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alt title(s): Grim Dark 
A process that seeks to make a work of fiction "more adult". All too often, this really means it'll be less mature about its production.
Beware any press release that promises a new character or show which will be Darker And Edgier than the competition. In theory, it means that a show will shift towards cynicism on the Sliding Scale Of Idealism Versus Cynicism. But in practice, it far overshoots the mark, ending up spiced up with gratuitous gore, cursing, and sex, none of which makes the story any better and which wouldn't impress anybody but Beavis and Butthead. The show will also demonstrate that it's a harder universe now by having lots of unpleasant things happen to the characters or giving the characters a particular issue they can spend all their time angsting about; as with the sex and violence, this will usually be done in a ham-handed and immature manner and will come off as being annoying, if not actually laughable.
Things are even worse if there is a Retool to make a pre-existing show Darker And Edgier. This is usually a sign of Jumping The Shark.
The most obvious example is in comic books, as a rebellion against the Silver Age led to more than a decade of clumsy attempts to show that comics are Darker And Edgier, and thus " not kid stuff anymore." What this actually showed was that comics were often kid stuff with gore, cursing, and sex. See Bronze Age, Dark Age, and Nineties Anti Hero.
Occasionally, it actually works. The trick is, naturally, to add good, adult writing to go with your adult themes.
Darker And Edgier is rapidly joining Hilarity Ensues as one of the most beaten-to-death marketing slogans.
Also mocked as Grim Dark, derived from the tagline of Warhammer 40000. (In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war.) Sometimes paired with World Half Empty.
Note that this is not the same as a Deconstruction. A Deconstruction plays out the genre's conventions to their logical conclusions in order to criticize the initial genre conventions. This does not have to be dark (see for instance Deconstructive Parody) and it doesn't prevent things from turning out well. Darker And Edgier just adds 'dark' elements to try and get the same effect. Sometimes works, sometimes doesn't. Usually shows up in Dark Fic.
Compare Grimmification, Hotter And Sexier, American Kirby Is Hardcore, Bloodier And Gorier, Obligatory Swearing, Cerebus Syndrome. Contrast Lighter And Softer.
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Examples:
Advertising
- Captain Birdseye (Captain Iglo in some parts of europe), a nice and old man on a sailing boat with a crew composed of children got a Darker And Edgier makeover during the nineties. He became a rugged 30-something submariner who fought against pirates. Backlash came hard and fast, and this version was never seen again.
Anime and Manga
- Often blamed for the critical failure of Digimon Tamers, although not only did the tone actually work for this season, it wasn't even played up in the ads at all.
- On the flip side, Yu-Gi-Oh 5Ds went the way of Akira in order to achieve Darker And Edgier. In fact, popular consensus among the show's fans is that the sheer spike in Darker And Edgier material in it was a deliberate act to keep Four Kids Entertainment from Macekreing it... not like it hasn't stopped them from trying.
- Little known fact: Akira was conceived as a Darker And Edgier retelling of Gigantor.
- Every adaptation of Read Or Die seems to do this. The manga is fairly light-hearted (and the Read or Dream manga entirely so). The OVA has a bit of camp to it, but gets fairly dark, with a Bittersweet Ending. The TV series, R.O.D the TV, manages to get more depressing nearly every episode, but eventually rewards its long-suffering cast with a happy ending. Strangely, they keep improving.
- The first few seasons of Dragon Ball were fairly light in tone, without the characters being in real danger. It became darker and more violent once the assassin Tao Pai Pai hit the picture. This continued with the Piccolo Daimao saga, in which many main and past characters are killed by Piccolo and his "sons". This tradition continued into the sequel series Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball GT, eventually escalating to the point where entire planets were being destroyed.
- But don't worry, they all got better.
- Tekkaman Blade is a Darker and Edgier version of an earlier series called Tekkaman the Space Knight Nothing like having to kill your family (except your sister's heroic sacrifice and going comatose to nail that in the head. Thankfully D-boy gets better in the sequel
- Pokémon Special, a manga spinoff of Pokémon's game version has fights to the death for everyone, humans included.
- Gatekeepers, while dark in places, ended upbeatly, with the notion that people can stand against The Heartless with The Power Of Love and Burning Spirit. Cue Gatekeepers 21, where 20 years later most of the cast is dead and The Heartless are winning.
- Neo Human Casshern while not a very kid friendly had a darker and edgier upgrade with Casshern SINS
- Urasawa's Pluto does this to Tezuka's Astro Boy, showing the grittier side of life in the twenty-first century. This being Urasawa, it works tremendously well as the writing and themes are thoughtful and touching as well as dark and edgy.
- GaoGaiGar FINAL was much darker than the television show for two main reasons: first, it was an OAV so they could get away with things that wouldn't fly on broadcast television, like explictedly sexual Fanservice. And secondly, it was aimed at a seinen audience rather than at children.
- Arguably happened to the anime installments of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. The series starts out as an archetypal, formulaic Magical Girl series, but then the first season turns it into more of a serious action series with magical girls. The second season, meanwhile, goes from having no real villains to uncovering a Sealed Cosmic Horror. The third season then becomes a straight military series with a little bit of magical girls.
- The fandom tends to do this. It seems everyone wants it to be Darker And Edgier. Then, there's the popular "Betrayer S" doujinshi, which literally cranks the darkness and edgy-ness up to 11. Hayate and Nanoha being Lawful Evil. However, it works. The thing is an awesome must-read, if only for the amazing art. You can get it here.
- The OVA of Magical Play is a much darker affair than the slapstick comedy of most of the original series—up to and including characters dying horrible deaths in big puddles of blood.
- Mahou Sensei Negima did this intentionally as part of a Genre Shift from an Unwanted Harem to Shounen. The two most obvious indicators of it are the characters' pasts being revealed, and Bloodless Carnage getting thrown out the window. The series still maintains it's Fan Service and humor, but breaks them up with stretches of action and drama.
- The first anime as compared to the manga of Full Metal Alchemist.
Comics
- In comics, this move is most famous for Batman. After the end of the Batman TV series, it became apparent the campy tone had burnt out, and DC realized a change was needed quickly. With Denny O'Neil's writing and predominantly Neal Adams' gothic and realistic art, Batman was made a darkly fearsome night stalker much like he was in the original stories before he was softened for kids. Later, in the mid-80s, Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns overclocked this to dangerous levels. Also note that the pattern repeated itself with the movies. After the increasingly silly Batman Forever and Batman And Robin movies failed, DC started again from the beginning with the more serious Batman Begins.
- The shift also carried over to Batman's Rogues Gallery, most notably the Joker, who had been written as a comical "Clown Prince of Crime", but now returned to his psychotic murderous roots.
- In the '90s the Batgirl mantle was passed from Barbara Gordon to Cassandra Cain, a character who came complete with a much darker origin (she's a mute trained from birth to be an assassin) and a costume that wouldn't look out of place at a BDSM club. Fortunately, she was written well enough in her own series to not come off as completely ridiculous.
