Mood Whiplash / Live-Action Films

Mood Whiplash in Live-Action Films.

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• Alien³ had a fair few examples of this, including a hilariously well-timed joke about running with scissors in-between gruesome deaths in the middle of a chase scene, Clemmens having his head lopped off less than a minute after having some light-hearted post-sex conversation with Ripley, and Morse erroneously yelling "fuck!" after a period of silence following the death of the superintendent. Plenty of other examples involving sudden cuts between scenes with vastly different levels of intensity.
• À ma sœur ! was not exactly light and fluffy before, but the ending, in which the lead character is raped after her family is axed to death in their car, is still a total shock.
• An American Werewolf in London has the lead character dead and his love interesting sobbing... then the credits roll with a doop-wop version of "Blue Moon" and listing Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy as part of the cast.
• In Apollo 13, the news that Jack Swigert is replacing the potentially ill Ken Mattingly as command module pilot is delivered in this manner. First, Swigert is shown getting the relevant phone call, and reacting with an appropriate Big "YES!". Smash Cut to the shocked face of Ken Mattingly.
  • Also, the lighthearted video transmission from the Aquarius is shortly followed by, well, if you don't know...
• Arizona Dream: How do we follow a Russian Roulette scene in which one character repeatedly pulls the trigger to try to get the bullet? With a charity talent show with a song and a comedy routine. From which the guests are pulled to be summoned to a major character having a heart attack. That's not even the twistiest five minutes of the movie.
• Two deleted scenes (restored in international cuts) of Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery have the death of mooks being mourned: one (crushed by a steamroller) was happily married with a kid and another, who was about to get married...
  Mook's friend (Rob Lowe): Yes, I have a friend named John Smith. That's right, he's in Dr. Evil's private army. What? He's dead? Decapitated by mutated ill-tempered sea bass? Oh my God! OK, thank you.
• Avatar: The Way of Water: An early scene shows Lo'ak and his adopted siblings Kiri and Spider jokingly speculating on who "knocked up" Grace Augustine (Kiri is the biological daughter of Grace's avatar, but nobody knows who the dad was). Kiri is rather grossed out by the conversation, both due to the Parental Sexuality Squick and because she's rather averse to the idea that Norm Spellman might be her dad. In the midst of this, Spider suddenly gets somber and says that "sometimes it's not so great to know who your father was." Lo'ak and Kiri then awkwardly try to comfort him. We later find out that Spider's biological dad was Miles Quaritch, a mass murderer of the Na'vi who was also directly responsible for Grace's death, which explains why that topic's such a sore subject for him.
• The party scene in Beethoven's 2nd takes a dark turn when Ryce's boyfriend attempts to rape her, then goes back to the usual hijinks when Beethoven causes the boyfriend's vacation home to collapse.
• The Bollywood film Baghban depicts a true happy family in the first act. Raj and Pooja have a loving relationship with their sons, daughter-in-laws, and grandchildren. They make jokes, sing songs together (it's a Bollywood movie, after all), have a nice dinner, and celebrate Holi together. However, Raj then asks his sons that Pooja and he need to live with them. His sons and their wives turn out not be very loving after all. The remainder of the film is much darker, where Pooja and Raj receive much abuse from their children.
• In its first few minutes, Beverly Hills Cop III has a bunch of mechanics dancing to The Supremes' "Come See About Me" before meeting with some buyers to offload stolen goods. Then the buyers murder them and do the same to Captain Todd when the cops burst in. It's a fairly dark opening for a film that doesn't start as it means to go on.
• Black Swan has several, none more jarring than the one Nina herself suffers when she finds herself masturbating with her sleeping mother right next to her.
• Played for Laughs during the climax of The Blues Brothers with rapid-fire contrast between the Army and National Guard and tanks and SWAT teams and helicopters outside and the boys in The Elevator from Ipanema.
• The Book of Masters, a 2009 Disney/Russian film, took it to extremes, especially in the last part. It goes from Affectionate Parody of fairy tales mixed with heavy doses of Parental Bonus humor to important characters getting killed off (not permanently, most of them) – and back again.
• The Boys in the Band starts out as a comedy and ends as a tearjerker, with plenty of yoyoing between "hilarious" and "depressing" in the middle.
• In Breakfast on Pluto, the scene switches from Kitten and a British soldier dancing in a club to the club exploding, and Kitten being accused of planting the bomb because she's an Irish man dressed as a woman, and the film takes place during the Irish revolution.
• The 1989 comedy The 'Burbs on the surface seems to be a wacky "mistaken identity" comedy about three childish protagonists who suspect that their next-door neighbors are serial killers. Hilarity Ensues, and then the whole thing culminates in a funny moment when the three men accidentally blow up the neighbors' house....or so it seems. Turns out, the suspicious neighbors really were serial killers, and the trunk of their car is filled with decomposed human remains. By the end of the adventure, the Tom Hanks character is exhausted, partially disfigured, and profoundly disillusioned about suburban life; he just wants to join his wife and son at a cabin by the lake. But then, at the very end, the mood reverts to comedy again as the teenaged Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant looks around at the chaos surrounding him and exults, "God, I love this street!"
• The comedy Burn After Reading. We start at casual, there are some laugh-out-loud moments, some tense scenes, followed by some shockingly funny scenes or shockingly sad scenes.
  • Case in point is the Surprisingly Sudden Death of The Ditz Chad who gets accidentally shot in the head by spy veteran Harry.
  • The scene where Richard Jenkins, who has the only sympathetic character, is shot and has his skull split open by a crazed John Malkovich.
• In Bob Fosse's film version of Cabaret, at a picnic a rather handsome German youth begins singing the patriotic song "Tomorrow Belongs To Me", and other people begin to spontaneously join him acapella. Then the camera pans back, to reveal him wearing the Swastika armband and a brownshirt.
  • One scene cuts rapidly between a peppy cabaret number and Nazis brutally beating one of the characters.
• Toward the end of Cabin Fever, the main character is passed out in jail, having a dream about himself and his girlfriend happily skipping through a flowery meadow with happy music. Which then smash-cuts to a shot of her horribly rotted face and loud screaming.
• The Cable Guy: "I can be your best friend, or your worst enemy."
• The short Cáca Milis uses this with aplomb. The first half of the film is humorous, with Paul, who is blind and severely asthmatic and yet very chatty, making conversation with Catherine on the train about anything and everything. Catherine makes many suggestions that she wants to be left alone to read her trashy romance novel, but they fly straight over his head. But then he tells her about how he knows the train route by heart and asks her to test him, and she deliberately tells him he is wrong, and suddenly the mood becomes dreary. The movie ends with Catherine deliberately invoking an asthma attack to kill Paul, and her disembarking at her station without a word.
• The Russian film City of Craftsmen has a bloody fight between city inhabitants and invaders, with a very serious scene where both the leader of the invaders and the Rebel Leader die as a climax. Then the Rebel Leader is Back from the Dead and we are treated to total slapstick as the rebels fight the invaders with large spoons, brooms, frying pans and the like, and drive them out without single drop of blood.
• A documentary case is Class Action Park, where it's mostly amusing and whimsical as stories of the title park recall it to be as fun as dangerous (the rides had safety issues, the teenage staff was at times apathetic, and some guests being boorish just helped them get injured). And then it turns really somber recalling the first death of the place, as a man lost control in the Alpine Slide and flew headfirst into some rocks.
• Averted in Clerks, a straight comedy that was originally going to end with the main character suddenly getting gunned down in a robbery. Kevin Smith was apparently brought to his senses.
• Click starts off as a typical Adam Sandler flick. Fart jokes, Rob Schneider cameos, and Jerkass moments ahoy! And then, Henry Winkler dies. The whole film starts turning into a rather bleak overview on life. However, the ending was All Just a Dream, and he redeems his Jerkass self.
• Cry_Wolf: The headmaster lecturing Owen and threatening to expel him is interrupted when her preteen son races in, dressed for trick-or-treating.
