Darker and Edgier/Western Animation



"What movie?"
 * Archer season 8: Dreamland took on a darker and edgier feel with it's noir-inspired setting.
 * Spoofed in this. Where's Brain?
 * Actually not too far from the truth, there seemed to be a new Inspector Gadget series, where the humor was announced to be darker, the characters more animesque, among other things. The only thing stupid-sounding about the show is that Gadget was going to fight ghosts, for Pete's sake.
 * So...in a sense, it was going to be Danny Phantom with more cyborgs?
 * Adventure Time started off as a light-hearted children's show (albeit with a heavy dose of parental bonuses and subversive jokes and black comedy. ) The show took a darker turn around the end of season 2, in which we are presented with a villain with absolutely no quirky or amusing characteristics whose only goal is to end all life. Since then, we've seen the show openly deal with issues like death, mental illness, mind rape, suicide, despair, and self esteem. The show is in its 4th season- a far cry from the candy-colored jelly beans shouting "Algebraic!" in the pilot so many moons ago.
 * Speaking of Danny Phantom, while being perhaps one of the edgiest of Nicktoons, the TV movie, "The Ultimate Enemy", was the perhaps the darkest episode in the entire series, as well as one of the darkest moments in Nickelodeon history.
 * Indeed, "The Ultimate Enemy" is Darker and Edgier for the series as a whole; it is the only episode/movie in which a character is explicitly murdered, albeit just offscreen. It also features the show's single most evil antagonist: a mass-murdering future version of the hero himself.
 * Warner Brothers attempted to make the classic Looney Tunes characters Darker And Edgier in the 2005 series Loonatics Unleashed, only to result in massive outcry against the idea, and an overhaul resulting in a strangely drawn cartoon that wasn't very much in the way of new or interesting. A Retool for the second season attempted to add more references to the original Looney Tunes, with mixed results.
 * Legion of Super Heroes Animated Adaptation started out fairly light in tone, but the second season features Ultimately,.
 * V4 LSH in the comic book version, as well as being an example of Running the Asylum, was notorious for this. It was even parodied in the Amalgam Comics Marvel/DC crossover.
 * Ben 10 Alien Force, the newer, more dramatic sequel to its predecessor appears to being going in this direction, as allotted by Ben, Gwen, and Kevin being aged up into their adolescence. Aside from the age difference, one drastic change is that Ben now retains wounds inflicted while in alien form even after he's reverted back human.
 * ReBoot pulled this off rather well in season 3 by, adapting to the change in writing style, introducing new locations, and expanding the scope of the series.
 * This was the culmination of a transitional phase of the story begun during the Web World Wars when.
 * Transformers Animated did similar, starting with the season three opener "Transwarped". Instead of the usual light-hearted action/humor, it explored the ethical implications of building a sentient but simple-minded superweapon, dealt with Ratchet's troubled past, involved far more visceral violence (albeit to robots) and brought several main character close to death. Not to mention that as of "Where Is Thy Sting"
 * Word of God says that had the series continued,
 * Beast Wars, although frequently serious in tone, was also often humourous and silly. Beast Machines, the sequel, begins with planetary genocide and things just degenerate from there.
 * Beast Wars itself saw this after the end of season 1, which featured . The first, episodic, often very campy season stands in contrast to the more mature, more serious later seasons.
 * Speaking of Beast Wars, Transformers Animated has a habit of borrowing characters, ideas, or scenery from the earlier Transformers shows and modifying them for its own purposes. In Beast Wars Waspinator was the lovable hapless Butt Monkey who blew up many times but always pieced himself together without any obvious lasting effects. In Animated he's a gigantic, half-crazed techno-organic bent on bloody revenge upon Bumblebee for (accidentally) having him sent to the stockades under accusations of treachery. When he
 * Transformers Prime is the darkest and edgiest Transformers cartoon thus far. Deaths are common (and the Autobots are actually shown killing Decepticons), there's far less comic relief, and disease, brutality, and the undead are common thematic elements.