- Bat-Azrael was a darker, edgier, more brutish version of Batman, created to show what makes the true Batman not a vigilante. However, DC was totally ready to keep Azrael as Batman, if it sold well enough.
- Jason Todd as Batman is similar to Azreal: a thuggish, heavily armored Batman who guns criminals down with his pair of pistols. Fans have taken to calling him "Gunbats".
- Even the first two Batman movies with Michael Keaton were intended to be darker-and-edgier versions of the Dark Knight than the campy Adam West Batman most people had grown up with, partly in an attempt to cash in on the popularity of The Dark Knight Returns comic.
- Indeed, the Dark Age was an instance of this for the entire American Comic Book medium.
- The Transformers Generation 2 comic books, loosed from even the moderate Contractual Immortality restrictions they had been operating under before, promptly started massacring the cast. Issue #1 cover copy: "This is Not Your Father's Autobot." #2: "Fort Max Gets the Ax." #3: "Killing Frenzy." The characters would also kill without hesitation and use guns that weren't their signature weapons.
- Here's one way to kill the party: Turn cheerful, bouncy Robbie Baldwin from the playfully heroic Speedball into an apparent murderer with a guilt complex worthy of Angel. Now he calls himself Penance, and wears a suit with 612 built-in points of pain, one for each person killed that day. His new powers can only manifest when he is in pain.Way to go, Marvel.
- However, Marvel mitigates this by having the newly christened Penance make an appearance with Squirrel Girl, in which Penance shouts at her about how she "DOESN'T UNDERSTAND" and that "his pain is.. too DEEP for [her]," all the while banging his helmeted head angstily against a wall.
- Recently in Thunderbolts, however, Penance has come to terms with the Stamford incident not being his fault. In his Crowning Moment Of Awesome, he reveals to Nitro the real reason for the suit. The suit wasn't for Robbie, although his survivor's guilt led him to wear it as a form of cutting, it was for Nitro. Robbie captured Nitro in Latveria to punish him for the Stamford incident, put him in the suit and proceeded to beat the CRAP out of him, after which he removes the last spike from his own chest to symbolize that he's freed himself of guilt.
- More recently Marvel had Baldwin mindwiped and he has now forgotten everything except that he killed people in Stamford and should be guilty over it. Damn you Marvel.
- Here's another way to kill the party: Take Slapstick, a living cartoon Deadpan Snarker powered by the Rule Of Funny, then turn him into a docile Ax Crazy drone who beats guards into comas. Way to go, Civil War.
- Much of Marvel's Ultimate Universe runs in this vein. A stunning amount of the process of its "updating" traditional Marvel characters for the modern era has involved inflating the sex and violence content, as well as gratuitous Squick (e.g. the Hulk isn't merely violent or even murderous but cannibalistic; Quicksilver isn't just very protective of his sister the Scarlett Witch but in a sexual relationship with her; Tony Stark is a genius as expected — due to a painful cancer-like affliction which has spread brain matter throughout his body and will soon kill him). Not to mention that "updating" personalities means turning pretty much everyone into a complete and utter Jerkass. Spider-Man largely escaped, but the Avengers and X-Men were all turned into such vile bastards that... well... they wouldn't exactly look out of place on the new Battlestar Galactica. Oddly enough, Iron Man is actually less of a dick in the Ultimate universe.
- Stark started an extradimensional concentration camp in the mainline universe. He had nowhere to go but up.
- The very worst Character Derailment in the Ultimate Universe is Captain America, who in the mainline universe is the embodiment of American ideals and values, including but not limited to equality, openness to political discourse, and dedication to international harmony. Ultimate Cap is a racist, sexist, hardliner who calls the French cowards, despite the fact that he fought alongside the Resistance in WWII. His characterization is more of a Deconstruction of the original idea: a man who's been frozen in ice since the 1940s and yet has to be the quintessential American hero for today, despite being the hero of (and thus holding ideals from) yesterday.
- What's really sad here is that Mark Millar's original portrayal of Ultimate Cap was neither racist nor sexist. That was Character Derailment from later writers. Yes, they took something Mark Millar wrote and made it worse.
- For example, the scene where he believed Nick Fury was a Skrull because he was an African-American General. Its not that cap has anything against black people (he seems to have no problems working under Fury until much later on when their philosophies diverged.) He was simply acknowledging a reality from his era that black people didn't make it into the upper ranks which made him suspicious given that he had been fighting shapeshifters.
- And, apparently, even the Ultimates weren't edgy enough for (Millar's) Fury's taste, as he's jettisoned all of the surviving ones except Hawkeye and started picking himself a new black ops team made of even bigger bastards, including a Wasp who has a chip implanted in her head to keep her from going back to being a terrorist, Tony Stark's completely amoral big brother, a Spider-Man who induces suicide in people, and a Hulk created by cloning and Frankenstein methods.
- Said Ultimate Universe spread to the 616-universe, as far as evil Iron Man and Reed Richards and Cyclops expelling Xavier from the X-Men (even though Cyclops utterly bombed as Top Guy at the school as far as Xavier saving the X-Men's asses during the Messiah Complex X-Over) and starting his own murder squad, a move even WOLVERINE found distasteful and only agreed to lead to try and keep Scott from turning Wolfsbane, X-23, and Warpath into soulless murderers). Not to mention the whole "Spider-Man selling his soul" crap.
- Not to mention the whole "Professor X is no better than Magneto" creep from the Ultimate to the main universe that was exemplified by Deadly Genesis where it was revealed that Professor X lead a team of X-Men to their deaths rescuing his original team from Krakoa and just mind-wiped everyone into forgetting that it happened and trying again with another new team. And that Professor X later realized that the Danger Room was becomming sentient but ignoring it leading to Danger being created years later.
- A 2004 Thundercats mini, Thundercats: The Return should count. Lion-O gets trapped in the Book of Omens for five years, and when he gets out he finds the Thundercats beaten and enslaved by Mumm-Ra. Of particular note are Wilykit and Wilykat. Let's just say that puberty has been good to them, and that Mumm-Ra has the same tailor for his slaves as Jabba the Hutt.
- Not to mention the implied rape of Cheetara by the Mutants.
- The sequel Thundercats: Dogs of War retains the same grittiness and furry fanservice, although naming the bad guys Doberlord and Diablodor detracts bit from the supposed drama.
- Marvel as much as said at the time that the thinking behind USAgent, War Machine and Thunderstrike was to have Darker And Edgier versions of Captain America, Iron Man and The Mighty Thor, without losing the originals. There's even a famous Avengers cover of the two versions facing off. Though created prior to the decade, they would see their heyday as Nineties Anti Heroes.
- Brazilian comic Monica's Gang, which in 2008 received, aside from the regular, comedic title◊ starring children, a manga version◊, changing art style, characters' age and personality, and more serious storylines with some elements directly taken from Japan such as sorcerers and Mecha.
- The DCU's post-Crisis universe was so grim it supposedly drove the Silver Age-inspired Superboy-Prime crazy— causing him to become a mass-murdering fanatic and perhaps the darkest and edgiest DC character of all time.
