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Knight Of Cerebus / Live-Action TV

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  • All in the Family had several:
    • The serial rapist who attempts to make Edith his latest victim on her 50th birthday.
    • The kids who attack Mike and Beverly LaSalle also count. Though neither the kids, nor the incident itself are shown, their act of beating Beverly to death causes Edith to (temporarily) renounce her faith in God in one of the series' darkest episodes.
    • Floyd, Stephanie's alcoholic father.
    • The "Kweens Kouncil of Krusaders" (the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan).
  • Angel:
    • The introduction of Holland Manners, the boss of Wolfram & Hart, shifted the series in a darker direction and away from Monster of the Week territory.
    • Daniel Holtz qualifies big time. While Angel was pretty dark anyway, Holtz was a sign that Angel's quest for redemption may be doomed to fail. He manages to put resident Magnificent Bastard firm Wolfram and Hart under serious pressure when he manipulates them, successfully causes a long-term fracture in the team, and despite dying he basically achieves his goal of revenge, in fact his death is all part of his plan, which works and has consequences which last long into the last season.
    • Hidden Villain Matthias Pavayne from "Hell Bound" stands out as an extremely memorable one-episode villain (technically four, since he technically had been torturing Spike since his first appearance on the show) due to how blatantly terrifying he is, signifying just how much darker the rest of Season 5 would be. His 'parlor tricks' are utterly horrifying and he's spent thousands of years sending people to hell. Any comedic elements are completely sucked out of the room when he appears, as opposed to most one-shot characters that had at least snarky tendencies. He also implicitly tortured anyone and everyone that died at Wolfram and Hart, including Lee Mercer, Linwood Murrow and Gavin Park.
  • Arrow is not a lighthearted show, but the appearance of these villains have caused things to get darker:
    • When Oliver realizes that Slade Wilson is still alive in present day, the mood and the tone of the show gets darker. In addition, the island flashbacks get darker when Slade becomes a bad guy.
    • Ra's Al-Ghul is this in every media he appears in and this show is no exception. His first major appearance has him curb-stomping Oliver to the point of death and he organizes a smear campaign for Oliver to become the new Leader of the League of Assassins, thus having him on the run.
    • They both pale in comparison to Prometheus. He brought a sort of darkness with him the other villains never had, the type that whips Star City into a frenzy. He also has accomplished something no other villain has been able to do: break Oliver, thus making him probably the darkest villain on the show.
    • Then comes Ricardo Diaz, who was originally introduced as a low-level drug dealer, and he manages to take over the entire city after revealing he's been playing the long game. In order to stop him, Oliver has to reveal his secret identity to the public and agree to go to jail for vigilantism.
  • Ashes to Ashes (2008) has two fairly spooky but ultimately ineffective villains in Season 1's Clown (who's more a mental/emotional villain for Alex than a true threat) and Season 2's Martin Summers, who doesn't directly hurt anyone. That changes in Season 3, when Jim Keats is brought in.
  • Ash vs. Evil Dead does maintain that the Deadites are a threat, but still leans more towards the Black Comedy established in the later movies. More individual antagonists, however, call to mind the pure horror of the original film:
    • Eligos, the first true demon the cast meets. Aside from being horrifying in appearance, his curbstomps Ash and Pablo in the first fight and almost kills them before Kelly gets rid of him with the Necronomicon. But then, that just leads to him possessing her and nearly killing Ash during his Vision Quest. And when he's uncovered, he invokes the horror of The Exorcist during their attempts to get rid of him, resulting in Pablo's Brujo uncle's death before he's finally killed.
    • Evil Ash, a clone created from Ash's possessed severed hand. He maintains Ash's amiable demeanor at first, but quickly drops the facade in the creepiest way possible, before indulging in a brutal fight with Amanda that ends with her death.
    • When Ruby reveals herself as the Big Bad in the first Season Finale, it quickly becomes the darkest episode in the series yet. She uses the Necronomicon to possess Pablo and use him to create creepy young Humanoid Abominations causing him to beg Ash to kill him. As a side effect of this, the cabin turns into an outright Eldritch Location, which torments Kelly and innocent bystander Heather, before inflicting a Cruel and Unusual Death on the latter.
    • Baal manages to usurp the title of Big Bad before he's even introduced, and after he is, takes the show to some of the darkest territory in the franchise's history. He even manages to (temporarily) kill Pablo.
  • Banshee has a few, despite starting somewhat dark. First but not least is Mr. Rabbit, a Russian gangster and Carrie's dad and Hood's former employer. He shows up in town after Hood gains a degree of fame, and takes Carrie and her children hostage. He returns later for another attempt before eventually being taken down.
    • There's also Chayton Littlestone, leader of the local gang, the Redbones. After escaping arrest in the past, he comes back with a vengeance in Season 3, where he Snaps Siobhan's neck in front of Hood after a prolonged siege of the police station, which lasted all night and left enough bullet casings behind to fill a swimming pool.
    • Season 3 also brings us Douglas Stowe, the commander of Camp Genoa. After starting a relationship with Carrie, he becomes abusive, and eventually catches her trying to rob the camp. He doesn't take it well, and it ends with her husband Gordon dead, Job taken hostage by one of his associates, and Kai Proctor in charge of Banshee.
