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The slide towards drama and away from comedy over the course of a series' run, named for the process undergone by the print comic Cerebus the Aardvark. (It should not be confused with the slide from drama to Author Tract which happened much later in the same comic's run, due to Creator Breakdown.) It often describes a comic in which the creator bases all the characters on thinly veiled versions of his friends, runs the first few months of the comic on in-jokes, and then runs out of material. The comic has no choice but to develop some original characterisations and drama, or fold.
More generally, it's any story/series which starts out light, episodic, and comedic, and then becomes dramatic and arc-based. It chiefly occurs in works where parts have been broadcast/published before other parts have been written, as that means the older parts can't be revised into conformity.
Often seen in media where artists are expected to write a few short stories first to see how the public will react, and then start writing longer and more serious story arcs once the magazine/tv channel/company gives the go-ahead. It can also be intentional, with the lighter mood at the beginning allowing readers to meet and become attached to the characters before the story arcs begin.
If the series has previously been fueled by high weirdness, then the transition can be rocky. Some comics tie themselves in painful knots trying to Ret Con an accumulated pile of weirdness with invented physics. Others sweep the stranger things under the rug and try to present a more respectable face. More often, the weird is left in place, but retrofitted into a more dramatic role. In a good case, the combination of drama and high weird can be invigorating. In a less successful case, it can be excruciating.
Expect an exodus of fans bemoaning the slide into "angst". When Cerebus Syndrome radically changes a series for the worse, it gets called First and Ten Syndrome, after a television series which notably skydived after the injection of drama. Despite this, it's not always a bad thing - in and of itself, adding drama to a comedic work can and often does work. It's just that frequently, the creators don't quite have the talent to pull it off.
Note that the difference between Cerebus Syndrome and First And Ten is very subjective, as are the examples below.
Both terms were coined by Eric Burns of Websnark.
May be a case of Growing The Beard if it actually works. Either way, fans may not wait to declare it Ruined FOREVER. See also Cerebus Retcon and Knight Of Cerebus.
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Examples
Anime and Manga
- Dragon Ball was originally a comedic version of Journey to the West. The villains were largely silly, like Emperor Pilaf and Commander Red, but then Krillin got killed by a monster (he got better). The monster was the child of Demon King Piccolo, who wanted eternal life, and after this arc, the comedic elements slowly decreased. This quickly became evident when Raditz, Goku's older brother, came and told Goku that he was an alien from another planet who was supposed to kill everyone on Earth. Toei, the company in charge of the Dragon Ball anime, decided then and there to end Dragon Ball and rename it Dragon Ball Z, starting with the arrival of Raditz. Given that the artist wanted to end the manga repeatedly, but was forced to continue by Toei because the merchandise was still selling too well, his taking the comic in a new direction might be justified.
- However, the Buu Saga included many comedy elements and was meant to be a self-parody. Or So I Heard.
- The more recent 2008 Jump Tour special had a heavy emphasis on comedy over action, which many fans seemed to find rather refreshing.
- Buu does possess an odd resemblance to Neko Majin, a character created by Toriyama specifically to parody Dragon Ball.
- Toriyama didn't really complain until the end of the Frieza arc, when this trope had been in effect for years already.
- A more recent example of this can be seen in the series Katekyo Hitman Reborn, which is mostly a pure comedy in the beginning, but after several chapters (though fewer episodes) it becomes an action series.
- Several chapters? More like 7 volumes!
- Kinnikuman started off as a comedy series parodying Ultraman, but then became a wrestling series with loads of drama, although with very silly characters.
- The anime adaptation of Trigun has a variation; all the filler is in the beginning, so it begins as a silly series with occasional bouts of action as the "insurance ladies" track down the identity of Vash the Stampede, then slowly come to accept that the goofball they found is a legendary gunman and walking disaster. About halfway through the series, actual plot from the manga starts appearing in consecutive episodes, with Knives sending the Gung-ho Guns, a team of ruthless super-powered fighters after him. Ostensibly they're hired to kill him, but really they're meant to make Vash suffer, which they all succeed in, each in their own way. This changeover is also evident in whether or not Vash manages to successfully keep people from getting killed; he manages it easily for the first half the series, but in the episode where the change hits you get streets littered with the corpses of men, women, and children.
- CLAMP's Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle started out as a fairly upbeat and child-friendly nakama adventure story, but took a sudden turn for the Angst in the Acid Tokyo arc, almost exactly the halfway point of the series. The arc's post-apocalyptic setting — where Tokyo is a desert and the only rain is acid — pales in comparison to the revelations of treachery and hints of almost unimaginably horrific backstory. There is simultaneously a dramatic increase in the prominence of death, violence, and sexual tension. The tone does become more hopeful again in the last third of the story, but the seriousness remains throughout. Tsubasa seems be a case of deliberate Cerebus, to the point of the second half essentially deconstructing the first and showing that its happiness and innocence was enabled by darkness lurking behind the scenes.
- Only adding to the angst is that Syaoran's decision to turn back time so he could save Sakura's life caused the entire multiverse to start decaying. Space-time was altered so much that Acid Tokyo and Clow Country are actually in the same world; the mysterious ruins that Syaoran enjoyed investigating so much were the ruins of Acid Tokyo, after all. But the heroes never did have the ability to time travel. Oh my.
- Da Capo literally tells the viewer in a next episode preview halfway through the series that it's about to get serious. And it does.
- The School Rumble manga jumps from a completely random love comedy to a surprisingly heart-wrenching drama, set off by the revelation that Karasuma is suffering from a terminal illness.
- Mahou Sensei Negima began as a light comedy about an inept ten-year old mage teaching a class of 31 Japanese middle school girls with lots of Fanservice. As the arcs progressed, the story became much more action-oriented and fairly serious at times.
- This was entirely intentional on the part of the author. From the beginning, he wanted to do an action series, but Executive Meddling forced him to hide it behind an Unwanted Harem image. The Genre Shift was his form of Writer Revolt. Arguably, the large number of unconventional characters for its genre (a Cute Shotaro Boy as a Shounen lead, for example) makes it more interesting.
- Interestingly, the fanservice has, if anything, intensified; some of the chapters can take it to such extremes that it's a miracle it's not considered straight-up hentai. (Probably because there are no nipples.)
- The frequency of the fanservice decreased, but when it shows up, it goes to insane levels. Especially the Furo Scene in the magic world. Hoo boy.
- Witch Hunter Robin started with the "monster of the week" style then shifted gears into plot and drama halfway through.
- Bleach, while still incorporating darker elements, started out as something of a Slice Of Life story with a Fish Out Of Water situation and a bit of a Monster Of The Week feel, with more focus on characters and their stories rather than action, but then they finished defining the starting characters and the Soul Society arc kicked the series into high gear.
- Yu-Gi-Oh initially started as a surprisingly dark, bleak manga about a kid who had an evil alter ego that inflicted punishments on bullies that ranged from psychologically crippling, to killing, to eternally damning in limbo forever, but then that card game came along and suddenly he started to regret what he did. While arguably more fulfilling in plot, it was generally a lot less fun in terms of escapist "revenge on the bully" fantasy.
- Get Backers starts out as a fairly standard We Help The Helpless series about two teenage guys having dorky misadventures, but the introduction of the other four major characters brings along the revelation that they have incredibly angsty back stories, involving Ginji becoming a crazy sociopath if he's not careful and Ban killing at least two of his friends, and lots of Parental Abandonment. Happily, the pair retain their status as a Weirdness Magnet and are still capable of being incredibly silly at the drop of a hat, so the slide isn't too drastic.
- Fruits Basket started as a manga with a good balance between humor and drama. One page would make you cry, but the next would have you rolling in laughter. Then the humor came less and less often until there was basically none left.
- Toradora starts out mostly comedy with a little drama on the side, gradually sliding the slider from comedy to drama as the arcs go on.
- In Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, when Kamina dies in a blaze of glory, much of the humor is gone from the series. Kittan takes up most of the humor left, then HE dies in a blaze of glory. Nia takes some humor, but it's more because she can be pretty ditzy. Then SHE dies after marrying Simon.
- Shuffle's first half was more on the comedic Slice Of Life happenings of an Unwanted Harem, with a Beach Episode to boot. Then along came Nerine, Lycoris' and Primula's Story Arc...
- School Days : And How! the only way to describe it is a Love Triangle comedy gone Battle Royale
- Gao Gai Gar to Gao Gai Gar Final: The light-hearted original series did dip its toe into seriousness every so often, but it was primarily a fun super-robot show. With the release of the OVA Final it goes into darker and edgier territory. By the second episode... One character's lover is killed by what appears to be the cute kid lead of the series, who is himself killed by the main character. Then, said main character is captured by the villains and brainwashed into fighting the good guys. And in the final episode, despite having defeated the Big Bad, all but two members of the main cast are trapped at the other end of the galaxy, dying, and with no forseeable way to get back to Earth.
- Detective Conan started as a mystery-themed comedy just like how Gosho Aoyama did with kendo in Yaiba. With time at has developed into a more serious story—which made the animators who guessed too much making a few Schrodingers Cats.
- Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ initially starts out with the old “monster of the week” routine with plenty of campy slapstick comedy despite the fact that it’s not anime. Then episode 18 rolls around and the story starts picking up momentum, and the comic mischief is eventually displaced by more serious content. By the time it becomes anime, the tone of the series becomes something more along the same vein as Zeta Gundam.
