Dark Reprise

"It's the same old song, but with a different meaning since you've been gone."

— Four Tops, "It's the Same Old Song"

A song starts in sunshine, but has a dark counterpart.

There are two main forms; the first is the sarcastic echo, the second is the dark reprise. This trope is favoured by the writers of musicals.

The sarcastic echo is a duet, but one party is oblivious to this fact. The main singer opens with a happy, even sappy verse. But there is an onlooking character mocking the first from the wings.

The other form is the dark reprise. Early in the show, we get a joyous song. In a later act, sadder and wiser, those same lyrics or melody are ironic and sad. Sometimes the reprise alters the original lyrics; sometimes they are the same, only sung more slowly and mournfully. In the case of a theme's reprise, the piece may have no lyrics at all. The "dark" part may even be literal, with the reprise using dimmer lighting.

The dark reprise is a subtrope of Ironic Echo, and the Evil Twin of Triumphant Reprise. Of course, the Dark Reprise and Triumphant Reprise can easily overlap if they happen to be the reprise of the Villain Song. In this case, the reprise comes as the villain stands triumphant (at least for now), which is good news for him, but bad news for everyone else. ^note Alternatively, the Dark Reprise can turn out to be bad news for the villain, when it's a reprise of the Villain Song. Whether or not the villain's demise makes things better for everyone else tends to vary.

Compare Dual-Meaning Chorus, more common in country music, where a song's chorus is interpreted differently with each iteration (and the song only plays once).

Can overlap with Lyrical Dissonance, although a dark reprise tends to smooth this over with a more somber arrangement. Note that this can also apply to moments that don't use music. See also Soundtrack Dissonance, Harsher in Hindsight, and Descent into Darkness Song.

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Example subpages:

• Animated Films
• Anime
• Live-Action Films
• Live-Action TV
• Music
• Theatre
• Video Games
• Western Animation

Other examples:

Dark Reprise

Advertising

• This Lincoln Project ad begins with Donald Trump boarding Marine One as the Jurassic Park theme plays...and then cuts to a disheveled-looking Trump returning from his disappointing June 2020 Tulsa rally to a horribly off-key harmonica version of the Jurassic Park theme.

Audio Plays

• Doctor Who and the Pirates (one of the audio stories) has Evelyn Smythe and Red Jasper claiming to be a Pirate Queen and King respectively, filking a Gilbert and Sullivan song while Evelyn (a sixty-something history lecturer) attempted to intimidate a pirate crew. Red Jasper sings it again shortly afterwards, celebrating his absolute authority after forcing a crewman to eat his own tongue. The enthusiastic pirate chorus is... somewhat less enthusiastic.

Fan Works

• A supposedly Deleted Scene from the fanfiction The Frozen Heart's Star gives us a much sadder and gloomier version of the originally upbeat and energetic Kirby: Right Back at Ya! English theme song, giving us the symbolization that Kirby had always been saving the day... until he was gone and all hope for Dream Land seems to be lost. Even the lyrics became melancholic, because rest assured that by looking at some of the lyrics, you will never look at that theme song the same way again.
  Kirby, Kirby, Kirby...
  He was the name we know...
  Kirby, Kirby, Kirby...
  He was the star of the show...
  He was more than you think, he had maximum pink...
  Kirby, Kirby, Kirby was the one...
  
