Lighter And Softer / Other Media

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• In 2013, EB Australia redesigned their mascot Buck the Bunny. He was originally a crude, adult-aimed mascot who only looked cute and cuddly. His second design is genuinely cutesy and has a Tuft of Head Fur. He doesn't have any of the adult humour the 2009 ads had.
• "American Honda Presents DC Comics Supergirl": The first issue of this Public Service Anouncement about seat belt safety features natural disasters, deaths, and a young man falling into a coma due to a car crash caused by a drunk driver. The second issue is more comedic, with Supergirl preventing people from getting hurt or killed and catching every reckless driver before they can cause more trouble.

Arts

• The Swing: The painting is the poster child of the Rococo Movement, a later part of the Baroque Movement that shifted its focus to the leisure time of the French Aristocracy and a Romantic appeal to nature.

Asian Animation

• The Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf spin-off show Pleasant Goat Fun Class, compared to the main show. Everyone is cuter and kinder, they teach the viewer about the world, and the spin-off is aimed at preschoolers.

Comic Strips

• Nils Egerbrandt's run of 91:an Karlsson features noticeably "nicer" comedy than the original author's, downplaying the characters' negative traits and making 91 himself less of a Butt-Monkey.
• FoxTrot:
  • Parodied at the end of a 1997 storyline where Paige receives an evaluation copy of the upcoming sequel to Jason's favorite computer game:
    Jason: What's that?
    Paige: It's a letter from the President of Blizzerbund Software.
    Jason: No way! What's it say? What's it say?
    Paige: (reading letter) "Dear Ms. Fox, thank you for your evaluation of our Riviablo CD-ROM beta. Per your suggestions, the final version of the game will have less violence, cuter monsters, and significantly easier puzzles. P.S. Thanks especially for the great idea to change the game's title to Happy Town."
    (A few seconds later)
    Peter: I thought they sent you a form letter.
    Paige: Oops. You're right. I must've misread it.
    Andy: (offscreen) Jason, will you stop bawling long enough to tell me what's wrong?!
  • Also, a later storyline has Andy forcing Peter and Jason to play Mothers Against Gory Games-approved versions of popular video games (such as Nice City) in an attempt to make them stop playing video games altogether.
• Bucky from Get Fuzzy had an idea to remake famous films in this vein.

Fairy Tales

• The original fairy tales collected by The Brothers Grimm were quite grim indeed. The versions published and told to children today are much lighter and less gory than the originals. This trope was played with, as the Grimm Brothers simply collected tales already in existence. Some were lightened ("Little Red Riding Hood"), some were darkened ("Cinderella"). The Charles Perrault version of "Cinderella", which preceded the Grimm version by nearly 100 years, was adapted by Disney.
• Charles Perrault's "Sleeping Beauty" (properly titled "The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood") was based on the earlier tale "Sun, Moon, and Talia". Sun, Moon, and Talia is a dark story infamous for the princess being raped by a king who is cheating on his wife, who tries to eat the resulting children. Perrault's "Sleeping Beauty" is much cleaner, with the princess getting a proper Prince Charming to rescue her from her enchanted slumber, the couple's children being born after they get married, and the evil wife is replaced by an ogre mother-in-law. It's still darker than most modern versions, though.

Game Books

• Fighting Fantasy books that are written through Scholastic, are aimed at a younger audience. As such there's less Dark Fantasy elements and more potty humour. The artwork is also far more cartoony and less gritty (think The Last Kids on Earth rather than Games Workshop)..

Pinball

• Pro Pinball: Big Race USA replaces the dark and gritty themes of the first two games in the Pro Pinball series for a brighter, cartoony cross-country car race.
• Stern Pinball's Shrek is a rethemed version of Family Guy, using the same ruleset and playfield, but with different artwork, sound effects, and family-appropriate jokes.
• Data East Pinball's Tales from the Crypt is Lighter and Softer compared to the HBO series it is based on.
• Monster Bash adopted a Lighter and Softer treatment of the iconic Universal monsters because the design team felt they weren't scary enough in The '90s for a straight treatment.

