Cerebus Syndrome/Video Games

• The Legend of Zelda, Zelda II the Adventure of Link, and The Legend of Zelda a Link To T He Past have happy endings, But afterwards the games' endings range from bittersweet to downright depressing.
• Same thing goes for fellow Nintendo Action Adventure series Metroid.
• Ace Combat started off as a very early entry into the realm of 3D arcade style flying shoot-em-ups for the original Play Station; though it was still at least somewhat more complicated than other competing titles and most of the gameplay elements that would define the series were already there, it didn't have much in the way of plot and was more or less a fairly straightforward game. By the time of Ace Combat 3, however, the flying and fighting aspects were framed by a deep and very well-developed story, which by the next title were often at best tangential in their impact on the player's actual missions and prone to focusing on the enemy just as much or more as on the player's side, as well as an increasing frequency in anti-war messages (odd in a game entirely about war, needless to say). The gameplay became more complex as well, introducing additional subtle realism tweaks such as more realistic aircraft momentum, and by the most recent title has had a corresponding effect on gameplay. The intro of the latest game, which probably tries a bit too hard when it comes to conveying the impact of war, embodies this trope and was duly featured on Unskippable.
• Live a Live (pronounced Life Alive) as a result of the theme. When it happens depends entirely on your mileage and the order you play the chapters. Some are Lighter and Softer then others, at least two are Nightmare Fuel, and if it's your first time you play in the chronological order without spoilers.
• Earthbound is a silly, shiny, nice game with colors all around. Its sequel Mother 3, though...well, what do you think of jokes such as "I have good news and bad news. Good news, I found you a new weapon. Bad news, I found it stabbed through your wife's heart."?
  • While Mother 3 is certainly more of a Tear Jerker than Earthbound, they both have Cerebus Syndrome within their games. Earthbound starts with you dealing with cops who take pride in their ability to block roads and ends with you fighting a being of pure evil that is considered Nightmare Fuel by many players. Mother 3 starts with you in a peaceful, utopian village and ends with the main villain essentially owning the entire world.
• Jak and Daxter is a silly, shiny, nice game with colors all around. Its two sequels are very clearly influenced by Grand Theft Auto in both gameplay and themes, but still remain good games, and it's arguable that the more serious shift allowed for better, more grown up jokes.
  • It's worth noting that in gaming communities this trope is more often called "Jak 2 syndrome".
• The sequel to Beyond Good and Evil looks to be far less cartoony and both teasers available indicate the game will take place in a city in the middle of the desert. Sounds familiar.
• Many RPGs do this willingly. For instance:
  • In Final Fantasy IX, you start with a bunch of thieves/actors kidnapping a rebellious princess and a kid who go to watch a theater play. The first 7 or 8 hours of the game (especially in the brilliantly done French translation) are light hearted and fun. Then, the thieves'/actors' hometown is invaded, the rebellious princess see the death of her mother and watch her kingdom getting nuked, the whole world comes close from destruction, and the little cute kid of the intro gets to deal with his own mortality.
  • The original Final Fantasy starts with the king saying "Oh Warriors of Prophecy please save my daughter who is in the hands of my ex-most trustworthy knight". He's pretty weak, too. Then, by the end of the game, it turns out that the Big Bad is that same knight, whose soul went 2000 years into the past, gained incredible power by the name of Chaos, and created the four elemental demons who are now plaguing the world, whom were the ones to send his soul into the past when you first killed him to save the princess. And your defeat of him breaks the cycle, meaning that nothing of the game ever happened.
  • Suikoden Tierkreis starts with the main character living a mostly carefree life in his little village, cue a militaristic cult appearing. The main character decides then to stand against it, while remaining mostly optimistic; cue the multiverse collapsing.
  • Dragon Quest VII starts also with the main character living a carefree life in a fishermen village, and the "DQ humor" still drives most of the storyline. Then the first chapters of the game proper start, but, while more dark, they remain mostly into the "dungeon of the week" routine and the story keeps many humorous moments. Then, little by little, each small chapter gets more and more tragic until the conclusion.
