According to science, evolution is slow, undirected, filled with dead ends, and grossly inefficient.
Science Fiction, however, likes to make it more ... intelligent.
Evolutionary Levels is presented in science fiction as a cycle of stable periods punctuated by periods of high mutation where the "leap" to the next stage happens all at once, within the span of a few generations. If you happen to be an individual born during one of these intermediate phases, the story might even have you spend part of your life in the old form, then spontaneously mutate into the new one (see Energy Beings and Ascended to a Higher Plane of Existence for some examples).
One of the most common view of Evolutionary Levels, especially among Social Darwinists who believe in such, is that evolution "improves" life forms by making them stronger, faster, smarter etc. Evolution does not work this way, but works toward utility based on the current environment. "Evolved" humans often have gigantic heads that house massive brains, often giving Psychic Powers along with increased intelligence, and are physically weak. However, this has slowly slid into Discredited Trope territory over the past few decades. Likewise, it's supposedly easy to regress in evolution. A Mad Scientist or a Negative Space Wedgie can hit humans with rays that will turn them into Neanderthals or modern monkeys, regardless of the fact that humans evolved from neither.
Another popular form seems to be how the entirety of evolution is pre-programmed, past and future. Evolution actually works through mutations that are beneficial, in the current environment, spreading through the species over time. The occurs over and over again until a new species forms.
Another popular form involves something evolving while still alive, on its own. While individual cells can mutate, as can the entire life form, this isn't evolution, but simple mutation. Evolution is defined as a population/species wide event. So one person cannot super evolve, as above, into the what would happen in the future.
A related idea is that speciation necessarily results in a "new" and "old" species, with the "old" one freezing as it was or instantly dying out; this results in errors like the "if we came from chimps, why are there still chimps?" argument, and tends to assume that the "goal" of evolution is to become a bipedal tool-user with curious ideas about how it got there, so doing anything else isn't evolving.
Relatedly, in Science Fiction, evolutionary mutations are usually triggered by a change in the environment (aka Lamarckian Evolution).
Evolutionary Levels also have a strange tendency to suddenly affect large populations at once. For example, mutants all around the world suddenly have the same mutation at the same time.
This has been a popular misconception since Darwin started publishing his theories, making this Older Than Radio.
Subtrope of Hollywood Evolution. See Intelligent Gerbil for the way animals always evolve into sentient humanoids. See A God Am I for one end result of sufficient hopping through Evolutionary Levels. See Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence for another. For super power inheritance, see Lamarck Was Right and Superpowerful Genetics. For cases where one jumps levels through use of technology or magic, see Transhuman. And when each generation is on a higher "level" than the previous one, get ready for some Goo Goo Godlike action. For villains using this, see The Social Darwinist, Evilutionary Biologist, Evil Evolves and anyone who believes in Goal Oriented Evolution.
The Ultimate Life Form is at the top of these levels.
The various nonhuman denizens of Digimon. This is lampshaded a few times, explaining Digimon at best can form "complex mimic proteins" from digital information, but thus not really animals. The third season, which provides the above explanation, actually frames it in a completely logical manner: Digimon originated as computer simulations of evolution. Thus, it would make perfect sense that they can rapidly "evolve".
It's also basically treated the same as age, with the Japenese levels named as "Baby", "Child", "Adult", and so on; as a Digimon grows older and stronger they go up the "evolutionary" ladder and can't go back (though the highest level is generally considered as being outside the age metaphor as it normally can't be reached by natural means). The ability to temporarily jump ahead a level or three and then revert back usually only comes from partnering with a human. Some "wild" Digimon can regress, but usually only after taking severe damage - it's implied that this is a defense mechanism that results from their core data forcing the remaining "shell" data to take the lowest "template" it can still support.
The Digimon Adventure novel actually discusses this, but no definite explanation is given for the terminology:
”I wonder why it’s called ‘evolution,’” Koushiro mused, voicing his thoughts to Tentomon this time. “I mean, evolution normally consists of an entire species changing slowly over a long period of time. The changes that you and your friends undergo are more like a transformation. You each transform into something too enormous to be an evolution.”
”Well, I don’t know the answer to that myself,” Tentomon replied. “I can’t give an explanation, but all I’m aware of is that it isn’t a transformation but evolution.”
Digimon levels have been ignored in Digimon Xros Wars in favor of the "age" description however, as even the main site lists the levels of all Digimon coming from Xros Wars to have no level. When actual "evolution" is introduced later on, it's explicitly described as being an Older Alter Ego rather than being a "higher level".
Another thing to note is that evolution paths aren't set in stone, and can apparently go different ways depending on different factors. It's more apparent in tie-in games than the anime, but can be seen a coupletimes when The Hero human gets pissed and his rage causes his partner to evolve into something uncontrollably monstrous.
In GaoGaiGar, Guy Shishio and his girlfriend Mikoto are transformed at the finale of the series into Evoluders, which is stated as the pinnacle of human evolution. As shown by Guy in the later OVAs, Evoluders are able to run as fast as a bullet train, are incredibly strong, can fly, and can survive in the vacuum of space thanks to a nifty green aura they can generate.
Newtypes in Mobile Suit Gundam were originally written as the next stage of human evolution, but later series distance themselves from this conception. The finale of Gundam X explicitly debunks the notion; it is, however, however set in an alternate universe to the majority of the series featuring newtypes, and doesn't use the term newtype in the same fashion as them, so whether this holds for the other series or not is questionable.
The Innovators*
not the Innovades, who rather confusingly called themselves Innovators during the second season
of Gundam 00 appear to play the trope straight, with the minor difference that the "evolution" was not entirely natural: it requires the person to be exposed to GN Particles, which do not occur naturally on Earth. By the series' Distant Finale, set 50 years after the conclusion, it is stated that fully 25% of humanity have become Innovators, with the implication that eventually the entire human race will have metamorphosed.
A mid-90s Black Jack movie featured groups of people who had developed incredible and highly advanced abilities in a variety of fields, including athletics and art, used the "next stage" terminology. They developed extremely dangerous side-effects also, and it was eventually revealed that, apparently, limited exposure to chemicals found only in a remote desert migrated across the world and advanced certain individuals by accentuating their natural and pre-existing talents.
The reasoning behind humans suddenly transforming into monsters in the anime adaptation of Go Nagai's Devilman Lady is that they are flukes in the first stages of humanity's next evolution and based on the transformee's talents and personality (e.g. a talented swimmer grows gills and scales, someone with severe A God Am I might become an angel, etc.) The main character is a frail young model that represses all feelings, thoughts, and urges unsuitable for a Yamato Nadeshiko. She transforms into a violent, muscular demon with no inhibitions.