- The new Wolverine led X-force team, now reborn as the X-men "black ops" team. Where everyone wears black leather and has red eyes, and there is much growling and slashing had by all◊. I mean, look at them. LOOK AT THEM.◊
- If you feel the need for a palette cleanser, look at them here◊.
- Surprisingly enough, the book is quite good.
- Dare, a 1991 take on Frank Hampson's iconic British 1950s space explorer Dan Dare. The 1991 version was written for Toxic magazine by Grant Morrison, and illustrated by Rian Hughes. Dare awakes in the 1990s to find that Britain has become a capitalist society, and that a thinly-disguised parody of Margaret Thatcher has sold Britain to the evil Mekon. During the course of the story all of the main characters are killed - Digby even has his arm blown off - and the final edition ends with Dare blowing up London with a nuclear bomb.
Fan Fiction
- Arguably any Fan Fic with a higher content rating than the source material is this by definition, but especially anything labelled as Dark Fic.
- 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 conterts, have sex, and proclaim how gothic "goffik" they are.
Films
- Babe 2: Pig in the City is very much this trope compared to the original. The original was about a little pig on a farm who was taken in by the female sheepdog and was mostly lighthearted. Tear Jerker here and there, but the darkest element was when Babe's parents are hearded to the slaughterhouse. In Babe 2, there's a hotel with illegal pets, animal control, a viscious bulldog that nearly hangs him trying to kill Babe, and one of those little wheelchair dogs who almost dies. Nightmare Fuel for some kids.
- The film of Miami Vice divided audiences by going this direction. The original was fairly dark itself, though: it just had more trappings of the '80s.
- The rebooted James Bond series, starting with Casino Royale, is an example of this trope done right. The excessive special effects, cheesy one-liners, and flashy gadgets that characterized previous Bond movies were thrown away in favor of a more mature and realistic plot, a flawed main character, and short, brutal fight scenes. In short, the writers focused more on substance than style while applying this trope, which is more than you can say for many other examples mentioned here. Oh, and swapping baccarat for poker. It's more sofistercated.
- Interestingly, this also involved bringing it a lot closer to the source material. Fleming liked Sean Connery as Bond, but since he died the films had been getting progressively Lighter And Softer.
- Licence To Kill was also a grittier approach to the Bond series, due to Timothy Dalton's portrayal of 007 and some influences from those days' television such as Miami Vice.
- The 2007 Transformers movies and its sequel. While we expect nastiness from the Decepticons, Optimus Prime is quite the cold-fueled killer when it comes to his foes, and the property destruction and robot body count (killed in graphic detail, we might add) is immense. There's also far, far more sex jokes, swearing, dirty humor and Megan Fox in skimpy outfits than you'd really expect from a movie based on a child's toy line.
- While many versions of The Phantom Of The Opera go in the opposite direction, the 1989 film turned the story into a bloody slasher flick, with Robert "Freddy Krueger" Englund in the title role. Really.
- Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom took this direction what with its plot about an evil cult using dark magic to pull people's hearts out and enslave cute children. This was apparently George Lucas' brilliant idea, based either on how well going darker had worked with the second installment of the original Star Wars trilogy (this ignores the fact that Doom is actually a prequel) or just because Lucas was going through a divorce at the time. Either way, Doom was later counterbalanced by the Lighter And Softer Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
- Of course, the original had head asploding galore and the Nazis. This editor honestly admits he had no idea Doom was supposed to be darker until he came to this wiki...
- Was it supposed to be darker or just more disgusting? Eyeball soup, monkey brains for dessert, the scene with all the insects...
- Hey, that part was meant to be funny
- Warner Bros' recent announcement on the future of their comic book movies implies that they are all getting the Darker And Edgier treatment (even the planned reboot of Superman), to capitalize on the success of The Dark Knight. It remains to be seen how effective this new direction is going to be, with the planned Shazam film having already suffered the consequences for not being "grim and gritty" enough.
- Rob Zombie's Halloween. More blood, more cursing, the Myers are pretty much rednecks, etc. etc. Even Laurie Strode's character falls into this category and isn't as likeable as Jamie Lee Curtis.
- Rob Zombie's take on Halloween was so much DarkerAndEdgier that at times it felt like soft core porn with murders occasionally inserted. It's probably the only mainstream slasher flick where you see more than boobs and pubes at one point. Most of the cast seemed to exist for the sheer purpose of having sex, cursing, or verbally mocking even the slightest most trivial hint of good character. They weren't the easiest bunch to sympathize with, to put it mildly.
- Richard Kelly wrote a screenplay for Louis Sachar's lighthearted Black Comedy, Holes, that went in this direction. Instead of searching for buried treasure at a juvenile delinquent summer camp, the movie would have had the boys searching for nuclear weapons in a post-apocalyptic Texas. One scene has Stanley visiting a prostitute. Mercifully, the studio used the screenplay written by Sachar himself.
- Excalibur, John Boorman's 1981 take on the legend of King Arthur. The film combined magical realism with gritty, bloody violence, reaching a peak of dark edginess in an early scene in which a knight in blood-stained armour rapes a duchess played by the director's daughter. The film often came across as a bigger-budget variation of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Stripped of its humour, the Python film was itself a darker and edgier take on the legend, inspired in part by Robert Bresson's similarly downbeat 1974 film Lancelot du Lac. It almost seems as if dark, edgy versions of the King Arthur legend outnumber all others.
- Return to Oz, a 1985 continuation of The Wizard of Oz. Since the events of the first film, Dorothy has been sent to a mental institution for tests; she is eventually catapulted back to Oz, which has become a surreal Bosch-esque nightmare hell in the interim. The film was one of several Disney productions from the last half of the studio's wilderness years, and was a box-office flop.
- Probably because everybody was expecting it to be light and fluffy. It's actually a lot closer to the books than the 1939 version, Or So I Heard, and what I've seen of it is quite good given its '80s FX.
- Home Alone 3.
- The Harry Potter films since Prisoner of Azkaban.
- Altough, truth be told, the third book in the series is where things actually start to get increasingly darker and edgier.
- The Pirates Of The Caribbean sequels.
- Incredibly, the film adaptation of Watchmen is best described as this trope applied to Watchmen itself. The sex, violence and language (especially the violence, which has the slightly more heroic Nite Owl and Silk Spectre
maiming killing foes when previously that was the sole province of the Comedian and Rorschach) have all been dialed up to 11, typically losing quite a bit of the original novel's characterization in the process...Your Mileage May Vary, though.
- Circular saw + forearms. The epitome of this trope done badly.
- Amen to that. This troper has never seen a more gratuitous, unearned, and completely unnecessary scene of violence in a film. It would have been a lot better if it had been left at the bloody spray we got in theaters, but the Director's Cut DVD felt the need to actually show the arms being cut off. Sad, as most of the extra footage in that version actually adds quite a bit to the story and characterization (minus the needlessly redundant scene where the scientists proclaimed that Dr. Manhattan was on Mars), though Your Mileage May Vary.