• Used in Gantz Abridged, of all places. In the final episode, when Kurono realizes that everyone else has died, a sad-sounding rendition of the Rickroll (Gantz's theme) plays in the background.
• Draco's solo in "Back To Hogwarts" from A Very Potter Musical. It switches from the happy major of everyone else's solos to a high minor, and it's about his dream of leaving Hogwarts, taking over the world, forcing everyone to submit to him, and getting Harry out of his way. Of course, since it's a parody musical, it's played for comedy:
  ...and then I'll be the one who is totally awesome!
• A meta version, in LazyTown, the memetic Villain Song known as "We Are Number One" has been met with people on the Internet turning it into a Lonely Piano Piece after Stefan Karl Stephenson's death.
• Perfect Cell's Villain Song in Dragon Ball Z Abridged initially has him being a Large Ham and introducing himself upon absorbing Android 18, but takes a sinister turn when he sings it after he survives a suicidal attack which take out King Kai's planet (killing its residents and Goku) and, after regaining his Perfect form, returns to Earth, killing Trunks to demonstrate what he means when he says "F is for how fucked you are".
• In the Star Trek: The Original Series fanfic Insontis, "Catch a Falling Star and Put it In Your Pocket" initially appears when Spock and kid!Kirk bond over having heard it from their mothers as children. When Spock is unconscious, McCoy walks in on Kirk trying to sing it to him.

Literature

• In The Lord of the Rings, Bilbo and Frodo sing almost the same song as they leave the Shire. A single adjective is the difference between Bilbo's song of adventure and Frodo's complaint the arduousness of his task.
  (Bilbo's version) Now far ahead the Road has gone
  And I must follow, if I can
  Pursuing it with eager feet...
  (Frodo's version)
  Pursuing it with weary feet...
• Children's story Superworm, by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler of Gruffalo fame, invokes this of all things with a reprise of the "Superworm is super-long, Superworm is super-strong" theme after Superworm's capture.
  • Crow: Superworm is good to eat! Superworm's a special treat!
• In A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Francie is horrified to hear her father come home singing the last verse of "Molly Malone" ("She died of a fever, and no one could save her..."), a verse he otherwise never sang. He dies a few weeks later.
• Bast's cheerful "Elderberry" counting rhyme from the prologue of The Wise Man's Fear gets a much darker repetition at the end, where he uses it first to decide what implement to use on two bandits who hurt Kvothe, and then which of them to kill first.
  Barrel. Barley.
  Stone and stave.
  Wind and water.
  Misbehave.

Other

• The BBC musical education series Time and Tune did this in its Viking themed set Sea Thunder. The titular song is a Dark Reprise of the first song "Row, Row". Both have the exact same melody but wildly different lyrics. "Row, Row" is a robust and triumphant song about Vikings celebrating their high seas conquests, while "Sea Thunder" is an ominous song about their ship being caught in a storm and the Vikings panicking as their ship sinks.

Pinball

• Zen Studios' virtual pinball adaptation of the Marvel character Venom features a multiball mode based on Spider-Man's first experience wearing a black suit contaminated with the alien symbiote responsible for Venom's creation. Given that the black suit clearly taps into Spider-Man's dark side, the music for that mode can be described as a darker version of the theme music used for Zen Studios' pinball adaptation of Spider-Man.

