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Genre Shift: Difference between revisions
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Genre Shifts sometimes occur at the ends of a series when the writers finally get around to [[Writer on Board|soapboxing their opinions]]. Many fluffy, over-the-top comedies will suddenly find their last episode making an attempt at drama. On the other hand, some cutesy or romance-based stories can experience [[Genre Shift]] simply because they start running so long the writer figured if they have to derail the original plot, they might as well do it with something creative.
It ''is'' possible for this to work, as long as the creators know what they're doing, and it can pay off quite well at times. Usually, however, this requires planning it from the start, allowing the writers to [[Foreshadowing|set up the genre shift]] ahead of time so it doesn't feel like it comes [[Ass Pull|out of nowhere]]. Because of their sudden onset, [[Genre Shift|Genre Shifts]] motivated by [[Executive Meddling]] are likely doomed.
Even worse is if a genre shift is used as [[Deus Ex Machina|the solution to a plot point]], which just feels tacky.
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* ''[[Mai-HiME]]'' starts out looking like a postmodern take on the [[Magical Girl]] genre, then turns into something disturbingly like ''[[Highlander]]''.
* ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]'', as pictured. It ''looks'' like a [[Harem|harem comedy]] when it starts, but slowly starts throwing in more and more action sequences... until you hit the [[Tournament Arc]], and suddenly realize that you're reading a [[Shounen]] action series with an unusual amount of [[Fan Service]]. By now, the harem antics are only occasional joke fodder, the story's mainly about Negi's quest to find his long-missing father, and the [[Power Levels]] are over... well, [[Memetic Mutation|you know how it goes]]. Basically, it's become ''[[Dragonball Z]]'' meets ''[[Harry Potter]]'' meets ''[[Love Hina]]''. The anime adaptation was cut short ''long'' before reaching the aforementioned [[Tournament Arc]], but still managed to pull off a slightly different [[Genre Shift]] [[Gecko Ending|in the last few episodes]].
* The Buu saga of [[Dragon Ball]] is an example, as it starts about a boy dealing with high school and a double identity as a super hero, and soon moves to a battle against a powerful monster that could destroy the Earth.
* ''[[Princess Tutu]]'', in its first season, was about a magical ballerina princess/therapist restoring emotions to her love interest. The second season revealed it just wasn't like a fairytale, and it turned into a dark, epic struggle against the sadistic author trying to wreck his character's lives. In other words, a slightly different type of fairytale.
* Similarly, ''[[Love Hina]]'' became prone to Road Trip arcs as the series lingered and most of the romantic misunderstandings had been resolved. These were apparently brief but enjoyed changes of pace for the author, as the later series ''Negima'''s framework allows them to be used more extensively.
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* ''[[Medaka Box]]'' underwent a [[Genre Shift]] not unlike that of ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]'', except far more sudden. It was a quirky series talking about the adventures of a [[God Mode Sue]] and her harem, with just a bit of fighting here and there, for about 14 chapters. Then (probably as was planned from the beginning, considering swiftness of the change), [[Knight of Cerebus|the first character with superpowers to match said Sue appeared]], and heralded a very swift change into a bloody, [[Darker and Edgier]] fighting series, with swiftly escalating power levels.
** As the series nears it's end ([[Dangerously Genre Savvy|if the villain is to be believed]]), this would indeed appear to have been the point, as it's now come full circle back to the original plotline, except much changed from all the fighting and genre savviness that arose from the first shift.
* ''[[Full Metal Panic!]]'' - at least, the later novels. Directly [[Lampshaded]] by the author, who mentions that he's changing the series to have a darker, more depressing feel.
* The plot of ''[[Rosario
* The ''[[Trigun]]'' anime started as a humorous, lighthearted western with sci-fi elements, with a bit of mystery sprinkled throughout (courtesy of Vash, the show's protagonist). That all changed with the episode "Diablo." Suddenly, Trigun became [[Darker and Edgier]], the comedic moments were few and far between, and the show was much more plot oriented. In this case, the shift worked very well, since the second half fleshed out details that were only teased in the first half.
** That's happened because the anime basically took all the lighthearted and comedic parts of the manga, and used them in the first part. The manga version was a dramedy from the beginning - it became increasingly darker towards the end, but not to the point of complete mood shift.
* The ''[[Higurashi no Naku Koro ni]]'' [[When They Cry]] series starts off as a bloody horror show, much like a slasher flick, each arc unconnected from the others. The Second season, Higurashi Kai, turns it into a supernatural suspense with traces of an even an ''action'' series by the end, with the gorn of the first season all but gone, and focused now on conspiracies. Then there was Higurashi Rei, which goes from comedy to drama and then back to comedy.
