Dark Fic



Deliberately writing a serious version of events related from a story which was originally quite lighthearted, "serious" in this case being more bleak, horrific, dark and/or possibly sadistic. Indeed, Dark Fic veritably wallows in (or savors) misery and darkness. This is sometimes satire, based on memes, or just writers flexing their creative muscles and showing us certain canonical elements that have the potential to be Nightmare Fuel. Or maybe the writer just enjoys depressing people with their writing style.

When badly done (especially when the original work was a comedy), it will do nothing but Squick readers, who will quickly abandon it. Or make people laugh. Well done, though, it can provide an intense and unsettling view of something supposedly familiar.

The Fanfic version of Darker and Edgier, may also lead to Deconstruction via Deconstruction Fic.

Related to Grimmification. Often due to Fridge Horror. (Often applies the fandom equivalent of Ascended Fridge Horror.)

Contrast with Fix Fic. A Dark Fic may or may not be the end result of a Deconstruction Fic.

Comedies or series on the "idealistic" side of the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism tend to inspire Dark Fic; similarly, "realistic" or darker stories inspire WAFF fanfic.

Anime and Manga
"Yomi: Tomo-chan, my best buddy in the whole world, wait for me so we can 'team up'! I'll introduce you to my new friend, Mr. Spiky Bat! He's been wanting to meet you for a real long time. I think you're going to become real close!"
 * Possibly the ultimate example of a well-done Dark Fic is the Ranma ½ story The Bitter End. It deconstructs the Fanon " psychobitch" Akane into a real person with a real mental disorder, and then follows this premise all the way to its dark, bloody and horrifying conclusion.
 * Ill Met By Starlight is the other great Ranma Dark Fic.
 * Another example of a popular Ranma ½ Dark Fic is Can't Let Go. It's about how both Ukyo and Mousse decide to deal with the ones they're infatuated with.
 * Take any story where females regularly beat up the male leads, such as Ranma ½, Familiar Of Zero, or Love Hina, and you'll have quite a few fics written about how the male lead is not shrugging off a casual Megaton Punch thrown his way, but is sent to the hospital or even fights back.
 * This seems to be a popular trend in Pokémon fanfiction, though in a world with god-like beings fighting each other a certain amount of dark is expected when humans control them. The multiple-novel-sized Pokemon Master claims to be "the first major Dark Pokémon Fanfiction released on the Internet", while Latias' Journey is a standout example. It often seems as if the authors are trying to out-angst Neon Genesis Evangelion.
 * There's an urban legend of a hacked Pokemon game dubbed "Pokemon: Lost Silver" that is pretty macabre, nightmareish and Mind Screw-y. It's unknown whether the game was real, or the guy who wrote about it just made it up, but it exists now.
 * The Takotsuboya K-ON Trilogy, one of the more infamous K-On!! works. You can find all three here (or on Fakku if you aren't fond of downloading). Be warned: this may send you into a depressing funk for quite some time.
 * An another example is Spiral which features a lot of dark themes, including sex between the girls.
 * Sailor Moon, an at times serious but mostly light-hearted series about magical girls that fight in the name of love and justice, had a bit of a dark turn in its final season, where a renegade magical girl tries to destroy the world and nearly succeeds. The fanfic The Golden Queen of Shadow Galactica tells her side of the story, taking cues from the manga but featuring a dream sequence from the anime, and has what would definitely be considered a bad ending.
 * Ruthlessly and hilariously deconstructed in The Dark, Twisted, Grotesque, Violent and Generally Perverse Adventures of the Sailor Scouts!. Written under the conceit of the main characters reading through various fanfic "scripts", it manages to touch on just about every facet of Sailor Moon darkfic ever to exist.
 * The Sailor Moon fanfic Deaths of the Senshi is actually quite good once you get past the squick.
 * Usagi Is Dead Hip Hip Hooray. The title only gives you the very barest inkling: it starts with an unspeakably horrifying tragedy that subverts the entire original show, and only gets worse from there.
 * The last Light is a short crossover in which the whole concept of the Sailor Crystals is given the Doctor Who treatment. Equal parts Tearjerker and Nightmare Fuel.
 * Damaged was a long-ago well-regarded darkfic in which one of the senshi is lost, presumed dead, in a battle with the Dark Kingdom. Lacking any explanation for what happened to her, officials turn their attention to the remaining girls, and their lives fall apart in different ways. But it's the ending that packs the real punch...
 * A highly popular yet unfinished Dark Fic is A Dangerous Pairing. The story features an evil version of both Usagi and Mamoru.
 * There are quite a few Naruto fanfictions which explore the whole children-as-warriors idea, as well as killing for money and the short life expectancy of ninjas. The only reason the setting of Naruto isn't already dark is purely because it chooses not to focus on such things, being a Shonen series. For starters, think about what would have happened to Hinata if she'd been successfully kidnapped. Or perhaps don't.
 * Fanfiction.net abounds with fanfiction describing Naruto's all-out, lifelong struggle to utterly decimate the Leaf Village because people hated him (he recognizes this possibility himself). These are usually chock full of tales of him being beaten, burned, stabbed, mugged, occasionally raped (if the author is going for some real shock value), harassed, having his house destroyed, and generally just doing everything possible to make him kill everything forever.
 * In dark fics featuring Hinata as the main character, you can bet Hiashi is going to be subject to Flanderization as a Complete Monster, Jerkass, The Antichrist, kicker and shooter of dogs, Manipulative Bastard, Smug Snake, and all-around not nice guy. All this despite the fact that in canon, he isn't really such a bad guy, just proud and strict. He's revealed to be quite a sympathetic character quite early on, as well.
 * The same goes for Hanabi, mixed with Bitch in Sheep's Clothing, due to her vague nature. However the manga suggests that she really is just a normal kid, and a nice sister at that, and the anime follows that through.
 * Ten Thousand Fists involves him getting an Omnitrix filled with anime characters in place of aliens. And you know its a Dark Fic when Chapter 1 has Iruka tortured, mutilated, and killed with the same happening to Naruto, who only lives due to a Deus Ex Machina. Then we find out he suffers the usual gamut of beatings, burnings, dog maulings, rapes, etc. And somehow it manages to get worse.
 * Naruto Veangance Revelaitons, was said by the author to be an attempt at a dark fic, and there is no shortage of terrible happenings in there, including mass murder, rape (by "heroes" and villains alike), and even.
 * There is, of all things, a Lucky Star Doujinshi Dark Fic, called Lonely Kagamin. The True Companions have split up, they've all gone to college, and Kagami is stuck in a depressing rut in which she no longer socializes with anyone. Until Konata walks back into her life... only now Kona-chan is a suicidally depressed loner who cuts herself. They fall in love and sleep together... and then Kagami wakes up and realizes it was All Just a Dream and goes back to her painfully stagnant life.
 * Which, itself, was All Just a Dream, and Kagami wakes up to find Konata next to her. Apparently, the Downer Ending was an April Fools joke meant to depress the reader.
 * Lonely Kagamin? How about Bulimic Prostitute Kagamin?. That's what you'll find in Lucky Star Blues.
 * Tsukasa is Pregnant and Other Such Stories. It takes a special kind of dementia to unleash the Sugar Apocalypse on Lucky Star. Chapter 5 especially shows the disturbing aftermath of Break the Cutie on.
 * If Konata was treated as how nerds are in real life... Danbooru used to have a "Melancholy Star" tag, largely because of that yonkoma.
 * Falling Stars, a Fusion Fic with the Lucky Star characters replacing the cast of Fallout 3 and casting Konata as The Lone Wanderer as she and her friends deal with the dangers of the Capital Wasteland.
 * The arc of Mega Man NT Warrior spawned about a million of these. Many of them shipping.
 * Axis Powers Hetalia is a manga series about personified countries. It goes without saying that darker stories—especially involving Russia or any colonial power, past or present—based on actual historical events are not uncommon.
 * A rather popular subject among these is the Cold War. While Russia is almost always shown as the Psychopathic Manchild he is, the portrayal of America varies.
 * Fanfiction regarding Nazi Germany basically writes itself.
 * Another popular subject is the conflict between North and South Korea. North Korea is usually portrayed as a hardened woman soldier whose goal is to force her brother South Korea to accept communism—whether he likes it or not. The conflict usually is portrayed as bloody and tear-jerking, and both Russia and America have no qualms about taking advantage of it.
 * Many fics involving colonialism, especially in regards to the British Empire, plunge straight in to darkfic territory in a brutal analysis of the implications of colonialism for the personified countries - anything regarding the Opium Wars is practically guaranteed to be this trope.
 * There are also quite a few darkfics based around the end of Prussia or the berlin Wall, which usually involve him being kidnapped and tortured/raped by Russia for a few decades. Hell, any fic about Russia and the Soviet countries is practically guaranteed to have him do horrible things to them, esspecially Lithuania), Latvia, or the aformentioned Prussia.
 * In the case of works like The 1983 Doomsday Stories, this can also be subverted. Nations die and suffer from the aftermath of Doomsday. But further down the line, things do get better for at least some of them.
 * One particularly disturbing example of this is the Fusion Fic doujinshi Azumanga Daioh: Drifting Classroom, a horror tale void of any of the series' humor, optimism or light-heartedness. It involves the school, with everyone inside, being sent to a barren world. They split into factions over whether they should attempt to find a way home or try to start a life in the new world.
 * There is a Hentai doujinshi (links will not be provided - Brain Bleach is expensive) which revisited Osaka theorizing about what would happen if Chiyo got kidnapped. It's a Hentai. Do the math.
 * I'll Be On The Road Again, in which Kaorin realises that she can never have Sakaki, and ends up killing herself by driving her car into a wall. Short and eerily In Character.
 * Azumanga Royale, which is a crossover with, well, Battle Royale. And it's hilarious, thus proving that you can make a series Darker and Edgier and still keep it funny.