Comics
- This trope takes its name from Cerebus the Aardvark
 , an (in)famous indie print comic that began as a parody of Heroic Fantasy, but drifted into the genre itself. (And subsequently into far stranger waters.)
- The Sonic The Hedgehog comic started out as a gag series, but slowly slid into relationship triangles and general angst over the years, culminating in a recent issue where Dr. Eggman attempts genocide against the entire cast. Arguably, the comic has been through both Cerebus and First and Ten Syndrome, going from good and funny to good and serious to bad and serious. Fan opinion on which parts of the comic's history fall into Cerebus Syndrome and which parts fall into First and Ten Syndrome (and which of the two the newest stories fall into) varies wildly.
- Over its ten-year run, Jeff Smith's Bone went from gags about sudden snowfalls, greedy relatives and stupid, stupid rat creatures to epic fantasy about a rather horrific Sealed Evil In A Can with graphic violence and death, the threat of genocide, an evil (or at least harmful) religion, and the aforementioned rat creatures going from harmless comic relief to a deadly threat. It still manages to kick in humor every now and then, with at least one funny moment every issue. Then it gets back to the good ol' all-comedic style in the epilogue.
- It's worth noting that this change back to humor may be because, as the author stated in an interview when the comic was realsed in a single volume, that he wrote the last page of the epic when he first started it.
- It could be said that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, as a franchise, experienced a reverse Cerebus Syndrome when it moved from comics - where the humor was almost entirely confined to the fact that they were turtles who were also ninjas, while everything else was played perfectly straight - to the cartoon, which sought to make the whole story an episodic, lighthearted adventure. Cross-reference with Lighter And Softer
- This actually happens twice. The 2003 Turtles cartoon begins by almost perfectly mirroring the original comic's dark, serialized story arcs (though with more overt humor), but then at the start of season five, goes through an entire tonal shift, becoming more like the older cartoon series.
- Scud The Disposable Assassin's first story arcs included a cult that worshipped "manliness and unnecessary explosions", a cyborg-giraffe crime lord, and a werewolf astronaut. The last few issues pretty much kicked humor to the curb, placing Scud literally in the middle of Armageddon, fighting against both Heaven and Hell. The recent 4-issue re-launch Time Skips ahead 10 years and manages to make things even darker, but then pulls out to an upbeat ending involving The Power Of Love. The author has noted that, if the series had finished as planned, it would have had a Downer Ending where Scud commits suicide and destroys the world, but between the original and relaunch, he moved away from his "angry young man" persona and rethought.
- It could be argued that the entire Super Hero genre has gone through Cerebus Syndrome. The days of jet-powered apes from Mars have more or less vanished in favour of dramatic, Darker And Edgier storylines.
- Johnny The Homicidal Maniac went through intentional Cerebus Syndrome, from the Black Comedy and Johnny's lewd justifications for killing sprees of the first three issues to an exploration of Johnny's depressing outlook on life in the fourth issue, The Reveal of the history of the Doughboys in the fifth, as well is an investigation of the characters of Tess and Krik, then back to Black Comedy in the sixth and seventh (though Reverend Meat and the death of Jimmy were far from funny). Even Happy Noodle Boy went through (sort of) Cerebus Syndrome, becoming more and more incomprehensible as Johnny slipped further into insanity. Jhonen Vasquez mentioned in his commentary in the Director's Cut that all this was planned.
- Wash Tubbs went from "bigfoot" humor to high adventure with the addition of soldier-of-fortune Captain Easy to the cast. Since this happened in 1929, this qualifies as Older Than Television.
- Another early example is Skippy, a comic strip from the 1920's through 1940's. It was originally a wildly popular comic about a mischievous kid, but it started getting more and more serious and political when creator Percy L. Crosby became convinced that President Franklin Roosevelt was a Communist. The government "randomly" performed several painful tax audits on him, and a company with connections to the IRS was able to successfully take over the rights to the name Skippy. The company was, of course, the maker of Skippy peanut butter. Crosby ended up suicidally depressed in a mental hospital. You can read the whole story here.
- What's funny is that he wasn't even targeted because of his political beliefs, but because a crooked company wanted to use his character without paying & just happened to have some corrupt IRS agents in its pocket. An outspoken Anti-Communist whose life is utterly destroyed by Big Business. Now there's irony for ya!
- The strip which eventually became Steve Roper & Mike Nomad began life in 1936 as a wacky comedy starring a stereotyped American Indian named Big Chief Wahoo. Roper was introduced in 1940 and took over the strip, until by 1947 Big Chief Wahoo had been written out and the wacky humour entirely dropped in favour of action adventure. Mike Nomad appeared in 1956, by which time the original nature of the strip had totally vanished.