  • Dragon Quest V begins with the main character as a child, journeying with his dad, occasionally going off on his own or with a friend on adventures straight out of Tom Sawyer, The Chronicles of Narnia, or George Mac Donald's fairy tales. Then, while trying to rescue a bratty prince, he watches his father get killed, and is sold into slavery, setting up the main plot of the game.
  • Tales of Phantasia starts with two main characters hunting, then it turns into a vendetta story, then into a world war, then into a conflict to save the human race, than the heroes discover that Dhaos was the good guy all along. The comedic elements of the game's beginning are of course diminishing through the story.
    • This is the entire series. Nearly every game can be summed up as "naive swordsman goes out on minor errand and stumbles on a plot to end the world". Ruca of Tales of Innocence is currently the record holder, wandering into the plot of the game while hanging around town to play with his "friends".
    • Performed rather well in Tales of Graces with the playable prologue. We're introduced to the young kids having fun with their new friend, meeting a new important friend...and then quickly watching as their new friend sacrifices herself before their very eyes with nothing they could do and (while they didn't know it yet), their other new friend was possessed by Lambda. The result? Four to five out of the seven playable characters have a rather Dark and Troubled Past.
  • Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, while not really "comedic", is fairly light at the beginning, with a teenage mercenary learning the ropes of his job against small bandit bands and under the careful watch of older fighters. By the end of its sequel, the plot looks like an adaptation of Berserk with slightly more colors.
  • Grandia start with two kids doing their usual antics in their hometown and dreaming of adventures that are, quite obviously, way above their level. By the end of the game, one of the kids, Justin, as turned into a badass by being punched in the face, repeatedly
  • Arc the Lad starts with a mostly light hearted storyline, with three of the seven Player Characters being comic reliefs. Then Arc 2 came along, and it became Darker, and Darker, and darker, and darker... At the end, Gogen was still cracking jokes and Poco was still a klutz, but it is hard to notice the comedy when you failed to stop the apocalypse, lost your Main couple, while the credits are running
  • Believe it or not, Chrono Trigger was, at some point, about going to the fair and having fun. You even meet a cute girl. Her pendant causes time travel, and wacky times are had by all. Even after you get tried and thrown in a cell for a few days, things are still lighthearted. Then you leap in the nearly dead future and see a recording of how the world ended...
    • The sequel, Chrono Cross, starts out rather okay, but after mid game, the hero gets his body switched with the bad guy, and the plot goes complicated and dark. Worse, the story's tieing up with Chrono Trigger by destroying every bit of happy parts of the prequel. Crono, Marle, and Lucca are likely to be killed shortly after "Trigger" ended, Schela is turned from a heroic sacrifical woman to a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds.
  • Zig-Zagged in Kingdom Hearts. While the first games released chronologically were pretty light-hearted, Days and Birth By Sleep are actually a lot darker in general, what with finding new characters who were Doomed by Canon and finding it all set in a Crap Saccharine World and a couple Complete Monster villains. The games even started off pretty light-hearted, too.
    • And in the first game? It begins with Sora playing on the beach...then he watches as his world is consumed by shadows and destroyed in front of his eyes, with his friends either being lost or turned into monsters. But don't worry - he's with Donald and Goofy now, so he quickly gets over it...and then comes Hollow Bastion. It Gets Worse, but the game still ends on a rather light-hearted note. Kingdom Hearts II meanwhile starts off with a blonde haired kid you never knew before enjoying the last seven days of his summer vacation and a couple....weird things go on. And then he finds out that it was all a lie, as he's forcefully merged with Sora. The game then becomes quite light-hearted just like the original...and then it starts to get darker but like the first, still ends on a happy note.
• Advance Wars had this; the first game was sort of up beat, with you fighting it out with the clear-cut bad guys. Second game, still upbeat, but the villain is somewhat more... unnerving. Third game, the villains are sucking the life out of the planet, there's few signs you can do anything to change this, and you choose at the end whether the Big Bad lives or dies. The latest one is set in a post apocalyptic wasteland where the NPCs in the campaign tell you to leave the civilians behind and the first fight you have is with piratical raiders.
  • And the big bad? Strum wanted to take over the world. Von Bolt wanted to live forever. Caulder, on the other hand, conducts experiments on what's left of humanity.
