Mood Whiplash/Video Games

Your mother dies when you're stranded in a chopper crash, you're named after a Foster's beer label by the feral garbage gatherer tribe that adopts you and build a cute robot pal, your entire tribe is murdered by stormtroopers sent to kidnap you, funny shenanigans with a mechanic and your snarky robot buddy,, funny shenanigans with an upper class nitwit boss and a cute girl, , more funny shenanigans, You descend into , funny shenanigans with The Ditz clone,. After you figure out the solution? Funny shenanigans with the mechanic from the start of the game and the cute girl's boss. Seriously Revolution, what were you thinking!? ""Mayumi Yamano was found dead on a TV antenna and that's why you're eating dinner alone tonight. In other news, Junes commercial!"
 * Crossover with Nightmare Fuel: For such a funny, lighthearted game, Portal 2 gets surprisingly disturbing when.
 * Which is immediately followed by
 * Done very deliberately in Dragon Age II at several times. The plot of the game is a report of the events of the last years given by Loveable Rogue Varric to an Inqusitor who needs to know what really happened to find a way to contain the major crisis that is currently sweeping the world. Also being a successful novelist who wrote several adventure novels based on his own experiences, he occasionally tries to get around the darker parts of the report by just making up over the top hilarious scenes, which then suddenly cut back to the interrogation room where the inqusitor tells him to stop the silliness and tell her what actually happened. Then you get to start the level again, but that time it is a lot darker and creepy.
 * The Zelda series is known for this. Examples include:
 * The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time has a fair bit of it, but an especially abrupt example is the transition from Kakariko Village to the Royal Family Tomb. The former is a small, peaceful village with a friendly population. (And if the in-game time is daytime, very pleasant music playing in the background; otherwise no music at all.) The latter is a gloomy dungeon with bones scattered across the floor, as well as . The transition between the two?
 * Used to bewildering effect in the Great Bay area of The Legend of Zelda Majoras Mask. You've pushed poor Mikau to the shore, but you've come too late, and he's dying! His last words will surely be dramatic and plot-important, right? If by dramatic, you mean "Hopping up and pulling out a guitar and singing about how his girlfriend got pregnant and won't talk anymore, before collapsing and asking you to 'heal his soul'" then yes. It is very "dramatic".
 * What makes Mikau's death scene even more bizarre is the fact that, after pushing him to shore, you get a short cutscene of him staggering around and collapsing. Since it's before he whips out the guitar, it makes you wonder even more where he got that sudden burst of energy from...
 * Also, the cutscene right before the final dungeon, which goes from nice to creepy to nice and back again once you get to the dungeon. The day is seemingly saved, and Tatl and Tael are reunited. But then
 * There is then The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword's Silent Realms, which are nice and relaxing, until the guardians wake up and come after you.
 * The Yakuza series is built on this trope. The game has a hard boiled, serious plotline lifted straight from the Yakuza genre... and then some of the most ridiculous sidequests in the history of gaming. So you have a scene where a character loses a family member to a betrayal by his closest friend, and then in between punishing those responsible, you can go ahead and help a flatulent man in a unitard who fights crime, but only when he eats curry.
 * Quintessence - The Blighted Venom - When scenes abruptly change from a Vikon (might or might not be with Salory) comic relief moment to something dead serious.
 * Final Fantasy X 2 veered sharply away from the angst and tragedy of its predecessor, going for a more lighthearted, fun experience. The game itself slides up and down from drama to comedy, though the switching points are rather clearly marked.
 * The tragic yet inevitable ending of Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core in which  dies is rather jarringly offset by the peppy Jpop playing over the game credits.
 * The song is called "Why", nothing about it sounds happy. At all.
 * Final Fantasy VI gives us a scene where Terra, during two separate chats with Leo and Shadow, is wondering whether it is possible for her to love a human (since she is half-Esper) and angsting about not understanding what love even is. It's all quite touching up to the point where a seasick Locke comes tumbling out of the cabin and pukes over the railing, complete with goofy music to underscore the whiplash.
 * It goes the other way, too: after Locke and Terra find the escaped Espers at Crescent Island and bring them back to Thamasa, everyone is confident that peace is returning to the world. Then Kefka shows up,
 * This is usually called "comic relief", to be used to bleed off tension after long moments of drama and the like so the audience doesn't become too tense and emotional.