** The series was always a mystery from the get-go, but DEEN didn't translate that part well. The newest [[OVA]], Higurashi Kira, seems to be comedy-fanservice. It makes sense since it's probably post-Kai {{spoiler|and thus none of the murder and mystery are in play anymore, since the everlasting June finished}}.
* ''[[Hellsing]]'' starts off as an action-horror story about a [[Government Agency of Fiction|vampire hunting organization working for the British government]] who [[Psycho for Hire|employ a vampire of their own]], with a bit of mystery thrown in as they try to uncover a plot to artificially manufacture vampires. Once [[Ghostapo|Millenium]] is properly introduced, it evolves into a war epic depicting a huge three-way battle over London, with much [[Contemplate Our Navels|introspection]] and many characters having to [[Character Development|rise to an enormous challenge]].
* ''[[Phantom Thief Pokémon 7]]'' starts out as a quirky manga about a boy living a double life as a [[Phantom Thief]]. It quickly turns into a dark, violent, adventure to save his sister from the unusually menacing Team Galactic. In the end it seems to turn into the original story, but in trio form. However it ended before anything came out of that.
** ''[[Pokémon Special]]'' changes genres each arc. They start as quirky adventures then turn more violent and team based.
* ''[[Tenchi Universe]]'' is a lighthearted romantic action comedy. The second ''Tenchi Universe'' movie, ''Tenchi Forever'', is a serious romantic drama with little action or comedy.
* ''[[Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann]]'' started out as a [[Desert Punk]] mecha show with an extremely [[Hot-Blooded]] protagonist. Then roughly halfway through, it turned into a [[Space Opera]], with the most epic battles ever created.
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* This happens in [[Monster]], which switches very early on from an almost noir-like hospital drama to a horror story involving Neo-Nazis, espionage, and serial killers shortly after adult Johan shows up.
* ''[[Chirin no Suzu]]'' starts off as a cute kid's movie about a baby lamb, but halfway through the film it turns into a dark tale of revenge.
== Comic Books ==
* During the tail end of [[The Golden Age of Comic Books]], many superhero characters were changed to civilian detectives, adventurers, horror hosts, etc, to accommodate the changing tastes of the reading public. Earlier, something similar happened to many non-superhero characters who went from pulp-style adventurers to pulp-style adventurers ''in tights''.
** A character known as Phantom Falcon stands out because he went through both - he began as a non-costumed air ace, turned into a superhero after being presumed dead and then turned into a civilian detective.
** The Black Hood gets a odd one in the very last issue of his Golden Age run when a villain unmasks him and he dropped the costume to become a civilian detective. The 'civilian detective' direction continued for a few back-up stories in Pep Comics.
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== Film ==
* ''[[Australia]]'' goes from screwball comedy to western to war movie.
* ''[[Audition]]'' does this. The film starts out like a romance film, with a middle-aged widower holding a mock audition to find his perfect mate. Things go along this vein for quite a while, until brief scenes start popping up showing the man's "soul mate" alone and acting very creepy. The horror doesn't really start to kick in until after the halfway mark.
* ''[[Wild Things]]'' starts out as a formulaic [[Wrongly Accused]] plot, complete with Bill Murray as a sleazy lawyer trying [[The Perry Mason Method]]... until the one hour mark. That's when it's revealed that the defendant was working with his accusers for a damages settlement, but they all have their own plans, which quickly create a [[Jigsaw Puzzle Plot]].
* ''[[Legally Blonde]]'' should end about 2/3 through, as technically Elle has accomplished her revised goal (instead of chasing Warner, she has become a serious person). Instead, she gets applied to a legal case. It's still a fun movie, and the musical revises this by making Emmitt a legitimate romantic lead that you want Elle to be with at the end.
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* The original ''[[Alien]]'' was a haunted house movie in space. ''Aliens'' is straight out [[Actionized Sequel|sci-fi action]]... and it works perfectly.
** And then ''Alien³'' shows a return to the haunted house style of the first film. And then another shift with ''Alien: Resurrection'', which is actionized like ''Aliens''.
* Similarly ''[[Pitch Black]]'' was mostly horror with the protagonists trapped on a dark planet inhabited by monsters. The sequel, ''[[The Chronicles of Riddick]]'' is sci-fi action.
* The Oscar-winning film ''La Vita è bella'' (In English, ''[[Life Is Beautiful]]'') begins as a very charming, but rather generic romantic comedy, except that it happens to be set in Mussolini's Italy, and the characters are Jewish. Now, flash forward three years. The male and female leads are now married, have a son, and the Holocaust is about to start. Amazingly, it ''remains a comedy'', only with an entirely different premise: the father starts telling his three-year-old son wild stories to protect him from the truth of what is happening.