Poetry

• Sir Orfeo, a Medieval poem by an unknown author (and translated by J. R. R. Tolkien) is a much lighter retelling/reimagining of the story of Orpheus. His wife is simply kidnapped by The Fair Folk rather than dying, and, unlike in the source material, our hero is successful in rescuing her and bringing her back home.

Theatre

• Wicked became a kid-friendly preteen-girl-targeted musical, in sharp contrast to the rape and murder filled original book.
• The Phantom of the Opera, although it still retains some of the darker themes of the original novel, is ultimately far less tragic and less scary than the original novel, which was written more as a crime horror thriller. The Phantom in particular is a sensual Tragic Villain, rather than a terrifying Psychotic Manchild monster like the novel. Also his relationship with the heroine Christine is relatively consensual, unlike the novel where there was nothing romantic about Christine’s terror of him and near the end she actually tries killing herself when forced into marrying him.
• Coppélia is a very light-hearted ballet loosely based on E. T. A. Hoffmann The Sandman (1816), which was a tragic horror story.
• Godspell, as compared to the actual gospels...until the crucifixion.
• Les Misérables while still incredibly dark, is still this compared the original novel. Valjean’s turn to goodness is much shorter and he doesn’t steal from a child, Javert doesn’t take sadistic glee in punishing people, the Thénardiers (while still deeply unpleasant) are the comic relief and Éponine is The Woobie pure and simple rather than a Yandere who tricks Marius into joining the Barricade in an attempt to be Together in Death with him. The most glaring example is Fantine’s death, in the novel she literally dies of shock and grief when Javert cruelly reveals Valjean (the man who promised to look after her daughter Cosette) is a convict who’s going back to prison. This was mercifully changed in the musical as Fantine passes away peacefully after Valjean makes his Declaration of Protection for Cosette, only then does Javert appear to arrest Valjean.
• The opera of Hansel and Gretel, as compared to the original fairy-tale. Instead of being abandoned in the forest by their Wicked Stepmother and weak-willed father to have two less mouths to feed, Hansel and Gretel are just sent there to pick berries by their angry mother after they accidentally make her spill the milk she needed to cook dinner, then accidentally get lost. The Witch is also mostly Played for Laughs, she turns children into gingerbread instead of actually eating their flesh, gets turned into gingerbread herself instead of burning to death, and afterwards, all her past child victims come back to life.
• King Lear's initial ending was originally so bleak and depressing for audiences, that an alternate Bittersweet Ending was used for centuries. In that ending, Cordelia and Lear survive; with the former marrying Edgar. Although this does make Edmund more villainous, since this lacks his last-minute repenting on his deathbed to try and save Cordelia, it has a lower body count than the original. After the horrors of World War II, the original tragic ending made a comeback.

Toys

• LEGO's Hero Factory, when compared to its predecessor BIONICLE. Bionicle had plenty of Nightmare Fuel and some death, while Hero Factory has a more comedic feel and was made to appeal to little kids, despite retaining some bizarre, darker remnants of how the series was originally envisioned. This is one of the main reasons fans have bashed it. The same applied to the more lighthearted and very short-lived Continuity Reboot, BIONICLE (2015).
• My First Cthulhu
• Transformers: BotBots is a silly and lighthearted take on the Transformers brand, swapping out the interplanetary wars and fighting with mischief-making robots with goofy alternate modes.
• No matter which character ends up getting their own Nendoroid figurine, they'll always be adorable and fun-sized. Even resilient, scowling badasses aren't exempt from this, such as Solid Snake, Kratos, Soldier 76, and Jotaro Kujo. Meanwhile, Ms. Fanservice characters like Harley Quinn and Mai Shiranui will have their sexiness toned down in favor of the cuteness that Nendoroids are known for.

