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Sliding Scale of Silliness Versus Seriousness

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
"Now, I've noticed a tendency for this programme to get rather silly. Now I do my best to keep things moving along, but I'm not having things getting silly!"

How does the work present itself? Do the characters appear to treat their current situation with the utmost seriousness and urgency or do the actors seem to be having way too much fun with their roles?

The answer depends on where the series falls on the Sliding Scale of Silliness Versus Seriousness.

  • A largely silly series relies heavily on theRule of Cool, theRule of Funny, and theRule of Fun. Much of the dialogue is made up of cheesy one-liners, and emotions and reactions are often exaggerated or otherwise played for laughs.No Fourth Wall andNegative Continuity may also be present, though not required, and it is possible to use both tropes in serious works as well.
  • A mostly serious series relies more on theRule of Drama, and the writers at least try to make the dialogue and emotional responses as realistic as possible, though if written or delivered poorly it can still result inNarm. It is possible that there may be moments of comic relief, but in general the series will retain its serious tone throughout.
  • Somewhere in the middle, seemingly leaning towards silly, are shows which employHa Ha Only Serious to slip uncomfortable or disquieting truths past the audience's defenses by making themappear superficially like farce.

It should be noted that when a creator creates a piece of media, they often take their work very seriously and want it to be good. But that doesn't mean that the work in question has to takeitself seriously.

It should be also noted that this scale is completely independent of theSliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism. It is entirely possible to have a work be idealistic but retain the same level of seriousness throughout, such as inThe Dark Knight Saga. Likewise, it is equally possible to have a very silly and campy work be downright cynical throughout, such asFamily Guy.

Did Not Do the Research might be a good indication of where the show lies on the scale. If the person clearlydid do the research and the situation presented on the show at least closely resembles how it would happen inReal Life, then most likely the show takes itself seriously. However, it should be noted that just because theyDid Not Do the Research, doesn't mean that the show was supposed to fall on the silly side. It could just as easily have been the result of carelessness or ignorance as to how things actually work on the part of the writers, thus leaving the series still serious, but filled with plot holes and factual errors. On the other hand, if the presentation is clearly done as a parody, or presented in such an outlandish and over-the-top manner, then the show itself probably doesn't take itself too seriously.

WorksSo Bad It's Good generally fall more toward the silly side, while worksSo Bad It's Horrible could fall on either side of the scale. Many works that are on the serious side but are consideredSo Bad It's Horrible have been criticized for taking themselvestoo seriously, thus becoming humourless, po-faced and pompous on top of their other faults, and many people believe thatsuch works would have been more enjoyable had they been moreCamp. Conversely (although relatively rarer), it is possible for a show to not take itself seriously enough, which can affect the audience's ability to immerse themselves in the drama; if the writers and characters obviously don't take what's happening seriously, why should the audience? True to form, works that areSo Okay It's Average can fall on either side of the scale, with slight silliness being moderately prevalent.

Of course, it is entirely possible for a work to be silly and campy, yet still be genuinely good on its own merits. Many fan bases tend to take the object of their fandom more seriously than the casual viewer and often vocally demand that the show reflect this; seeMaturity Is Serious Business for more on fans of this mindset.Pandering to the Base can pose a problem, however, if as a result of this a show initially quite 'silly' begins to take itselftoo seriously, with the result of turning off casual viewers. If silly scenes and serious scenes are back-to-back to each other, beware ofMood Whiplash.Cerebus Syndrome can occur if the work starts out on the silly side, and eventually ends up on the serious side over time. Some concepts can confuse the scale, such asBlack Comedy orHa Ha Only Serious: comedy is generally more silly, but the subject matter ofBlack Comedy is dark and serious; andHa Ha Only Seriouspretends to be comedy to distract while delivering unwelcome truths. And sometimesthe scale wraps around.

Examples of Sliding Scale of Silliness Versus Seriousness include:

Anime and Manga

  • Hayate the Combat Butler is definitely on the silly side of things.No Fourth Wall,Negative Continuity, AnUnreliable Narrator who interacts with the characters,Mask the Money... and that's all without theParody Stu main character who is both a Marty Stu ANDThe Chew Toyat the same time. The picture for this ought to just be Hayate talking about theYakuza "Very Nice People."
    • This doesn't stop the series from doing serious, or semi-serious, story arcs, as with The End of the World or Golden Week. This happens more in the manga than the anime, though even then there is only one truely serious story arc and it still keeps the comedy.
  • Some people considerFullmetal Alchemist too silly because even when the story gets serious, there are visual gags abound and the characters manage to crack jokes in the middle of the most adverse of situations, causing immenseMood Whiplash. Possibly the only part that does without any measure of humor is thelengthy flashbackabout the war in Ishval.
    • Not to mention when, halfway through an episode ofBrotherhood (its direct anime adaptation), a very excited and cheerful announcer will sometimes yell "FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST" in the midst of a gory battle.Mood Whiplash twice within 15 seconds.
    • The2003 anime version, on the other hand, while often mixing deadly serious and completely farcical elements just like the source material, took itselfmuch more seriously and included allusions to very adult themes (most infamously,gang rape). Whether it succeeded in being more dramatic or wandered intonarmy territory isup to much debate.
      • Given this, it seems strange thatBrotherhood received a higher rating of R-17, whereas the 2003 anime was a PG-13.
  • Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann starts off on the far side of silly, but winds up somehow mixing hyper-reliance onRule of Cool withTear Jerkers anddog-shooting,Bruce Ironstaunch aside.
  • Higurashi no Naku Koro ni can go from one length to the other without any warning, but when the going gets serious, it usually stays serious until the end of the arc. This creates a good effect ofMood Whiplash.
  • Elfen Lied also has some extremely radical shifts from silliness to seriousness and back again and gives off plenty ofMood Whiplash of its own. Overall it probably doesn't take itself too seriously.
  • MD Geist takes itself very seriously and many have criticized it for doing so, given how poorly made and ridiculous it was.
    • The fact that it manages to keep a straight face while talking about anUltimate Evil calledDEATH FORCE stored in an impenetrable fortress calledBRAIN PALACE is part of the reason why it'sSo Bad It's Good.
  • SHUFFLE!! is another one that goes from one end to the other. The first half of the series is full of fun,Fan Service and harem jokes. The second?It Got Worse. Most people find this an example ofGrowing the Beard, but a few think it'sJumping the Shark.
  • Trigun starts off very far on the silly side and although it gradually becomes more serious as the series progresses, it never completely loses its sense of humor.
  • TheBerserk manga for the most part takes itself pretty seriously. The main exceptions are pretty much any scenes involving either Puck or Isidro, who both tend to be extremely silly and have even broken the fourth wall a few times. Puck and Isidro are not present in the anime due to the anime mainly taking place during the Golden Age arc of the manga, which has the Band of the Hawk bringing their occasional moments of humor to the series—right up untilthey die horribly when the Eclipse goes down.
  • Gintama owns this trope. It's mostly a gag comedy but it can seesaw into dark and sentimental territory.
    • Serious fight scenes are interspersed throughout but there is always witty dialogue to accompany them. Characters are really good at ruining serious moods.
    • This series often serves to deconstruct various (and more serious) genres in a humorous way.
  • One Piece is a series that can be shockingly violent and dark at times (a good example is the Alabasta arc), while being ridiculously silly near-simultaneously. The same fight scene where Usopp, the lovable comic relief,gets his skull cracked and nose broken by a 4-ton bat (among other painful things), features a gun-dog hybrid who sneezes exploding baseballs.
    • Regarding that hybrid—if you've heard of the Devil Fruits, you might assume it was a dog that ate a fruit turning it into a gun hybrid. You'd be wrong. It's actuallya gun that ate a fruit turning it into a dog hybrid.
    • Another example ofOne Piece's ambiguousness in this is the Arlong Arc. During the flashback to the death of Bellemere, her fall to the ground following being shot is cut through a few times with other brief flashbacks of giggle-inducing footage of young Nami and Bellemere's relationship. Very hard to cry and giggle at the same time.
      • Don't forget about a sword that ate a fruit which lets it turn itself into an elephant.
  • Bobobo-Bo Bo-bobo falls so far on the silly side that itbreaks the scale.
  • Neon Genesis Evangelion is a complicated case: in its lightest moments it could almost be categorized as comedy, but its dark climax is... grather grave.
  • Texhnolyze may be one of the few shows that trumps theshow above in seriousness. Seriously, there isno show that is more serious thanTexhnolyze.
  • Comparatively,Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei takes very serious subjects, such as suicide, domestic violence and rape, and makes them* funny*.
  • FLCL andRahXephon: both music-themed mecha shows, both very clever, both on opposite ends of the scale. For one thing, FLCL uses modern rock andRahXephon uses classical music.
  • For an animated feature film,Princess Mononoke is decidedly serious. It has comic-relief moments, but only one real laugh line ("No, it's still broken.").
  • Fist of the North Star isextremely serious... Or was created with the intention to be, anyway. Most people today watch it for theNarm that results.
    • The series actually has quite its fair share of (intentionally) silly moments, moreso in the TV series than in any other version (where they tried to give Bat more focus by making thePlucky Comic Relief). There's really no way that characters like Juza, Ein, Gyoko, and the whole Fang Clan were meant to be taken too seriously in the first place.
  • Death Note is very serious. Most of the humour is subtle and the kind that makes you chuckle, not laugh out loud. It doesn't cross over intoNarmtoo often in the anime...and almost never in the manga.
    • Most notably, Ryuk's hijinks, especially when apples are involved, and arguably almost everything about L, and Mello's chocolate eating habits.
  • Excel Saga spends exactly 2 episodes being serious. When you have a livingReset Button as part of the cast, it comes with the territory.
    • The manga actually features a sliding scale that is all over the place: with hectic silliness interlaced with looming seriousness. It tends to hit the serious endwhen dealing with Il Palazzo and Kabapu's origins, motivations and encounters. Also worth noting the fact that Excel's past and first encounter with Il Palazzo is hinted to be a dark one. Last but not least, the daily life of Excel and other ACROSS operatives are presented to be dire - dirt-poor and always near-starved, at some points imprisoned and/or homeless (to the point where Excel considers imprisonment to have the advantages of 'three hot meals a day and a cot'
  • Blame begins asSerious Business andends asSerious Business, though an almost complete lack ofdrama prevents anyNarm from showing up. Thereare a few darkly humorous scenes though, near the beginning... If you squint.
    • "My arm should be around you. Should you come across it, please take it with you."
  • InKyo Kara Maoh!,Ordinary High School Student Yuuri is flushed down a toilet into an alternate universe where he is seemingly arbitrarily crowned king of demonkind. Then they hit you with theFantastic Racism andSealed Evil in a Can. It slides on down the scale toward serious through the series, with a few (mostly) filler-induced fluctuations.
  • Katekyo Hitman Reborn started out deeply steeped inRefuge in Audacity with itsButt Monkey protagonist and gun-totingbaby tutor...then theKokuyou arc happened. Now its a largely serious piece with perhaps a bit more comic relief than usual thrown in as a reminder of its roots.
  • The Twelve Kingdoms is very far on the serious side. It's realistic in that a few characters can see the humorous parts of life as well, though.
  • Full Metal Panic! swings between both ends of the scale, which results in a fair bit ofMood Whiplash - especially if you're having anArchive Binge and watchingFumoffu! andThe Second Raid back to back. Given the way later installments in the light novels are going, expect more of the same.
  • Naruto seems light hearted at first, but after the Wave arc Starts, it can get very serious even byShonen standards, especially after the time skip. Dear god where to begin there.
    • Naruto the character himself also exhibits this trope. In Serious mode, he has the "I want to be stronger than all Hokages", "I will never give up", "I have to catch up to Sasuke and bring him back", sennin mode, kyuubi mode, and now the rikudo mode. In Silliness mode, he has the sexy technique, farting humour, stupidity, ramen obsession, pervert. This was nearly lampshaded once, when Naruto went into the Kyuubi mode and started a rampage, and Sakura sees a flashback of Naruto smiling with his hand on the back of his head, and remarks, "Is he reallythat Naruto?"
      • He often does both at the same time (and make it effective), in one of the first episodes Kakashi sticks his finger in Naruto's ass with so much strengh it sends him flying, several arcs later, when Naruto is fighting against his (until that point) stronger enemy he decides to use the same technique, except that instead of a finger he sticked an explosive, Gaara states that his sand armor was the weakest in that part.
  • Record of Lodoss War is pretty serious.The second part, on the other hand, isvery silly.
  • Eyeshield 21 is a series that's very aware it's a sports manga and has no problem poking fun at itself; whether it's lampshading particular cliches, cracking jokes during moments that would be played as tense in any other series, or having characters so over-the-top and fun that any flatness they may have is forgiven.
  • TheGundam franchise has usually placed itself far at the serious end of the scale, withGundam 00 and the recentGundam Unicorn, the two most cinematic Gundam shows thus far, probably at the farthest end of the serious side of all of the series. The ones that go closest to the silly side includeGundam ZZ andG Gundam.
  • In the beginning,Dragon Ball was pretty silly but starts getting more and more serious over time. ByDragon Ball Z, It's mostly serious but still has quite a few humorous aspects to it such the Ginyu Force, Mr. Satan and a lot of things in the Majin Buu arc.
  • Battle Angel Alita is a often very serious manga, with gory deaths and no character being save from getting killed, however this doesn't stop it from constantly adding jokes or over the top elements. Even the normaly very serious main character Gally/Alita has moments in which cracks jokes, does silly things or accidently reveals that she is not as smart as she pretends. Last Order drives the point home when one character got heavily injured and the distraction to get him away results in a super sonic thumb fight between two martial arts fighters.


Comic Books

  • Ambush Bug. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand nothing need more be said.
  • Tank Girl is set in the Australian outback in a dystopian future. The main character isa girl who drives a tank. And drinks beer. And snogs kangaroos. Totally on the silly side, most plots are very thin and resolved in some ridiculous way.
  • Bone creates a perfect balance here. The heroes could be walking through the dark forest, right into a very serious and threatening ambush of two rat creatures. The next thing you get is the two arguing about whether they should capture them alive ormake them into a quiche.
  • Sin City, as dark as it is, is so over the top and insane that it often ventures intoDead Baby Comedy with a dash ofRule of Cool.
    • Perfect case in point:Marv. Just about any action he takes could apply, but possibly the most wildlyludicrous: Marv flat-out torturing a series of seemingly random, shady people in his search for information. This culminates with an image of him in a car, holding an unfortunate face-down in the asphalt, driving at a speed fast enough for the unfortunate's legs to be up in the air. In essence, he is using the street as a grindstone and holding a dude's face into it. Marv's line, also captured inThe Movie, is "I don't know about you, but I'm having a ball." This sequence captures this trope masterfully, as not only is the situation extraordinarily insane, not only would this guy have not survived through the first two seconds of this abuse, not only could Marvnever hope to actually get information out of this guy afterwards, butMarv is one of the good guys. With zero irony, Marv is a sympathetic hero literally searching for truth and justice AND ALSO a psychotic madman who murders and tortures freely in this horribleCrapsack World. The seriousness and silliness is completely interwoven throughout all of theSin City stories, with varying degrees of success.