 * Differing Paths, in the genre of "Tomo-as-badass-cop" fics. Not entirely serious, but contains severe, near chapter-to-chapter Mood Whiplash. This is the kind of thing that goes straight from a hilariously meta Lucky Star crossover, to Tomo torturing Kaorin.
 * The Name of War proves this can be done for Lyrical Nanoha. There's no external enemy, just the TSAB, and the divisions in squads and families are heart-breaking.
 * Anything by Extrinsical is not for the faint of heart.
 * Also, Scars of Time and Distant Sky. (The latter contains Planetarian spoilers!)
 * BetrayerS is something of a household name for Nanoha darkfic.
 * The two 'Karakura Cops' stories. It places the Bleach characters in a police force setting and the Espada are a terrorist group who brutally murder almost the entire cast. Apart from containing cannibalism, suicide and child murder, it actually starts off as a light-hearted comedy.
 * Real Anpanman is a tongue-in-cheek darkfic that tells the story of the kid-friendly superhero being betrayed and nearly killed by all his friends, sending him on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
 * Neon Genesis Evangelion fandom might be collectively the crowning champion of this trope. The series was pretty dark to begin with, but amongst fans known for analysing everything down to the smallest detail the ability to tease out the smallest aspect and expand upon every twisted meaning or interpretation is phenomenal. A far from comprehensive list:
 * Adam Kadmon has written some of the darkest fics you're likely to encounter. Witness is particularly hard-hitting.
 * Random1377 is another prolific NGE darkfic author, with entries such as The Lifespan of a Love Affair (a brutal deconstruction of the Misato/Shinji pairing), Let She Who is Without Sin (about a Serial Killer), and Aoi (includes Shinji being killed in the first chapter, and falls apart from there).
 * Alive takes the verse's base darkness several steps further by introducing one more factor: . Even worse, . It's also sadly a Dead Fic which means the darkness won't get resolved.
 * Scar Tissue is also a good one: Asuka blames her scars and failure in EoE on Shinji and punishes him by subjecting him to constant emotional, physical and sexual torture, while Shinji's extremely low self-esteem tortures him in the form of hallucinations, forcing him to truly believe that what she's doing to him is the least of what he deserves. And that's only the backstory; the fic itself begins after On the other hand, the fic inverts the usual darkfic formula in that it starts off dark and gets progressively lighter.
 * Taboo Parallel Crosses the Line Twice: Asuka and Rei are being blackmailed to perform depraved and degrading sexual services for two guys, drugged, raped, and filmed. Due to the drugs, both girls behave like nyphomaniacs. If they refuse, the footage will be released with express intent to ruin Asuka's reputation. Then it kicks into even higher gear, with the reveal that . And the final strike:
 * The doujins Broken Doll, The Screaming Toy, Slave Suit and Fuck Toy and A Gangbang Toy On The Road To School, all by the same author, have Ritsuko conducting some VERY unethical and downright nasty experiments on Rei and Asuka, then escalates even further. The worst thing with these doujins? Ritsuko is not Out of Character AT ALL.
 * Soul Eater has been getting a few, too. For example, A Souls Songbook is a Alternate Universe Fic where the battle between Shinigami-sama & Asura eight centuries ago went the other way, resulting in a Crapsack World run by the witches, the Kishin is worshiped by the mainstream religion, and the Shapeshifter Weapons are considered things.
 * Shadow Cell's Gundam Seed Destiny retelling, it brings out much of the Zeta out of Destiny's retelling.
 * The Cries of Haruhi Suzumiya is a Suzumiya Haruhi darkfic by way of crossing it over with Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, and manages to be darker than both of the source materials. It contains Fingore, child murder, heads exploding,
 * The Rise and Fall of Captain Starlock is basically this, with Simon crossing the Despair Event Horizon and vowing revenge against the beastman. It still didn't become full darkfic, but, you got the picture.
 * The Story We Never Told is a darker retelling of Digimon Adventure 02; the violence level is ramped up, there's distrust between the two generations of Digidestined, and there's a anti-Emperor resistance that quickly becomes vehemently anti-human in general, and quickly turns most of the Digital World against the kids.
 * In a similar vein, there's Zero 2: A Revision. It starts off fairly light—and then the Emperor nukes a city to try and kill the Digidestined. It lightens up for a while after that, but then really darkens during the last third or so of the story, as Devimon Mind Rapes Davis to create the being known as Darkheart, who spends the next dozen or so chapters curb-stomping and tormenting the Destined. And while that's happening, there's a three-way invasion of the Real World that devastates Tokyo and ultimately leads to several character deaths. And for the record, one of the factions that invades the Real World is/are an Expy of the Flood, so, yeah...
 * Death Note isn't exactly a cheerful story to begin with, but The Faceless explores the Fridge Horror of having an entire realm of Death Gods feeding off human lifespans all the time and what happens when humans learn this. They begin killing each other because of it, resulting in Post Apocalyptic World of Nihilism.
 * Remember the Azumanga Daioh: Drifting Classroom example above? The same people (who also made Evangelion RE-TAKE) made Negimaru, a Dark Fic for Mahou Sensei Negima. Basically, it’s about Chisame’s alter ego Idol character getting beaten by her fellow classmates in Internet popularity polls so she schemes of a plan to destroy their reputations online by using her *ahem* cosplay skills.
 * Marie D. Suesse And The Mystery New Pirate Age! deliberately invokes as many One Piece fanfiction cliches as possible, then breaks down and explores what would happen in those cases if reality ensued. The results are often both hilarious and horrific.