 * Happens a lot in Final Fantasy XIII-2, but the normal ending takes the cake by far.
 * Tales of the Abyss has whiplashing as optional. In the in-between moments of all the cutscenes of the game, there are some skits of random talk between the party that can be heard by pressing "Select". While the talk sometimes is serious, it is mostly comments about trivial subjects (the characters outfits, for example), plot commentaries, shipping, and so on. It helps to get the players head out of the whole apocalypsing storyline, although there are too many damn skits.
 * Kingdom Hearts fails in this, especially Kingdom Hearts II. In some worlds, serious conversations are interrupted by some "humorous" moments between the heroes' party. They are not out-of-place (after all, this IS a Disney game), but some of them just don't make sense (for example, there is a moment in the Pirates of the Caribbean world where Sora and Goofy comment that they are surprised that Donald didn't give up to the treasure's curse (implying that Donald is greedy, although Donald never showed signs of being greedy in that world). And please, do I even have to mention Atlantica in Kingdom Hearts II? "Let's forget about our mission and... SING!!".
 * The Kirby franchise follows the adventures of the titular bright pink, insanely cute fluffball through a primarily Sugar Bowl world. The Final Bosses of many Kirby games, however, are significantly darker than the rest of the game. 0 and 0^2, two of the final bosses in the series, even attack Kirby by squirting blood.
 * Mana Khemia Alchemists of Al Revis, for the past seven chapters, has been very non-serious and lighthearted; everything's played for laughs. Just last chapter, for example, your workshop leader recruited an adorable pink blob alien thing that may or may not be intent on taking over the world. Aww. But wait, what's this? "This was the last time I really enjoyed being at school..." in the end of chapter summary? Well, crap. On entry into chapter 8, cue descent into more serious grounds, like  Curse you, chapters 11 and 12.
 * .hack//G.U.. After some 2 or 3 missions regarding the plot, you can be sure one of your friends (who, probably, was already thrown out of the main plot) will call you to play some random quest. While in the first game this is optional, in the other two it isn't. It doesn't help that the quests are not even a little bit fun.
 * There are other examples, for example, the flowers and lace addition to the camera when Saku gushes over Endrance, and the flying friendship glomp that Haseo is subjected to by Silabus and Gaspard, in contrast to some of the more intense moments (someone becoming comatose or realizing how badly you're being manipulated).
 * Or seeing the slightly nightmare fuelish final boss roar at Skeith in a way not really normal for the series. ( definitely startled this Troper the first time she saw him.)
 * The violently Japanese Chu Lip is based around a young boy trying to kiss as many people as possible in order to win the heart of his crush. He's lucky if the characters are human rather than animals, eggplant-headed boys, or people with telephone poles for bodies. The game is unapologetically nonsensical. However, there's a section of the game where he encounters the spirit of a very sweet girl who was in a car accident, but prayed that she would live no matter what. Over the course of several visits it becomes clear she's stuck between life and death in a body that's slowly falling apart and a mind that's beginning to fade. You eventually set her free by helping her remember who she was  It's very touching. ...and then you're right back to kissing men in gimp suits and small Godzilla parodies.
 * Part of the reason for Beyond Good and Evil's poor sales reception may lie in its mixture of Funny Animal characters and silly gags straight out of a Saturday morning cartoon with a number of touching and intensely emotional scenes. Then again, most of it works pretty well, since the funny generally stays far away from the most poignant scenes, and if it doesn't, it works to enforce the friendship between the characters.
 * Super Mario RPG: After defeating the Giant Bipolar Medieval Knight From Nowhere Boomer, you're treated to an overly dramatic, somewhat depressing cutscene featuring Boomer effectively committing suicide, accompanied by the game's "Mallow is sad" theme. The next second, your party is doing a goofy dance to the happy, bouncy Midas River music as you ride a Shy Guy-powered chandelier up to the roof of Bowser's Castle.
 * It's Mario, the same guy who was (much later) overjoyed at the sight of Bowser being horrifically burned into Dry Bowser in New Super Mario Bros. He couldn't care less about traumatic deaths.