Film

  • Moulin Rouge could be considered the perfect representation of this scale because it begins serious, goes silly for a long time and then, at the second act, smashes onto seriousness.
    • Resulting in seriousMood Whiplash. The opening scene is Christian James at his typewriter, obviously quite depressed and even a little teary atSatine's death and having to write their story, which was her last request, as he writes about how a narcoleptic Argentinean man crashes through his ceiling, followed soon by a midget dressed as a nun. It's followed by Zidler dressed as a bride singing Madonna's "Like a Virgin" done as aGilbert and Sullivan number, complete withBusby Berkeley choreography.But before that, we learn Satine has tuberculosis and hasn't told anyone, a sure sign that's she's going to die, probably in the final act.
  • Given its extremely bizarre plot, the creators decided to makeSnakes on a Plane as campy and silly as possible, and they even reshot certain scenes to make them sillier.
  • Despite their differing feel, each of theAlien movies have maintained a consistently serious tone throughout. That was untilAlien Resurrection, which many fans are all too happy todisown.
  • ThePredator movies, on the other hand, take themselves slightly less seriously, with a high level of machismo throughout the first movie, along with one-liners peppering the dialogue throughout both films.
  • An ongoing debate over theStar Wars series is how silly or serious the two trilogies are in comparison to each other. Many long-time Star Wars fans were outraged by the silliness and slapstick in the prequels. Other fans, including Lucas himself, insisted that the original trilogy was quite silly as well. The age at which you originally watch each trilogy may be a factor in how you perceive them on the scale.
    • One could say that the original Star Wars trilogy was an example ofCerebus Syndrome, depending on how much you buy the theory that the more dramatic, character-driven sequelThe Empire Strikes Back was largely the doing of director Irvin Kirshner and screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan rather thanGeorge Lucas.
  • Shaun of the Dead lost a lot of viewers who were not expecting the slapsticky horror film parody to play the horror and drama of theZombie Apocalypse so straight at times in the second half. The filmmakers insisted that the film was not intended to be a parody, but a real zombie movie that also had a lot of humor.
  • TheBatman films could go toward either end of the scale, depending on the director.
  • James Bond has an inconsistent track record with this. Films likeDr. No andLicence to Kill take themselves very seriously, but others likeLive and Let Die orDie Another Day remove the brakes on sanity.
    • Bonus points toOctopussy for being a serious Clancy-style thriller one moment and a ride throughSim Sim Salabim land the next. Both worlds collide when Bond deactivates a nuclear bomb...while wearing a clown suit.
    • It seems to be a pretty workable rule of thumb that the franchise always resets towards seriousness when a new actor takes over the lead role. Subsequent installments grow sillier, though the progression is not always consistent.
  • ContrastThe Rocky Horror Picture Show with the film often cited as itsSpiritual Successor in audience participation,Hedwig and The Angry Inch. Both are musical comedies with queer overtones and an obsession with glam rock, butRocky is absolutely devoted to theRule of Funny, with no character really possible to "read" except as a pastiche of other archetypes, the events not bound by logic so much as what would make the best song orShout-Out, and frequent theatrical musical numbers;Hedwig, on the other hand, takes itself generally seriously (with a bit ofBellisario's Maxim), being heavily a character study with musical numbers that come without exception from the titular band's playlist (although not always literally being played by them), and a sense of humor that comes mostly fromDeadpan Snarker Hedwig. It may tell of the difference in times that Meatloaf nearly quitRocky upon realizing just what he was getting into until being assured everything wasPlayed for Laughs, and is now a noted influence on the music inHedwig.
  • From Dusk till Dawngoes all the way from the serious end, as it starts out with two thieving brothers on the run from the law (along with the family they kidnap), but halfway through it switches into an extremely campy vampire movie set in a debased Mexican bar.
  • Quentin Tarantino seems to love this trope.
  • Airplane! took its entire plot and much of its dialog from a completely serious movie calledZero Hour!, then turned the silly knobUp to Eleven.
    • Airplane is serious. And don't call it Shirley.
  • TheEvil Dead films go from serious to silly as the films go on.
  • The screenwriters ofTransformers: Revenge of the Fallen stated that when they knew the sequel called for larger-scale and more intense violence and death, they decided to try and balance it out with more outrageous humor. In other words, they tried to go downboth sides of this scale at once. Needless to say, fans were not pleased.
  • The Room. Every time Johnny is on screen, whatever seriousness the movie might have built up with the other characters is lost and his scenes quickly become hilarious.


Literature

  • The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy has to be among the silliest works in print.
    • But incredibly cynical at times, too.
    • And pretty damn campy in every other format it's been done in, too.
    • It also lambasts the serious end of this trope with the Roary, a small silver award given for the most gratuitous use of the word "fuck"[1] in a serious screen play.
  • A Series of Unfortunate Events is another example of a work which is cynical but not "serious". It's set in aCrapsack World full of bizarre conspiracies and senseless tragedy, but the style ofLemony Narrator (himself a tragic figure) lends everything a lighthearted and over-the-top tone. Besides, many of the actual details, like the costumes adopted by the villains, can be accurately described as "cartoony".
  • The Princess Bride. Its setting, which is "before Europe" but "after America", is a good indicator how seriously it takes itself.
    • And "after Paris", which is lampshaded by both the editor and Goldman in one of the asides.
  • Catch-22: often shifts suddenly from absurdist humor to depressing realism. A good example of this is the chapter following Doc Daneca, which first describes a series of events that happen to the doctor in such a way as to make them seem hilarious, only to then describe how they essentially ruined his life, leaving him a shadow of his former self.
  • TheDiscworld books are an interesting case; they started out mostly being silly, but while they have shifted to being more "realistic," they haven't actually stopped beingfunny.
    • Part of this is probably thanks to where it falls on theSliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: four of the most important characters (that's Vetinari, Vimes, Weatherwax and Rincewind) areall cynics - living in a world that, on the whole, is pretty idealistic. Thanks mostly toDeath.
    • Death is actually pretty cynical as well.

Ipslore the Red: And what would people be without love?
Death:Rare.