Shido Fuyuki of Get Backers has the ability to take on the characteristics of about 100 different types of animals. They try to reason that, since humans are the most evolved species on Earth, they also have the DNA of all the lower animals. Shido only has the ability to tap into the dormant DNA. Riiiiight.
The chimera ant queen of Hunter × Hunter transfers the "most worthy" DNA of whatever she eats to her progeny, resulting in every batch of eggs giving more powerful (and human-like, since humans are obviously the best food) ants than the last, culminating in the King being the supreme being. Obviously, this makes no damn sense from a scientific point of view.
A major theme of Getter Robo, since the energy that powers their Humongous Mecha is the spirit of evolution itself, or taken another way, the embodiment of life/survival itself.
The Diclonius in Elfen Lied. Well, probably. Maybe. The conspicuously nameless government agency claims they're our evolutionary superiors, genetically programmed to take over the earth in cold-hearted genocide. The protagonists quickly find out that, at least, they're not cold-hearted at all.
Neon Genesis Evangelion has a one-off example in the form of the Eleventh Angel, Iruel. The Angel has the ability to rapidly adapt to its environment (arguably justified by the fact that it's a colony of single cell organisms, allowing it to reproduce with greater speed) and it gets defeated when NERV manages to convince it to self-destruct by creating an environment where death is the most sensible adaptation.
AKIRA and Tetsuo, if the movie's handwave is correct.
One of the ideas in Stardust Memories is that evolutionary levels are contagious on a mass scale—if a world has primitive life, and it's visited by humans, that primitive life will rapidly evolve to fill all evolutionary niches required in order to produce human-like creatures. Unfortunately, it may hit an evolutionary dead end during the attempt . . .
Comic Books
All of Marvel Comics' "mutant" comics dub mutants "homo superior", the "next step" in human evolution. A biologist probably wouldn't even go as far as to label mutants a sub-species of humanity, let alone a new species. (To be fair, however, this was originally a label created by the militant mutant-superiority villains for their own propaganda.)
In the movies, despite insistence from Magneto that they are "homo superior," it's established that mutant powers are actually a result from a simple genetic carrier, "the mutant gene".
And then there is Mr. Immortal, who is so evolved that he's not just "homo superior", he's "homo supreme".
If one pokes around Marvel lore enough, this all is "justified" by having been the result of tampering by Sufficiently Advanced Aliens called the Celestials on early humans. Thus, mutants (and most superpowers triggered otherwise) are an artificial result, rather then any natural evolution.
Fun fact: When Marvel published the comic book adaptation of 2001: A Space Odyssey the Celestials were revealed to be the creators of the famous black monoliths that evolved proto-humanity. Still canon!
One issue of Excalibur (written by Chris Claremont) says that all mutants are just a bit more in every department. Nightcrawler, for example, healed from his broken leg a bit faster then a regular human would. Nightcrawler doesn't have healing powers, he's just That Awesome because he is a mutant.
Similarly, in the Silver Age, Professor X was an accomplished athlete merely because he was a mutant. Not because he used his Psychic Powers, just because of his mutant physique. (Although being able to monitor his opponents while running track helped... somehow.)
A long-established but seldom-mentioned trait of Marvel's mutants is that they're a little tougher than a normal human of the same frame. E.g., In her solo comic, Dazzler mentions that one of the advantages of being a mutant is that she doesn't get tired as quickly as normal people, and the old Marvel-based Role-Playing Game gave all mutants + 1 level in the Endurance stat.
The cartoon series takes it a step further, with Apocalypse declaring to a non-mutant character that "I am as far beyond mutants as they are beyond you."
Sometimes, Galactus is said to target worlds at the "apex of their evolution" to devour. For evolution to have an "apex", it has to be a finite process with multiple levels, and a highest, "best" level.
Transformers, of all things, gets it somewhat right, despite its main race not even being organic. Ironically, this is due at least in part to the Merchandise Driven nature of the thing. New gimmicks in the toys often manifest themselves as new technology in the fictions.
A key example is the binary-bonding process that created the Headmasters, Targetmasters, and Powermasters. The processes had varying degrees of success, and the Headmaster process could be especially problematic if the personality of the smaller organic lifeform that became the head clashed with that of the robot that was its body.
One comic book series implies that the smaller, more energy-efficient Micromasters that were so sorely mistreated by their larger comrades-in-arms on both sides of the war eventually became the Maximals and Predacons that replaced the Autobots and Decepticons (furthur supported by them being so much smaller when they interact).
And no discussion of this would be complete without the Marvel Universe's High Evolutionary, a man who has made a career of accelerating the evolution of various species — which, naturally, all happen to be anthropomorphic afterwards.
At one point, a ragtag group of Avengers goes in to bust up the High Evolutionary to stop him from being... evil or something. The climax involves the villain and an Avenger both hyper-evolving into major godhood and right out of this realm. The kicker was the Avenger was Hercules, who already was a Physical God.
Easily the most absurd thing the HE ever managed was in his first appearance, where he hyper-evolved a wolf. This evolution came complete with knowledge of martial arts from the future.
This is trumped by him fighting Hulk so Hulk would kill him, when he changed the "evolutionary levels" of the Earth, converting the ground beneath Hulk into tar (like tarpits, you know, because tarpits are like stone age, man?), then lava, then gas.
In What If? The Avengers Lost The Evolutionary War?, all mutant and otherwise empowered superpeople have their powers enhanced in all kinds of ways (Cyclops can now control his blasts and doesn't need a visor; Spiderman grows four extra arms) while ordinary humans (including non-evolved heroes and villains such as Ironman and Doctor Doom) become bigbrained superintelligent psychics.
During Marvel's Kree-Skrull War, Ronan the Accuser busted out the old monkey-making de-evolutionary ray as part of his plan against Earth.
Speaking of the Kree, one of their subplots involved them being "unable to evolve" and needing Half-Kree Hybrids to further their "evolution", suddenly turning the whole race into the "self-evolving" Ruul.
Zot! has the Church of De-Evolution, a gang of ranting nutcases armed with Transformation Ray Guns that turn whoever they shoot into chimpanzees. It's played almost entirely for laughs. McCloud says this is because they represented what he considered the least plausible outcome of our relationship with technology. (The other end of the scale is 9-Jack-9, if you're interested.)
The "Superman of the future" (100,000 years in the future) in Action Comics #256, as seen on Superdickery◊.
This is largely how Doomsday worked.