 * Also Chapter 7 of Paper Mario the Thousand Year Door does this. Up until now, it was a pretty lighthearted, funny game. Then Lord Crump apparently dies, you discover that TEC the computer is dying, and then TEC blows up itself and the moonbase. And then, in Chapter 8 you enter the door and things get DANGEROUS. Mario even pulls something that would only be seen in The Exorcist.
 * And what about its sequel Super Paper Mario? It's like a giant, continual mood-whiplash, including Great.
 * And on that note, I'd also like to nominate The Very Definitely Final Dungeon, and the second to last chapter, in which  If there was ever a What the Hell, Hero? for developers, this is it.
 * At the end of Super Mario Galaxy, Mario defeats Bowser by literally throwing him into the Sun, then flying back to get Peach and the two start to dance in space.
 * And at the end of Super Mario Galaxy 2, Mario looks like if he had finally defeated Bowser for the last time and is about to get the last Grand Star
 * While the seemingly mandatory slapstick quotient in point-n-click Adventure Games makes Mood Whiplash pretty common to the genre, Beneath a Steel Sky takes the cake:
 * The game Grim Grimoire starts off seemingly as a relatively light-hearted Magic School drama... but towards the end of Lillet's five days there, it rapidly turns dark, with the Sealed Evil in A Can escaping, culminating in everyone but the main character dying. The player actually knows this is coming in advance, but it's still shocking in its suddenness and intensity--and the fact that, afterwards, the first Groundhog Day Loop unexpectedly and suddenly turns the mood back to merely serious doesn't help matters.
 * The bizarre way No More Heroes operates simultaneously on Rule of Cool, Rule of Funny, and Rule of Fun inevitably leads to this. The most jarring example is a moment when it goes from Travis whining comically about how his entrance fee to fight Dr. Peace went to giving him a fine night on the town... to a serious discussion of how Dr. Peace's life as an assassin and dirty Private Investigator has estranged him from ex-wife and daughter, and how both he and Travis are ruthless sociopaths "addicted to blood".
 * And then there's the final battle, where
 * Desperate Struggle follows this trope just as much as its predecessor did. The beginning again comes across as crude yet hilarious, especially when you see Travis summon the Glastonbury. But later one starting with
 * The final battle of the second game zigzags drastically between serious and funny. The final confrontation starts before the level, with
 * Also, in the second game, the scenes between the 2nd and 1st assassins cuts from one of the most serious moments to one of the funniest moments.
 * The endings of both Pokémon Mystery Dungeon titles are really sad, complete with the really emotional music and copious amounts of crying. And then the credits start rolling and a cheerful rendition of the theme music starts playing. It's kind of funny, really.
 * The second game's post-credits additional cutscene, turned an unholy Tear Jerker into the world's absolute best Crowning Moment of Heartwarming.
 * Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky has a really memorable example. After a fairly consistently-lighthearted game in the vein of its predecessor,
 * Elite Beat Agents: You play the game for a while and the tone of the game sets itself fairly clearly, it's downright wacky with Automobile CEO heirs playing Ninja, a speed freak taxi driver outrunning the law to get an expecting mother to the hospital et al, and then you get to Mission 12: A Christmas Gift. The opening FMV looks simple enough, a father heads out to a job and his young daughter asks for a girl teddy bear to go with her male one for Christmas. No problem there, will probably be some hilarious level dealing with getting the bear in question. The FMV jumps to a few months on, the mother states that the father's "had an accident" and "will not be able to come home". Wait, what?
 * This is a once-a-game tradition for the Osu Tatakae Ouendan series of which EBA is an American counterpart. All three are considered extremely effective, at that.
 * Three Panel Soul nails it.
 * The notable part is that in the final song for both EBA/Ouendan 2 had the young daughter and the sister of a figure skater who died after she had an argument with earlier participating in the final song in a hot-blooded fashion, neither Tetsu (the deceased husband of a widow whom they had an argument with) or his wife was in the final song (they do appear in the credits), also the song maintained a sadder tone then the other tear jerkers (For example, no Ouedan style OMG moment when you get 50s in that song, rather it was Tetsu being even more distant from his wife as he tries to say he loves her but wouldn't listen.)
 * Painkiller was a straightforward first-person shooter until the Asylum level, which was almost completely devoid of lights and filled with invulnerable ghosts that could damage Daniel. It was like a light version of Shalebridge Cradle from Thief. After that, the game went back to its normal intense tone.