Comic Books

 * Being a Reality Warper whose powers can manifest subconsciously, it's easy to write Wiccan of the Young Avengers in the most creepy light imaginable without making him OOC. This fanfic takes the cake.

Literature

 * The Lord of the Rings fandom has plenty of these, many involving Elves and Ho Yay. However, one fan fic stands out as being extremely disturbing: And These Pearls That Were Her Eyes. A story based on the Silmarillion segment about the last king and queen of Numenor, it's a dark tragedy about spousal violence and rape.
 * Not that The Silmarillion isn't pretty dark to begin with.
 * If you ever wonder why the obvious plot bunny of "what if Aziraphale was the demon and Crowley the angel?" hardly ever pops up in Good Omens fandom, read The Sacred and the Profane. It proves that the only way to pull this off without completely abandoning canon characterization is to deconstruct the traits that would otherwise be out of place when on the other side. Thus, Aziraphale's affability becomes the facade Zirah assumes to convince others (and himself) that he's really an angelic soul when he's not casually offing people, and Crowley's tendency to be not so evil around Aziraphale is translated into Caphriel's inability to let go of his love for, and what passes for a relationship with, Zirah. The fact that Armageddon is still averted seems to take most of the edge off... and then a brutal exception to the canon-established Everybody Lives outcome occurs: And all because an angel had the wrong thought in the wrong place.
 * There are also Good Omens fics about a Second Apocalypse that the characters have no hope of averting, Crowley and/or Aziraphale being punished for averting Armageddon or their love, or Crowley revealing that his Noble Demon personality was an act all along and making Aziraphale suffer for his misguided trust/love. Some of them are competently written, while others plunge straight into Deus Angst Machina territory.
 * Due to its nature, Phantom of the Opera is rich with possibilities. The Phantom is a Stalker with a Crush, who has been watching a little girl for years as she grows up (hidden behind her mirror, no less), who has a history of assassination and dark magic (among other things), and whom most of the fans still want to see get the girl.
 * Ironically, this goes back to the original interpretation of the character, prior to the the musical version, which made the Phantom Lighter and Fluffier.
 * Many, many Harry Potter fanfics. Before book 7, most were of "What if Voldemort wins" variety (Cycle of the Badger, for example). After that, they mostly flesh out the what was happening with the rest of the wizarding world during the book. Also the First War is quite popular.
 * Oedipus' Flower, where Harry's parents survived and Voldemort wasn't around, so Harry himself was the villain. By the end of it, Harry had killed his own brother and almost killed his father, not to mention raping his mother and sister.
 * Hogwarts Exposed is something of a Dark Fic, full as it is of rape, pedophilia, torture and bodily functions; the author disagreed with himself as to the extent to which this was intentional.
 * The Paper Doll Kindergarten is a darkfic for the Twilight series, of all things. Remember Nessie (or Renesmee Carlie, if you prefer), Bella's super-quick-growing genius vampire baby? Well, Nessie isn't happy. Sadly, this fic is no longer available for whatever reason. There's certainly other Twilight darkfic (a lot of it concerned with the Cullen family's sex life before Bella showed up, usually leading to vampiric pseudo-incest) but none quite as deconstructiony.
 * Neil Gaiman has written a Narnia darkfic called "The Problem of Susan" about Susan after her siblings are killed so they can stay in Narnia. It involves
 * He also wrote Snow, Glass, Apples which makes "Snow White" much darker by telling it from the Queen's point of view and making Snow White the villain.
 * Pretty much the point of Wicked, applying this trope to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
 * A Shot of the Needful deals with manipulation, alcoholism and sexual abuse... in the Jeeves and Wooster fandom.

