier lives" (like Iron Liz never meeting Linkara as one example) or have this heartbreaking sense of loss that makes you want to cry.

Command & Conquer: Tiberian Series

  • Tiberium Wars manages to make the Command & Conquer Tiberium universe even darker than it already is, by virtue of introducing War Is Hell to show just how horrific the battles and weaponry in the setting really are.

Crash Bandicoot

  • Outcast Bandicoot portrays both the characters and the universe they inhabit as much, MUCH darker than the original games, even at their gloomiest. Dr. Neo Cortex — arguably one of the funniest, cartooniest villains in fiction is turned into a full-on sadist. In addition, the work combines this trope with Bloodier and Gorier, making for a VERY violent, heartbreaking, and even scary portrayal of an otherwise lighthearted universe.

Crossover

  • Brutal Mario Demo 7.5 starts with Mario ruining the Mushroom Kingdom, getting darker from there, then in the Special World we see Wily transform Mega Man into Quint, and Mario has to kill Mega Man, and that's before the unofficial Middle Path ROM by Thirteen 1355.
  • Child of the Storm appears to be a Lighter and Softer family fic for the first ten chapters. Chapter 11 introduced a version of the Winter Soldier even more terrifying than his canon counterpart and a necromancer who is quite clearly insane. Just how insane becomes clear in Chapter 21, which is dark enough to comfortably compare with the darkest parts of The Authority.
    • While the heroes remain the heroes we know and love and the story never veers into Grimdark territory, the story explores the darker side of the natures and of the setting: Natasha's past is somewhat explored and is quite clearly a very dark place, especially when we get to see the Red Room itself and some of its other products, including one of her clearly deranged successors. Clint used to kill people for a living. Loki is a hero, but underneath the charming sorcerer, coffee maker and indulgent uncle is the most dangerous spymaster in the Nine Realms, a man who bitterly regrets his past misdeeds, and who is nevertheless entirely willing to methodically murder his way through the entire Red Room when they threaten his family. Sif frankly acknowledges that yes, she is a warrior god, and yes, she has killed a lot of people, some of whom could be reasonably defined as innocent. So have Thor and the Warriors Three.
    • Nick Fury's lighter past as a Lovable Rogue is elaborated upon, having been SHIELD's liaison to the Order of the Phoenix, and acted as a big brother figure to Lily Potter for most of her life - so close, in fact, that he was next in line after Sirius to be Harry's godfather. This is contrasted with his cold and manipulative current self, Lily's death having been his final Cynicism Catalyst, after her parents (his mentors) were murdered. Sirius being locked up despite his innocence, a lot of Death Eaters getting away, and Harry going to the Dursleys were just the icing on the cake.
    • Behind his eccentric facade, Albus Dumbledore is deeply frustrated by the culturally enforced Medieval Stasis which strangles innovation and denied him the chance to communicate with brilliant non-wizards, save for working with Howard Stark during World War II. He shows a brief glimpse of his dark side, frankly admitting that he remains capable of becoming a Dark Lord the likes of which Voldemort could never match.
    • Sean Cassidy is still a light hearted and wise Irishman note . However, like canon, his wife was murdered by the IRA. His ensuing Roaring Rampage of Revenge was bad enough that parts of it still give Nick Fury, no wilting violet himself, nightmares over a decade later.
    • Johnny and Susan Storm's backstory. Their father murdered their mother when Johnny was six years old and it is more likely than not that Johnny saw it happen. After that, a relative took them in, then died, after which Sue mostly raised Johnny by herself. Additionally, the incident which gives their powers is not some cosmic storm, but them being caught up in a cosmic scale battle and swept into the Negative Zone a.k.a. Sakaar, an Eldritch Location where none of them age for fifteen relative years, Ben Grimm has to fight as a gladiator, Johnny is a mixture of amusement/finger-toy for its nigh-omnipotent Eldritch Abomination of a God-Emperor, and Sue and Reed spend all their time trying to find a way out while concealing Francis Richards, their impossible child. Oh, and everyone in the Negative Zone is slowly being devoured from the inside out.
    • Carol Danvers is Younger than She Looks, being able to pass for a buxom college student at the age of 14 or so. This gains her a severe amount of unwanted attention. Then there's the sheer amount of PTSD inducing experiences, second only to Harry and Maddie in the amount of trauma induced.
    • Luna Lovegood dies thanks to a bullet in the lungs meaning that she choked to death on her own blood. She's barely thirteen. Granted, it ends well enough for her, with her ascension to become the new Delirium of the Endless, but even still.
    • Arthur Weasley has his neck snapped by the Winter Soldier. And considering his likely fate at HYDRA's hands, it is made very clear by the narration that this was actually a singular act of mercy.
    • The sequel dials up the darkness, with Voldemort putting a horrific spin on the "Freaky Friday" Flip at the World Cup and very nearly succeeds in telepathically tricking a panicking Thor into killing Harry and Pepper-in-Carol's-Body in the second chapter. He later pulls something similar when he effectively feeds Ron and Hermione to a living Eldritch Location simply to distract Harry (and at least partially for his own amusement).
    • Then, it's still pretty light... until the Forever Red arc comes along and the Red Room make their foreshadowed return, and demonstrate why even HYDRA feared them. The arc is the story's Darkest Hour, featuring Darker and Edgier versions of: Dudley, now a drugged-up superpowered thug, murderer, and rapist; Maddie Pryor a.k.a. Rachel Grey (Jean's twin, stolen from her cradle), a heavily brainwashed robotic and ruthless Living Weapon with bare hints of independent thought; Yelena Belova, their Ax-Crazy Black Widow, who rapes the Red Son a.k.a. Harry just to make a point to Natasha; and the Red Son a.k.a. Harry's reprogrammed Blank Slate body, the Superior Successor to the Winter Soldier who's infected with Transmode Virus which is activated when Magneto's getting the better of him. And then there's Sinister, who's half deceptively mild-mannered Mad Scientist, half Evil Counterpart to Doctor Strange, and every bit as bad as canon - if not worse. And at the end of the arc, once Harry gets his mangled body back, complete with memories of what happened to it/what it was used to do, he snaps and becomes the Dark Phoenix. While it lightens up afterwards, Harry's ensuing battle with PTSD consumes much of the rest of the story, and informs the rest of it.
  • Sherlockian Crossover with Doctor Who series, Children of Time. The initial story is fairly grim, invoking the Time War, and then the series lightens until midway through, when we reach the "42" rewrite "Burn", and it all goes downhill from there. Little bit more swearing than in the Sherlockian canon, much more torture and violence, Attempted Rape, and Insatiable Newlyweds all find their way into the series, particularly the three-part finale.
