Fantasy Creep

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Shows rarely end in the same place they begin. Shakeups to the status quo are a tale as old as time and major changes to the world are often interesting ways of allowing consumers to see how the characters will roll with the major shakeup they've been dealt. However, some of these changes need not be abrupt.

Sometimes a show may include something fantastical for a little shakeup. Say, for example, a gritty detective show spent the entirety of its first season only dealing with mundane, worldly cases, but now features an actual wizard with real magic as a suspect in Season 2. The case is solved, the status quo remains in place, everyone moves along. But then in Season 3, it's revealed that this wizard was part of an order of wizards. Now in Season 4, the wizards show up more frequently. Now in Season 5, wizard magic is an occasional but still routine part of the show. By Season 6, wizards and magic have become a core part of the show's setting. The fantasy has crept in and can no longer be separated from the world.

If the switch was intended from the beginning, there may be heavy amounts of Foreshadowing that indicate a greater, less grounded explanation for events in the story, which gets explored as the work progresses.

Can often occur in Speculative Fiction, but nothing is stopping this from happening in even Slice of Life stories. While this is particularly noticeable if the story has, until this point, been more grounded, it can just as easily affect works that start off with a fantastical element or two as well. All that matters is that the series begins with less fantasy, if any, and more fantasy pervades it as time goes on.

Some tropes may serve as "gateways" to this trope. The Cosmic Horror Reveal is a good example, which is when the setting is revealed to be a lot bigger than anticipated and contains far more dangerous and unknowable entities than it seems. Or it can be a consequence of The Magic Comes Back, but only if magic was not established to be part of the work's setting at the beginning. In universes where "Magic A" Is "Magic A", however, the introduction of Wrong Context Magic can throw the established rules out the window and enforce the same shift. In other cases, what begins as the odd gag, cartoony exaggeration, and debatably-real aside spot in a looser episodic work can build up over time until obviously fantastical elements become prominent.

If enough fantasy is injected into the work, it can become a Fantasy Kitchen Sink or a Magic Realism setting. Like Reality, Unless Noted can be an example as well, if the "Unless Noted" moments become more and more frequent.

This is also when the more fantastical elements are here to stay and not simply a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment. That trope is How Unscientific!, and this trope deals with fantastical elements that appear, never go away, and become more and more the focus as the show progresses. It also cannot be a Bizarro Episode, Alien Episode, Cryptid Episode, Paranormal Episode, and so on. Those are just that: singular episodes. This would be if these happen more than just one time throughout a series' run.

Generally speaking, if your story starts closer to "Mundane" in the Sliding Scale of Realistic vs. Fantastic and slowly grows closer to "Surreal" as a story evolves and it stays there for a while (if not the rest of the story), it is undergoing a fantasy creep.

As this is a substantial Tone Shift in itself, it may also lead to heavy Genre Shift if the fantastical elements prompt a change in focus. If handled poorly, this can break the Willing Suspension of Disbelief and can induce Seasonal Rot or be perceived as Later-Installment Weirdness, and risks falling into the Sci-Fi Ghetto. On the flip side, if the shift happens early enough and the show becomes known for these elements instead, the grounded parts of the story can come off as Early-Installment Weirdness instead. Heavy overlap with Doing in the Scientist, when a previously-scientific explanation for something is retconned to being pure magic instead.

Related to Serial Escalation and Sequel Escalation, particularly if the lighter supernatural elements were well-received in their first outing, leading to heavier elements in the future.

Super-Trope to The Series Has Left Reality, but where that trope deals with works or franchises that begin in a world that could very plausibly exist in the real world, only to feature elements or developments that firmly remove that possibility, this trope deals with works that may not even present themselves as existing in reality and add fantastical elements on top of what is already there.

See also Earth Drift, which is when a property starts off in a world very similar to Earth, but slowly becomes more and more its own world through the introduction of its own histories, cultures, and mythologies. Although Fantasy Creep can be an aspect of this, this trope doesn't necessarily need to be involved.

Not to be confused with Fantasy Twist, which is when a character's dreams or desires are turned on themselves. Contrast Doing In the Wizard where fantastic elements are retconned as mundane ones.

Note that, by definition, standalone or single-installment films, books, games, or works in general usually do not count as examples of this trope, but there are rare exceptions. However, larger franchises featuring these singular works may be included if the franchise itself is what is undergoing this change.

Examples: