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Unlike the Medal of Honor, the Param Vir Chakra is only given for "rarest of the rare gallantry which is beyond the call of duty and which in normal life is considered impossible to do." That's right, you actually have to break the laws of reality just to be eligible. It has only been awarded 21 times, and two thirds of the people who earned it died in the process.
Some series have the tendency (or, more likely, the goal) to push themselves up and over the top, surpassing themselves in whatever category fits. Studio Gainax tends to do this a lot.
This isn't meant to be confused with the buildup to season finales or what have you, but a consistent, or at least extremely obvious, escalation in whatever the series is working with. When this is done well, a new Crowning Moment Of Awesome is, at any given moment, just around the corner. When done poorly, what would constitute as a Crowning Moment Of Awesome feels that much more ordinary and mediocre.
Named for one translation (of many) of one of Kamina's (many, many) Catch Phrases from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.
Related to Sequel Escalation and Up To Eleven.
Compare Troperiffic, Exaggerated Trope.
Examples:
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Anime/Manga
- Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, the Trope Namer, fits this to a T. Every single fight scene is cooler and wackier than the last.
- G Gundam can probably be considered its predecessor in many aspects, but doesn't get nearly as far. They finished with a robot the size of, or rather made out of, a space colony that is apparently the size of Japan. They more than make up for it by trying to out cheese themselves in a Writer Revolt. It starts with a Giant Robot shaped like a windmill, and ends with The Power Of Love taking the form of an actual King of Hearts
 .
- Detective Conan Movie 5: Countdown to Heaven. Conan jumps between two skyscrapers on a skateboard. And it only gets crazier from there. (Warning: some spoilers for the ending.)
- And Movie 10: The Private Eye's Requiem, for the unnecessary Cast Herd pileup. How many of the 30+ regulars can fit in one movie?
- Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure thrives on this. Each chapter of the saga has weirder powers, more sick-in-the-head ubervillains, more insane stunts, more grosstastic moments of Squick...
- Neon Genesis Evangelion: How can we break Shinji today? What next happens to the characters that no psychiatrist can help with?
- FLCL: What will come out of Naota's head next? How many double entendres and half-veiled sexual references can be packed into a single episode? How impossibly bizarre can the plot ultimately become?
- Code Geass: How will the life, the universe, and
everything causality itself attempt and fail to screw over Lelouch this time? And what will the agonizingly stressful cliffhanger be for this episode (or season, for that matter)? How much more Pizza Hut endorsements can they cram in?
- Sousei No Aquarion: How terrible a pun can Gen make? What saturday-morning-cartoon-on-acid lesson can the heroes learn? How over the top can the symbolism become? How can crystal power save the universe this week?
- Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha: How much more powerful will Nanoha's magical cannon get? How much effort will she have to use to "befriend" her latest ally? How much subtext can be inserted between her and Fate? How high can the rankings get? The answer to all of these questions, of course, is "infinity."
- Maria-sama Ga Miteru: How much more romantic subtext can they put in the relationships between the girls without them actually going anywhere? How much more will Yumi berate herself for being insignificant, despite several of the school's most popular girls fawning over her? How long can they postpone Sachiko's inevitable graduation? There has to be a massive black hole in the vicinity of the Lillian high school to explain the immense slowing down of time between New Year's and April, since that period gets covered by least a dozen light novels.
- Black Jack. Tezuka in English sums it up best simply by listing a small fraction of the doctor's work:
Among Black Jack's many medical accomplishments are full-body skin grafts, arm transplants, brain transplants, fingerprint transplants, grafting two people together to share one heart, extracting full-body parasites, operating at lightning speed, operating blind, operating in space, operating on a dozen patients at once, operating on dogs, cats, deer, bears, monkeys, birds, whales, aliens, ghosts, mummies, plants and computers, and removing a parasitic worm from his own intestines while under assault by a pack of wild dingos.
- Black Jack 21 takes all of this and turns it up to eleven. Example scenario: Dr. Black Jack must save the life of the pilot (critically injured by a point blank grenade hit in the cockpit) of a turbulence-ridden and heavily damaged jet so that he may guide someone else into landing it before the plane runs out of fuel and dooms all of its passengers. However, before BJ can do this, he must first get into the cockpit via an emergency exit that can only be accessed by exiting the passenger cabin and climbing atop of the plane's fuselage, all while the plane is still thousands of feet in the air and flying at full speed. And that's just episode 6. Wait until they bring in the thermonuclear missile.
- Dragon Ball Z — How big can we make this energy blast? What will the villain blow up next? Just how blond and glowy will Goku become next? How many of the cast will die and be brought back to life by the Dragonballs? What, exactly, is Goku's power level? How many episodes will the battle last?
- "Over 9000" to all of those.
- How could the villain blow up "Over 9000"?
- What?! 9000?!