Film
The aliens in the movie Evolution started out evolving to fit the ecological niches they found themselves in, but were eventually shown as evolving along a fixed path, becoming dinosaur-like things and then primates for no reason. In addition, despite the rapid evolution that was the point of the film, there was no sense that the creatures were going through multiple generations particularly rapidly. (There was also a cartoon series based on the movie that made the same mistakes, only more so.)
One interesting aversion, however, is that the final form achieved by the creatures when forced through rapid evolution was essentially a giant amoeba. It's explained that this is the most efficient form for its particular environment so it can be considered the best adapted even though it's one of the simplest.
The creatures in the movie were meant to be evolving in an extremely screwed up way whilst mimicking the evolution of our own planet. It makes sense in context, if you start with the assumption that it's even vaguely likely for evolution to follow such a similar path again.
In Time Traxx, humanity is depicted as being on the cusp of an evolutionary advance granting some (almost realistically) minor abilities such as greatly enhanced agility and the ability to "time stall" (Nothing strange and extratemporal: the term refers to an ability to alter the way the brain processes sensory data giving the perception of time slowing down). An episode featured protagonist Darien Lambert meeting a young boy with enhanced athletic skills similar to what's described above. Darien wondered if this boy might be the "missing link" between the present humanity and future humanity. In the end, it turns out the boy is himself from the future, brought there by his father when he was very young.
Creature from the Black Lagoon had the titular creature as "the missing link" between man and fish, being a clawed, super strong, bipedal amphibious dinosaur from the Paleozoic. In the third movie they even try to "evolve" him into near human, and educate him. This ends badly.
The Super Mario Bros.. movie features an evolution/de-evolution gun (actually a SNES Super Scope with a paint job), which is used several times throughout. The most extreme use of it comes when it's used to de-evolve Koopa, turning him first into a T-Rex and then eventually sludge. The "evolve" setting apparently just makes you smarter. (Of course, this setting was used on the Quirky Miniboss Squad, so it didn't really make them any smarter in practice, just gave them a bigger vocabulary.)
The film Teeth comes close to averting this trope, with a biology teacher explaining how evolution works in terms of gradually developing proto-organs. Then it turns around and throws this all away, claiming that in fact, it would be entirely possible for an entire organ system (a rattlesnake's rattle, or the heroine's Vagina Dentata) to appear in a single generation, fully functional and ready for use. Surprisingly, a biological system which actively prevents conception has some analogues in nature: some species of duck and hyena have adaptations to their genitalia that allows the females to block conception (spotted hyenas can do this for several hours after intercourse), allowing them to be more selective about breeding partners. Also works the other way around, by the way. The males of some species are capable of, uh, "plugging" the female after intercourse, to make sure that his genes are the only ones that will be used for fertilizing the offspring. This is most common in insects and, curiously, some species of birds.
But isn't what the biology teacher talking about in fact theoretically possible? It sounds like he might just be saying "although it almost always happens like X, it is possible for Y as well."
Planet of the Apes has non-human primates "evolving", thus getting intelligent and with the ability to speak, in only 2,000 years (although some could say the nuclear wars in between helped). The remake tries to Hand Wave this, both by never saying when Leo's ship crashes on the planet and starting out with genetically improved simians (but that works only for the planet Leo crashes on, not Earth in the ending). The original novel (and possibly the remake) halfway averts this trope: on the planet the hero first lands on, simians developed intelligence while humans didn't. And then it plays it straight when the hero returns to Earth to find intelligent apes. The sequels to the original movie simplify the matter using a Stable Time Loop: the "first" talking ape is the child of two time travelers.
In the 1997 film Mimic scientists in New York City engineer a "Judas Strain" of cockroaches, intended to infiltrate and wipe out the normal, disease-carrying cockroach population which is spreading a fatal illness among NYC's children (note: real roaches, while disgusting little scavengers, are not carriers of illness). Unfortunately, this Judas Strain does not die out after one generation (as engineered), instead evolving into a breed of giant insects that is capable of mimicking (hence the title) and preying on human beings (in only three years — but as the movie points out, we have to think not in terms of years but rather generations).
I Am Legend suffered from this, in both the original and changed ending. The original ending showed that the vampire-like creatures that Robert Neville hunted were developing societal improvements (a clear leader, compassion for fellows, the need to protect their own from being captured and killed, learning and repeating traps, etc.) — changes that don't need "genes" to make — and that Neville himself was the monster for not seeing these as anything more than sick and damaged monsters he needed to kill and/or save. Test audiences balked at the idea that the vampires were anything but monsters for Neville to kill, refusing to accept the possibility for the mutation to be beneficial, so the ending was rewritten with Neville sacrificing himself against the monsters to save the last humans...
The biology teacher in the beginning of Starship Troopers thought the Bugs were more evolved than humans.
"We humans like to think we are nature's finest achievement, but I'm afraid that just isn't true."
Literature
The climax of H. Rider Haggard's She has the title character take another bath in the life-giving flame, which takes away her youth. Her dying form is described as being like a monkey. Darwin's theories had only recently entered the public consciousness when the book was written and the whole story is about the fear of "devolving" since people were scared that it might work backwards at the time.
Averted in H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, where the future evolutions of mankind are an innocent race, apparently less intelligent than modern humans (the Eloi) and what amounts to Mole People (the Morlocks). This was influenced by Wells' early socialist ideas. The Eloi and the Morlocks represent the cultured, wealthy bourgeoisie people of leisure and the lower-class proletariat manual labourers respectively. Taken to extremes over thousands of years, the Eloi are witless sheep with no spark of creativity or ambition (or even the ability to defend themselves), and the Morlocks are mechanically-apt but brutal cannibalistic savages. A little bit Strawman Political, to be sure.
In this example, an evolutionary process resulted in speciation, and social selection was what drove it. The significance of this idea seems lost on Wells, but modern readers benefit. Society placing greater reproductive pressures on human beings than the natural environment is well within the bounds of evolutionary theory and Wells' novel provides a lucid, believable scenario which is actually pretty much in line with mainstream evolutionary theory. The future men don't seem "better" from our present point of view, and since the Eloi and Morlocks have such an interdependent relationship, neither is "better" than the other.
In Odd John, by Olaf Stapledon, the titular character is one of a new species of supermen who happen to be born here and there around the world at roughly the same time. This story is apparently the origin of the term "Homo Superior" for such beings.
In Last and First Men, also by Olaf Stapledon, after leaving a dying Earth and settling on Venus, humanity goes through eighteen stages of evolution, each adapting to their unique environment. For example, the dwarf "Ninth Men" who are limited by size due to excessive gravitation, the flying "Sixth Men" who live a harsh existence competing their seal-like relatives, and the "Tenth to Seventeenth Men" whose sentience reemerges after the "Sixth Men" civilization crumbles into savagery.