Literature
- R.A. Salvatore's Drizzt has, in recent iterations especially, sailed headlong into this territory. All of this jives strangely with the original portrayal of the character (who it should probably be noted wasn't actually intended to be the hero), who was more cheerful — a mix of a devil-may-care style swordsman/rogue, and a mentor for Wulfgar when he wasn't. Admittedly, he was still quite un-talkative when around strangers.
- Which may be caused by author's own attitude, considering there was even little self-deconstruction (Dark Mirror). Indeed, Salvatore's writings seem to indicate that the cheerful face he wore in the first novel was something of a mask.
- Diana Gabaldon's Lord John Grey series, historical mysteries concerning a secondary character from her main set of historicals, come across as an attempt to be both Darker And Edgier and Hotter And Sexier, using the seedy aspects of the protaganist's forbidden love affairs, him being gay and the setting being the 18th century, for all the shock they're worth. They may or may not have managed it. (Her main books are themselves essentially Darker and Edgier versions of the 'roguish Scots in kilts' type of historical romance, though significantly better written- there's still smouldering glances, kilts, time travels and duels, but the male love interest's the one who suffers all the traumatic villain-initiated rape scenes and Gabaldon doesn't hold back on the gore or inequality much.)
- Really? With all the horrible stuff that happens to Jamie and Claire's family, Lord John and the Private Matter felt like a breather.
- Nodded to with the "Adult Edition" of the Harry Potter novels, which swap out the cartoonish dust jackets with John Grisham-style artwork.
- This is what the author has promised for the fourth Warrior Cats arc, and if the latter half of Sunrise is any indication of what the fourth series will be like, it certainly will be.
- Wicked and The Wizard of Oz. The Wizard of Oz is a fluffy, heartwarming story of a few friends in a magical country. Wicked, the novel, doesn't go more than a few pages without some swear word or mention of sex, or just sex. Gregory Maguire had a pretty dirty mind... there is a lot of weird romance in it, like Elphaba's father and mother were both in love with the same man, Elphaba's roommate was in love with her (but married a older rich guy, who all Gelphie shippers insist is an abusive ass), Elphaba's guy friend and his friend may have had a hint of romance... it never ends.
- And yet this isn't the actual thrust of the plot. The Wizard is a tyrant, using a secret police and assassination to suppress dissension and many ethnic groups. Conscious, sapient Animals are sent to farms and stripped of their rights, resulting in many Animals going into hiding. Elphaba herself is willing to commit murder to help her cause, and works for what can only be called a terrorist group at one point. Her mentor, Doctor Dillamond, is brutally murdered for coming close to proving the minor point that Animals (the sapient kind) and animals (the normal kind) and humans are made from the same stuff. Religious tensions between Tick-tokism (straw-man science), Lurline (straw man paganism), and the Unionists worshiping the Unnamed God tears apart society. The Wizard's projects come at severe cost in life, such as the destruction of the Quadlings' country for ruby mines. Racism between humans - especially towards Winkies and Quadlings, is common (though Munchkinlanders of means always "marry into height)." The land is caught in a terrible drought. The Yellow Brick Road and Emerald City are both wasteful boondoggles. Witch sex is hardly the 'darker and edgier' in Wicked.
- Which, oddly enough, was Lighter And Fluffier-ered back to about the same level as The Wizard Of Oz by the megahit Broadway musical.
- Another Gregory Maguire novel, Mirror Mirror, starts off as an interesting take on Snow White... and quickly devolves into lots of kink and squick. (Menstruation does not work that way!)
- The Harry Potter books tended to get Darker And Edgier as they went along.
- Which was no accident. Rowling set out to write a series that would grow up with its audience, and it was published over a decade- so the same 10-year-olds expected to read
Sorcerer's Philosopher's Stone were expected to be about 20 when they read Deathly Hallows, and ready for more mature fare.
- The Sword Of Truth series tends to feel like a Darker And Edgier knockoff of The Wheel Of Time a lot of the time.
- When it's not being a Darker and Edgier
fantasy deep novel of philisophical reach FANTASY knockoff of The Fountainhead.
- The recent Discworld novels are a perfect example of Darker And Edgier done right, especially Night Watch. They lose the obvious-parody humor of the early novels for more subtle (but just as funny) stuff, and gain darker plots.
- Fairly, it could be considered that the Later discworld novels are Terry Pratchett becoming more mature. But, being a Gamer, it took him until his Sixties.
- Many of the poems in Songs of Experience are darker counterparts to poems in Songs of Innocence, for example "THE Chimney Sweeper" to "The Chimney Sweeper", "Infant Sorrow" to "Infant Joy", and both "The Human Abstract" and the cut poem "A DIVINE IMAGE" to "The Divine Image".
- During the sixties and seventies there was a period in Science Fiction called the New Wave. There was an influx of new authors into the science fiction field who wanted to make it more "literary" and "experimental." This was usually accomplished by including a great deal of sex, setting the stories in dystopian futures that were far along the cynical scale of the Sliding Scale Of Idealism Versus Cynicism, replacing Science Hero protagonists with angsty, passive, unlikable and unheroic characters, and embracing the True Art Is Incomprehensible mantra. Many of the New Wave authors were openly contemptuous of all previously existing science fiction and tried to surgically remove its optimism, sense of wonder, and all the other things that made it good. Science fiction was stuck in the New Wave rut until the early eighties, when authors like David Brin, Greg Bear, and Vernor Vinge made optimism and old school hard sf and Space Opera popular again. The New Wave did have some positive effects, it helped break some of the field's sexual taboos for one thing. Plus a lot of great authors, like Michael Moorcock, Ursula K Le Guin, Harlan Ellison, Philip Jose Farmer, and Philip K Dick, either got their start or reached their height during the New Wave. But generally, the New Wave was to Science Fiction as the Dark Age was to Comics.
Live Action TV
- The Doctor Who spinoff Torchwood was billed as "Darker and Edgier" than its family-aimed parent, and was shown late at night. Unfortunately, with the show keeping the visual feel of Doctor Who, the swearing, sex and "adult themes" grated even further. It was mentioned in SFX magazine that the episodes which worked best were either the ones which didn't go Darker And Edgier, or the ones that didn't tie into the Whoniverse.
- This really only applies to Season 1. Season 2 was still relentlessly grim but it developed its own style and lost that feel of being "dark and edgy" for the heck of it. It also became a lot more willing to poke (albeit dark) fun at itself.
- And then there was Chilrden of Earth.
- Conversely, the Children's BBC series The Sarah Jane Adventures is "Lighter and Softer" than the original series.
- Doctor Who itself, starting with the new series and the 9th Doctor, is Darker And Edgier than the original series, introducing a large new angst source and the sudden possibility of romance.
- Debatable, to the point that the new series could in some lights be described as Lighter And Softer (cat nuns, anyone?). Unintentional silliness caused by the low budget aside, the original series was consistently strange and had some very dark episodes (as an example, Genesis of the Daleks involves radiation sickness, mutation, slave labourers who'll be killed after they stop being useful, summary execution and of course nuclear war - ignoring all the body-horror elements of Davros and the Daleks themselves).