Live-Action TV

 * The infamous Mighty Morphin Power Rangers fanfiction Agony In Pink, the far-too-long story in which the original Pink Ranger, Kimberly, is kidnapped, raped, tortured and snuffed by Lord Zedd in very graphic fashion. Some believe it caused an "international incident" (if being mentioned as a reason for filtering a site counts as such) and may have been the reason that fanfiction.net stopped allowing NC-17 stories.
 * Doctor Who is almost custom made for this. Even beyond the Doctor being a well-baked angst muffin with psychological scars so deep you can fit entire lost civilisations in them, the legions of vicious, dangerous and destructive Aliens and Monsters that have been featured, the sheer potential of a vehicle that can appear anywhere in time and space, and a universe that is Always Doomed all combine to contain endless possibilities. Fans have not ignored any of this.
 * On a more subtle note, Psycho Savior, qu'est-ce que c'est? features a pretty dark take on the Ninth Doctor, who was never exactly a sunshiney kind of guy to begin with. Fortunately, the writer never forgets that the Doctor is, in fact, a Big Damn Hero, which keeps the story firmly on the side of pretty damn good.
 * Day of the Barney, which depicts Barney the Dinosaur as an evil immortal overlord hell-bent on conquering the world (his first and only successful attempt involves inciting every child in the world into a riot against everyone else) with a major case of hypocrisy, not being afraid to murder in graphic manners while maintaining his sickeningly sweet personality. Oh, and his backstory holds him responsible for killing the dinosaurs, corrupting Caligula, unleashing the Black Plague, rescuing Adolf Hitler and leading Those Wacky Nazis to Anne Frank.
 * Speaking of Anne Frank, there was once a fanfic where Anne continues her diary while imprisoned.
 * Remember the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode with many Enterprises and a reality where ? Well, there is a fanfic about it here.
 * Speaking of Star Trek, Djinn1 is particularly good at this trope. See: the Original Series stories Dream Until Your Dream Comes True, Banshee, and Witness. There are many more; those are just the exceptionally good (and exceptionally dark) ones.
 * There are also some very dark Star Trek fics and fanart depicting the MirrorUniverse.
 * The Marissa Picard storys [sic] are light-hearted Star Trek: The Next Generation fanfiction centering on one Mary Sue character. These fanfic stories have attracted some of their own fanfics, including some that are very dark indeed (such as Dark Marrissa #1: The Master Builders and Marrissa Pays Off Karma).
 * Many M*A*S*H fics focus on Hawkeye Pierce struggling to adjust to life after the war and often end with him being Driven to Suicide. Arguably justifiable, as he always was a little bipolar and Fanfic writer Meredith Bronwen Mallory has some disturbingly well-written darkfics on Fanfiction.net. Mostly Slash Fic, but all haunting and brilliant.
 * iCarly can get some pretty bleak fic. It's usually based on Sam's potentially abusive mother, or the potential for a Sam/Freddie relationship to go horrifically off the rails and end up with Sam physically abusing Freddie (often including rape).
 * In the Carly/Sam fandom, fanfics relating to Sam's behavior pop up, especially self harm (cutting, drugs, alcohol abuse, etc) related ones.
 * Sam gets raped all the time.
 * In one fic, the gang holds a segment on iCarly where anyone can suggest a website and they'll visit it. Someone links them to Goatse, Lemon Party, and the Offended page of Encyclopedia Dramatica. Needless to say, the kids are scarred and it doesn't get any better from there.
 * There's a popular type of dark fic called JDA in Scrubs fan fiction. In them, JD is often suicidal, abuses drugs, and even has cancer in a few of them.
 * Blue's Clues of all series has at least one. It's a subtle, realistic take on the series and it delves into the fact Blue's Clues isn't real, or doesn't appear to be to most.
 * Stargate SG-1 has the Eurydice Verse, in which the damage doesn't reset itself after every episode. The author probably thinks the characters should be a lot more screwed up than they appear to be in Canon.
 * Harper's Island has a lot of darkfic based on the Big Bad's plan succeeding.
 * Believe it or not, fanfiction.net's small cache of Everybody Loves Raymond fanfic consists almost entirely of Dark Fic, which is pretty surprising for a sitcom. There are a couple of fics where Debra cheats on Ray with Robert (including one where the result of this action is both Ray and Amy becoming embittered, dark souls who join forces to plot revenge, if I remember correctly), one where Marie has a heart attack and the other characters stand around sneering and laughing at her instead of calling an ambulance, and one that features teenaged versions of Ray and Debra as angst-ridden Emo Teens who spend an afternoon cutting themselves.
 * How I Met Your Mother has an entire livejournal community of darkfic—an impressive feat for any fandom, let alone a sitcom. Most of them involve various main characters getting into abusive relationships (either with each other or with one-shot or original characters, but most often Barney/Robin), extreme genre shifts changing the setting from comedy to crime/drama or thriller/horror multichapter stories, or subjecting one or more of of the characters' pasts to a Cerebus Retcon, again, usually involving abuse. idioticonion is one of the fandom's most prolific darkfic writers.
 * Hunting the Unicorn is a Glee fic that's heavily influenced by The Last Unicorn. It deconstructs Kurt and Blaine's sugary, chaste romance by exposing just what would make them (and especially Blaine) act like they do in the show. According to readers, the effect is heartbreaking.
 * Although Supernatural is pretty dark to start with, some fanfics manage to make it worse, usually through a lot of torture and rape. One fic springs instantly to mind when Evil!Sam decides to make Dean his sex slave, mostly through raping the living daylights out of him, all in a world where Hell had taken over just in case the rape and Dean clinging to the idea that his brother is still in there somewhere didn't depress you forever.

Music

 * Vocaloid has some pretty dark fanfics, such as From Concert to Chaos which involves Miku and Rin's Evil Counterparts attacking them on stage during a concert and in front of over 16,000 fans.
 * Wattpad has a fair share of dark fanfics, such as In The Dark, a crossover with the Spice Girls and Backstreet Boys, dealing with a bus accident, abduction, and  developing post-trauma stress and recovering.