Web Original

• The SCP Foundation has a list of Anomalous Items, Events and Locations that are too boring or harmless to have SCP status, with many of the events never repeating again or the items getting incinerated. It's also filled with way more snarky quips from the Foundation personnel than a standard SCP log.
  • The Foundation also has Sloth's Pit, AKA "Sloth Spit", a little town in Wisconsin where the people are strange, the landscape is weirder, and the anomalies just generally tend to hang around instead of being secured in laboratories. Compared to the other sites, Sloth's Pit has a practically nonexistent death toll, and Foundation staff from other sites who wind up there via transfer are incredibly creeped out.
  • The setting as a whole qualifies as the website started out as a place to write horror before gradually expanding into more general weird fiction and Urban Fantasy.
• In The Kindness of Devils, Under The Cold Moon was essentially a Wham Episode for the whole series and consisted of two vile, cannibalistic villains who tried to destroy the entire world. The next chronological story, And to All a Good Night, is about the heroes trying to save Christmas, and the villain is much less disturbing and deplorable.
• Legatum opened with Smirvlak's Stone, a relatively lighthearted story that quickly ended with multiple shocking revelations and Wham Episodes that culminated in two of the three lead characters dying, and the sole survivor revealed to be the leader of an Apocalypse Cult. The series' next story, The Green Wanderer, has almost no deaths, No Antagonist, and is just about an orc Walking the Earth. The third story, Help Not Wanted, took a darkly comical approach to the series and ended on a very optimistic note.
• Neopets was made by, and for college kids when it first started. The early plots all were filled with black comedy, where the staff members (fictionally) were killed off one by one (the players got to vote on who died). The site was made kid friendly after two years, but the old pages from early plots still exist, which are all Nightmare Fuel.
• This trope is parodied in Saturday Morning Watchmen, with an attempt to make Watchmen lighter and softer. It's a parody of the animated cartoon versions of films geared towards adult audiences. In particular, Rorschach describes himself as "nutty" (he's relegated to comic relief) and the Comedian... has a crush on Silk Spectre, in addition to him and the two dogs Rorschach cut up being alive and well.
• And, there's the Deviantart comic G-Rated Watchmen. Be sure to read the rest of the chapters as well!
• After the Incarnates arc in We Are Our Avatars, which is chockfull of Grimdark, many of the Arcs started to get lighter, although many exceptions have applied.
• Tobuscus started out his vlogging career with a very gritty, profanity-laced style, clearly going for a "bad boy" vibe. Around 2010, however, his popularity started to really grow, his sponsorships took off, and his teenage niece, Ciara, started appearing in his videos — and suddenly the grittiness was gone, replaced by a Toby who never swears, pretends to be oblivious to things like sex and alcohol, and is almost entirely comedic. His niece aside, this was almost certainly a calculated career move to broaden his appeal, although there are still occasional comments on his videos expressing longing for the "old Toby".
• Hardcore Gaming 101 comments on this when talking about Dynamite Dux:
  Belt-scrolling beat-em-ups are typically serious business. The likes of Double Dragon, Final Fight, Golden Axe, Streets of Rage and numerous others are all dark and gritty rampages of violence through decaying landscapes. Even the relatively goofy Kunio games involve street gangs. And yet there are a few that took things in a different direction, one of the first being Sega's Dynamite Dux (sometimes spelled Dynamite Düx, with an umlaut over the 'u' for no discernable reason). To make an analogy, Dynamite Dux is to Double Dragon as Twinbee is to Xevious.
• While still retaining the serious tone and a lot of the dark aspects of DC Comics, DC: United We Stand aims to be this. For example, a lot of the darker events (such as Identity Crisis (2004) and War Games) have been retconned in some way, big or small, to achieve this.
• Many YouTube Poop authors who indulge in Vulgar Humor will do at least one clean poop. For example, cs188 has "Ballmer Sells Clean Windows" and "The Apocalypse Bulb", and ChickenPika has "Rosen of the Valley of the Windmills". Relatedly, poopers who generally keep their material family-friendly, such as DaThings, can be seen as this to the YTP genre as a whole.
• RWBY Chibi: A spin-off comedy from the original RWBY. When the main show's Volume 3 set-up the main plot line by shifting the format from a slice-of-life to a dangerous adventure as the young heroes get sucked into the world's Secret War, Chibi was introduced to focus on light-hearted, slice-of-life comedy.
• Tails of the Bounty Hunter is nowhere near as dreary as Tails of Fame, its previous story. This is largely because the main character is an Anti-Hero, not a Villain Protagonist, and because there's much more Black Comedy involved, whereas Tails of Fame took a more serious and cynical approach.