    • Season 4 as a whole could be considered this, thanks in no small part to Rebecca's murder by Mr. Burton, of all people, along with the aftermath from the previous season. It's a dark season following a broken, broken man.
  • Best Friends Whenever: Janet Smyth, before her the series was mostly a light hearted Kid Com about two girls with the power to time travel, with most episodes not even having an antagonist, and the ones that did had the likes of a comical Stern Teacher, a well meaning obstructer or a light-hearted Jerkass. Enter Janet, a ruthless business woman and Mad Scientist, whose got no problems with using human experimentation and even outright murder to further her research. She came dangerously close to killing Cyd, all in the hope of stealing the secret to time travel. Her presence turned a light-hearted Kid Com, into a high stakes sci-fi thriller.
  • Better Call Saul, the prequel/spinoff of Breaking Bad, similarly chips away the Black Comedy element in Season 3... and by no coincidence, that's also the season where Gus is introduced into the narrative.
  • The Boys (2019):
    • The brief appearance of the Compound V-empowered terrorist Naqib changes the situation between the government and supes drastically. It only gets worse when it's revealed that Homelander deliberately gave Compound V to terrorists like Naqib so that there would be supervillains that would justify the involvement of the Vought Corporation's supes in the military.
    • Naqib doesn't last long enough to make an influence in the story with his own actions. Stormfront, the supe member to replace the assassinated Transluscent in The Seven, however, manages to take the spotlight in Season 2 with gusto. She's immediately shown to be an unpleasant and rude individual who rivals Homelander in arrogance and maintaining a facade. It only gets worse when her bigotry and sadism show in fights, and it's revealed that she's one of the original Nazis, having much slower aging as a result of the original Compound V doses, which is how she keeps her youth in the modern era. Oh, and she teams up with Homelander, doubling the trouble.
  • Breaking Bad, though quite a macabre show from the start, retained a prominent Black Comedy element in its first and second seasons. This was chipped away in stages by a series of particularly menacing and/or cruel villains.
  • Brooklyn Nine-Nine: Season 3 is still just as silly as the seasons before it, but with the addition of mob boss Jimmy "The Butcher" Figgis, the tone shifts whenever he's mentioned. Even him calling Jake at the end of Season 3 makes Jake and Captain Holt go into Witness Protection.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Angelus. Not that the show was exactly family friendly up to that point, and plenty of the villains had been genuinely dangerous, but from mid Season 2 (when Angelus turned up) onwards, the show got noticeably darker. Some mention has to go to Spike as well, as he was the one who kicked off the storyline.
    • This trope is somewhat inverted with the Nerd Trio in Season 6. Season 6 is the darkest season as many bad things happen to the protagonists, but when the Trio are around, despite being the villains of the season they seem to lighten the story up with their comic relief and pop culture references. Although Warren soon proves to be just as evil as the previous Big Bads of the series, if not more.
  • Castle: Though the killers’ motivations are often played seriously, many of them may still get Butt-Monkey status in the show’s usual comedic nature when they attempt to escape and Hilarity Ensues. However, when the show doesn’t have a villain of the usual light nature, the contrast in how dark they can get is pretty sharp.
    • The Dark Castle episodes became very prominent for this. In "Sucker Punch," the victim's brother Dick Coonan was not only revealed to be the hitman who committed the crime, but also the one who was hired to kill Beckett's mother Joanna.
    • In "Knowdown" and "Knockout," Hal Lockwood was a brutal hitman who had no qualms about killing anyone who threatened to expose the conspiracy his boss had created. Same goes for Cole Maddox, the hitman who took over for him in "Always" and "After the Storm" and was the sniper who nearly killed Beckett in "Knockout," which in turn, drove the plot to the events in "Rise."
    • "After the Storm" revealed the head of the conspiracy to be New York Senator William Bracken, who had a Freudian Excuse, but went to large extremes to achieve what he believed was the greater good.
    • Vulcan Simmons (a drug lord first suspected of heading the conspiracy) from "Knockdown" later showed up again in "Belly of the Beast" and "Recoil" as an ally of Bracken's.
    • Though he wasn't part of the main storyline in "Rise," the guy who killed the victim in her bed is made to be even darker since he symbolically represents Beckett's difficulties in being able to do her job in the wake of being shot.
    • "Kill Shot" had a sniper with a damaging case of PTSD as a Freudian Excuse for his killings. Dead Serious on its own, it was made even more so with Beckett's own shooting affecting her mindset on the case.
    • 3XK or the Triple Killer AKA Jerry Tyson was a serial killer who targeted women and strangled them to death. When introduced in "3XK" he had the distinction of being the first killer on the show to get away in the end and that provided us with the very first real Downer Ending episode. His actions later affected the events of "Kick the Ballistics," he later framed Castle for murder in "Probable Cause," killed people made up to look like Esposito and Lanie in "Disciple" and provided a cruel endgame that nearly came to fruition in the two-parter "Resurrection"/"Reckoning." His girlfriend plastic surgeon Dr. Kelly Neiman, introduced in "Disciple" and also appearing in the two-parter proved to be just as psychotic.