Newspaper Comics

 * There are quite a few Peanuts darkfics out there, but this one probably takes the cake.
 * Dog Sees God is something like this,
 * It probably won't take long for someone to find a Calvin and Hobbes dark fic, such as this one called "Camp Nightmare". Calvin is signed up for a day camp which has a really cheery atmosphere and people dressed like clowns....

Tabletop Games

 * Somehow, someone managed to write darkfic for Warhammer 40,000, the God-tier of Crapsack Worlds. In The Shape of the Nightmare to Come, the Orks and Tyranids fuse to become an unimaginably powerful new organism, the Astronomicon collapses, resulting in humanity fracturing into innumerable fiefdoms, the hordes of Chaos spew from the Eye of Terror to carve a colossal region of the galaxy as their dominion, and the Void Dragon awakens to lead its legions of impossibly advanced machines. And then, in true 40K style, it gets worse.
 * The above is merely the first part of the fanfiction. The sequel, The Age of Dusk, is in some ways worse. Although it does get better in places...

Theater

 * Little Shop of Horrors is somewhat dark at times on its own, but somewhere on Deviant ART, some fanfics are, instead of a surreal musical romantic comedy from the 80's based off of a dark comedy from the 60's, quite dark and dramatic, such as Seymour's Nightmare.

Video Games

 * The infamous (at least among Sonic the Hedgehog fans) A Sorcerer, A Demon, And Emeralds. Filled with graphic violence, torture,, and squicky sex (mostly rape), with the other characters trying to stop Dark Sonic. If you dare look up and read this fic, get out the Brain Bleach, you're gonna need it.
 * The MSTing only covers bits and pieces of it, because nobody in their right mind would try to riff the whole thing. Rumor has it someone tried, and literally threw up during the attempt. Rape, torture and cannibalism do not inspire "good-natured ribbin'."
 * The same fanfic has recently gotten a name change (Sonic: Duality) and is (slowly) becoming a Fan Web Comic. Now you get to see all of the above mentioned atrocities in pictorial form! Ugh!
 * Another big Dark Fic is Wonderland, a fic where Sonic and all of his friends save Robotnik are all mentally ill. The mental hospital they are placed in has a demonic machine that feeds off of their insanity, which creates a disturbing Parallel Universe that is described as being similar to a child's drawing only much grimmer.
 * Mega Man has Rockman: the Robot War: Creative liberties with the characters aside, the result is a deconstruction of the games: Wily, why the human military doesn't get involved in the fighting, the robot masters are mass produced, and Rock is creative with his weapons, like using Rolling Cutter to.
 * Of course, you can't mention "Mega Man" and "Dark Fic" in a single sentence without thinking of The Protomen first.
 * Mega Man X, being a Darker and Edgier Sequel Series, has a lot of potential for dark fics, considering that most of the enemies are driven insane by a digital virus, there's a near genocidal war going on and of course Zero's true potential. Darkfics usually center on torture/rape by Mavericks, fanatic racism between humans and reploids (usually where reploids are badly mistreated), and the horrible things that could happen if Zero ever truly went evil.
 * Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation fame managed to make Animal Crossing look like Silent Hill.
 * Compared to Something Awful member Chewbot's Let's Play, The Terrible Secret of Animal Crossing, the above is Care Bears meets The Smurfs, managing to turn the DS Animal Crossing into the most depressing and psychotic thing imaginable. Mention "the Mouse" anyone who read the LP and watch them shudder.
 * Scythemantis' contribution to Animal Crossing darkfic, WHERE AM I, is a combination of Surreal Horror and one man's descent into madness.
 * Chewbot's other Let's Play, one of Oregon Trail. It turns a gentle educational sim into a hellish-and-funny action thriller.
 * For Team Fortress 2, people just seem to refuse to give the characters (especially the Pyro) happy backstories. And there's With Apologies to Harlan Ellison, which is a horrifying homage to I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream with a twist, with several sequel fics written by different authors.
 * The Web Comic My Name Is Might Have Been is a darkfic based on Guitar Hero and Rock Band, of all things.
 * Tales of Symphonia is very far toward the idealistic side of the sliding scale, full of bright colors and empowering morals. But since almost none of the characters have any living family, the Exspheres that give the protagonists extra power are not only made from human souls, but those souls are implied in some cases to be still conscious, and you have the option of, the canon seems practically designed to inspire Dark Fic.
 * This is extremely common in Kingdom Hearts fanfic. Like Tales of Symphonia, the canon certainly gives many hooks for dark fics, what with the Nobodies and their quasi-existences, the various Disney villains, and such. And if all else fails, one can exploit The Multiverse to simply send the cast to a particularly dark setting.
 * There are numerous "Organization 13 running a brothel" fanfics, which generally focus on "LOL SEX MAKES MY FIC EDGY." One fic, oblivion, is inspired by Toni Morrison's Beloved, beginning with Axel having killed the rest of the Organization and being haunted by Roxas, who is violently unhappy about his state. Most people focus on the unsettling plot and Roxas The Angry Ghost, but the aching dynamic between Axel and Roxas has been commented on by more discerning readers.
 * One of the better examples of this genre is All The Roads We Have To Walk, which tosses Sora through a keyhole into a "shadow dimension" of sorts and charges him with finding a way home. Despite being a darkfic, the series maintained much of the tone of the original series simply by taking the darkest moments of the games and using them as a baseline for the overall tone of the series; it isn't dark so much as it is darker, and much closer to the center of the Sliding Scale than the main series. Granted, there are some very dark moments (just to name one, Halloween Town comes with its' own Heartless Expy of Pyramid Head) but the situation never feels completely hopeless, and the series comes highly recommended even for people who usually avoid darkfics like the plague.
 * In-universe example: Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, at one point, involves Luigi going off on his own journey through the Waffle Kingdom, which is, if anything, rather comical (as his helpers will tell you). At some point, a book of his travels is published, which surgically removes any comedy his journey may have had and replaces it with overly-dramatic Purple Prose.
 * Bully fandom had some of this. It's not even that optimistic a fandom. Some of it's well pulled off - taking things that were punchlines in the game and making them shockingly serious - and some of it... isn't.
 * Touhou games are based on Excuse Plots of some Youkai being dumb or just plain bored and end with a Spot of Tea or some similar meeting of all the main characters, heroines and "villainesses" alike, but for every WAFF or Slice of Life fanfiction there's a darkfic to counter it. The mountains of Fridge Horror and being a definite Crap Saccharine World don't exactly help, humans almost completely at the mercy of the incredibly powerful youkai that can (and have) put the entirety of Gensokyo at risk on a whim, and despite their appearance a lot of characters are derived from and/or have the potential to be some truly horrifying creatures.
 * Almost every Western fan will know what you're talking about if you mention A Bad End. It starts with an Ax Crazy Kaguya declaring war on Gensokyo, and escalates from there. It is, of course, running on Rule of Funny - no one cares about anyone dying and it runs on Dead Baby Comedy.
 * Touhou Ibunshu is made of darkfic and awesome. The aforementioned powerful creatures and the incidents they cause are explored in detail, a "ground level" perspective milking the threat they represent for all it's worth, with things such as an insane powerhouse, a scheming quasi-god, and a deranged immortal portrayed as terrifying as they can possibly be.
 * Imperfect Metamorphosis can probably challenge Ibunshu for darkfic points, if only because its alterations to the source material aren't as explicit. The first chapter ends with one of Team 9 getting eaten, and it continues with a rampage in Eientei, EX-Rumia being unleashed, Yukari gathering the most powerful and influential beings in Gensoukyou, then Yuuka decides she wants to play as well...
 * Reimu Surrenders and is Destroyed is considered one of the most repulsive Hentai Doujinshis to be released about the series (once again links will not and should not be provided) which involves a Brought Down to Normal Reimu encountering a lowlife in an alleyway. Once again, it's a Hentai. Do the math. Graphic for it's eleven-page length (a safe way to put it), to the point that several hentai sites don't even allow it.
 * One of the more well written dark fics in the Soul Series is an as yet completed fic called The Pitfalls of Madness featuring the main character Cassandra slowly going insane.
 * The Final Fantasy VII fanfic series, beginning with Eromenos: The Beginning, is pretty awful. It features Cloud getting raped by Sephiroth, and its sequels make Cloud into a sadistic abuser himself.
 * Dead Fantasy combines characters from Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, and Ninja Gaiden and puts them in darker and more violent situations than in their respective canons (especially for the former two).
 * A parodic example: Death Ball, Katamari Damacy in the style of Sin City.
 * There's also a serious attempt at a Katamari Damacy darkfic, Katamari Damacy: The Shocking True Story, here. Features heavy amounts of And I Must Scream.
 * The very aptly named Knights of the Old Republic fic called Worst Case Scenario.
 * Space Channel 5 has some pretty dark fics despite being a happy series. Space Channel Sacrfice, which crosses the series with Alice Human Sacrifice, and Light Character Study: Purge, which gives a new look on Purge, one that people may miss.
 * Dragon's Lair has inspired a darkfic that can be found here.
 * The normally comedic Space Quest has at least a couple. The Middle of the Night deals with Roger not quite being the idiot he appear to be. Burn, Xenon, Burn follows Roger's son from the future, the horrific implications of Space Quest 4, and portraying an extremely unflattering depiction of Xenonian society.
 * While Pokémon is quite the dark series disguised as a kids series a lot of writers take this to the edge, making protagonists into a Dysfunction Junction and putting in every strand of canon darkness.
 * Quite a few Nuzlocke Comics could be counted as this, though the successful ones are closer to Earn Your Happy Ending. They still generally involve a lot more death and angst than the source material, and one fan comic in particular even has multiple references to Neon Genesis Evangelion.
 * Star Wars Force Unleashed is an official Dark Fic of the Star Wars franchise, getting darker when you play the DLC where the main character becomes a full out Villain Protagonist.
 * The Sims, due to how players can essentially create their own stories in the game, has a large roster of Dark Fics. The Sims Wiki's Fanon Portal features a lot. One in particular, "Night of the Living PlumbBob," stands out. It features Sunset Valley being victim to a zombie outbreak, many characters dying, such as, and The Government choosing to destroy Sunset Valley completely.
 * Queen of Sorrow and Curse of the Triforce by the same author do this for Fire Emblem and The Legend of Zelda, respectively, mostly by applying the the realistic dangers and side-effects of a real war to the setting.
 * Raccoon is a Sly Cooper kill fic (Dimitri brutally tortures and murders Sly), which, to some, has to be read to be believed. The author apologizes in advance to anyone who gets nightmares after reading it.
 * The Secret Life of the Backyard Kids zig-zagged this by being on a Cerebus Rollercoaster. Chapter 6 has a graphic scene of Jorge using his magic powers to morph into a panther, but chapter 7 is more lighthearted. Chapter 9, things go dark again...