 * Don't forget the amputees.
 * The Orphanage anyone? Decapitated children, schoolgirls that burst into flame and scream in agony while attacking you, a giant butcher who devours the childrens' souls and cooks their bodies, children wrapped in bedsheets that explode into gorey mist...to say absolutely nothing of the iron maidens and other torture implements in the environment. One of the squickiest is the giant teddy bear in one room whose stomach has been split vertically, with a gore patch underneath it...
 * Mother 3 begins with the usual Earthbound-style humor, even amid the search for Flint's missing family in the first chapter, right up to the moment
 * The endgame could also count as well. You arrive in the bustling, amusement park-like, go up the strange and whimsical and are even shown a welcome bit of nostalgia from Earthbound in the form of a boat ride. Then, suddenly you encounter the sinister
 * Earthbound itself had its moments. The generally happy-go-lucky nature of the game made the abrupt switch to Cosmic Horror at the end all the more terrifying.
 * To elaborate, the game is bright, happy, goofy, and random for the most part, until an abrupt shift near the end where
 * Heck, we can probably pin this trope down as the entire point of the Mother/Earthbound series. It looks cute and cuddly, with this undercurrent of dissonant weirdness, then you get to the ending and suddenly it's pure psychological horror and Nightmare Fuel. This is probably the cause of it's small, yet super-devoted fanbase - if it were either pure cuteness or pure horror, it would have been much more forgettable.
 * In Episode 4 of Phoenix Wright: Trials and Tribulations, the case seems to be building up to a triumph as Mia is on the verge of proving her defendant innocent and the lying witness guilty. Victory is at hand.  While the game does depict corpses due to most of the cases being murders, this scene is particularly horrific.
 * The Phoenix Wright games as a whole invoke this trope often. The overall tone of the games is fairly light and satirical; but remember that all cases are framed around often horrible, grisly murders. The fact that the games typically jump right into the snappy comedic dialogue the series is known for mere moments after a corpse is found can be rather jarring.
 * A completely unintentional example: In Justice for All's final case, presenting the wrong evidence to
 * Investigations has one that doesn't involve the murder scene itself, but the reaction to it:
 * In Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine Doors, the characters have been told they are on a sinking ship and must escape within 9 hours. It doesn't stop them from making jokes and innuendos right and left.
 * Shadow of the Colossus. You finally took down that HUGE Colossus that took half an hour just to climb. Yeah, good job asshole.
 * The Jak and Daxter series pulls this off to an almost masterful degree. The most notable one is the switch between Jak and Daxter The Precursor Legacy and Jak II Renegade. The first consists of bright, primary colors, a relatively simple story and the heroes saving the day; the second starts off with two years of torture, is set in a totalitarian city under iron rule, and has the hero slowly heading for insanity and death.
 * Two scenes in Jak 3 Wastelander that happen within minutes of each other depict a Crowning Moment of Sadness, a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming   and a Crowning Moment of Funny.
 * Liable to happen often due to players in World of Warcraft, but one jarring example where the game itself presents this is the death knight starting sequence. From the get-go, the player and his/her npc allies happily slaughter screaming and pleading innocent peasants, torture crusaders to death, and wreak havoc and destruction across the land. It's cruel, it's evil, it's fun. Then comes the execution quest...
 * Then, immediately AFTER the execution quest, you hide behind a hilariously obvious cardboard tree to ambush a courier.
 * Another case happens when you start playing as a Goblin. Their starting area is one large funny pop culture reference, and the Goblins are all having a good time. Then Deathwing rears his ugly metal head, and suddenly everyone's screaming and running for their lives. And after that, when you evacuate the island, a cinematic starts and its back to funny again.
 * There's plenty of whiplash going on in Cataclysm. For instance, the questlines of Silverpine Forest are truly dark and serious, which is preceded immediately by the new questlines for Hillsbrad Foothills, which are almost all funny (some are even funny while dealing with a serious subject, such as the wiping out of the largest human settlements in the area).