- The 1990s series of New Adventures novels, billed as "Stories too deep and too wide for the small screen", often fell into Darker And Edgier territory, as did the later BBC Books series. This may have been an influence on the series revival, particularly the concept of Gallifrey and the Time Lords being destroyed.
- Doctor Who has varied in tone and theme over it's forty years so frequently that there's been numerous Darker And Edgier periods and Lighter And Softer periods, so it's difficult to say that the new series is any grimmer / lighter than the old series. The new series itself tends to zigzag from one to the other wildly; for every cat-nurse, there's an insane cannibalized future human reduced to a head in a metal tank travelling back in time from the end of the universe to exterminate it's human ancestors largely for shits and giggles.
- One particular example of a classic Doctor Who Darker And Edgier period is Eric Saward's tenure as script-editor. Saward was a big believer in showing the consequences of the violence surrounding the Doctor, and tended to adopt a darker writing and editing style which eventually culminated in Season Twenty Three, which was widely criticised for it's increase on visceral shocks and gore, the unlikeable characterization of the Sixth Doctor and a lot of plots in which grimdark mercenaries and various other Jerkasses seemed to play heavy roles (in some cases, they got better lines and more to do than the Doctor himself). It got so bad that this was reportedly one of the motivating features behind the eighteen month hiatus that the show was put under soon after, and when it returned the producers made notable efforts to make the
- The revival of Battlestar Galactica. This is one of the more successful — and for that matter, logical — cases of darkening. The original Battlestar Galactica wasn't exactly WAFFy, but it did devolve into 1970s camp a lot.
- Parodied on CSI (of all places), where the Darker and Edgier and Bloodier and Gorier version of a Star Trek expy was so bad that even Boomer and (word of) God were appalled. fortunately for the CSI 'verse the creator of the D&E&B&G version is also the episode's Asshole Victim
- Speaking of CSI:, CSI New York was supposed to be the Darker and Edgier counterpart to the Brighter and Shinier CSI Miami: Mac Taylor lost his wife in 9/11; the lab was in a dingy 100-year old stone building; the area where the deceased were identified by their loved ones was a cramped, dark room where the corpses were lifted into the light by a hydraulic "elevator"; and, of course, liberal abuse of Bad Blue Lighting (lampshaded in the pilot when Mac and H are lit by their respective filters: H is bathed in a warm orange glow while Mac is in cold blue shadow). Thankfully, this nonsense only lasted one season.
- Smallville's Season 3. And Season 8, arguably.
- The 2007 revival of Bionic Woman.
- During the US broadcast of Seasons Four and Five of Degrassi The Next Generation on The-N, all commercials for the show emphasized that each episode would be more "intense" than the last, because "Degrassi — It Goes There." The show had always been melodramatic, but the commercials now went out of their way to show that every character was to suffer (venereal disease, teen pregnancy, getting cyber-stalked, etc.). Some fans loved this, but others sneered that The-N was hardly "intense" when it refused to show an episode about abortion. Eventually it got so over-the-top that The-N stopped the Darker And Edgier commercials, and switched to self-parodying commercials instead.
- Star Trek Deep Space Nine
- Season 3 of Star Trek Enterprise.
- Season 2 of Desperate Housewives.
- Seasons 3-5 of Miami Vice are a marked departure from the first two seasons. This was largely caused by Law & Order writer Dick Wolf taking up head writer duties on the show. The Daytona was destroyed and replaced with the Testarossa, the pastel colours disappeared, the plots got much more serious (see Zito's death), and the whole enterprise spiraled downwards into mediocrity.
- Kaamelott is a very popular short-format French TV show, a parody of the Arthurian Legends. Straight comedy in its first seasons, it became more story-oriented later, and also much more darker in its latest season (culminating with Arthur’s attempted suicide). This is not the result of executive melding, though, but the very intent of the original creator of the show.
- Stargate Atlantis was announced to be Darker And Edgier than Stargate SG-1. It dealt with an all around darker atmosphere, Moral Dissonance and Anyone Can Die, along with an arc enemy intended to be even more frightening than the Body Horror of the Goa'uld and Scary Dogmatic Aliens of the Ori. Unfortunately, they forgot to keep them dead, and the enemy's only advantages were soon nullified, until all they had was numbers.
- The Kamen Rider franchise started out by being a darker take on the tokusatsu genre (well, more serious than Super Sentai at least), though it still had a somewhat campy tone throughout its various series. Then came Kamen Rider Black, which had a more serious and dramatic spin on the usual formula. Its lighter and fluffier sequel, Kamen Rider Black RX, was such a humongous mood whiplash that it effectively managed to kill off the franchise for the rest of the Showa era (sound familiar?). Not even a series of one-shot movies could revive it. It took the heroic efforts of the darker and edgier Kamen Rider Kuuga series, to bring the franchise back to life during the Heisei (current) era. While that new revival reinvigorated the formula, it couldn't keep the future series from having progressively poorer ratings and toy sales. This led to Kamen Rider Den-O, a sillier, Merchandise Driven. The following series, Kamen Rider Kiva, is darker, but not by much, judging from the reception. It's only a matter of time before the cycle starts again.
- And yet Den-O has proved to be amazingly successful, with three separate movies. Despite KR's ratings dropping at a continuous rate since Kamen Rider Agito, the Den-O toyline had astronomical sales.
- Then Heisei had Kamen Rider Faiz for its Darker and Edgier title, the novel took it new heights with Rape As Drama. Given the fact that Toshiki Inoue made Choujin Sentai Jetman, one would have expect it to be darker than usual.
- Before the RX incident, X was much darker than V3 or the original, lasting 35 eps, the third shortest Rider series.
- Super Sentai has had various installments like this. The first was JAKQ Dengekitai in 1977 which was much darker than Himitsu Sentai Goranger until ExecutiveMeddling forced the writers to put comic relief in such as the somewhat clownish prettyboy Big One. The series only lasted 39 episodes because of this.
- Tin Man has DG (Dorothy Gale) going to the Outer Zone (yup, the O.Z.) where she befriends a man who has lost part of his brain to evil experimenters, and a tortured empathic beast who seems to be a human/lion crossbreed, and the "Tin Man" of the title, a cop who wears a tin star.
- He was also locked in a metal life support box that kept him alive but awake and unable to move or talk, furthering the Darker And Edgier parallels. The whole thing is pretty much a combination of the movies, the book, and a bunch of Darker And Edgier twists and story details.
- Ironically, that's nowhere near as dark as the Tin Man's origin story in the book.
- Completely inverted in Angel. The 3rd and 4th seasons were one big soap opera, with long lost sons, comatose lovers, abandonment, questionable ethics all around including the cold blooded murder of Fred's old teacher by Fred and Gunn (Fred wanted more torture, but Gunn snapped his neck before she could). The first episode of the 5th season brings back Harmony, the vampire ditz as Angel's new assistant, and the 2nd one brings back Spike as a ghost who can't do anything but stand around cracking jokes. The mailman is a former Mexican wrestler super hero who fought a robot built by the devil, which Wesley later identifies as "El Diablo Robotico". The fact that Spike killed his mother for trying to have incestuous sex with him is played for laughs.