• The Twitter parody account @ffvii_blazed goes out of its way to avoid the original game's horror themes and violence. This even goes for small moments that no-one would have noticed if the parody had just skipped completely - for instance, at a point where the original game had Cloud punch Aeris while under the influence of Sephiroth's mind control, the parody has Aeris thank Cloud for not punching her. Most fights are resolved by having Cloud talk his way out of fighting people by declaring himself a pacifist or making friends with them - Sephiroth's murder of Aeris is resolved by giving him weed, and she survives. The parody contains a lot more drugs than the original, but even so the stoner heroes will stop every now and again to deliver An Aesop about how they don't do 'real' drugs, and the characters associated with drugs that aren't weed are invariably villains. (The one exception is Cloud's use of DMT to defeat Sephiroth).
• Warhammer Idol Month: Warhammer 40,000 meets Idol Singers.
• The My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic series Scootertrix the Abridged is this to the many other MLP Abridged Series out there, that get a lot of humor out of reinterpreting the mane six as sociopaths, and/or turning Equestria into a technicolor evil empire. Here, the mane six are flawed but still clearly trying to do the right thing, and Equestria is beset by external dangers but still worth defending.
• The Music Video Show has its third season being this, with the jokes being on par with lightness of the debut season. It's also noticeable due to it being sandwiched between a previously dark season and followed by seasons four through seven.
  • Season eight (and so far, nine) is this compared to season seven. It makes sense considering season eight was written after a year long Creator Breakdown Season nine has only started but, so far, it's in this trope.
• DC Super Hero Girls combines this with Younger and Hipper to create a web series featuring younger incarnations of the classic superheroines and villainesses.
• DEATH BATTLE! is a show about figuring out who wins Cool vs. Awesome matchups. As you might expect, it can get pretty violent at times. However, some episodes are more lighthearted than others:
  • Episodes featuring My Little Pony characters tend to be much less violent. In "Starscream VS Rainbow Dash", Rainbow Dash doesn't take any hits during the whole fight, while Starscream, as a robot, doesn't bleed. "Deadpool VS Pinkie Pie" is a Bizarro Episode where they decide to not even fight each other at all. "Raven VS Twilight Sparkle" is a bit more violent than the previous ones, but is still entirely gore-free, with an Ambiguous Ending that doesn't explicitly say that the loser died.
  • "Yoda VS King Mickey" is also very lighthearted. There's no blood or gore, the two combatants treat each other with respect, the finishing blow causes a big, flashy light effect that hides Yoda's death so we never see his dead body, and in the end, Yoda is shown surviving as a Force ghost (and doesn't sound that upset about it).
• Pretending to Be People is primarily focused on Horror Comedy and Cruel and Unusual Death. It also sports an episode discussing the antics of the Contention Creek Critter Coalition, a group of adorable animals who team up to save Bean, Keith Vigna's dog. Only one person dies horribly in this arc!
• Though its episodes are not particularly dark, most of the subject matter covered by Fascinating Horror involves various types of disasters with high body counts and/or numerous severe injuries. However, the episode about the US Airways Flight 1549 incident, better known as "The Miracle on the Hudson," involves no human deaths and only five serious injuries.
• Better With Bob? started out discussing some very hard-hitting topics in older films - for one the infamous Brooke Shields nude scene in Pretty Baby and whether I Spit on Your Grave was actually exploitative. Many videos also discussed how certain films tackled issues like race and sexuality before the mainstream. In the 2020s, the discussions shifted to general film and television appreciation - including a series called 'Twelve Minutes of Gushing' (about why a certain work was good) and videos with hyperbolic titles like "Why Charmed (1998) Was The Greatest" or "How Iconic Was Sabrina the Teenage Witch?"
• Since The Hire is a Genre Roulette Anthology Series where the tone and genre of an episode depends heavily on whichever director is behind the camera, there are naturally some episodes that are lighter than others, but most installments in the series are dramas. However, there are two episodes that are outright comedies: "Star", a lighthearted slapstick comedy where the Driver gets hired to teach an egotistical, abusive pop star a lesson on humility, which is by far the most low-stakes job he's ever been hired to do, and "Beat the Devil", an audacious Out-of-Genre Experience where the Driver has to beat the Devil in a race in exchange for James Brown's soul (yes, really). For extra points, "Star" is right in between two of the series' darkest and most heartbreaking installments.

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