The whole premise of Edmond Hamilton's 1931 short story The Man Who Evolved. In the story, a man uses a modified form of radiation to evolve himself in minutes. In the end, he eventually evolves into protoplasm, since, for some reason, evolutionary levels apparently go in a cycle.
Hamilton liked the idea that radiation caused evolution, since he took the implication to be that worlds without radioactive elements would have little to no evolution. "Devolution" takes another approach to the same problem: the highest form of life to ever exist is a kind of alien bacteria that forms a benevolent Hive Mind. All life on Earth is descended from some of that bacteria that was stranded here, but evolution has weakened rather than strengthened us, costing us our unity.
Among the forest-covered hills of the northwest exist wandering bands of ape-men, without human speech, or the knowledge of fire or the use of implements. They are the descendants of the Atlanteans, sunk back into the squalling chaos of jungle-bestiality from which ages ago their ancestors so laboriously crawled. To the southwest dwell scattered clans of degraded, cave-dwelling savages, whose speech is of the most primitive form, yet who still retain the name of Picts, which has come to mean merely a term designating men — themselves, to distinguish them from the true beasts with which they contend for life and food. It is their only link with their former stage.
A.E. Van Vogt's Slans are mutants that are faster and stronger than ordinary humans, and have enhanced healing ability and psychic powers.
Wilmar Shiras's fixup novel Children of the Atom is based on the notion that after an accidental release of radiation at a nuclear power plant, several dozen female employees give birth to children, absolutely normal in every way except that all of them have IQs of over 300.
Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End is fundamentally about most of humanity evolving beyond their corporeal forms into a mass consciousness and merging with a universal psychic gestalt. (If this sounds familiar to anime fans, Hideaki Anno has cited the novel as a major inspiration for Neon Genesis Evangelion.) The story also features the Overlords, alien creatures that are an evolutionary cul-de-sac of sorts, who are apparently unable to achieve this level of evolution for some reason.
The 2001 series discusses the "evolution" of the Sufficiently Advanced Aliens who brought The Monolith to Earth. Read literally, it's an example of this trope, but is actually a case of a species reaching a point technologically where they can perform Brain Uploading into machine bodies and then finally turn themselves into Energy Beings — self-directed evolution rather than natural.
Philip K. Dick's book The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, set twenty minutes into the future, features "evolutionary therapy" becoming popular among the rich. It makes your cranium large and bubble-like, and even increases your intelligence, although in rare cases it can backfire and de-evolve you into a monkey-like state. The best part? It works by stimulating the gland that controls evolution. I wish I had a gland that controlled my evolution.
However, evolution is at least not completely fixed in the book, but dependent on environmental factors. Earth in the book has heated up to the point that going outdoors without an air conditioning unit strapped to your back is a fatal mistake. The ridged craniums in the book are supposed to be to dissipate excess heat. Later on in the book when one character travels in time, he comes across humans who are going evolving along different lines because the Earth is now in an ice age.
There is also a short story by Philip K. Dick, called Strange Eden, that successfully manages to make pretty much every mistake about evolution mentioned here. It's about an astronaut that finds an attractive and immortal female Goddess-like alien on a far-away world. Immediately he wants to sleep with her, but she warns him that in doing so he will magically begin to rapidly evolve. Thinking that this will lead him to become a superior being like her (and for the obvious reason), the astronaut accepts the offer. However, it turns out that humanity's set evolutionary path is that we will evolve into bestial cat-creatures — exactly why is never stated — and so the astronaut is stuck as the alien woman's pet forever.
One of Kurt Vonnegut's short stories tells of astronauts that start to evolve into huge-headed telepathic freaks after being exposed to otherworldly radiation. They're saved from this predicament by their test animals, who have been exposed longer and evolved past them and into energy beings. This trope was nicely averted in his book Galápagos. The evolved humans resemble seals, and natural selection lowers their intelligence to that of animals. It's a bit misanthropic, though.
In The War Against the Chtorr, it's stated that since Chtorran lifeforms have a billion-year evolutionary head start they have a massive advantage over Earth lifeforms.
One of the early-90s Tom Swift books took this trope to the limit — a human being was hit with an evolution ray, and was turned into a specific person, with his own memories, from the far future.
Subverted in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. On Mono Island (featured in The Last Continent and Darwin's Watch), the abode of the God of Evolution, life-forms (especially plants) evolve at the speed of the blink of an eye. When there are humans near, they will promptly bear fruit that are useful for human consumption, like pencils, cigarettes, bandages or boats. Research wizard Ponder Stibbons postulated they evolve so quickly because they want to get off of the island as soon as possible.
Note that the reason for the island's name is that there is only one of each species on the island — the God hasn't quite got the hang of sex yet. The God complains at one point that the plants are trying to do sex on their own — but he can't quite vocalize the problem, since neither he nor they have really got it. That's what the rapid evolution is for; they know they need to spread and they know that the best way to do this is to make themselves useful in ways that will mean that bits will get left lying around, but the only way they can do that is by taking three minutes instead of three million years to get the point of usefulness.
At least one of these plants evidently succeeded in this, as another Discworld novel briefly mentions that pencils come from bushes that sprout in graphite-rich soils.
Also, note the God of Evolution's personal project, the creature he's been working to perfect for centuries: the cockroach.
Another Discworld example: In Carpe Jugulum, Lord Magpyr refers to fairies and Igor as evolutionary cul-de-sacs, although he was probably just being arrogant and mean, rather than making any thoughtful judgements on their place in the world.
Greg Bear tries to justify this in Darwin's Radio. A species that evolves "Darwin's radio" makes abrupt and massive changes in its genome when faced with a significant problem. The radio in question has evolved so that it essentially "knows" what changes are necessary to deal with a particular crisis. One character describes this as "Evolution evolving. Species with a radio can evolve faster and better than species that can't," which almost makes sense if you think about it.
Also, the "evolved" children actually have several atavistic traits (like color-changing face spots from sea animals and vomeronasal passages like cats) instead of growing new biological devices from nowhere.
Parodied in Kim Newman's Tomorrow Town; one of the claims made by the futurists who have set up shop in the titular town is that they have evolved beyond their 1970s contemporaries, or 'yesterday men' as they are called. Of course, like most things to do with their "futopia", they're quite, quite mistaken.
In John C. Wright's Count to a Trillion, some characters use this to soothe their consciences; their murder of other men shows that the other men were not fit.