- Of course, this season itself gets darker and darker as it goes along, eventually culminating in Gunn making a Deal With The Devil, Fred dying and being replaced by a demon god thing, and a genuine Bolivian Army Ending. The comic series After The Fall promptly sends all the characters to Hell.
- Power Rangers RPM has subverted this. While its tone is quite dark compared to recent seasons, what with humanity on the brink of extinction and now all survivors are living in a single city out in a barren wasteland, most fans agree that this is a welcome change. Part of that may be that the show still has a sense of humour, yet it takes itself seriously at the same (leading to an interesting, yet amusing discussion on how the ranger suits are not made of spandex).
- The Vampyr: A Soap Opera. Even though the original was pretty dark and edgy to begin with, apparently it didn't have enough nudity or blood.
- Mirrorman REFLEX was a darker and scarier take on the 1971 Toku Mirrorman, which was itself a darker take on the giant heroes of the time.
- Ultraman has had various installments like this. First there was Leo in 1974, which dealt with slavery and had a Kill Em All style ending before Tomino even had his own series.
- And let's not forget Ultraman Nexus, which was supposed to be a Darker And Edgier reboot of the franchise aimed at a shonen/seinen audience, but got Screwed By The Network and placed in a Saturday Morning Kids Slot.
- Robin of Sherwood, a 1984 British television adaptation of the Robin Hood legend. The show retold the Robin Hood story with a combination of pagan magick and the gritty look and tone of John Boorman's 1981 film Excalibur. The characters eschewed bright green tights for primitive camoflague gear, and the show had a semblance of historical realism. The show's legacy was tarnished by the double-blow of Jason Connery in the final series, and the 1991 Kevin Costner film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, which firmly returned the Robin Hood legend to the realm of camp.
- Firefly underwent a very subtle shift when Serenity came out, as the original series was already fairly dark to begin with. The subtlety came as much from the lighting, clothing, and camerawork as it came from the actual events of the movie.
Music
- Done famously and successfully by Pantera in the late 80's. After spending most of the The Eighties as an unknown glam metal band, Pantera became recognized for the the darker and edgier Cowboys from Hell after hiring Phil Anselmo to replace Terry Glaze and trashing their glammy image in favor of a more "street wise" one. They would attempt to make each subsequent album even more darker and edgier throughout the The Nineties. Your Mileage May Vary on these albums and their Testosterone Poisoning.
- Judas Priest went here by releasing Painkiller, an album full of hard-hitting power and speed metal, with none of the happy-go-lucky synthesizers and lyrics of their previous album Turbo (they did keep the synths, but only to evoke dark atmospheres). Subsequent albums (the Ripper Owens period especially) continued the trend, although most fans dismiss these albums (which seems to happen with more Ripper-sung albums; see Iced Earth's album The glorious burden)
- Sonata Arctica's music has been progressing from the standard cheesy excesses endemic to power metal to more grim lyrics and darker sounds. It seems to be working, though one wonders how far they can stretch it...
- Their music has always been a bit dark thematically, though, even if they did used to sound like an explosion in a Skittles factory.
- The cover of Imagine by A Perfect Circle is darker, edgier, and downright depressing. With a simple shift to a minor chord, the song switches from hopeful and uplifting to cynical and depressing. "Imagine all the people sharing all the world! ...yeah, like that'll ever happen..." The change has been likened to going from a friendly, smiling hippie offering you peace and love and flowers, to a grim suicide bomber outlining his manifesto to a huddled, frightened crowd.
- Type O Negative make a Running Gag of doing this to hippie anthems: Seals & Croft's "Summer Breeze", Neil Young's "Cinnamon Girl", several Beatles songs...
- Any cover by Marilyn Manson. Impressive when he picks already-dark or creepy songs.
- Dope's cover of Dead Or Alive's "You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)".
- As well as Ten Masked Men's cover of the same song, and others.
- Progressive metal band Dream Theater has done a little in this direction lyrically and vocally, the only curse words in the band's 16+ year history were in its past three albums (still very few overall), but this change has been mostly for the better, as their softer songs don't really portray the technical brilliance of the instrumentalists, and vocals such as "The smile of dawn/Arrived early May/She carried a gift from her home/The night shed a tear/To tell her of fear and of sorrow and pain, she'll never outgrow" in a track from their 1992 album Images And Words stand in stark contrast to the guitar riffs and drumming, which wouldn't be out of place in a Metallica song. Your Mileage May Vary.
- Neil Young's Rust Never Sleeps album arguably falls into this, compared to Tonight's the Night which was more of a Creator Breakdown.
- Much, though not all, of John Lennon's songwriting took this direction in the late sixties due to a combination of drug use (especially heroin), the influence of Yoko Ono, and a growing disillusionment with his role as a Beatle. This culminated in his 1970 solo album Plastic Ono Band in which, under the influence of primal scream therapy, he expressed his childhood traumas and adult pain starkly and directly in a way that he couldn't do with the Beatles. While Lennon continued to write hard-edged songs afterward, most of his subsequent work was more pleasant and hopeful in tone.
- Anyone remember the old Pink Floyd C Ds with Syd Barret? Remember Bike? Remember the jolly good times? No? Probably because it was Obscured by Clouds or on the Dark Side of the Moon or maybe on the other side of the Wall.
- The musical history of Pink Floyd seems to have been one long slide from the spacey, exploratory psychadelia of Syd Barret, down into Roger Waters' descent into dark, cynical Wangst. Waters' post-PF solo work continues the trend.
- Not so much anymore. A few years ago, he wrote "Hello (I Love You)," the title track from the movie The Last Mimzy.
- The entire musical genre of Doom Metal is one big exercise in how grim and depressing music can get.
- Porcupine Tree have been doing this since 2003 or so. While they never made the most upbeat or happy music out there, there's a definite change between psychedelic, Pink Floyd-influenced rock like The Sky Moves Sideways, and the metal Fear of a Blank Planet, which has ends with "Sleep Together", about the album's 'narrator' trying to convince another teenager to commit suicide with him.
- Van Halen's fourth album, Fair Warning. Most of the band's, silly hard-partying atmosphere (which made them famous) from the previous albums disappears and a heavier, more serious sound is heard. This is mostly attributed to the tensions between lead guitarist Eddie Van Halen and lead singer David Lee Roth at the time. The album features "Mean Street" and a foggy synthesized instrumental "Sunday Afternoon in the Park" that is full of Nightmare Fuel.
- The Counting Crows' first album, August and Everything After, was a sweetly melodic, very subdued folk album. Their second, Recovering the Satellites, added distortion guitar, angry lyrics, and several swear words. Eventually they found a middle ground which worked quite well.
- The formerly cartoonish Gorillaz went Darker And Edgier with their second album, Demon Days.