  • Part 2 of Clash of the Elements. There is little to no humor, some rather grim scenarios are brought up during Smithy and Dimentio's (Fake) backstories, including Betrayal, paranoia and the strong pursuit of a dream leading to the death of Smithy's closest friend, Dimentio casually mocking the love of Blumiere and Lady Timpani, along with his fabricated story that mentioned a pregnant Daisy DYING during an alien invasion. And that's not even getting into Chapters 21-29...
  • Fairy May Cry: The addition of elements from Devil May Cry make it this to Fairy Tail. There's a more realistic amount of blood from woundsnote , and enemies are more dangerous and vicious, even employing psychological tactics on the enemies. And while there are still comedic moments, very few opponents, such as Vergil, are Played for Laughs.
  • Falling Stars takes the characters of Lucky Star and places them into the Capital Wasteland. Needless to say, it's not nearly as cheery as the original source material.
  • Flashpoint 2: Advent Solaris is a crossover of Sonic the Hedgehog with DC Animated Movie Universe - for Sonic standards this trope applies, though admittedly it's about more on par with things as far as the DCAMU is concerned.
  • Infinity Train: Star Finder: This crossover between Infinity Train and The Loud House, In comparison for the original show, is more cynical in tone, with the characters being more jaded, less cheerful and having personal issues. The dark themes is right from the start such as Stella's implied backstory, Lincoln being emotionally drained and people being disdainful towards the Louds.
  • Powerpuff Girls Doujinshi and its spin-off Grim Tales from Down Below are both examples of this trope done extraordinarily well, provided you can get past all the fluffy kids' cartoons going through this process in the first place.
  • Kingdom Hearts: Cody's Story: Compared to Total Drama Island, this story has a much more serious tone. Not only do Cody and his friends lose their home, but Heather, Geoff, Duncan, Gwen, and Courtney all betray the heroes and team up with Maleficent. Duncan even almost murders Cody to stop him from meddling. This is even darker than the actual KH games, due to swearing and some instances of blood.
  • Lighting Candles: While the two films this story is based on deal with mature themes, both are ultimately light-hearted family films. This fic not only contains language and violence, but it points out that Tadashi's death was a bad way to go.
  • Shinnen New Year is a Guilty Crown Mega Crossover set years after the anime. Despite having creative humor, the co-authors make the setting dark once the main antagonists shows up and shows a lot of body counts.
  • Stars Above is an interesting case. It's a Crossover between Lucky Star and Madoka Magica, in which the darkness of the latter starts invading the universe of the former.
  • The Terrible Secret of Animal Crossing, a fanfic mixed with Let's Play, does this to Animal Crossing.
  • Warhammer 40000 Trouble. War Fic, in our Harem Comedy story? Yes. It Makes Sense in Context? HELL YES! Everyone Took a Level in Badass? FUCK YEAH, especially everyone that already badass in the original story but Played for Drama instead. That's before we add Warhammer 40,000 into account...
  • People Like Us: While the fic is Lighter and Softer than canon overall, the author adds certain details to Arthur and Travis's backstories that make them even more tragic than originally implied. On top of that, the two characters are given even more mental problems to deal with, and they're described in disturbing detail.
  • Tokimeki PokéLive! and TwinBee is Love Live! meets Pokémon, Tokimeki Memorial and Twinbee, and while the Main Stories are still pretty lighthearted like the Love Live!, TokiMemo and Twinbee franchises proper are, the Side Story arcs and Special Stories on the other hand usually up the stakes for the characters involved, including some backstory about the fateful battle between Hilbert and N ala Pokémon Black and White being the Darkest Hour for this version of Love Live Earth and versions of Mia and Lanzhu, especially Mia, who are exclusive to this universe that are easily on par with the likes of the vilest Pokémon villains like Ghetsis, Motherbeast!Lusamine, Team Cipher and Hunter J, but absolutely nothing from this AU comes close to the backstory for the Knothole Freedom Fighters in this continuity, where an Ultra Beast invasion destroys their former home world, possibly resulting in up to 90% of the population being killed by strange creatures from other dimensions. Not only that, "Prophecy of Failure!?" also reveals that the extreme Climate Change that caused the Earth of Aleena's time (The 2060s-2070s) to be a dry, dessicated hothouse with the sole exceptions of the polar regions and their surrounding tundras was caused by Yoko and Ellie being defeated by Eggman during their final battle!
  • Pokémon Crossing: While both Animal Crossing and Pokémon are both relatively light-hearted series, the fanfic delves into darker topics such as gender dysphoria, grief, adultery, and familial abuse.
  • Rick and The Loud House: Played With, considering the shows contrast each other in content. While the violence, crude humor, and profanity is perfectly in-tone with Rick and Morty, it's a far cry from The Loud House's simple Slice of Life nature.
  • Of Gemstones and Watches has some edge to it;
    • Permanent Retirement illustrates the chase scene with the idea that "Marty" is gonna kill the two kids.
    • Last Laugh implied that Zombozo killed some of his crewmen before Ben fought him.
    • Charm School's Out has Michelle Morningstar, the genderbent version of Michael Morningstar / Darkstar, rip out a girl's tongue.
    • Secrets has a giant Nevermore eating someone, and it's made clear that the Plumbers lost people in fending it and the other Grimm off.
    • Framed Part 1 has Kevin attacking a guy who got off scot-free for rape. In Part 2, Kevin is wounded enough to bleed heavily, and his Water Hazard equivalent, Dead Sea, manages to nearly kill Echo Echo.
    • Animo 10k murdered Kevin 11k for the alien DNA in the Antitrix. When Ben 10k learns this, he bites the head off of the creation Animo was using to relay this.
    • Vilgax's torture at the hands of the Fulmini. The end result is horrific, maybe even worse than how he ended up in the canon's first episode.
    • Elias rips Max's arm off, and then either kills him or sends him to the Null Void.
    • Zs'skayr's debut has him phase objects into people's bodies, take over Rook and Kylie's body, and nearly murder Ben. And even worse, he's working with Salem.
  • Infinity Train: Blossoming Trail was always going to be this due to the nature of crossing over Pokémon and Infinity Train but it turns Book 3 of the latter even darker due to the Psychological Horror, expanding on the cruelty of the Apex, children die in the story, the climactic battle with the heroes and the Apex ends in Silent Hill and one boy gets thrown into a suicide ward at age 10.
  • Temporal Anomaly, the crossover between Kamen Rider Zi-O and Drakengard 3, is already darker than most Kamen Rider crossover stories by default due to its events taking place in the latter's world, which is one of gaming's most infamous Crapsack Worlds, with the story doing its best to capture the bleak atmosphere of that setting. However, it manages to take things a step further by having the main protagonist be 2068!Sougo Tokiwa/Oma Zi-O - the Evil Overlord responsible for his world's Bad Future where he killed off half of humanity while ruling over the rest with an tyrannical iron fistand and is now looking to take over the new world he's found himself in.

