Editing Grimdark (section)

===Animation and Comics===
* '''''[[Adventure Time]]''''''s backstory.
* The first two seasons of '''''Animals of Farthing Wood''''', a animated series for kids ''infamous'' for having graphic depictions of violence and a death rate of major characters on par with Game of Thrones. Notable deaths in the series include but are not limited to: the pheasants, a couple who die at a farm in an extremely cruel manner; three baby mice who are all killed onscreen by a shrike, a bird infamous for impaling its prey; and the hedgehogs. While trying to cross a road, have to fight not to curl up into a ball... but eventually, the husband goes crazy, unable to stop himself from curling up, and his wife elects to stay with him, leading to both their deaths when a lorry runs them over.
* '''''Akame ga Kill''''': The world is run by a corrupt fascist empire, crime is rampant, nobles torture, rape, and eat commoners for fun, and the heroes are a ragtag team of assassins and terrorists who frequently get fucked over and/or die horribly as they try to bring the empire down.  
* '''''Armored Trooper Votoms''''', an old-school mech anime. [[Humanity Fuck Yeah|Mankind has been at war for so long that even the computers created to direct strategy don't know what the goal is]]. War isn't glorious either, most of the first arc is about a squad that goes rogue and raids their own side's armory to find some loot. While the mech designs aren't pretty or fancy, they are more industrial and utilitarian than many contemporaries, being repurposed exo-suits. The main character is a [[Perpetual]] done right, through a mix of natural regeneration abilities, skills and nigh supernatural luck; unlike, you know, [[Vulkan]], who was just handed something that should have probably belong to all Primarchs just so that he could make [[Horus|some]] [[Sanguinius|people]] [[Ferrus Manus|jealous]].  
[[File:Digimon_Tamers_Nope_Nope_Nope!.jpg|300px|right|thumb|[[RIP AND TEAR|It was going to be a kids show they said. It was going to be as whimsical as Pokemon they said...]]]]
* '''''Attack on Titan'''''. You cannot win, ever. And if you do, you've probably lost all your friends, who've been eaten by giant freaky Mutants, who don't even need food. Yeeeah.
* '''''Ava's Demon'''''. A planet is destroyed by Silent Scavengers, which are Tyranids and Necrons mixed together, then the main character ends up impaled when they crash land, her soul going to turn into space dust until she agrees to help the demon who's been possessing her since she was born to get revenge on TITAN, who can at best be described as the God-Emperor if he were every negative stereotype about the Imperium taken to the extreme and then some. 
* '''''[[Blame!]]'''''
* '''''[[Berserk]]'''''
* '''''Devilman'''''. Especially CRYBABY
* '''''[[Digimon: Digital Adventures|Digimon Tamers]]'''''. (Digimon as a franchise is noted to be surprisingly dark and adult for a kids anime in the 'Mon' genre, but Digimon Tamers is exceptionally depressing even by the series standard. Children attempting suicide, child abuse, attempted murder on a child, multiple on-screen deaths of major characters, torture, psychological mind rape on a young girl, PTSD on said young girl, eldritch abominations, horror and psychological horror. You think Tamers would have a happy ending? Lolnope, Tamers has a bittersweet ending in which the main kids lose their Digimon partners <u>''for ever''</u>. This is what happens when you allow a guy notorious in psychological horror anime to do a kids show. There is a reason why Tamers is considered the Neon Genesis Evangelion for kids.) Unsurprisingly, the writer has written Cthulhu Mythos short stories.
** '''''Digimon Adventure Tri''''' (aimed towards adult fans of the series) takes Tamers up a notch in just plain creepiness. Deaths, assisted suicide, infanticide of Digimon babies, psychological damage, grief-induced madness, corruption, attempted genocide, racial supremacy, racism, immense property damage with collateral damage and attempted rape from the series' former mentor and teacher becoming a creepy sexual predator molesting one of the main characters and choking another one to near death (Both female by the way). Digimon doesn't fuck around.