- There's no way that can be right!
- In the manga version, when Vegeta smashes his scouter after the line, Nappa remarks "That's Impossible! It's BROKEN!" Nappa isn't the brightest on the block.
- A sign of how the series works, Son Goku's level reaches 32,000 just a few episodes after those famous words were spoken. (X4 Kaiô-Ken) Indeed, less than two months later, he had defeated Freeza, whose (canonically given in the Daizenshuu) power level in his final form was 120,000,000. So Goku had gone in BARELY OVER A YEAR from 416 (him fighting Raditz) to 150,000,000. And they just get stronger from there (in fact Power Levels were explicitly abandoned after this point as they just ended up getting stupidly high). Son Goku's power has to be considered to grow exponentially. So Yeah.
- Actually, Goku's power level as a Super Saiyan is actually about 15,000,000. I read somewhere that the Daizenshu translation was inaccurate due to a mistranslation from Japanese to english, which means that Frieza's initial starting point was actually about a 1/3 of his power ie. 4,000,000, and Goku's base is 300,000. Besides, he came to Namek with a power level of 90,000; it's impossible for even a Saiyan power level to jump 30-fold, after recoverin from life-threatening injury. If that was so, Super Saiyan would be irrelevant. Hate to de-level a Beyond The Impossible moment, but that is true.
- Achieving the level of Super Saiyan was considered to be a myth and the equivalent of a Saiyan achieving godhood. Fittingly, Goku accomplishes this, with a Super Saiyan from the future arriving, and then Vegeta, and Goku's son Gohan. Then they got wind of a possibility of going beyond that, known as "ascending the threshold of Super Saiyan", Vegeta and Trunks did it in a sense, Goku and Gohan were the closest, but the latter truly accomplished this and became a Super Saiyan 2 or a "True Ascended Saiyan". Then, facing Majin Buu, Goku gave a tutorial on Saiyans and their transformations; going to Super Saiyan 3; literally saying as he transforms "And THIS...is to go even beyond!" Even the English dub voice actor went Beyond The Impossible with that massive Kiai he was scripted to do! Truly, becoming an Super Saiyan 3 is this, if anything.
- Yes, it sure is. To clarify the power level jumps; Super Saiyan 2 is double Normal Super Saiyan, while SSJ 3 is Quadruple a Super Saiyan 2.
- One Piece — The Final Battle of each story arc is always more spectacular than the last.
- Bleach: How insane will the fights get? How many more ridiculously strong power-ups will Ichigo stack on at once?
- How strong will be the next Espada's Release? I mean, if the Segunda Espada Barragan Luisenbarn can age everything around him AND release a wave that immediately rots and decays everything that touches, even after the attack stopped moving?
- How ridiculously strong are Bankai of the 7 remaining Shinigami that have yet to release their Zanpakuto?
- How much more talking will we go through before we fight? Nice coat, by the way, I really like the white-on-black...
- Mahou Sensei Negima: How over-the-top and ridiculous can Jack Rakan's improvised techniques become? He starts off by summoning a skyscraper sized sword, moves on to accidentally blowing up a mountain while making up a finishing move for Negi, surfs on a sword, defeats enemies by stealing their panties, and destroys a pocket dimension just by being awesome, despite the fact that the act totally and utterly disregards the laws of magic. This is lampshaded by other characters to no end.
- His list of accomplishments includes fighting a Legendary Dragon to a standstill. Apparently the skyscraper sized sword does have a logical purpose. It's how he has his record of destroying 137 AIRSHIPS. Rakan modestly placed his power level as 12,000 to boot.
- For reference, the demon god of the Kyoto arc was ranked at 8000, this is Rakan's new estimate on the Big Bad too.
- Negi and Rakan's entire fight is turned into this. It starts with Negi revealing his artifact, that lets him use all his partners' artifacts and builds through multiple rounds of No One Could Survive That by Jack and I Am Not Left Handed by Negi. Insert Crowning Moment Of Awesome for Jack, Negi, and Kotaru while we're at it until... Negi applies the Lightning Bruiser concept literally to go
Super Saiyan 3 while using a power absorption spell to hit Jack with his own power. All to bring it down to a joyful slugfest that ends in a tie. As a side show it breaks the arena safety barrier rated for magical battleship fire. (Oh and for comic relief has Jack using Eternal Negi Fever... on Negi)
- Chapter 263: Ultimate extreme KISSING.
- Where Negi either ensouls a robot or bends the laws of pactio. Take your pick.
- Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle and XxxHOLiC: How squicky and "Double-You-Tee-Eff?"-inducing can the characters' connections and relationships with each other get? How utterly convoluted could the Thirty Xanatos Pileup get? How much angst can we pile up on Fay?
- Prince Of Tennis. Basically, it's Dragonball Z, only MORE. With junior high school tennis.