    • The books slide internally as well.The Fifth Elephant, for example, begins with the fool's guild trying to put out a fire via slapstick, and ends with Carrot promising Angua that he'll kill her if necessary. Beginning silly and ending serious is the most common pattern.
    • In his acceptance speech for an award forThe Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, Pratchett points out that, contrary to popular belief, funny is not the opposite of serious.
  • This funny-serious thing is also very prevalent inGood Omens. Case in point: Crowley. Wears sunglasses, drives a Bentley,Deadpan Snarker, terrorises his houseplants, questions God's grand plan and speculates on the paradoxical good and evil within humanity...
  • TheChronicles of Thomas Covenant takes itself very seriously. Silly moments are few and far between, although not completely absent. Tragedy is far more common.
    • This, of course, is writer Stephen R. Donaldson's trademark. Fantasy isSerious Business (though he does it rather well, and even improves over time).
  • Steven Erikson'sMalazan Book of the Fallen is mostly dark and serious, even tragic, but the mood is lightened by a number of comic relief characters, such as Kruppe and Tehol Beddict.
  • Most Kurt Vonnegut novels seem to work by piling absurdity and silliness upon absurdity and silliness until somehow you're left with something quite serious and profound.
  • J. Robert King's trilogy aboutKing Arthur completely fudges this. It's supposed to be an epic adventure but contains scenes too bizarre to be taken seriously. This in fact plagues nearly everything that King writes, both tie-ins and original fiction. No matter how hard he tries to write it a serious fantasy epic, it will be filled with bizarre, nonsensical and inexplicable events, sometimes going into downright silly and ridiculous and coming dangerously close to aRandom Events Plot strung together fromNon Sequitur Scenes.
  • Speaking ofKing Arthur, T.H. White'sThe Once and Future King starts off silly and gets more and more serious as it reaches itsAnvilicious conclusion.
  • Kids' bookJennifer-the-Jerk Is Missing starts out as a suspenseful tale of a kidnapped 8-year-old and the desperate attempts of a tall tale-telling boy to get his babysitter to believe him, then turns into the exciting attempt to rescue the girl... but once they get there, the mood totally swings over into silly territory. The kidnappers are ridiculous, one of them pointing his hand through his jeans so as to fake having a gun. Jennifer herself is so over-the-top bratty that it's hard to feel sorry for her beingBound and Gagged, especially when she lets a disdainful "ha ha" under her gag. If not for the suspenseful elements of the plot still continuing during the silly phase, it would easily beMood Whiplash.
  • Starfighers Of Adumar is an interesting case.Aaron Allston was in top form in this one; this book is said to be the funniest novel in theStar Wars Expanded Universe, and certainly there are the most jokes and snarky irreverent remarks per chapter. Most of them coming from Wes Janson. At the same time, beneath the humor it's a very solid story about duty versus personal responsibility, with Wedge eventually deciding, in essence, "Screw being in the New Republic military for my entire adult life,I will not kill people who are not my enemies."
  • Stationery Voyagers tries very hard to take itself seriously. Yet, it has been critiquedby at least one university professor [dead link] as having a propensity towards "lacking an emotional center of gravity."
  • TheHarry Potter series as a whole demonstrates a gradual shift from silly to serious. For example, in onlythe first book do the characters sing the extremely silly school song, which would feel rather out of place by, say,Book 5.
  • The Dresden Files features some very serious situations, ranging from magical drug trafficking/murder to destroying the world, but our hero inserts quite a bit of silliness into these situations. He does become more serious as the series progresses, but the silliness does show through every now and again.
  • It's interesting to chartPG Wodehouse's progression from serious to silly over his career. He was neverseriously serious, of course, but his early works are more-or-less realistic school stories about chaps playing cricket and foiling burglars. Then he stirred things up by inventing the flamboyantPsmith, with his monocle and tendency to 'jaw', and asEvelyn Waugh said, that was the moment that the 'divine spark' struck Wodehouse. Yet he continued writing realistic novels, including numerous romantic comedies in the 1920s. It was only when he was in his fifties that he dedicated himself entirely to silliness, concentrating on theJeeves and Wooster andBlandings Castle novels and the various other farces that represent his best work.
  • Stella Gibbons began at the silly end of the scale withCold Comfort Farm. Her subsequent novels tended to be much more serious, and not nearly so successful, a fact that depressed her.


Live Action TV

  • The X-Files has gone to both ends of the scale throughout its run. During Seasons 1-5 it generally took itself very seriously, except for the Darin Morgan episodes, which had a very surreal comedic feel to them. While Seasons 6 and 7 had their share of serious episodes, they also had quite a few episodes that went even further with the surreal humor to the point of making the episodes downright campy, such as the two-part "Dreamland" episode from Season 6 and "Hollywood AD" from Season 7. Season 8 returned the series to the more serious end of the scale, while season 9 once more had a mixture of serious episodes as well as lighthearted and really campy episodes as well.
  • Millennium, also created by Chris Carter, was serious throughout its first season but as withThe X-Files, fluctuated between seriousness and camp during seasons 2 and 3.
  • Tales from the Crypt usually fell very far on the silly side of the scale, with intentionally hammy acting and very over-the-top characterization and often plots that present a sort of grotesque parody to sitcom plot conventions and other very outlandish stories.
  • Many HispanicSoap Opera take themselves very seriously, no matter how silly the "tragedies" appear after being subjected toFridge Logic. Because of that, doing comedic (or at leastDramedy) soaps, such asYo Soy Betty, la Fea and its Mexican spinoffLa Fea Mas Bella, is tricky and difficult. There have been interesting experiments where the producers follow the conventions, but present them with an slight farcical tone, where the main love story is treated seriously but the rest... not that much.
  • TheBatman TV series of the 1960s not only rests at the "silly" end of the scale, it jumps off that end and keeps swimming.
    • Better take that shark repellant with you if you go out swimming.
    • Some days you just can't rid of abomb.
  • Supernatural fluctuates between the two extremes so much it could you give whiplash. It's certainly done the homework for theUrban Legends, the psychology and what crappy (long-term) consequences could come from the characters' actions but not so much for the seriousness of wounds or how long it takes to get from one place to the other. And just when you think it's getting far too grim and bleak and disheartening for its own good, along comes a gimmicky episode like "Tall Tales" where Sam and Dean are raging bitches to each other and all their quirks and flaws are heightened to the point of absurdity.
    • It wasn't that prominent in the first two seasons, it started around the third season (with "A Very Supernatural Christmas" and "Mystery Spot", some of the season 4 episodes focused a lot on comedy (blended with angst), and season 5 took it to the extreme, since it was basically an alternation between very serious episodes, like "The End", "Abandon All Hope" and extremely silly episodes, like the one with Paris Hilton, or "Changing Channels".
  • Doctor Who jumps between the two so much that the entire series is one long example ofMood Whiplash.
    • A perfect illustration of this is Seasons Seventeen and Eighteen of the classic series. Seventeen is often criticised as being an example of a show not taking itself seriously enough; an increased emphasis on humour (thanks in part to script-editorDouglas Adams, best known for his work onThe Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), a low budget mixed with some truly mad ideas and the production team's willingness to let series star andLarge Ham Tom Baker off the leash entirely lead to a great deal of camp, which many fans felt ruined the drama a bit (of course, for other fans, this was all part of the charm). Conversely, Eighteen saw a new production team take over, and they promptly dialed back on the comedy, put Baker on a tighter leash and tried to introduce more gravity, seriousness and scientific earnestness into the show. However, it could be argued that they went too far theother way; fans began criticising the show for being po-faced and taking all the fun out of it. Then again, theDoctor Who fan base isnotoriously unpleasable.
  • One of the goals inScrubs was to create a show that combines comedy and dramawithout looking stupid.
  • Seinfeld is cynical but generally very silly. The only events treated with any real seriousness are Susan's death (possibly not even that) and the series finale.
  • Strangers with Candy, as a parody of after-school specials, naturally handles very serious issues such as drug abuse, prostitution and racism - but is about as silly as is humanly possible. When one character is hit by a car, his face is torn off and sticks in the car's radiator grill. The hit-and-run driver is later seen washing the car with it.Crossing the Line Twice doesn't even begin to describe it.
  • Desperate Housewives is considered to be a comedy series, but unexpectedly switches between being silly and being serious several times in a single episode. The fact that (at least) each housewife has their own storylines allows the show to have silly and serious plotlines in the same episode.
  • Stargate SG-1 started off being pretty serious and gradually slid down the silliness scale over its run, nearly becoming a self-parody by the eighth season. The producers tried to push it back up the serious scale by introducing a newBig Bad for the final two seasons.
    • Jack O'Neill, the leader of theSG-1 team, was a frequent source of silliness for the first eight seasons. He often provided moments of comedic relief andMood Whiplash. At the same time, he was a very competent, pragmatic, and sometimes tragic leader. He was one of the reasons the show could often seamlessly switch from one end of the Silliness Scale to the other, and back again, to great effect.
    • Stargate Universe is taking itself very seriously with only little bits of comic relief.
  • The Fast Show isconstantly silly, apart from one or two quite notable exceptions.
  • Power Rangers is somewhere in the middle. The stories are sometimes pretty serious, but rarely allowed to go far into the dark side, and sprinkled with lots of one-liners and the like.Super Sentai is at the same time far more serious and far more silly thanPower Rangers, sometimes causing tons ofMood Whiplash.
    • Concrete example:Juken Sentai Gekiranger switches back and forth between Rio and Mele's dark background story... and Jan wrestling pandas in the jungle.
  • Kamen Rider is generally more on the serious side thanSentai (except things likeDen-O, but let's not get into that). Some series, though, especiallyKabuto, haveMood Whiplash-inducing moments of stupid humour.
  • Monty Python's Flying Circus was constructed entirely from silliness. While some of their more satirical sketches were no doubt intended seriously on some level, having a large flashing sign reading "SATIRE" appear over it neatly drained away anything serious whatsoever.
    • And of course, theylampshaded the ludicrous nature of their humour with a certain Graham Chapman character...who would, well, stop a sketch by pointing out that it's getting extremely silly, at which point it would move on to something just as ridiculous.
    • Not to mention the election night sketch, where the results of various elections were announced, mostly between the Silly Party and the Serious Party, with a few third party candidates from the Slightly Silly Party and the Very Silly Party, taking the title of this page quite literally.
  • Psych seems pretty tame in the silliness department compared to something like 30Rock orFamily Guy, but consider that the show's format is (ostensibly)an hour long crime-drama.
    • It gets pretty strange when the happy-go-lucky characters (especially Shawn) have to investigate what are increasingly horrifyingly violent murders. The characters themselves have even pointed out the weird contrast on occasion.
    • Specifically lampshaded when chasing a serial killer, when Shawn tells Gus that he has to be silly or he won't be able to deal with what he's facing.Truth in Television, to an extent, as morbid humor is often a coping mechanism.
  • Pushing Daisies works like this: you try to pour as much silliness as possible in a single episode and try to treat it with seriousness. The strangest part? It works.
  • Miami Vice started out in the first two seasons by being a fairly serious cop show but with 80's glamor and pastel colors. Then it got darker around the third season and had some pretty ridiculous plots during the fourth and fifth season but eventually tried to get back to how it was at the beginning in the fifth season.
  • The variousStar Trek series. WhileStar Trek: The Next Generation was pretty serious overall (with of course a few good jokes and comedic episodes here and there), thetwofollowing series were pretty much a mixed bag of dead-serious episodes and pure comedy examples (some beingBreather Episodes), such as Quark and family onDeep Space Nine and The Doctor onVoyager episodes.
  • Bones has become distinctly less intense as the seasons progressed.
  • Castle started out pretty silly, but has taken a turn in a more serious direction towards the end of season three.This development got a mixed receptionfrom the fans.
  • How I Met Your Mother, while always keepingsome measure of comedy, fluctuates all over the place with this trope. Pretty understandable, as it's a guy telling stories about a section of his life to his kids, andthe events of peoples' lives have a tendency to fluctuate between serious and silly, without much regard for how appropriate the preceding context is. So we get stuff like Marshall and Lily's reproductive health specialist looking exactly like Barney, Lily refusing to be examined unless Barney is in the same room in case it reallyis Barney, Marshall being too neurotic to produce a sperm sample at the doctor's office and trying to do it at home while his oblivious visiting parents loudly inundate him withFetish Retardant, getting conned by Barney pretending to be his doctor, and ending withLily informing him out of the blue that his dad just died.