    • "Still" had a bomber who not only bombed one building, but intended to bomb another. His actions resulted in Beckett stepping on a trigger plate that she could not move from or it would set the bomb off. She was there most of the episode.
    • "Valkyrie"/"Dreamworld" had dark villains because they were indirectly responsible for poisoning Castle, which would result in him dying in days if he didn't get the antidote.
    • Many of the two parters have villains who are also among the darkest in the series, such as Scott Dunn from "Tick, Tick, Tick..."/"Boom!" who is not only a serial killer committing his crimes in the name of Nikki Heat, but he was the perpetrator of other serial killings who framed another man to take the fall.
    • "Setup"/"Countdown" had a group of former soldiers seeking to set off a dirty bomb in New York in order to frame terrorists and inspire action in the war against terrorism.
    • "Pandora"/"Linchpin" revealed that the brains behind the killings and events that would supposedly lead to World War III and America's surrender was a Russian spy, none other than Sophie Turner, Castle's old CIA contact and flame.
    • "Target"/"Hunt": A Russian mob boss who it turns out sought revenge against "Jackson Hunt", a CIA sleeper agent and Castle's father for killing his wife by kidnapping Alexis.
    • "Hollander's Woods" had a serial killer who targeted, tortured and killed women no one would be likely to report right away. Seeing one of his victims dead and being threatened by him as a kid is what lead Castle to become a writer and always want to find a story that had an ending to it. This guy also has the distinction of being the first person that Castle has ever directly killed. When that happens, you know it all meant business!
  • Charmed (1998) had earlier serious threats like Rex Buckland and Hannah Webster, Inspector Rodriguez, and Litvack; they all had implied or outright stated ties to the Source of All Evil and posed serious threats, often for the span of several episodes, but they were still pretty consistent with the series' Demon of the Week format. Come Season 3, however, the introduction of Cole Turner / Belthazor implements in full force the idea of a well-organised Underworld whose leader is out to kill the Charmed Ones, shifting the show from episodic to arc-based, setting up a darker tone for the season and paving the way for an even darker Season 4.
    • Of the post-Source seasons, the fifth and sixth are deliberately Lighter and Softer and don't even bother – well, Season 6 tries, but a predictable, undercooked villain treated as a big plot twist, along with severe tonal problems, undermine the attempt – and Season 7 introduces the Avatars, who are not very threatening due to their Blue and Orange, Utopia Justifies the Means morality. However, they act as a catalist for the release of Zankou, one of the most legitimately threatening villains in the entire series' run, whose apperance takes the story back to very dark territories.
    • Season 8 starts off on a more Slice of Life, Monster of the Week note, but the introduction of Christy Jenkins, Billie's long-lost sister brings back the drama. This is most noticeable when the character actually shows up and joins the action, but the mere introduction of her and the mystery of her disappearance via flashback marks the shift in tone by bringing out the unexpected Dark and Troubled Past of the otherwise comedic Billie.
  • Doctor Who has a couple of examples in individual stories:
    • "The Gunfighters" starts off as a comedy story in which the real-world characters from Tombstone are quirky and not particularly threatening. Then the truly psychopathic Johnny Ringo appears and things get much more serious.
    • Sutekh the Destroyer from "Pyramids of Mars" is bad enough to make the Fourth Doctor scared. When the man who was flippant and jokey in the face of Daleks, Cybermen and other horrors is terrified, then you know this is no idle threat.
    • "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship" spends its first half as a Rule of Cool comedy piece with wacky new allies for the Doctor and a plot based around environmental exploring. Then the episode's actual villain, Solomon the Trader, turns up and is revealed to be a sadistic mass murderer who gets a whole speech blatantly describing his love of raping people.
  • Every Witch Way Principal Torres of Season 1 is played as a pretty serious threat, especially since the initial antagonist is Maddie, the Alpha Bitch witch. The only thing remotely funny about her is her over the top personality.
    • In Season 2, Jax Nova's father, despite not officially appearing is set up to be a serious villain himself. Despite only being "seen" as a voice on Jax's phone, he played as an emotionless and curt man, with non of Torres' comical quirks.
  • Scorpius in Farscape. Within a few episodes, he tortures Crichton and usurps the role of Big Bad from Crais. This heralds larger and more serious threats for Moya's crew, as well as their personal issues becoming more prominent and problematic.
  • Firefly:
    • Whenever the Reavers are mentioned, expect the mood of the series to become much darker and scarier.
    • The Hands of Blue only made one appearance during the episode "Ariel", but they managed to turn things dark in a damned hurry by subjecting the Federal officers who talked to Simon to a Cruel and Unusual Death via Tears of Blood.
    • Jubal Early is another example as not only did he threaten to rape Kaylee, but he was probably one of the few villains in the show to utterly curb stomp the crew.
  • In general, The Flash (2014) is much lighter than Arrow, its parent show. However, things always get darker whenever the Reverse-Flash shows up, as the body count escalates dramatically. The same applies when Grodd finally takes an active role, since his interactions with Team Flash play out more like a horror film, with Joe suffering from a serious case of Break the Badass and Barry being completely unable to harm him.
