History Main / ArtStyleDissonance

* The art style of ''VideoGame/{{Bugsnax}}'' is about as silly as it can get, with googly-eyed Bugsnax and NPCs resembling ''Sesame Street'' Muppets. The game starts out lighthearted, and while it does have moments of seriousness, the childish art style isn't outright jarring -- that is, until the point of no return near the end of the game. [[spoiler:Once it's revealed that the Bugsnax you've been feeding your friends are actually parasites that slowly assimilate their hosts, and the entire island is one giant colony of those parasites, the silly visuals don't fit quite as well. Those googly-eyed Bugsnax are a very unusual sight when they're swarming you with the intent to kill.]]

* The 2003 animated short, ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGA0YZ2UfpY Boys' Night Out]]'', is smoothly animated and the stylized and relatively simplistic art direction is strongly reminiscent of the works of [[Creator/ColumbiaCartoons UPA]]. The actual short itself, however, involves a man sneaking his underage stepson into a ''strip club''.

* ''WebAnimation/AFatherSonStory'' is a tragic, ''Series/BreakingBad''-esque series of shorts...made in Website/GoAnimate.

* ''WebAnimation/ObjectTerror'' may look like one of those corny ObjectShows you'd commonly find on Website/{{YouTube}}. But however, it's actually chock-full to the brim of extreme gore, vulgar profanity, and, even though it's not very common, ''object sex''. You heard it right there.

* Some of the worlds in ''VideoGame/FireEmblem'' come across as this. The UsefulNotes/GameBoyAdvance entries are mostly this due to the artstyle being bright and colorful as a result of the SP model not being standardized for most of the runs (not so much in 8). ''VideoGame/FireEmblemMysteryOfTheEmblem'' is interesting, despite being one of the DarkerAndEdgier titles, the SNES original used very colorful, bright and cartoonish graphics. However, the DS remake of the game used a much darker color scheme and less stylized art style.

* ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfHeroesTrailsInTheSky'' has a bright, anime-style aesthetic with chibi sprites that look like your favorite UsefulNotes/PlayStation JRPG. The protagonist is a GenkiGirl with her [[TheComicallySerious grumpy adopted brother]] helping people and making friends. Its themes match said art style at first...sure, the first game has a backstory of war and the heroine once recounts how [[spoiler:her mother died protecting her under a pile of rubble as they were bombarded with shells]], but it's only briefly described, much less shown. Then [[WhamEpisode the ending completely changes everything you were led to believe]] with the threat of darker things to follow. Come its two sequels, it delves into ''very'' dark territory for an RPG, such as betrayal, manipulating friends for the greater good, government conspiracy, brainwashing children through repressed trauma, the merciless slaughter of a community as a political scapegoat, survivor guilt, psychological dependence on addiction and the collapse of a civilization, and the hardships of two child soldiers. The worst offender is the reveal that one of the aforementioned children was driven to murderous insanity when [[spoiler:her parents sold her into prostitution at the age of 5 to cover their debts.]]

* ''WebAnimation/HazbinHotel'' looks like something straight outta Warner Bros. with its bouncy animation and cutesy designs. However, the pilot's satanic themes, black comedy, sexually suggestive content, coarse language, and nightmare fuel proves it's not exactly kid-friendly material. The same applies to the pilot's sister series ''WebAnimation/HelluvaBoss'', which is drawn in an identical art direction.