Date A Live

The DCU

Digimon

  • The Tamers Forever Series, to the point where it's been favourably compared to Evangelion. A great example of Tropes Are Not Bad.
  • The remake of the Digimon Adventure 02 Zero 2: A Revision is a lot darker than both the Adventure series especially the latter, on par with Digimon Tamers in terms of the dark content. While the remade Digimon Emperor arc is almost the same as the original sans the use of nukes, Alien and Terminators, and a possessed Magnaangemon, it is the next arcs when the true content finally emerges; For starters, most villains like Devimon, Demon, and Dragomon that were previously shoved aside became the main villains of the Digidestied along with other enemies including Piedmon, Darkheart, Gravemon, and a rerailed Myotismon note . The last third also features an invasion into the Real world, directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of people while the Digidestined themselves are trapped by Darkheart's pursuits unable to do anything to help. And as it is later revealed, the reason the universe becomes like this is due to Shaun time travel to the past, resulting the Digidestined fighting even greater Dark forces than what they would have confronted.
  • Neo Digimon Digital War, like the above example, is considerably darker than Adventure and Adventure 02, featuring such things as a War Is Hell theme and Hikari being plagued by recurring nightmares that induce Bring My Brown Pants.

Discworld

  • The Discworld continuum offers the fanfics of A.A. Pessimal, which while written with a touch of Pratchett's absurdism, offer a darker edge to his fantasy world. The question from Pyramids, of what happens to luckless students who fail the Assassins' Guild School's Final Exam, is finally answered in detail that Pratchett only hinted at but did not give. According to reviews, this chapter moved one reader to tears. The Discworld country of "Rimwards Howondaland" is an expy of the old South Africa taken up to eleven, and has social institutions to match, as well as a paranoid and ruthless secret police - who are even called BOSS in the Discworld.

Disney

Doki Doki Literature Club!

  • The Bike is a YouTube channel that specializes in producing Doki Doki Literature Club-related videos some in particular managing to amplify the horrors of the original game to new heights. The most infamous one is Monika checks on Sayori. In this take on the infamous scene, Monika goes to Sayori's house, and willfully chooses to not prevent Sayori's suicide. Worse, Monika takes a rather crude fixation with the events.
  • Doki Doki Takeover: Bad Ending is a straightforward homage to the horror elements of Doki Doki Literature Club — this in contrast to the Lighter and Softer main mod, which shies away from the more grotesque horrors of 'DDLC'' in favor of ending on on a much happier note, whereas this mod lives up to the subtitle by comparison.

Donkey Kong

  • Return to Krocodile Isle: Not by much, mind, but the short goes much further than the source cartoon. This in turn allows things like K. Rool alluding to hell, using realistic firearms, referencing alcohol and suicide, and flat out wanting to kill DK.

Dragon Ball

DuckTales (1987)

  • Mother Dearest is a fanfic that qualifies as this, if only for the exploration of Huey, Dewey and Louie's questionable origins. The story has no disturbing themes or violence, though.

Fairly OddParents

  • Never Had a Friend Like Me: While the story is mostly lighthearted-Norm having a young master he actually likes-the story features a frank and realistic portrayal of child abuse, and villains willing to murder innocent children and cause the apocalypse.

Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends

Frozen

  • The Girl In Black, does this to mildly Nightmare Fuel levels, considering that Elsa kills Hans, the two Weselton men and probably Kristoff with her powers...oh, and she's also ending the world.