    • Both pale in comparison to Zoom. Sure, the Reverse-Flash was a Humanoid Abomination, but the key word there is Humanoid. Zoom is perhaps the most evil villain to appear on the show, completely lacking in compassion, he's managed to intimidate most of Earth-2's meta-humans into working for him. Zoom also has one of the highest (if not the highest) body counts of any antagonist. His appearance in "Enter Zoom", in the span of one commercial break, turns an especially quippy episode into pseudo-Knightfall.
  • In the Season 5 episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air entitled "Bullets Over Bel-Air," a nameless armed thief held Carlton and Will at gunpoint while they were at an ATM machine. He shot Will after he took the bullet for Carlton and runs away. Because of his actions, it lead to Carlton buying himself a gun as an attempt to protect himself and his family members and to the biggest Tear Jerker in the show in which Will begged Carlton to give him the gun when he was visiting him in the hospital.
    • Another famous example, is the episode where Will Smith's father visits him and gives him a Hope Spot that he will become a part of his life. Uncle Phil and Aunt Vivian don't believe him, and sure enough, Will's father tries to leave him behind again. The episode begins lighthearted, but ends with a heartbroken Will promising to make it without his father while breaking down crying. A sad and sympathetic Uncle Phil gives Will a Cooldown Hug.
  • Game of Thrones: The Night King is the most serious Big Bad in the entire series thus far and is a completely humorless and scary entity with no levity at all whose mere presence brings the foremost conflict to the table.
  • General Hospital: Fluke, the true head of the Jerome Crime Family. Though only a manifestation of Luke Spencer's mind, the things he did (nearly blowing up a boat, killing his own hitman, threatening the lives of people Luke was related to or cared about, as well as threatening a little kid because her friend got wise to him, desiring nothing but power and control and seeing everyone around him as expendable if they couldn't serve a purpose or do what he wanted done) clearly showcase him as the most vile villain Port Charles ever faced.
    • The Start of Darkness that created Fluke was by the means of circumstances caused by Luke's sadistic father Tim. We finally get a view of how messed up and miserable childhood was for Luke and his sisters in the 52nd Anniversary episode, which showcases what we have only heard about Tim and now nasty and cruel he was up until that point.
  • Dave Karofsky from Glee. The show's antagonist is usually Sue Sylvester and her Refuge in Audacity antics, but Dave, in addition to tormenting the Glee Club with his buddy Azimio, had a special hatred for Kurt. At first it just seemed like homophobic bullying, until Dave forcibly kissed Kurt. From there, his gayngst became a central plot point, going as far as threatening to kill Kurt if he said anything, forcing Kurt to temporarily transfer schools. Even after Dave's Heel–Face Turn, he himself transferred schools when rumors started flying that he might be gay, and it all goes to hell when a boy at his new school sees him professing his love for Kurt at a party and outs him at school, causing him to be ruthlessly bullied until he attempts suicide.
  • Henry Danger had Drex in "Hour of Power" and "Back to the Danger". Before he showed up, Henry Danger had dumb, incompetent villains who were all Played for Laughs, but Drex quickly proves to be one of the darkest villains they ever faced, when he tricks Ray into getting his hands stuck, and turns Kid Danger into a laughing stock with an embarrassing video. Heck, Henry had to get a superpower to defeat him, he's that tough. Even the police are afraid of him!
    • Not too far behind in that department is Season 5's Rick Twitler, who proves to be an even greater challenge than even the above-mentioned Drex. What he lacks in physical strength, he makes up for in the smarts department...big time. He's a master planner and strategist, knows all of the heroes' closest secrets and information, successfully steals Kid Danger's power, keeps the team distracted long enough to successfully destroy the internet — marking one of the only victories for a villain — and even has a backup plan for in case that plan failed. Not your average bad guy, indeed.
  • The Nazis in later seasons of Hogan's Heroes. Earlier seasons had them as bumbling villains, becoming increasingly dangerous as time passed, yet they never got effective enough to pose an actual threat for the gang.
  • Justified was a dark morality play from the beginning, but it's Bo Crowder's release from prison partway through Season 1 that would ultimately see the show lose much of its comedic edge. Bo's actions turned Johnny into a crippled, bitter, scheming snake, derailed Boyd's quest for redemption, forced Raylan into an alliance with Boyd, made Raylan's relationship with his father, Arlo, even worse, and set up most of the darker elements that continue to effect the show into the present.
  • Kaamelott got darker with each passing season, but it was still mostly a comedy. This changes whenever the ominous, possibly inhuman wizard Meleagant is onscreen, as he tries to drive Lancelot into craziness and murder, and convinces both King Arthur and the Roman Emperor to commit suicide.
  • Lab Rats: Like most Disney shows, the majority of the villains are reasonably harmless and normally portrayed as light hearted. Marcus on the other hand, once he drops his nice guy act, is presented as a sociopathic bully, that realistically tries to murder Leo.
    • It gets worse when they introduce his creator, Douglas Davenport. Although still seemingly light hearted, he is a coldblooded Mad Scientist who's committed a list of crimes over a mile long, including experimenting on children, violating medical ethics, kidnapping, brainwashing and is also perfectly willing to commit outright murder when it suits him. When he appears the show takes a much darker tone.
