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{{trope}}
[[File:firefly-
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]],
{{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?")
* Luis Buñuel and [[Salvador Dali
=== Literature ===
* ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'': There is a chapter in ''Return of the King'' called
=== Live Action TV ===
* ''[[Lost]]'' is (at least in the beginning) about people stranded on an island. Jack is a doctor. We expect Jack to tend to people on the island. What we don't expect is Jack's flashbacks to become a full-blown medical drama. Never once has ''Lost'' been described as a "medical drama".
* Lampshaded in ''[[Diagnosis
* In the ''[[JAG]]'' episode ''Each of Us Angels'' is about an old man telling stories about his experience on a hospital ship during the [[World War II|storming of Iwo Jima]].
* ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]'' season two featured a virus that was capable of disabling powers, and then killing the victim. The series had a tendency to shift into medical drama at times when it followed Mohinder, who was trying to find a cure.
* [[Chuck]]'s sister and brother in law are both doctors, but it dips into "Medical Drama" (or medical ''comedy'', given that this is Chuck) less often then you would think (it still happens from time to time, though).
* The ''[[Firefly]]'' episode "Ariel," pictured above, has Mal and crew robbing a hospital in the Core while Simon and Jayne smuggle River into the hospital and to an imaging suite so that Simon can find out what the Alliance did to her. Simon, the resident doctor on board Serenity and once one of the best trauma surgeons in the Core before the events which led to him and River becoming wanted fugitives, poses as a doctor and gets some awesome moments, including one where he risks blowing his cover to save a patient's life, and then ''thoroughly'' chews out the guy who was treating him.
* The episode of ''[[Jericho]]'' that dealt with {{spoiler|April's death}}.
* The ''[[
=== Newspaper Comics ===
* ''[[Peanuts]]'' had a few arcs in which characters ended up in hospital, including Charlie Brown and Lila (Snoopy's original owner), which were dealt with seriously in comparison to the rest of the series.
==Other Genres==
=== Anime & Manga ===▼
* The ''[[Excel Saga (
▲== Anime & Manga ==
* Halfway through ''[[Mayoi Neko Overrun]]'', the viewer gets an entire episode about [[Mecha]] and later about a simple game that was made so [[Serious Business|dramatic]] it goes on par with [[Saki (
▲* 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.
▲* Halfway through ''[[Mayoi Neko Overrun]]'', the viewer gets an entire episode about [[Mecha]] and later about a simple game that was made so [[Serious Business|dramatic]] it goes on par with [[Saki (Manga)|a certain mahjong anime]].
* The [[Slice of Life]] alternate reality scene in episode 26 of ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]''.
* ''[[Berserk]]'', for one arc, becomes a grim and gritty medieval story devoid of any demons, aside from the Zodd fight. After the arc, shit starts hitting the fan and we return to the [[Crapsack World]] that is the world of Berserk.
* 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 ===▼
▲== Comic Books ==
* [[Grant Morrison]]'s run on ''New [[X-Men (Comic Book)|X-Men]]'' was a succession of these instead of the routine superhero stuff: high school drama, sci-fi, murder mystery...
** Interestingly, Morrison fled from this genre bending as far as he could after a certain point in his run, making the good guys and bad guys as unambiguously traditionally super-hero/super-villain in their morals and adventures, despite still keeping the more exotic outward trappings introduced earlier.
* ''[[Sin City]]'' is mostly a crime-noir comic series set in a somewhat realistic world (for a
** 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]]
** 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
** And ''Rats'' is a creepy psychological horror story about a Nazi
* In the 1980s, a story arc in ''[[Batman]]'' dealt with Batman fighting a villain called Doctor Fang who was an ex-boxer who was trying to take over boxing in Gotham City. One issue (''Batman'' #372 for those of you who are curious) turned into a full on boxing detail concerning a minor prizefighter getting a shot at the title and hardly had the Dark Knight in the issue at all.
=== Film ===
* ''[[Forrest Gump]]'': Mostly a general drama, but part of the plot is a war story.
* In ''[[Master and Commander]]'', the crew rests for a few days on the Galapagos Islands. Dr. Maturin explores the island with the help of an eager midshipman and the film turns into a nature documentary for a little while.