Godzilla

Harry Potter

  • Alexandra Quick is this to Harry Potter, although in a way that doesn't go to the extremes of Darkfic or seem out of place with the mood of the original series. People do start dying in the first book though and there are some dark, dark plots in Wizarding America. Things get that way when you have wizards as government and wizards as terrorist with Black-and-Gray Morality and you don't know which is which.
  • Dumbledore's Army and the Year of Darkness itself compared to Canon; Sluagh, goes even further with a few sections with very detailed descriptions of the rape and torture of Hermione. And A Peccatis seems determined to examine all the warts and seams of the wizarding world in general.
  • Let's not forget My Immortal, in which most of the characters have converted to Satanism "STANISM", Harry's scar is now a pentegram, and all the characters seem to do is Wangst around, cut their wrists, go to My Chemical Romance concerts, have sex, and proclaim how gothic "goffik" they are. The irony being that, for all its posturing, it's not nearly as dark as the actual later books of the series, for which see Literature below.
  • In The Stillness Gave No Token after his uncle tried to rape him, Harry merges with the horcrux and becomes a batshit insane Poetic Serial Killer. Some of his more imaginative methods of Muggle torture surprises even Voldemort.
  • Fall Back – 1940 has a lot more violence than canon.
  • Kaleidoscopic Grangers goes into detail about the trauma and PTSD of multiple main characters, including Ariadne Granger. From the get-go, Ariadne was blinded by the Dursleys' abuse before she was rescued and adopted by the Grangers, and then develops depression and PTSD after Lord Voldemort returns. The Battle of Hogwarts' interlude in the Great Hall is also quite different from its counterpart; in the movies, the scene is quiet, but in the fic it is frantic and desperate. Several reocurring characters are disabled afterwards, like Clarabelle Burton who lost an eye. Five students become werewolves in the battle. Ginny, meanwhile, is heavily traumatised and veers close to alcoholism in her attempts to cope with her trauma, having even been sent into the Forbidden Forest by the Death Eater administration of Hogwarts either to finally break and give them information on Ariadne, or be eaten by the Acromantulae - instead, she burned it down along with the Acromantula nest and unlocked her wandless magic in the process, leaving her with pyrophobia and significant scarring. Additionally, Ariadne has significantly less qualms about killing than Harry Potter, and killed several people during the battle, as well as one during the Battle of the Department of Mysteries according to Word of God. Despite this, it would not qualify as a Dark Fic, as it is written in a hurt-comfort style and the later chapters of the story focus heavily on the characters' recoveries.

Hetalia: Axis Powers

  • Take Hetalia: Axis Powers- a cute, comedic series about anthropomorphised countries- twist history a bit, add a good dosage of mind screwing and a bizarre love quadrangle, and you get All He Ever Wanted, a series of fanfics set in a world where England is on the Axis Powers' side, America is Communist, Prussia is a batshit Nazi and rape machine who rapes Hungary and Liechtenstein, Austria is suddenly Jewish, and everyone's suffering for it.
    • Note that the AHEW crew are not the first nor the last to give this particular series this makeover. The Hetalia fandom as a whole is greatly enamored with the trope. The results... well, are varied.

Homestuck

  • Hivefled; on one hand, the entire universe isn't being destroyed and nobody's mind-controlled or in thrall to an Eldritch Abomination. On the other hand, the plotline was kicked off by a series of events involving the Big Bad couple raping thousands of teenagers to death.

Inside Out

  • While Intercom is in no way a Dark Fic, it certainly is a lot more serious than the original film (which was already pretty serious in its own right). The story is about Riley being able to communicate with her own emotions when Anger breaks the intercom used to talk to Riley as a "voice in the back of your head". However, this eventually leads to some rather big issues for Riley as she begins to believe that she might be suffering from schizophrenia and develops bit of an identity crisis.

Jackie Chan Adventures

  • This is pretty much the point of the works that are a part of Project Dark Jade, mostly because in them Jade either turns evil or is in the danger of doing that.
  • The Ultimate Evil and its sequel, The Stronger Evil, have more blood, violence and sexual themes than the original cartoon.

Jurassic Park

  • The Geeky Zoologist's reimagining of Jurassic World has a way higher body count and is more violent and gorier than both the film upon which it is based and the Jurassic Park original trilogy. Some of the creatures are nightmarish, the main characters go through more suffering, children count among the victims of the fall of Jurassic World, there is a certain number of anti-heroes and anti-villains among the characters, and brutal human-on-human violence is not unaccounted.

Kamen Rider

  • Horseshoes and Hand Grenades is set in the world of the friendship-based High School centered, Kamen Rider Fourze...except in this story, Gentaro was resurrected by an evil serpent and is causing mayhem as other Serpents start enacting Deal with the Devil themes with people who have died, more and more Kamen Riders get pulled into the madness, and at the end of the day, the bad guys are going to be claiming victory of some kind.

KanColle

Kerbal Space Program

  • First Flight starts out as a fairly light-hearted fanfic, even if it plays the constant threat of Stuff Blowing Up and the shoestring budget for drama instead of comedy. But as the story progresses the focus switches from Jebediah Kerman and his friends grappling with the theory and practice of manned spaceflight to an epic global crisis that threatens to plunge the entire Kerbal civilisation into an apocalyptic war.
  • First Flight's Quasi-sequel The Next Frontier does much the same, with the first half of the story being about the Kerbals boldly setting off in a shiny new Faster Than Light starship and making First Contact... only to learn a lot of ugly things about their neighbours and find themselves facing the possibility of interstellar war.

Kirby

  • Gumball Warrior is a prequel AU about Meta Knight and the Galaxy Soldier Army puffballs from the anime during their childhood on another planet system. But just one look at it, and you would think that Kirby: Right Back at Ya! looked like the plot of Spring Breeze in comparison. The webcomic doesn't stray far from violence, and the five puffballs are subject to many trials and tribulations before they can attain the title of Star Warriors. One central element surrounds the graphic deaths of a mother and her newborn children at the hands of the main villain's Co-Dragons. Even the supplementary material doesn't take the easy route, with mentions of child abuse and Kirby himself suffering from PTSD in his adult years.
  • Quite a few in Nightmarefics, with chapter 14 being the most notable example.

