History Main / SnowballingThreat

* TheAssimilator
* TheConqueror
* TheVirus

* ''WesternAnimation/TheDragonPrince'': Soren directly characterizes Viren as this type of threat after personally witnessing the powerplays that got him to where he is. It's a big part of why he advocates everyone to draw a line in the sand and stop him now, rather than retreat and hope they can do so later.

** [[Characters/TheDragonPrinceViren Kuvira]] is a political variant of this. Every military state she acquires expands her resources and manpower further, which she then leverages to take her next target.

** Vilgax [[VictorGainsLosersPowers defeats heroes and takes their powers]] repeatedly in preparation for fighting Ben.

** Kuvira is a political variant of this. Every military state she acquires expands her resources and manpower further, which she then leverages to take her next target.

** Lord Tirek starts out weak and frail, but over the course of "[[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS4E25TwilightsKingdomPart1 Twilight's Kingdom - Part 1]]" and "[[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS4E26TwilightsKingdomPart2 Part 2]]", he rapidly powerscales above everyone else in the series (while evading every attempt to stop him early). It comes to the point that the Alicorns need to combine their power into one body just to have someone who can still match up to him after they fail to stop his rise.

* ''WesternAnimation/SheRaAndThePrincessesOfPower'': Downplayed with Horde Prime's infection. While he captures and mind-controls more and more characters to bring into his thrall, he doesn't actually ''need'' to add their strength to his own. He is mostly just doing it to damage the Princesses' morale.
* ''WesternAnimation/StarVsTheForcesOfEvil'': Eclipsa's daughter, after she starts [[SoulEating sucking up everyone's souls]].

** In "[[Recap/JusticeLeagueUnlimitedS1E10DarkHeart Dark Heart]]", a GreyGoo lands on Earth and threatens to transform every bit of theplanet it consumes into more of its army.

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->''"My dad... is a villain. And he's only gonna get more powerful, and the more powerful he gets, the more people will listen to him, and believe him, and follow him. […] The only way to stop this is to look evil in the face and say -- no more."''

A Snowballing threat is an antagonist (or antagonistic force) that rapidly (and repeatedly) gets more and more formidable the longer the narrative takes to deal with them, putting pressure and urgency on the protagonists to stop them while they still have a chance. Typically this happens on an exponential curve, where over the course of an episode they treat the SlidingScaleOfVillainThreat like a speedrunner leaderboard. Worst of all, usually ''every bit'' of power these foes acquire expands their ability to acquire ''even more'' power.

The actual speed and method by which the threat snowballs in power varies. Sometimes it can be a slow burn that takes place over months of neglect by the heroes—but just as often it can happen over the course of a single encounter if the threat can grow from the various people attacking it.

* ''Franchise/FateSeries''
** In ''Literature/FateZero'', Gilles de Rais has a book that can infinitely accumulate mana, which he uses to [[GatheringSteam build up enough power]] to create an EldritchAbomination.

* ''Manga/{{Naruto}}'': Despite several variations of PowerCopying and ManaDrain existing in the series, this trope is usually averted. The major exception to this is Kabuto, who over the course of several arcs collects and resurrects nearly ''every'' notable dead character to add to Tobi's military force, and continues to create and release even more throughout the war without reaching any limit.

* ''Franchise/TheThing'': the titular creature is an extraterrestrial organism that has the ability to assimilate any lifeform it comes into contact with and create a flawless imitation in the process. Should an assimilated lifeform be revealed as an imitation, the creature will transform its body in an attempt to defend itself frequently sprouting extra limbs, fangs, and tentacles. Doctor Blair, one of the researchers at Outpost number 31, theorizes that, should the creature escape the Antarctic and reach civilization, all life on Earth would be assimilated three years after first contact with it.