Pro Wrestling

• The old entrance music of Colin & Jimmy Olsen in Chikara 06-07 was Britney Spears' 'Toxic', along with the intro from Full House. After Colin left for greener pastures, came back, and subsequently had a Face–Heel Turn, he used A Static Lullaby's cover of Toxic - the alternative metal/screamo music emphasising that he'd changed about as much as his brother had.
• This is the song of Dashing Cody Rhodes, arrogant and handsome jerk extraordinaire. Now this is the theme he took when his face got busted and he had to wear a mask because of how "ugly" he thought he was.
• Eddie Guerrero was well-known as the crafty, resourceful Lovable Rogue babyface of Smackdown between 2003 and early 2005, and his theme stated as such. After his Face–Heel Turn on Rey Mysterio, his theme would be slower and more menacing.
• Neville during his heroic cape-wearing days would come out to "Break Orbit", a fast-paced electronic rock track. After his Face–Heel Turn and his transformation into the ruthless "King of the Cruiserweights", his theme became slower and gained a more menacing feel.
• The 2018 "Ultimate Deletion" match between Bray Wyatt and "Woken" Matt Hardy had two cases of Dark Reprises for Bray:
  • When he first started out in the WWE, Wyatt would often serenade the fans with a creepy version of "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands." At the climax of the Ultimate Deletion match, Señor Benjamin would toss an inflatable globe at Wyatt, then sing the song at Bray with Brother Nero, distracting Wyatt long enough for Matt to pick up the victory.
  • The week following the match, when Señor Benjamin found Bray's trademark lantern as the only trace of him left, a somber piano version of Wyatt's entrance theme "Live in Fear" played as Matt was giving the lantern to his son as a gift.
• Shinsuke Nakamura's original entrance theme in WWE (both in NXT and on the main roster) was "The Rising Sun", a triumphant, soaring theme. After losing to AJ Styles at WrestleMania 35 and subsequently making a Face–Heel Turn, he switched to a new theme, "Shadows of the Setting Sun", which combines the melody of "The Rising Sun" with an aggressive electric guitar and a Boastful Rap in Japanese.
• While Bray Wyatt was already a Darker and Edgier character than most of WWE's roster, upon his return in April of 2019, Wyatt cranked this up. Becoming a Depraved Kids' Show Host was only the tip of the iceberg, as it was revealed that he could now harness and control his inner darkness, becoming something far worse than even the old Bray. That being is the Monster Clown known as "The Fiend." Appropriately enough, to match this even darker character, Wyatt received a new theme: "Let Me In", a metal remix of his old theme, "Broken Out in Love/Live in Fear."
• When Drew McIntyre returned to NXT, he debuted a new theme song "Gallantry", which is a slow-paced rock song with the traditional Scottish bagpipes...however, upon turning heel on the main roster, he gained a more traditional remix with more drums and less guitars with emphasis on the bagpipes.
• After Sasha Banks turned heel in early 2019, her original theme "Sky's The Limit" gains a remix with darker brass and darker lyrics rapped by Snoop Dogg, one of which describes her heel attitude:
  She's a Legit Boss, but y'all knew that
  The Big Boss Dogg, yeah I had to do that
  That's my family and we so G
  Bow down to the new Champ of WWE
• After Baron Corbin got dethroned from his position as King of the Ring, he started becoming broke and his once rocking theme "I Bring the Darkness (End of Days)" gets a darker and sadder arrangement simply, yet tentatively, titled "Darkness".
• When Anna Jay turned heel and joined the Dark Order, her theme "Crawl" got a mostly instrumental trap remix called "Queen Slayer". It later got inverted when Anna Jay turned face with the rest of the Dark Order after Brodie Lee's passing.
• After Finn Balor joined The Judgement Day and kicked (former) leader Edge out, each (remaining) member received a darker arrangement of their individual themes. Once Dominik Mysterio joined the group, he also received a darker arrangement of his theme as well.
• As a face, "Stone Cold" Steve Austin enters the ring to "I Won't Do What You Tell Me". As a heel, Stone Cold would enter the ring to Disturbed's pitched down and slightly slower metal remix of said theme, titled "Glass Shatters".

Puppet Shows

• Sesame Street:
  • The special Elmo Saves Christmas has three in a row:
    • Elmo and Lightning sing a melancholic reprise of "Every Day Can't Be Christmas" as Elmo finally realizes having Christmas Every Day is a horrendous decision, resulting in Sesame Street becoming unhappy.
    • Elmo and Lightning's first glimpses of Sesame Street in the Bad Future, is accompanied by a mournful and lustful instrumental version of the theme song.
    • When the carolers have lost their voices, this results in an out-of-key variation of the special's opening number, "It's Christmas Again".
  • In the episode "The Good Bird's Club", Big Bird is bullied and rejected by a trio of birds who mock him over his appearance; this causes his initially excitable "I Am Great!" Song to gradually degenerate into uncertainty until finally becoming straight-up sad and heartbroken over himself.
  • Episode 4525, "Grover Does it All" features the eponymous very energetic and upbeat song, where Grover sings about he can do several different things at the same time. The song has 2 reprises just as peppy as the first renditions, before a depressed and defeated Grover sings "Grover Just Can't Do It All".