Kung Fu Panda

The Legend of Zelda

  • The brutally unforgiving fanfic Zelda's Honor is quite violent and a far cry from the (mostly) kid friendly The Legend of Zelda franchise. The child-like Kokiri getting raped, murdered, tortured and turned into cannibalistic assassins? Check. Major character death in some horrific ways such as holes being blown through chests or being melted from the inside out? Check. Primary protagonist's own son being aborted literally out of her uterus and burned alive in front of her? Check. This can be quite the horrific story.
  • This novelisation of The Wind Waker is darker than its original story, but it doesn't try too hard to be dark and edgy that it's cringeworthy. For example, Link actually bleeds several times throughout the book and at some point and he is almost driven insane by the contents of the Ghost Ship to the point where his voice hurts from screaming.
  • The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time (DragonRand100) enters this territory on more than one occasion. Most of the royal family of Hyrule are brutally murdered, as are the townsfolk of Castletown. Then there is the Shadow Temple. One character is driven mad after the dead hand makes short work of his companions Malon is also driven mad after being captured but she is healed and Link loses an eye when it’s cut out by the necromancer and Impa is blinded. We also learn that When the Sheikah found out about Link's birth, they had any male child born at the time as Link murdered. Link narrowly avoids the same fate thanks to his mother.

The Lion King (1994)

  • Series Five of The Lion King Adventures is incredibly dark, featuring the deaths of many beloved characters and countless tragedies.

The Loud House

  • Flowing Star: The fanfic is more dark than the show due to the antagonists being more dangerous here, and there are subjects such as damaged relationships and brutal bullying.
  • The Heroverse while it still has its many light moments, each of the fics is much darker than the source material, with things like actual onscreen deaths.
  • It's (Not) Your Fault does not hold back with how depressingly dark it is. When comparing it to the show it is based on, the difference is very apparent. With the comic dealing with stuff such as, abandonment, trauma, mental problems, relationship problems, Self-Harm and eventually a rape leading to a Teen Pregnancy.
  • Requiem for a Loud is about main protagonist Lincoln Loud suffering a terminal illness (specifically brain tumors) and is only given about two-to-three weeks left to live. That premise alone is dark by this shows standards, but what really sells it is how everybody else is taking it. While Lincoln's younger sisters (sans Lisa and maybe Lucy) remain unaware of his condition, his older sisters are absolutely broken over the mere thought of losing their only brother. In particular, Lynn engages in self-harm and Luna becomes so depressed that she resorts to drinking beer and has casual sex with a random teen to cope with it.

Lyrical Nanoha

  • Game Theory is interesting in that while elements that were played for comedy in Lyrical Nanoha are now deconstructed for dramatic effect, and the lethality of the combat is notably higher, the characters are just as caring and morally upright as ever. In fact, the primary villain is more sympathetic. Which actually makes things worse, because Nanoha decides to help her. The ending , on the other hand, is actually happier than in canon. It just took a lot of effort and pain to get there.
  • Continuing with Nanoha fics, "Toward the World's End" starts out fairly light hearted with some cliche romance. It seems to just be so the author could get his OC with Nanoha... then, without WARNING, the entire world crumbles to dust and the only known survivors are Nanoha and Arthur, the OC of the author. Explicitly mentioned are the deaths of Arthur's mother and best friend, of Nanoha's childhood friends Suzaka and Arisa, and of course, Yuuno. Nanoha and Arthur wind up on a deserted island (Because these too many corpses of humans everywhere else) and are resigned to a hopeless life. At the end of the first story they bet their lives, not caring about the outcome, on a tiny Hope Spot.
    • It's back to being a fair bit lighter in the following fics - however, the "everyone's dead" deal is still in effect

Marvel Cinematic Universe

  • Zig-zagged in Ain't No Grave. Thematically, it's darker than the Captain America movies, with more violence, drug addiction, mental illness, Rape as Backstory, and other issues. But despite their additional demons, the characters are probably happier than they are in the main MCU canon by the end of the story. Bucky may be a Functional Addict with serious mental health problems but at least he isn't a Manchurian Agent, the series diverges from canon before Avengers: Age of Ultron so Tony hasn't "built a killer robot that almost destroyed humanity" on his conscience, and poor lonely Steve Rogers gets a post-defrosting family.

Mega Man (Ruby-Spears)

  • Mega Man Recut is darker than the show it was inspired from. Mega Man's family is secretly dysfunctional, Roll skews the line to acting like Proto Man, and some Robot Masters die.
    • Wily's dystopia in "Future Shock" is much darker than the show, with scientists essentially being lobotomized. This also extends to the future versions of Mega Man's family.
  • Mega Man: Defender of the Human Race is darker than the Mega Man cartoon. Dr. Wily in particular is a much darker, twisted character, and a couple characters die or are severely injured.
    • In the cartoon, Metal Man was a camp if effective oneshot Robot Master. In Defender, he's a sadist who takes pleasure in destruction and has appeared multiple times.

Miraculous Ladybug

Monster Girl Encyclopedia

  • Sword and Claw is this to its source material due to taking place in the past, when the monster girls were still conventional, man-eating (and not in the euphemistic sense) monsters.

Monsters vs. Aliens

  • God Help the Outcasts: While not a dark fic, the story isn't afraid to discuss some of the more terrifying aspects of Susan's situation. Namely, the fact that her body has been irreversibly altered, she can't contact her family or fiance, she's not even considered a human anymore, she's been imprisoned in a government base with all of her rights removed, and the only ones treating her like an equal are creatures that are (at first) horrifying for her to look at. The story is also more willing to address death, with several monsters having killed people during their captures/rampages and civilians dying during the robot's attack.

