In the backstory thread, I mentioned a Pathfinder Tiefling I have on the backburner and am hesitant to use without at least a confederate or two because otherwise there was too high a chance that "people would just assume that 'edgelord' was Zerris's intended archetype rather than the starting point he'd grow out of". And I've been thinking about that lately because...well, character building is a good distraction.
More to the point, I was wondering what everyone else's experiences with 'darker' archetypes was. I know a lot of us can probably say that our first 'developed' tabletop character was probably "Grumpy the Grim" or one of his many siblings and that's something we aren't proud of. Rest assured, I'm not asking about that character.
No, I'm asking about ones that you think were more successful and any tricks or techniques you used to make them fun to play and fun for other players to play with. How do you make your character(s) dark without making the rest of the table roll their eyes and assume you're "that guy/girl" pulling out another awful edgelord?