 * There's also the new questlines for Thousand Needles. It usually begins with the Grimtotems raiding and partially destroying both the Alliance and Horde settlements in the area. Then you reach the speedbarge, which has some truly non-serious moments like the troll boss you just killed following you around as a ghost and talks with his ex-wife who hates him. Then comes the questline with Magartha, who plans on destroying all of Thousand Needles with something that the Twilight Cult created and threatening to kill you if she ever saw you again.
 * Call of Duty 4 has a amazingly brutal and tragic ending. Then during the end credits, it then switches to a rap song by Griggs. Then there is the epilogue which is a Time Crisis style mission on a plane that starts off with an Airplane quip. Seeing those two moments after the ending you have just witnessed is just so jarring.
 * A certain cheat turns the end of one mission into this: you've cornered an enemy officer on the roof of an apartment complex, trying to capture him and find the Big Bad, when he puts his own gun against his chin and commits suicide. In slow motion, his body falls backwards, and goes limp... at which point he explodes into a shower of car tires.
 * Persona 4 gives us two examples. First of all, the game loves to alternate between a suspenseful supernatural murder mystery and a Slice of Life/high school comedy. In addition, for a Shin Megami Tensei game, a series known for it's dark tones and depressing endings, Persona 4 is extremely idealistic and upbeat.
 * One of the most prominate occurs late in the game when  After consulting with the rest of the team about the implications of this and how it affects the murder case, they decide that there is nothing they can do about it at the moment but to wait for the killer to make their move. The conversation then changes to their plans for the upcoming culture festival; a lead up to some of the funniest events in the game, involving a beauty pagent, a cross-dressing pagent, and a wacky trip to a hot spring. However, a few days latter, all hell breaks loose
 * Parodied in a fan webcomic:

"You became friends with Yosuke. >Yosuke will now die for you.""

"What could possibly go wrong?"
 * Uncharted: Drake's Fortune plays as a mix of Gears of "War and Prince of Persia for most of its length (its mix of run-and-gun and exploration with a male protagonist led some to dub it "Dude Raider"). About the 80% mark it makes a sudden left turn into the  genre, when the protagonist discovers that the MacGuffin is not just a rather large slab of gold, but is also a  . The upshot of this is that the gun-toting pirates and mercenaries of most of the game are suddenly replaced with  . Your Mileage May Vary.
 * Eversion. To explain why would spoil things, but suffice to say that there's a reason that warning is on the game's opening.
 * Just in case those who haven't played the game need a further hint, said warning shares the screen with a quote from HP Lovecraft.
 * At the end of Gokujou Parodius, you find a cartoon bomb that proceeds to blow up the place; nothing out of the ordinary, considering every other bizarre thing you just witnessed... and then you are treated to a slow pan across the wreckage, and see your character's lifeless body float by, all accompanied with depressing music.
 * Grand Theft Auto IV: The serious story and dramatic moments clash somewhat with the goofy radio stations and ads.
 * So does every other damn Grand Theft Auto.
 * A possible subversion in GTA IV: After a particular mission, Niko actually says something along the lines of, "I'm not in the mood for these annoying ads and DJs," and switches off the radio himself.
 * Conkers Bad Fur Day has a pretty big swing. The game is ridiculously non serious and comical, until just before the final battle, when
 * The original ending was even worse, with  If that doesn't completely contrast the game's funny moments I don't know what would!
 * Mega Man Star Force 2. One of the villains is a Replacement Goldfish who sacrifices himself because he loves the woman the man he replaced loved, but he knows he can never take his place. Another one of the villains, for comparison, threatens to tickle the main character's friends.
 * Both Secret Files game has a serious story, and very humorous ending.
 * Fate Stay Night, and quite frequently too. Example, in Heavens Feel first we have Sakura, Shirou and Rider in a goofy fight based on Sakura's jealousy - which is less amusing a few days later - before Shirou goes off to get Ilya's help.  All in the space of about 6 game hours and significantly less reading.
 * Two Words: Tiger Dojo.
 * In Trace Memory after you find out that, eat the candies you got at the start and she makes a joyful comment of "I love candy!"
 * Psychonauts is a game that can be mildly disturbing or depressing at times, but is also very funny and enjoyable. Then, you get to the final level.