- Eminem's entire discography has basically been a sine-wave of Lighter And Softer and Darker And Edgier. His 1996 debut Infinite was basically the former, though a series of life events caused him to take the darker content to the nth degree with both The Slim Shady LP and The Marshall Mathers LP, both of which were critical and commercial successes. His subsequent two albums were somewhat Lighter And Softer, though the cycle has begun again with the recently-released Relapse, which serves in and out of this trope. It should, of curse, be noted that each album always has a parodying track somewhere in it.
- Massive Attack. While 'Blue Lines' and 'Protection' weren't entirely sunny, 'Mezzanine' had a sonic background so dark, it absorbed light.
- Trip-Hop as a whole has moved in this direction. It originated as a soothing, acid jazz-inspired blend of hip-hop and dub; in mid 90's, the post-punk influences turned into angry post-grunge riffs, the trippiness became heavy psychedelia, and the Retraux atmosphere traded nostalgia for old horror movie creepiness.
New Media
- The blog Chocolate Hammer mocked this trend with the game Darker and Edgier, in which familiar franchises were warped beyond recognition and readers had to guess what they originally were. The posts in question can be found here and here.
Professional Wrestling
- The WWF's Attitude era gained so much attention because it was so much Darker And Edgier than the days of Super Hero-like wrestlers like Hulk Hogan, the fact that much of the new flavor was imported directly from ECW aside.
Close Professional Wrestling
Tabletop Games
- Warhammer 40000 takes this trope to insane levels. (One of the game's marketing slogans is, "In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war.") Some groups of fans of the game have taken the phrase "grim dark" (taken from the catch phrase of the game) to describe when this trope is used to an extreme, usually implying that it is done in a way that's So Bad Its Good. Something might be Dark and Edgy, but its nothing compared to the GrimDarkness of the Grimdark future of Grimdark.
- Despite this fact, the background of the 5th edition of the game looks like a Darker and Edgier version of 40K. The fact that the Imperium is crumbling is shoved down a reader's throat even more than in previous editions, and there are hints that the Emperor's life-support device is failing (which would completely destroy all human civilisation, since FTL travel is only possible using the Warp — and only the Emperor can create the necessary navigation beacon).
- So... nothing else is new?
- Well, the prices are getting darker and edgier too. The current price for an army box is really Grimdark.
- Dungeons And Dragons 4th Edition has gone both this route and the opposite (Lighter And Softer) simultaneously.
- The wacky gnomes and lust-for-life half-orcs are replaced as player races with dragon-men and demon-children. For the most part, dragonborn and half-orcs fill the same niches; they aren't any more given to brooding than half-orcs, the race most likely to be spawned by rape, already would be. The gnome and tiefling switch is better apples and oranges. Replace the angst-free fun loving inhently magical race with... demon children, who all but gain dark powers by slashing their wrists. Not to mention that they did include a new kind of elves that are shinier, happier, more mystical and just all-around ''better'', like an entire race made of Galadriel. (...some tropers will be in their bunk...)
- Some welcome the lack of gnomes as a basic PC race. Goddamned gnomes.
- Then along came Players Handbook 2 and put Half-Orcs and Gnomes back in again.
- On the other hand, while the default setting has changed from "knights and kingdoms" to "cities are points of light in a sea of darkness", it's more of a "golden age of exploration". Settlements are relatively isolated in the wilderness, and most of the world is unmapped. Cue adventurers. However squared...
- Forgotten Realms definitely went darker, with glorious cathedrals crumbling and different gods and longtime power characters being slain or depowered left and right. Though one must remember that Forgotten Realms wasn't the only campaign setting, just the most popular; other settings, particularly Ravenloft and Dark Sun, were noticably darker than FR was anyway — this more brought FR "down" to Greyhawk's level. Players still have Eberron, with its pulp-adventure-y feel, for less depressing fare.
- On the third hand, the system is much Lighter And Softer, in that every adverse condition that happens to the players can be removed almost instantly. Several of the nastier conditions from earlier editions (e.g. attribute drain) simply don't exist any more, and all of the others either automatically wear off in five minutes, or can be removed by a low-level spell. Hungry? Oh, here are some infinite rations. Room is dark? Plenty of infinite light sources around. The world may be dark and edgy, but hardship for the player characters is non-existent.
- The Pathfinder Adventure Paths and campaign setting have also gotten noticeably Darker And Edgier. The half-orcs' origins as the product are made more explicit, ogres are reimagined as inbred monsters right out of Deliverance, and most monsters explicitly like to eat people. Even the gnomes get in on the act. In Pathfinder, they are fey creatures who have been separated from their original world. If they do not constantly seek out new and ever more sensational experiences, their features begin to 'bleach', the banality of existence aging them to death.
- Bliss Stage is essentially "Bokurano: The Roleplaying Game".
- The World Of Darkness initially marketed itself along these lines, as an "adult role-playing game" for "mature gamers". Apparently feeling that their attempts had failed, White Wolf demolished that line and rebooted it as WoD 2.0, a Darker and Edgier version of the first.
- The setting itself is described as being Modern Day Earth... only, you guessed it, darker and edgier.
- And within the World Of Darkness itself... Changeling. The original game, Changeling The Dreaming had its darker moments, but was widely considered "kiddy" as it was a game about the power of imagination and resisting crushing banality. Then came Changeling The Lost, which hewed much closer to the original myths of The Fair Folk by having the main characters being humans who fought their way back to Earth after being abducted and changed by mad alien gods.
- Magic The Gathering has "Shadowmoor," a plane which is the Darker And Edgier version of the Lighter And Softer "Lorwyn."
Theatre
- Dog Sees God is a play featuring thinly disguised versions of the Peanuts cast in High School. Snoopy was put down after getting rabies and killing Woodstock. Lucy is in an asylum for lighting the little redheaded girl's hair on fire and that's the tip of the iceberg.
Video Games
Web Animation
- The There She Is! series of videos at http://www.sambakza.net/ feature Doki and Nabi, a rabbit who falls in love with a cat. The first two videos are cute and funny, showing Doki chasing Nabi despite his arguing that they are different species, then him getting her a birthday cake. The third and fourth videos show how society is REALLY against this pairing, with the two of them getting injured, property destroyed, pet dying, etc. Not so fun any more, huh?
- Jib Jab, originally, light in tone, went from gently mocking the two candidates to mocking McCain and Obama straight up, along with the broken promises made by presidents in election day that never come to light when they are actually in office. The "Year in Reviews" went from hoping it'll get better to, most recently, the 2008 Year in Review summing up everything that's bad, and even adding "wars and famine" to the end.
Web Comics
- Spoofed by the Stick Figure Comic Stickman And Cube in this strip. The cartoonist announces that he is making the comic "Darker And Edgier", gives the characters new Wangst-ridden backstories and sums it up by saying that "basically everyone's just going to shoot each other and swear a lot." At which point Stickman says "Oh, HELL no." The characters later get back at the cartoonist for this. With extreme prejudice.