- Ironically, Big Chief Wahoo had not been planned to be the strip leader; he was supposed to be a supporting character to the Great Gusto, a traveling salesman/conman. Wahoo was instantly much more popular and Gusto, reduced to second banana status from the beginning, was gone by 1939.
- Funky Winkerbean literally jumped (in the form of a 10-year timeskip) from a high-school based gag strip (with occasional dramatic Very Special Episodes) to a frequently depressing drama strip where Anyone Can Die. A second ten-year timeskip seems to have abandoned all pretense of zany (or should that be funky?) comedy, preferring a more down-to-earth kind.
- 9 Chickweed Lane started life in 1993 as a gag-a-day strip about 3 generations of females and their daily experiences. It has since become a piercing look at personal relationships and the human condition, with its recent "mega-arc" - encompassing the lives of many people - lasting several years.
- For Better Or For Worse, although that has turned around somewhat as Lynn Johnston has essentially did a Reboot back to its original chronology, and the more gag-oriented formula therein.
- She actually hasn't done a Reboot of the old continuity. She has simply decided to reprint the old strip from the beginning, in order, with (I think) some revisions.
- Ctrl-Alt-Delete, See recent plotline with Lilah and baby (Became more serious before ending in tragedy).
Literature
Live Action TV
- The first couple seasons of Smallville were mostly lighthearted freak-of-the-week affairs. Around the middle of season three, they began to delve more into the Superman mythos, and the show reflected this.
- Buffy The Vampire Slayer started its Cerebus transition after the end of the first season. It's frequently debate on the point where it went too far.
- M*A*S*H is the classic TV example, although it must be noted that Robert Altman's film had a darker (if still basically comic) tone than did the first couple years of the series.
- The second season of the Argentine soap Rebelde Way took a turn toward darker storylines.
- Psych may be undergoing this process as of late season 3.
- Supernatural underwent this process when it hit the halfway point of Season One. And it got even worse from there. Much, much worse.
- Friends has a subtle process in this vein. It starts out with story arcs entirely for comedy, actual jokes with punchlines, and a set of characters that seem to fulfill every comedic need you could have. Then heavy character development sets in, started with Rachel Green, and eventually the series becomes Drama with lots of Comedy, instead of Comedy with bits of Drama.
- Sex and the City: Started out as being about sex and dating and all the various types of men out there, then starting in Season 3 shifted focus to long-term relationships. Really set in in season six, which had arcs dealing with Charlotte's infertility and Samantha developing breast cancer. The last several episodes and The Movie were considerably less light-hearted than the early seasons.
- The French comedy show Kaamelott starts as a short comedic series spoofing the legend of King Arthur, but after three seasons, the storyline became darker and less comedic (except for the two comic relief characters of Perceval and Karadoc) and turned to get an actual (twistful) plot, while doubling its air time to 7 minutes length.
- Weeds began as a comedy (or dramedy) about a housewife dealing marijuana in the suburbs; from the second season on, though still possessing a lot of bizarre and quirky humour, it became a lot more serious. The first two episodes of the third season are pretty light on laughs.
Music
- Prodigy some how went from this("Out of Space") to this ("No Good").
- That somehow is called the '90s. Most everything became Darker and Edgier in the '90s. Prehaps a better example of just how dark Prodigy became post "Out of Space" would be "Breathe"
Video Games
- Ace Combat started off as a very early entry into the realm of 3D arcade style flying shoot-em-ups for the original Play Station; though it was still at least somewhat more complicated than other competing titles and most of the gameplay elements that would define the series were already there, it didn't have much in the way of plot and was more or less a fairly straightforward game. By the time of Ace Combat 3, however, the flying and fighting aspects were framed by a deep and very well-developed story, which by the next title were often at best tangential in their impact on the player's actual missions and prone to focusing on the enemy just as much or more as on the player's side, as well as an increasing frequency in anti-war messages (odd in a game entirely about war, needless to say). The gameplay became more complex as well, introducing additional subtle realism tweaks such as more realistic aircraft momentum, and by the most recent title has had a corresponding effect on gameplay. The intro of the latest game, which probably tries a bit too hard when it comes to conveying the impact of war, embodies this trope and was duly featured on Unskippable.
- Earthbound is a silly, shiny, nice game with colors all around. Its sequel Mother 3, though...well, what do you think of jokes such as "I have good news and bad news. Good news, I found you a new weapon. Bad news, I found it stabbed through your wife's heart."
- While Mother 3 is certainly more of a Tear Jerker than Earthbound, they both have Cerebus Syndrome within their games. Earthbound starts with you dealing with cops who take pride in their ability to block roads and ends with you fighting a being of pure evil that is considered Nightmare Fuel by many players. Mother 3 starts with you in a peaceful, utopian village and ends with the main villain essentially owning the entire world.