      • Which then gets takes up to eleven when Douglas' benefactor Krane (who has also been given bionics) shows up, and demonstrates that he is a brutal power hungry sociopath who has zero consideration for the well-being or lives of anyone who gets in the way of his plans.
  • The show Las Vegas was fairly light in tone despite several dramatic moments such as Danny's shellshock and the episode's typical villains were usually thieves, cheaters and con artists. Then comes Vince Peterson in Season 4, who quickly establishes himself as the most twisted and horrifying one when he is revealed as a rapist and serial killer when he abducts Sam Marquez to do the same to her. After Sam kills him she suffers from PTSD in the next season and spends most of it trying to cope with the trauma.
  • Marvel Netflix universe
    • Daredevil (2015): While Daredevil was already dark and gritty, the arrival of Frank Castle in Season 2 makes the show even darker and Frank's ramifications causes some of Matt Murdock's worse turmoil, leading to Nelson & Murdock to shut down, and Matt progressively shunning off his friends away from him.
    • If Frank started the trend towards darkness, Elektra sealed it.
  • Mom: The mugger who takes Christy's rent money never makes any jokes or does anything in the show's usual comedic nature. He comes from behind her, threatens her and forces her to give him the cash. We never see his gun, but even if he didn't have one, he still went as far as making Christy think he did in order to proceed and carry out with his theft.
    • A far straighter example in the form of Butch, Violet's dad. Though we have yet to see him onscreen, we find out that when he and Christy were together, he'd lose his temper over the smallest things and viciously beat her. He had such an impact on Christy that he made it extremely difficult for her to even talk about him and the instant what he did is brought up by Bonnie, the number of laughs in the episode go down exponentially. Christy revealed that when she found out she was pregnant with Violet, it drove her to run away so as to escape his influence forever. When Violet demands to meet him, Christy lies and says he died in a car accident and goes even further to bring her to an innocent man's tombstone to drive the lie home. She does this as a means of sparing Violet from ever having to know this man in any way. What makes it even more effective is that subject matter like this was never brought up before and so it came completely out of nowhere and really did prove to be an incredibly sharp contrast in the tone that the show usually has. Even if one did expect it, they didn't think a show co-created by Chuck Lorre of all people would actually go through with it!
  • Mork & Mindy, being a Sitcom, obviously didn't often use villains and if they did, they were usually comedic aliens, not unlike Mork, or the occasional human criminal. However Kalnik note  is definitely an exception. While he did have a few Played for Laughs moments, and was a Large Ham, he still attempted to kill the titular duo and their son Mearth, blew up their apartment, sent men with rifles after them, and seeks to Take Over the World. The three episodes in which he appears are far darker than any of the others.
    • The "Pure Power" group from "The Night They Raided Mind-skis"; they're a white supremacist group (in fact, they're clearly based on the Klan, albeit with different hoods); though they have some funny moments when Mork initially joins them, note  once their true motives are revealed, things get more serious. note 
  • An interesting example in the form of Once Upon a Time. While the show was pretty serious and said Knight (Regina) was shown to be a threat from the get-go, we see this in the flashback portion of the show. The present portion, however, followed more of a Mystery of the Week sort of format... for about seven episodes before she pulls off the first present-day kill and shows she means business.
    • Played much more straight with Regina's mother, Cora. This is the woman who made Regina the villain she is and proved to much worse.
    • All other knights pale in comparison to the Big Bad of Season 3's first arc: Peter Pan. Showing no love for anyone but himself, he abandoned his son for immortality and power and kidnapped various children in a quest to keep his immortality. Every other villain in this series has at least one sympathetic or amusing moment; this guy does not.
  • The Orville. Oh and how...
    • For a season and a half, the Kaylons have been referred to as a robotic race who are isolated from the galaxy with Isaac sent to be an emissary in hopes of joining the Union. Isaac himself is a source of humor for misunderstanding humans and even romances Claire. Then, in the two-part "Identity", it turns out the Kaylons had wiped out their creators (a race of billions) and have decided to do the same to all organic life. They easily take control of the ship and prepare for a full-on assault on the galaxy. In desperation, the Union has to ally with the Krill of all people in order to stop them.
  • John Greer from Person of Interest is easily the greatest threat Team Machine has ever faced. He has also appeared in some of the darkest episodes of the series.
  • Power Rangers' Big Bads are always either this or a Large Ham. It's not unheard of for them to be both, but it's rather rare. Some examples:
    • Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers
      • Lord Zedd fits the trope perfectly. In a series known for ineffectual series of monsters and goofball villains, Lord Zedd almost singlehandedly reversed that in his debut by locking Rita Repulsa back in her trash can, restoring Goldar's wings, and causing the destruction of the rangers' old Dinozords. Though the old pattern eventually reasserted itself, Zedd himself was such a serious villain for the show that his character was eventually watered down to avoid scaring the kiddies. And even after being nerfed, he still kicked Tommy's ass the one time they fought.
      • Strangely enough, Rita kind of fits this trope when she returns near the end of the second season. After she married Zedd, both of them start to up their game, gaining more successes together than they had when operating separately. With some outside help, they managed to destroy the thunderzords and steal the pink power coin and the Falconzord. While these things are resolved by the Rangers, Rita and Zedd ultimately won by actually destroying the Power Coins and the Command Center.