* One of the classic examples is, of course, ''[[From Dusk till Dawn]]'', which begins as a dark crime drama about crooks on the lam kidnapping a dysfunctional family, but abruptly turns into a slapstick action movie with vampires over the course of a striptease.
* ''[[Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull]]'' is set in [[The Fifties]] and based on science fiction of that era. All three previous films were more heavily based on adventure serials of the pre-war period.
* The movie ''Miracle Mile'' starts out as an indie romantic comedy. It ''sure'' doesn't end that way.
* The 2007 film ''[[Sunshine (film)|Sunshine]]'' starts out as a hard sci-fi film about a mission to reignite the dying sun. Then, at almost exactly the three-quarters mark, it suddenly becomes a horror film in space.
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* ''[[The Lost Boys]]'' begins as a bleak, played-straight vampire horror film and then takes on a humorous tone in the third act, with the teenage heroes spouting such lines as "Whoa, death by stereo!"
* A pronounced [[Genre Shift]] occurs between the original ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' film, a parody of vampire horror flicks, and the subsequent TV series which, though it had its share of witty banter, was from the start a much darker and more dramatic effort with strong [[Tragedy|tragic]] elements. [[Joss Whedon]]'s original movie pitch was in fact more in keeping with the tone of the series, but ended up a comedy thanks to [[Executive Meddling]]. In contrast, both the WB and the UPN networks allowed Whedon the creative freedom to realize his intended dramatic treatment. Note that while the movie is not was Whedeon originally intended, the movie was still quite good, and is one of the few cases where the [[Executive Meddling]] didn't hurt the movie, and some fans think it actually helped.
* ''[[Hollow Man]]''. Another ''sci-fi''-into-''thriller'' shift.
* ''Click'' started as a [[Fantastic Comedy]], then very suddenly and very early turned into drama. [[Trailers Always Lie|Guess what part the ads were sampled from]].
* This happens to the [[Evil Dead]] trilogy. The first film, ''The Evil Dead'', is a more-or-less straightforward horror film. ''Evil Dead 2'' is a strange hybrid of gory, serious horror, and slapstick comedy. ''Army of Darkness'' drops almost all the horror and works instead as an action-comedy and managed to become the most popular film in the series.
* ''[[Adaptation]]'', starring [[Nicholas Cage]], starts as an amusing dramedy about a scriptwriter suffering from a writer's block, but slowly turns darker and darker, with elements of a thriller, until in the climax {{spoiler|the protagonist's comical twin dies}}. It still tries to [[Bittersweet Ending|end things]] [[Earn Your Happy Ending|on a high note]], though.
** The really key shift is when {{spoiler|Charlie asks Donald for help on his screenplay}}; due to the highly self-referential nature of the movie, it's implied that {{spoiler|everything after that, all the drugs/guns/sex, is [[Literary Agent Hypothesis|being written]] by or on the advice of Donald}}. The thing to remember is that {{spoiler|Donald's the only character in the movie who isn't [[Real Life|a real person]]}}.
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* In-story example: in ''[[The Addams Family|Addams Family Values]]'', Wednesday, in [[Crowning Moment of Awesome]], transforms a cheesy Pocahontas musical into an [[Nightmare Fuel]] action play.
* ''[[Million Dollar Baby]]'' begins as a scrappy underdog sports movie and turns into a thoughtful but depressing drama about {{spoiler|spinal cord injury and euthanasia}}.
* ''[[Dream House (film)|Dream House]]'' begins as a suspense/horror movie about a man who moved into a house with his family and finds out that a murder had taken place at the home. {{spoiler|After he learns that he was really the sole survivor of the massacre at the house, it becomes a movie about his grief}}.
* ''The Forgotten'' begins as a typical drama about a woman who is told by every person in her life (including her ''husband'') that her recently-dead son never existed and gradually becomes {{spoiler|a sci-fi about abductions and alien experiments with the human mind}}.
* This is one of [[Alfred Hitchcock]]'s favorite tropes, and one that's unfortunately [[It Was His Sled|a bit spoiled]] by how famous his movies have become:
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* ''[[Chungking Express]]'' starts as an urban thriller, and one third of the way through, becomes a romantic comedy.
* ''[[Kill Bill]] Volume 1'' is a kung fu action thriller that's given an excuse plot and little consideration as to character or story development. ''[[Kill Bill]] Volume 2'' is a character-driven, plot-heavy ode to the Western. Both Volumes were originally intended as one four-hour movie.