- Bobobobo-bobobo. How more truly messed up can we make the villains, the heroes techniques and the ENTIRE show itself?
- At first glance, the only thing Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni seems to be about is creating a sandbox in which to see how many different ways to kill the main characters. Kill, rinse, repeat. Kill, rinse...
- Getter Robo: How batshit freakin' insane can the characters get? How big can the mecha get? How many completely improbable things can the mecha combine with? How intense can the crazy expressions get? How manly can the heroic sacrifices get? Will there ever be a page that doesn't feature dinosaurs and if so, will it show up before our brains explode from the awesome?
- Death Note: How much more audacious can L and Kira get in attempting to unmask each other? At least in the first half. The second half reduces this tension immensely.
- Paranoia Agent: How screwed up and/or insane can the characters become?
- Baccano!: How bloody can the violence get? How Badass can the characters be? How weird/dumb/awesome can Isaac and Miria get? How badly can karma fuck up Dallas this time? How much can we screw over Czeslaw now? Just how batshit yet supremely awesome are Ladd and Claire going to be in this episode? Will there ever be enough machine guns?
- Katekyo Hitman Reborn: How many more Bishonen are going to be introduced? How much larger is Tsuna's harem of possessive, dedicated Bishonen bodyguards going to get? How many more magical powers does the mafia have?
- Subtopic for the last question above: How many worlds does Byakuran exist in and can draw knowledge from?
- The whole of the Yu Gi Oh franchise. With nearly every duel the protagonists fight, at least against the main villains, requires constant ante-upping and over-the-top cards and combos. Early on, it's just some teenagers trying to contend with some jerkasses giving them a hard time. Then they have to contend with rescuing some people whose souls were abducted. Then they have to deal with people from Egypt having family squabbles and fight using literal gods, then they have to save the entire world and a parallel counterpart we haven't heard of, and THEN we have to worry about the entire timestream of the whole universe unravelling! Following in GX, it's a lot more easygoing at first, but the first real ongoing plot already involves saving the world, then we have to save the universe, followed by EVERY universe! TWICE! And now in the third series, the action started right away and the world-saving schtick starts up even earlier.
- Sengoku Basara: How epic can the fights get? How
manly "manry" and Hot Blooded can the characters be? Is there any way the Anachronism Stew can be even more hilariously awesome? How gratuitous and engrishy can Masamune's Gratuitous Engrish become? Can we cram any more blatant homoeroticism into this before Masamune and Yukimura actually start making out onscreen? How much of a gigantic, creepy prick can we make Mitsuhide? Can Oda Nobunaga possibly be any more Obviously Evil?
- Shin Mazinger - What's more powerful than a Rocket Punch? Turning your entire mecha into a Rocket Punch. Mazinger literally transforms into a giant golden fist.
- And they find a way to top that in the final episode, by a ludicrous degree!
- Welcometo The NHK - (Manga) How depressed/desperate/destitute will Satou get? How maniacal and deranged will Misaki get? How perverted will Yamazaki get?
Comic Books
- Lately the Marvel Universe has become one of these. What over-hyped crossover will we pull out next summer? How many more longstanding friendships can we destroy? How much more of a prick can Tony Stark become? How much of Wolverine can we disintegrate and how many milliseconds can we push his healing down to? And most importantly: How far can we piss off Spider-Man fans until they finally stop buying the series?
- I'd say that last one came about recently.
- Blue Beetle: How is Jaime Reyes gonna get screwed over this time? How awesome are Brenda and Paco gonna be next issue? Is that a giant naked guy? Is Paco going to use his stick? Is the Scarab going to figure out how to take down EVERYTHING?
- How many overpowered villains can Squirrel Girl defeat?
- The achievements of the Saint of Killers from Preacher get steadily more impressive until the end where he kills God.
- Nextwave: Agents of Hate. Just... just read it. It almost completely defies description.
- DC One Million started out by creating a version of the Justice League Of America from an insane amount of time in the future, where hyper-technology gave everyone superpowers, everyone was connected to a telepathic internet, and the Big Seven each had their own planet. Then it started raising the stakes. By the end of it, the original Superman had emerged from his Fortress in the Sun to defeat Solaris the Living Star with a Green Lantern ring supplied by J'Onn J'Onzz, who was now Mars's Genius Loci. He was then was reunited with Lois and his Kryptonian parents, recreated through some form of supercloning.
- So, just how insane and ridiculous can Deadpool get today?
- To elaborate: One of his issues begins with a panel of Deadpool garotting Santa Claus while the caption reads: "A routine assignment." And that is probably the least weird thing that happens in that issue.
- Jhonen Vasquez. 'nuff said.
- Occurs to some extent in Elf Quest: How much more evil can we make Winnowill in this story arc?
