Quotes / Cerebus Syndrome

Anime

"Wow, this got serious all of a sudden."

— Chiru, Xabungle

Audio Plays

Except you don't do that anymore, do you, Doctor? You don't play your spoons, don't mix your metaphors, don't have fun. Too busy destroying planets, tidying up your previous mistakes, dreary navel-gazing...

—Death, Big Finish Doctor Who, (Master'')

Comic Books

"You've changed, Parker. You used to have a sense of humor. What happened? Why are you so angry?"

— Ben Reilly echoing the sentiments of Spidey fans in general, during The Clone Saga

"Villains would talk a lot back then. They didn't leave innocent women in a pool of blood... I guess... I haven't really thought about it... but the ones in costume never used to kill anybody..."

— Daredevil, Daredevil: Yellow

"You look around these days...it's all different. It's all changed. The Joker's killing people, for God's sake! Did I miss something? Was I away when they changed the rules?"

— The Riddler, "When Is a Door"

Film

"It's always lightest before the dark."

— The Killer Inside Me

Literature

"If our life was a series, you'd say it was getting weird and dark. Like, a lot weirder and darker than those highly accessible early books..."

—Mr. Wolf, The Bad Guys in Open Wide and Say Arrrgh!

Live-Action TV

"I was always brave
And kind of righteous
Now I find I’m wavering
Crawl out of your grave,
You find this fight just
Doesn’t mean a thing"

—Buffy sings "Going Through the Motions" ("Once More With Feeling")

"It's stopped being fun, Doctor."

— Tegan, Doctor Who, "Resurrection of the Daleks"

Music

"And then people started dying
I thought this comic was fun
Oh god, my heart
Look at what you've done
[...]
I still don't know, still don't know what Homestuck is
I still don't know, still don't know what Homestuck is
I'm not sure when things changed, but I'm near broken-hearted"

— totalspiffage, I Don't Know What Homestuck Is

Podcasts

"How do you even begin to separate the horrible from the fanciful in this place anymore?"

— Kevin Murphy, Rifftrax commentary of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Webcomics

Haley: We were a lot safer when we just made fairly obvious jokes about the rules!
Vaarsuvius: I blame Cerebus.

— The Order of the Stick

"Seriously, I'd make an effort to get out. The drama tag was pulled, so we're looking at a limited lifespan here. Sure, it's manageable now, but soon you'll have backstories and love triangles and then love pentagons and then super-horrible secrets are revealed that change things forever... this store will end up so miserably emo that no sane being will be able to stand it. Everyone will just leave."

— Head Alien, Shortpacked!

Helen: Okay, the truth. I can't date because when I was a girl I saw my father commit suicide.
Dave: That makes no sense. And you don't have a father.
Helen: Okay ... I was sexually assaulted by my college fiance.
Dave: Wouldn't you have told me this before...
Helen: ALZHEIMER'S! I HAVE ALZHEIMER'S!
Dave: It's just not that kind of strip, Helen.

— Narbonic

Reginald: Beartato, you haven't updated your comic in days! What's up?
Beartato: I can't think of any funny jokes!
Reginald: So why do you need to tell jokes all the time? Turn your comic into a serious drama!
Beartato: (Pulls out a gun) That's not what the original Reginald would have said.
Reginald: The what??
[To Be Continued!!]

— Nedroid

Web Original

"SHIT JUST GOT LOVECRAFTIAN"

— Anonymous fa/tg/uy, Ruby Quest

Paul Cornell once observed that the reason Sylvester McCoy was his favorite Doctor was that McCoy was the first Doctor Cornell could imagine encountering a concentration camp and still having the story work, whereas earlier Doctors would just not work, morally, in that setting. And it's a fair point — imagining William Hartnell 'hmmming' his way through systematic extermination while insisting on upholding history would be sickening... But sometimes seeing the shocking extremes of what a Doctor Who story can be is necessary. You don't really know the shape of something until you probe its edges.

— Dr. El Sandifer on the Doctor Who Missing Adventures novel The Man in the Velvet Mask

I certainly didn't tune into Happy Days to see a visibly pissed-off Richie screaming and yelling at the blind, petulant, self-pitying Fonzie to quit being a coward (when Fonzie, in all seriousness, castigates God with, "I thought I was your favorite person!?" as he claws at his own eyes...So why did the producers and writers attempt it? Was it requested by star Winkler, to give him something 'real' to act, as opposed to all the "Whoas!" and "Aaaaays!"?

— Paul Mavis on the infamous "Fonzie's Blindness"

Perhaps the most controversial part of the series was the introduction of Section 31, a Federation secret police (so secret that nobody ever heard of them before) that carries out assassinations and genocide. Gene certainly wouldn't want that.