 * The Powerpuff Girls underwent this slightly for the movie. It was edgier and more serious than the majority of the series -- not that that's hard to accomplish.
 * An episode had them sell the formula to an unscrupulous man who started cranking out "EXTREME" Powerpuff Girls. He used more Chemical X and less of the other ingredients resulting in malformed girls, later when he won't give up the Chemical X he drinks it and turns into a monster and nearly sucks the life out of the girls leaving them a sickly green and covered in spots, the professor and their clones are just barely able to save them.
 * What about the "Speed Demon" episode where the girls travel to a grim future where Ms. Bellum has turned into a Mayor-hat obsessed wretch, the teacher is so traumatized that she keeps repeating a Madness Mantra about the girls leaving, and the professor is shallow shell of his former self, not even going into the list of people who blame them, having suffered possibly even worse things. And it's all caused by   who has reduced the town to an apocalyptic wasteland and becoming a literal Satan himself.
 * In the episode Super Zeros, where the girls try to act like their favourite heroes, they poke fun at this trope. Buttercup at one point complains, "And we're not all dark and tormented!"
 * In 2003, John Kricfalusi made a revival of his cartoon Ren and Stimpy, called Ren and Stimpy Adult Party Cartoon, to allow him more freedom on what he couldn't do previously on the show. It was darker, much more violent, the characters used stronger curse words, and it had a lot more blatant sex jokes, including a few episodes where the duo are portrayed as gay lovers.
 * To promote the movie, a PG-13 version of G.I. Joe called G.I. Joe: Resolute has been launched for Adult Swim. The first episode has the Joe's battleship base attacked, Bazooka killed, and Cobra Commander wiping Moscow off the face of the map. Then again, what do you expect when Warren Ellis is doing the writing?
 * The Scooby Doo films of the late '90s were much darker than the previous shows and movies. They were very violent, people actually died, the villains were threatening, most of the monsters were real, and a few adult jokes were put in. By the time What's New, Scooby-Doo? premiered, they became Lighter and Softer.
 * However, the new series Scooby Doo Mystery Inc has become Darker and Edgier, again. And becomes more and more Darker and Edgier so as the series goes on....
 * The final episode of Tales from the Crypt (the only one animated) was a bloody and gory retelling of The Three Little Pigs, featuring the wolf messily eating the pigs (and presented as a rapist in one scene) and making two of the pigs a smoker and an alcoholic who sponge of their brother.
 * The 2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2003  animated series compared to the original 1987 version. But slightly Lighter and Softer compared to the original comic.
 * Lampshaded in the animated, Direct-to-DVD feature Turtles Forever, where the Edgier 2003 Turtles disdain their 1987 counterparts, but are in turn scorned by the yet edgier original comic Turtles when they meet.
 * The "Red Sky" seasons in the 1987 series is this compared to the light-hearted show before.
 * Avatar: The Last Airbender features this after Season 1. While the first episodes did detail how an entire nation was destroyed and explains Zuko's scar, it's not until the second season when the plot really starts to hammer in the sheer destruction of war, touching on such cheery implications as genocide, concentration camps, and a general feeling of helplessness. Even the personal stories get deeper and darker, with Zuko struggling with moral issues,   Done well, because the descent into darkness is gradual and doesn't just put a gun in a character's hand. Rather, the focus is on fleshing out characters and exploring the implications of their situation.
 * The show is an excellent example of how a series can be dark, with mature themes, without having to resort to graphic content (something it shares with a number of other series, including Harry Potter).
 * The Legend of Korra seems to be taking it even further, with a Steampunk city riddled by crime.
 * The creators have even stated outright that Korra is darker and more mature in comparison to Airbender - which is extremely impressive for a Nickelodeon cartoon, given how mature the original series was already. So far, nothing has proven them wrong, with scenes that are highly reminiscent of public executions and rape, and perhaps the most blatant and horrifying depiction of a terrorist attack in the history of children's television.