 * There's also a level taking place in the mind of a very happy camp counselor named Milla Vodello. The level is a very upbeat dance party/ levitation training session. However, if you happen to find a hidden room in Milla's mind, you can find a memory that shows
 * There's also a level inside the mind of a woman suffering from bipolar disorder. You can manipulate a spotlight to literally switch the mood of the level from happy and carefree to depressing and dangerous.
 * During the level inside your own mind, after you've discovered the memory vault titled The World Shall Taste My Eggs, you climb up the thorn tower and a cutscene is activated in which
 * In LEGO Star Wars, Vader's death is treated seriously, while most of the rest of the cutscenes verge on parody. (Even the destruction of Alderaan is Played for Laughs.) Well... seriously until Luke closes the shuttle's ramp, and Vader slides into the shuttle headfirst. Take into effect that the Lego shuttle's ramp is most of the backside of the ship that flips down from the top.
 * Brutal Legend alternates between rock-fueled awesomeness and tragedy. The Mood Whiplash hits first after the final epic battle with Lionwhyte and his hair-metal army, . Then the game goes back to heavy-metal awesomeness for a while, at least until.
 * Metal Gear Solid 4 Act 5. YES! We've WON! "Snake, hear me. Our country is an innocent child once more..." Still euphoric...
 * Metal Gear Solid 3 is an even better example. The entire game is an Affectionate Parody of spy movies from the 60s. Because of this, it's incredibly goofy. Yet it has, by far, the most utterly gut-wrenching and depressing ending in the entire series.
 * Every Disgaea game opens with a dark, grim and ominous narrative...that's immediately followed by the quirkiness and insanity that the series is famous for.
 * And sometimes, it whiplashes back.
 * An admittedly minor example: the victory jingle from Sonic Chronicles. It's odd to lurch from the game's sinister, driving battle music to... cheering children?
 * Sands of Destruction has a light-hearted RPG storyline... about heroes who are out to destroy the world because it really is just that bad and unsalvageable by more conventional means. It... makes for a weird game. Reportedly the less-serious aspects were added later due to Executive Meddling.
 * This can happen in Mass Effect if you're in good enough standing with both available love interests at one point. So, Virmire.  And if the right person survives, guess what happens next? A relationship argument.
 * A slightly less severe one occurs in the sequel, in which Shepard's angry rant at the Quarian Admiralty Board and major Crowning Moment of Heartwarming at Tali's trial slides into jokes about watching Shepard yell.
 * "Priority: Rannoch" in the third game is a double-whammy. Accomplishment for, then tension as the war between the geth and quarians reaches its climax. If  , the tone shifts to peaceful , with some sadness   If not, then no matter which side you're on, things are going to get traumatic,  fast.
 * A somewhat logical one occurs during the end of a Paragon playthrough of Miranda's loyalty mission. It makes sense in-game, but watching her go from within three or four minutes of gameplay was rather sudden.
 * Her Lair of the Shadow Broker dossier is even worse, swinging from hilarity to sadness to pity within the space of a few sentences is pretty horrible. In fact, this is true for most of the dossiers.
 * How about Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack In Time? One second, [[spoiler:the duo are bidding each other farewell. The next, we're grinning at Clank's, "I always thought that you were the sidekick." The next...Ratchet is dead. You may be a little dizzy after that.
 * It totally works, though. It's near the end of the game, and we already think that we've defeated  Even those who were suspicious of   would have set the WMG aside by that point, in the face of an apparent victory.
 * All over the place in Cross Channel, such as a sex scene with Touko being immediately followed with the revelation Youko was watching the entire time or just a few scenes later a scene where it seems like they're trying to set up an Aw, Look -- They Really Do Love Each Other situation accidentally reveals that Taichi had recorded said sex scene.
 * Sazh and Vanille take a detour to Nautilus to get away from the madness of PSICOM chasing after them relentlessly - this is a bit easy given the chaos Lightning, Hope, Snow and Fang are causing in the other direction. The whole scene is relaxing after all the fighting involved - an amusement park complete with a Disneyland-esque light show and a bit of frolicking with the Cocoon Chocobos with neither monster nor military to mar it... and then PSICOM shows up and opens fire on the two of them. This is to be expected, but it gets so much worse.
 * The original Metal Slug, like its sequels, is based on More Dakka, Stuff Blowing Up, and the Rule of Funny. The credits however, are shown over a pan of the game's stages, with the bodies of the Mooks killed strewn about. One can even see a woman visiting a makeshift grave on the battlefied.