* ''[[A Nightmare
* Some scenes from ''[[The Good, the Bad
* While all the ''[[Resident Evil]]'' films were arguably a [[Genre Roulette]], the third one was entirely different from the other
=== 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.
* In ''Mists of Everness'', the second book of ''[[
* ''[[Goosebumps]]'' is normally a kid's horror series, but "How I Learned to fly" is more of a [[Romantic Comedy]] type of thing,
=== 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.
** Nikki and Paulo became a one-time relationship comedy. Or rather, tragicomedy.
** Ben and Sayid had a ''[[James Bond]]''/''[[
** Sayid had flashbacks about his time as a torturer in the Iraqi army and his later attempts to lead a normal life after the war
** Another Sayid flashback had him infiltrate a terrorist group that was planning a bombing in Australia
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** And some consider the Sun/Jin flashbacks to be a full-fledged [[Soap Opera]].
** The flash-sideways frequently switch genre. Flash-sideways Locke appears to be in some sort of dramedy about coping with his disability, Ben's are a drama set in a high school (yes, a ''canon'' [[High School AU]]), Sawyer and Miles are in a buddy cop movie...
* ''[[House (TV series)|House]]'', which is actually a medical drama, has an arc in which Dr. House hires a private investigator to spy on Wilson. Instant detective drama!
** Two seasons before that, it also dipped into courtroom drama for part of an episode for the conclusion of the story arc featuring Detective Michael Tritter.
** And then the two-hour Season Six opener was a psychology/rehab drama? Either way, definite genre change.
** The Season Six episode "Lockdown" was a character-driven mystery drama.
** Ever since the {{spoiler|mass-firing/departure}} of House's fellows at the end of season 3, the show has done a fairly consistent job of mixing in genre-bender episodes that break with the standard format it had established. Since the end of season 5, in particular, this has become more and more common. These writers really know what they are doing in terms of keeping the show fresh.
* ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]'' is a sci-fi drama, but has a tendency to shift to different genres depending on who is being focused on. It can be a political drama when following Nathan Petrelli (in season one and late season three), it can be a high school/college drama when it follows Claire, or a cop show when following Matt.
* ''[[
* Similarly, ''[[Supernatural]]'' has the episodes "The Benders" and "Family Remains".
** And "Ghostfacers" and "Monster Movie"
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* For one episode of ''[[The Prisoner]],'' "Living in Harmony," the series' plot is transplanted onto a Western setting.
* ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' had a hilarious musical episode. There's also the episode "The Body" which is a "pure" drama with no supernatural elements until the last few minutes. Really, Buffy's eclectic combination of "Horror-Comedy-Romance-Action-Drama" meant that it felt a little unusual for any individual episode to lean hard on any one genre.
** The episode "Helpless" left Buffy without her super Slayer strength for an episode, preventing her from just beating down the villain as usual. This made the episode have much more of a "horror" feel than any other episode in the series.
* ''[[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 ''[[
* ''[[
=== Music ===▼
* [[Tech
▲== Music ==
▲* [[Tech N 9 ne (Music)|Tech N 9 ne]]'s "Devil Boy" jumps from [[Hip Hop]] to [[Thrash Metal]] for a one-line [[Crowning Moment of Funny]]:
''[[Metal Scream|I LOVE]] [[Satan|LUCIFER]] [[Metal Scream|I WILL KILL ALL OF YOU]] }}▼
▲{{quote| Y'all act like I'm sayin' <br />
▲[[Metal Scream|I LOVE]] [[Satan|LUCIFER]] [[Metal Scream|I WILL KILL ALL OF YOU]] }}
* The first half of Laserdance's ''The Guardian of Forever'' was their usual synthdance, but the second half completely abandoned the style and switched to progressive trance. It was thought that this was going to be a permanent [[Genre Shift]], but they returned to form for their final album, ''Laserdance Strikes Back''.
* Anoraak normally does minimalistic synthpop, but "Long Distance Hearts" has a more trancy sound.
* [[
* [[Queen]]'s
=== Newspaper Comics ===
* ''[[Candorville]]'', a strip with just enough [[Magical Realism]] to avoid fitting into [[Slice of Life]], made a temporary switch to dark [[Urban Fantasy]] in February
* ''[[Mother Goose and Grimm]]'' can't make up its mind whether it's going to have continuity with its title characters, or be an absurd gag-per-day strip without recurring cast members á la ''[[The Far Side]]''.