 * Sonic Sat AM to Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog: The latter show was a light hearted comedic show without any of the characters being in any real danger while in SatAM, Dr. Robotnik has become a power hungry dictator who has taken over the city of Mobotropolis, captured the king and thrown him into another universe, and has turned most of the inhabitants into robots to do his bidding. He is also much more menacing and capable than his other interpretations, which are generally bumbling idiots. Also, Sonic, Tails and a band of surviving friends known as the Freedom Fighters try to stop him from completely taking over the world- he already owns most of it -and must avoid being captured and roboticized in the process.
 * Although it is MUCH lighter than the comic.
 * Parodied in The Stinger for the Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy movie.

"J. Torres: [The show] started out skewed a lot younger... but along the way, I think the producers discovered it was reaching a wider audience. ... [the show] got into some darker story lines, and they introduced a lot more characters, so they expanded on it, and they let the show evolve with the audience."
 * The movie itself was a more darker and edgier version of the series, and not in the fun way: The Eds' scheme seriously wounded the other kids for once, which cause them to seek retribution, meaning ganging up on the Eds so they could beat them up senseless. The Eds themselves ends up in several hardships trying to escape them, which takes its tolls on both Edd and Eddy. . The climax itself was a horrific Deconstruction of Amusing Injuries and what consequences they actually have.
 * Another episode that has a dark feel to it is the Cartoon Network Invaded special episode "The Eds Are Coming".
 * The "Coon and Friends" episode trilogy of South Park takes Darker and Edgier and runs with it.
 * South Park in general, thanks in part to its evolving animation style and in greater part to loosening content restrictions imposed by the network, has gotten a fair bit darker (if not more serious) over its run, with more and more graphic content included on a regular basis. It's gotten to the point that reruns of old episodes, which were once rated TV-MA, are now rated TV-14 since they appear downright tame compared to what's been allowed on the show (and other basic cable programming) in recent years.
 * Unfortunately, said episodes are edited from their original broadcast in order to fit the TV-14 rating (as well as the late afternoon/early evening time slot). Words and phrases like "asshole" and "god damn" are bleeped, as well as Kenny's muffled cursing. Visuals, ranging from Kenny eating vomit to a dead man on a noose crapping his pants, are replaced by white-on-black messages. Some scenes are outright edited: Ben Affleck, while the General's line "You're a little faggot, kid!" is completely cut out. To make matters worse, all of the episodes are pan & scan, regardless of their original format (everything from Season 5 onward was originally rendered in widescreen). This applies to every season prior to the eleventh, with each prior season less and less likely to pass this threshold, the first four being limited completely to it. The viewer is forced to either watch/download the episodes online (problematic, considering the official website only offers pan & scan versions of all pre-Season 13 episodes) or purchase the episodes on DVD. If you want to watch anything from the first four seasons on Comedy Central the way they were meant to be watched ("back in the day"), then you're basically SOL.
 * Spider-Man: The New Animated Series is perhaps the darkest telling of Spiderman. The pilot alone portrays the origin of villain Electro as a tormented university student who smashes a sign after everyone laughs at a cruel prank played on him, is electrocuted, then murders the chief antagonist. Spiderman tries to stop him from killing more people, Electro seeing everyone as the people who hurt him, but can only do so by killing him. Too bad, as the graphic nature made the series Too Good to Last.
 * The Rugrats Movie: Not too many fans (want to) remember the show containing murderous animals, child endangerment, and tension between the babies thick enough that it can be cut by katana
 * It's also a bad sign when the Adults Are Useless are being more competent than usual.
 * The Penguins of Madagascar has taken on a slightly darker tone in season two, by playing up the For Science! and commando motifs more.
 * Teen Titans got darker with each season, starting out mainly as an action-comedy cartoon with only the Robin-centric episodes being serious, but after the first season it all went downhill from there, and you got episodes like Robin going temporarily insane, Terra "dying", and then there was the apocalypse with everyone turning to stone...