- Jak and Daxter is a silly, shiny, nice game with colors all around. Its two sequels very clearly influenced Grand Theft Auto in both gameplay and themes, but still remain good games, and it's arguable that the more serious shift allowed for better, more grown up jokes.
- Actually, many RP Gs do this willingly: for instance:
- In Final Fantasy IX, you start with a bunch of Thieves/actors kidnapping a rebellious princess and a kid who go to watch a theater play. The first 7 or 8 hours of the game (especially in the brilliantly done french translation) are light hearted and fun. Then, the Thieves/actors hometown is invaded, the rebellious princess see the death of her mother and watch her kingdom getting nuked, the whole world comes close from destruction, and the little cute kid of the intro gets to deal with his own mortality.
- Suikoden Tierkreis starts with the main character living a mostly carefree life in his little village, cue a millitaristic cult appearing. The main character decides then to stand against it, while remaining mostly optimistic, cue the multiverse collapsing.
- Dragon Quest VII starts also with the main character living a carefree life in a fishermen village, and the "DQ humor" still drives most of the storyline. Then the first chapters of the game proper start, but, while more dark, they remain mostly into the "dungeon of the week" routine and the story keeps many humorous moments. Then, little by little, each small chapter gets more and more tragic until the conclusion.
- Tales of Phantasia starts with two main characters hunting, then it turns into a vendetta story, then into a world war, then into a conflict to save the human race, than the heroes discover that Daos was the good guy all along. The comedic elements of the game's beginning are of course diminishing through the story.
- Fire Emblem path of radiance, while not really "comedic" remain light heated at the begining, with a teenage mercenary learning the ropes of his job against small bandits bands and under the carefull watch of older fighters. By the end of Radiant Dawn, the game's looks like an adaptation of Berserk with slightly more colors
- Grandia start with a two kids doing their usual antics in their hometown and dreaming of adventures that are, quite obviously, way above their level. By the end of the game, one of the kids, Justin, as turned into a badass by being punched in the face, repeatedly
- Arc the Lad starts with a mostly light hearted storyline, with three of the seven Player Characters being comic reliefs. Then Arc 2 came along, and it became Darker, and Darker, and darker, and darker... At the end, Gogen was still cracking jokes and Poco was still a klutz, but it is hard to notice the comedy when you failed to stop the apocalypse, lost your Main couple, while the credits are running
- Advance wars had this; the first game was sort of up beat, with you fighting it out with the clear-cut bad guys. The latest one is set in a post apocalyptic wasteland where the NP Cs in the campaign tell you to leave the civilians behind and the first fight you have is with piratical raiders.
- The Paper Mario and Mario And Luigi series.
- Call Of Duty World at War's Nazi zombie mode appears to be suffering from the syndrome.
- The first map, Nacht der Untoten, was really just four AFGNCAAP 's holed up in a building under siege by unlimited hordes of zombies.
- The second map, Verrukt, was more of the same, with Perk-a-cola machines and electro-shock defenses. And the EVIL teddy bear.
- But the third map, Shi no Numa, not only features four well-defined characters, but has lots and lots of easter eggs hinting to the origins of the zombies, and most of all, This.
Web Animation
- Red vs Blue begins with a comedic and zany plot for the majority of The Blood Gulch Chronicles. It then becomes almost completely serious during Out Of Mind and Recovery One. Finally, in Reconstruction, the drama meets the comedy in a batshit insane mash-up of genres.
- This is one rare instance of the drama complementing the comedy. Wash's dead seriousness was entertaining in and of itself, and it also made Caboose's stupidity even more hilarious than it already was.
- there she is!! by SamBakZa started out as a silly romantic comedy about a rabbit-girl pursuing a cat-boy who finds himself falling in love despite his own prejudices and those of society. Then a rock crashes through his window at the end of the third installment, and the fourth sees the world go into all-out Fantastic Racism, with bad things happening to both the cat boy and the rabbit girl, and with things rather firmly in the Darkest Hour by the end.
- Marvel/DC: After Hours had this in a big way. What started off as an uber-topical superhero satire slowly started to become a kind of uber-fanfic, placing the gamut of comic book characters in a world with very flexible rules. The first series only even begins to have a plot at episode three, the second series consists of five 20-minute episodes, and is so plot-centric that the jokes start to become slightly forced (most of them come from the Green Goblin being on tranquilizers, and then pretending to be on tranquilizers) it remains to be seen how long the creators can keep up the game before they run out of plot.
- N.B.: they still do intermittent comedic side-series as well, which have thus far retained the comedic element completely.
- It seems to be the method RandomGuy is adopting. Start off a new series with comedy and delve into darker elements by the finale, rise and repeat.