      • And when Lord Zedd started losing his edge we got the superficially goofy Master Vile... who had much stronger monsters, which would routinely trash the rangers, and force them into a corner while he came closer than ever to ruling the earth. Even his monsters of the week were far more dangerous than Zedd's, having annoying special powers and almost never being defeated in a lame One-Hit Kill zord battle. And he's easily the smartest villain that Power Rangers has ever had; after many failures at defeating the Rangers, what does he do? He goes back home, where as he puts it, the bad guys always win.
    • Power Rangers in Space, while it started off more serious than its predecessors, it really started to move into Darker and Edgier territory with the introduction of Darkonda. He shows himself to be far more ruthless than Astronema or Ecliptor, and he's revealed to have also kidnapped Astronema as a child and caused her to be raised evil. He later helps bring about Ecliptor being brainwashed to make him more evil, which leads to the same happening to Astronema, after which the series becomes even more serious.
    • Power Rangers Lost Galaxy
      • Deviot's first action against the rangers was forcing Kai and Damon to fight to the death. He only gets worse as he later attempts to get Scorpius killed and succeeds. He would later try to do the same to Trakeena after she obtains her father's role as Big Bad.
      • Trakeena actually started out as Daddy's Little Villain and grew into a Knight of Cerebus. The tipping point was after she was forcibly merged with Deviot in the Cocoon, where she was willing to outright kill civilians by turning her Stingwingers into suicide bombers in an effort to destroy Terra Venture and would later try and destroy the evacuated people by firing a laser at their ships.
      • The Magna Defender, while not a villain, is notably the series' first Anti-Hero, as he was on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against Scorpius for killing his son and was willing to sacrifice innocents (albeit reluctantly) to do it.
    • Power Rangers S.P.D. has this with Emperor Grumm. A menacing living skeleton who is established to have taken over and/or destroyed many, many worlds before the storyline even began. He has a handful of less-than-menacing moments with Mora, but that's it.
    • Power Rangers Mystic Force had Octomus, the Master of the Underworld. In comparison to just about every other Power Rangers series, nothing about Octomus was played for laughs, and he never cracks jokes or engages in comedy antics. He also looks pretty damn menacing, and his voice was a perfect complement. His dragon Sculpin also really ups the ante.
    • Power Rangers RPM had the champion of this trope in the PR franchise: Venjix. Nothing about him was played for laughs, and he never cracks jokes or engages in comedy antics. Being a sentient computer virus, he was completely inhuman, was responsible for the extinction of 99% of the human race, was pretty much unkillable and made Mesogog look like a joke in comparison.
    • Power Rangers Samurai has Serrator. Not only is he responsible for making the Deal with the Devil with Dayu that turned her into Nighlock, in the process erasing Deker's memory and turning him into a half Nighlok cursed to walk the earth searching for the ultimate battle (which wasn't part of the deal, Dayu thought she was saving his life!), which he admits to Dayu's face that he enjoyed every minute of, he's leagues beyond the Rangers and routinely beats them down. On top of this, the Nighlok he brings with him are pretty much living torture devices.
      • Not to mention why he did all these things. He needed Deker the way he eventually became, and the suffering his Nighloks caused as raw material; it's all part of the Long Game to do in one stroke what Xandred and company were trying to do one monster at a time and he nearly succeeded. He didn't do what he did For the Evulz; he's quite The Chessmaster. And even once he was gone, the consequences of what he did to Deker and Dayu only got darker. In the end, since Dayu's grief over Deker's death is what allowed the injured Xandred to restore himself and become immune to the sealing symbol, Xandred going from Orcus on His Throne to the real menace he was in the finale is also courtesy of Serrator.
    • Power Rangers Beast Morphers has Evox, who is intending to take over the Morphin' Grid and is being opposed by the defense organization Grid Battleforce. While his forces are also big threats, he shows no comical traits and is dead set on completing his goals. And then comes the final few episodes of the show, when Evox reveals a shocking truth, causing the stakes and how dire the Rangers' situation is to instantly skyrocket as the franchise's biggest bombshell is dropped...
    Evox (reverting to his original voice tone): I... WAS... VENJIX!!!
  • Not Going Out: This show usually is very light-hearted. However the 2015 Christmas Special has the cast getting trapped in a Department Store with an armed robber who comes close to killing them several times.
  • Serial killers Mr. Yin and Mr. Yang on Psych. The latter played mind games with Shawn, and later hooked Shawn's mother up to a bomb; and the former murdered Mary, kidnapped Juliet and Abigail, placed them into death traps to taunt Shawn, and got away scot free (the first time). A terrified Shawn even remarked during the Yang case that his constant wisecracks were a coping mechanism to keep himself sane. But since he had to focus all his energies on solving the case, he asked Gus to pick up the slack in the goofiness to keep him from cracking under the stress (with hilarious results and lots of awkward looks from everyone else).