Radio

• American Country Countdown: The 1995-1998 music cue package had two somber-sounding cues, one to open and the other to lead to a commercial. Usually, these were used for ballads, but a few times they were used before song with a sad or somber theme.
• The Steve Wright afternoon show on BBC Radio Two, has a jaunty opening theme. The closing theme is a Dark Reprise, played at the end of the show in slower tempo on French horns, acting as a very cheesy "The show is over, goodbye, loyal fans, see you tomorrow" theme.

Theatre

• In Cirque du Soleil's Amaluna, the main melody from "Enchanted Reunion", the Aerial Poles/Peacock Dance theme, gets a dark reprise in "Creature of Light", the Chinese pole act theme. In the former, the Peacock Goddess attempts to distract Romeo from pursuing Miranda, in the latter, now dressed in black, she abducts Miranda, beckoning him to climb up the pole after her. Preceding that, the Thousand Arms music (also part of "Creature of Light") reprises the non-soundtrack subdued section of "Elma Om Mi Lize" (Meteors). Conversely, the villain's juggling act song, "Mutation", is reprised this way when the Valkyries capture him. Subverted by the slow Hawaiian guitar reprise of "O Ma Ley" played when Romeo and Miranda fall in love. It's not on the soundtrack, so many people forget its existence.

Theme Parks

• If you've ever rode on the Disneyland ride, Splash Mountain (based on the movie, Song of the South) the annoyingly addictive song "Laughing Place" becomes more sinister when the ride passes by the two sinister, animatronic crows anxiously waiting for Brer Rabbit's death (and, in the Disneyland Anaheim version, before that scene, the dark reprise starts earlier with two Mother characters exclusive to that version of the ride singing mournfully about Brer Rabbit being caught facing certain death warning their children to not go to the laughing place) and when it climbs up the last and highest hill in the cave before descending below.

Visual Novels

• Ace Attorney:
  • The Steel Samurai is an exciting children's action show. Appropriately, it has an upbeat theme song. The protagonist of the first three games even uses it as his ringtone. The show's popularity leads to a spin-off show called the Nickel Samurai with the same theme. However, the star of the Nickel Samurai is accused of murdering the star of a rival show. At a certain point during this case, when something sad is being explained, a slowed-down and sad version of the song called "The Ballad of The Steel Samurai" plays. The same Ballad also plays during the game's bad ending.
  • It could also be said with several character reminiscence themes. Some notable ones being:
    • Maya Fey's theme, Turnabout Sisters, changes to "The Ballad of Turnabout Sisters" whenever Mia's death is mentioned or Maya is upset.
    • Kay Faraday's theme, The Great Truth Thief, changes to this after she loses her memories.
    • Shi-Long Lang's initial theme, Speak up, Pup, changes to this whenever he mentions the fall of the house of Lang.
    • Athena Cykes's theme, Courtroom Révolutionnaire, becomes this whenever the UR-1 incident is brought up.
    • The Swashbuckler Spectacular show's original theme song becomes this when the truth about the victim's death is revealed.
    • Dhurke's theme, A Dragon Never Yields, becomes this when it is revealed that he was Dead All Along.
• Doki Doki Literature Club! has a song called Sayo-nara who took the main theme of the VN and turned it into a disturbing mixture of Ominous Music Box Tune and One-Woman Wail emphasing the Halfway Plot Switch from slice of life romance game to surreal metafictional horror. It's also fitting since it plays during Sayori's suicide.
• Umineko: When They Cry manages to make an already dark theme darker, not just one time but twice, turning goldenslaughterer (which usually plays when a murder scene is discovered) into resurrected replayer, and then to the executioner.
  • Another song that gets this treatment is deadangle which is only played in the more hopeless of situation, which then becomes discolor.
• You and Me and Her has this when Miyuki sings happy birthday to Shinichi at the end of her route. She sings it again at the end of Aoi's route while brutally murdering Aoi and Shinichi.