- Red Hulk is an example of how this can go wrong. How many popular characters can he effortlessly beat? How many ways can he violate the rules of the Marvel Universe just for something that looks cool? How many items can he tick off the Villain Sue checklist?
- Transformers: Alternity is... a hell of a thing. To start with, standard armaments include weapons (both ranged and melee) which can strike any target anywhere in any universe at any point backwards or forwards in time. Standard shielding consists of erasing one's self from existence. The Big Bad is essentially a Planet Eater who devours time itself. And that's not even counting all the little extra bits.
Fanfic
- It's fortunate that Neon Genesis Evangelion and Warhammer 40000 have already been mentioned, because Shinji And Warhammer40k combines both (obviously). What Rule Of Cool-laden method will be used to kill the Angel this time? What literally impossible thing can the AT-Field be used for next? How thoroughly can Tokyo 3 be destroyed? How much CAPSLOCK can be inserted into the next In The Name Of The Moon speech? What new Xanatos Gambit can Shinji pull off? How much More Dakka will Kensuke need? How much carnage can apocalypse Rei inflict? Which meek, unassuming and/or pathetic character becomes completely awesome due to Shinji's mere presence?
- If you've read My Immortal, you'll know that, at any given moment in the fic, you'll believe it's impossible for it to get any worse. And then the next chapter comes and proves you wrong.
Film
Literature
- From the first chapter of The Princess Bride comes this gem. By the end of the book, Buttercup's all but describing her love as "Over Nine Thousand."
"I have loved you for several hours now, and every second, more. I thought an hour ago that I loved you more than any woman has ever loved a man, but a half hour after that I knew that what I felt before was nothing compared to what I felt then. But ten minutes after that, I understood that my previous love was a puddle compared to the high seas before a storm. Your eyes are like that, did you know? Well they are. How many minutes ago was I? Twenty? Had I brought my feelings up to then? It doesn't matter. I love you so much more now than twenty minutes ago that there cannot be comparison. I love you so much more now than when you opened your hovel door, there cannot be comparison."
- Westley then tops that by explaining how much greater his love is compared to hers.
- Referenced (and parodied) in Jack of Fables, when Jack copies this speech practically word for word and tells it to the Snow Queen. Unlike Buttercup, though, Jack doesn't really love her and just wants to mooch off her and live in her palace as long as he can.
- How many missiles can Honor fire off at once?
- 69,984 missiles, in 7,776 pods. After ECM, over 37 thousand got through. On 85 targets. Oh and of those missiles? 54,208 were laser warheads. X-ray Lasers created by the nuclear bomb on the missile exploding...
- Trumped earlier in the battle of Manticore where the opening and ONLY salvo contained over half a million missiles, albeit that not being launched by Honor.
- China Mieville's Iron Council - What sort of golem is Judah Low going to whip up this time?
- What sort of primal unstoppable force is Vimes going to Determinate through this time?
- The Lensman series is MADE of this (well, this mixed with Lensman Arms Race). Galactic Patrol starts with spaceships capable of ninety parsecs per hour and firing "super-atomic" explosives. By the beginning of the third book there are flotillas of armed, moving planets; by the end, whole planets made of antimatter are used as faster-than-light projectiles routinely, and there is a psychic super-mind (the "Unit") capable of destroying the Eddorian planet, which "all the physical weapons of all the universes" could not harm.
- The Dresden Files: What mind-blowingly awesome trick will Harry pull this time? How many new scars can he get? How much more Bad Ass can Murphy become before she becomes the female equivalent of Kamina? How bizarre and gory can the villains' tactics get? How much can we scale up the Thirty Xanatos Pileup? How pretty can Thomas be? How's Harry going to top The Dinosaur Incident? How much ass can be kicked?
Live Action TV
- Myth Busters: What ridiculously complicated automation are we going to construct to test this myth? How much crap can we blow up? How badly can we totally maim the show mascot, Buster? How the hell are we going to talk the next poor sap into donating his motorcycle/car/motorboat/747 jetplane to us, knowing it's going to end up scattered across California in a bazillion microscopic pieces? Just how are we going to completely sandwich that compact car between two fully loaded semitrucks like the myth says? How many ways can we repurpose Grant's one-time sword-swinging rig?
- They made a ''lead balloon''
- They also disintegrated a car!!!
- Forget the car. Remember the cement truck?
- Nah, the car was much MUCH more awesome. The cement truck was just a big explosion. The car... The car turns to multi-coloured dust! In awesomely-gratuitous ultra slow motion. Before your very eyes!
- And more cynically, how much more completely can we sell out our supposed pretensions to science for the sake of spectacle?
- The season finales of the new Doctor Who series seem determined to top the previous ones every year. They've gone from having the Daleks invading Earth, to the Daleks and the Cybermen invading Earth, to the Master and a race of devolved humans from the end of time itself actually conquering Earth and massacring a tenth of the population before enslaving the rest to construct an army of warships that would invade the rest of the universe.