• The flash game Viricide goes, over the course of the paragraphs that pop up between the 17 waves, from jokes about an AI's malfunctioning doble entandra system, to said AI explaining that her programmer was taking depression meds while working on her, and one day told her he was going to solve all his problems by taking all the pills in the bottle at once instead of taking them two at a time. She never saw him again, but hopes what he did made him feel better.
  • She also goes from referring to her programer as "my programmer" to calling him "my father" and "Dad" and she ask you to disable her "emotional core" which gives her a personality
• The main Mario usually makes no attempt to do this, but the Paper Mario and Mario and Luigi series do.
  • Paper Mario is the only Mario RPG to play the typical Bowser kidnapping the princess plot straight; the second was already darker, starring an Eldritch Abomination as a Big Bad; and then Super Paper Mario came in, featuring an Omnicidal Maniac, the main characters dying and going to Hell (Less Disturbing in Context), and The End of the World as We Know It actually happening. It underwent a MASSIVE case of Buu Syndrome shortly afterwards, becoming less serious than even the original.
    • They make a point in-game Mario and the others didn't die. Yes, that's right, Mario and his partners entered Hell alive and came back to tell the tale. (They probably awoke their 8th sense). Awesome.
  • Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga was a fairly lighthearted game. Partners In Time had aliens attacking the past for a plot, with depressing moments (Toad Town, anyone?). Bowser's Inside Story apparently shifts the pendulum back to a lighthearted tone. This was kept around for Dream Team, and shifted to even cheerier territory with Paper Jam.
  • The non-RPG games have an undead Bowser and Bowser's risky plot to expand his empire into outer space. Not to mention a horrifying realistic dragon who levelled an entire kingdom.
• Call of Duty: World at War's Nazi Zombies mode appears to be suffering from the syndrome.
  • The first map, Nacht der Untoten, was really just four Featureless Protagonists holed up in a building under siege by unlimited hordes of zombies.
  • The second map, Verruckt, was more of the same, with Perk-a-cola machines and electro-shock defenses. And the EVIL teddy bear.
  • But the third map, Shi no Numa, not only features four well-defined characters, but has lots and lots of easter eggs hinting to the origins of the zombies, and most of all, This.
  • Der Riese, the next map continues this somewhat. To some extent, less dark looking than Verrukt, but it's where the zombies and hellhounds were created, apparently after experimentation on live patients and dogs, according to these radio conversations and easter eggs. It's also got things like teleporters, rounds with both dogs and zombies, and possibly the origins of both of them.
    • On the other hand, the characters are much more amusing hilarious.
• Tales of Monkey Island, which started out light in tone and around Episode 4 suddenly got very dark indeed...
• Conkers Bad Fur Day starts off, and plays as, a ridiculously over the top and bizarre adventure bordering on satire. However, starting from the Spooky level, the plot quickly becomes darker and darker, ultimately culminating in one of the bleakest endings in video game history.
  • It gets better. The first game in the series was an E-rated Game Boy Color game.
• Arguable in Pokémon. While world-influencing and universe-influencing events were beyond the scope of the early games, Team Rocket tortured people, killed a Pokémon, held people hostage, took over companies and buildings (terrorism), attacked (and recruited) ten-year-olds, and promoted gambling. They were on a much smaller scale but it is arguable how much heavier the plot really got, if at all. Sequel Escalation is definite either way.
  • • Team Galactic does all of that stuff too, but they also try to suicide bomb Celestic Town.
  • It goes from apparently incompetent Yakuza with a badass leader, to Darker and Edgier Yakuza without said leader, to two Well-Intentioned Extremist cults who almost kill everyone in their region and change the world for the worst, to an even more extreme cult with a Manipulative Bastard leader that wants to destroy the world. Pokémon Black and White scaled back with a Well-Intentioned Extremist Animal Wrongs Group but they still aim higher than the Yakuza (and the main villain of that game is nastier than any before him, or even after him). NPCs and the storyline in the games tend to get worse too, such as Maylene's dad having an addiction to gambling that has driven him to not leave the facility and the periodic Parental Abandonment.
    • The next two generations go back to having larger-scope villains, with them both being fairly tragic, although in US/UM, guess who returns...
