Something has survived... but not without getting scuffed along the way.
Whenever the sequel for a work goes in a Darker and Edgier direction, there is a tendency to advertise it with a more weathered and battered looking variation of the first work's logo. This is a convenient visual shorthand for the extra death and/or destruction/Darkest Hour that will take place in the sequel.
Evolving Title Screen is closely related to this trope, particularly when the scenery gets more ruined as the story goes on. A subtrope of Thematic Sequel Logo Change, which is when the sequel to a work changes its logo to match its themes or plot.
Examples:
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Films — Animated
- Frozen II: Compared to how the first movie's logo is, well, frozen, the sequel's logo is halfway thawed.
Films — Live-Action
- The Dark Knight Trilogy: In promotional material, the Bat logo starts off pristine for Batman Begins, gets pieces flaking off for The Dark Knight, and becomes surrounded by cracks for The Dark Knight Rises.
- The Warner Bros. shield at the beginning of each Harry Potter movie becomes darker as the series progresses
, as does the title logo itself, going from being made of gold, to a silvery metal, to stone, to metal that is visibly and audibly rusting at an accelerated rate, then back to stone for the finale. The accompanying music is "Hedwig's Theme", the Bootstrapped Theme for the Harry Potter films, becoming each time more sinister too.
- The opening logos for It: Chapter Two are this compared to the first chapter. Here, the Warner Bros. Pictures and New Line Cinema logos are completely grungy and rusty, and are illuminated by the Deadlights while both logos are set in a background consissting of nothing but pitch-black darkness.
- The logo for The Lost World: Jurassic Park, which takes place after the Park has failed and the dinosaur-filled islands have been Reclaimed by Nature, is a weathered 3D version of the Jurassic Park (1993) logo. The franchise pulled the same trick with the Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom logo in relation to the Jurassic World logo, this time being rock breaking apart to mirror the eruption of Mt. Sibo.
- Marvel Cinematic Universe:
- The title image for Iron Man 3 in the trailer is a sparking, incomplete, and generally broken-looking version of the Iron Man 2 logo.
- The logo for Avengers: Endgame is a disintegrating version of the classic Avengers logo, as a nod to Thanos' victory in the previous film.
- Batman & Robin opens with the WB logo morphing into a frozen Bat logo, signifying Mr. Freeze as one of the main villains, which is then shattered by the animated credits.
Video Games
- The logo for Assassin's Creed Rogue has a shattered Assassin's symbol to signify Shay's break with the Assassins and The Purge of the Colonial Assassins, and the title screen goes a step further by having the shattered symbol turn to reveal a Templar cross formed from the shards.
- All of the logos in the Batman: Arkham Series look pretty weathered, but the bat symbol for Batman: Arkham Asylum and Batman: Arkham Origins can be seen clearly, while Batman: Arkham City's is partially obscured by shadow, and by Batman: Arkham Knight is almost pitch black and wreathed in fire.
- BioShock 2 is set eight years after the original. The sequel's logo is significantly more corroded and even encrusted with barnacles, indicating how badly Rapture has decayed between the two games.
- The icon of The Elder Scrolls is the mark of the Empire, but in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, the mark is chipped and damaged, representing the damages the Empire has undergone and its potential downfall at the hands of the Stormcloak Rebellion.
- Far Cry:
- The logos for Far Cry 2, Far Cry 3, and Far Cry 4 are far more torn up than the original's (Itself torn up) in a reflection of their darker subject matter.
- Far Cry 5 inverts this as the logo returns to a pristine form, but its narrative sequel Far Cry: New Dawn has the stars replaced with faded pink spray paint spelling the subtitle, and the background is the same location as 5's but ruined to reflect it taking place in the post-apocalypse.
- Far Cry 6 plays it straight again with its logo in the trailers and box art being mostly pristine but changed from bright white to a burnt orange with scratches and smudges going through the letters and number.
- The Legend of Zelda:
- The logo for The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword has pristine font, but behind it is the Hylian Crest and Triforce covered in foliage and moss, a reflection of the fact that this game takes place After the End following Demise's ravaging of the surface world.
- The logo for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild features the same font as the franchise logo but is more weathered-looking, signifying the After the End setting. Furthermore, the logo also depicts the Master Sword lodged through the "Z" much like in the logo for The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, except that it's chipped and rusting much like it is briefly in-game.
- Mass Effect's logo is the franchise's title written in soothing blue letters, the second game's logo is the same but with a slightly-corroded "2" on a red square while the third game's is like the second but even more corroded. Sure enough, each game's tone is darker and more apocalyptic than the previous.
- Persona 2: Eternal Punishment's logo has cracked letters to represent its darker nature compared to 1 and its prequel Innocent Sin.
- Compare the logo for one of the earlier games◊ in the Spec Ops series to that from the most recent installment◊, Spec Ops: The Line. This is an early clue to the nature of the game's underlying tone.
- On the World of Warcraft: Cataclysm expansion logo, the planet is cracked, alluding to the titular Cataclysm that caused a lot of environmental damage around Azeroth.
- The Metal Slug 6 logo◊ has become dislodged from the metal casing that surrounds it, along with being peppered with bullet holes.
Web Original
- Variation with Gemini Home Entertainment. While the actual logo shown at the start of each "tape" doesn't get redesigned, each logo intro gets distorted by more and more Ominous Visual Glitches in each episode as we get a more complete picture of the creepy things happening in the setting.
Western Animation
- Star Wars: The Bad Batch:
- Compared to the metallic, shiny logo of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, the logo of The Bad Batch is rusted and stripped of its color. It should be noted the Star Wars Rebels logo is rusted but painted over.
- At the end of the first trailer for the series, the logo of The Clone Wars (the red variation used for the final arc) burns away, revealing the Bad Batch logo underneath.