Machinima

  • Red vs. Blue was born out of the idea of using the standard 'bottom rung employees bitching about work' theme and applying it to the military of the future. WhileThe Blood Gulch Chronicles are all out silly, the two miniseries are played completely seriously. The following seriesReconstruction splits the difference.
    • And now it's back to silly.
    • In general, it seems that the simulation troopers are silly, and the Freelancers andA Is are (mostly) serious. Those involved with both shift on the scale depending on who they're interacting with.


Meta


Music

  • The Wall, believe it or not, does this from time to time. The message of the album—shutting yourself off from society is not a good idea—is quite serious, but moments of pure silliness shine through. "In the Flesh," for example, plays the hero as anEvil Overlord type, which is outright cartoonish in and of itself, and the lyrics are so over-the-top that they sound like the ravings of a frothing-at-the-mouth lunatic. And then there's "The Trial," which plays Pink's moment of clarity as a vaudeville show, complete with a judge that resembles an enormous, disembodied human backside that wears a judge's wig. And yet it only enhances the message: "Shutting yourself off from society is not only a bad idea, it is also a very silly and ultimately pointless one."
  • Captain Beefheart's work frequently goes from surreal and often sexual imagery to his rather serious environmental concerns. The best example of this is on the album Trout Mask Replica, where the rather serious (albeit cryptic) "Well" is sandwiched between the bizarre "Pena" and the hilarious "When Big Joan Sets Up". Another example is on the album The Spotlight Kid which features the song "Blabber N' Smoke". The lyrics of the song go from him making fun of his wife telling him not to smoke to insisting that we "clean up the air and treat the animals fair".
  • Iron Maiden have recorded serious songs as singles and released joke songs as B Sides for quite a while now.
  • Microdisney's Money For The Trams seems like serious commentary on yuppie culture...until Cathal yells "Take your stupid clothes off!"
    • Horse Overboard. In the past when a ship was carrying too much cargo they would have to put something overboard to stop it from sinking, and the horses would be the first to go. With that in mind the line "My wife is a horse" makes sense (it's about leaving your wife). Out of context however, it is a hilarious line, made funnier by the fact "horse" is of course a derogatory thing to call a woman.


Tabletop Games

  • Looked at from an out-of-universe perspectiveWarhammer40K has the tongue so firmly planted in cheek its punching through, in-universe it is so serious and depressing its rather surprising you have productive people at all considering how depressing it must be to be in charge of anything in 40k.
  • TheIlluminati University setting forGURPS actually makes the Sliding Scale of Silliness Versus Seriousness adjustable, from "Silly" through "Weird" to the (more or less) serious, paradoxically named "Darkly Illuminated". The current edition ofParanoia does much the same thing, with Straight, Classic, and Zap.

Theatre

  • Of Thee I Sing was the first musical to win a Pulitzer Prize; for a satire on politics, it's quite idealistic. It's also gleefully silly, with the nine Supreme Court judges appearing to rule on suchSerious Business as:

"Which is more important: corn muffins or justice?" (The answer is corn muffins, becauseFeminine Women Can Cook.)
"Will it be a boy or a girl?" (The Supreme Court decides the sex of Presidential infants by a strict party-line vote.)

  • Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama's Hung You In The Closet And I'm Feelin' So Sad is both cynical and silly.
  • Shakespeare's plays always run back and forth over this line. The comedies have serious undertones (The Taming of the Shrew and spousal abuse,Much Ado About Nothing and the damaging effects of rumors,The Merchant of Venice and racial prejudice) and the tragedies always have comedic asides (The Porter inMacbeth, Mercutio inRomeo and Juliet, Polonius inHamlet).
  • Jason Robert Brown has written on the more serious side of the spectrum, but13 is on the sillier side.
  • Cirque Du Soleil shows are idealistic but all overthis spectrum—ranging from whimsically comic (KOOZA,OVO) to bittersweet and melancholy (Quidam) or grand and stately ("O",KA), with such shows asMystere,Alegria,Varekai, andCorteo occupying a middle ground. A good indicator of where a show falls on the line is its clown acts—how much time they get, how important the characters are to the rest of the show, the style of their humor, etc.
  • Wicked ismuch lighter than the novel it was based upon, especially with songs like "What Is This Feeling?" and "Popular" in Act 1, but still remains fairly serious on the whole.