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic

  • For a show as innocuous as My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, there is quite a substantial amount of fan media with this in mind. Indeed, a great deal of the fanfiction is darker and edgier to some extent due to addressing more mature themes than the show. This is, of course, disregarding the stuff which is MUCH darker:
  • One of the most notable examples is Cupcakes (Sergeant Sprinkles), a fan fiction that has gained memetic status within the Brony community for its rather horrifying portrayal of Pinkie Pie and her cupcake recipe.
  • Another example would be Fallout: Equestria, an MLP and Fallout crossover featuring a post-apocalyptic Equestria, two-hundred years after a war between ponies and zebras led to a cataclysmic exchange of Fantastic Nukes.
  • Another infamous one would be Rainbow Factory. The song it was based upon insinuated that pegasi did something to make pretty rainbows, but what, exactly, was left to the imagination. The fic spelled out in explicit detail the murder of foals too weak to fly.
  • Yet another example is Cheerilee's Garden, where Cheerilee deals with unruly students and the mane 6 (in the sequel) using certain methods.
  • Yet another is Pages Of Harmony, in which Twilight, believing the Elements of Harmony are threatened, decides to extract them from her friends through extremely violent means. While it does teach the reader about many scientific procedures, it does so in ways that you would never hope to learn it.
  • The fanfic series RainbowDoubleDash's Lunaverse. It begins with a mild case of this, where the evil alicorn (here Corona, not Nightmare Moon) is able to remain free after being hit by the Elements and continues plotting to conquer Equestria. This amplifies over the course of the series, to the point where the season finale set at the Gala — in contrast to the original show, where the gala story was just about the six friends showing up and making a mess — has the Lunaverse 6 basically conducting a sting operation in order to get a known criminal arrested, so that she can spill the beans on the nobles of Equestria, who vary from apathetic to outright corrupt.
  • Discord's New Business: Not that Darker and Edgier, but Luna's chapter is much more serious than the previous ones, dealing with Luna investigating Canterlot for racism against non-ponies and facing it herself when she takes the form of a zebra and ends up getting attacked and actually injured by pony supremacists.
  • Dusk's Dangerous Game features centuries-length plans for breeding more alicorns, including deaths of mothers through birth, and a full fledged uprising... all fueled by best intentions of a control freak. She gets better... Nah, not really, but she has to gulp the will of Deus Ex Machina.
  • The fanfic The Monster We Made is this trope. The story chronicles the last thoughts and actions of everypony as they are put to death by Alicorn Twilight Sparkle
  • Diaries of a Madman appears to keep the Sugar Bowl setting at first, but ends up being a much darker take on the world.
  • This trope is directly referenced and parodied in Equestria: A History Revealed when discussing Princess Luna's transformation into Nightmare Moon.
    "But she was different 'cuz she was dark and edgy. And nopony understood her." This is then directly followed by Linkin' Park lyrics.
  • Starlight Glimmer's cutie mark removal spell is much darker in Fallout Equestria: Legacies than it was in the show. Not only is it described as very painful, but it's also more or less a Dangerous Forbidden Technique that stands a good chance of killing the person it's being used if you cast it on someone more then once without waiting for too long. Attention is also drawn to how unpleasant it feels to have your special talent taken away.
  • The story Shell Shock is an incredibly dark take on military stories in the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fandom. It actually warns the reader: "This is seriously the darkest thing I have yet written. You have been warned."
  • The Vinyl and Octavia Series is a fairly lighthearted comedy series...until Vinyl and Octavia in 'Dial D for Detectives', which features the two investigating a murder. It only gets worse with Vinyl and Octavia Duel Destiny, which ends with the two going to prison and with the villain getting away scott-free. That being said, the two aforementioned stories are only dark in comparison with the rest of the series - they both still have a decent amount of comedy in them.
  • Age (In)appropriate is a seemingly innocent Fan Webcomic that revolves around Spike trying to murder or otherwise get rid of stallions Rarity is trying to date.

Naruto

  • The premise of People Lie is that Naruto was deeply affected by an act of violence during his youth, one that transforms him into a manipulative person with little interest in friendship. A running theme of the fic is how "some characters may have turned out even worse off if they had a father or mentor to look up to".
  • War of the Biju is a bit darker than the Naruto series it's based on. Body counts of War are shown in the first few chapters of the War Arc, named characters introduced during the War Arc are either killed or mauled or one becomes the Sole Survivor of an attack by Akatsuki's Edo Tensei'd Deidara, and even the Konoha 11 get injured during their battles of the War Arc.
  • Team 7's Ascension starts with Kakashi putting his team through training that could very well kill them. Named characters die and/or are terribly maimed, fights are almost always to the death, and the heroes do horrible things to survive. Tellingly, Sasuke notes at one point that he's killed more people in the last year than people lived in his clan compound which is the size of a small village. Hell, the second phase of the Chunin Exam is deliberately modified to be more deadly because too many foreign teams were entered.
    • At the end of the story, Naruto remarks on how it's not just shinobi or Konoha what are messed up, it's the whole world. Everyone's a villain and he simply has to choose which one he'll follow.
  • your move, instigator (draw your weapon and hold your tongue) is a What If? fic where the Third Shinobi War lasted closer to the present day, and Danzo is able to acquire more power from Sarutobi. "Expendables" like Sakura, Kiba, Neji, and Tenten are sent out as Child Soldiers due to dire and corrupt the situation has become.

Neon Genesis Evangelion

  • Evangelion 303: This doujinshi makes this by aiming for realism. It removes the Evas, Angels or Adam or Lilith, uses real world politics in the setting and changes the main characters' traumas for different psychological issues.

Neptunia

Odd Squad

  • Ships Ahoy! is a downplayed example. The fanfic has romance as a primary theme, which is barely present in canon outside from a few Ship Tease moments, and has quite a lot of Shipping in regards to Odd Squad agents that evolves into relationships reaching Official Couple status. It also has themes of violence, mental illness, and trauma prevalent throughout that go one step further than what is presented in official material.

Once Upon a Studio

  • Once Upon a Studio: Version 2.0 downplays this. This version of OUAS keeps the fun and soul of the original fully intact, but the scenes between Cinderella and Rapunzel as everyone is about to give up on the photo are certainly a little sad, particularly as Raps remarks that a major fault of some kind was pretty much unavoidable.
    • This version also takes the time to show how much pressure everyone is truly under to deliver, thus driving home the inevitability of Goofy's unfortunate accident. While the camera itself was broken, Cinderella, Raps and their respective Princes know that everyone's morale is the one thing that truly needs fixing.

Order of the Stick

The Owl House

Phineas and Ferb

  • The List Of Secrets (since removed from the Internet) is famously dark and edgy, with characters dying left and right.

