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Out-of-Genre Experience: Difference between revisions
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[[File:firefly-outgenrexp 3977.png|link=Firefly|frame|Would you believe this is a [[Space Western]]?]]
Writing drama is hard. Sticking to a popular formula is easy. That's why sometimes you can create a
This trope can be glaringly obvious or just a subtle genre that doesn't fit into the rest of the series. [[Medical Drama]] is used as an example because it is difficult to hide.
A good test to see whether something fits this trope: If you turned on the television or opened the book at a particular point, would you be able to
This trope is often paired with [[Mood Whiplash]]. For a permanent genre change, see [[Genre Shift]], [[Halfway Plot Switch]] is when the plot starts out as something unrelated leading up to the switch. See [[Genre Roulette]] for a more extreme version, and [[Courtroom Episode]], [[Noir Episode]], and [[Superhero Episode]] for common subtropes. For the same principle applied to video game genres, see [[Unexpected Gameplay Change]].
{{examples}}
== Medical Drama==
=== Film ===
* In ''[[Catch Me If You Can]]'', con man Frank Abagnale Jr works illegally as a doctor, among other things. This subplot looks almost as if it could be reused as a pilot for a television series. Which is entirely appropriate, since Frank is shown studying hospital dramas for lingo and basic protocol ("Do you concur?")
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=== Literature ===
* ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'': There is a chapter in ''Return of the King'' called "The Houses of Healing". Aragorn manages to heal several patients including Faramir and Eowyn because "the hands of a king are the hands of a healer." And because he happens to know herbal medicine unknown in Gondor.
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==Other Genres==
=== Anime & Manga ===
* The ''[[Excel Saga (anime)|Excel Saga]]'' anime is, for the most part, the epitome of a [[Gag Series]]. So naturally one of the last episodes was played completely straight.
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* In ''[[Hajime no Ippo]]'', a ([[Long Runner|long]]) series about the harsh world of boxing, the main characters take part in an light-hearted baseball match for a few chapters. [[Mood Whiplash|Just after the bloodiest, dirtiest and least funny fight of the series]].
* It's arguable whether ''[[Tenchi Muyo!]]'' is a [[Harem Comedy]] that randomly switches to a [[Space Opera]] or vice versa.
** [[Take a Third Option]]. It's a [[Harem Comedy]] [[in Space]]!
* Given what it's [[Bound and Gagged|normally]] [[Ecchi|like]], seeing ''[[Nana to Kaoru]]'' briefly turn into a high school sports manga is unexpected. The heroine and her rival ''are'' on their separate school's track teams, though.
* ''[[Weathering with You]]'' briefly dips its feet into {{spoiler|[[Cosmic Horror Story]] when it shows the full scale of the weather gods that have been talked about across most of the film. Forget the overgrown winged lizards you might think of when you hear the word "dragon"; these things stretch across the the sky, being so huge that buildings are small beneath them and humans too tiny to be seen. [[Kaiju]] fight around and through buildings; one of these, while not quite big enough to be a full-scale [[Cosmic Entity]], could flatten an entire skyline just by landing. Hodaka is briefly sucked into and through one, and it shows no humanly-recognisable sign of noticing, if it even noticed at all, much less communicating with him. What agendas, drives or motivations they might have are never made known. Even when Tokyo is flooded after Hina is brought back to Earth, it's not possible to tell whether this is a malicious smiting of lesser beings for defiance or merely an autonomic, impersonal natural law kicking in. One can clearly understand why these things were worshipped and offered [[Human Sacrifice]]s.}}
=== Comic Books ===
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** Shlubb and Klump had their own short story which was a wacky little story featuring [[Those Two Bad Guys]] and an ending gag straight out of a [[Looney Tunes]] cartoon.
** The story ''Hell and Back'' features genetic tampering, espionage, a guild of assassins with high tech weapons, and a [http://images.darkhorse.com/covers/300/s/schab9.jpg villainess] who could easily be mistaken as a straight up supervillain due to her costume and gadgets. It seemed like a [[Tom Clancy]] novel, mixed with [[Metal Gear]].
** The Yellow Bastard was operated on by genetic scientists and even [[
** The Farm is often described as affecting the characters mentally. Every time anyone goes there, they always feel something in the pit of their stomachs and think the exact same thing, "People have died here." It's also believed to be haunted, giving it a weird horror vibe even though we don't see anything.
** And ''Rats'' is a creepy psychological horror story about a Nazi concentration camp guard getting his overdue comeuppance.