— h2g2 on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

The Crossing seems to confirm that Enterprise is no longer a show about exploration and new worlds. Perhaps it never was; perhaps that show was dead before Broken Bow was even broadcast in late September 2011.

— Darren Mooney on Star Trek: Enterprise

Toy Story: A couple of toys get lost and then found. The only folks who cry are the animators who make 2D films as they watch their future crumble.

Toy Story 2: We watch as a toy is abandoned by her beloved owner and we get to see her heart shattered during a Sarah McLachlan ballad. Tears flow like rain.

Toy Story 3: All our heroes learn that everything they love will eventually leave them behind. The demand for antidepressants for preschoolers skyrockets.

Toy Story 4: Woody is stabbed by a gang of rogue toys only to discover that his voice box has cancer. His death is very painful, it lasts 90 minutes, and Pixar shows the whole thing. No one ever smiles again.

— Cracked chart: The Sadness of Toy Story Measured in Tears

"SHIT JUST GOT DOUBLE LOVECRAFTIAN"

— Anonymous fa/tg/uy, Ruby Quest

While they’re often overlooked by super-hero fans, newspaper comic strips are a vital part of the world of Sequential Art that reaches millions of readers and is no less worthy of examination or criticism than their long-form counterparts. Unless, of course, we’re talking about Tom Batiuk’s Funky Winkerbean, which started out 30 years ago as a high school comedy and evolved into a form that delivers three panels of pure, crushing despair directly at its readers on a daily basis.

— Chris Sims

Maybe [Masao] Kato reckoned that the fans who enjoyed Trigger when they were ten to fifteen years old deserved a sequel whose maturation was commensurate with their own experiences during the years since Trigger's release. Chrono Trigger is a fairy tale; a boyhood dream. Chrono Cross is a bittersweet dose of reality.

— Pat R., "Triggers and Crosses"

"SHIT JUST GOT TRIPLE LOVECRAFTIAN"

— Anonymous fa/tg/uy, Ruby Quest

"Of course, the first Mother game's slogan was 'No crying until the ending', but this time, it really is what the game bases itself on... It's the only episode in which there are genuinely moving sequences and real character developments, which focus on the protagonists' fears and uncertainties that arise in the midst of Tazmily's mutating world. Of course, that Mother 3 is more "serious" doesn't mean it takes itself too seriously or tries too hard to be dark - it's very natural, with its own bizarre quirks."

— Hardcore Gaming 101 review of Mother 3

Does anyone remember the days in Mystreet when the biggest conflicts were about who got to be the Romeo to Aphmau's Juliet in the community play, and nobody got seriously hurt?

—A Tumblr user discussing MyStreet

to think this started as a weekly gag show with exploding dummies

— ENDgie on "The Lost Undead", Minilife TV Season 5 Watch Party

Web Video

"Rob? H-having some trouble here! [nervous laughter] D-Dan's no longer cheesy! He's turned into a much darker 80's character!"

— 80's Dan, "The McDLT"

"I was just picturing Judy Garland getting strapped down to a table and being brought into a room where they're about to shock her brain, but giving the same type of performance she gave in the original movie. That would've been wonderful."

— Half in the Bag on Return to Oz

"Boy, Toy Story got really dark, didn't it? I mean it's like 'You've got a friend in m—BURN ALIVE! BURN UNTIL YOU ROT IN HELL!'"

— Chester A Bum reviewing Toy Story 3

"This moment in the show… you can hear the audience be like 'He he... huh...' When they reach their moment of like, 'Should we be laughing at this anymore? Where did the comedy go? Why did this get so serious all of a sudden?'"

— Musical Theater Mash on Into the Woods

Western Animation

"See, this is how it starts. First with the jokes, then comes the heavy stuff."

— Zoidberg, Futurama, "War Is the H-Word"

Real Life

"Quit whispering in my ear, Cerberus!"

— The author of El Goonish Shive

Virus: Never turn a funny comic into a serious epic drama. We have a murder-suicide pact that says if we ever turn into a drama, we're going to end it all rather than inflict that on the world.
Eastwood: No, I said I was going to murder the rest of you, change my name and spend the rest of my days as a painter in Brazil.

— The authors of Exterminatus Now

"These writers and the producer, who's very creative, were writing more and more about how painful it is to be immortal. And there was a little bit of existential crisis linked to, also, an inspirational crisis, and it became a little less 'MTV Rock n' Roll.' By the time they went into Raven, in my opinion, we were full-aheaded into a middle-aged crisis show... It was like a death wish. Nobody wanted to go on living forever. Everyone's saying, 'Aaaahh, it's so hard living forever! I can't take it! Everybody dies but me!' It started already on Highlander, a little bit; and it always cracked me up because, basically, you'd think it'd be a great, blissful gift to be alive forever. Well, it became darker and darker and more painful."

— Dennis Berry on the aborted Highlander: The Raven

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