- And then the fourth season finale tops even this, putting every single universe in peril. If that weren't enough, it features all three of the Doctor's main companions from the New Series returning, plus Sarah Jane Smith, her son, computer, and robot dog, Captain Jack Harkness and the Torchwood crew, plus Rose Tyler's mother and ex-boyfriend (i.e. around 80% of all returning characters from the New Series, probably excepting only those who couldn't fit filming into their schedules). And let's not even get into which villain from the Classic series returns, or which ship finally sets sail. The only mercy is that the lead writer is stepping down after this series, so he won't be tempted to top even this next time.
- Of course, when you consider who's replacing him, you know the question will become "how many ways can we make viewers incapable of ever sleeping again this week?"
- Stargate: What horrible new Sealed Evil In A Can will our heroes stumble into and fight for all of the next season? What absurd new weapons will they jury rig to destroy them? How many more times can we kill Jackson? How much more can the Ancients screw up? How powerful can the millennia-old weapons get, and how quickly can the heroes find them right next to the villain's headquarters where nobody bothered to look before?
- 24: How bad a day can Jack Bauer save us from this season? What plots will the terrorist pull this season? Assassinate the president? Steal a nuclear bomb? Unleash a devastating virus? Or many cannisters of nerve gas? How will Jack Bauer kill them? Shooting them with a gun? Two guns? Run on the wall while simultaneously snapping their necks? With a cell phone?! Biting their necks out?!?!
- All that, and Jack never has to eat or go to the bathroom. Ever.
- What ridiculously hard task can the producers of Top Gear set the three presenters this week? They've gone from buying used cars and driving from Florida to New Orleans, to buying used, two-wheel-drive cars and driving across Africa from one border to the other. And what about the episode where they attempted to turn a Reliant Robin into a functioning space shuttle?
- The Middleman: How many awesome pop-culture references can they fit in this week? How much stranger can they get? Can they possibly top trout zombies? YES THEY CAN
- How horrible can the people in Its Always Sunny In Philadelphia get?
- On Psych, how much more brazen can Shawn get? How much more ridiculous can the truth of the next crime be? The latter is a necessity of the format in this case, since due to Shawn nearly always being right, the only way to keep the police from believing him right off, is to commit incredible crimes... and we're
a season two seasons past the victim being killed by a tyrannosaur.
- Buffy The Vampire Slayer: how much more emotional trauma can we inflict on Buffy? How many times can the Scoobies prevent the end of the world?
- Lampshaded several times in the show, once by the entire Scoobies who respond to Giles saying "It's the end of the world" with (in chorus) "*AGAIN*?!?!?!" and later by Riley, who says to Buffy "Before I met you I never needed to know the plural of apocalypse".
- Heroes: How dumb can Peter/Mohinder/Hiro get? How many times can we get Claire to cry? How much darker can this show get? How many powers can Peter have? How many of those will he actually remember? How many overpowered characters that nothing can kill can you put into one show?
- Not much, not very, plenty, all of them, one, and six.
- How are they going to kill Nathan again in the next Season Finale? We assumed in the first season that he was disintegrated by Peter exploding; the second season had him getting shot several times by Peter who came from the future (don't ask); the third had him getting his throat slashed by Sylar, which threw in a new twist by having Matt mindbend Sylar into permanently transforming as Nathan (Again, don't ask).
- Madan Senki Ryukendo: What impossible act of heroism will Kenji pull off? How much further can he be powered up?
- Lost: What Arc Words are going to come up? Can Ben Linus be even more of a Crazy Prepared Magnificent Bastard? How many more questions can they create by answering one of them? Who can they give A Day In The Limelight to (I mean, we have to get to the dog eventually)? Will they drop hints on a Alternate Reality Game? What type of Flashback Twist can they do, how about a Flash Forward, now how are they going to outdo that, wait, how about A FLASHBACK AND A FLASHFORWARD AT THE SAME TIME AND THEY DON'T TELL YOU UNTIL THE END!?! How can they, what? Slaughterhouse Five!?!
- This basically encompasses Bill Brasky's life. How many horrifying and magical things can he do? How many things can he destroy? How many people can he kill? How many people can he rape? How much gin can he drink? And how can we not love him for it? To Bill Brasky!
- The Red Green Show: is there any limit to what can be cobbled together out of old parts, lawn mowers, duct tape, K-cars, and the Possum Van?
- Battlestar Galactica: How could things possibly get worse? Who hasn't had anything life-alteringly horrible happen to them recently?
- How exuberant and disturbingly ambitious can Carmen Sandiego's crimes get? What priceless relic/building/country will she steal next?
- Supernatural: How much worse can everyone's Daddy Issues get? And how much more emotional torture can the boys take before they top themselves?