Web Animation

• The Amazing Digital Circus: The ending of the pilot has the last minute of the episode play a darker remix of the show's main theme that played at the beginning of the episode. This happens right after Pomni learns that the exit door she and Kaufmo were searching for was just a fake made by Caine and that Kaufmo "abstracted" over a false hope of escape before being put in the cellar of the circus by Caine. As the music plays over the other residents talking about how they can only feel the sensation of eating, the shot zooms in on Pomni until she and the others are all at the dinner table and she looks at the food. The very next shot shows the others conversing with each other as the camera zooms in on Pomni again with her now sporting a Broken Smile as she breaks down and finally realizes that she isn't dreaming and accepts that there is no escape after all.
• Kirby Guardian: The main theme gets a deeper, muffled remix for Episode 6
• Red vs. Blue:
  • Arguably, "Blood Gulch Blues", which is the theme with lyrics added, although the lyrics aren't too morbid, and the song is mainly about how the teams fight among themselves more than with the other team. However, especially because it was played after Tex's (apparent) death, some of the parts seem borderline depressing (It's Blue Versus Blue/And Red Versus Red/Living like this, we were already dead). It also helped that the snippet played ended before getting to the outright sillier lyrics ("My car's like a puma, it drives on all fours").
  • Done to great effect in Carolina's fight with York during the freelancer break-in using her leitmotif from Jeff Williams' "Extraction". Also of sorts done when Agent Washington explains he'll be taking the Epsilon unit by force from the Reds and Blues at the end of Recreation, using a slower portion of his leitmotif Good Fight by Trocadero.
  • In season 10 during the scene where Carolina confronts the Director, Jeff Williams' "Finding the Director" contains a piano version of the chorus of the season 8 theme "Red vs. Blue".
  • The main theme of The Chorus Trilogy, "Contact", is slightly downbeat. But then the credits of season 13 make it downright depressing with the piano-driven "Contact Redux", not helped by following Epsilon preparing an Heroic Sacrifice so the Reds and Blues can survive the Bolivian Army Ending.
  • "Blood Gulch Blues" finally got a full-blown Dark Reprise in Season 17, Singularity, with the help of the singer from the above mentioned "Contact Redux": "Blood Gulch Blue" reduces all the instrumentation to a melancholic piano, and through some rewritten lyrics and solemn vocals all the uplifting comedy from the original is gone. The scene where it plays (everyone coming to terms with the fact that again Washington is going to be shot in the neck and suffer a lot as a result) makes things even worse.
• RWBY:
  • Amity Colosseum and the Vytal Festival Tournament are introduced with a grandiose, heroic fanfare of a theme. When Ruby encounters the supposedly-injured Mercury in one of the arena's maintenance hallways, the theme is reprised with a slow, ominous electric guitar, signaling that things are about to take a turn for the worst.
  • Pre-corruption Salem, the Girl in the Tower, receives a sweet, wistful, gentle leitmotif in the flashback spotlighting her. When the present-day Salem hits her Rage Breaking Point over the news that her lover-turned-archnemesis Ozpin has reincarnated early and is coordinating the heroes, that same theme plays, warped almost beyond recognition and with a hefty dose of Scare Chords.
• Alphabet: "nZ..." starts with F and his friends happily dancing to a jaunty xylophone instrumental of the alphabet song and, when he loses all his friends and grows up to become the Big Bad of the series and Z cries about the sad events happening on him, a sad piano and glockenspiel instrumental of the song plays.
• Jonathan "Jonti" Picking of Weebl & Bob fame's "Patrick Moore Plays The Xylophone" is a light-hearted ribbing of Patrick Moore. Naturally, upon Patrick Moore's death in 2012, Jonti paid tribute with a dirge-like remix.