* In a bizarre example of this trope happening in a ''trailer'' an up and coming Jack Black film initially appears to be a [[Judd Apatow]] style slacker in love romantic comedy set in New York, then suddenly shifts gear into science fiction territory with a trip into the Bermuda Triangle, ''then'' finally reveals itself to be a modern reimagining of ''[[Gulliver's Travels]]''. See it for yourself [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhoktf7X0aQ here].
* The tone of the movie ''[[The Dirty Dozen]]'' changes dramatically once the team actually starts their mission. The first act could almost be considered a comedy. The second... [[Kill'Em All|not so much]].
* ''[[The Prestige]]'' begins as a romantic tale of a professional rivalry between magicians, and ends very much as [[Science Fiction]].
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== Literature ==
* Happens fairly early on in ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]''. The first chapter, and parts of the second, are very comical and whimsical, except for Gandalf's confrontation with Bilbo, whereas the rest is much more dark and grim. This has a lot to do with Tolkien trying to write a sequel to ''[[The Hobbit (novel)|The Hobbit]]'' by [[Editorial Mandate]], but giving that up pretty early in favor of something connected to ''[[The Silmarillion]]'' (which said Editor rejected).
** Even then, after the Fellowship splits, each character's story is, in many ways, a different genre, ranging from modern stories concerning war and morality to epic tales in a more medieval vein. These changes were more intentional than the shift out of a children's story, as Tolkien toyed a lot with the difference between medieval and modern works.
* ''The Hedge Knight'', the prequel for ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]'', reads first as an romantic tale about an up-and-coming knight, but anyone familiar with the author knows it'll turn into tragedy.
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* ''[[Ranger's Apprentice]]'' begins in classic fantasy style - a young orphaned hero has to fight against an evil sorcerer controlling an army of monsters. However, in later books there's not a shred of the fantastic to be seen; indeed, one story deals with an old man using primitive science to fake magic.
* [[Nikolai Gogol]]'s classic short story "The Overcoat" is set in nineteenth-century Russia and appears to have no elements of the supernatural at all. Then, in the last few pages, {{spoiler|the main character dies and comes back as a zombie.}}
* ''[[The Saga of the Noble Dead]]'' starts off looking like a very standard "vampire hunter" story that happens to have a [[High Fantasy]] setting rather than the more common modern one. From the end of the second book on, it becomes obvious that this is, in fact, a [[High Fantasy]] epic that happens to heavily involve vampires.
* ''[[The Boy Who Couldn't Sleep and Never Had To]]'' turns from a coming-of-age tale to a frenzied escape from [[The Man]] (literally) about two-thirds through.
* [[The Bartimaeus Trilogy]] undergoes one, together with some major [[Character Development]] somewhere during the second book, and, most noticeably, between the second and third. It starts out as your typical fantasy story about a [[Kid with the Leash|preteen boy and his quirky sidekick demon]] defeating the bad guy and saving a whole lot of [[Adults Are Useless|useless adults]] in the process. In the later books the saved government is exposed to be oppressive and totalitarian, the glorified idols of the protagonist's youth are viciously unmasked. By the end of the series the books describe a dying empire, clinging desperately to it's former glory. The most interesting part is probably that {{spoiler|the kid from the first book turns into one of the oppressors and the reader ends up rooting for [[La Résistance]], that is originally introduced very briefly as nothing more than a bunch of deranged terrorists.}}
* [[Out of the Dark]] By [[David Weber]] is expanded from a short story he wrote. The genre shift doesn't take place near the end, resulting in a cry of [[Twist Ending]] or [[Deus Ex Machina]]. The original short story shifts about halfway thru, the issue is though the novel's expansion of the story is entirely before the events, resulting in 90% in the first genre of hard scifi alien invasion. The last 10% however involves {{spoiler|Dracula}}
* A story ''Distant Rainbow'' by Brothers Strugatski starts as a funny story about peculiar scientific experiments and shifts into a story about an apocalypse halfway through, as their experiement has [[Gone Horribly Wrong]].
* [[The Diary of a Young Girl|Anne Frank's diary]] does not begin with her family hiding in the attic. It begins with a girl receiving a blank diary for her thirteenth birthday, having a party, attending school, describing her friends...
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*** When all's said and done, the show went from being being more subtle SF/F to full-blown science fiction in Season 3 when {{spoiler|Desmond started time-travelling}}, and cemented that change in Season 4 with an episode written with the specific purpose of smacking the viewers around the head with the message "LOST IS SCIENCE FICTION."