  • Red Dwarf had The Inquisitor, an immortal android that exists until the end of time, where he concludes that the only meaning of existence is to live a good life. He invents a time machine, judges everyone who ever lived, and if he deems them unworthy of existence, he erases them from history. He has no comical traits and is treated very seriously. And from his debut episode onward, the show get progressively Darker and Edgier.
  • Non-villainous example: Dan from Roseanne. He had his comedic moments, but the episodes that focused on him tended to have a much more serious tone than the rest of the series, such as his unresolved issues with his father, his friction with Becky's boyfriend (later husband) Mark, his No-Holds-Barred Beatdown of Jackie's abusive boyfriend Fisher, his affair, and of course his heart attack. The last one especially counts, since we find out in the final episode that he had died, and the outlandishness of the final season turned out to be a novel written by Roseanne to cope with his death.
  • A Series of Unfortunate Events (2017): Much like in the books, the show takes a darker turn once Esmé Squalor joins Count Olaf. She is a deranged, violent and ruthless villain, with her own agenda and a tendency to put the orphans through much more awful things than the Count.
    • And this happens again with The Man With a Beard But No Hair and The Woman With Hair But No Beard, whose villainous plans are much bigger in scale and much more likely to succeed than those of either Esme or Olaf.
  • Someday or One Day: Xie Zhong Ru is set up as Chen Yun Ru's potential murderer. After he makes his appearance in the narrative, the tone of future episodes gets darker overall, with light-hearted moments and comic relief characters steadily making fewer and fewer appearances until they eventually stop appearing altogether, as the threat the Big Bad poses to the main characters increases.
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation initially gave us the Ferengi, an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain race that was meant to be the new Big Bad on the level of the Klingons and Romulans from the previous series. This didn't quite work out. Then the Borg were introduced, and became the number one ultimate threat to the Federation for the entire series, despite only appearing in six episodes. In their first encounter with the Borg, the Enterprise was utterly defeated and on the verge of being dissected and assimilated before Q rescued themnote .
    Q: You judge yourselves against the pitiful adversaries you've encountered so far. The Klingons, the Romulans; they're nothing compared to what's waiting.
    • After two first season episodes as a zany foil for the Enterprise crew, Q himself becomes a much darker character by introducing the Enterprise to the Borg. When Riker calls him out for causing the deaths of the Enterprise crew, Q responds with "Oh please". When Picard begs Q to tell him that it's all just a silly illusion, Q says "Oh no, this is as real as your so-called life gets".
  • The entrance of the Dominion in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine saw the destruction of a Galaxy-class Federation vessel and actions similar to terrorists (for reference, the Enterprise-D mentioned above was that class of ship), kicking off the first of many story arcs for the series and a marked rise in quality for the rest of the show.
    • More specifically, the episode "To the Death" shed light on Dominion politics and the tug-of-war between its two premier races, the Jem'Hadar (the muscle) and the Vorta (the brains). Earlier in the season, a group of renegade Jem'Hadar had been wreaking havoc on both sides, weaning themselves off of Dominion mind control and stockpiling weapons. The new Vorta, Weyoun (Jeffrey Combs), instructs his platoon of Jem'Hadar to cooperate with Starfleet in crushing the renegades. In reality, the Jem'Hadar civil war was turning out to be narrative dead end for the writers, but calling in Weyoun to fix it is perfect because it means each of the species have to co-habitate—which was the sort of thing DS9 excelled at. The episode ends with Weyoun being polished off...by his own troops, but he returns later as a clone. For the next three seasons, the Weyouns will be the most prominent face(s) of the Dominion government.
      Joe Ford: One of the greatest gifts DS9 gave to the Trek universe was Weyoun and it is no co-incidence that is heavy presence in the last three seasons sees a soar in quality of the show. Jeffrey Combs has already chipped his teeth on some minor characters and Brunt but this is his ''piece de resistance' performance, a naughty, sinister Vorta with a great line in black humour. Once he is introduced the writers simply had no choice but to let the Dominion invade because we simply had to spend more time in this guys company.
  • The Borg is really a Knight of Cerebus for the whole franchise. The Federation goes from a Utopia to doing the wrong thing for right reasons on many occasions. The whole Trek Verse became a darker place, and things like Section 31 were established as existing (which means though Star Trek: Enterprise and the new Alternate Timeline movies were set earlier, the darkness DS9 brought with it gets to stick around.) Compare The Wrath of Khan to Into Darkness. From Khan and his people who'd been found accidentally back in "Space Seed" now acting alone for personal vengeance to the true Big Bad being the Federation admiral who woke up the augments deliberately, and who fully intends to destroy the Enterprise and all its crew just because they found out. In any other series, he'd be a rogue admiral who'd clearly gone off the deep end, but he's not in it alone, and though the execution (the plan to kill everyone on the Enterprise, and to start the war he's sure is inevitable because he thinks he can win) earns him villain status, his Motive Rant has some pretty good points, though knowing Khan and company it would probably not have ended well if the Enterprise crew hadn't found out. Oh, and Section 31 makes an appearance too. These different takes on the same storyline show you the difference between the pre-Dominion War and post-Dominion War vision of the Trek Verse.
  • Stranger Things:
    • Troy. Despite not being a significant threat in the series, the scene in which he tries to kill both Mike and Dustin is pretty dark and realistic.