Pokémon

  • The constant and unrelenting use of this trope in Pokémon fanfic spawned this parody, which also doubles as a parody of grimdark movie reboots in general.
  • Latias' Journey is an awesome, hilarious but hellish Pokémon fan fic.
  • New World. A nice story about a teenaged boy and his adventures with pokemon, that just happens to feature murder, rape, and the apocalypse. The very first chapter features a Scyther beheading another Pokemon and then being horrifically and disgustingly killed.
  • While it doesn't go into full Dark Fic territory, Pokémon Reset Bloodlines is nevertheless grittier than the anime. It doesn't shy away from sad content, delves into darker territory than the anime (including the more destructive potential uses of Pokémon in war), and refuses to sugarcoat the nastier aspects of life. That alone probably wouldn't earn it a spot on this page, but it also bears the distinction of being considerably darker than one of its main inspirations, Ashes of the Past.
  • Pokémon: The Series has taken on a much darker edge with Cornova's Poké Wars. Where the stories are set, all the regions have been ravaged by war. Not to mention, the stories are much more violent, cynical, grittier and much less idealistic than the anime it was based on.
  • Pokémon has gotten a makeover with the advent of The Sun Soul, which combines a pointed Deconstruction with an Anyone Can Die attitude. So far, if the reviews and forum opinions are to be believed, the fandom approves.
  • Several fan games, like Pokémon Reborn, Pokémon Rejuvenation and Pokémon Insurgence.
  • While not on the level of some of these, Traveler is still set in a world where people and Pokemon can and do die, and the battles, while rarely deadly, are described in much more brutal and violent terms than in the Anime or games on which it is based.
  • Parodied in The (Edit) War for Ash’s Freedom to not be Betrayed with the character Darkern Edgier, a mysterious being who tries to make the Pokemon anime darker, edgier, and sexier. He's trolled at every attempt by Arceus.
  • Citadel of the Heart began its life as a Pokémon fic, simply called Truth and Ideals, and it started off as tame as a T Rating would allow, until going through an escalating surge of family unfriendly material that would not be so blatant in the mainline games. There are direct mentions of blood surprisingly common, death actually being a highly probable threat to the main characters, Ghetsis murdering his own grunts by ordering his Hydreigon to eat them alive, and prior to evolving into said form trapping his failures with a Zweilous that is exclusively fed humans for food, and then Ghetsis attempting pure, unadulterated murder against Ash and N in the climax, and even Ghetsis himself isn't safe from his own signature Pokémon because his already severely damaged arm gets torn off and eaten by Zweilous upon its (mercifully off-screen) evolution into Hydreigon. Combined with Ash's Simisear being Killed Off for Real, Genesect outright killing its enemies instead of fainting them, Hoopa manipulating an ex of Misty into doing his bidding by effectively Mind Rape. Add in Eldritch Abominations, the sudden appearance of Digimon such as WarGreymon, and the only thing keeping this fic from being completely grim dark is the refreshing factoid that it has a much more idealistic outlook and a huge case of Earn Your Happy Ending for the finale.
  • Guys Being Dudes: It's still the fundamentally idealistic world of Pokémon GO and most of the edgy content is lampshaded and Played for Laughs, but multiple characters gain Emo tendencies, the fic doesn't shy away from sexual innuendo, death threats, and pointing out that Pokemon are capable of killing humans, and everyone is more inclined to snark at their coworkers and enemies alike than in canon.

Redwall

RWBY

Sherlock Holmes

Scooby-Doo

Sgt. Frog

  • Yin and Yang Series: Played with. Although the main four stories try to stay true to the spirit of the original series, both "Eliza: A Side-Story" and "The Past Has a Past, Too...' depict events far darker than the ones of the main series.

Shadowchasers Series

  • Shadowchasers: City of Angels: Compared to all previous Shadowchasers fics, the villains having far more vile and violent motivations. Damien is rather dark as well; he and the other heroes at least qualify for Good Is Not Nice.

Something Awful

Sonic the Hedgehog

Splatoon

  • Inkopolis Chaos: This saga's topics are somewhat more mature than those of Splatoon, with depictions of PTSD, frame-ups, and regular endangerment of Inkopolis otherwise unheard of outside the Octo Expansion and Splatoon 3.

Spongebob Squarepants

Star Trek

  • The three films of the "Star Trek: Specter" trilogy (Star Trek Specter, Star Trek Retribution, and Star Trek Retribution) elevate this trope an art form, with plotlines that are much darker (and more personal) than old-school Star Trek ever got.
    • In the first film, a scientist working for Starfleet Intelligence turns renegade, and runs off with a treasure trove of Federation secrets, forcing his oldest friend into a position to have to stop him. At first it seems like the villain's own time experiments were his downfall, but turns out he was thrown back in time and spent decades being rebuilt from the inside out by Borg technology (which we're assured was an agonizing process).
    • In the sequel, he tries to frame the Federation for genocide against the Romulans in a False Flag Operation, hoping to incite all-out war between the two powers. It nearly works, until a last-minute Engineered Public Confession turns the Romulans against him.
    • Then the third film sees more time shenanigans, this time tearing all of space-time apart just so the bad guy can go back in time to restore his physiology, presumably restarting his entire evil plot. This leads to a temporal pursuit that ultimately sees the villain dead...maybe.

Super Mario Bros.

Team Fortress 2

  • Team Fortress 2 is normally quite a violent game, but always in a light-hearted and comedic way. Respawn of the Dead, on the other hand, is brutal and disturbing in its violence and very, very dark. Cat Bountry takes the personal quirks of the characters and expands them into full-blown psychosis. The result is actually quite good.
    • Cuanta Vida has moments of this as well, although in a very different way, largely by actually confronting some of the inherent Fridge Horror of the premise of the games. The fact that the characters are actually somewhat toned down from their portrayal in-game somehow only makes it worse. (For example, in the game, Spies are backstabbing bastards who relish killing. The main character spy, Bleu, actively avoids it.)