** And then season six ditches the science fiction in favor of becoming a fantasy show.
** The shift from science fiction to fantasy is definitely the most clear cut example of genre shift in the show. The dramatic shift from (occasionally bonkers) sci-fi to straight up [[A Wizard Did It]] fantasy left a sour taste in the mouth of many longtime fans, to the point that season 6 more than any other season has been fanonically disregarded by many. Lost never really shifted into sci-fi to the same jarring degree, it was really grounded in it from the beginning, albeit far more subtly and with a greater emphasis on mystery than anything else.
* ''[[MASH]]'' famously began drifting away from being a Black Comedy after the departure of Colonel Blake and Trapper John, and by the time Radar left in the 8th season, it had lost most of its dark humorous edge and has rebranded itself a "Dramedy."
* ''[[Passions]]'' started out as a typical soap opera and quickly mutated into a supernatural weird-fest. Ditto for ''[[Dark Shadows (TV series)|Dark Shadows]]'' and ''[[General Hospital]]'''s [[Spin-Off]] ''Port Charles''.
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* Likewise, the ''[[Supernatural]]'' episodes "The Benders" and "Family Remains."
* ''[[Doctor Who]]'', the parent show of ''[[Torchwood]]'', can and frequently does change genres from one story to the next. A show whose premise is that the main character travels throughout time and space lends itself to this.
** All the way back in the 1960s, when the show first aired, it was meant to be an Edutainment show with a heavy focus on history and science. Now its a sci-fi fantasy horror dramedy where Agatha Christie fought off murderous alien wasps and Winston Churchill sent spitfires into space to fight alien crafts. So, yeah, the genre changed somewhere there.
** Series 6 turned into a [[Sci Fi]] [[Soap Opera]] at times.
* ''[[Battlestar Galactica Reimagined|Battlestar Galactica]]'' to ''[[Caprica]]''. The former is a [[Space Opera]] that also happens to be a [[Darker and Grittier]] [[Continuity Reboot]] of a [[Battlestar Galactica Classic|70s action adventure show]]. The latter is a [[Cyberpunk]] story set in a setting similar to (though not actually) [[Twenty Minutes in The Future]] blended with a [[Family Drama]].
* ''[[Jonas]]'''s first season was your average sitcom, featuring the Jonas Brothers in the title role of course. Its second season, ''Jonas L.A.'', has a stronger plot and is a borderline soap-opera, complete with [["Previously On..."]] and [["On the Next..."]] segments.
* The first season of ''[[Prison Break]]'' revolves around [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|an honest-to-god prison break]] with a cast composed almost entirely of stock characters ripped from classic prison movies, and the second season continues it with the escaped inmates on the run from the FBI. By the end of the second season, the escapees have all successfully evaded the law {{spoiler|(the few that survived, at least...)}} but the writers manage to justify the title by having the main characters all [[Ass Pull|rounded up for random reasons]] and [[It Got Worse|sent to a new, even worse prison in Panama]]. Then the final season rolls around, and the whole series morphs into some weird cross between ''[[MacGyver]]'' and ''[[The Bourne Series]]'' about the main cast trying to take down some [[The Syndicate|evil shadow corporation]] using zany schemes whipped together with loot from the Dollar Store.
* ''[[Community]]'' most episode are comedic joke a minute following the study group and their antics on the Greendale campus. However there are some switchups. "[[Community/Recap/S2 E10 Mixology Certification|Mixology Certification]]" keeps this up for the first five minutes, but as soon as things switch to the bar, things become more somber. The end of the episode isn't comedic, but poignant. Consuming alcohol doesn't make the characters do anything funny, but makes things ''sad'' (it's the [[Lifetime Movie of the Week|"Lifetime original movie of beverages"]] as Troy puts it).
** ''Community'' is renowned for managing all sorts of single-episode genre shifts perfectly. It's been an action movie ("Modern Warfare"), a Rankin-Bass style Christmas Special ("Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas"), a spaghetti Western ("For a Few Paintballs More"), a single-camera documentary show ("Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking"), and even a zombie movie ("Epidemiology"). The reason it can pull all of this off is because while each episode is great example of the genre it's shifted to, it's also a great episode of ''Community'' at the same time.
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* Charlie Simpson went from being a member of the clean-cut British boy band Busted to the lead singer of the post-hardcore band Fightstar to a folk rock solo artist.
* Darius Rucker had huge success in the 1990s with guitar-pop band [[Hootie and the Blowfish]], briefly flirted with R&B in the early '00s, and became a country music artist in 2008.