* Jim Davis intentionally did this for a few ''[[Garfield]]'' strips in which Garfield is in the midst of an abandonment nightmare. Suddenly the strip is entirely creepy and not at all funny.
==
* ''[[Metal Gear Solid]] 3'' has an interesting experience with this trope. {{spoiler|While in prison, Naked Snake can fall asleep [[No Fourth Wall|if you save and quit]]. When you load it back, a hack-and-slash minigame starts. After a few minutes of slicing up [[Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot|giant mutant prison guard monsters]], Snake wakes up from his nightmare, evoking a hilarious radio conversation from Para-Medic when called.}}
* ''[[Jagged Alliance]] 2'' is a squad-based strategy/RPG, set in a [[Banana Republic]], where you assist an uprising against an evil queen and... WHERE THE HELL DID THE HUGE MAN-EATING BUGS COME FROM!?
* A certain village in ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess]]'' puts you right into a Spaghetti Western (or a light-gun FPS, depending how you play it).
* A DLC pack for ''[[Red Dead Redemption]]'', "Undead Nightmare" turns the game into a [[Zombie Apocalypse]] story in a new campaign mode. Oh, and it add mythical creatures, too.
* The ''[[
* ''[[Mass Effect 2]]'' is pretty much a straight Bioware RPG [[Space Opera]]. Commander Shepard wanders around the galaxy performing quests and beating up bad guys. Then there are two quests worth of downloadable content which turn the game temporarily into a heist movie and a detective movie respectively, with the appropriate mood, camera work and tropes.
* ''[[Kingdom
* In ''[[Fable|Fable III]]'', once the King/Queen first sets foot on the streets of Aurora, there is a rather abrupt (and effective) switch from dark humor/fantasy to full-blown horror and it just gets [[It Got Worse|worse from there.]]
* Each of the ''[[Fallout: New Vegas]]'' add-ons are this. ''Dead Money'' is a slice of [[Survival Horror]] in a Art Deco resort (not unlike [[
* In the NES ice hockey game ''Blades of Steel'', the first intermission entertainment is a short, simplified game of the space-shooter ''[[Gradius]]'' on the arena scoreboard. Then the puck drops for the second period.
== [[Web Comics]] ==▼
* [[Sinfest]] filler comics often are in different genres, such as [http://www.sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=1974 Baby Sinfest].▼
▲=== [[Web Comics]] ===
▲* ''[[Sinfest]]'' filler comics often are in different genres, such as [
==
* The ''[[Gargoyles]]'' episode "Sentinel" marked a brief foray into [[Space Opera]], when Goliath and Angela go to Easter Island and run into an alien warrior who mistakenly believes that the Gargoyles are aliens as well. Though we don't see its direct consequences, the episode makes it clear that Earth is an outpost in a massive intergalactic war.
** [[Word of God]] says that the aliens the sentinel are guarding against invade Earth two centuries from now with the descendants of the main characters (and some the cast that are still alive) forming a resistance against them. Honestly, the show was already such a [[Fantasy Kitchen Sink]] it wasn't that big of a stretch to have aliens, too.
* ''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender]]'' has a couple of episodes like this. "Zuko Alone" is a random Western, complete with a [[Showdown At High Noon]]. "The Beach" is a random [[Teen Drama]], complete with [[Fan Service]] and a [[Wild Teen Party]]. "The Puppetmaster" is a horror, conveniently aired near Halloween.
** They even lampshaded their pre-finale summation episode; when the Gaang takes a break from training to go see a play based on their previous adventures, Sokka comments that this exactly the kind of random time-wasting activity he misses since the show shifted to more serious and plot-driven/driving episodes.
* In ''[[
* The ''[[Recess]]'' episode "Schoolworld" adds Sci-fi to the comedy-drama.
* ''[[Dan Vs.]]'', a show focused on wacky revenge schemes has "The Dentist" where Dan and Chris fight a dentist supervillain.
* ''[[
* ''[[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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[[Category:Something Completely Different]]
[[Category:Genres]]
[[Category:Out
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