• C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America goes from joking about the Alternate History it's showing to just examining how bad the country is as a result.
• Extreme example in The Dark Crystal: Jen and Kira get to the village of Podlings where she was raised. The whole town start a big party (not mentioned why, probably to celebrate that Kira found a living brethren) with music, food, drinks, everything. All's fun and joy, until the Garthim Soldiers arrive, attack everyone, destroy everything while everyone is screaming in terror and trying to run away. Unexpected.
• DC Extended Universe
  • Man of Steel: From the death of Zod to Superman addressing the military on his need to keep a secret identity. After such an intense scene as the former, the latter seems almost downright lighthearted.
  • One of the biggest criticisms leveled at the 2017 theatrical cut of Justice League was that its tone felt wildly inconsistent, as certain parts would shift rapidly from serious to silly. This was due in large part to the fact that the theatrical cut was essentially cobbled together from the footage shot by both the original director Zack Snyder and replacement director Joss Whedon, whose individual styles are as different as night and day. Moreover, as a follow-up to Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (which had gotten criticism for coming off as too dark and self-serious), the tonal shift to Lighter and Softer in Justice League felt jarring and unnatural. Conversely, the 2021 director's cut got praise for being much more tonally consistent as a follow-up to BvS, balancing out its serious and somber moments with lighter and more humorous parts in a way that felt much more organic and unforced.
• Dead Poets Society has this when Neil Perry is thrilled to pieces about landing the lead role in the school play, A Midnight Summer's Dream, only to enter his room and see his father already waiting for him in order to scold him ruthlessly and insist that he quit the play immediately.
• Deadpool: After Wade and Vanessa meet, they have a raunchy (and hilarious) Sex Montage throughout the rest of the year. How does it end? Wade toppling over unconscious after proposing and a trip to the hospital revealing he has terminal cancer.
• The elevator scene in Drive (2011) is a rather notable example transitioning from romantic music and a lit backdrop over the kiss to the Driver brutally killing the other in the elevator by ''stomping his head into a bloody pulp’’.
• In Dirty Little Secret, the Lifetime Movie of the Week about the Jodi Arias case, Jodi is shown making out with her boyfriend in a pool, then telling him she's going to become a Mormon. She then goes underwater to presumably perform oral sex and the scene cuts to her coming out of water at a baptism.
• The Israeli film Distortion starts like a romantic comedy, with a couple meeting in person for the first time in a cafe. Moments later, the cafe blows up.
• Fantasy Mission Force, helpfully recapped here by The Agony Booth crew. The movie starts out as crazy low-brow slapstick "humor", with plot twists that make no sense, and then suddenly there are people being bloodily massacred on-screen, including most of the main characters. What? You can't blame all that on the American dub, or on some cultural humor thing. But don't take my word for it.
• Though the use of this trope is a longtime staple in Coen brothers films (see Burn After Reading above), probably the most extreme example is in Fargo, in which hilarious deadpan comedy is interspersed with graphic killings, brutal violence, and a surprisingly haunting musical theme. The sheer extremity of the film's Mood Whiplash is personified in the character of Gaear (played by Peter Stormare), who rarely speaks except to nag Steve Buscemi's character (repeatedly) about going to "the pancakes house", tears up over TV soap operas - and is a terrifying, cold-blooded killer who murders anyone and everyone who gets in his way (including his own partner. Brutally. And feeds his body into a wood chipper.) without a moment's hesitation.
• The little-seen movie Fierce People is really only notable for this trope. The first half is a jolly, cutesy coming of age/Fish out of Water movie. Then around the halfway mark the main character suffers a violent, brutal rape, causing him to reevaluate everything he knows. The scene where his mother discovers the... true nature of the crime is particularly brutal because Finn's character is pretty understated up until this point, where he breaks down with shame, begging her not to reveal it. Not surprisingly, the second half of the movie is like a completely different film after that.
• 50/50 (2011), in spades. It's a comedy about cancer, which should clue you in. Sequences include: Joseph Gordon-Levitt walking down a hallway filled with empathetic cancer patients, being offered weed by older patients followed by a highly amusing trip down a hallway, and then waking up in the middle of the night and vomiting violently. In that order.
• Friends with Benefits is a raunchy, yet light hearted romantic comedy, right up until Dylan's father is introduced, who is clearly suffering from memory loss. The movie becomes heartbreaking from then on out.
• Peter Jackson's movie The Frighteners is a perfect example of this trope. For the first half of the movie it is a relatively light-hearted horror-comedy which appears to be making fun of more serious, scary horror movies. Then in the second half of the movie all comedy elements of the movie are completely abandoned and it becomes a fully fledged horror movie.
• In Ghosts of the Abyss, an IMAX film by James Cameron detailing his return to the Titanic, one of his two probes loses power while inside a stateroom. After almost losing the other probe in a rescue effort, Cameron's team gets both back outside the ship to the tune of "Just The Two of Us." It's the CMOH of the film. Then, as the submersibles are returning to the surface, the camera cuts to a crewman in one of the submersibles who reports the time as 6 o'clock on September 11, 2001. The crew in the submersibles find out about the attacks on the World Trade Center as soon as they get back on board their ship.
• The Godfather uses this extensively for dramatic impact, snapping from violence to peacefully pastoral scenes, and vice versa, culminating in a series of murders intercut with a baptism.
• Godzilla (2014):
  • A violent, action-packed scene of the male MUTO savaging an army squad and destroying a military vehicle to access the nuke suddenly snaps to a surprisingly touching and heartwarming scene of the MUTO couple courting and caressing lovingly.
  • As the male MUTO attacking civilians in a train, destroying airliners and people in an airport undergoing a screaming frenzy, Godzilla's foot appears, and everyone promptly shuts up. And hilariously enough, the music.
• Gold Diggers of 1933 ends with a happy scene of all the lovers finally ending up together, followed by a somber Depression-themed musical number that closes the film. (Had it not been for Executive Meddling, the film would have ended with a happier song, which instead got pushed to the middle of the film.)
• In The Good Son when Mark tells Susan that Henry may be a psychopath she slaps him and tells him never to say that again, seconds later she's crying and hugging him. Yay mood swings!
• The Graduate is a satirical comedy up until the scene where Elaine discovers the truth about her mother and Ben. Things get considerably heavier then.
• The Great Escape starts off as a cheerful, fun escape romp. Until the part when Ives commits suicide. Then it leads to having the entire cast, with three exceptions, recaptured or killed off. Yikes.
  • On top of that, Hilts' escape goes from exciting and action packed, to very sad when he is eventually recaptured, and then goes into a weird state of hopeful optimism at the very end despite being in prison.
• Harry Potter
  • In Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone while Harry and the Dursleys are in a small hut in the middle of a sea during a massive storm, something starts pounding on the door. The door gets knocked off its hinges and in walks a giant silhouetted figure...who then casually says "Sorry about that!" and fixes the door.
  • Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: Harry hears the Basilisk's blood-curdling voice echoing all around the hospital wing. Then he notices Dobby right in front of him who cheerfully says "Hello!"
  • Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire:
    • When Mad-Eye Moody is demonstrating the Unforgiveable Curses. Making the little spidery thing dance and jump and crawl over people? Classroom is in fits of giggles. Making her jump out of the window or drown herself? Hilarity comes to a screeching halt.
    • After Harry Portkeys back to the grounds with Cedric's body, the marching band starts playing, everyone cheers (Cedric's dad is very enthusiastic) and the headmasters go to congratulate Harry, failing to notice him sobbing over the dead Cedric. By the time Harry and Voldemort have stopped fighting, it's easy for the movie audience to have forgotten that Cedric was killed in the midst of the conflict. Suddenly Fleur lets out a shriek, the music slowly dies down, and everything come to a silence. Cedric's father then runs down to the body of his son. Cue the violin.
  • Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
    • In the book, the scene with Ron's humorous love potion antics already has an extreme case of this, but the movie takes it a step further by having Ron comically toppling out of frame first. The audience giggles. Cut immediately to him convulsing on the floor and foaming at the mouth.