* One of [[King Crimson]]'s defining traits, with their biggest shift occurring in the early 1980s when Robert Fripp abandoned the prog based sounds of the previous lineups in order to dabble with minimalistic New Wave and World Beat music.
* John Frusciante of Red Hot Chili Peppers fame had an interesting version of this where he released six albums of six different genres...all in six months.
* Marc van Linden went from epic trance to minimal tech-house, now he appears to be doing nu-skool Euro-house.
* Linkin Park. Not only did the band change genres, but changed their logo as well. The shift of genre has gotten to the point where fans describe nu metal Linkin Park as "old" whereas the alternative rock style from ''Minutes to Midnight'' and onwards is "new".
* [[David Bowie]] built an entire career on this trope, switching between psychedelic folk-rock, glam rock, Philly soul, and Krautrock within an entire decade alone. This resulted in a [[New Sound Album]] every time he stepped into a recording studio.
* Bill Callahan started out doing avant-garde lo-fi rock for his first few albums as Smog, switched to baroque pop for an album, then folk for a while, and has settled now on alt-country.
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* [[The Doobie Brothers]], after original frontman Tom Johnston left the band due to severe illness, and replaced by the more soulful Michael McDonald.
* [[Behemoth]] went from [[Black Metal]] to [[Death Metal|Blackened Death Metal]], and then [[Death Metal]].
* It may be hard to believe, given songs like "I Kissed a Girl" and revealing photo shoots, but [[Katy Perry]] started out as a contemporary Christian singer.
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* Chester Gould's strange twist of ''[[Dick Tracy]]'' from crime drama (albeit with futuristic technology) to SCI-FI, one of the most obvious genre shifts of all time. This is so (in)famous, it could almost be the trope namer.
* During the Great Depression, a good number of comic strips shifted from domestic comedy to comedic adventure.
* [[Blondie]] started out just before the Great Depression with the couple being fabulously rich. When the stock market collapsed, Dagwood lost his fortune overnight, shifting the strip from flapper comedy to everyday struggles.
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* In ''[[Medal of Honor]]: Airborne'', after 5 missions of largely realistic gameplay based on actual historic [[World War II]] campaigns, the final mission throws bulletproof, heavy-machinegun-wielding Nazi [[Super Soldier|Super Soldiers]] at you, and takes place in, as [[Zero Punctuation|Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw]] put it, "a giant concrete tower that can only be described as a '''Doom Fortress'''."
** Those "doom fortresses" are actually real. 8 were built, they were ridiculously sized, and they had more refuge in intimidation than use. I mean, come on, they're towers built to repel air attacks that are also made of concrete. Still true to this trope, however, the Allies never actually attempted an attack on one of them.
* ''[[Oddworld]]: Stranger's Wrath'' starts out as the Oddworld equivalent of a western. Mysterious [[Bounty Hunter]]? Check. Gun toting outlaws? Check. Hick Towns populated by chicken men? ...Um, Check. But then in the final third of the game, {{spoiler|after stumbling into an ambush set up by the [[Big Bad]], and getting hit with a [[Tomato Surprise]],}} the game shifts to a more traditional Oddworld setting as you help the native Grubbs overcome the [[Big Bad]]. This change completely overhauls the game. Stranger's costume changes, the concept of Moolah (and therefore the concept of enemy bounties) is removed (enemies are turned into ammo instead. Don't ask), the soundtrack changes from spaghetti western music to epic orchestrated pieces, the enemies change from gruff outlaws to military Mooks, new gameplay mechanics are added, and the scenery colors shift from browns and reds to blues and greys.
* The ''[[Chzo Mythos]]'' goes from fairly conventional (but good) horror, to [[Recycled in Space|SPACE horror]], to [[Cosmic Horror]].
* Similarily, ''[[Earthbound]]'' starts off as pure humour, then goes to sci-fi at the Cave of the Past, then shifts to [[Cosmic Horror]] at the end of said cave.
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* ''[[Okami]]'' gets a bit of a shift towards the end, from a feudal Japan mythical fantasy to a feudal Japan {{spoiler|Sci-Fi}} fantasy.
** To Elaborate: {{spoiler|Near the end, you see Kaguya, a woman born from a Bamboo shoot in the myth, have a ''rocket that looks like a bamboo shoot'', and in the last part of the game, the eponymous Ark of Yamato turns out to be a ''fucking spaceship'', also implying that these monsters you've been facing... They're aliens...}}
* The ''[[Ace Attorney]]'' series wavers back and forth on how fantastical its court drama is. In the first game spirit channeling is simply a way to talk to [[Spirit Advisor|Mia Fey]] after her murder. The magatama shows up in the second game, upping the fantasy factor, and by the third game the entire final case revolves around the angry spirit of {{spoiler|Dahlia Hawthorne}} and her attempt to murder {{spoiler|Maya Fey.}} However, ''Apollo Justice'' trades the spiritual for a scientific (if slightly implausible) explanation for the Perceive ability and in ''Investigations'' the closest we get to unrealism is the holodeck-esque [[Schizo-Tech|Little Thief]].