Webcomics

• Homestuck uses this multiple times over the course of the soundtracks; for example, the lighthearted song "Harlequin" from early in the story gets a pretty effective Dark Reprise called "The Carnival" to represent Gamzee's descent into insanity.
  • Another song, "Chorale for Jaspers", is used in Act 3 as a sort of silly, self-parodying epitaph for Rose's childhood cat. The same melody appears hundreds of pages later in a dramatic scene where Rose faces Jack to avenge the mother and friend he murdered.
  • "Hate You" ends on a Dark Reprise of Feferi's Theme, "Love You". It even replaces Feferi's pearly laugh by Meenah's mischievous giggles... which then overlap with the Evil Laugh of her tyrannical adult alternate self, in all her imperious condescension.
  • Inverted with "Expedition", which is a heroic take on "English", Lord English's theme.
  • Eternity's Shylock (later expanded and renamed Eternity Served Cold), which adds Ominous Latin Chanting among other changes, to let you know that this is no longer a case of Orcus on His Throne. The original ends with a soft, barely-there reprise of a melody from Savior of the Waking World - the song played during John's and later Jade's ascension to the God Tiers. Given what happened in the update it accompanies, it causes shivers.
    • That song also reiterates Revelawesome, an overdramatic song that played during a very silly scene, in one of the scariest scenes in the entire comic.
  • Most of the album Cherubim is made of this trope, with Caliborn's half of the songs being Darker and Edgier variants of Calliope's.

Web Videos

• Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog has one with "Slipping." The song's melody is first heard as background music as Horrible is attempting to steal the Wonderflonium. When we actually hear it as a song in its own right, it's significantly darker...not that it doesn't have totally random humorous moments (such as the Doctor interrupting his own song to give a reporter the correct spelling of his name.) This is Dr. Horrible, the king of Mood Whiplash, we're talking about.
  • Also, the theme song. Also a mild subversion in Brand new day / the music at the party after Hammer's defeat. The subversion is that BOTH usages are dark, but in different ways.
  • My Eyes, the opening number of Act II, probably counts as a sarcastic (ironic?) echo, with Billy and Penny singing completely different songs in the same space. Billy/Dr. Horrible's is a angsty, dark song about his descent into supervillainy because Penny is boinking Captain Hammer, while Penny's is an inspirational song about Hammer superficially supporting the homeless shelter to get into Penny's pants but still being a jerk to the bums. "So They Say" continues along these lines.
  • The background singers, and the title of the "Everything You Ever" are a reprise of a line in Slipping where Horrible declares he'll get "Everything he ever". The word "wanted" is implied in both cases. The latter half of the song, "The Nightmare's Real" contains a dark, techno version of Brand New Day as well as a darker version of the theme music.
• Horrible Turn has a dark reprise of "No Place on Earth like Australia" for the dark finale song of webmovie.
• Something Broke has two, one being a meta example: Hide The Body (Art Of Distress), which echoes two songs from the source show, and Ponyville: All Seems Normal.
• Lovely Little Losers posted an old video of Benedick and Balthazar singing "Beatrice, You're Vivacious"—the song that Benedick uses to declare his love for Beatrice in the prequel series Nothing Much To Do—two days after Bea breaks up with Ben.
• Played with in Vinesauce Tomodachi Life — in episode 35, the Jahns (a reclusive trio of mysterious aliens) are given a song called "Jahn of the Jahngle"; the song opens with the line "We the Jahns will assimilate", ends with "Until the break of new day", and all the lines in between are the word "Jahn" repeated over and over with different annunciation. At the time the song is just as goofy and random as every other song Vinny gives the Miis. Then the song is played again (unaltered) in episode 49, after the Assimilation Plot has begun; naturally, it's far less goofy. This is not lost on the mind-controlled Vinny, who simply declares "It was all there from the beginning".
• In Atop the Fourth Wall, at the end of the story arc "A Piece of the World is Missing", a slower, more somber rendition of the theme song plays as Linkara goes out to confront the Entity, who has absorbed the entire population of the Earth at this point. It helps to convey the hopelessness of the situation, and how overwhelmed Linkara was by the sheer scale of the threat he was facing.
• The Demolition of Six Flags Astroworld episode of Defunctland closes out with a somber country and western-style acoustic remake of one of the amusement park's most famous and upbeat advertising jingles ("We Make People Happy") from when it was still open. This is in reference to both its location in Houston, as well its status as one of the most beloved and sorely-missed locations featured in the series.
• "Wii Shop One Last Time" by StacheBros takes Luigi's song about the Wii Shop Channel from its respective episode of "Luigi Time!!!" and turns it into a somber piece lamenting the service's discontinuation on January 30, 2019.
• Super Mario 64: CLASSIFIED: The ending of 09.02.97 contains a rendition of Super Mario World's "Donut Plains" theme, as the video gets progressively more corrupted and someone screams in the background.