Web Original

 * That Guy with the Glasses in Space. If a group of nerdy, fun internet personas becoming broken - but very, very Badass - woobies due to war and experiments isn't dark then we don't know what is.
 * The fiction blog Hitherby Dragons tries this with many of its entries, spanning from The Smurfs (undergoing the Trail of Tears), to My Little Pony (during the apocalypse), to Glow Worm (as a demon, fighting a doomed battle against worse horrors), to The Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe (the heroine dies early on), to stereotypical high school Magical Girl stories (the magical girls are the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse). In the bittersweet style of Hitherby, some such stories (like the one where The Teletubbies are suffering eternal punishment for their sins) turn things around on the reader again and manage to end on an uplifting note, while others do not.
 * Sailor Nothing takes the Sailor Moon style Magical Girl genre and deconstructs it into a realistically horrifying tale similar to, yet totally different from Puella Magi Madoka Magica. The story follows a teenage girl who, after jumping at the chance to be a hero, spends most of her time fighting evil rather than making friends, doing well in school, and generally living her life. This is made worse by the fact that it is during high school, so her social reputation is constantly demolished, and that she can never truly quit being a hero.
 * A popular meme on Tumblr involves "genre swap"—i.e., taking carefully-selected screenshots of a particular fandom and arranging them and moderately manipulating their tint, exposure, brightness, etc to make them fit a completely different genre. You've got some dark-to-light -- Dexter as a romantic comedy! Breaking Bad as a Rogers and Hammerstein musical ("Albuquerque's Alive With The Sound Of Dealing")! -- but others are light-to-dark, such as Glee as a horror film, How I Met Your Mother as a murder mystery (involving the murder of the eponymous mother), or Tangled as a psychological thriller.
 * Given the material, some of the timelines and stories on AlternateHistory.com arguably fall under this in relation to Alternate History. These are generally brutal, Crapsack Worlds ranging from victorious Nazis to nuclear holocaust. One specific example would be A World of Laughter a World of Tears, which follows the unforeseen consequences of Walt Disney's election into the White House.