* ''[[Final Fantasy VI]]'' shifts from a linear world to an openended one - the game begins in the World of Light, a bright, happy world with a linear plot and virtually no subquests. The second part of the game, the [[Apocalypse How|World of Ruin]], is a dark, dreary place and is entirely open for exploration, the player free to recruit allies and do subquests in any order before heading to the final dungeon.
** The [[Final Fantasy]] series has toyed with adding in modern and even [[Sci Fi]] elements from time to time, starting with an entire race of moon people and a giant robot in [[Final Fantasy IV]] (or even earlier than that, with [[Bonus Boss|Warmech]] from the very first game.) and hitting full force by [[Final Fantasy VII]], which went from straight up fantasy with the occasional [[Sci Fi]] element to [[Urban Fantasy]].
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* ''[[Police Quest]]: SWAT'' started as a first-person [[Interactive Movie]], then changed to isometric overhead RTS, then to a ''[[Rainbow Six]]''-style [[Tactical Shooter]].
** Going back further, [[Police Quest]] 1-4 were all [[Sierra]] adventure games. The first game was a straightforward [[Police Procedural]]. The second game was mostly a police procedural with more of a ''[[Lethal Weapon]]'' flavor. The third game was a [[Darker and Edgier]] tale of revenge. And ''Police Quest: Open Season'' was an even darker [[Author Tract]] about trying to hunt a [[Depraved Homosexual|crossdressing serial killer]] despite the media's interference.
* ''Iji'' has a decidedly Survival/Horror twinge to it, especially in the very first level, but that is very quickly dispelled, and it very rapidly progresses into an epic Sci-Fi battle to secure the safety of the planet, with increasing levels of epic warfare depending on how you progress.
* ''[[Boiling Point: Road to Hell]]'' most of the game is set in a Troperiffic [[Wide Open Sandbox]] [[Banana Republic]]. You deal with the drug lords, the rebels, the army and the CIA. The final act: Stop the [[Big Bad]] in his volcano lair from using his giant mind control device.
* The ''[[Don Pachi|(Do)DonPachi]]'' features this not exactly in its gameplay<ref>the later games play differently from earlier games, but in ways [[Public Medium Ignorance|nobody cares about]]</ref>, but in its characters and plot. The series started off as two shooters with mainly mechanical graphics for the player and enemies, much like other shmups of their time; the only characters you see are the player character (in ''DoDonPachi'''s true ending), the Colonel, and [[True Final Boss|Hibachi]]. In ''DoDonPachi dai ou jou'', the "mecha-loli" element starts to creep in: the player character is accompanied by one of several different Element Dolls, who make prominent apperances on the covers of the PS2 and Xbox 360 ports. By ''DoDonPachi Daifukkatsu'', the mecha-loli trend is in full force; the Element Daughters (successors to the Dolls) appear as ''bosses'' and you'd be hard-pressed to find official ''Daifukkatsu'' art that is devoid of the Daughters, let alone features the player ships.
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* Numerous webcomics have experienced [[Cerebus Syndrome]], which is somewhat similar to, but not the same as, [[Genre Shift]].
** ''[[Megatokyo]]'' is a good example of this. It began as a simple, four panel webcomic about two friends trapped in Japan, the focus being more on the two men playing off each other verbally and [[Two Gamers on a Couch|talking about video games]]. As time went on, [[Continuity Drift|the comic drifted away from this]], and began to focus more on the relationships Piro and Largo were creating in Japan, and [[Deconstruction|picking apart aspects of popular Japanese culture]].
* ''[[Questionable Content]]'' started out about a post-college Indie rocker, his friends, and his weird little [[Robot Buddy]]. Then Faye got her tragic backstory, Pintsize got increasingly destructive and psychotic, Raven got kinda skanky, etc, until you can barely recognize the characters from the early strips.
* ''[[YU+ME: dream]]'' starts out as a romantic story between two girls at a Catholic school, dealing with the various issues that comes with, with some family drama -- an average young adult romance story. Then after a hefty [[Wham! Episode]] it turns into a slightly-psychological adventure-based story on an epic scale.
* Within [http://xkcd.com/734/ this xkcd strip].