Sarcastic Echo

Anime & Manga

• Two versions of the song "Aura" in .hack//SIGN. One showing the majesty of The World, and the other the horror. Lyrically, however, both versions sound like a Villain Song.

Films — Animation

• Frosty Returns has one called "Let There Be Snow", but it's unique in that it gets two sarcastic echoes. In the first time the song was sung, the school children are playing and singing about how much they love the snow, while the snow-shovelling adults voice their complaints through song. Later in the special, the song is reprised as the protagonists explore a landscape filled with snow, singing about the benefits of snow. At one point, it cuts to the Big Bad Corrupt Corporate Executive sitting in his limousine elsewhere, and the music takes on an industrial arrangement as he extolls his plans on becoming king now that his patented method of getting rid of snow has gone mainstream.
• Kung Fu Panda 3: In a meta-example, "Kai's Theme" is a dark remix of "I'm So Sorry" by Imagine Dragons. Hint: He isn't. At all.
• Similar to the above is the song "On the Open Road" from A Goofy Movie. Goofy is excited and happy about his road trip with his son, who is inversely angry and depressed about leaving his new girlfriend behind.
• "I Won't Say I'm in Love" from Hercules is one of the lighter forms of the sarcastic echo, with Meg singing and the Muses responding.
• "Welcome To the Show" from My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Rainbow Rocks begins with a sinister reprise of the Dazzlings' Villain Song, switches to the Rainbooms for their song, back to the Dazzlings as they employ the avatars of their true forms and begin to overpower the Rainbooms, then finally Sunset Shimmer joins in, leading to a Triumphant Reprise of the Rainbooms' song. After being depowered, the Dazzlings sing an out-of-tune reprise of their song before being booed off the stage.
• In Teen Titans Go! To the Movies, Robin sings "My Superhero Movie" about how his movie needs to be the coolest one ever and have all the superhero movie mod-cons. Slade throws it back in his face in the climax, while tricking him into being brainwashed by the subliminals in Robin: The Movie.

Films — Live-Action

• The Producers:
  • The song "We Can Do It" has Bialystock and Bloom alternately singing about how their plan cannot and is sure to fail, respectively.
  • Also, Max's song "Betrayed" is practically the entire show abridged, and includes mocking Leo.
• Song of the South: Br'er Rabbit is singing a cheerful song called "How Do You Do?" when he happens across the tar baby. When he doesn't get a response from the dummy he picks a fight with it and gets himself trapped, whereupon Br'er Fox and Br'er Bear emerge from hiding and sing a brief, mocking reprise.

Live-Action TV

• During the climactic "Walk Through The Fire" in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer musical episode "Once More, With Feeling", quotes from the earlier, more positive "If we're together" appear as sarcastic echoes.
• The theme song of the show Green Acres is similar to, but lighter than the Candide example, where husband and wife protagonists give radically different versions of the perfect life to the same melody.
• Kamen Rider Kiva - The promotional band for the series, TETRA-FANG, did a cover for Nago Keisuke a.k.a Kamen Rider IXA called Individual System. He then does his own version of it with the lyrics changed to support his twisted Black and White view of the world called Fight For Justice. He then does it again with his more lighter mindset called Don't Lose Yourself