- Ninja Warrior, also known as SASUKE in Japan, is one of the most absurdly difficult strength/balance/skill competitions ever. Some of the most notorious obstacles in the 4 stages are the Warped Wall (Stage 1) and the Salmon Ladder (Stage 2). There are 100 competitors in each competition. In the 19th, a particularly evil event, 98 people, including ALL of the "All-Stars", failed the first stage. The remaining two failed the Salmon Ladder, the SECOND obstacle in Stage 2.
- Michael Irvin, American football legend, has a TV show on Spike where people who couldn't make the NFL due to external factors are given a chance to compete for one spot in the Cowboys training camp roster, which is basically a shot at having a shot at making a team. After a series of already absurdly difficult practices, they are given a night on the town, which is basically an excuse to get them as far off-rhythm as possible. The next MORNING, he puts them through an Unwinnable practice, where the only way out is to quit the show. They are expected to last 30 minutes. Instead, they last FIVE HOURS of practices, in the middle of Texas, in September (around 80 degree weather), in what several pro football legends called the most extreme practice they had ever seen. Had the episode been filmed in the month when it had aired (June, 100+ degree weather), the creator/host acknowledged someone absolutely would have died. The only reason why the practice was stopped at 5 hours was because Irvin had to prevent this from happening, as it became apparent the competitors absolutely would not give up.
- How hilariously cartoonish
can could the murders in Pushing Daisies be? (Lampshaded by Emerson in "Smell of Success")
- Also, how awful could Ned's childhood get? He's like an onion of trauma, you just peel away one damaging event after another.
- Mystery Science Theater 3000: How awful can the movies get? How obscure can the references be? How many jokes can we pack into one and a half hours? The last is particularly impressive, as most episodes have over 700 jokes, which is to say a joke every '7.15 seconds.
- Leverage. What improbable thing can they steal this week? (A hospital? A mountain? A miracle?) How much more terrible can the villains get? (In with the mob? Financially ruining innocents? Kidnapping orphans to use as a cover for their gunrunning operation?) How crazy can Nate's plan be? Who will have a morality crisis this episode? Who can Eliot beat up? How much can they get away with?
- While the show itself is not an example, one episode of The Goodies has Graeme start up a pirate radio station outside the five mile limit of Britain for Bill and Tim, then getting the idea to run a pirate post office on the side. He starts going mad with power, adding on a pirate bus station, then a few other ideas, until finally he tries dragging Britain outside the five mile limit for a pirate country.
- How much more offensive can Frankie Boyle get? Since he's left the show, not very.
- Carl Sagan in Cosmos used this to explain the concept of eternity and infinity: He described the Googolplex as a really big number (10^(10^100)) and then compared it to the number of atoms in the universe (something around 10^80), and yet he states that ''infinity is bigger'' and the googolplex is as far from infinity as it is the number 1.
- To put the immensity of the googolplex into perspective, if you tried to write it out (a 1 followed by a googol zeros), you'd run out of atoms to put your zeros on before you finished.
- Win, place and show must go the second season of Lexx, in which the Big Bad managed to convert every piece of matter in the universe into one of his robots (except the Lexx and its passengers.) Our heroes still managed to defeat him, by causing the universe to collapse and create a wormhole through which they escaped.
Music And Sound Effects
- Tom Lehrer's parody song "I Hold Your Hand In Mine" manages to get squickier (and funnier) with every verse.
- Then there's "I Got It From Agnes," with the increasing squick that never enters Dude Not Funny.
- For those who've never heard those songs, "I Hold Your Hand In Mine" is about a man holding his lover's hand which he just chopped off from her dead body, now that he's killed her and "I Got It From Agnes" is about a present that keeps going around a circle of friends and acquaintances: an STD.
- This seems to be a specialty of Lehrer's. Other examples include "How black can I make this comedy while still keeping it funny" ("The Irish Ballad" and "We Will All Go Together When We Go", among others), "What wholly inappropriate countries can I suggest are going to get nuclear capabilities" ("Who's Next?"; answer: Alabama), and "What disabilities can I suggest the army allows in recruits" ("It Makes a Fellow Proud to be a Soldier").
- Stephen Lynch is also brilliant at this, although he may cross over into squick territory. YMMV.
- Rumor has it he left one song unfinished because his father threatened to disown him if he didn't.
- DragonForce. How many references to sunlight/moonlight/warriors/fire can we fit in? How much apocalyptic subtex can we fit in a single verse? How many ludicrously overblown solos can Herman Li and Sam Totman manage?
- Meshuggah. How many more strings can we add to our guitars? How low can we tune them before we reach the brown note? How intense does Tom Haake's rhythmic mindfuckery of the drums get?