* [[Bob and George]] was originally intended to be a superhero comedy webcomic about the titular brothers. It changed into a sprite comic after the author realized he couldn't draw.
* [[Kid Radd]] started out as a general parody of video games. Then Cerberus syndrome sets in.
* ''[[Homestuck]]'' started out as a simple [[Spiritual Successor]] to ''[[Problem Sleuth]]'', but in time became a riff on epic stories and creation mythos, which made the series much more popular. Later, When [[Ensemble Darkhorse|the trolls]] [[And Now for Someone Completely Different|were introduced]], the entire comic shifted to have [[Romantic Comedy]] elements and took a turn for the darker.
* Since-ended [[Keenspot]] comic ''Cool Cat Studio'' started out as a mundane office comedy without any hint of unusual goings-on. And then one of the characters got [[Abducted By Aliens]]. The sudden genre and tonal shift caused many readers to cry foul.
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** To list them all would take way too long, but just a handful of his best genre shifts include: Bella and Edward [[Fourth Wall Mail Slot|writing letters to Stephenie Meyer]] [http://markreadstwilight.buzznet.com/user/journal/4437901/ questioning their own character development;] [http://markreadstwilight.buzznet.com/user/journal/4442971/mark-reads-twilight-chapter-9/ Mark's own autopsy report] after the chapter's stupidity [[Driven to Suicide|drove him to "suicide";]] [http://markreadstwilight.buzznet.com/user/journal/4489601/ legendary announcer Vin Scully giving a play-by-play of the infamous "Vampire Baseball" scene]; [http://markreadstwilight.buzznet.com/user/journal/4523531/mark-reads-twilight-chapter-24/ Charlie and Jacob staging an intervention to stop Bella from submitting to "Cullenism";] and [http://markreadstwilight.buzznet.com/user/journal/4608661/mark-reads-new-moon-chapter/ Bella Tweeting away while she stalks Jacob Black.]
** He also likes to change his targets, for example, mocking the hate mail he gets from ''Twilight'' fans, liveblogging the ''Twilight'' movie with his readers, [http://markreadstwilight.buzznet.com/user/journal/4839521/mark-reads-story-behind-writing/ (attempting to) read the "Making of New Moon" page on Meyer's website], and [http://markreadstwilight.buzznet.com/user/journal/5259711/mark-reads-eclipse-chapter-10/ calling out a relationship counsellor who uses Edward Cullen to give boys advice on romance.]
** Although he far preferred [[Harry Potter]] and [[The Hunger Games]] which he also reviewed at [[Mark Reads Harry Potter]], he also mixed those ones up. He'd write the reviews as a script of the book, with characters commenting on plot developments, liveblog entries from various characters, and Hedwig-the-spy writing entries on her mission to guard the boy who lived.
* "[[Ruby Quest|Okay, so we're playing as an adorable bunny with amnesia.]] And we have to rescuse our little cat friend from his cell. Okay, seems to be a standard puzzle game, so far so good...hey, is there someone behind that door?"
* [[The Nostalgia Chick]] talks about how ''[[Dragonheart]]'' went from [[A Boy and His X]] to Buddy Comedy halfway through.
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* ''[[Re Boot]]'' started out as an episodic comedy with heavy [[Executive Meddling]] from ABC's standards and practices. This changed in the middle of season 2 when ABC dropped the show and the writers were given free rein on the show. The episodic nature was dropped in favor of longer story arcs and a much darker tone. The comedy is still there, just mixed in with the darker story.
* ''[[We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story]]'' starts out as a cheery musical film about cute talking dinosaurs, but about halfway through the film, it turns into an animated horror film about an evil scientist and his [[Circus of Fear]].
* ''[[Dreamworks Animation]]'': Originally, Dreamworks focused on sweeping epics, and more serious stories such as ''[[The Prince of Egypt]]''. These unfortunately fell under the umbrella of ''[[All Animation Is Disney]]''. Now, barring some of their [[Kung Fu Panda|recent]] [[How to Train Your Dragon|efforts]], it can be hard to remember when their films didn't include pop-culture references and celebrities.
* ''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender]]'' was an Asian-influenced [[High Fantasy]] that featured its heroes [[Wandering the Earth]] to stop an [[Evil Overlord]]. The [[Sequel Series]] ''[[The Legend of Korra]]'', by contrast, is an Asian-influenced [[Urban Fantasy]] series with the protagonists fighting an [[Anti-Magical Faction]] in a [[City of Adventure]]. Technology has also advanced from [[Steampunk]] to a more [[Roaring Twenties]] aesthetic.
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