 * Chibi-Robo, and how. It never strays away from being cute, but see how many drastic mood changes you can count in one subplot alone.
 * In the NES game Uninvited, the music may change into 'danger approaches!' if you are facing something that can kill you. But in case of the Scarlet O'hara ghost... the music is very upbeat and pleasant. Yeah, get her attention, and the Hell Is That Noise death music suddenly plays as she rips you apart.
 * The bright, humorous, mostly family friendly, PS 2 dog adventure simulator Dog's Life takes a turn toward Nightmare Fuel during the last part of it. You find out . You have to save your love interest from certain demise in a gloomy, run-down factory, where the blades are coated in blood. After you save her the villain falls and gets . And the game still has a happy, upbeat epilogue. It's highly likely that the "T" rating was solely because of this scene.
 * In Half Life 2 when you finally exit the mine shaft it is daytime for the first time since you entered the nightmarish Ravenholm and quite peaceful...then you notice that the dancing blue ray of light is actually a very damage heavy weapon.
 * After an intense battle, the rocket remains safe. It launches sucessfully, despite a minor weight anomaly (due to a headcrab and/or garden gnome). The super-portal is destroyed, meaning all Combine forces on Earth are stranded, with no hope of reenforcements. The missing Aperature Science research vessel has been located, meaning Dr. Freeman's adventure continues. Hey, he even gets the go-ahead from Dr. Vance to "do [his] part" with Alyx! Not only that, but it has been revealed that he may know something about a certain bastard in a blue suit.
 * In Half Life 2 when you finally exit the mine shaft it is daytime for the first time since you entered the nightmarish Ravenholm and quite peaceful...then you notice that the dancing blue ray of light is actually a very damage heavy weapon.
 * After an intense battle, the rocket remains safe. It launches sucessfully, despite a minor weight anomaly (due to a headcrab and/or garden gnome). The super-portal is destroyed, meaning all Combine forces on Earth are stranded, with no hope of reenforcements. The missing Aperature Science research vessel has been located, meaning Dr. Freeman's adventure continues. Hey, he even gets the go-ahead from Dr. Vance to "do [his] part" with Alyx! Not only that, but it has been revealed that he may know something about a certain bastard in a blue suit.


 * In Jade Empire, in the Great Dam area (chapter 2), if you enter the ruin of the orphanage and finish The Drowned Orphans quest before you go any further into the area, you will be treated into a very weird scene
 * Dragon Quest IX has a sad, serious scene shortly after you fight a boss that calls itself the Ragin' Contagion.
 * At the end of fourth level in Flower it suddenly gets very dark.
 * Golden Sun: Dark Dawn about halfway through. Your sunny nice country is suddenly covered in evil fog and littered with dead bodies. The number of supporting characters who die in your arms in staggering. Not to mention that every . AND the music is turns creepy.
 * The plot of Iji is rather dark, and indirectly deals with the psychological effects of being forced into the role of a One Woman Army. It also has logbooks that talk about Rocket Jumping as a sport and Marco Polo being played in minefields, a gun that fires bananas, various lampshades hung on video gaming conventions, a Silliness Switch that turns the entire game into a Blind Idiot Translation, with the dialogue of a Complete Monster replaced entirely with sound effects (PEW PEW PEW) and emoticons ( >:, and some truly epic weapons and explosions.
 * Touhou Mother spends quite a bit of the game being a quirky RPG much in the style of the series it is based on.
 * Any player's first visit to Praetoria is riddled with this. Especially when compared to the Four Color nature of the vanilla game. In a game where the fate of defeated enemies was typically left up to the player, one of the first Morality Missions involves a Sadistic Choice where you have to choose to murder one of your contacts. There is no third option. Someone has to die. Talk about Darker and Edgier.
 * Custom Robo (GCN). Silly game about foot high robots and very lulzy script
 * Deadly Premonition whips between Narm and horrifyingly gruesome murder scenes fast enough to make your head spin.
 * 'When you go between the humorous and cute Pkunk and hilariously cowardly Spathi to the Genocidal Kohr-Ah and the chilling warnings about Them from the Arilou, you see how this trope applies in Star Control 2.