Web Comics
- Sluggy Freelance was probably the first webcomic to grapple with the tendency towards drama. Different readers locate the turning point at different places, but the early "Vampire Arc" was probably the first arc with ongoing continuity, characterisation and character death. The final strip of the arc hung a little bit of a lampshade on the shift.
- Emergency Exit does this with surprisingly good results. Starting as nothing more than a strip of wacky cartoonish hijinks and a vague plotline about college roomies, it abruptly takes a darker, edgier turn around the time they do a crossover with Parallel Dementia and plunges into a rather gripping dramatic stortyline. It tends to remember its comic roots, however, and doesn't hold back on quips, zingers, and punchlines. Character death has thus far been scarce, but it doesn't hold back on other brutalities, such as ripping the face off one of the main characters.
- Megatokyo started out as a light humor strip. This led to Creative Differences between writer Rodney Caston, who liked it that way, and artist Fred Gallagher, who preferred a more serious, ongoing plot. Rodney eventually quit, at which point Megatokyo became more of a seinen romance manga about the characters Piro and Kimiko, combined with a zombie-horror action story about Largo, and with comedic elements from the early strips.
- College Roomies From Hell engaged Cerebus Syndrome with "The Adversary", a six-month arc that played the Devil (previously a minor comic relief character) as a terrifying threat, and the Butt Monkey's (previously humorous) romantic woes as heartbreaking. Some readers, however, see this shift as an example of First and Ten Syndrome.
- Parodied in Shortpacked!: after Ethan explains to a toy store customer how "Try Me" products come to the store with a tag on the battery which, once pulled, means the battery's unstoppable decay, Robin accidentally pulls the comic's "drama" tag.
- It's also a Call Back to the author's previous webcomic, It's Walky!, which attempted the transition with varying success; an alternate universe version of the Big Bad from that comic shows up when Robin pulls the tag, although in this incarnation he's more of a Meta Guy than a straight villain.
- Arguably, Bob And George. When it started, it was simply a stand-in for another comic the author, Dave, was planning on doing and, as such, was mostly just one-off jokes from comic to comic. After the comic that Dave was working on never managed to lift off the ground, Bob and George began to get storylines and continuity, although it stayed humorous; the story is mostly told one punch line per comic, with an ending that borders on making a Shaggy Dog Story of a two-year storyline.
- Parodied in this Checkerboard Nightmare strip.
- The webcomic Exploitation Now started as comedic, but changed into a drama (with the comic's focus shifting from two characters to two other characters), ending up with a main character Killed Off For Real.
- Done fairly successfully with The Order of the Stick (with Lampshade Hanging in this strip). The fact that the comic stayed funny, and the quality of the plot itself, mean that the comic has only grown more popular as the increasingly complex plot unfolds. The strip's creator has even stated that he believes it would never have garnered such a large following without the story.
- Yamara, also a D&D-based comic, did a similar shift fairly early in its run, with a rather more elaborate Lampshade Hanging in this strip.
- El Goonish Shive. After the heavily plot-based, action-packed "Painted Black" arc, the author admitted that he didn't really feel comfortable with that sort of thing. His next arc was about the interpersonal relations of the cast; it was still dramatic, but in a different way. The series continues to shift between drama, humor, and outright weirdness.
- It's only going to get worse from here on out, apparently: in the commentary for the March 10, 2009 update, which includes a creepy old man putting on a scary face and intoning that someone is going to die, the author writes this cheerful little phrase:
"Leading up to this update, some people could predict this direction, but expressed doubt due to the concept being too dark for El Goonish Shive. Frankly, I'm just getting started."
- Dominic Deegan: Oracle For Hire did this, while not ultimately forgetting its roots; the author still at least uses puns for comic relief during its more serious arcs, though needed to be reminded to do so by his readers in the wake of his first. The resulting Mood Whiplash is relieving to some and jarring to others.
- Sam And Fuzzy started out as a episodic comedy webcomic about a taxi driver and his psychotic bear friend, but once the Ninja Mafia is introduced it ends up as a long but still hilarious tale of deception, murder, demons and ninjas.
- RPG World went from gaily romping through RPG tropes to blank-eyed villains killing people and fetishistically licking the blood off their swords. It's slid back into the middle since then though.
- Questionable Content provides an unusual example, as a general plot has been running since the first strip along with the usual gag-a-day format of jokes; however, a deeper storyline was hinted about main character Faye's life prior to the start of the comic. Comic #500 started an arc entitled "The Talk" which, in Faye's own words, was "like interrupting an intricate waltz with a sledgehammer to the knee." Despite handling the arc and its fallout with realistic seriousness, the comedic element was retained in nearly every strip in the arc and since then.
- Parodied a few times in the Stick Figure Comic Stickman And Cube. The first comic has Stickman assure the audience that there will be no Cerebus or First And Ten Syndrome, because "adding drama would probably involve more drawing". Then, this comic has Stickman guarantee that there will be no Cerebus or First and Ten, only to have Cube then announce he's pregnant. Stickman is not amused.
