History Main / MoodDissonance

* In the middle of one of the most [[SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome climactic]] scenes in ''Anime/{{Gunbuster}}'', Noriko - alone in the cockpit of her giant robot - suddenly rips her shirt ''and [[SuperStrength bra]]'' open, exposing her breast. Now, this ''is'' one of the anime that the phrase "{{Gainaxing}}" was coined for, but still.

* In ''Anime/RODTheTV'', [[spoiler:Nenene]] does some rather conspicuous {{Gainaxing}} while being {{Mind Rape}}d.

*** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS15E1HorrorOfFangRock "Horror of Fang Rock"]] and [[Recap/DoctorWhoS15E3ImageOfTheFendahl "Image of the Fendahl"]] were written for Creator/PhilipHinchcliffe's GothicHorror-influenced tenure, but MoralGuardians had forced him out of a job and his replacement, Creator/GrahamWilliams, was told that horror was off the table or the show would be cancelled. The result was that they were some of the most thematically dark scripts in the whole of Tom Baker's tenure (TheSiege meets KillEmAll in a foreboding Victorian tower; people trapped with an explicitly occult EldritchAbomination that makes people [[DrivenToSuicide kill themselves]] upon seeing it) but with all the scares and gore taken out and replaced with jokes.

* Much of the music by Music/TheCure, especially around the "Head on the Door" and "Kiss Me" albums, falls into this. Major key pop-songs with jangly guitars and upbeat keyboards, with lyrics about loneliness, isolation, drugs, and heartbreak.

** The Joker's two funniest moments are when he [[EyeScream makes a pencil disappear]] and when he [[spoiler:has to fiddle a bit with his detonator to get a ''hospital to explode''.]] Of course, the latter was a ThrowItIn SpecialEffectsFailure, so...

* ''Webcomic/{{Unsounded}}'': Duane's idealistic speech about waging war with honor and decency is [[http://www.casualvillain.com/Unsounded/comic/ch07/ch07_94.html contrasted with]] pictures of his NoHoldsBarredBeatdown at the hands of the authorites of the government he is defending. "Only in Alderode are we free”, indeed.

* ''Webcomic/DarthsAndDroids'' frequently accomplishes this with the contrast between what the characters are doing within the game and what their players are talking about outside the game. Taken to the extremes in [[http://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0607.html #607]], in which Anakin is Force-choking Padmé and exclaiming MyGodWhatHaveIDone while, out of character, Annie is pronouncing her love for Jim for roleplaying the scene so effectively.

* Most of the Manga/SoulEater episodes for which the peppy and cute 'Style' was the ED. The Kid Heroes not only fail to stop the bad guy, but they also fail in a very [[ThroughTheEyesOfMadness unpleasant]] [[FromBadToWorse fashion]] with some of the series' prime examples of Nightmare Fuel. Although the tune does allow for the adorable version with a young Maka and Crona. In contrast, the fourth ED 'Strength' is considerably darker than what the final episodes [[FunnyAneurysmMoment actually]] depict though it spoils the general setup.

** The show does this ''all the time'', though the episodes are bookended with PreviouslyOn and OnTheNext segments. The spinoff takes this UpToEleven by only having the former, thus making every episode that ends serious and darkly are immediately followed by the upbeat and rocking end credits music.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Amphibia}}'': The EndingTheme is the slow, relaxing "Anne's Theme", which tends to play after episodes that end with a heavy twist or cliffhanger, such as "Prison Break", "Bizarre Bazaar" and "Anne of the Year".

* ComicBook/TheJoker lives and breathes this trope. He's a clown, something that's supposed to be lighthearted and happy, that does [[KickTheDog awful]] and horrible things to people in a way that's occasionally funny. One description that sums it up goes that when the Joker's written right, he should be terrifying, should make you laugh, then hate yourself for laughing at him.
* ''ComicBook/TheUmbrellaAcademy'' uses the bright, clean style of Gabriel Ba, while the plot is a mix of dramatic confrontations, violence, and absurdist humor.
* The ending of Creator/DonRosa's [[ComicBook/DisneyDucksComicUniverse Scrooge McDuck]] story "The Old Castle's Other Secret or A Letter From Home": the last main panel contains several smaller panels around the edges, combining into a single scene with multiple viewpoints. [[spoiler: Central is Scrooge reunited with his estranged sister and looking at the letter from his long-dead parents that confirms that, contrary to what he began to fear during the story, they ''were'' proud of him and trusted him. The other panels play into this theme and into the generally uplifting spirit of the goal of the adventure having been achieved and the villain defeated... except the last one, which features Donald frantically trying to fix the Holy Grail, which he accidentally broke earlier.]] When it works, the effect is basically to make the reader be moved to tears and laugh at that last panel at the same time.