* ''Literature/CodexAlera'': [[HordeOfAlienLocusts The Vord]] are this in a number of ways; not only do the drones breed extremely fast, the queens (who are not only telepathic but also every bit as intelligent and resourceful as a very smart human) can create new forms of drones to counter the abilities and tactics of her enemies, and is also capable of learning and using the magic system of the setting. They first appear in book 2, where they have only recently emerged from hibernation and are building up their numbers in secret (and are still formidable threats to the heroes), but when they finally emerge openly in Book 5 and 6, it is a fully apocalyptic situation. By the end it is revealed that the Vord we saw were ''still'' limited in their ability to snowball by the fact that [[spoiler: the first queen's "contamination" with human blood and behaviour altered her to the point that any other queens she spawns will try to kill her, meaning she has to make them sterile and then abandon them, rather than increasing the number of queens exponentially and coordinating with them all the while]]. It's unmistakeably clear that without this restriction the non-Vord species of Alera would have been doomed from the moment they failed to hunt down and fully exterminate the first set of queens at the end of Book 2.

* In ''Literature/PleaseDontTellMyParentsImASupervillain'', anyone with a MadScience power can use the power to make valuable devices to sell for large sums to get more resources to make more devices... many of which are either better weapons or armor to become even stronger in a fight. Only Penny is shown doing this, however. She starts with a recycling machine and some raw materials. She builds some basic armor and an air cannon. By the time the first book is over, she built a drone capable of nullifying all guns in a large radius, a chemical tank that can take down another super with an absurd HealingFactor, a set of candy-themed weapons that can electrify or immobilize enemies, and a pair of gloves capable of creating explosions.

** In season 8 [[spoiler: Daenerys retroactively becomes this]].

* ''Franchise/StarTrek'': The [[Recap/StarTrekS2E15TheTroubleWithTribbles Tribbles]] are this due to being a multiplicative IntroducedSpeciesCalamity.
* ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' PilotEpisode "[[Recap/StarTrekS1E3WhereNoManHasGoneBefore Where No Man Has Gone Before]]". When the Enterprise leaves the galaxy, two characters with ESP, Dr. Dehner and Gary Mitchell, receive a jolt of energy that starts increasing their PsychicPowers at an exponential rate. Before escaping, Mitchell kills a fellow crewman. If the Enterprise crew can't deal with them in time, they will become extremely dangerous to the rest of the crew and the ship.

** "[[Recap/SupernaturalS04E07ItsTheGreatPumpkinSamWinchester It's the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester]]": It's said that [[SpiritOfHalloween Samhain]] possess the unique ability to summon and control all manner of supernatural beings, and the longer he is free the more dangerous monster he is able to draw to his presence. This is a big part of his potential threat that must be averted.
** Amara, the BigBad of Season 11 and TheAntiGod, starts off the season as little more than a soul-devouring, telekinetic child after her essence possesses a human baby upon being freed from her [[SealedEvilInACan can]], but she grows increasingly powerful as her vessel rapidly grows to adulthood. By the mid-season finale, she can telekinetically overpower and obliterate multiple demons and angels without any difficulty. By Episode 18, she can curb-stomp ''[[{{Satan}} Lucifer]]'' (one of the setting's older and more powerful entities), ''after'' she's been set back for several episodes by sustaining the angelic equivalent of a nuclear barrage. [[spoiler:In the last several episodes, she begins infecting entire towns with a Rabid-creating and ultimately deadly mist which, despite the main protagonists' efforts, ultimately requires literal intervention from God himself to stop it, and she makes it clear that she's now on her way to erasing all the contents of the universe]].

