Mood Whiplash / Visual Novels

• Ace Attorney:
  • In Episode 4 of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Trials and Tribulations, the case seems to be building up to a triumph as Mia is on the verge of proving her defendant innocent and the lying witness guilty. Victory is at hand. Then the defendant begins coughing up blood. He reveals that he'd promised Dahlia that if they ever couldn't trust each other, he would drink the poison hidden in a bottle in her necklace. This is in the courtroom. On the witness stand. Right in front of you. While the game does depict corpses due to most of the cases being murders, this scene is particularly horrific.
  • The Ace Attorney games as a whole invoke this trope often. The overall tone of the games is fairly light and satirical; but remember that all cases are framed around often horrible, grisly murders. The fact that the games typically jump right into the snappy comedic dialogue the series is known for mere moments after a corpse is found can be rather jarring.
  • A completely unintentional example: In Justice for All's final case, presenting the wrong evidence to Shelley De Killer causes a scene where Matt Engarde is found not guilty, which leaves Phoenix so depressed that he quits law forever. The whiplash? "The miracle never happen.", an infamous bit of Engrish that was referenced in the subsequent game. This was averted in the European release, where the phrase is spelled correctly.
  • Investigations has one that doesn't involve the murder scene itself, but the reaction to it: Young Kay, having learned that her father is dead, bursts into tears. In an attempt to console her, Edgeworth offers a handkerchief - but Kay, in a moment of either confusion or outright desperation, instead grabs Edgeworth's cravat and blows her nose into it. Wow, emotionally-draining loss of family to comedic bodily functions in about three seconds.
  • The first game has a particularly big one in the fourth case. Nick and Maya are investigating the boat rental place by the lake, and the caretaker is a senile cloudcuckoolander who continually addresses Phoenix as "Keith" and asks him whether he'll agree to inherit his pasta shop, the Wet Noodle. The scene is hilarious right up until Maya, who's been talking to the caretaker's parrot, says, "Polly, Polly! Are we forgetting anything?" and it replies "Don't forget DL-6!"
• A Profile has a cheerful 'going home together' scene with the Masayuki's childhood friend and younger sister interrupted by the sister asking the friend if she loves him. Since Masayuki broke up with her and Rizu was directly responsible for that everyone there knows that the answer is 'yes.' From then on the walk home is decidedly gloomy.
• All over the place in CROSS†CHANNEL, such as a sex scene with Touko being immediately followed with the revelation Youko was watching the entire time or just a few scenes later a scene where it seems like they're trying to set up an Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other situation accidentally reveals that Taichi had recorded said sex scene.
• Danganronpa will have moments of comic relief (usually Monokuma showing up to mess with the students) that seem to exist just to throw the tension of the whole "killing game" thing into sharper relief.
• Dra+Koi rapidly shifts between goofy romantic comedy and metafiction with bits of fights to the death popping up all throughout until the very end.
• ghostpia has this almost constantly with the narrative and tone going from dark, violent and serious to incredibly silly and back again in a heartbeat, often multiple times within a single scene.
• Hatoful Boyfriend is a pigeon-dating game that has a lot of surreal humor and takes great fun in parodying the entire Dating Sim genre. It also has genuinely heartbreaking endings for some of the birds and hints of a darker plot going on behind the scenes that's fully revealed in the Bad Boys Love route.
  • The second game, Holiday Star, does this at the end of the third goofy, almost carefree episode, leading into the involved and very disturbing fourth.
• In My Harem Heaven is Yandere Hell, the opening song starts off cheerful and friendly... and quickly turns into dark, letting the viewer know about the insanity they will have to endure. The main story itself goes through this as well. It seems like a silly Slice of Life story between the protagonist and his childhood friends and their club, but everything changes when someone is killed by someone in a mascot costume.
• In Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, the characters have been told they are on a sinking ship and must escape within 9 hours. It doesn't stop them from making jokes and innuendos right and left.
  • The jokes and innuendos continue in Virtue's Last Reward. But perhaps the game's greatest moment of this is during a moment in Quark's route when, after Sigma successfully subdues Dio and uses the #9 door to cut his robotic arm off (saving himself from lethal injection), the whole group gathers together in relief. Alice promptly succumbs to Radical-6 and kills herself.
• In Spirit Hunter: NG, a somber moment where Akira and Rosé realize how exhausted and distraught Natsumi is at the disappearance of her daughter is interrupted by Ban's cheerful arrival, having just arrived from a mahjong game. Rosé rags on him for ruining the mood.

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