Tropedia

  • Before making a single edit, Tropedia EXPECTS our site policy and manual of style to be followed. Failure to do so may result in deletion of contributions and blocks of users who refuse to learn to do so. Our policies can be reviewed here.
  • All images MUST now have proper attribution, those who neglect to assign at least the "fair use" licensing to an image may have it deleted. All new pages should use the preloadable templates feature on the edit page to add the appropriate basic page markup. Pages that don't do this will be subject to deletion, with or without explanation.
  • All new trope pages will be made with the "Trope Workshop" found on the "Troper Tools" menu and worked on until they have at least three examples. The Trope workshop specific templates can then be removed and it will be regarded as a regular trope page after being moved to the Main namespace. THIS SHOULD BE WORKING NOW, REPORT ANY ISSUES TO Janna2000, SelfCloak or RRabbit42. DON'T MAKE PAGES MANUALLY UNLESS A TEMPLATE IS BROKEN, AND REPORT IT THAT IS THE CASE. PAGES WILL BE DELETED OTHERWISE IF THEY ARE MISSING BASIC MARKUP.

READ MORE

Tropedia
Register
Advertisement
WikEd fancyquotesQuotesBug-silkHeadscratchersIcons-mini-icon extensionPlaying WithUseful NotesMagnifierAnalysisPhoto linkImage LinksHaiku-wide-iconHaikuLaconic

Over time, works can change in tone. A formerly episodic comedic work can become a dark political satire with a strong plot arc. A dark work about a future dystopia can become a lighthearted adventure series.

This can be a deliberate shift in tone that was planned all along, it can be done deliberately because of a perceived advantage to the new tone (almost always financial), or it may be an unplanned and almost accidental shift over time.

This is especially true in episodic media, such as Live Action TV, Comic Books, and Web Comics, where their long-running status and, in the first two cases, changes in writing teams can cause marked changes in tone over time.

This also frequently appears when remaking or re-imagining older media for a modern audience.

Changes to tone are not always permanent, but in order to qualify they must be long-lasting. A single dark episode in an otherwise light and fluffy show is not a Tone Shift.

A Super-Trope to:


Please only add examples that don't fit into one of the subtropes.

Compare Genre Shift.

Examples of Tone Shift include:


  • Full House started with some family-friendly undertones but otherwise a run-of-the-mill sitcom. Over time, it brought the family-friendly aspect more and more to the forefront until they were dropping Aesop anvils every episode. Complete with heavy Flanderization and a continual feed of new child actors.
  • Roseanne started out as a very witty sitcom with elements of Kitchen Sink Drama with a good deal of Character Development, until behind the scenes drama derailed the entire show into A Denser and Wackier farce of its former self AND a heavy-handed Melodrama subject to Mood Whiplash. The last Season plays like one long Gainax Ending.
  • Boy Meets World started out as a wholesome family sitcom about a kid living next door to his teacher. Since the show followed Cory as he aged, the next seasons focused on him and his friends entering puberty and figuring out adolescence, and season 6 shifted to a more adult tone dealing with parental death, premature birth, adoption, sexual harassment, and the realities of adult life after marriage. Unlike most examples, this was deliberate.
Advertisement