* ''TabletopGame/GammaWorld'' adventure [=GW1=] ''Legion of Gold''. The Legion starts off as a few Centurion robots sent out to attack small human settlements. Each time it attacks a settlement, it captures some of the humans and takes them back to the Legion's base, where they are turned into legionnaires and join the Legion. Eventually, the Legion will be large enough to attack large cities.
* [[HordeOfAlienLocusts The Tyranids]] of ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'' are this, given their hyper-adaptive and all-consuming nature. The bigger a Hive Fleet gets, the more it adapts, evolves, produces more organisms and fleets so it can invade more systems and consume more, ad infinitum. Now that Hive Fleet Leviathan is attacking from ''both sides'' of the galaxy at once, it looks like the Tyranid threat is so widespread that it'll be consuming more biomass that the Imperium of Man or anyone else can incinerate from it.
** It's not just a matter of bodies, either. The HiveMind is already a gestalt galaxy-conquering genius, it's ''always'' learning, and currently orchestrating the conquest of countless worlds at once. As it stands, trying to commune with it drives everyone instantly insane (less than a handful of psychically gifted beings have done so and lived). If this ''thing'' gets any smarter, it'll be ''beyond'' godlike.
** Genestealer Cults. As a BreedingCult, their goal is to produce as many HalfHumanHybrid infiltrators as possible and get them spread out across all levels of society. If not rooted out and exterminated in time, their population will eventually reach a critical mass where their collective psychic signature summons the Tyranid hive fleets, at which point the entire planet is doomed.
** On a smaller level, Ork WAAARGHS are the product of this. Ork culture is anarchic and fractured but solely geared towards "fightin'", meaning one Ork will eventually get to the top of the heap. At this point, he'll start looking beyond his planet and batter together dozens of tribes into a system-wrecking crusade/pub crawl/party rampage known as a WAAAARGH. Many opposing factions (particularly Deathwatch Astartes outposts) focus on eliminating potential Warlords before the snowball gets this big, stopping the WAAARGH... at least until another Ork starts his own ascent.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Root}}'' has a few factions that need to be kept in check, lest they steamroll the whole forest. The woodland alliance for instance starts out as plucky little annoyances, using your troop movements to justify a rebellion. Once they have expanded far enough, they are almost impossible to contain again and you will only give them more power to fight back, when you try to cut them back to size.

* ''VideoGame/AceCombat7SkiesUnknown'': Part of why the {{Final Boss}}es are such a threat to the world is that [[spoiler:they are highly-advanced drones that start to analyze [[PlayerCharacter Trigger]]'s combat abilities and as a result better themselves in the process, having already been built on the combat data of Mihaly, another top-notch fighter pilot (who Trigger had defeated a few missions ago). Thus other characters make a big deal of the fact that they are also trying to use the SpaceElevator to transmit that data to drone facilities all around the world, and should that happen, humanity will be doomed to a ForeverWar carried on by warfare amongst impossible-to-defeat drones.]]

* Some perks in ''VideoGame/DeadByDaylight'' give either Survivors or Killers more power as more conditions are filled during a match. A specific example is the Hex: Devour Hope perk, unique to the Hag. With every successive hook rescue while the Killer is far away, they gain a token. Two tokens give a temporary Haste effect after hooking a Survivor. Three tokens permanently make the Survivors [[OneHitKill Exposed]], making it easier to down and hook them. Five tokens allow the Killer to kill any survivor by their own hand, bypassing whatever hook state that Survivor may have. This all hinges on a Hex Totem remaining in play during the match, giving Survivors incentive to try and find it and destroy it lest the Killer become way too dangerous.

* ''Franchise/Ben10''

* ''WesternAnimation/CodeLyoko'': In season 2, it is discovered that activating a [[ResetButton return to the past]] doubles the supercomputers processing power—i.e. XANA's power. This means the Lyoko Warriors have been quadratically scaling XANA's power throughout the entire series, and they are forced to keep doing so until they can find a way to stop XANA.
* ''WesternAnimation/DannyPhantom''

* ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeagueUnlimited''
** At one point, a GreyGoo expy lands on the planet and threatens to transform every bit of earth it consumes into more of its army.
** Amazo. Over the course of a battle, the android copies each of the Justice League's abilities, while also negating their weaknesses.

** The Red Lotus early escape sequences play out like this, as each additional member makes them harder to stop.

* ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic''
** The Parasprites exponentially multiply as a threat over the course of "Swarm of the Century". After all but one of them are eliminated, it happens again.

** Lord Tirek starts out weak and frail, but over the course of 2 episodes rapidly powerscales above everyone else in the series (while evading every attempt to stop him early). It comes to the point where the Alicorns need to combine their power into one body just to have someone who can still match up to him after they fail to stop his rise.

* ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitans''

* ''WesternAnimation/XMenEvolution'': Rogue has the ability to absorb other mutants' powers through skin contact. As she gradually accumulates more abilities, she becomes an unstoppable force that nobody manages to contain. In her debut, it happens by accident, and she does it again later while undergoing PowerIncontinence. Near the end of the series, [[spoiler: she does it again under mind control. First copying her friends' abilities while they are asleep, and using those powers to steal even more powers afterwards.]]