Teen Titans (2003)

  • New Tamaran: The author is well aware that the original show's child audience has grown up.
  • The Masks We Wear is a darker and edgier origin story for Slade, who is actually John Grayson, pulling from the comics and the DC Animated Movie Universe film Batman vs. Robin.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

The Tomorrow Series

Total Drama

  • Despair Island: The fic upgrades Total Drama from to a simple over-the-top reality show to an illegally organized Deadly Game. As a result, it takes itself a lot more seriously, makes the challenges and their hazards more realistic, removes the cartoonish elements, and does not play any of the show's Amusing Injuries for comedy.
  • The Doctor Will See You Now: Even before the story starts having bodies hit the floor, this story is noticeably darker than Total Drama, though not in the usual way this is achieved. The characters are more or less in character, though maybe slightly “edgier” than normal, but not much. Its more the context they are in which changes the story’s overall tone. The second chapter contains many references to the gruesome, but real, horrors endured by mental patents in asylums in the 1940s. At least until charters 3 and 4…by then, this story enters the full dark edge of despair!
  • The Legend of Total Drama Island, a reimagining of the show's first season, achieves this effect by several methods, most notably by playing for drama certain incidents that the original played for laughs, and by replacing certain cartoonish elements of the original with some pretty stark realism.
  • Monster Chronicles: This story is much darker than Total Drama canon with elements such as a supernatural serial killer sneaking aboard the plane and taking the contestants hostage. The stakes are higher with the contestants' lives in more danger, and even the world at stake.
  • Predator and Prey: Despite none of the events from the canon World Tour being changed at all, the fic still manages to be this. For starters, the story begins with Alejandro sexually abusing and then raping Bridgette. This traumatizes her to the point where she develops Stockholm Syndrome, and afterwards, she becomes near-suicidally depressed by Geoff breaking up with her for it, has a Pregnancy Scare, and needs to get therapy to get over her feelings for Alejandro.
    • In a weird kind of way, the story's Adaptational Explanation for what happened between Alejandro and Bridgette on World Tour gives some of her and Geoff's negative remarks about him on the Aftermath much darker implications. For instance, Geoff says on the final Aftermath that Alejandro is like a jaguar because "you shouldn't leave them alone with your kitten", which in canon, was merely a statement about how Alejandro manipulated Bridgette into cheating with him, but when he says it in the fic, its meaning is much more sinister.
  • A TDA Love Triangle with Betty, Cody, and Gwenny: It has some strong, uncensored language; and, of course, the very accurate description of a rather gory video game.
  • Total Drama Action: All-In: While the story retains the canon season's mixture of drama and comedy, the drama is much more intense than canon and the humour at times veers into outright adult territory, with sex jokes and drug references.
  • Total Drama All-Stars Rewrite: Mal's villainous moments are much more, well, villainous, with the biggest example being how he brutally beats up Owen and blackmails Dawn with hurting Noah if she reveals Mal's identity.
  • Total Drama: Pomewin Island: It's rated M for a reason, and that reason is Murder. Similar to Despair Island, it transforms Total Drama into a Deadly Game.
  • Unbreakable Red Silken Thread: Those only familiar with the lighthearted parody of reality television might find this story’s frank, nondramatic portrayal of abusive relationships, the effect of living in a less than ideal household, and the strained relations between many of the central characters and their parents a little jarring.

Touhou Project

The Twilight Saga

  • Dark Games & Twisted Minds is this for the first book in Twilight series. Conflict with James and Victoria drives the plot from the start, violence is brutal and very common, sex scenes don't get sexy discretion shots, OCs are only introduced to be vampire snacks, and even canon characters aren't safe.
  • Downward Spiral has Edward imprisoned in Volterra and faced with an ultimatum: either breed hybrids on Aro's orders, or simply kill human women sent into his cell.
  • In For You, I Will, Embry imprints on an OC with less than noble intentions, and she takes full advantage of the power she has over him. Warnings for rape, violence, character deaths.

Winx Club

  • Thomas Vaccaro's Winx Club rewrite series was made as this compared to canon for the sake of Growing with the Audience. The first 3 canon seasons of Winx are often seen by its fanbase, Thomas included, as the series' best for carrying a mature, complex tone. In Season 4 and onward, this was abandoned in favor of making Winx a Lighter and Softer show in an attempt to appeal more to children, doing things such as rewriting the Winx as teens and keeping them together in Alfea (despite them graduating at the end of Season 3). The rewrite series is meant as an Inversion of this, keeping the more mature storytelling of the first 3 seasons. Compared to the original, the rewrite also adds in additional adult themes, including Abusive Parents, racism, discrimination, loss of one's culture, miscarriage, Written by the Winners, LGBT relationships, depression, losing close friends and lovers, undergoing therapy, and so on. Basically, the rewrite can be seen as being for Winx Club what The Legend of Korra was for Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Worm

  • Cenotaph zig-zags this trope as both played straight and inverted. On one hand Taylor's father is murdered by Bakuda on the other, Taylor dosen't spend the first month of her cape career fighting for her life against both sides of the law.

Your Lie in April

  • His Lie in April - Oh, god. Where do we begin? This story, as if the original wasn't sad enough turns things up to 15 what with what Kousei goes through (permanent brain damage caused by three blows to the head), which leads to his suicide.

Yu-Gi-Oh!

  • Fallen King shows what could have happened if Yugi lost to Pegasus and deconstructs the power of friendship that the series runs on. Joey realizes that the villains can and will use it as a weapon, and ultimately decides he, Tristan, and Tea must stop being friends to save the world.

Other

  • Pikachu gets made into a coat by Team Rocket, causing Ash to kill himself, Mary Poppins gets hit by an airplane while flying with her umbrella, Alice accidentally poisons herself when she drinks from the "Drink Me" bottle, just to name a few of the fates of famous popular characters in stories by Hans Von Hozel.
  • PAW Patrol doesn't have extreme disasters, but its fandom writes several Dark Fics that put the pups in real danger.

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