- And as Dragon Force is to metal, so is Meat Loaf to rock 'n' roll. Take the familiar lyrical themes of '70s hard rock, double the length of each song, add pounding pianos, soaring orchestra, layer upon layer of squealing guitars, bombastic backing choirs, and one of the largest hams in modern music history on lead vocal, and you've got a totally unique brand of "Wagnerian rock" that seems scientifically engineered to produce crowning moment after crowning moment.
- Grindcore. The entire genre.
- A currently-unidentified radio show once dedicated an hour to this trope. The first track was One Note Song by Tenacious D, and each subsequent track added another layer of complexity (usually by adding another instrument). The final track was Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture.
- Neil Peart of the band Rush appears to be doing it with the number of pieces in his drum set.
- To be fair, he doesn't have the big-ass glockenspiel and Chinese gong any more. Now, digital samples of said instruments he can trigger via foot pedals on the other hand...
Stephen Colbert: The band Rush is here! Either that or a drum factory exploded in my studio.
- This rendition of Flandre Scarlet's theme starts out fairly playable, and then it adds more and more notes until only a computer could play it.
- The Lonely Island's entire musical output runs on this trope.
- The lyrics of Traffic's song "Forty Thousand Headmen" are a tall tale by an Unreliable Narrator who claims to have performed a series of increasingly-impossible feats: knocking down the titular 40,000 headmen, walking on the sea, carrying 100 tons of treasure all at once, flying above the clouds while carrying the 100 tons of treasure, and being alive and able to walk away after being shot by 800,000 shotguns.
Close Music And Sound Effects
Professional Wrestling
Close Professional Wrestling
Tabletop Games
- Warhammer 40000 asks you a few simple questions: How much worse can we make this galaxy? How many atrocities can we get the Imperium to commit today? How many more Imperial Guardsman can we kill in this battle? How much more hopeless can the wars against the Tyranids and Necrons become? What futher madness can spew from the Eye of Terror this week? And most importantly of all... how much more dakka do we need until we have enuff dakka?
- You can never have enuff dakka.
- I draw to your attention the theoretical weapon that simultaneously hits every point in the universe with every point in the universe.
- Ork Mekboyz have concluded that such a weapon would not be enuff dakka because in order to qualify as dakka there must be someone (preferably someone orky) to use it. Weaponizing every point in the universe would leave no orks to wield such a weapon.
- Big Mek Bignutz is here to blow your minds: Sum people arsks me, 'ow I expect ta make enuff dakka if dere ain't no such fing. Well, I fink dere IZ such a fing as enuff dakka: A gun dat can destroy nuffin. Fink about it! Wot'z indestructible? NUFFIN! So if'n you make a gun dat can destroy nuffin, den you have enuff dakka!
- Bigga Mek Gribsnit 'ere; ya fergot sumfink, ya git. Ya gotz ta make a gun wot can krump nuffin, an' also krump evryfin...if ya gotz a gun wot kan krump nuffin, but won't krump ennyfin else, ya doin' it wrong.
- And den ya twin link it! And add a choppa! Yes, we have a gun that causes every point in the universe with every point in the universe (which includes the warp, that is Hell) *Simultaneosly* and destroys everything and nothing, TWICE. FOREVER! And, because that's not enough dakka, then we make it rapid fire so fast it fires an infanite amount of times in no time at all. What do orks do? We twin link it, and add a choppy bit. Oh, and paint it blue for good luck.
- Youz doins it wrong ifn yas paints it blue, for sometink like dats, it's gotta be green, cause green's da best, and dis da best dakka you can gitz
- Oi.....Howzis? We take dat shoota wit dat massive dakka, give it to a whole buncha orks, den build some Huge Mek, wot SHOOTS ORKS wot already has two of dem mega-dakka guns?
- Paint wun red, wun blue, wun green, an' wun uvver purple, cos purple makes ya dead sneaky.
- Then there's Wazdakka Gutzmek, an Ork Big Mek whose lifelong ambition is to built the most awesomest bike in the 'ooniverse. How awesome? Well, he used it to ram into the cockpit of a Titan and kill the people inside. For his next trick he'll try fitting it with a fully fucntional warp-drive, so that he can ride from one side of the galaxy to the other (and shoot anything that gets in the way)!
- His bike has so many flashy gubbinz that it's one looted antigrav system from being a jetbike, has no less than three large guns that can all be fired at once (going by the wording in his entry), and the man himself has been depicted in art with a chainsaw claw.
- When played right, the game Exalted is basically the Do It Yourself version of Beyond The Impossible.
- Scion starts at 11 and the books actively encourage the players and Storyteller to see how far they can push the meter up.
- Mage: The Ascension had plenty of this. What mindbreaking horrors can the Nephandi conjure up? What beautifully crazy spells, characters and phenomena can the setting support? How can Paradox screw things up this time? How much overwhelming force can the Technocracy bring to bear? How convulted can the metaplot become? The answer: No limits! NOTHING IS TRUE, ANYTHING IS PERMITTED! Or for the Technocrats: If we can visualise it, WE CAN DO IT! WE HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY!