The chief example from The Outer Limits would have to be The Sixth Finger, featuring David McCallum as a scruffy laborer / guinea pig in a scientist's evolution experiments, who is turned into a "typical human" from various points in the distant future with a lever (helpfully marked "Forward" and "Backward"). Among other effects, the evolver ray alters his accent and ability to play piano.
Naturally, there are several Star Trek examples — "Where No Man Has Gone Before" from Star Trek: The Original Series comes to mind, as does "Genesis", an episode of The Next Generation where the crew began "devolving" into various lower animals with no rhyme or reason.
The TNG episode mentioned above attempted to justify the stock "devolution" story with Techno Babble about "activating the introns in the genetic code". At the time, the idea of introns as "fossil" or "junk" DNA left over from a species' ancestors was still in vogue. (There actually is "junk" DNA, but most of it seems to be deactivated viral code or parasitic "jumping genes" instead of fragments of formerly-useful genes. Occasionally transcription errors happen to make some of this into something useful to the organism; it's believed that the mutation that prevented the mammalian immune system from rejecting the placenta of a fetus might have come from such viral junk, for example.)
Star Trek: Voyager took considerable fire for "Threshold", in which a flight test at Ludicrous Speeds caused a character to "evolve" rapidly (just enough technobabble was applied to work around the fact that individuals do not themselves evolve; technically, he "experienced mutations consistent with the pattern of human evolution"), whose end-state was to turn him into a giant salamander with a Fu Manchu mustache. The fact that so many fans complained that "That's not evolving; it's devolving!" shows that TV has corrupted our understanding of evolution — there's no such thing as "devolving": evolution does not lead inevitably toward bigger, smarter creatures who would necessarily seem "more advanced" by human standards. Brannon Braga says this was the idea he tried to get across, but admits he failed spectacularly.
"Genus Hadrosaur" was described as being the "most highly evolved cold-blooded descendant of Eryops". They manage to get at least five things wrong in that scene.
Another Next Gen episode had an alien developing Healing Hands and other superpowers because he himself, not his species, was on the verge of an "evolutionary leap".
The Star Trek: Enterprise episode Dear Doctor showcased the "path evolution is supposed to take" misconception. This was his justification for refusing to cure a plague he had a cure for, leading some like SF Debris to accuse him of genocide.
The TOS episode The Omega Glory also used the 'path evolution is supposed to take' idea in order to show a planet who evolved the American flag and Constitution in parallel to Earth.
To be fair, evolution may indeed work differently in the Star Trek Universe thanks to these guys.
Spock explains:
"The actual theory is that all lifeforms evolved from the lower levels to the more advanced stages."
The entire premise of The Tomorrow People revolved around "the next step in human evolution".
In the Farscape episode "My Three Crichtons", an alien probe produced both "de-evolved" and "super-evolved" versions of Crichton. The crew also assumed the "de-evolved" caveman was hostile and savage, while the "super-evolved" Crichton turned out to be the self-serving and dangerous one.
Deconstructed when the probe explains that the two extra Crichtons are just two of the millions of alternate versions of humanity that the probe was simulating and cataloging. They just happen to be a caveman and big-brained superhuman. And just to nail the point home, D'argo comforts a worried Crichton that the "super-evolved genius" form is just a possible evolution.
The Mutants involved the Solonians mutating into new forms within their lifetimes, something which happened whenever their planet entered a new half-millennium-long "season". The Doctor at least noted this to be a unique lifecycle.
In Full Circle, the inhabitants of planet Alzarius include humans, enemy Fish People called Marshmen, and giant spiders. As it turns out, the humans are descendants of Marshmen, and the Marshmen of spiders, and this is in some sense "destined" to continue in the future. So not only is Alzarian evolution "directed", but its pathways are very, very different from Earth's!
In the story Ghost Light, a clergyman is turned into a monkey by a Sufficiently Advanced Alien; it is justified, however, by suggesting that this is not "de-evolution" as such, because the alien could have turned him into anything and only chose the monkey form to mock the clergyman's anti-Darwinist beliefs. (Another character, for instance, is transformed into stone instead.)
Another episode, "The Lazarus Experiment", had the bad guy of the week use a molecule-rearranging room to de-age himself... with the side-effect that he would occasionally turn into a hulking beast that had to suck the life essence out of other people. The Doctor explains it by saying the genetic rearrangement had accidentally activated genes from evolutionary paths humans passed by and never used. Of course, given the Doctor's way of explaining things, this is likely just the best he can do to explain a much more convoluted concept.
Terry Nation was fond of this. In the first Dalek story, the Thals had mutated into something hideous, then back again into good-looking space elves in leather trousers because that was, supposedly, the most perfect form. In Genesis of the Daleks, Davros worked out what the Kaled race was going to evolve into as a result of the centuries-long ABC war they'd been having with the Thals. (Apparently it was a green blob that would require a motorised dustbin if it was going to get around.)
The voiceovers at the start and end of Heroes talk a lot about how the next stage of evolution comes about. If you listen closely during these, you can actually hear Charles Darwin turn in his grave, as we are to believe a mutation has suddenly occurred for people in Japan, Haiti, and America all at once.
Even worse, in the very beginning of Season 2 it is said that having super-powers actually makes you more vulnerable to a certain disease. The "evolutionary biologist"'s conclusion? The scientific community must destroy the virus so that "evolution can continue unimpeded." Natural selection, indeed...
The nasty team of M.I.B. after Dr. Jackman in Jekyll want him because he is "the next stage in human evolution". In this case, it is implied that the original Jekyll had hundreds of kids, becoming responsible for many, if not all cases of identical twins and so forth. This seems to bear a better relationship to real evolution than most on the page.
Red Dwarf, "DNA": Lister uses a genetic transmogrifier to temporarily transform himself into "a super human" to fight a vindaloo monster. He turns into a midget Robocop. This is not stated to be evolution, but it taps into the same misunderstandings about genetics and development that allows people to imagine someone "evolving" during their lifetime.
In "Pete", a pet sparrow accidentally regresses back to what it evolved from, a Tyrannosaurus rex. I suppose it wouldn't have been half as impressive if he had become a Dromaeosaurus or something.
In Stargate SG-1, all sentient species apparently evolve "towards" ascension. Just before evolutionary ascension, people will have all kinds of Psychic Powers, such as mind-reading, telepathy, healing powers and some kind of super-intelligence.
Space: 1999 features one of the oddest theories of evolution: everyone is evolving, and will eventually become perfect (apparently ignoring that pesky old mortality). Even worse, there is a mirror universe where evolution works backwards, and people gradually turn into piles of primordial soup, and traveling to this dimension will cause you to start evolving backwards as well!
Mystery Science Theater 3000 thoroughly mocked the "evolution is improvement" idea with several episodes featuring the super brain-powered Observers. A race so evolved that we "are as amoeba" to them, they have evolved beyond bodies (which still have to carry their brains around in their hands) and communicate only with their minds (by using the mouths on the bodies they've evolved beyond).
Gypsy: Wouldn't it be more convenient to just leave the brains in your heads?
Observer: Convenient? Why, our brains are fully functional from our bodies for up to fifty yards.
Also referenced in the final host segment of the last episode of the Comedy Central years (a 2001 parody), when the SOL crew evolves into energy. They decide to regain their bodily forms at the beginning of the first episode of the Sci-Fi Channel years.
You could justify this as him just being incredibly childish. This is the same character who attempts to blow up people's heads with his mind.
This could be an example of Truth in Television. It's not unheard of for respected scientists to think that they have a firmer grasp of other disciplines than they actually do, with their views sometimes veering into outright pseudoscience.
Given that he explicitly does internet searches to find out anything about biology (like why his stomach might be hurting), he probably doesn't know half as much about biology or medicine as he thinks he does. Not that it would stop him believing that he's superior anyway.
Music
Jonathan Coulton has a song called De-Evolving, where the protagonist describes "de-evolving" into a monkey. It's funny, but inaccurate.
Tabletop Games
In the Magic: The Gathering card game, the Slivers seem to be an insectile species that have evolved the ability to evolve faster and share genetics through some sort of psionic link, resulting in not just momentary changes to genotype but also phenotype when two different varieties are in proximity. In addition, some flavor text references Evolutionary Levels. The Ghostflame Sliver, for example, seems to be a reference to the common misunderstanding of the punctuated equilibrium theory, as they are "on the cusp of evolution", but it's most notable in the Sliver Overlord, which declares it the end of evolution. Then again, the Slivers evolve so quickly partially by devouring other life forms and adapting their advantageous genes to their offspring, grow rapidly to adulthood, are semi-sentient, act in concert, and are almost virus-like in their ability to infest, consume, and spread rapidly, so it might just be an intimation that the Slivers will kill everything on the planet, halting evolution permanently.
Using the concept of "evolution being to better adapt for survival" is the sliver's end game. During the the Planar Overlay of Rath onto Dominaria (essentially a bridge between Phyrexia and Dominaria), the slivers are destroyed when the location of their hive is overlaid onto a volcano. A few sets later, some scientists are tasked to artificially recreate slivers that are true to the lost species. Once this is accomplished, the artificial slivers gain sentience, break free, kill everyone, and escape into the wild, where. One card's text reads "Death couldn't contain the slivers. What made us think we could?", spoken by one of the scientists.
By that same concept one could make a case for the Sliver Overlord being the "end of evolution" in that it has the ability to grab any sliver in the deck. This gives it (not really, but good enough for fluff purposes) the ability to react to any change by making itself and all other slivers able to thrive with that change. If evolution has an end it's at the point that a creature will always be ideally suited to its situation, no matter how that circumstance changes.
Many superhero Role-Playing Games — like Mutants & Masterminds and the original Marvel Superheroes Role-Playing Game — include, among the list of powers available to players, some sort of "Hyper-Evolution" power that lets a hero shift up and down along their "evolutionary path," generally affording them the ability to "devolve" into cave-man form (temporarily lower their intelligence to raise their strength) or "evolve" into frail but hyper-intelligent (and possibly psionic) "future" form.
The write-up for the "Evolution" power in MSH even lampshades it: "This is comic book evolution, people, the kind where super-strong cavemen eventually evolve into giant brains with vestigial limbs."
Pages from the Magesplayed with this. The spell "Evolve" changes a normal animal into an intelligent and more or less human-like form. The punchline is that glorified name aside, the spell just permanently transforms the target halfway to its caster (presumed to be a human smart enough to use a 8-level spell), using his own blood sample(!) as a component.
The Tyranids in Warhammer 40k avert this. While they "evolve" at a hyper-accelerated rate(accomplished by devouring entire biospheres, then using the material to spawn custom-creatures) most of these creatures are short-lived, and allow their superiors to devour them once they've served their purpose. It's bizarre and science fictiony, but the sheer fact that it's portrayed as being generational makes it closer to Real Life evolution than most of the examples on this page.
Video Games
Most Pokémon have stronger forms they can "evolve" into under the appropriate stresses and circumstances.*
To their credit, though, the official backstory is that Pokémon evolution "isn't like Earth's other organisms". In other words, the terms "evolution" when talking about Pokémon and "evolution" when talking about any other organism are two different things.
A better term might be metamorphosis, considering Pokémon was inspired by a rather imaginative idea of insect collecting. The word "metamorphosis" was probably considered too big and complicated for the target audience. This is especially obvious in several insect Pokémon such as Caterpie or Weedle, whose "evolutionary" paths are close parallels of real-life butterflies and wasps.
However, the part about "evolution is always the same" is averted with a couple of Pokémon. Eevee has had new evolutions constantly discovered due to its "unstable genetics". So while it can evolve into Jolteon thanks to a Thunder Stone, if it levels up in a specificarea with a special glacier that's covered in snow, it becomes the Ice-type Glaceon. A similar process occurs with Eevee's evolution Leafeon. Likewise, Nosepass and Magneton evolve into Probopass and Magnezone respectively when they level up in certain areas of Sinnoh and Unova. This actually makes sense in a way. The reason people couldn't get these certain evolutions before was simply because nobody had discovered the effects certain areas had on certain Pokémon. In other words, they adapted to their new environment. Yes, it happened in the matter of five minutes (or less with a Rare Candy) but it's still a slightly more realistic take on the usual fixed evolutionary lines. But while there are those sensical ones, there are also some nonsensical ones. Piloswine evolves into Mamoswine by leveling up and knowing Ancientpower...despite being able to learn Ancientpower as far back as its introduction in Generation II. The same goes for Lickitung and Rollout. And, regarding Eevee, you mean to say that there was no day versus night in Kanto? That's ridiculous....and yet, even in the remakes, oh so true.
Sometimes metamorphosis is the best word, but most of the time what is happening is maturation. Small, immature Pokémon grow up to become bigger ones. Venusaur looks like a grown up Bulbasaur but because they were using sprites, showing them slowly growing was infeasible, so they had at most three forms to show them getting older as they fight more.