 * Done on purpose and exacuted very well in Dragon Age II in Act II. The entire game takes place in flashbacks told by Varric to his interogator. When entering mansion, the game does a hilarious over the top Scarface homage, which becomes so silly that the action returns to the interrogation room where the interrogator tells him to stop fooling around and tell her what really happened. Then the game returns to the beginning of the level, which this time is one of the most gloomy and creepy in the entire game, that Varric rather had not told at all.
 * The "On the Loose" sidequest that deals with three escaped mages in Act III is the epitome of this. Dealing with Emile de Launcet is a fairly lighthearted and hilarious little affair. Dealing with Huon and Evelina  is horrifiying and heartwrenching. And you can deal with them in any order.
 * Borderlands is largely a tongue-and-cheek Crapsack World; sure, you've got wastelands packed with mutant alien beasts and pillaging bandits, but it's largely Played for Laughs. Then you get a quest to check on the friendly Cloudcuckoolander blind cripple questgiver from the first area. Oh, he's not sitting in his usual chair, I'd better check in his shack....
 * The Reconstruction contains two examples, both of which are lighthearted-to-serious transitions.
 * The first occurs in the Wham Level, "To Ascend". Up until that point, the game has been a relatively lighthearted happy-go-lucky Heroic Fantasy adventure, with a few bouts of seriousness but otherwise retaining its perky atmosphere. But then and the chapter boss (the first boss who isn't a mindless monster, it is worth noting) has a death scene that contains the first showing of blood in a cutscene. You also learn that . It is also followed immediately by one of the biggest Tear Jerker scenes in the game.
 * The game regains some of its lightheartedness in the next chapter, however...for the express purpose of delivering another Wham! Episode that's even more jarring. It starts off innocuously enough, with peaceful humans arriving on Dehl's island, and Dehl then going off to find his father.
 * Baten Kaitos: Origins has the scene in the Lava Caves. You've just watched . Then the Lord of the Lava Caves pops out, and the escape from the collapsing cavern turns into a farce.
 * A Profile has a cheerful 'going home together' scene with the Masayuki's childhood friend and younger sister interrupted by the sister asking the friend if she loves him. Since Masayuki broke up with her everyone there knows that the answer is 'yes.' From then on the walk home is decidedly gloomy.
 * In the 'Old World Blues' expansion for Fallout New Vegas, the hilarious, double entendre (hell, often outright sexual and perverted) silly banter of the researchers takes a decidedly dark turn when one of them starts discussing conducting experiments on large groups of Chinese prisoners. Anyone even passingly familiar with Chinese history around WWII will understand why this is such a disturbing dip in the conversation. May also double as a moment of Fridge Horror.
 * The video game adaption of The Lion King follows up the overbearingly somber and ominous "Simba's Exile" level with the lighthearted and upbeat "Hakuna Matata" level.
 * While Marimo is comforting Takeru in the aftermath of the attack on Yokohama base  From this event onwards, the game starts to get darker very rapidly.
 * Hatoful Boyfriend is a pigeon-dating game that has a lot of surreal humor and takes great fun in parodying the entire Dating Sim genre. It also has genuinely heartbreaking endings for some of the birds and hints of a darker plot going on behind the scenes that's fully revealed in the Bad Boys Love route.
 * Rosenkreuzstilette does this with a few stage themes and talk themes, especially Zorne's, Trauare's, and Schwer-Muta's. Two of the talk themes get Darker and Edgier than their stage themes, the other one the other way around.
 * Blaz Blue has Help Me, Professor Kokonoe!, a short cartoon where after the character's Bad Ending, they meet up with Professor Kokonoe for verbal admonishing and advice on how to get the True Ending. Many of these shorts are quite humourous, but cause serious Mood Whiplash when you consider what usually happens to the characters in the Bad Endings. This is especially true in the Bad Endings for Ragna, Lambda , Tsubaki and Makoto.
 * There's the opening to Heavy Rain. The very first scene in the game has the player getting used to controlling Ethan and having a fairly bright, happy day with his family as he celebrates the birthday of his elder son, Jason. Things end a little more seriously when the family's bird dies at the end. Then the next scene comes and has everything end in tragedy, presenting the somber setting of the rest of the game.