- The now-defunct Life Of Riley suffered from this, starting out with the requisite author-and-his-friends characters in offbeat gaming-related hijinks and ending with an imminent final battle between the arch-demon Lilith and the reincarnation of Christ (in the person of the main character) over an artifact which could literally kill God. Sadly, a series of personal issues and server crashes left the comic drifting in the ether before the insanity could come to a head.
- Dresden Codak started out with a series of gag strips with intricate art, until the author decided to do an ongoing story arc.
- Although once the arc finished, the author quickly went back to the original single-serving gag strip style.
- 1/0 originally started out as a nonsensical gag-based comic without a fourth wall, and eventually developed into an entirely serious affair full of symbolism and metaphor.
- DMFA has mostly kept the syndrome out of the main comic, limiting it to side-stories. Recently, it seems to have crept in, particularly when Hannah is Killed Off For Real by Dark Pegasus in a flashback. The story in question did have its funny moments, although it kinda depends on the reader's sense of humor. The event that preceded it were also rather funny, since Dan's moral-guidance animal got into the liquor cabinet and proceeded to get drunk. Given that it's also poisonous...
- Newshounds began as a comedy strip comic, but as years progressed it started to contain a growing number of more serious plotlines. However, the comedy was still kept as the main point of the comic while the same author explored more serious content in the spin-off comic Manifestations. Newshounds ended temporarily in 2006 and was revived in 2007 as "Newshounds II". This time, the format changed from a 3-panel strip to a larger comic while also turning the series more serious (though not devoid of comedy, now just lacking the obvious punchlines). Fittingly, another new comic by the same author, Something Happens, was launched during the same year; it's the author's main comedy output now.
- Nip and Tuck started out as a gag-a-strip comic about two young brothers, but became more serious as the two brothers grew up.
- Venus Envy, probably due to a very clear, utterly unashamed case of Writer On Board.
- Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic recently made the jump, complete with a previously humorous villain gaining sudden competence.
- Adventurers! started out as a Gag Strip that eventually gained a plot. It still remained comedic, though, never getting more serious than an Affectionate Parody.
- General Protection Fault started as a light-hearted comic with weirdness and humour, but eventually transformed into a complex story arc with angst, character death, and betrayal. Sometime after the first story arc, the comic designer declared an upcoming arc "even better than the last one".
- This can be to an extent credited as the trope namer, as it was in a post about GPF that Burns coined the term. Of course, this post was about how GPF was an example of this trope gone horribly wrong.
- A Modest Destiny had continuity and all that goes along with it from the start, but as time went on the story got progressively Darker And Edgier. The first turning point would probably be the dinner party, where the silliness was interrupted by the murdering of a bunch of innocents, a whole lotta backstabbing and the near-death of the main character. It just kept going from there.
- Equinox, Defender of the Horde started out as a light-hearted romp, but progressively became darker and more drama-prone; at the same time, the female lead turned into a Mary Sue while the (deliberately silly) titular character faded into the background.
- Josh Lesnick's Wendy took a straight nosedive into unexpected drama territory after its first "part" was finished, and according to the post-series epilogue was going to get even worse had it finished the way the author originally intended. Thankfully, this change was not without a bit of lampshade hanging.
- Dub This! Seriously, check it out. Quirky anime in-jokes and satire quickly falls to melodrama by the buckets.
- Ctrl Alt Del has been accused of this, leading to Internet Backdraft. While the comic has always been more character-based than gag-based (except for the actual gag strips), everything post-miscarriage has swung a lot more to the dramatic than pre-miscarriage.
- It's possible that the author started the entirely gag-based "Sillies" sub-comic shortly after that to satisfy people that feel it's getting too serious.
- God Mode did this twice. Plot slowly took over the comic, and after a while the creator just said "Screw it". The comic then continued on as if the plotline never happened. It got serious again, and another reboot was needed. The comic got a new artist/writer after each reboot.
- Goblins transitioned from a deconstruction of fantasy RPGs in general and Dungeons & Dragons in particular to a more serious story when the original antagonists were discarded in favor of a truly villainous Big Bad. The comic arguably got better, as killing off or discarding most of the cast allowed the main characters to become more well-rounded and the strip retained enough humor to keep it from getting too dry.
- Elf Only Inn started out as an online chat room and, after a year-long hiatus, came back a complex RPG story.
- Nana's Everyday Life. So hard. It starts out as a random collection of off-color jokes using the cast of some anime, predominantly Elfen Lied. Then, around strip twenty-something, it suddenly drops the jokes almost entirely, to become one of the most tragic webcomics in existence.