Western Animation

 * An Animaniacs fanfic called The Burbank Confession, where toons experience prejudice from humans, to the point that one who is seen AT ALL is shot with a turpentine bullet. Dot flips off a cop, bloody battles ensue, DIES (NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!), and many other equally pleasant things happen.
 * Transformers-related Dark Fics are not uncommon. Unsurprisingly, they tend towards war stories. One fan-comic ends with an outnumbered, outgunned group of Autobots preparing to make their last stand... A Decepticon Army Ending, if you will.
 * This comic would be "War Journal", side-project of the "Transformers: Mosaic" project.
 * There are a number of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Dark Fics. The general public may look upon the Turtles as kid friendly fare thanks to Adaptation Displacement, but the fics in question hearken back to the days of the original comics, which got pretty damned dark and violent. Yoshi's backstory alone was nowhere near kid-friendly.
 * There is, in fact, a Fanfiction.net community devoted to these darkfics, many of which are quite well-constructed.
 * There's also Mutant Ninja Turtles Gaiden, a fancomic that deals with the four turtles growing up with psychological problems after a horrific incident, wrapped up in a mystery regarding a new turtle (who has his own set of issues).
 * Kim Possible darkfics are not uncommon either, usually involving the return of Ron's evil side, or Kim turning to evil. One featuring Kim holds that the good/evil switching device will make a moderately good person moderately evil, and a very good person very evil. Having been through it, Kim is a Complete Monster, torturing Shego with scalpels and pliers for her amusement. It's well made, but (obviously) really unpleasant.
 * The other main style is turning Harmless Villain Dr.Drakken into someone... Not-So-Harmless Villain.
 * Paragon, pictured above. It's a very well done horror story that involves Josh Mankey cursing Ron with the ability to see the dead. His ultimate goal is to use Kim as a vessel for his mother's spirit, since she is the paragon of perfection in his eyes.
 * There are fan made webcomics of both Nickelodeon's Rugrats and Doug, the latter dealing with Doug seeking revenge on Skeeter for raping and killing Patty, after which it became So Bad It's Good.
 * Danny Phantom has some excellent plot bunnies: "The Ultimate Enemy" from Dark Danny's POV, or him escaping, or Danny joining Vlad and staying even after a death threat to Jazz is lifted.
 * South Park seems to practically hemmorhage darkfics. Possibly because it often has very dark humor, a lot of canon violence, and Cartman. Just... Cartman. For crying out loud, a well-written Cartman can out-evil the most villainous of drama characters.
 * For an example of a Cartman centered dark fic, we have Playing God, in which Cartman . The fact that everyone is shockingly in-character makes it worse...
 * Avatar: The Last Airbender fandom breeds darkfic almost as much as it does Shipping. While vastly varied, it can generally be divided into three main groups: a) From before the series begins, speculating on what a century long war would do to the world, b) During the series, exploring the minds of what are essentially Child Soldiers and the implications of a lot of the on-screen nastiness (such as the main characters' impressive body count), as well as the depredations of the Fire Nation, or c) Set after the series, deconstructing the Happily Ever After ending on the entirely reasonable basis that a lot of the Fire Nationals aren't just going to accept peace, and the rest of the world isn't going the let them go unpunished. Alternate Universe Fic, for example the Fire Nation winning the war, is also popular.
 * Anything serious by marvel26 can give chills. Especially when the Fridge Logic behind it all makes sense. His story Manifest Destiny is a chilling depiction of the Dark Side of Aang's love for Katara to it's extreme. And by the same author is His Father's Son, a story that explores Zuko as Fire Lord Post-Series.
 * The ATLA Wiki's fanon portal features a large number of Darker and Edgier sequel fics, AU fics, and prequel fics. A:TLAR gets some attention purely for being recognized as being one of the closest to an unacceptable (by ATLA wiki rules) R rating, without being out-and-out graphic. My Own Savior is particularly dark.
 * While Invader Zim isn't exactly a cheery series to begin with, it usually addresses dark and serious issues (the main character is trying to enslave and/or genocide humanity, after all) with relative sarcasm or surrealism. Fanfiction writers, on the other hand, often take these more seriously, which is relatively easy to write considering the Crapsack World in which the series occurs. Often this includes a.) Zim destroying the world and feeling bad about it afterwards, b.) Dib killing Zim and feeling bad about it afterwards or c.) Zim or Dib simply realizing how horrible their lives are and killing themselves. Originality can be hard to find, but worth the effort.
 * Fairly Oddparents has enough of these to create a community for them.
 * There exists a Dark Fic, aptly (ironically?) named "Twilight on London," that manages to turn much of the Disney/DonBluth Mouseworld on its head and rework it into a Godfather-like tale taking place in 1800s London, replete with sex, beatings, murders, and all-around Canon/character-breakage.
 * Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers has spawned quite a few of these, most notable of which is "The Nowakverse" by John Nowak. It's about Gadget's long-lost twin sister who wants to kill Gadget because she thinks their father rejected her because she was born with one arm. It was eventually given a MSTing co-written by John Nowak himself.
 * Of Mice and Mayhem is a webcomic based on the cartoon that delves into a lot of dark subject matter.
 * The Lost Tales of Fantaisa is a chilling Darkfic that combines every Disney story (Every single one) into a single world, while answering some Fridge Logic questions with Fridge Horror. Why is Peter Pan's ears pointy?  Why is Captain Hook such a bumbling figure compaired to the original works?   Every horrible explanation makes perfect sense in canon. Oh and the story takes place during World War Two. So Hitler has a Villain Song.
 * Challenge of the Super Friends: The End, where the Legion of Doom travel to a horrific Lovecraftian universe and end up like victims in the Event Horizon and Hellraiser films, while the Superfriends themselves become fascistic and attempt to make their world a utopia in the villains' absence.
 * The Reverse World is a dark Phineas and Ferb fanfic.
 * Dark Phineas and Ferb fics are surprisingly(?) common. "Lacrimosa" was a good one, which now sadly seems to be dead (involving an old partner of Perry's torturing Phineas for the funsies), "Over Complexity is a Wonderful Thing" and its sequel, "DoubleCrossed and Back Into the Fray!" are Alternate Universe War Fics involving the occasional...rather graphic scene (including Irving being blown to dust by a grenade, though it's not like some of the fanbase would mind), and The Shadow Chronicles are pretty basic Dark Fic.