    • The scene where Hagrid and Slughorn are singing that wizard song and reminiscing about Aragog. In a drunken stupor, complete with Hagrid passing out after Slughorn mentions he once had a fish. After Hagrid passes out, Slughorn turns to Harry and immediately explains that the fish was given to him by Harry's mother, and the fish disappeared because the magic sustaining it was dead...
  • Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 features a fairly comical line by Dobby the house elf, followed not three minutes later by his death by the hands of Bellatrix. This is what the film ends on.
• The film version of He's Just Not That into You falls into this thanks to its Four Lines, All Waiting plot. You switch between peppy, fun romantic comedy to watching a marriage fall apart with no humor at all.
• Hitler, Dead or Alive, from 1942, starts off as a warped comedy about ex-cons smuggled into Nazi Germany, attempting to assassinate Hitler. They do manage to not just capture Der Fuehrer, but shave off his mustache while he cries like a girl. And then they notice several children lined up against a wall, being shot execution-style. Cue patriotic speech on Why We Fight.
• Home Alone 2: Lost in New York has a moment where Kevin is walking the streets of New York on Christmas Eve, stopping by the children's hospital. It's a heart-rending Tear Jerker as he and a young patient wave to each other while "Christmas Star" plays in the background—and then Kevin remembers that Harry and Marv are planning to rob the money that is to be donated to the hospital. Cue "Setting the Traps" as Kevin prepares for battle.
  Kevin: You can mess with a lot of things, but you can't mess with kids on Christmas.
• In Hot Fuzz, there is a scene where Nick finds a lot of dead bodies stashed in a crypt underground, murdered by the villagers. The scene is by all means quite disturbing, not only because of the shere mulitude corpses Nick comes across, but also from the fact that some are reduced to skeletons, or others still are green, bloated, and covered in rats — that is, with the exception of the corpse of a living statue mime performer overacting his own death with a silly look of surprise on his face, still wearing his metallic body paint.
• In How to Deal, we see a high school boy score a soccer goal and dance around happily, while his teammates crowd around him and his girlfriend cheers from the stands. Suddenly he drops to the ground, and seconds later we learn he died of a heart defect. It's so ridiculously abrupt as to almost cause laughter.
• In The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1, Katniss seeing Peeta again in District 13. The music's very light, there's relief all around, and as broken as he is, it looks like a touching reunion is in order. And then he tries to strangle her.
• Being a pitch black comedy, In Bruges does this expertly with some frequency.
• Incident At Loch Ness is a documentary (...but not really) about director Werner Herzog attempting to film a project about the Loch Ness monster and the nature of folk tales. Herzog has to deal with the undercutting of assistant-director Zak Penn constantly. Penn is trying to stage things for dramatic effect, such as getting an animatronic Nessie to scare the crew members, much to Herzog's consternation. Then, after Zak Penn draws a gun, the REAL Loch Ness monster attacks the crew and all hell breaks loose.
• Into the Wild: The non-linear narrative structure allows for this in a scene transition: The first scene shows the protagonist, Chris, at one of the happier parts of his journey. The film abruptly cuts to a scene from near the chronological end, in which Chris is firing his gun in the air, desperately trying to signal for help while screaming "I'm fuckin' hungry!" at the top of his lungs. The whiplash is even more intense when you see that he eventually dies of starvation.
• Into the Woods seems to have a Happy Ending at the start, but it turns out the Giantess is coming down the beanstalk.
• Melanie in Jackie Brown taunts Lewis for not knowing where he parked the car. Lewis warns her not to say another word and the scene keeps its light-hearted atmosphere until the seemingly stable Lewis shoots her twice in the parking lot, muttering to her afterward that it was exactly where he thought it was.
• James Bond:
  • On Her Majesty's Secret Service has newlyweds Bond and Tracy drive off happily. Bond pauses to get rid of the flowers and whatnot on the car. Then Blofeld and Irma Bunt drive up to them and fire several shots at them. Bond survives. Guess who doesn't?
  • In For Your Eyes Only, Bond has a baddie trapped in a car slowly sliding off a cliff. Bond takes out a pin and says "You left this with Ferrara^note one of Bond's allies, who the baddie murdered and left the pin of another (eventual) ally so as to frame him, I believe", tossing it over to the baddie. He can only stare at the pin as the car starts sliding off some more before Bond kicks the car off himself. This badass moment is immediately ruined by Bond noting "He had no head for heights...".
  • In Quantum of Solace, there is a sad moment between Mathis and Bond when Mathis dies. Then, several seconds later, Bond dumps his body into a dumpster and loots his wallet, pointing that "he wouldn't care". The audience wasn't sure whether to laugh or not.
• Jason's Lyric: At the beginning is about a broken family and its impacts. Second, it shifts the focus on the romance of the titular characters. Near the end, it becomes quite frightening with crime and violence.
• Jaws manages to successfully switch back and forth between comedy and horror, sometimes in the space of a single line: "Come on down and chum some of this shit!"
  • Spielberg admitted that in that scene, the intention was laugh - Jump Scare - nervous laugh ("You're gonna need a bigger boat"). So much that when after a preview had the one-liner being covered by screams, they re-edited so the audience could recover and properly laugh.
  • One scene starts off with Hooper and Quint drunkenly comparing scars before making up a couple of fake ones. Then Quint reveals he was on the doomed Indianapolis, and Hooper immediately realizes that the mood has completely changed. What starts as a lighthearted bonding moment expertly turns into one of the most legendarily disturbing monologues in cinematic history.
• Joker (2019) follows Arthur Fleck murdering a former co-worker in a horrific and bloody way with a funny moment where their dwarf workmate is unable to leave, as he is too short to unchain the door, prompting Arthur to help him and give a sincere apology while doing so.
• JCVD varies between scenes of a police chief and a doctor being forced to walk through a crowd of onlookers cheering Jean-Claude Van Damme, who they believe to be in the process of robbing their post office (it was his home town, so he was still an icon), and court room scenes of his custody battle over his daughter.
• Kingsman: The Secret Service:
  • The over-the-top, manic nature of the church massacre is shockingly hilarious. Harry's muted horror at going on a murderous rampage against civilians, and Valentine's abrupt dispatch of him, is just plain shocking.
  • The shift back to Bond-style comedy shortly after the Apocalypse How/Inferred Holocaust sequence is equally jarring.
• Korean cinema and Asian movies in general tend to do this a lot. There are already a few examples here but others include:
  • Korean film distributor Showbox has this cute little Vanity Plate preceding all of their movies. This includes dark flicks such as Taegukgi ("Hard to believe 20 minutes after this adorable logo, you'd see the most intensive, violence war scenes ever.", says a comment in the linked video) and The Host (2006)...
    • ...which itself flip flops from a family drama, to a comedy, to a giant monster movie, to a political thriller, and returns to all of these in a moment's notice.
  • The Korean film Save the Green Planet! can be described as "Men in Black meets Misery," with all the mood dissonance that implies.
  • Heroic Trio - A goofy Hong Kong superhero/martial arts movie about three women kicking butt. There are scenes of pure slapstick mingled with decapitations, blood sprays, and babies being killed.
  • The Untold Story (aka Bun Man) - A supposedly true story about a man from Macau who kills people and cooks them in his dumplings. The film is extremely dark and disturbing except for the scenes taking place at the police station which are on an almost sitcom-level of whackiness.
  • The Korean movie Vampire Cop Ricky, nominally a comedy, switches repeatedly between serious cop drama and total vampire slapstick. Several serious scenes are interrupted by sudden physical comedy, while others start hilarious and end very, very badly.
• Kung Fu Hustle. The scene that starts the whole Axe Gang versus the Tenants debacle begins with Sing getting his ass handed to him by the tenants and the landlady, accidentally attracting the attention of the Axe Gang with a misplaced flare ("Who threw that firecracker?"), and the Landlady comically fleeing at what got Sing's ass handed to him (calling the Landlady fat). There is a brutal fight scene, interspersed with Brother Sum hitting his Assistant comedically. A Looney Tunes tribute ends with a dramatic/funny scene of Sing (with his lips swollen from snake bites) in a fit of rage.