* ''ComicBook/WonderWoman'' [[ComicBook/WonderWoman1942 Volume 1]]: Lila Brown, Steve and Diana's coworker and one of the very few regularly recurring characters, gets pretty much vaporized from the knees up by Dr. Psycho's expermental bomb. Di then makes a joke about Lila not having to listen to her anymore while standing right over what's left of the poor woman's corpse since Lila grabbed the explosive right after Di told her not to.

--> By the operating table was a little table with various tools: scalpels, an unused IV drip, a bottle of whiskey ( half full, because optimism was something I ''really'' needed right now), a full syringe of morphine, and a bottle of something called "laudanum".

** Similar to the ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitans'' example below, it's become practically a RunningGag that the two-parter episodes will have a dark opening or end on a scary cliffhanger...Cue the happy theme song.

** Pinkie Pie tends to be the ''God queen'' of this trope due to her [[CloudCuckooLander wackiness]]. Charging in to attack Nightmare Moon? She hops with a big smile while everyone else is deadly serious. Getting ready to take out Discord? She tells ''both'' her friends and the baddie to wait (which they do) so she can have one final drink of the free chocolate milk raining down. She also tends to invert it. When everyone else is calmly walking around the Crystal Empire politely asking for information, she's sneaking around dressed like [[VideoGame/SplinterCell Sam Fisher]] and disguising herself as Fluttershy.

* The ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' fanfiction ''Fanfic/{{Jericho}}'' has a few of these. A lot it comes from the narrator, Jericho, being a FirstPersonSmartass and also a SociopathicHero. During the dark scene in chapter 3, which had earlier had an ApocalypticLog wherein a little girl watched her parents beaten up by agents of a GovernmentConspiracy, we get this little gem:

*** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS12E1Robot "Robot"]], the Fourth Doctor's first story and the last story produced by Third Doctor producer Barry Letts, does a similar thing to the above — most of the story is the same 'the Doctor and UNIT investigate a science fictional threat in bucolic English surroundings' template associated with the sombre and authoritarian Third Doctor, the result being that the drastically more flamboyant, sly and alien characterisation of the new Doctor shines through.

* In Toad Trainworks in ''VideoGame/PaperMarioColorSplash'', the broken train has a car full of impatient Toads. Entering it initiates a "battle" that consists of twelve Toads yelling at him, which takes 1 HP each time. If you start off with 12 HP or less, the Toads will keep yelling at the poor guy - even when he shows clear signs of exhaustion - until they take all his HP, at which point one of them says "Ah, I feel so much better now!". Then you get the usual Game Over animation where Mario falls over and the Slurp Guys suck up all his colour as the screen [[FadeToWhite fades to white]]... but the Toads who got to yell at him ''watch contently'' as their only hope of survival suffers a FamilyUnfriendlyDeath.

*** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS15E1HorrorOfFangRock "Horror of Fang Rock"]] and [[Recap/DoctorWhoS15E3ImageOfTheFendahl "Image of the Fendahl"]] were written for Creator/PhilipHinchcliffe's GothicHorror-influenced tenure, but MoralGuardians had forced him out of a job and his replacement was told that horror was off the table or the show would be cancelled. The result was that they were some of the most thematically dark scripts in the whole of Tom Baker's tenure (TheSiege meets KillEmAll in a foreboding Victorian tower; people trapped with an explicitly occult EldritchAbomination that makes people [[DrivenToSuicide kill themselves]] upon seeing it) but with all the scares and gore taken out and replaced with jokes.

*** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS15E1HorrorOfFangRock "Horror of Fang Rock"]] and [[Recap/DoctorWhoS15E3ImageOfTheFendahl "Image of the Fendahl"]] were written for Philip Hinchcliffe's GothicHorror-influenced tenure, but MoralGuardians had forced him out of a job and his replacement was told that horror was off the table or the show would be cancelled. The result was that they were some of the most thematically dark scripts in the whole of Tom Baker's tenure (TheSiege meets KillEmAll in a foreboding Victorian tower; people trapped with an explicitly occult EldritchAbomination that makes people [[DrivenToSuicide kill themselves]] upon seeing it) but with all the scares and gore taken out and replaced with jokes.