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=== Literature ===
* ''[[To Kill a Mockingbird]]'': The genre of the novel is probably best described as "coming of age". In the middle of it is a courtroom drama. There are some other crime elements scattered throughout, but it would be misleading to describe it as a crime or law novel.
** [[The Film of the Book|The film]] has a higher focus on the courtroom scene and won the award "Best Courtroom Drama" from the American Film Institute.
*** And from the American Bar Association...
* ''[[Moby Dick]]'' includes chapters devoted to explaining various aspects of whaling life, as well as a cetology (study of whales) lesson that could fit into a biology textbook or encyclopedia. [[
* Similarly, ''[[Les Misérables]]'' has extensive sections detailing the Paris sewers, the Battle of Waterloo, thieves' argot, cloistered orders of nuns...
* Until the final chapters, ''[[Harry Potter and
** Similarly, ''[[Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (novel)|Chamber of Secrets]]'' is kind of a horror story and ''[[Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (novel)|Order of the Phoenix]]'' is kind of a political drama/satire. Also, anything with [[Hilariously Abusive Childhood|the Dursleys]] leans on something of a [[Stepford Suburbia]] [[Black Comedy]].
* The ''[[Thursday Next]]'' books are... [[Genre Busting|sort of]] an urban fantasy mystery series about literature and the [[Meta Fiction]] thereof. Once per book, there's a chapter wherein Thursday teams up with Spike [[Meaningful Name|Stoker]] to fight vampires, ghosts, demons or what have you, usually just so she can pay the rent. The narration shifts to a style that would not be out of place in ''[[Dracula]]'' or the more serious modern horror novel. And then things are back to normal next chapter.
** There's also a scene where Thursday has to cross the void between two books in the Bookworld, and the book depicts the wordless void by briefly turning into a comic.
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=== Live Action TV ===
* ''[[Lost]]'': Lost's use of flashbacks
** Ana Lucia's flashbacks become a cop/crime drama.
** Kate's flashbacks feature a fugitive drama.
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* ''[[Scrubs]]'' also did a musical episode. Usually they're a medical dramedy.
* ''[[Hercules: The Legendary Journeys|Hercules]]'' and ''[[Xena]]'' did this rather frequently, with the latter being by far the worse offender. This tendency would eventually be lampshaded later in the latter series.
* "The Rescue Mission", a mid-season episode of ''[[Power Rangers Lost Galaxy]]'', features Terra Venture answering a distress signal left by an alien spaceship - as a result, there are no Zords, [[Super Sentai|Sentai]] footage or regular villains, and most of the fight scenes are unmorphed, while the unnamed alien monster is more Lovecraftian than the lighthearted foes the franchise is familiar with. Possibly this was done as a [[Mythology Gag]] reference to director Steve Wang's previous work in the ''[[Guyver]]'' movies.
* The flashbacks in ''[[The Sarah Connor Chronicles]]'' episode "The last voyage of the Jimmy Carter" look more like scenes from a [[Darker and Edgier]] version of ''[[SeaQuest DSV|Sea Quest DSV]]''.
* ''[[Community]]'' does this for about quarter of their episodes. They've covered alot of ground from mafia movies to [[The Western]] to [[Zombie Apocalypse]].
=== Music ===
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=== [[Web Comics]] ===
* ''[[Sinfest]]'' filler comics often are in different genres, such as [
=== Western Animation ===
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* ''[[Dan Vs.]]'', a show focused on wacky revenge schemes has "The Dentist" where Dan and Chris fight a dentist supervillain.
* ''[[Dexter's Laboratory]]'', a sci-fi gag comedy, has the episode "Cracked". It's very dialogue-heavy, Dexter's titular lab isn't even ''mentioned'', and feels more like a school slice-of-life story.
* ''[[Archer]]'' becomes a [[Journey to The Centre of The Mind]] and an Out-of-Genre Experience for the titular character after the season 7 finale:
** Season 8 [[Genre Shift|takes place]] in an extended [[Dream Sequence|dream sequence]] and full blown [[Adventures in Coma Land|dream state]], which is entirely inspired by [[Noir Episode|Film Noir]]. The genre shifts from [[parody|spy]] to [[homage|detective]].
** Season 9 sees the [[Adventures in Coma Land|dream state]] [[Genre Shift|continue]] but the location and era change to the South Pacific, pre World War II. The genre shifts again, only this time from [[homage|detective]] to [[parody|action-adventure]].
{{reflist}}
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