• The Ritchie Valens biopic La Bamba ends with Valens' funeral procession, followed by his grief-stricken brother Bob walking over a bridge while screaming "Ritchie!" as a short Really Dead Montage of happier moments the two had together ensues... Then the credits play over Valens playing the cheerful title song.
• The Last American Virgin starts off as a teen comedy with situations on par with American Pie. In the last third of the movie, the main character's best friend gets a girl pregnant and breaks up with her over the news. The main gets into a fight with his former best friend over this, and because the girl is his love interest, he helps her "take care" of the baby over Spring Break at great expense to him. The movie ends with a party after Spring Break where the main character sees his old friends after staying behind for the vacation. He walks into the party and sees his former best friend got back together with the girl even after everything that happened. Considering the type of movie most thought it was, it had quite the Downer Ending in the form of a Kick the Dog Moment.
• The Last House on the Left has this in spades. Scenes where girls are being brutally raped and mutilated are interspersed with lighthearted scenes, like their parents cleaning up the house or bumbling cops meeting obstacles. Later, her parents are talking about her being missing, complete with somber music; meanwhile, the killers are driving around with upbeat music playing in the background.
• The Legend of Billie Jean: During the initial frantic getaway scene where the characters have been framed for theft and attempted murder and are on the run, Ophelia abruptly tries to stop for gas because she is using the car without asking her dad and he keeps track of how full the tank is.
• Let Me In: Due to the film being a combination between a dark,brutal horror film and a Puppy Love Romance story. This happens freqeuntly. Notably:
  • In the date scene in the basement. It starts off as a date scene, with the main character being adorably awkard and tries to initiate a a friendship pact with his girlfriend because he was too shy to kiss her. Only shes a vampire and her blood lust activates the second she sees the wound on his thumb. She assumes her demonic form and very nearly kills him.
  • When Abby first kisses Owen on the lips, its a remarkabily tender moment. That happens just after shes eaten a man alive with his blood still plastered on her face. She even gets some of his blood on Owens mouth as well.
• La Vita è bella (Life Is Beautiful), starts out as a comedy in Mussolini's Italy, and ends up as a dramedy in a concentration camp.
• Life as a House: The film can swing wildly from tearjerker territory to scenes that border on absurdity, like Alyssa coming on to George while he's under the influence of medication, and then lying on top of him and kissing him, before abruptly leaving.
• Little Shop of Horrors is considered a "hothouse of laughs" by Gene Siskel. True, the movie is pretty funny at times, from Seymour's interview at a radio station to Orin dealing with the only patient that can withstand the pain. However, once Orin inadvertently kills himself with nitrous oxide and Seymour feeds his body to Audrey II, we're treated to more serious parts of the story, starting with a heartwarming/tearjerking musical number where Seymour comforts Audrey over Orin's "disappearance". And this is even WITH a last-minute Focus Group Ending slapped on. Had it been made as intended, both of the main characters would have been killed in extensive, dramatic scenes, followed by a half upbeat half dirge song about the end of the world.
• The Lone Ranger:
  • The movie follows up a scene where Butch Cavendish cuts out a man's heart and eating it with a slapstick comedy scene involving horse excrement. Also, the brutally violent gunfights alternate with almost comic book-ish stunt sequences.
  • Even worse is Tonto's farcical jailbreak of the Lone Ranger segueing immediately into a massacre of Comanches before their eyes.
• Likewise for Looking for Mr. Goodbar, which ends with the main character being raped and killed by a man she picked up in a bar, made all the more tragic by the fact that she was finally beginning to turn her life around.
• In The Lost Battalion, the main characters are saved by their side's artillery, complete with heartwarming music and cheering. In an instant, this turns sour as the artillery has been misaimed and is falling right on top of them, killing tons of soldiers.
• The Loved Ones has quite a few instances of this, such as one scene which goes from Brent being horrifically tortured to Jamie while he's on his date with Mia.
• Tyler Perry's 2009 film Madea Goes to Jail is the best example of this in his works as the plot frequently switches focus from the comical, over-the-top Madea getting into trouble in amusing ways, to a young prostitute's trials and tribulations that are handled in a dead serious manner. The sequences feel like they come from completely different movies.
• Mandalay: At the end of the movie, there's a sequence of Tony, freshly poisoned, falling down the board and drowning in the river. Cue the ferry boat's propellers and a Fade to Black right to Mandalay, with people going about their lives and the passengers disembarking. All of this clashes against Tanya's heartbroken, haunted expression in the previous scene. Then, slowly, Tanya starts leaving her past behind and softly smiles.
• The Romantic Comedy The Marrying Kind starts off as pretty comedic, but it gets darker with the reveal of their son's death.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • When Thor is adjusting to Earth, the whiplash borders on a Genre Shift from epic fantasy to fish out of water comedy, although the film's In Media Res opening lets us know it's coming and softens the impact a bit.
  • Guardians of the Galaxy
    • The whiplash in the first five minutes is so strong that it can cause neck pain. The film starts with a young Peter at his mother's death bed. Stricken by grief, he runs away before being abducted by aliens. Then the Marvel logo appears. After the logo, Star-Lord looks around on a dying world for signs of life when he comes into a temple. When he gets there, he takes his mask off, turns on his Walkman, and starts playing "Come and Get Your Love" and dancing hilariously.
    • Another example comes near the end; with their enemy defeated Groot has seemingly sacrificed himself to save the rest, going from heartwarming to heartbreaking as they react to the loss. Then Ronan shows up, and makes a grand, menacing speech which is suddenly interrupted by Peter Quill challenging him to a dance-off (as a distraction). It's so much of a mood breaker that Ronan stops to demand what he's doing rather than just ignore him and complete his life's work, because the guy's antics are ruining what should be the most satisfying moment of his life.
  • Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 isn't slouch in this department either. Highlights include Taserface throwing out mutinous crew out in the vacuum only to have Rocket (and Ravagers) laugh at his name seconds after that, lengthy sequence including Baby Groot bringing wrong items followed by absolute carnage, and Ego transforming to David Hasselhoff for few seconds during the emotional climax of the movie.
  • Thor: Ragnarok has one in The Stinger. After a mostly light-hearted space comedy, Loki and Thor discuss their plans to bring the Asgardian people to Earth, and whether it's really such a good idea to bring Loki back as well, considering his role in the events of The Avengers (2012). They suddenly fall silent as a shadow falls over the refugee ship and the looks on both of their faces go from relaxed to "oh fuck". They've just been intercepted by Thanos.
  • Avengers: Infinity War has one during the final fight. When Thanos completes the Infinity Gauntlet, Thor suddenly leaps in and rams Stormbeaker deep into Thanos's chest. Thanos falls over as Thor pushes it deeper in, leaving everyone in the theaters relieved (if a little grossed out). But then...
    Thanos: You should have gone for the head. [snap]
  • Ant-Man and the Wasp is mostly presented as a slapstick comedy, but then along comes the post-credits scene, and suddenly we remember, Thanos has wiped out half of humanity.
  • Avengers: Endgame is no slouch in this department either. The opening scene itself is a Downer Beginning with Clint Barton still under house arrest and having a family picnic in his farm as his family disintegrates as he is momentarily distracted thanks to Thanos. Then the Marvel logo appears with the song "Dear Mr. Fantasy" by Traffic plays in the background - cut to Tony Stark and Nebula playing paper football to kill time while stuck in the outer space.
  • Thor: Love and Thunder followed the same Bathos-filled Denser and Wackier tone of Thor: Ragnarok, and many serious or sad scenes are undercut by a sudden joke - Jane and Valkyrie discuss the former's cancer and how the two need to join a fight even if it means dying in the process, with the latter showing off her swords... and then a boombox, leading to both bobbing their heads to Mary J. Blige.