 * All of the arc episodes in Raven's season (a.k.a. season four) were Cerebus Syndrome incarnate. How bad is it? Well,  And that's just the first arc episode.


 * Thomas the Tank Engine: Season Five. It had several scary and adventurous episodes.
 * Invoked Trope during the third episode of Family Guy Presents Laugh It Up Fuzzball. When the Rebel team first raids the shield generator on Endor, Han Solo (Peter) tells the Imperial soldiers that he's had enough of the Ewok's cuteness and sends them outside to dig their own graves with their helmets. He then instructs one of the soldiers to shoot one of the others, cut off his face, and wear it in front of his family. Then again, this is before they are ambushed by the empire.
 * Immediately afterward, the battle with the Ewoks looks a whole lot darker, with stormtroopers bleeding and screaming as they're hit with arrows and rocks, and Ewoks eating each other. Also, "Holy shit! That blast came from the Death Star!"
 * The regular series itself became darker in recent seasons. Bertram crosses the Moral Event Horizon by doing something not so comedic. He kills Leonardo da Vinci. Then Peter seems to cross Complete Monsterdom by throwing an unconscious Stewie under Lois' car wheel, and promptly has her run him over, and there was Evil Stewie, who committed one homicide, cut of Brian's tail, tries to choke Stewie with it, and later tries to strangle said dog with his collar. Seems like Family Guy is getting more seriously menacing antagonists, aren't they?
 * On the topic of more recent episodes being darker, the episode "Screams of Silence" actually has very few laughs in it due to the plot being about Quagmire trying to help his sister overcome domestic abuse she is in severe denial over; due to the serious nature of the topic, the series instead throws itself to the right on the comedy-horror scale by including several instances of domestic violence,  and very, very few gags. And those gags weren't all that funny.
 * The difference can also be seen in the Christmas Specials, evident to anyone who watched both "A Very Special Family Guy Freakin' Christmas" and "Road to the North Pole".
 * The Boondocks TV series in comparison to the comic strip its based on. Though justified in that being on television obviously allows it to get away with a lot more than what a daily newspaper comic strip would.
 * Weapon Brown is Peanuts (and other cartoon characters) made ludicrously grimdark.
 * There was also the student film "Bring Me The Head Of Charlie Brown" by future Simpsons writer Jim Reardon, which involves the Great Pumpkin hiring the kids as hitmen to kill Charlie Brown in gruesome ways, eventually he snaps and goes on a killing spree.
 * Dragon Tales brutally parodies this concept with its parody video "Dragon Tales: Too Hot for TV!", to the extent that the male lead expresses distaste at the concept.
 * When Batman: The Animated Series started in 1992, it was basically this compared to every other kids show out there. In a good way though, with mature storylines and complex characters and themes. The movies were even darker.
 * Darker still was its follow-up series, Batman Beyond, set in a gritty Cyberpunk future Gotham City. It was basically Batman: The Animated Series Up to Eleven: more mature stories, edgier violence, and an even bleaker tone. And to think the network originally wanted it to be a "kid-friendlier" Batman show!
 * ThunderCats (2011) is actively promoted as such, particularly noticeable with the Thundercats' enslavement of their Lizard enemies, and other themes of Fantastic Racism. Moral ambiguity comes to Thundera, which soon becomes a Soiled City on a Hill and Doomed Hometown with the murder of young Lion-O's father.
 * While Phineas and Ferb is a funny and light-hearted in it's own right, the show's first half-hour episode (and season one finale), "Phineas And Ferb Get Busted" is among the darkest things Disney has ever done. After Candace successfully busts her brothers, the duo get sent to a reform school that's basically a prison where their identities and creativity are stripped and they are subject to Clockwork Orange-esque torture and a not-so-subtle form of waterboarding, to the point of becoming imagination-deprived zombies. Candace does notice what's going on and attempts a rescue, where she is barely able to save them. Bonus points for the fact that the reformatory's Drill Sergeant Nasty is perhaps the most evil villain in the entire series, to the point where he even gets KILLED at the end.