    • Dr. Martin Brenner. Any sort of levity or goofiness stops whenever he shows up.
    • The Mind Flayer. Its scenes are among the darkest, most macabre moments of the series. In fact, any scene involving it is pure terror and is remarkably the most dangerous creature to date.
    • Of course, all of them pale in comaparison to Vecna. Arguably the most terrifying villain of the series. Crissy's gruesome murder at his hands during the season 4 premiere cements the darkest entry of the story yet, and things only get worse after this.
  • Supernatural: Sam and Dean has face many monsters and villains throughout the years so its ironic that the sole Knight of Cerebus in the series happens to be their own mother Mary Winchester. When she first showed up in Season 1's "Home", everything starts going downhill. The writers even lampshade it in the commentary. After they realized how well Jensen and Jared worked together, they made everything more emotional, darker and less comedic...if you ignore "Yellow Fever", "Hollywood Babylon", "A Very Supernatural Christmas", "Mystery Spot", "Monster Movie", "Fallen Idol", "Changing Channels", "The Curious Case of Dean Winchester", "The Real Ghostbusters", " Sam Interrupted" and "Bad Day at Black Rock".
    • Season 4 introduced the Angels and Heaven to the series, which shifted the show's focus from a show about two brothers killing creatures of folklore to a show influenced by Abrahamic mythology, which almost every major storyline coming afterwards having something to do with Heaven and Hell. This had the effect of upping the stakes/motives in general from revenge (for their mother's death) or saving a person/group/town to stopping various entities from initiating the End of the World as We Know It or worse.
  • Teen Wolf is basically made out of the trope. Every season (or half-season) ups the ante with absolutely no regard for logic of escalation, though perhaps the most egregious power spike happens in Season 3, with the Alpha Pack, which changers the rules of hierarchies and dynamics for werewolves entirely. Still, every time a new baddy shows up, it changes the game and ups the ante.
  • Titans (2018):
    • Trigon: First season builds Trigon up upon being an inter-dimensional entity capable of destroying entire worlds. In the end, is averted in first episode of Season 2; he gets easily defeated by Raven.
    • Deathstroke: Slade may not be a non-human demon, but he managed to scare most of the main characters to the point where they can barely function as human beings. Things are never light around this guy. Never.
  • As if things weren't bad enough in 24: Live Another Day, things immediately go From Bad to Worse when Cheng Zhi shows up.
  • Katherine and Klaus from The Vampire Diaries introduced a world of pain to the main characters, like turning them into vampires and killing off their family members. They led to people like Esther, Alaric, Silas and Markos. However, the worst one may be Kai, who wiped out his entire family on his twin sister's wedding day, and put Elena into a coma that can only be broken if Bonnie dies.
  • Victor LaRue from Walker, Texas Ranger. While there has been plenty of antagonists on the show that were very threatening to the protagonists, none of them had quite an impact on the protagonists like Victor La Rue did. The fact that La Rue tried to rape Alex several times and nearly killed Walker during their confrontations made his episodes extremely dark compared to the other episodes. He was also one of the few villains that Walker had to kill in order to stop his reign of terror.
  • The Walking Dead: Glenn, Hershel and Rick meet Dave and Tony in Season 2, two survivors who are prepared to kill them for their resources, introducing the main character to the danger of rival groups. These two random men quickly prove that normal people are an even bigger threat than walkers.
    • The show is already plenty dark, and in terms of sheer body count, The Governor's got them beat. What makes the survivors of Terminus worse than any previous antagonists is that they're not a power-hungry despot who's just killing any threat to their power; nor just average thugs, nor a jealous, insane former friend. Once a genuine sanctuary that helped people, they were brutalised by a group of marauders and became a group of twisted survivalists who lure in people only to eat them, after brutally slaughtering them like pigs. According to showrunner Scott Gimple, whenever someone they view as "strong enough" arrives, they secretly feed them human flesh and give them the choice of joining them or becoming their next meal; if someone they view as "weak" shows up, they drop the act and throw them in the train car immediately (this didn't happen with Glenn's group because Abraham tried to leave before they could be fed and Rick's group sensed something was wrong off the bat). When Carol destroys their compound, the remaining survivors set out specifically to eat Rick's group. It's also heavily implied they ate their own children and actually get off on eating human flesh. Their ways and eating Bob's leg disgust the group so much that they are sure to hack them messily to pieces in return. Even long after their demise, the group is still shaken from their ordeal.
  • Whiles the series already had a deep case of Cerebus Syndrome by the time he arrived, Gorog is by far the most imposing villain in Wizards of Waverly Place, being basically the stand-in for the devil. When you cause one of the heroes to threaten to throw a child off the top of a skyscraper you know you're bad.
    • And there's Stevie, who's more complex — to the point of Misaimed Fandom attraction.
  • While the show never truly stops being a silly comedy first and foremost, Yonderland's Imperatrix is pretty much the only villain in the series who poses an actual threat, particularly when compared to the other main villain Negatus who is basically useless (although the show could be a slight subversion of the trope given how it's heavily implied that the world of Yonderland is filled with horrible villains and that Negatus is the only useless one, making him closer to a Knight of Reverse Cerebus

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