• The little-seen Charlie Chaplin non-Tramp movie Monsieur Verdoux is an interesting version of this: for the first two-thirds it's a merry dark comedy about a dandy who murders a succession of rich wives for their money; there are quite hilarious hijinks as he attempts to kill the most annoying one in a rowboat and also when the current wife shows up at the wedding to the next wife, etc. It then takes a not-funny dark and philosophical turn when he's actually arrested for his crimes and sentenced to death. The movie then has a very frank and stern message about the morality of the death penalty. Not so hilarious.
• Monsters:
  • Lampshaded by Andrew after he fills Samantha in on how his son's mother (they'd only spent 2 months together) had screwed him over regarding visitation.
  Andrew: So on a lighter note, you got any pets?
• Parodied (like everything else) near the end of Monty Python and the Holy Grail when King Arthur and Sir Bedevere finally reach the castle where the Holy Grail is kept. The scene even has majestic music playing, until...
  King Arthur: Our quest is at an end! God be praised! (he and Sir Bedevere kneel) Almighty God, we thank Thee that Thou hast vouchsafed to us the most holy- (a sheep is flung at them) JESUS CHRIST!! (sheep lands on them)
  French Guard: Hello, stuffy English Kniggit and Monsieur Arthur King who has the brain of a duck, you know! So we French persons art with you a second time!
• Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium is a very musical, colourful, and exciting film until it begins winding down to Mr. Magorium's death, which plunges even the titular Emporium into a deep depression. The characters are then forced to enter the "real world". Granted, one of the movie's lessons is about how to rise from tragedy and find your own place, but the shift from whimsical to bleakly serious is fairly shocking for a children's movie.
• Mrs. Doubtfire was adverted as a wacky romp, which it was, except for the scenes where Robin Williams and Sally Field were tearing each other apart, sometimes in front of their kids. ^note  Many of the film's deleted scenes would have pushed the domestic discourse even closer to the foreground.
• My Amnesia Girl: Near the end, Apollo drives to Irene's workplace while he and she have a phone conversation, confessing their love for each other, but then the heartwarming moment stops when Apollo gets into a car crash while Irene is waiting for him, getting worried.
• Averted in Mystery Team, thanks to it being a Black Comedy.
• Minor example in the 1946 Cole Porter biopic Night and Day: at one point you get Busby Berkeley-type numbers intercut with scenes of Porter on the operating table getting major leg surgery after his riding accident.
• Fellini's Nights of Cabiria varies in tone from comic to somewhat tragic, but with a generally positive outlook. Nothing like the end of the movie where there is a genuine sense that Cabiria's life is in danger and the absolute heartbreak that follows.
• The final third of North doesn't just involve the youthful hero trying to return to his parents — another kid, his conniving, power-hungry friend from back home, has sent assassins out to kill him. The film has been a light fantasy up to this point, and indeed continues to be, but the plot development is so dark that it invokes this trope nevertheless.
• Pacific Rim has some pretty wild ones: in the beginning Gipsy is celebrating that they've taken down Knifehead only for it to come back with a vengeance, in the middle of the Hong Kong fight Gipsy Danger's fist smashes into an office building and starts a Newton cradle when it stops short of smashing a desk, and when the Marshall is giving a congratulatory speech to the Jaeger pilots his radiation sickness kicks into overdrive.
• Of all places, The Passion of the Christ. During a flashback in between the movie's extended torture scenes, it shows Mary asking Jesus about a table he's building. She comments, with a smile, that It Will Never Catch On.
• The Russian adaptation of Pippi Longstocking does this a couple of times. One second, the audience, along with half of the characters, is laughing at Pippi's antics, the next second she is asked about her parent and breaks into a total Tear Jerker song, revealing that her mother is dead and her father is missing. And then, "Lets play Hide-and-Seek!"
• Played for laughs in Pixels, when Professor Iwatani goes to talk to Pac-Man. Everything seems very heartfelt and soothing, and Pac-Man seems to be listening to his spiritual father, and the others watching from their cars are talking about how beautiful the experience is. This lasts right up until Iwatani tries to touch his creation. Pac-Man suddenly chomps his hand, turning it into pixels. Iwatani starts running back to the cars, screaming for everyone to annihilate Pac-Man while everyone else is screaming in sudden terror.
• Planet of the Apes
  • In Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Dodge snarls "Get your stinkin' paws off me, you damn dirty ape," causing the audience to laugh. Then Caesar shouts "NOOOOOO!" and the audience fell silent in shock.
  • It's sequel Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, has it's own, only more deadly. Koba's simple-minded chimp routine for the 2 gunmen had the audience laughing just as much as the 2 men in the movie. But when the men were off guard, allowing Koba to grab the gun and kill them, everybody instantly stopped laughing.
• RoboCop (1987):
  • Early in the film, before his resurrection as the title cyborg, Murphy is captured by Boddicker's gang. They don't seem to mean any real harm, merely getting pleasure out of incapacitating Murphy and taunting him, but then they start graphically dismembering him with shotguns.
  • After Murphy escapes ED-209 because it can't go down the stairs while he can, he promptly walks into a heavily-armored SWAT time who all but shoot him to pieces while a somber rendition of the main theme plays.
• The Poker House has quite a few examples of this. The most notable is the rollercoaster of a third act, wherein the main character gets raped, then verbally abused, then sets a record at a basketball game, then breaks down sobbing in the car, then sings along with her two sisters to "Ain't No Mountain High Enough". Mood Whiplash indeed.
• Polar is, for most of the movie, an over-the-top action film parody, until the last scene when it suddenly turns to intense drama.
• Done brilliantly in the film adaptation of A Prairie Home Companion when during the titular radio show a heartbreaking duet "Goodbye to my Mama" is followed up immediately by a pair of goofy cowboys singing "Bad Jokes", 4 1/2 minutes of pure, unadulterated comedy.
• The 1967 feature The President's Analyst is loaded with this: pop-culture snark and cheerful caricature are interspersed with moments like Godfrey Cambridge's devastating monologue on the day he started kindergarten and learned "what a nigger was". At one point the titular analyst, Sidney Schafer, has a paranoid nightmare that everyone is spying on him, even his beloved girlfriend Nan. Awakening in a panic, he telephones her for reassurance and then hangs up, in sudden comic suspicion that his telephone might be bugged. His paranoia is played as comedically preposterous... until Nan is seen, with tears in her eyes, playing back his recorded phone call for her CEA handlers.
• Pulp Fiction has Christopher Walken's character solemnly explaining how the gold watch was handed down through World War I and World War II... and The Vietnam War, where he and Butch's father saved it from being confiscated by shoving it up their asses for seven years.
  • The whole movie rapidly and jarringly cycles between graphic, horrific violence and madcap zaniness.
• The Taiwanese horror film Re-Cycle hopscotches around moods like a meth-crazed grasshopper. Starting off as a suspense-driven horror film, about midway through the horror gives way to dark fantasy followed by Squick in the form of a cavern full of aborted fetuses and then a few genuinely touching moments, a brief return to horror, and then a Bittersweet Ending sandwiched in between TWO separate Mind Screws. Add a couple of Ass Pulls—because what else can you call the helpful figures having been her previously unmentioned aborted daughter and Grandfather??—and you're there.
• Red Dawn (1984) keeps switching between dark, serious scenes and patriotic Narm so thick it's a wonder the characters don't spontaneously transform into mom's apple pies.
• Red Eye goes from Jackson and Lisa getting along quite nicely, to Jackson revealing that he's been stalking Lisa for weeks, and that he needs her to help him carry out an assassination attempt. The trailer does this particularly well.
• Remember the Titans: After the Titans have won the semi-final game, half the town is celebrating. Gerry Bertier drives through the streets, enjoying the cheering of his fans—and then a truck smashes into him. Cut to his mother and the entire team gathered in the hospital, learning that he's now paralyzed from the waist-down.