* '''''Dorohedoro'''''. The entire setting is a massive slum, with horrible pollution, mass poverty, and human body parts polluting the waterways. Your options for living are being a normal human, living in poverty and treated like toys, lab rats, and livestock by the various magic users. Or being a [[psyker|magic user]], and either be lynched by the terrified normies or captured by other magic users and boiled down to make drugs. And if you're a magic user, regardless of how good you are when you die you're [[Warp|guaranteed to be sent to hell to be tortured by devils for all eternity]] ([[Daemon Prince|unless you become a devil yourself]]). Or being a devil, and worry about being [[Tzeentch|screwed over by your boss for shits and giggles]] or eaten by Store, who is implied to be an angel and treats devils the same way devils treat mortals. Or being said boss, [[Necron|and dick around with people for all eternity because you're absolutely bored with existence]], can't die, and are horribly lonely since you can't form a meaningful bond with anyone else. 
* '''''Dragon Ball Z: History of Trunks'''''. Could just be expanded to Trunks' timeline in general. Dragon Ball has always been known as a sort of noble bright anime, but ''this'', damn. Everyone is either dead, dying, or living in fear of two walking machines of pure evil. And then when Trunks does actually take care of his enemies, another more powerful one shows up and just sends everything back to the way it was. Even the parody of this movie is oddly depressing.
* Most good 'Real Robot' anime/video games. Further discussion will result in [[skub]].
* '''''Elfen Lied'''''. Where the next step of the evolution of mankind is a group of schizophrenic homicidal mutant girls with invisible tentacle hands and a hair-trigger temper who will either kill you in the worst way possible or [[Genestealer|infect you with their gene to increase their numbers]].
* '''''Emergence aka Metamorphosis'''''. 177013. So retardedly bad people fan-fic'd a happier end and even threatened the artist to make it all a movie set in the end.
* '''''Everything is Fine'''''. A horror webtoon about a seemingly perfect society where everyone wears giant cat masks with cutesy expressions, have to pretend that everything is fine at all times and be perfectly moral, upstanding citizens... or watch their kids commit suicide in real-time. In other words, it's a horrific dystopia taking the image of a perfect suburb where you are made to ignore everything that is going wrong, or those you love most kill themselves horribly, then you get kicked to the curb as a broken shell of a human being, forgotten and ignored.
* '''''Full Metal Alchemist''''': At first glance, the world has a nice noblebright candy-coating, but morphs into 1984 the more you watch/read. The world starts out all fine and dandy (despite being a fascist military dictatorship (the head of state is literally called the [[nazi|Führer]])), and then it morphs into a world where the main country (Amestris) is at constant war with almost all its neighbors, commits genocides left and right, and murders anyone who finds out the dark truth.
* '''''The Goon''''' comic series by Eric Powell (because circus hillbillies, werewolves with midget hand phobias, and the Zombie Priest are the least of it all).
* '''''GANTZ'''''
* '''''[[Goblin Slayer]]'''''. Pretty much [[Berserk]] if it was set in a Dungeons and Dragons world.
* '''''Grave of the Fireflies'''''.  The plot of film is "A pair WW2 of orphans from a high ranking officer in the brutal Japanese military freeloads off on his aunt's goodwill then refuses to sell his mother's clothes and piano and sets off on his own without a plan, only for him and his sister to starve to death." The movie is taken by 99% of the viewers overseas as showing how innocent the Japanese were, but the Japanese see it as an allegory about the leaders of Japan (the older brother) disregarding the suffering of their own people (his little sister), telling them childish propaganda that they are doing really well in war, and then obliging the childish tantrums of the populace enabled by such propaganda. '''This is an allegory of Japan,''' when shit hit the fan, told people to press on and declared everyone must sacrifice their life for the one true living god that is Emperor Hirohito. 
** Even in this period millions of people did what work they could find to feed themselves despite the war time inflation brought on by the wars they started, yet the protagonist would not "deign" menial labor because he was the son of a rich, high ranking Naval officer. ''Starvation was NOT rampant in Japan, but the protagonist (Japan)'s arrogant laziness and subsequent death was an allegory of making his bed and sleeping in it.'' Note how while it wasn’t easy, they WEREN'T starving when they were under their “evil” aunt's care. 
*** For instance, the day the battleship Yamato sank in 1945, it was scheduled to serve the men aboard canned beef, canned red bean rice, and sweet bean porridge for dessert.
** This movie was based on a book by Akiyuki Nosaka who lived through WW2 as a boy. He admittedly regretted killing his toddler of a little sister by hungrily stealing food from her and dashing her head against the ground and giving her concussions when she would cry about it. The novel was to be his penance of sorts. 