All in all, the only straight example Pokémon seems to have is the vaguely fetus-like Pokémon Mew, which is supposed to be the evolutionary origin of almost every Pokémon in the traditional evolutionary sense... and evidences this by having their complete genomes integrated into its own — the "hardcoded future evolution" misconception not just written large, but in 50-story flashing neon pink letters.
Megaman X8: "New Generation Reploids", by copying the DNA data of earlier models including Sigma who created them from behind the scenes, could change their form and abilities to best suit their environment, and have immunity from the Maverick Virus. They felt they were beyond the constraints of "the old world" and rebelled to make their own society. Maverick Hunter X, a remake of the first Mega Man X game, has an OVA prequel that brings up the implications of evolution involving Reploids several times: X himself is the main factor, as he can, as Dr. Light puts it, evolve as he fights and even influence the evolution of robots in the same way as life. Sigma gets the idea that Reploids likewise have potential, but are being held back by humans.
The Commodore64 game Dino Eggs had as a hazard the possibility of getting bit by a spider and suffering "devolution" into a spider due to genetic contamination. Seriously.
Kane in the Command and Conquer series believes Tiberium holds the key to the next stage of human evolution. However, this is closer to actual evolution; rather than just being more powerful, the Tiberium mutants in the series are more capable of surviving in the Tiberium-infested regions of the world (about 90% of it).
E.V.O.: The Search for Eden. In each chapter, you start as a "basic" version of whatever the chapter is about (fish, amphibian, reptile, mammal), and you gain "evo points" by eating other animals, which you can then turn in to alter your body parts. Oh, and whenever you evolve a body part, you get the helpful message "MYSTERIOUS TIME STREAM EVOLVES YOU." Also, occasionally (say, when you're a reptile or mammal and have to do a water stage), you'll get the message "CHANGE IN CIRCUMSTANCES CAUSES EVOLUTION", followed by your characters feet becoming fins. Even if you're a mammal, or a bird.
It should be noted that the main character in E.V.O. is a time traveling agent under direct orders of Earth herself, tasked with taking care of eventual historical screwups, and apparently isn't subject to the same rules as everyone else.
The creature stage of Spore is E.V.O. with better graphics. Oddly enough, Will Wright had intended Spore to be more scientific in its conception and presentation, but marketing won out, leading to massively bad reviews from the biology community for the missed opportunity.
In Treasure of the Rudras, Mitra created an "Eternal Engine". Every 4,000 years, the weaker races are replaced by stronger ones to prepare for the return of the invaders that Mitra and her allies fought long ago, when Mitra was defeated, the need for the Eternal Engine is no longer required.
In Super Robot Wars, Alfimi was created to be the "apex of human evolution".
Psaro the Manslayer from Dragon Quest IV is revealed to be after the Secret of Evolution in order to build an all-powerful monster army to help him easily conquer the world. One of his generals, Balzack, showcases the fruits of Psaro's discovery; he's almost pathetically easy to beat in your first encounter with him, but one chapter later, he's gained about 150 kg, some nasty new attacks, and an extra "a" in his name.
Amazingly enough, Geneforge manages to justify this. All the game's monsters are the result of genetic engineering, and the super-powerful ones were created when basic designs were modified. (These modifications are random, so you encounter a few screwups that are insane or slowly dying.)
Much of the art work of the game is various schematics and plans for the Mons. Many have notations to things like lack of this causes mutation leading to death or including this gives fire breathing...
The Big Bad of Star Ocean: The Last Hope seems to think that it's possible to create a "better" evolution that will save humanity from violence and sadness. Even worse, the heroes believe that it's necessary to "make our hearts worthy" in order to evolve.
Mass Effect 2 gives us the vorcha, who are decribed as, essentially, living stem cell banks, allowing them to adapt to normally inhospitable environments over the course of a few hours rather than several generations. However, it is somewhat averted in the Codex when it explains that when an organ adapts, it cannot adapt in a whole other direction (can't adapt to breath water after it's adapted to breathing volcanic sulfur). Gameplay-wise, this means they regenerate very quickly, so you have to make sure its internal organs have STOPPED before you let off the trigger.
Monsters in the What Did I Do to Deserve This, My Lord? games evolve under pressure: thus, presented as changes of individuals rather than species. However, the parent race does not mutate due to pressure; they merely have a higher chance of giving birth to a new form, and odds are just as good that you'll get a useless mutation. If they're being killed off by starvation, the survivors will give birth to forms that are better at hoarding food. If they're dying to predation, they birth Weak, but Skilled forms that can paralyze those that eat them (and invading heroes). It's tricky to force this adaptation to occur due to the random nature of the game, but it's there.
Western Animation
An overly longcouch gag sequence in The Simpsons features the evolution of Homer. This starts with single-celled organisms, then goes from jellyfish to fish to lizard, rodent, monkey, ape... and finally to the modern Homo sapiens before showcasing several historical eras ending in modern Homer walking into his house. This showcases the supposed evolutionary levels misconception.
And subverted for Rule of Funny; he meets Moe on the way who walks in the opposite direction...and devolves.
Mighty Max used this. In one episode, a mad scientist named Dr. Zygote develops a ray that devolves anything to their prehistoric state. A bunch of human tourists become apes, Max's pet lizard becomes a dinosaur, and Virgil (a lemurian who is supposed to be the next step in human evolution) gets turned into a pterodactyl (?!) Later it's used by Dr. Zygote to turn a bunch of devolved mutated monsters into primordial ooze. He surmises that the ray "reversed their evolutionary path to the final quagmire, an evolutionary dead-end"—which really makes no sense at all. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owZqBj0vLXU&feature=related
Then in another episode, Dr. Zygote uses the ray again to further evolve himself into a more advanced form, from a big brained alien, to a lemurian, to a floating giant brain, and finally into a flash of light. at the end, he "evolved beyond good and evil" and left. There was a subversion along the way, as he became a chicken fowl-like humanoid similar to Max's Obi-Wan Virgil, who mentioned humanity will find the form enjoyable, much to Max's surprise. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmB5NDeziMk
Parodied in an episode of Futurama: the characters find the lost city of Atlanta, in which the human inhabitants have evolved into mermaids. When Bender points out that this should have taken millions of years, the mayor's daughter explains that the caffeine from the Coca-Cola bottling plant sped things up.
Also in Futurama, the Professor accidentally creates evolving robots, who evolve much faster than organisims. Within a few days, they go from microscopic plankton-esque lifeforms to murderous trilobites to dinosaurs to cavemen to modern humans to Energy Beings.