 * For Every Action, a rather disturbing take on Atomic Betty. The plot involves the eponymous hero getting sucked into an alternate universe, where she is the dictator. Various death and carnage ensue.
 * The brilliant Teen Titans fanfic Joker's Wild shows what happens when you take a mass murdering psychopath like The Joker and put him into a light hearted series like the Teen Titans cartoonverse. It's moments of horrific slaughter are matched by twisted humor. Not surprising considering it's about the Joker.
 * Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers was already pretty vicious for a mid-eighties cartoon, but when the fanfic writers get a hold of it, they have zero problem playing up the stuff the writers only got to hint at, like the brutality of Wolf Den, the corruption in Earth's government, etc. One of the show's writers, Chris "Kaymo" Rowley, made the mistake of joking about the villainess's sexual tastes to the fanfic writers. You can probably guess what happened next. Taking the crown is Ann Kathrin Kniggendorf. Very well-written and exceptionally brutal. The scariest one is "Raumjager," (a timeline where Nazi Germany not only won, but has gone on to conquer the galaxy, and the normally persecuted Shane is now considered a paragon of the ubermenchen ideal...scarier when you remember that the writer is German herself). The nastiest is "The Lie" - massive Squick, Rape as Drama, and a very unsettling ending on top of it.
 * Unsuprisingly, Jimmy Two-Shoes is lending itself well to this. Being a kids show that takes place in Hell, it was asking for it.
 * Go to a Daria fan site and look for fanfics written by the "Angst Lords" - a number of Dariafic writers who really turn the screws to the characters in the show. What makes the majority of these fics really dark is that they're also really well-written.
 * The SpongeBob SquarePants fanfiction Most Wanted includes And the story's not even over yet! More outrageous, it's rated T.
 * There's also Felony. This (so far, unfinished) story deals with some mysterious disappearances that have been going on in Bikini Bottom in the past few years. Spongebob is getting worried, but he and Patrick decide to go to Goofy Goober's for some ice cream. They end up getting drunk, just like in The Movie, and get into a barfight. Spongebob is taken to the emergency room, but is ok. Patrick, however, is nowhere to be found.
 * The My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic fandom is filled with these:
 * The notorious, infamous little number called Cupcakes, in which Pinkie Pie gleefully tortures and mutilates Rainbow Dash to death, all while retaining her Genki Girl spirit.
 * In its Spiritual Successor, Sweet Apple Massacre, the Cutie Mark Crusaders get on Big Mac's nerves, so he takes them into the basement to rape and torture to death in brutally graphic fashion. Worse, the story ends with him planning to do the same to his sister Applejack. Basically, someone thought Cupcakes wasn't brutal enough.
 * Chaos Is Very Good is not only dark, but Mind Screw at it's finest.
 * Bittersweet deals with the aftermath of Pinkie Pie dying from complications of diabetes.
 * The Pony Psychology Series series features the cast struggling with mental breakdowns, UST and other issues after the Grand Galloping Gala.
 * Memories of Days Long Past has Twilight discovering, through magical means, that life before Celestia's rise to power was quite brutal.
 * Prince Charming, in which Rarity gets so pissed at Prince Blueblood, that she decides to create her own boyfriend in her shop. Gosh, what could go wrong?
 * The two-part sequel, which can be found here and here, is even bleaker.
 * Pattycakes, which is by Word of God intended as parody, stars Fluttershy, except with a twisted infantilism fetish and a drug that can forcibly regress a pony's mind to a childlike state. And some 'vintages' are permanent in large enough doses,.
 * The much-loved flash game Story of the Blanks is somewhat unusual among dark fics, as despite being significantly darker and more gruesome than the show, it sticks pretty close to its themes and tone.
 * Several Ask a Pony blogs depict a rather horrifying alternate Equestria, where among other things, Rarity is a Complete Monster, Berry Punch is a pathetic, drunken, incestuous single mother (and her daughter has a porn addiction), and Pinkamina is even more psychotic than usual, with Scootaloo as her cheerful sidekick.
 * Rainbow Factory gives us a bunch of crazy, sadistic ponies and a gruesome explanation of how rainbows are made.
 * Cheerilee's Garden. If the other stories left you with nary a twinge, this story may make you more than a bit sick.
 * The Pony POV Series is on the Earn Your Happy Ending side of things, and ultimately a lot of circumstances have improved from what they were at the beginning... but there is a long list of good reasons why Discord's entry in the Complete Monster section is so extensive.
 * Ed, Edd n Eddy has Eddward - Edd has enough of it and decides to murder all his tormentors. Rated M for all right reasons. Its sequel Johnny is even more terrifing,
 * Forefit, which shows what would happen if Ed, Edd and Eddy still maintained their childhood problems four years after the show's end. Gets even darker as the chapters progress.
 * Two fanfictions in form of webcomics by Bleedman are this for various cartoons. Powerpuff Girls Doujinshi is this mostly for Dexters Laboratory and Atomic Betty, . Grim Tales from Down Below is this for The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy with a bit of other cartoons, by having villains like Dark Danny and Him living up to their villainous potential the boundaries of kid-friendly shows couldn't let them dwell into.
 * Vindictive Hand of Vengeance is a Ben 10: Ultimate Alien Fanfic in which Gwen Tennyson is framed for murder and thrown into the Null Void for 16 years. She escapes and sets out on an elaborate Roaring Rampage of Revenge while trying to piece her life back together.
 * Jeftoon01 has drawn a series called Twisted Princess wherein various Disney Princesses are portrayed in macabre styles, ranging from creepy to plain horrific. Each drawing has an accompanying short story that details how the princesses came to share such dark fates.
 * He is also working on a similiar set, Twisted Fairies, with describtions connecting fates of each disney Fairy to larger Myth Arc. Here's the first (and, at this moment, only) one.
 * The Adventures of Blinky Bill fanfic Scars Are Forever.
 * Try taking a crack at one Yin Yang Yo! story.
 * Among the increasing amount of The Amazing World of Gumball dark fics, there's Rise Of Darkness and The Orb Of Corruption both of which are very dark, but especially the latter.