*** This is still absolutely nothing compared to what the Japanese were doing to other colonies though, '''it was rather 2 million Vietnamese that were butchered to rob and feed Japanese,''' just between October of 1944 to August of 1945 alone. Not counting all the families traumatized or permanently crippled via malnutrition. Thankfully the war ended with an Allied victory that put a quick end to this, Japan surrendered because of USSR's August push through Manchuria and was poised to land on Japan proper (Japan did not surrender because of American nukes which they themselves were busy making unlike the Nazis who didn't bother. Japanese high command got casualty reports like that everyday at the end of the war, they were only afraid of being split in two like Germany did in May. Japan also sent only foreign slaves to clean up the radiation and killed them afterwards to hide their war crimes.) In Korea people were dying from intestinal bleeding from eating boiled tree barks too rough for the human body as a regular prolonged diet because anyone who touched the crops were beaten or executed, because food was robbed and taken to Japan. In Korea particular, due to proximity, the nation’s hills were rendered barren dirt hills for all the trees were cut down to make desperate turpentine oil that was going to be a makeshift fuel source for ships and planes, sent to Japan once the Southeast Asian territories and their oil fields were liberated by Allies. The dead cannot speak and the [[grimdark|living can whine louder about the troubles they faced,]] that's why so many killings happened at the end of the war to hide war crimes.
*** Director Takahata Isao himself said this is '''NOT an anti-war anime,''' but an allegory of idealists bringing people death. Also note he is a rare kind in modern Japan who accuses the Japanese government for all the sins of WW2, and used to fight the riot police who were quelling anti-imperialists like him. Note that Japan is a place where saying Japan was at fault can get one shot dead. Mayor Motoshima of Nagasaki in 1990 got shot in the heart for accusing his government of starting the wars that got his city nuked. Mayor Itoh got shot in the heart for saying the same in 2007. There's just no way ordinary criminals could get their hands on a gun in a country with really tight gun control laws, [[Assassin|unless...]]
* '''''[[Hellsing]]'''''... just all of Hellsing... Though it can easily slide into grimderp. (A little girl seeing her mother killed while hiding in a closet? Yeah, that's intense. In a moment of desperation, shove a rod into the guy's eyeball, only for him to not be mortally wounded? That's pretty unfortunate. Said guy deciding to fuck the corpse as his smashed eyeball hangs from the socket? That's just silly.)
**'''''Drifters''''', by the same author. The protagonists are a bunch of [[murderhobo|kill-happy murderhoboes]] drawn from various psychos from all throughout history into [[Isekai|a generic fantasy world]] who have decided to [[Great Crusade|save the world by conquering it, one country at a time]]. One of the major powers of the setting turns out to have been founded by ''Adolph friggin' Hitler''. Even Joan of Arc, who IRL was noted for being a pacifist, is warped into a bloodthirsty psycho. The [[BBEG]], who wants to kill all humans (and is noted to be a step up from his subordinates, who want to kill [[Necron|everything]]) is all but outright stated to be ''Jesus''.
* '''''Hunter x Hunter'''''. What if 40k was a Shonen manga?
* The '''Kerberos''' trilogy, but special mentions to '''Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade'''. A series of films that basically gave birth to Killzone singlehandedly (Seriously, look at the comparisons between the Helghast and the film's Protect Gear, [[Original character, do not steal|it is ''blatant'']]). Set in an alternate-history where Japan was occupied by Germany rather than America at the end of WW2. In Jin-Roh, the nation is constantly in social turmoil with left-wing communist terrorist guerillas using children as bomb couriers against two police force of Japan: the normal-looking police force (Backed by the Japanese KGB/CIA hybrid) and the <u>'''ORIGINAL'''</u> Helghasts called the Kerberos Panzer Cops. Jin-Roh is a political thriller film that largely talks about the problems of the "Good guy, bad guy" dichotomy and how juvenile it is for stories to portray these things in real life. All of the films have a downer ending, so if you are looking for a happy ending, you're gonna get dissapointed. Despite what [[/pol/|some people]] [[SJW|may argue,]] the Kerberos trilogy is a condemnation of all extremist ideas and actions. Its a Mamoru Oshii film of Ghost in the Shell fame, what do you fucking expect.