• The comedic 1958 Japanese film The Rickshaw Man for 85% of its running time is funny, charming, good old-fashioned family fun. In the last 10 or 15 minutes, Toshiro Mifune suddenly becomes debilitatingly sad and then dies in a drunk stupor.
• The Rocky Horror Picture Show. It's all spoofy and crazy and fun and then.... WTF!? The song "I'm Going Home" pops up and it's downhill from there.
  • Hacking Eddie to death with an ax right after he's introduced, feeding his corpse to unsuspecting guests, and brainwashing everyone into becoming your personal orgy slaves might have been a bigger whiplash for some people. Also, those seeing it for the first time might have expected a campy horror spoof; after getting up and doing the Time Warp, one might have been a tad shocked to see Tim curry throw off his cape and reveal a bodice and fishnet stockings. What seemed like a Monster Mash in the entire first act briskly becomes something more like Pink Flamingos.
  • The Criminologist deserves a mention as well. He starts out giving straightlaced, nonchalant, neutral descriptions of the situation, lets himself go during the Time Warp, goes back to straightlaced, and at the end delivers a slow, deadpan commentary on humanity that sounds almost like an ill omen.
• One of Johnny's lines from The Room (2003) contains this. Granted, it's more to do with the words themselves, as Tommy Wiseau's tone is the same throughout:
  Johnny: ''"I did not hit her! It's not true, it's bullshit! I did not hit her! I did not!... oh hi Mark.
  • Johnny's fight with Mark at the end. It's supposed to be a dramatic turning point representing the shattering of their friendship and how deeply Johnny has been betrayed...and then Johnny goes "You're just a chicken! Cheep-cheep-cheep-cheep-cheep-cheeeeeep!
• In A Room in Town, a sweet scene between Francois and Violette immediately transitions to the workers on strike and the reality of their conditions.
• Rush has a brutal one where the pre-race festivities, with Team Hesketh and James Hunt downing oysters and champagne, suddenly turn grim after driver Francois Cevert is beheaded by a crash barrier in qualifying.^note In Real Life, Cevert was not decapitated; that was Helmuth Konigg in 1974. Cevert was nearly bisected.
• Rush Hour: Consul Han's daughter, Soo Yung, is getting driven to school, happily singing along to Mariah Carey's "Fantasy" playing on the radio. Then, Tsang shows up disguised as a police officer, killing her bodyguards and kidnapping her.
• The 2016 Gender Bender comedy Sam follows Sam, a Handsome Lech who ends up being magically turned into a beautiful woman ('Samantha') as a punishment for his attitude towards women. The first fifteen minutes leading up the transformation are quite dark and mean spirited with Sam being shown to be an unrepentant Jerkass with an openly misogynistic streak. The next act has 'Samantha' dealing with her new state and while it has a lot more comedy that the opening act and Samantha is portrayed more likable, she goes through some serious angst that is portrayed more for drama. Then the tone shifts again into a lighter more Fish out of Water Romantic Comedy territory and the mood stays like that for the rest of the story.
• Saving Private Ryan intermixes thrilling battle scenes with thoughtful scenes featuring rookie soldiers breaking down in tears after realizing the horror they've gotten themselves into, while the more veteran soldiers start pondering about the purpose of war.
  • Reiben telling a low-brow story to the squad before the Final Battle. Before he shipped out to Europe, he was working at his mothers' shop and a very well-endowed woman walks in, looking for a new bra. He purposefully gives her one that's way too small for her and she is "pouring out" of the bra trying to squeeze into it. When she realises what he's trying from his... physical reaction, she tells him in a motherly fashion that "if you get scared or see anything over there that upsets you, think about [my boobs]". Once the sexy humour vanishes, a somber silence falls over the men, as they all think about what they've seen and done so far.
  • Most chilling when Mellish, a Jew, is handed a Hitler Youth knife. He cracks a joke that it is now a Shabbat Challah cutter (for cutting the bread in the Jewish observance of Shabbat), and then immediately breaks down in tears.
  • The scene where the soldiers look along the dogtags starts serious, becomes jokey when they decide to pretend playing cards with the tags and laughing about some names (even the very serious Captain Miller smiles seeing it), and then shifts to sadness as Wade furiously runs over to scoop the tags up, angrily pointing out that they're making light of dead soldiers, in full view and earshot of a column of soldiers (who presumably are the dead guys' comrades) marching by.
  • Or when, in the middle of the final battle, there is a rather hilarious fight between a German and an American, in which both of their guns jam, and they instead throw their helmets at each other before pulling out their sidearms. The American shoots first, but gets hit by machine gun fire and begins dancing around, cursing and throwing his sidearm at the dead German.
    • Worth noting that this hilarious scene happens immediately after the above-mentioned Mellish's infamously disturbing death at the hands of a German soldier. He overpowers Mellish and slowly sinks the very same knife into Mellish's chest while mockingly whispering (in German):
  "Give up, you don't stand a chance! Let's end this here!... It will be easier for you, much easier. You'll see it will be over quickly. Shhhh... Shhhhhh..."
• Secretly, Greatly: The first half of the film is more or less a lighthearted story that finds the humor in well-trained spies forced to live mundane lives. Then the suicide order comes, and the film becomes more of a dark action thriller.
• An intentional use: the beginning of Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events starts with a stop-motion animated short called "The Littlest Elf". The happy, frolicking piece is suddenly cut off with a Record Needle Scratch that turns off all of the lights:
  Lemony Snicket: I'm sorry to inform you that this is not the movie you will be watching. The movie you are about to see is extremely unpleasant. If you wish to see a film about a happy little elf, then I'm sure there is still plenty of seating in theatre number two. However, if you like stories about clever and reasonably attractive orphans, suspicious fires, carnivorous leeches, Italian food and secret organizations, then stay, as I retrace each and every one of the Baudelaire children's woeful steps. My name is Lemony Snicket, and it is my sad duty to document this tale.
• The Seven Little Foys gives you Bob Hope and One-Scene Wonder James Cagney trading jokes and tap dancing together for a good five minutes. In the very next scene, Hope's character finds out that his wife died while he was away.
• Shaolin Soccer also contains a lot of silly slapstick comedy. One scene, however, dwells on a scrawny soccer player bursting into tears as maudlin music swells in the background.
• Shaun of the Dead uses this trope, flipping between a mad-cap comedy and an earnest disaster movie with plenty of high tragedy played straight.
  • Perfect example: After it has been set up that Shaun's stepfather is a stodgy old man who despises rock, metal, and rap, he becomes a zombie. The resulting, rather tense scene where Shaun attempts to explain to his mother that "there's nothing left of your husband in there" is punctuated by the old man promptly crawling into the front seat and turning off the metal playing on the radio, the exact same thing he would have done in life.
  • Even Better Example: In the previous Tear Jerker as Shaun 's stepfather passes away just after giving his last words to Shaun - to the effect that "I've always loved you... look after your mother, Shaun..." - Shaun tearfully begs for Ed to stop the car. Ed obliges... by swerving off the road to ram (comedically) into a zombie, and then pulling a racing-car slide-stop. Shaun calls him out on this though.
  • Even better example still: Once they finally get refuge in the local pub, they are quickly besieged by zombies. The bartender comes out, but they don't have any working weapons, and the power just came back on, which turned on the jukebox. So, they use pool cues to hit him in time to Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now" before finally knocking him out and discovering the pub's titular Winchester is still activated and there is a box of bullets nearby. Skip forward five minutes, and Shaun's mother admits to Liz (Shaun's ex, although his mother isn't aware of the breakup) that she was bitten by a zombie earlier in the movie, dooming her to death and resurrection. She dies in Shaun's arms as he begs her not to leave him. This is followed by a genuinely tense Mexican standoff over what to do with Shaun's mother - David reckons they have to shoot her; Shaun and Ed are hysterically protective.
  • One of the best examples arises when the three remaining party members are hiding in the Winchester's basement with Ed having been bitten and badly injured. Shaun and Ed say a tearful goodbye, and Ed apologizes...not for being a bad friend, but for ripping off a silent but apparently noxious fart.