Video Games

  • Metal Gear Solid is full oflampshades and has completelyabolished the fourth wall very early on, but stays dead serious all the time.
    • It actually zips back and forth through the scale.
  • The Legend of Zelda series is typically a serious series(even if the cel-shaded visual style ofThe Wind Waker and other iterations may say otherwise), sometimes sliding to the middle of the scale at the verymost when it comes to silliness for the comic relief that slightly lightens the series' somewhat-known melancholy.Majoras Mask pretty muchstays on the serious side of the scale for more or less the majority of the game(for good reason, of course).
    • Of course, being a Nintendo game, it has its moments of extreme silliness.Tingle, for example. The worst offender is probablyLinks Awakening, which,overall, deals with deep philosophical questions about the nature of reality, but has instances where you trade with talking animals, rescue achain chomp from evil pig people, andrescue a giant flying whale called the "Wind Fish".
    • Zelda is almost completely serious in tone. It does include not so serious elements, such as the cel shading of certain games and talking animals, but aside from brief moments of comic relief it takes itself seriously and treats said non serious elements completely seriously.
  • Dragon Age is generally a verygrim sort of game revolving around weighty issues, possiblechild-killing, a forcedHeroic Sacrifice, demonic possession, andThe Corruption. Some of the inter-party banter, however, is just hysterical; of particular note areSten's fondness for cookies,Leliana's pet nug, and all ofMorrigan andAlistair's back-and-forth snarking.
  • The earlyTomb Raiders didn't take themselves seriously at all, with a heavy dose ofRule of Fun andRule of Cool, evenBreaking the Fourth Wall at the end ofTomb Raider II as Lara shoots the player for trying to watch her in the shower.Last Revelation onwards, the series has become more and more sensible and mature.
    • Though one could argue that Lara's outfits started out silly and kept going...
  • This trope wouldn't be complete withoutSerious Sam. Despite constantly claiming to be serious, the games are always far on the silly side of the scale. To show justhow serious the game is, this quote from the man himself: "Now I'm seriously serious!"

Sam: (on picking up theatomic powered chainsaw):LOOK MA! I'M A LUMBERJACK!

  • Doom, which was one of the pioneers of theFirst-Person Shooter genre remains serious as the unnamedPlayer Character runs down the dark and gloomy corridors of Hell, blowing away the evil demons and never so much as cracking a joke (or saying anything at all) while doing so.
  • Contrast toDuke Nukem 3D, which doesn't take itself seriously at all. Duke constantly spouts off one-liners and making homages to movies and other video games as he explores each new brightly-lit level, saving naked babes and blowing away the alien scum.
  • Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, with its unbelievably hard science and its completely consistent stories about the survival of Mankind in aDeath World is one of the most serious videogames ever created by man.
    • It still manages to crack a few jokes along the road. Okay, it manages to crack one joke. One single joke.But it's a damn good one! "Please don't go. The drones need you. They look up to you."
      • That might have been one of the most disturbing things in the game. Other than that, we don't really get to see what nerve stapling does to people. But that one audio clip tells you all you need to know. The rioting workers, unhappy because of overcrowding and overwork and lack of facilities in the base, have been... altered... into a totally dependent state of childish adulation of the Leader. Brrrr.
    • Well, the "Abort Retry Fail"Encyclopedia Exposita quote was somewhat amusing...until you wonder what happens to the universes being simulated if theydon't click Retry...
    • There's a good number of jokes scattered throughout theEncyclopedia Exposita. Especially the Morganite quotes. On the subject of black holes: "Yes, yes, we've all heard the philosophers babble about 'oneness' being 'beautiful' and 'holy'. But let me tell you thatthis kind of oneness certainly isn't pretty and if you're not careful it will scare the bejeezus out of you."
    • The Spartan cadence is really funny, especially if you know what the Spartans really wanted to say. "I dunno but I been told / Diedre's got a network node /Likes to use theon-off switch / Dig that crazy Gaian witch"
      • "A handsome young cyborg named Ace / Wooed women at every base / But once ladies glanced at / His special enhancement / They vanished, with nary a trace." Made all the funnier by the sinister delivery.
  • StarCraft, meanwhile, falls somewhere in between. The Terran footsoldiers and commanders are fond of cracking jokes, throwing one-liners and being portrayed in aDuke Nukem-esque style (the Confederacy is even theDeep South RecycledIN SPACE!); the Zerg, however, are portrayed as aChaotic Evil force of destruction and assimilation, while the Protoss are portrayed as strict but virtuous and disciplined heroes... who occasionally crack a really good joke.
    • "I love you, sarge..."
    • This is a game where if you click often enough on a Protoss observer, it'll replay lines from other units, as well as "One small step for man", and the sequel's Viking unit is aTransforming Mecha that's slated to say "Transform and roll out!". It also has cutscenes in which people get claws shoved through their faces.
  • Kingdom Hearts whips up and down the scale. The plot is generally serious (albeitimpenetrable), but on occasion the series does have to lighten up...because, after all, it's impossible to betotally serious when most of your cast comes fromWalt Disney Studios.
  • The villains in theRayman series have been steadily going from serious to silly as time goes by: The first game featured Mr. Dark, a more serious character (as serious asRayman 1 could be) with no funny bits at all.Rayman 2: The Great Escape featured the Robo-Pirates, genuinely scary-looking monstrosities but with their own funny moments.Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc had the Hoodlums, about as scary as the Robo-Pirates but much more cartoony, with lots of slapstick humor throughout the game. Finally there's theRaving Rabbids party game series, featuring the psychotic but overall stupid Rabbids, who seem somewhat creepy at first until... "BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"
  • The main reason whyShadow the Hedgehog, both game and character, aresuch sore spots of contention amongst Sonic fans is most likely the fact that both take themselvesdeadly seriously, in contrast to the light-hearted and cartoonish tone of previous games and most of the rest of the cast.
  • The first game in theDonkey Kong Country series was definitely on the "silliness" side of the scale, featuring a wide variety of cartoony enemies and bright, colorful locales. The second game took a view steps towards the "seriousness" side, with more realistic colors and settings and more ominous music, but took an equal amount of steps backwards for the third game.
    • Hold up, the one with the deliberately-overdone pirate theme with roller-coasters for levels and a coiled-up snake as one of the animal buddies is the serious one?!
  • InLa-Mulana, Elder Xelpud starts off as a cheery, screwy old man whorambles about MSX games. Also, in the village, Lemeza's cheerful theme music will play. Then when you beat the eight Guardians, he stops saying them for the rest of the game, the village music gets changed to the dark title screen music, his theme music no longer plays when you enter his tent (instead continuing to play the title music), and his random lines all get changed to the following:

The wind is restless...

