Basic Trope: A light work is either retooled or re-imagined to be darker than it previously was.
- Straight: A show/book/movie is fairly lighthearted. A few years later, it's retooled into something different which is far more edgy in terms of subject matter.
- Exaggerated:
- The original show/book/movie is explicitly aimed at children and is on the level of Judy Moody. The retool makes it an R-rated gorefest set in a Town with a Dark Secret with graphic violence shown frequently, a regular use of sex scenes, and every other word being a swear, among other adult content.
- Bloodier and Gorier
- Downplayed:
- Ruder and Cruder
- A new special episode of a lighthearted/humorous series which is definitely more serious than the usual episodes, but it's not to grimdark or cynical levels. Afterwards, it's just a one-time episode, the series resumes to being lighthearted/humorous again afterwards.
- The series gets more serious as it goes on, and the stakes are higher, but it remains a kids show for as long as it's still running, meaning things can't get too much more violent without bumping up the age rating.
- Justified:
- Now that the heroes are stronger, stronger and more evil villains try to stop them.
- Alternatively, the "dark" aspects of the series were vaguely implied before and now they're just being confirmed.
- The reboot allows the creators to add mature content that they wanted to include a long time back, but wasn't allowed back in the original series.
- The original was explicitly aimed at preschoolers, while there's more at stake when making The Movie due to the bigger budget, so they had to aim the film at a more general family audience.
- Inverted: Lighter and Softer
- Subverted: The show/book/movie has all the hallmarks of a Darker and Edgier retool, but is no more edgy or dark.
- Double Subverted: ...At first, anyway. Those first few episodes/chapters/parts were only meant to lure in people who saw the original work.
- Parodied:
- The Darker and Edgier aspects of the show/book/movie are nullified by extreme censorship and Moral Guardians Of The Week.
- Nothing about the show really changes, but everyone just starts swearing and killing each other for the hell of it.
- The characters try to act darker and more serious, but it's all Played for Laughs, and they end up coming off as sillier than their lighter selves.
- Zig Zagged:
- The show can never really decide which angle it wants to take. One episode will be incredibly dark, the next will be as light as the original.
- The show is as lighthearted as before, but it has more mature elements like death or sexual innuendo, as well as some wham episodes.
- The show is more violent and darker in tone, but balances this out with breather episodes and humor in the style of the original series.
- Averted:
- The retool has the same tone as the original work.
- No retool is made at all.
- The show never changes in tone and atmosphere.
- Enforced:
- Rated M for Money
- "We're not getting enough of the 17+ demographic with this show/book/movie. Let's make some changes and see if we can't fix this."
- Studio executives force the creators of the show to make it edgy so that less people watch it and the executives could cancel it and replace it with some other dreck.
- Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids!
- The writers ran out of ideas with the show as it currently was - the retool will allow them to explore new stories, as well as some implications that were left unsaid.
- Lampshaded: One of the characters remarks: "Wow, this place is a whole lot scarier than I remember..."
- Invoked: Knight of Cerebus
- Exploited: Valerie the wizard needs a drop of pure sadness to make Polter Geist-damaging charges. Now that the show is darker and edgier, whenever there's a poltergeist infestation Valerie can just go outside and collect the sadness that's emanating from everyone all the time.
- Defied: Valerie sees everything getting bleaker, so she forcibly takes over the town, installing a serpent-proof magical barrier and correcting the malignant policies that started cropping up.
- Discussed: "Remember when all we did was stand around and tell jokes?"
- Conversed: "Ah please, that show's for kids. I mean, look, that...one guy is killing that other guy. And did he just swear?"
- Implied: The remake is very lighthearted on the surface, but has some vaguely implied Backstory Horror and has much more Fridge Horror.
- Deconstructed:
- The darker and edgier aspects only affect the parts of the show/book/movie which were prone to dark edginess to begin with, while the lighter and softer elements simply become stronger from living side by side with the darker parts of the story.
- Too Bleak, Stopped Caring
- Reconstructed: But over time the darker parts of the story begin overshadowing the lighter parts until everything in the story is at least a bit darker than they started with.
- Played For Laughs: The remake turns the show into a Black Comedy Sadist Show.
Get the hell back to Darker and Edgier - the trope that's been revamped for the fucking 90s... bitches!