'''Peter Purves' co-hosts:''' ''A star is born!''

* In ''VideoGame/TheLionKing'', the stage "Simba's Exile", of course, takes place right after Scar has killed Mufasa and led Simba to believe it was his fault, and the stage music is a medley of all the somber themes from the movie, but they still use Young Simba's standard smiling sprite, and we still hear him say "cool!" when he grabs a bug.

Note that cases such as the page quote are ''very'' common (and often done deliberately) in RealLife, since people with jobs dealing with sickness and death are still human, and need to avert [[DarknessInducedAudienceApathy Darkness-Induced Real Life Apathy]].

** ''WesternAnimation/Ducktales2017'' and ''WesternAnimation/BigHero6TheSeries'' manage to pull off the same trick by always having their upbeat and rocking opening and ending themes play before and after every episode, no matter how serious or dark they are.

* ''WesternAnimation/WinxClub'' does this ''all the time'', though the episodes are bookended with PreviouslyOn and OnTheNext segments. The spinoff takes this UpToEleven by only having the former, thus making every episode that ends serious and darkly are immediately followed by the upbeat and rocking end credits music.

* The ReallyDeadMontage [[spoiler: of Setsuko's ghost/spirit/memory playing around the pond]] in ''Anime/GraveOfTheFireflies'' is sad enough... but when that's accompanied by a lovely rendition of ''HomeSweetHome'' being played on the record-player of a family that had ''kept'' everything [[spoiler: while the two children we'd been following]] had ''lost'' everything... It just makes that scene all the more poignant.

* Similar to the ''Smile Pretty Cure!'' example, the original airing of the ''[[VideoGame/PriPara [=PriPara=]]]'' episode "Hurry Up! Divine Idol Grandprix" [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQ-RWDlQgOY had a typhoon warning appear on screen]] during the upbeat song "Mon Chouchou".

* When ''Manga/KatekyoHitmanReborn'' underwent CerebusSyndrome, the characters still kept their comedic gimmicks, such as Yamamoto still believing they are all just playing a game and complimenting Ken on his "realistic wolf puppets". Leroy Douresseaux of Comic Book Bin said that the battle arcs are like if the cast of ''Series/ArrestedDevelopment'' was injected into the setting of ''{{Manga/Naruto}}''. This is notably averted with Giannini, who had his appearance and personality redesigned for the future arc.

* The WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic fanfiction ''Fanfic/{{Jericho}}'' has a few of these. A lot it comes from the narrator, Jericho, being a FirstPersonSmartass and also a SociopathicHero. During the dark scene in chapter 3, which had earlier had an ApocalypticLog wherein a little girl watched her parents beaten up by agents of a GovernmentConspiracy, we get this little gem:

* The Franchise/SonicTheHedgehog DarkFic ''Fanfic/PrisonIslandBreak'' always injects its humour this way, making engrossed readers sit up sharply. During even the darkest or most dramatic of moments, humorous thoughts and dialogue turn up almost randomly. There are many examples, one when the depressed Silver tries to drown himself in his bowl of cereal, and in another, during a dramatic Anger Management class Sonic drops boiling hot coffee in his lap without noticing. Others involve the erotic, violent, dramatic romp between Shadow and Sonic being described as 'a dance-battle with sex', and a ShoutOut to ''{{WesternAnimation/Frozen|2013}}'' happens while Silver is dying from a drug overdose.

* During the GainaxEnding of ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid2SonsOfLiberty'', [[spoiler:the Colonel]]... ''changes''. His dialogue begins to vary from parental admonishments to childish fantasies to [[ContinuityNod quotes from earlier games]] to [[TalkativeLoon dadaist nonsense]], and it's funny; [[SceneryCensor Raiden's nudity]] is also [[NakedPeopleAreFunny funny]]. But it only serves to rub in that you are helpless, alone and betrayed and it's going to get worse from here on, providing one of the creepiest segments in any game ever made. "GODDAMMIT stop calling me! You're creeping me out!" Made all the worse by the fact that you have to answer the incessant (and repetitive) codec calls in order to advance the game.

* ''Manga/{{Narutaru}}'''s ridiculously over-the-top cheery introduction can have this effect, given that inevitably it will only take a few seconds after it's ended for the anime to start recapping how the plot went [[GoneHorriblyWrong horribly wrong]] last episode.