- In a May 2008 Dominic Deegan strip, the titular characters learns, to his horror, that his favorite comic is about to become Darker And Edgier...by retconning the hero into a demon. It's like making Superman Darker And Edgier by giving him a German heritage, a small mustache, and a great personal hatred of Jews.
- Butterfly, an Affectionate Parody of Batman, spoofs the phenomenon here. The specific point of reference is Christopher Nolan's latest Batman films.
- Occurred in A Modest Destiny, around the third story arc. Up to that point it was a lighthearted and humorous fantasy spoof. Then came "The War of Fate" arc, which was much more darker and serious, such as the female lead considering getting an abortion.
- The original material that Exterminatus Now is based on was 'The Grim Darkness', a project to make the Archie Sonic comic universe GRIMDARK by blending it with Warhammer 40000. According to Word Of God: "...in reflection, one of the worst ideas I have ever had." The actual webcomic makes fun of it.
- Ctrl Alt Del. Let's not forget the shift from "two game nerds on a couch" to "personal responsibility and miscarriage tragedy".
- WapsiSquare has certainly gotten much darker and edgier since it shifted from a slice-of-life comedy, to a supernatural drama; dragging in themes of suicide, human sacrifice, manifestating personal demons, and a looming quasi-apocalypse.
- "Breakfast Of The Gods" is an intermittently-updated Darker And Edgier and Bloodier And Gorier use of breakfast cereal mascots, of all things. Tightly-written and exquisitely drawn, it's D&E&B&G at its finest. Frankenberry is a sadistic thug, Sonny the Cuckoo is batshit insane, The Trix Rabbit is a private investigator, Toucan Sam runs a bar and acts a lot like Rick.
- Shortpacked mocks this tendency here and again in reference to GI Joe: Resolute.
- Obligatory xkcd parody here. Harriet The Spy??
- The concept is mocked in this Fey Winds page.
Web Originals
Western Animation
- Even Wallace And Gromit isn't immune to this. Their first outing a grand day out has them going to the moon for a picnic. While the recent a matter of loaf and death has the duo targeted by a serial killer (it was Played For Laughs but still).
- Spoofed in this. Where's Brain?
- Actually not too far from the truth, there seemed to be a new Inspector Gadget series, where the humor was announced to be darker, the characters more anime esque, among other things, the only thing stupid sounding about the show is that Gadget was going to fight ghosts, for Petes sake.
- Warner Brothers attempted to make the classic Looney Tunes characters Darker And Edgier in the 2005 series Loonatics Unleashed, only to result in massive outcry against the idea, and an overhaul resulting in a strangely drawn cartoon that wasn't very much in the way of new or interesting. A Re Tool for the second season attempted to add more references to the original Looney Tunes, with mixed results.
- The Legion Of Super Heroes' Animated Adaptation started out fairly light in tone, but the second season features a future laid waste by an evil warlord, the replacement of the young Clark Kent version of Superman with a rather disagreeable clone called Superman X, an utterly destroyed New Metropolis, and the death of one of Triplicate Girl's selves. Dark and edgy enough? No? How about, Superman X says Brainiac 5's going to do something original-Brainiac-level nasty at some point in the future. Ultimately, it ends up a lot better than you'd think: Brainiac takes over Brainiac 5, kills Imperiex, but 5 takes back over, and Superman X can go home right and the restoration of the time-stream brings the third Triplicate Girl back.
- V4 LSH in the comic book version, as well as being an example of Running The Asylum, was notorious for this. It was even parodied in the Amalgam Comics Marvel/DC crossover.
- Ben 10: Alien Force, the newer, more dramatic sequel to its predecessor appears to being going in this direction, as allotted by Ben, Gwen, and Kevin being aged up into their adolescence. Aside from the age difference, one drastic change is that Ben now retains wounds inflicted while in alien form even after he's reverted back human.
- Don't forget the strangely Aryan-like aliens.
- ReBoot pulled this off rather well in season 3 by showing two young characters suddenly grown up, adapting to the change in writing style, introducing new locations, and expanding the scope of the series.
- Transformers Animated did similar, starting with the season three opener "Transwarped". Instead of the usual light-hearted action/humor, it explored the ethical implications of building a sentient but simple-minded superweapon, dealt with Ratchet's troubled past, involved far more visceral violance (albeit to robots) and brought several main character close to death. Not to mention that as of "Where Is Thy Sting" one Autobot character's been killed off grotesquely and the leader of the Autobots is beaten into a coma with his own hammer. We never do see him wake up, by the way.
- Beast Wars, although frequently serious in tone, was also often humourous and silly. Beast Machines, the sequel, begins with planetary genocide and things just degenerate from there.
- Beast Wars itself saw this after the end of season 1, which featured the death of Optimus Primal. The first, episodic, often very campy season stands in contrast to the more mature, more serious later seasons.
- Speaking of Beast Wars, Transformers Animated has a habit of borrowing characters, ideas, or scenery from the earlier Transformers shows and modifying them for its own purposes. In Beast Wars Waspinator was the lovable hapless Butt Monkey who blew up many times but always pieced himself together without any obvious lasting effects. In Animated he's a gigantic, half-crazed technoorganic bent on bloody revenge upon Bumblebee for (accidentally) having him sent to the stockades under accusations of treachery. When he blows up, he's also seen piecing himself back together, but the effect is intensely creepier.
- The Powerpuff Girls underwent this slightly for the movie- It was edgier and more serious than the majority of the series- not that that's hard to accomplish.
- In 2003, John Kricfalusi made a revival of his cartoon Ren and Stimpy, called Ren and Stimpy Adult Party Cartoon, to allow him more freedom on what he couldn't do previously on the show. It was darker, much more violent, the characters used stronger curse words, and it had a lot more blatant sex jokes, including a few episodes where the duo are portrayed as gay lovers.
- However, even though the show had less meddling involving the violence, the renewed show absolutely failed. Reviewers noted that the humor was unappealing, had way too much violence (Moreso than the old show!), among other problems, and the show was pulled from Spike TV after three episodes. One wonders if this could be considered karma for John K.'s planet sized ego.
- To promote the movie, PG-13 version of GI Joe called GI JOE: Resolute has been launched for Adult Swim. The first episode has the Joe's battleship base attacked, Bazooka killed, and Cobra Commander wiping Moscow off the face of the map. Then again, what do you expect when Warren Ellis is doing the writing?
- The Scooby Doo films of the late 90's were much darker than the previous shows and movies. They were very violent, people actually died, the villains were threatening, most of the monsters were real, and a few adult jokes were put in. Unfortunately, by the time What's New, Scooby Doo? premiered, they became Lighter and Softer.
- Arguably, the only time this trope has been used properly with Sonic the Hedgehog (see the video game section for examples of where it wasn't) was with his early 90's TV series of the same name, dubbed "Sat AM" by its fans.
- Batman Beyond can be said to have been this to Batman: The Animated Series, as it featured a lot more character deaths, often in very Family Unfriendly way, as well as the horrid fates of many of the of the original Batman's Rogues Gallery. Then, of course, there was the Return of the Joker.
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