• Short Circuit 2, like its predecessor, is a fairly light comedy. That is, till the scene where Oscar has his goons brutally smash up Johnny Five in near-slow-motion. Seeing him "limp off" afterwards doesn't help matters, right after our robot hero saves himself by using a toy plane to Ass Shove one of the goons. And then, it reaches Tear Jerker levels when Johnny Five writes "dying" on a brick wall.
• The Sixth Sense is a pretty dark thriller all the way through, but one moment takes the cake as being a pretty severe case of this trope. Cole gives a bereaved father a box with a VHS tape from his deceased daughter. He pops it in, and it starts with a cute puppet show... which leads into a grisly scene of the mother poisoning his daughter's food, revealing her role in her death.
• In Sleuth, the story jumps from funny to horrifying within a second. Some scenes you might alternate between smiling and being afraid for the characters' lives several times within one moment. You could even find yourself grinning while thinking "I think something horrible is going to happen any minute".
• Something Wild starts of as a kooky sexcapade, but when raven-haired Lulu turns into golden-haired Audrey, that's when the tone changes - enter Ray Liotta.
• In Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), the scene with the tiny robot removing the roof of Tom's car and turning into a sticky bomb starts out as being Played for Laughs — but isn't very funny when it explodes and Sonic is caught in the blast, knocking him unconscious.
• In a German Film Stahlnetz: PSI a little girl is kidnapped, locked up and left to die and the police struggles to find her in time. With the help of The Power of Friendship, and some supernatural thing they do and then her best friend meets her:
  - I missed you so much.
  - I still owe you the solution for those Math questions...
  - I already got an F for them. Doesn't matter...
• Star Trek
  • Star Trek: The Motion Picture has two people killed in a transporter malfunction with implied Body Horror. A few minutes later, Dr. McCoy's reluctance to go through the transporter is Played for Laughs.
  • Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home is a Lighter and Softer romp about going back in time to San Fransisco, and nobody dies. Except....
    • While Kirk and Spock are in a tour group at the Cetacean Institute, their tour guide Gillian leads them to a television display. Audiences reportedly became very quiet as the Green Aesop shot home by way of actual whale hunting footage. In some instances, the decks underfoot were awash in blood.
    • Chekov, a Russian, is caught in the middle of the top-secret reactor of an aircraft carrier. After a hilarious interrogation ("You play games with me and we're through!" "I am? May I go now?") he tries to stun his captors, only for his phaser to make a few pathetic sputtering noises. He flees through the ship to a Russian-inspired soundtrack—then slips and plummets from the very high deck to the ground, and suddenly the audience doesn't know if he's dead or alive.
    • A Downplayed example in the pizza restaurant. Gillian starts tearing up at the thought of saying goodbye to the whales while worrying about their survival in the open sea—and then Kirk gets a call on his "pocket pager." His pathetic attempt to be discreet about it, as well as the dialogue between him and Scotty (including Scotty calling him "Admiral", just like Spock), have Gillian clearly wondering just what the hell she's gotten herself involved in.
  • Star Trek (2009) has a killer instance of this. Kirk has to prove that Spock, in the wake of his planet's destruction (and his mother's death), is not emotionally fit to be Acting Captain, so he goads Spock by mocking his apparent emotionlessness and saying it proves he never loved his mother. Cue Spock almost beating Kirk to death before he recovers his wits and resigns. It's a tense, horrible scene that has everyone on the bridge in shock... except newly-arrived Scotty, who proclaims, "I LIKE THIS SHIP! It's ''exciting'’!"
• The Star Wars movies do this. Going by order of release, the first movie was a light-hearted fairy tale, the second movie was a dark and serious drama, and the third flipped back to being a child friendly light hearted action movie with even more whimsical creatures and humour. This tone carried through the fourth movie before going back to the dark drama and more grittiness in the later films that bordered on disturbing.
  • The climax of The Phantom Menace was pointed out by the editor to do this, in a negative way. Due to it being made up of four different conflicts with varying tones, it jumps between sadness at the death of a hero, humour with Jar-Jar Binks, excitement in a large space battle, and nothing in a scene with Padme. This results in all the would-be emotions being negated and in a worse case scenario leaving the audience bored out of their minds. Both the following movies had much less complicated climaxes as a result.
  • The second and third prequel movies do a better job at keeping the same general mood throughout except for the climax of Revenge of the Sith. Anakin is disfigured and has turned to the Dark Side, Padme is dead, the Jedi Order and the Republic are no more, Palpatine has taken over the galaxy,... and we get a cute little funny scene with C-3PO moments before the end credits. At least it was Black Comedy.
  • Master Yoda's first appearance in The Empire Strikes Back as a senile swamp dweller and his subsequent reveal as the last Jedi Master. Bonus points for great acting by a puppet way before the age of CGI.
  • Return of the Jedi's climax also had this problem, to a slightly lesser degree -We switch between Luke falling dangerously close to the Dark Side during his confrontation with the Emperor, the Rebel Alliance's Last Stand against the Imperial Armada... And the Ewoks, cute cuddly teddy bears comically beating up Stormtroopers with sticks and stones.
  • One of the first scenes of The Last Jedi picks up at the ending of The Force Awakens. Rey finds Luke at the top of a mountain, and hands him his father's lightsaber. Luke, in shock, holds the lightsaber and stares for a moment. Then his expression hardens, he tosses the lightsaber over his shoulder, and storms away without a word.
• Striptease is an outlandish Sex Comedy that gets deadly serious whenever it centers around protagonist Erin, a Single Mom Stripper trying not to lose custody of her daughter. Roger Ebert's review even noted "all of the characters are hilarious except for Demi Moore's."
• Super frequently shifts tones from an indie-flavored superhero parody to a very Black Comedy with people getting their heads split open with wrenches. Easily the biggest example is The Crimson Bolt and Boltie storming Jacques' compound, taking out some mooks, the music lifting in heroic triumph as Boltie screams with glee... before she's brutally shot in the head, and the reality that they're storming a heavily fortified compound belonging to a drug dealer sets in.
• Super 8 has a few moments.
  • Joe's mother's funeral, which starts out very somber and then switches to the kids all arguing about the grisly manner in which she died.
  • The climax, when Joe talks down the alien from killing him and his friends immediately followed by Cary's indignant reaction to the fact that it actually worked.
  • The ending has a depressing moment where Joe lets go of the locket, followed by the ship leaving, the credits continue the sad music... only to cut to show the hilarious Stylistic Suck horror movie made by the kids. And then, The Knack's "My Sharona".
• Superman: The Movie: A perfect example of this is when the police detectives are following a goofy, bumbling Otis. The mood swiftly changes when Lex uses Otis' entry point to his underground lair to push the cop into the path of an oncoming express train, with a Gory Discretion Shot. Miss Teschmacher growls, "Sick!" at Lex.
• Superman Returns is similar — in the middle of a relatively light-hearted movie, there's the truly uncomfortable scene where Lex Luthor and his goons kick the crap out of Superman. And to top it off, Lex stabs Supes in the back with a Kryptonite shiv. Compared to the rest of the movie, it's unsettlingly brutal. Then there's the unsettling scene where a thug with a skull tattoo on the back of his head plays a duet with Lois's son on the piano before assaulting and preparing to kill Lois in front of him. Lois's son kills the thug with the piano.
• Near the end of The Ten Commandments, the divine majesty of God giving His law to Moses is contrasted with the debauchery of the Hebrews worshipping their golden idol.
• Terminator:
  • Averted in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. The reason that the T-800's Un Smile was cut out of the film was because James Cameron thought it was too big of a leap to go from Arnold goofing off, to discussing Judgment Day in the very next scene.