 * My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic's second season starts on a light note with the new villain brutally Mind Raping most of the mane cast and consuming the world in chaos. Then we get to the third episode which has Fluttershy snapping a bear's neck and Twilight going insane.
 * The show in general is Darker and Edgier compared to previous My Little Pony shows, especially the G3 ones. This is especially cemented that comedic Sanity Slippage is common among our Mane Cast.
 * An in-universe example in King of the Hill: Multiple episodes show Luann running a Bible-themed puppet show called "The Manger Babies". In a later episode, John Redcorn runs a business of selling children's educational DVDs and has Luann make some. When her popularity wanes, she tries to gain back her fanbase by making a Darker and Edgier show with "edgier" storylines and characters, including a Bratz doll Expy.
 * "Pigmalion".
 * The first Halloween special for The Simpsons was a series of moderately creepy stories connected by a non-frightening Framing Device which kept reminding viewers that the tales were fictional. Starting with the second special, however, the stories began to get more violent and scary while the Framing Device got less and less reassuring. Eventually it was dropped altogether, and the stories quickly became downright horrific.
 * "Homer's Enemy" is considered to be one of the darkest episodes of the Simpsons, due to face that Frank Grimes became so appalled by Homer's incompetence that he lost his mind and accidentally committed suicide. Not to mention that in the ending scene, during his funeral people forget him and instead laugh at Homer, who is sleeping. The chilling implication is that anyone from/with the mindset of Real Life would be driven insane by the people in Springfield. "Homer's Enemy" is proof that, beneath it's humorous exterior, Springfield is a dystopia. No wonder it's considered America's Worst City...
 * "The Boys of the Bummer" also gets a special mention. The entire population of Springfield abused, mocked, humiliated and attacked Bart simply over a lousy baseball game. And they did not stop abusing Bart, even when he was Driven to Suicide. If Marge hadn't intervened, who knows what might have happened...
 * Any episode with a character who has no funny quirks and is played seriously to the point of going into Complete Monster territory. Examples include the winemakers from "The Crepes Of Wrath" (who nearly killed Bart by giving him antfreeze-laced wine), the Babysitter Bandit from "Some Enchanted Evening" (who tied up the kids and tried to rob the house) and Bart's kindergarten teacher from "Lisa's Sax" (whose treatment of Bart basically made him what he is today).
 * Some episodes with Mr. Burns are darker and more dramatic than any other episodes (except the ones mentioned here). Examples include "Raging Abe Simpson and His Grumbling Grandson in The Curse of the Flying Hellfish" (where he crossed Moral Event Horizon by trying to drown Bart), "Who Shot Mr. Burns?" (where he blocked all the sunlight from Springfield, not to mention that he screwed over other characters in the same episode and his action were played seriously), "Mother Simpson" (where he was involved with biological warfare and he is responsible for making Homer's mother, Mona Simpson, to run from the law, even though she saved him).
 * The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything movie in Veggie Tales seemed pretty more grimmer than its predecessor. While it still had jokes, there was still a darker atmosphere aspect that can be felt in it.
 * When it comes to the mainline series, the episode "Sweetpea Beauty" seems a tad darker than other episodes, featuring a Nightmare Fuelish climax and a villain more threatening than most others in the show.
 * Hell, Winnie the Pooh did one. For proof watch Poohs Grand Adventure.
 * Or just look at the page image up there. Yes, Winnie the freakin Pooh has indeed crossed the Despair Event Horizon.
 * If you can believe it, ALL of the Winnie The Pooh films released during the 1990's/2000's had darker and edgier moments compared to the original film: the third act of The Tigger Movie, the "pictures" scene in Piglet's Big Movie, the climax of Pooh's Heffalump Movie, and the third act (again) of Pooh's Heffalump Halloween Movie. The most recent film went the reboot route and averted this trope completely.