*'''''The Incredible Hulk'''''. Most Marvel heroes have a network of friends they can rely on, Hulk does not. Most Marvel heroes can say they are not reguarly hunted down by the military, Hulk does not. Most Marvel heroes are accepted enough in polite society that they can buy supplies and keep down a job, Hulk does not. Most Marvel heroes have the bliss of not knowing what it's like to have their father murder their mother in front of them as a child and angrily demand to lie in court what happened, Hulk does not. Did we mention he was slapped by his dad as a newborn? Most Marvel heroes are unaware how painful it is to have their head torn off and have their body explode, Hulk does not. Most Marvel heroes are unaware of what it's like to lose <s>three</s> (two, Betty eventually came back as Red She Hulk) love interests by violent deaths, Hulk does not. Most Marvel heroes that die were mourned by the public, not for Hulk. Most Marvel heroes are not pawns of Satan forced to be pushed back into life thus unable to rest in peace, Hulk does not. No wonder Hulk wants to be left alone since '62.
* '''''Magical Girl Site'''''. So grimdark it makes Meguca look Noblebright. So much fucking dread, suicide, blood, and sexual assault.
* '''''Made in Abyss'''''. A death world disguised as a cute loli adventure featuring on-screen death and mutilation, child labor, and philosophical exploration of just how far humanity can go before completely losing it.
* '''''Muv-Luv''''' Often compared to 40k in how bleak and brutal the series is.
* '''''Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind'''''. A manga/anime film made by Hayao Miyazaki, yes you heard us right. The man who was the main founder of Studio Ghibli and gave us childhood gems such as Totoro, Spirited Away and Ponyo, gave us a Science-Fantasy Epic of the brutality of war. Nausicaa, especially the manga, does not shy away from human slavery, biological WMDS, genocides, nuclear holocaust, a gratuitous amount of inferred and overt infanticides, inquisitorial purging and the likes. 
* '''''Neon Genesis Evangelion''''' (Especially End).
* '''''Now and Then, Here and There'''''. The setting takes place in an alternate world, ''10 billion years'' into the future where the [[Xeelee Sequence|sun is about to go into a red giant]] and whatever scraps of humanity are fighting each other for the last remaining sources of water. Expect a lot of child soldiers, child abuse, child torture, child rape and ethnic cleansing to a scarily realistic degree. This is a post-post-apocalyptic world that is designed to break the viewers. It is an anime darker than 40k despite the 'happy' ending due the sheer levels of nihilism and unforgiving horrors of human depravity. 
* '''''[[Isekai|Re:Zero]]'''''
* '''''The Promised Neverland'''''. An anime/manga about a bunch of cute children raised in a nice orphanage, that is really a farm set up by demons who raise the children as food. A handful girls get to survive until adulthood by getting selected to act as mothers to children, but they are still prisoners who can't leave the farm. If they are unlucky they will have to watch over their own children until the day they are killed.
** The world outside the farms is even worse. A thousand years ago the world was divided between humans and demons. Demons used to hunt humans until the two sides made a truce where the world was divided in two halves to keep peace and humans were handed over to the demons to farm as food and the wealthy family of humans who made the deal are out to kill the escaped children to uphold it. Demons actually need to eat humans or they degenerate into mindless animals that attack everything in sight, except of the demon nobility thanks to them consuming blood that removed the need. And they still insist on hoarding the best quality human meat for themselves while leaving the commoners to feed on meat from humans raised on factory farms where the humans are force fed until they die. 
* '''''Puella Magi Madoka Magica'''''. Being Meguca is suffering.
* '''''Uzumaki'''''. Basically a Lovecraftian horror manga where a seaside town gets [[rape]]d by spirals. Not as weird as it sounds. Or maybe it is as weird as it sounds but not as bad. Also has enough body horror to put most [[Chaos Spawn]] to shame.
** Come to think of it, pretty much anything by [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junji_Ito Junji Ito.] Except ''Junji Ito's Cat Diary: Yon & Mu''.
* '''''Wanted''''': The villains won the war against the heroes and completely erased them from reality. Crime is not only rampant but is actually part of the law, enforced by the Fraternity (Justice League for bad guys), and the only way to even have the closest thing to a 'safe and happy life' is by murdering your next door neighbor out of paranoia. Furthermore, as the world is cut up into sections and ruled by different supervillains, you will most likely be born in a country ruled by either a psychotic bastard who shoots children for shits and giggles, a Lex Luthor archetype who hungers for more unrestrained power, a literal Nazi from the future who wants another Holocaust, or a megalomaniac and sociopathic Chinese emperor who makes Mao Zedong like a chump or a completely immortal 'President-for-Life' Mugabe expy that will probably rule for eternity.