  • Played straight in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. For about 90% of its running time, the movie largely comes off as a Lighter and Softer parody of the Terminator saga: Arnold Schwarzenegger spoofs the T-800's famous introduction in a sequence where he walks naked into a strip club, steals a male stripper's clothes mid-striptease, and dramatically dons the man's star-shaped sunglasses, the new villain is a female Terminator who uses her shape-shifting abilities to distract men by inflating her breasts, John Connor has an intentionally awkward romance with a former school classmate, there's a long car chase where the T-800 gets dangled from a crane as it smashes through one building after another, and — lest we forget — that bathroom fight where the T-800 pulls a urinal from the wall and whacks the female Terminator with it. It's all surprisingly fun and lightheartedly over-the-top until the ending. Most of humanity is wiped out in the nuclear holocaust that the heroes just spent the last two movies trying to prevent, John accepts that the apocalypse is inevitable, and he resigns himself to spending the rest of his life fighting Skynet.
• Every Shane Meadows film ever made features one of these. An example is This Is England: Shaun is having a great time with his new friends, but when Combo returns from prison, things start to get ugly. A particularly devastating use of this trope is when Milky, stoned with Combo, shares pleasant stories about his family, which cause Combo to get increasingly agitated, racist and then beat the crap out of him.
• The Bollywood megamovie 3 Idiots has an orbital one. Our heroes are fixing a desperate senior's flying camera, to help him to a graduation. The small chooper flies up to the window of the senior, while our heroes are singing and dancing. And then we can see on the tiny screen that the senior hanged himself.
• In the Mel Brooks remake of To Be or Not to Be the theatrical group's dresser Sasha is the Camp Gay, which is typical for 80's era comedy, until we're suddenly reminded that the film is set in Nazi occupied Poland.
  Sasha puts on his coat to go out
  Anna Bronski: What's that on your coat?
  Sasha: Oh, it's the newest fashion in occupied Warsaw. Jews wear yellow stars, homosexuals wear pink triangles.
  Anna Bronski: Sasha! How awful for you!
  Sasha: [quietly] I hate it.
  Anna Bronski: Now listen, they're rounding up Jews. Are they rounding up...?
  Sasha: No, no, so far, so good. Now, don't wait up for me. I've got a hot date with another triangle.
• Tommy Boy: We go from the heartfelt reunion between Tommy Callahan and his dad Big Tom, then Big Tom's gleeful wedding, followed by Big Tom's fatal heart attack during the wedding and tear-jerking funeral, to a hilarious buddy road movie, all within the first 45 minutes.
• After the death of Goose in Top Gun, what immediately follows is a random Shower Scene, complete with a shot of Tom Cruise's butt in tighty-whities.
  • In the sequel, at the end Maverick and Rooster are completely out of ammo with a Felon on their tail, and to make it even worse, their ejector seats don't work. Maverick can only say "I'm sorry, Goose..." as he seemingly resigns himself to his fate, only for Hangman to show up and take down the Felon, greeting them by saying "Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, this is your savior speaking".
• TRON: Legacy gives us the nightclub battle, where we see the flamboyantly and Ambiguously Gay Castor hilariously having a blast with his cane gun. Nano-seconds later, we cut to Quorra's arm getting hacked off.
• One of the best comedic moments in True Lies is probably the "Battery, Aziz" scene - the terrorist Aziz is making an angry and frightening threat video, when the camcorder runs low on battery. The cameraman lowers the camera, looks pained and apologetic, and explains "battery, Aziz!" Aziz, dumbfounded, snaps at him "then go get another one, you IDIOT!”
• Twister has one that might be more for a character than the audience. Late in the movie, when the chasers are taking shelter from an approaching F-5 tornado, the high winds cause a hose to break and whip around near the huddling group. One of the characters manages to grab the hose, bellowing a shout of triumph as he holds his prize. A second later a hubcap flies through the air, slicing across his forehead and needless to say darkening his mood.
• Under Siege: In one sentence: It's a pleasure to meet you Commander Green!
• The Serbian epic The Underground mixes a comic farce with the horrors of World War II and the tragedy of Balkanization.
  • Most Bosnian/Serbian/Croatian movies fall into this trope, since it is what happens when you combine the joival humor of the region and it's tragic past.
• V for Vendetta, Gordon's hysterically funny TV show and then BOOM He gets beaten with a stick and Evey gets kidnapped.
• A Very Long Engagement alternates between the often fairly whimsical scenes set in the present and extremely grisly flashbacks to the recently ended first world war.
• The Jean-Claude Van Damme action movie Wake of Death features a classic example of the trope. Van Damme's character's wife is murdered by members of the Triad, and a lengthy scene involves him staggering home, fixing himself a drink, and basically collapsing into a teary, broken, grief-stricken mess as an Ennio Morricone-inspired score wails on the soundtrack. And then suddenly without warning a Triad member with a samurai sword literally jumps through a window in front of Van Damme and the two have a kickboxing fight.
• In War of the Worlds (2005), one of the few moments of levity after the film's first act, a scene where Rachel argues with her father about where she's going to use the bathroom during a short rest-stop, immediately precedes Rachel's discovery of a river full of corpses.
• The fairly good Irish indie film "WC", has a Clerks-ish vibe for the most part... then we flash back to Katya's horrible kidnapping and rape shot in a distressingly realistic way... then we go right back into the low-key comedy Clerks-ish style.
• The 1960 movie Where the Boys Are starts out as a frothy Annette Funicello-style beach comedy and climaxes with the rape and attempted suicide of one of the leads.
• Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory:
  • When he's first seen, Wonka limps out of the factory with a cane, causing the assembled crowds to go quiet. As he nears the gate, his cane gets stuck in the ground, then he leans forward, does a somersault, and stands tall, bringing everyone to applause.
  • Wonka is taking the group on a boat ride. There's a sweet instrumental reprise of "Pure Imagination," everything's whimsical...and then they approach a tunnel and the music instantly turns dark and ominous.
  • At the end of the movie after the tour is over. After all the fun we had on that tour, it suddenly goes quiet. Grandpa Joe and Charlie step into Wonka's office to ask about the chocolate only to find out he broke the rules, then suddenly, Wonka starts yelling at the top of his lungs over why they lost. After which, the room goes silent again until Charlie does a good deed, and suddenly, everybody is happy!
• In The World's End Peter's talk about how he was bullied is interrupted by Gary loudly bringing over several shots. Andrew calls Gary out for it though.
• X-Men Film Series
  • Some reviewers commented that X-Men: First Class's exploration of serious themes (racial prejudice, the morality of revenge, nuclear war, etc.) doesn't mesh well with over-the-top and somewhat goofy superhero and Spy Fiction tropes.
  • In X-Men: Days of Future Past, the '70s scenes in the first act are filled with jokes and humorous moments (most notably Quicksilver's antics) which clash with the bleak tone of the 2023 scenes and the somber mood of acts 2 and 3. In fact, the 1973 scenes in general can come across as this. Even during their darkest moments, the more colorful backdrops and blatantly '70s hairstyles, clothes and aesthetics can be jarring.
  • X-Men: Apocalypse has one of the most dramatic sequences (Apocalypse getting into Charles's mind through Cerebro, which Alex then destroys in order to stop it, followed by Apocalypse and his horsemen arriving at the mansion and taking Charles away whilst Alex tries to save him, causing an explosion) followed by one of the most comedic scenes (Quicksilver using his powers to run in and save everyone whilst listening to "Sweet Dreams" by Eurythmics), which then becomes sad when it turns out he didn't save Alex in time.
• The Chinese film Youth (2017) is mostly backstage drama at a military arts troupe, and the members getting on with their lives after the troupe is disbanded ... except for fifteen minutes in the middle of people getting shot to bits in the 1979 War with Vietnam.
• Zombieland. The Bill Murray scene crosses the line between funny and sad so many times it uses said line as a jump-rope.
  • Also, the scene where it's revealed that Woody Harrelson's character's son, not his dog, is the one who died is appallingly sad.
    • The whiplash at this part actually comes when said character then says 'I haven't cried this hard since Titanic!", and wipes his eyes with hundred-dollar bills.

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