  • Some of the later spin-offs are even nastier. Pokémon Colosseum takes place in a Crapsack World where the enemy is an organization that Mind Rapes Pokémon into heartless killing-machines for a pastime, Pokémon Ranger has the third Big Bad plotting to Kill All Humans just because his plan to Take Over the World failed, and there's the second Pokémon Mystery Dungeon which is home to a horrific and nightmarish alternate future that gives Terminator's future a run for its money, one of the most gut-wrenching endings in gaming (things got better during The Stinger thankfully), and the heroes considering killing themselves to save the world.
  • The anime had a different form of this than most. While it usually doesn't get really dark outside of the movies, the series goes in the opposite direction of its Denser and Wackier first season. Then by the Diamond and Pearl seasons, Team Galactic and Pokemon Hunter J made some episodes a lot darker. And now they're in Unova, where the Terrible Trio suddenly Took a Level In Badass, and our heroes will presumably fight Ghetsis}} at some point...
• Brutally done in Eversion. In fact, it's the entire point.
• Not just with the comics, the Sonic the Hedgehog games are particularly infamous for this, starting with Sonic Adventure, but it really took hold in Shadow the Hedgehog. This also corresponded with a decline in quality (reaching its low with the notorious Sonic the Hedgehog from 2006) that essentially caused the Fan Dumb to tear itself apart. Only when Reverse Cerebus Syndrome kicked in did the blue speedster begin to win back the approval of the critics and his jaded fan base by not only lightening the tone, but discarding almost all of the Loads and Loads of Characters. But this RCS eventually went too far, causing the CS to return in Forces.
• Telltale's Sam and Max games have always been darkly humorous adventures without a bit of seriousness. Then The Devil's Playhouse began. The comedy remained, but a lot more emphasis was placed on the narrative. The series' Crapsack World stopped being played totally for jokes, episode continuity became much tighter, and the tone became darker and darker, leading all the way to the finale and Max's death.
• The first Portal game touches on this. In the beginning G La DOS's jokes seem unintentionally funny, but as the game progresses the player finds out it/she has a serious (and homicidal) personality disorder. The game rapidly descends from an upbeat puzzler into life-threatening drama. However, it still manages to be quite funny.
• Parodied and subverted in Recettear. At the end of Obsidian Tower, Griff reveals his plot to restore power to the demon race, which would wreak havoc all over the place...then Recette mocks his plan for being really cliche.
• The Broodwar addon did this to Starcraft, although the Starcraft universe wasn't a very cheerful one to begin with.
  • Heck, the first one had a bittersweet ending, with the Overmind being destroyed and Tassadar dying. Broodwar had the UED, Dominion, Protoss and Raiders combining for an epic battle against Kerrigan that we knew they would win. Then Kerrigan slaughters them all.
• Happened to a certain extent in the Fallout universe. Fallout 2 was full of wacky gags and fourth-wall-breaking humor (an item that only be gained by having one of your stats permanently reduced includes "If you're reading this, you're probably going to reload," as part of its description). In comparison, Fallout 3 is a very serious game that focuses on easing the brutality of a Crapsack World.
  • Fallout: New Vegas lightens things up a little, mostly in the form of the Wild Wasteland Trait.
  • In the series' defense, the original Fallout was rather serious in tone, and Bethesda stated that they planned to emulate that style over the wackier one that emerged in the sequel.
• Hatoful Boyfriend is an Affectionate Parody of Dating Sims where you date wacky pigeons as a wacky human female. It also has the grim Bad Boys Love route unlocked after obtaining every other ending that starts with the female protagonist being Killed Off for Real and gets worse from there on with a series of genuinely shocking and heartbreaking Reveals that transform even the silliest and most light-hearted birds into massive Woobies or Big Damn Heroes.
• Kid Icarus: Uprising goes through this once you hit Chapter 18. For something that starts out as a Denser and Wackier Affectionate Parody of both Greek Mythology and videogames in general with No Fourth Wall, the shift to one of the bleakest tones in any Nintendo game comes as quite a shock to say the least.
• Custom Robo doesn't even try to take itself seriously. Villains are mostly comical, the story lighthearted, and not too much hint of the events to come. Then comes the Info Dump with two seperate save points...and it all goes downhill from there (granted, you can invoke some humour by picking the funny dialogue options. It's just not played up automatically).