- Strip 27, where she drops off of a bridge. Her continued living after this event just serves to highlight her misfortune.
- Goats went from basically being Dilbert with beer, to a sprawling, dadist, universe hopping epic about the nature of reality. With beer.
- Fuzzy Knights. As with Cerebus itself, it went on to become seriously weird.
- The Last Days Of Foxhound begun as a ridiculously over-the-top parody of hilariously exaggarated (and violent) versions of the bosses of Metal Gear Solid. As the strip went on, it slowly turned into a story-driven, over-the-top parody of the hilariously exaggarated, violent and filthy-mouthed versions of the bosses of Metal Gear Solid, with an overarching, compelling and deep plot.
- Not to mention the immense Downer Ending. Although, given its status as a Prequel, that was only to be expected...
- Spiky-haired Dragon, Worthless Knight goes from somewhat humorous strips about a knight who can't touch weapons to dramatic story about curse of a family that is tied to dragons. It is unknown if it's intentional or not, since it happens after around first hundred strips.
- Deliberately averted by Exterminatus Now, which started out as a merciless lampooning of the authors' Darker And Edgier Old Shame. Eastwood himself has stated literally that Cerebus Syndrome is one of his top signs to start murdering his co-authors.
- Which is ironic, considering that the story has had several dramatic plotlines.
- Twisted Kaiju Theater, although (a) the sophomoric humor refuses to stay completely out of the more serious arcs, and (b) the series continues to have strictly-for-laughs one-shots between arcs.
- Zebra Girl has undergone this transition.
- And Shine Heaven Now is beginning to undergo this, although it is justified in this case: the creator intended her comic to lead to the darker canon manga.
- Wapsi Square undergoes a transition from a light-hearted slice-of-life comedy, to a dark, supernatural drama where the main character has to save the world from a quasi-apocalypse; dropping nearly all of it's supporting cast in the process (although a few do pop in for cameos from time to time), and leaving a large number of unresolved subplots. Aspects of this were hinted at early in the series; but were mostly off-hand comments prior to the appearnce of the "Golem Girls"; whose addition to the cast denote the transition point (although it takes a bit longer for the change to really manifest).
- Apple Geeks started out — and is still described on this wiki — as "a Slice Of Life comic with a few surreal elements," primarily Cloud Cuckoo Lander Hawk, straight man Jayce, and various friends. Then Hawk turned out to be a tinkerer/inventor who made Robot Girl Eve, Jayce turned out to have a military-industrialist father who was interested in the technology, Gina had martial-arts champion parents, and even the seven-year-old Alice babysits for wants Hawk dead and has a mother who might be a witch and who caused a Freaky Friday.
- 8-Bit Theater, while remaining a comedy strip, has had a few of what could be called "Cerebus Arcs". It dipped into it during the battle against Lich, and went quite a bit deeper into it during the battle against Kary, which resulted in Black Belt's death. It seems to be there again, although in 8 Bit Theater's case, it tends to abandon the Cerebus arcs abruptly. It's also been known to tease and then not deliver Cerebus arcs, such as the "battle" against Kraken.
- Sequential Art Twice the artist has taken a few months to due long arc stories involving our plucky characters combating dangerously powerful adversaries like the Denizens or Oz, only to have that conflict resolved and go right back to the "Gag-A-Day" Format.
Web Original
- The Ed Stories start out in blog format, then continue as a more formal type of prose fiction with a fairly whimsical tone (cf. "An Admin Password for the Universe"), then suddenly takes a turn for "the dreaded continuity", turns a hinted-at running gag into a major plot point for a longer story arc, and culminates in a Downer Ending.
Western Animation
- Moral Orel started as a goofy and over-the-top parody of shows like Davey And Goliath. They've slowly become 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 (which 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.
- 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.
- 12Oz Mouse started out as an immature comedy that appealed to stoned 12 year olds, and quickly became a something that defies description.
- The series started out defying description and went off from there.
- Well, 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 I had to pin-point the exact moment this happened, it would be in the end of episode 3, when Fitz say's "where's Skillet" and then...
- 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. But by the fourth season, the two were insecure, fighting over the same boy, and not always coming out on top. While some liked the development of the characters, and were impressed by the writer's ability to keep the show funny, others in the fandom were appalled. Much fanwank ensued.
- A lot of the disgruntled fans apparently weren't paying attention — Glenn Eichler stated during an interview that they started pushing the show in this direction during Season 3.
- 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 Enzo lost a game a few episodes into Season 3, the series got much more serious, but still retained its adventurous charm, even after Bob was brought back as The Messiah and Enzo as an older Bad Ass.
- The fourth and final (before the movies) 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.
- A common belief I've heard is that a lot of the emotional episodes were produced because the writers weren't sure which episode would end up being aired by FOX as the finale.
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