The Saturday Morning Mega Man cartoon managed to take the concept of devolution to the next stage, when Dr. Wily made a chemical that caused robots to "devolve" into more primitive robots. This meant they went from robots designed to look like humans to robots designed to look like cavemen, getting stupider in the process.
This was Bob the Goldfish's schtick in the Earthworm Jim cartoon. He tried various schemes to evolve himself into a higher form of life, in one instance using a contraption that stole "Evolutionary Energy" from other creatures, turning people into apes & Princess Whatshername into a ladybug & such. Interestingly, Jim's creator Doug TenNapel is apparently a creationist, or at least a believer in some sort of divine intervention in the origins of life, humanity in particular. Fortunately, since it's all Played for Laughs, it's easy for people on both sides of the issue to enjoy.
In an episode of The Spectacular Spider Man titled Natural Selection, Martha Connors states that lizard DNA is more primitive than humans, to which Curt Connors, the unfortunate victim of his own experiment, responds: "I'm regressing."
Spider-Man: The Animated Series actually invoked this trope between two humans when, after revealing to Harry that he was his father, the Green Goblin exclaims, "I am the ultimate evolution of Norman Osborn! Smarter, stronger, able to be more ruthless than he ever was." Wow.
Of course, like most recent versions of the Green Goblin besides Spectacular's, the Green Goblin saying this is insane, so we have a bit of an Unreliable Expositor situation going on here.
In one Pinky And The Brain episode, the Brain attempts to use radiation to evolve Pinky into a higher form of life.
It's Pinky. Anything at all would be a higher form of life.
One Prometheus And Bob had an evolution chamber that could evolve a club into a laser, and devolve it back. In the course of it, the monkey was evolved into a human, bob was evolved into a pink version of Prometheus, Prometheus devolved into a purple Bob, and the monkey evolved into a floating telekinetic brain.
We also see a wolf evolved into a domestic dog and a piece of wood evolved into an aluminum baseball bat.
Word Of God claims that the Ultimate forms are actually the projected evolution of a species based off of a simulated planet-wide civil war lasting millions of years.
Real Life
The closest thing to this in reality would probably be taxon cycles. Basically 1) species A reaches a series of islands 2) species A adapts to these islands 3) species A continues to adapt into a specific niche as its ability to disperse is lost 4) descendents of species A lose the ability to disperse and become endemic to the specific island they happen to be on. The whole thing is still on shaky ground though, and may well be proven wrong, or at least not a general predictive pattern.
During the American pioneer days, all sorts of mythical creatures were believed to exist out in the woods, and, for all the settlers knew, they could. Naturally, circus hawkers liked to exploit this, and one such charlatan described his captured "guyascutus" as "The long-sought missing link" between the Mynodon (a type of Pleistocene ground sloth) and the Icthyosaurus (a Cretaceous swimming reptile, resembling a dolphin). There were probably plenty who knew it was bunk, of course. One hopes.
Metasystem Transition Theory describes evolutionary "levels" as organizational levels of systemic hierarchy, levels that may or may not be strictly biological, e.g. from the cellular level to the social level. Each metasystem evolves to the limit of its adaptive competence, which is defined quite pragmatically as the limit to which it has demonstrated it's capable.
There is also a Technological Evolution theory, which summed up, implies we've stopped evolving biologically and now do most of our evolving on a technological level—the argument being that while biological evolution takes a few millennia at minimum, we can evolve much faster using our technological advancements now. Of course there is no reason these need be mutually exclusive. It's more than possible that even as people evolve technology to suit them they will evolve to suit the technology. Those better able to use the tools will be more successful.
This is largely dismissed by biologists, however. Increased technology has not ended evolution, merely altered the types of selective pressures that humans are effected by.
Biological systems can and do evolve traits that make it easier to evolve. Examples include bacterial conjugation, cellular nuclei, sexual reproduction (the constant recombining of genes creates more opportunities for a mutation to have a favorable effect by working together with other genes), multicellular bodies, technology and genetic engineering... One hypothesis being batted about by some evolutionary scientists is that evolution is speeding up with the passage of time.
Some Creationists who reject Evolution, accept Devolution. They believe that after God created life, the mutations make it less advanced and less able to survive, although they can appear to occasionally do good, there is usually a bad outcome making it less advanced (like losing DNA with no apparent way to regain it).
This actually goes way back before Darwin, even. Many Europeans even up past the Renaissance believed the Ancients were far larger and more intelligent than the contemporary men. This seems to mostly stem from a respect for the older civilization and/or passages in the Bible that claim early humans had lifespans and physical dimensions that are far greater than those of anyone living. It became a major debating point among intellectuals as late as the seventeenth century when analogies about the history of humankind being equivalent to the life of a man led to two distinct schools of thought. The first thought that this analogy between man and mankind led to the inevitable conclusion that mankind was growing older, weaker and senile. The second group, Francis Bacon a notable member, claimed that unlike a man, mankind would be eternally young.
This degeneration concept goes back way before Darwin. The myth of an ancient Golden Age, where humans were better, stronger, longer-lived, and more righteous, shows up in the writings of the Greek Hesiod.
Some Creationist arguments against evolution (such as citing a lack of intermediate forms as distinct species, claiming that the slow pace of evolution makes the process unobservable, or that there is a distinction between "micro" and "macro" forms of evolution) are more of a refutation of this trope, rather than a refutation of actual evolutionary theory.
There is a set of five siblings in Turkey who walk on all fours (hands and feet). Media frequently refer to this as evolution going "backwards". Actually, they just have a neurological disability that makes them unable to stand up; needless to say, this wasn't true of our ancestors.
Some new agers believe that humanity is on the verge of breaking through to the "next level" in its evolution, which they say is evidenced by an increase of Psychic Powers in people. Some believe that if humanity gets in touch with its latent psychic and spiritual sides, it will be able to Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence, which they believe is our eventual evolutionary goal, or at least a milestone thereupon.
Cracked.com has an article called "6 Formerly Kickass Creatures Ruined by Evolution" which, though it's stuffed with inaccuracies, shows off the humor to be gained from the reversal of the expectation that a species will always get "better" by human standards (more "kickass", by this author's standards).
Nazis and other contemporary racists base their idea of racial supremacy on this misunderstanding of evolution.
The origins of this can be traced back to Theosophy's concept of "root races," of which the Aryans are the fifth and within which the Teutonic peoples are the most recent example of this trope. Given its origins as a 19th century New Age religious / mystic movement, some of the beliefs are a wee bit bizarre.
One of the books banned by the Nazis was Darwin's The Origin of Species because it completely bunked their theories on the ideas of supremacy and inferiority.