 * SpongeBob SquarePants started out as happy and light kid-friendly cartoon about an optimistic Sea Sponge and with few Gross-Out Show elements and all episodes were light-hearted and characters themselves were comical and good-natured. However starting with season 4, the series became darker: the episodes are very violent with characters getting skinned, ripped in half, beheaded, melted, disemboweled, eaten alive by humans, vaporized, killing each other, and killing one-shots off for real, and there were many gross, scary, sad, and even sexual moments (especially in episodes "The Splinter", the infamous "Toenail incident" in "House Fancy") and a lot more of Squick and Nausea Fuel. Characters became Flanderized and many of them (pretty much everyone except Sandy, Gary, and all non-regulars (who basically got cut from the show)) Took a Level in Jerkass. Special mention goes to Mr. Krabs: he went from greedy yet good person, to a completely cheap but still harmless and funny person who hurt people on accident, to finally a sadist who is worse than Big Bad Plankton (who became much more symphatethic). Mr. Krabs has sold rotten and deliberately poisoned food, abused and exploited his employess and even dressed as Pearl and scared Plankton, who actually wanted to commit suicide afterwards. Things got so bad, the writers had to give Krabs a commeuppance in "The Cent Of Money", followed by a return to his old personality. The worst case would be any episode focused on Squidward or Plankton.
 * Futurama in the films and Comedy Central seasons, though there were earlier examples that foreshadowed this.
 * Recess, despite being light-hearted show about group of kids and their adventures at school, had a few dark and serious episodes. "Prickly Is Leaving" is perhaps the darkest episode of the series, due to fact that we were introduced to Dr. Slicer: the most evil villain in the entire series, who employed cruel and unusual tactics to control the school and, unlike Finster or Prickly, only cared about power without regard for the students' welfare. His behavior even disgusted Miss Finster, and TJ (who was never afraid to stand up to adults before or since) was completely scared of him. He was ousted in the end, of course, but consider this: Third Street wasn't the first school he was principal of, and likely would not be the last.
 * "The Biggest Trouble Ever" is a Wham! Episode for the series. It involves the gang accidentally breaking the statue of Thaddeus T. Third III and become the town's most hated people. Ms. Finster punishes them by making them work menial jobs. But the real reason why the episode is so dark is what happens later: Mayor Fitzhugh, the mayor of Third Street, decides to send Recess Gang to six separate schools, even though they were remorseful and even Prickly and Ms. Finster objected. Throughout the episode, Fitzhugh looked very gleefully sadistic about the whole thing, and only relented when Third's own grandson, demanding that they be pardoned, threatened to expose Fitzhugh's own (deliberate) past misbehavior regarding the statue.
 * The Rise of Miss Power is this to the regular Word Girl series. While there are still jokes, we are introduced to the villainess Miss Power, who, unlike other villains, is taken seriously. She goes to Earth, and teaches Word Girl her powers (like ice breath), and also teaches her to mock the other villains. This goes so far as to Word Girl/Becky Botsford talking back to her parents, and she even mocks her own sidekick. When she discovers Miss Power's scheme, she gets a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown, and is declared to be weak by Miss Power, and she takes over the town. And, unlike other villains, she would've succeeded in killing someone, had Word Girl not intervened, and almost succeeded in taking over the world. This feeling towards the episode is mostly because of the anti-bullying message they put into the movie.
 * The Wallace and Gromit short "A Matter Of Loaf And Death".
 * Even though it was a darker and edgier that most animated fare at the time, the fourth and final season of Courage the Cowardly Dog had some of the show's darkest and scariest episodes. "The Mask" stands out from the crowd.
 * Young Justice season 2, "Invasion".
 * Miss Martian is now an Anti-Hero who regularly extracts information from her enemies' minds, even though it leaves them completely catatonic. Superboy (now her ex-boyfriend) is increasingly concerned, and  was the last straw before the breakup.
 * Aqualad's arc isn't any lighter.
 * Bart "Impulse" Allen, Fun Personified in the comics, is a Stepford Smiler from a Bad Future.


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