  • Mother 3 manages to exist on both sides of the scale at the same time. It isn't subtitled "Strange, funny, and heartrending" for nothing.
  • Nippon Ichi are renown for making games mostly on the 'silly' end of the spectrum.Disgaea 1 andDisgaea 3 are very silly (although not lacking in a fewDrama Bombs), as isMakai Kingdom andLa Pucelle.Disgaea 2 still manages to be quite silly while still being the most 'serious' of the Disgaea games.Soul Nomad and The World Eaters can actually bequite serious (not to mentionquite cynical), and would probably be even moreso ifGig hadn't been a main character.Phantom Brave,Nippon Ichi'smost serious game, is about on the level of aFinal Fantasy orTales (series) game, even though it's alsoNippon Ichi's mostidealistic game.
    • Disgaea 4 almost inverts it. It's silly moments are played as serious and it's serious moments are more often than not played as silly. Previous tend to be aware of when their being silly or serious, but D4 doesn't seem to be aware. The result is more enjoyable for some than for others, thought reception has generally been very positive.
  • TheWario Land series is the most extreme representation of the silly end of the scale. You've gotWario Ware which is pretty much rule of silly and fun defined, which is pretty much random character stories with even more random microgames which deliberately make as little sense as possible, andWario Land which pretty much does away with a story so to speak and has Wario exploring extremeTheme Park Versions of places and fighting some extremely weird bosses (Evil cuckoo clock? Basketball playing rabbit? What looks like a French duck chef riding a frying pan and randomly attacking the character from the ceiling or the side of the screen?) And with treasure that includes well...literal metaphors and random items with punny names?
    • Wario's parent seriesSuper Mario Bros. is pretty muchthe archetypical example of the silly side of the scale in the Nintendo lineup, if not gaming in general.
  • The concept of theSuper Smash Bros.. series - Nintendo characters fighting each other on a variety of quirky stages for no discernible reason beyondit being cool - is fundamentally silly, and the games revel in this goofiness. The "Subspace Emissary" mode inBrawl takes itself a little bit more seriously than the rest of the game, but only just enough that the sheer ridiculousness of the story loops around to become legitimately awesome at points.
  • The Sims and its sequel are planted firmly on the silly side, with such things as giant half-cow Venus flytraps that eat people (luring them in with a fake piece of cake in a transparently obvious trap, which I feel I must point out is from a game predatingPortal by two years) and a method of snatching freshly-dead loved ones fromThe Grim Reaper's clutchesby winning a contest of either rock-paper-scissors or 'which hand is their soul in?', depending on the game.
  • Up untilDays of Ruin,Nintendo Wars lived happily way down the silly end of this scale.Days of Ruin has suddenly shifted the series right to the serious end. The transfer is handled reasonably well, but it's easy to miss the goofiness (saying that, theAmerican version still has plenty of goofy moments, even in the post-apocalyptic setting).
    • Similarly, one of the complaints leveled against theBattalion Wars games is that while the character and unit designs lean towards the silly side, the action and carnage are played entirely straight, making this part of the series on the part of the line between the two sides that runs right through theUncanny Valley.
  • Team Fortress 2 has a less serious story thanBattalion Wars, its characters are even more cartoony but the carnage is more graphic (if on a smaller scale).
  • There seems to be two realities conflicting with each other inMelty Blood. One is the full-borne sequel toTsukihime with vampires, vampire-killers, and half-demons trying to struggle with themselves and the horrors their world throws at them; and the other is filled with chibi-cat girls and catboys, mecha-maids, aDark Magical Girl/Witch/Mad Scientist, and a giant Tsundere.
  • Shadow Hearts almost defines this trope. The first game is quite serious, but is quite willing to get silly at frequent intervals, sometimes blending dead seriousness and hammy silliness into the samemoment, i.e. the Dehuai arc. Dehuai is quite the large ham, but his plots have deadly consequences and he is a seriously difficult boss to beat when the time comes. The events following this skew towards the serious, what withYuri being in an internal battle trying to dominate the soul of a Demi-God called Seraphic Radiance, but still manages to find breaths of comedy. The endings of the game also reflect both ends of the spectrum.
    • Shadow Hearts: Covenant. Despite starting off by establishingthe first game's bad end as canon, once the initial characters are introduced, things are quite clearly presented in a lighter and softer tone. Silly villains are sillier (but still deadly), hamminess is hammier, and combat is more bombastic and over the top. Even so, the scale of conflict and dark dangers presented here are much larger than those presented in the first game, and throughout the game Yuri must deal withthe loss of his love, Alice Elliot, who exchanged her soul for his in a tragically unsubvertedDeal with the Devil, and a curse that will eventually either steal his soul or his memories. However, once again, the possible endings reflect the Sliding Scale in thatone ending has Yuri losing his memories to the curse, dying and possibly lost in Limbo, while the other establishes him being time-travelling to shortly before the events of the first game, memories intact. As there is no direct sequel to this game, neither ending is officially canonical, but fanon has it that the continuity flows as such:Shadow Hearts bad ending ->Covenant good ending ->Shadow Hearts good ending.
      • Shadow Hearts: From the New World. This game does not share direct continuity with the previous two games, and as such is viewed as aGaiden Game within the series. This game lies FAR closer to the silly side of the scale then either of the previous two games. In fact, roughly half the characters who join your party are fairly comical in and of themselves. These includea super patriotic geriatric ninja loyal to the USA, aMega Neko with dreams of Hollywood stardom, and a Mexican musician with an instrument that doubles as heavy armament.
  • Command & Conquer is an interesting example of two series, both of which are traveling along the Sliding Scale of Silliness Versus Seriousness - however, in different directions. TheTiberium series started out fairly seriously although with a fair bit of camp. Tiberium Sun moves the series intoDarker and Edgier territories and Tiberium War is downrightBlack and Grey Morality depending on your mileage.Red Alert on the other hand started out serious with the premise of theHitler's Time Travel Exemption Act.Red Alert 2 on the other hand had psychics, telepathically controlled squids and dolphins and female assassins in latex as well as an overall notching up of the camp in the cutscenes.Red Alert 3 is downright silly: Armored bears shot out of cannons,mechas,Magical Girl assassins, an overall plot that doesn't make sense whatsoever and of courseTim Curry.
  • TheMega Man series starts off as silly, with Mega Man stopping Wily and his bunch of googly-eyed robots. It gets more serious withMega Man X, where reploids are trying to destroy humanity with moderate success but there are bits of robot cartoonishness here and there.Mega Man Zero is evenmore serious, setAfter the End and trying to stop villains from making it evenworse.Mega Man ZX seems to have lightened the series back up again though. The two spin-off series,Mega Man Legends andMega Man Battle Network are definitely on the sillier side.
  • TheSoul Series has always displayed both at the same time. For instance, the first game,Soul Blade. On one hand you have Li Long, whose story is utterly tragic, yet believable. Then, on the other hand, you have Voldo, who is ridiculous. Sophitia has a move where she kicks her opponent in the balls and says "Oops". As the series goes on, it reveals more fantasy elements, which mean that the story is a lot harder to follow seriously. The fourth game features Darth Vader and Yoda as playable characters, their inclusion in a historical game being extremely silly.
    • Although there is someFridge Brilliance here, as Star Wars is set A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away- it serves to reason that "a long time ago" could equate to the same timeline as the Soul series.
  • Tekken has always taken itself far less seriously than many games in the genre. Its long running nature means that characters will develop over time, sometimes getting sillier as they go along. The best example is Paul, who started off as a serious fighter before descending into joke character mode. Part of the reason for this is because of the game's makers noticing how much he looks like a combination of Ken and Guile fromStreet Fighter, which meant he would have to do something unique or parody them not to be seen as a ripoff. So naturally, his gimmick is that he is an arrogant American fighter who enters the tournament every year only to lose it nearly every time, has a special move that is a fire punch, and that his rival is a bear, Kuma. Despite this he has always been one of the best fighters in the game and simply doesn't have much bearing on the main story.
  • TheGrand Theft Auto games have some elements that can go either way. The world around the protagonists seems gritty and corrupt, but the radio stations seem reluctant to take themselves seriously, suggesting a somewhat more frivolous world.
    • AndSaints Row does away with the serious elements altogether.
  • Morrowind is a very serious game, withone very good joke plus some wackinesshere andthere.
    • Oblivion, on the other hand is quite silly at times, such as a Daedric Prince giving you a quest to cast a spell that strips everyone in a room naked, in the name of good fun. And then there's Sheogorath...
      • ...who will threaten to kill you if you fail him, in a deep voice...only to notice, one line later, that he just made a pun.
  • TheZork games vary widely: on the silly side, there's theLarge Ham Grand Inquisitor, magic words like "Hello, sailor," and everything being manufactured by a company called Frobozz (tm). On the serious side, there's also some moments of genuineNightmare Fuel, such as anEldritch Abomination in a maze, topiary stalkers, and a dark ur-grue that can possess the unwary player.
  • Sakura Taisen 2 tracks the player character's position on this scale (based mostly on dialogue choices.)
  • Metal Slug pretty much defines the silly end of the scale.
  • Metroid, or at least thePrime games, is almost always very serious. However, some of theSpace Pirates' logs are notable comic relief.

"Attempts to duplicate Samus Aran's Morph Ball ability were haltedafter the prototype crippled and killed an unacceptable number of test subjects."

  • Worms livesway down the silly end of the scale, and loves every second of it.
  • Konami's two popular shoot 'em up franchises,Gradius andTwinbee, lie far at opposite ends of the scale, with the cinematicGradius at the serious end and the cartoonishTwinbee far at the silly end.
  • Metal Wolf Chaos is way at the silly end of scale, being an affectionate parody over both the Japanese mecha anime and the American blockbuster action movies!!! Practically an Americanized,manly version ofParodius.
  • Bug!!- Definitely at the end of the silly side. You know that when the "hit an enemy" sound is a wacky cartoon sound effect. Also, Bug's silly humorous quotes when he kills an enemy or when he takes damage show it too.
  • Dead Rising manages to cover the entire scale gameplay-wise while keeping its serious story elements. At one point, you can dress yourself as a fat old lady with beard, and at another point, costumes homaging theMega Man franchise spawn up to goof up the zombie massacre (Frank as Mega Man; Chuck as Dr. Wily).
  • TheMass Effect series, which loves to hammer home the fact thatWar Is Hell, stays extremely serious most of the time, but is willing to get silly from time to time, especially when it comes toJoker andGarrus.