Music

• Used in Lupe Fiasco's already somewhat dark song 'The Die.' The second verse consists of the character's friend trying to convince him that he's safe, while the killer repeats the laundry-list of 'hidden' guns, and the two's plans for the evening and replaces the last line ('Go and get some grub') with 'Catch a few slugs'
  • A lot of Fiasco's songs have a darker meaning in them. He can be extremely dark when he wants to be. For example, his smash hit Superstar can sounds cool, smooth and joyful at first, but if you know Lu's music, and know how he sometimes calls out other rappers for the content of their music and all that, the chorus will sound a little scary. If you are what you say you are, a superstar, have no fear.
• The Blue Öyster Cult and Patti Smith recorded The Revenge of Vera Gemini, where Patti comes in towards the end of the male singer's lines with a sarcastically mocking echo of his words.
• Genesis used this fairly often, with The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway in particular containing the example of "The Light Dies Down on Broadway", a Dark Reprise of themes from the album's title track and "The Lamia". Another example is "Unquiet Slumbers for the Sleepers in That Quiet Earth", which reprises themes from "Eleventh Earl of Mar" in a substantially more sinister fashion.

Pro Wrestling

• During a famous angle in which his career was almost ended ^note (in kayfabe, as Hogan was taking time off to heal from legit injuries and to film Suburban Commando) by Earthquake, a video shown on WWE TV (and later in home video) about Hulk Hogan started by playing his famous entrance theme "Real American", but cut to footage of Hogan being massacred by Earthquake on "The Brother Love Show," interspersed with clips of Hogan's greatest moments and "happy times," set to a sad, melancholy, string version of "Real American" which ended with a shot of Hogan's locker being slammed shut.
• One WWE video detailed the history of the company set to Kid Rock's "Lonely Road of Faith". As the New World Order were set to debut, they made their own version.
• After The Great Khali's hard-to-understand yet heartwarming birthday song to Natalya, the Bella Twins beat her in a match and taunted her by singing a nasty version of the birthday song.

Web Animation

• Hazbin Hotel has Charlie, princess of Hell and All-Loving Hero, publicly detail her plans to open a rehabilitation facility for demons in the hopes that they can redeem themselves to heaven. When talking about it doesn't get her point across, she breaks out into her song Inside Every Demon is a Rainbow, explaining her belief that every demon has at least the potential to be redeemed. Later, Alastor the Radio Demon, a feared and nearly-eldritch elder of Hell, approaches Charlie and offers his support. He's very open about how he believes Charlie's goal is ridiculous, but he thinks demons trying to redeem themselves and failing would be great entertainment, hence he offers his patronage with no strings attached. Charlie accepts Alastor's help, and after implementing a few improvements, he breaks out into his own musical number Alastor's Reprise. It's somewhat similar to Charlie's, and it's actually superficially cheerful too, only intentionally ironic instead of how Charlie's was unintentionally twice as ironic. Fitting his early-1900s radio announcer theme, Alastor's song has a bit of a ragtime twist. The former title lyric becomes "Inside every demon is a lost cause."

Web Videos

• Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog:
  • "My Eyes" — inverted, as it starts with Dr. Horrible's negative verse and follows up with Penny's optimistic variation. The overall effect, however, is the same.
  • In subtext, Penny's version comes off as darker, since she's blind to the negative aspects that Billy is actually seeing accurately. Also, Billy is a sympathetic character and Penny's being taken in by Hammer (who is an egotistical jerk), so...

Western Animation

• The Batman: Joker has his own version of gear up sequence when he decides to become Batman for an episode.

• Sweet Sea's happy, cheery opening song is reprised in a minor key and with altered lyrics as Sweet Sea cries over the ruined kingdom when Sheeba takes over.
• In Total Drama World Tour's first song, Noah's only line has him sarcastically echoing the song itself.
  • "Come fly with us, come DIE with us."

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