Web Comics

  • Sluggy Freelance is on the silly end of the spectrum roughly 95% of the time, but every so often something like "Fire And Rain" comes along and the series dives head first into seriousness. This seriousness is usuallymocked later on.
    • And yet, one of the reasons why Ian McDonald's guest Saturdays gained some hatedom seems to have been that he went over some invisible line in making the Dimension of Pain a bit more silly than usual.
      • He'd probably have gotten away with it if his strips had actually been funny.
  • TheInsecticomics has never really taken itself seriously, to the point where the fourth wall has a hinge on it, but there have been a few dramatic storylines to add an element of seriousness to the business—the current Unicron-related one being the most dramatic yet.
  • Despite being known for a solid and serious storyline,Girl Genius hits the silliness switch every second we step out of canon (eveninside canon, sometimes). Case in point: the Ferretina arc.
  • Schlock Mercenary, despite being one of the morecynical works out there, is quite silly, looking mostly like a normal gag a day strip at first glance.
  • Order of the Stick began pretty much on the silly side, slid slowly but surely towards the serious side, reached some major extremes during the Azure City battles and the split party arc, and has slid back noticeably since that story wrapped up, going back to self-aware joke-a-day strips, though still remaining within the story.
  • TheCiem Webcomic Series tries very hard to be all serious and that.But... it's made withThe Sims, so a littleNarm is inevitable.
  • Goblins: Life Through Their Eyes started as a light hearted parody poking at DnD rules. Thenall hell broke loose.
  • Gunnerkrigg Court: A mostly serious story-telling comic, that inherently includes teen drama and is sprinkled with borderlineMad Scientist wackiness and magic trickster goofiness. Entire chapters can be non-stop funny (like Chapter 12, 24, 36, 42 and 48). And then there are bonus pages.
  • The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob is generally quite silly(e.g., one of the main characters is a Muppet-like furry monster spontaneously generated from a jar of peanut butter), but that doesn't stop the characters from having emotional depth and experiencing some quite moving moments of pain, love, regret, and redemption amidst all the absurdity of the storylines.


Web Original

It's Dr. Horrible's turn
You people all have to learn
This world is going to burn!
Burn!
(Yeah it's two Rs, H-O-R-R, right...)
Burn!


Western Animation

  • Cartoons likeThe Simpsons,South Park,Futurama, andFamily Guy are, on the whole, pretty cynical, but also flippant and often deliberately silly. However, on the occasion where they're slightly serious, they're usually less cynical.
  • Contrast to theSpawn HBO animated series, which ran from 1997 to 1999. It remains dark and gritty throughout, everything is taken seriously, and about the only thing one might find laughable is some of the random nudity in the first season as well as thebarrage of profanity constantly spewed from everyone's mouths.
  • TheDCAU takes itself seriously, especially wheneverDarkseid shows up, but when the spotlight is onThe Flash then it usually crosses over to the silly side.
    • It's very much the same in the comics and their respective influences on mood are used very deliberately by authors.Santa delivering coal to Darkseid? Hysterical. Horrific things happening to the various Flashes (Heroic Sacrifice, children murdered, wife murdered)? Utterly tragic.
  • Two Batman shows spanning the scale:Batman: The Animated Series andBatman the Brave And The Bold.
    • The latter show could seesaw between light-hearted and deadly serious too. The episode where Batman finally tracks down Joe Chill - the man who killed his parents, springs to mind. He's every bit as dark and terrifying as hisBatman: The Animated Series counterpart was, even edging close toThe Dark Knight Returns territory.
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender fluctuates wildly between the two sides of the scale depending on the episode. The extent to which each side of the scale is travelled is equally extreme; the silly moments are incredibly silly (for example, ahammy playbased on the characters' exploits) and the serious moments are incredibly serious (for example, revealing that Zuko obtained his scar fromhis own father whoshot him in the face).
  • Much likeAvatar above,Danny Phantom is all over this scale. It goes from various degrees of complete silliness (the Box Ghost in general, Danny being split into two stereotypical and wackyFlanderizations of his personality) to incredibly serious (anything involving Danny'salternatefutureself for a start, Vlad's cloning, Danny becoming Public Enemy Number One). Many times, the scale fluctuates repeatedly in a single episode, where humor will be placed into an extremely serious episode.
  • Teen Titans has really serious and dark episodes like Slade's scaryMind Rape with a few episodes away from a funnyExtreme Omnivore episode. SillyA Day at the Bizarro episodes always aired RIGHT BEFORE theDarker and EdgierSeason Finales.
    • Head Injury Theater evennotes that seasons tend to go up and down the scale correspondingly. For example, Season 1 was relatively low on plot, and the episodes tended to mostly stay in the middle. Season 4 was heavy on a dark and apocalyptic plot, but the episodes not having to do with that plot were aboutControl Freak leading them through TV shows, Cyborg going back in time to fight with barbarians, the other members dressing like Robin while he trains with animals, tofu aliens, a redneck who can duplicate himself, and a bizarre re-enactment of Hansel and Gretal.
  • Invader Zim is an interesting case, basically being about ridiculously silly characters in a totalCrapsack World. Episodes tended to lean on the side of silly, but it varied; often they would mix the two, which could result in bizarre aspects of a very dark plot (such as in "Bad, Bad Rubber Piggy," whereZim uses the titular toys to mercilessly maim andalmost murderDib as a small child).
    • Zim is something of a blending of this trope andCrosses the Line Twice. A lot of what Zim does or attempts to do is actually incredibly horrific when you think about it. Try describing the show to someone in objective terms - a girl stalks a boy and invades his home, all over a portable game console; children are fitted with hall passes in the form of exploding collars; an alien goes around stealing the vital organs of schoolchildren - it comes across as sickening. The show presents the events and situations in such a cartoonish, over-the-top manner, though, that it's easy to miss the grim implications of what's really happening inside the goofy wrapper.
  • During most of the first three seasons,Daria was firmly silly. Starting with the season three finale, the Daria/Tom/JaneLove Triangle brought the show closer to serious territory, although most elements not related to it remained silly.
  • Samurai Jack could jump genres as easily as it jumped degrees of silly: moving from a slapstickAlice in Wonderland parody in one episode to outright undead horror in others.
  • The Boondocks is another "Silly yet Cynical" work. For example, "The Passion of Uncle Ruckus" is about a man with re-vitiligo[2] who hates black people founding the "Church of White Jesus," who believe, among other things, that smacking black people is good for both the slapper and "slappee." He demonstrates this on people whocome up to the altar. Meanwhile, Huey tries to break an innocent black man out of prison. Said innocent man had a ton of evidence that said he did not commit the murder, up to and including the gun license that had thefull name and other identification of the real culprit, as well as a confession lettersigned by the culprit himself.
  • My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic is already a silly show in itself, with lampshades being hung all over the place, and deliberateviolations of disbelief being made in favor ofcoolness,funniness; etc. WhenPinkie Pie enters the scene, however, the show drops any sense of seriousness and shoots off the silly end of the scale. Even the"serious"momentsintheshow are still done in tongue-in-cheek and propped up by gags and silliness by the characters themselves to keep things from getting too heavy and dramatic, including the villains (EspeciallyDiscord).

Right, stop that! That's silly!And a bit suspect, I think...

  1. ↑In the American version, this was changed to the word Belgium.
  2. ↑The opposite of whatMichael Jackson had.
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