- Part of the Dungeons And Dragons community enjoys turning a Game Breaker Up To Eleven. Some call us "Munchkins", but we prefer "theoretical optimisation". Notable exploits include turning Locate City into a tactical nuke, implanting your mind into a bizarre creature with an impossible parentage in order to make over one million thrown knife attacks in a single round, and the infamous Pun-Pun, the first-level kobold with arbitrarily high stats and all abilities in existence useable at will.
- What's the break DC of a planet?
- The /tg/ board on 4chan has been seen discussing how to properly min-max Surtr. As in, the Norse fire giant destroying the world. That Surtr. Min-Maxing him.
- Paranoia. The fall damage chart goes up to orbital.
- The questions in question are "how many consecutive character sheets must we hand out?" and "how large a pipe do we need for the inevitable hose job?"
- Spirit of the Century lets player characters pull off some ridiculous stunts to rise to the challenge, so long as you're willing to be creative and spend a fair number of Fate Points. Oh, and any game that is willing to include build-it-yourself gadgets and the potential to fight talking gorillas on the top of a Zeppelin is already up to 11.
- Don't Rest Your Head has the same mechanic that is slowly wearing you down make you more powerful at the same time, pretty much guarantreeing you'll push a little further beyond the impossible next time. By the late game (which can sneak up on you surprisingly quick) you're more powerful than the (possible) incarnation of Death. And, using the madness powers, by this point you have power so over the top you could call down the four Horsemen, or an army of nijas, or make enough ants crawl out of your skin to consume the city. It gets pretty intense when you're creative.
Videogames
- Disgaea: How epic and shiny can the attacks get? How high can the damage and level caps go? How many Badass Lolitas can we cram into the game? How cracktacular can we make the next chapter preview? What hilarious but utterly depraved deed will our "heroes" try now? How hard can we smash the fourth wall this time? Just how evil and powerful is Bonus Boss Baal? He's a Demon Lord; he's a Supreme Demon Overlord; who instantly reincarnates upon defeat; actually he's as old as the universe, and takes a new body every time he loses, he can have more than one body at a time.
- Ratchet And Clank: Think we can't make the BFGs any bigger? Oh, how wrong you are...
- Scribblenauts: The game can do anything on this list.
- Perhaps a bit of an exaggeration, but yes, the game does indeed allow you to summon any noun in the dictionary, and then some. Wanna see God armed with a shotgun duke it out with Cthulhu to the death? You got it! Want to defeat a giant enemy crab with a rocket launcher? Your wish is Scribblenauts' command! Want to defeat an army of zombie robots by traveling back in time and recruiting a dinosaur to ride into battle? No easier said than done! There's a reason this game was the breakaway hit at E3.
- Kingdom Hearts II: How many more ridiculous cool reaction commands and cutscenes can you put in this game? The game's final level ends with an area where you can cut in half, and casually kick around skyscrapers. Did we mention the main character's weapon is a giant key?
- The final boss of the first Kingdom Hearts was a magical spaceship.
- With a giant shirtless man attached to it by tentacles. Don't forget that part.
- And don't forget the one-man war against a thousand Heartless.
- Complete with kill counter!
- How badass can we make Mickey flippin' Mouse?
- Don't forget the first part in the final sequence of the game, where you somehow cut through three skyscrapers that emerge from the ground and completely block your way, and you somehow end up cutting them into triangular slices with your key, and then to top it off you somehow appear on the OTHER SIDE before the buildings even start collapsing.
- Near the climax of the first game, Beast, in order to find Belle, tears through dimensions by sheer force of will.
- Phantom Brave: What ordinary object will become the next Infinity Plus One
Sword fish crate flower pastry? Will you give it to the undead male lead, the 13-year old girl, the talking rabbit, the anthropomorphic bottle, or the exploding penguin?
- Super Robot Wars: How many Crowning Moments Of Awesome can each character get? How
over the top HAMMY can Sanger Zonvolt get? How EX!PLO!SIVE! can the attacks get? How powerful can the Big Bad be? What new problem can Latooni have?
- Arika has escalated the difficulty of Tetris in its Tetris The Grand Master series of arcade games released in Japan. In ordinary Tetris, the pieces fall faster and faster.
- But in Tetris The Grand Master, halfway through the game, at about 150 lines, the blocks fall to the floor immediately as they enter, and the player needs to slide each piece into place within a half second.
- Tetris The Absolute The Grand Master 2 PLUS: By 270 lines, the time to slide each piece into place decreases to not much more than a quarter second. At 300 lines, the lights turn off. The player can see only the active piece, which disappears as soon as it locks into place, and has to play for a whole minute by memory and feel. Even this player can't do it.
- Here's a video of a player pulling this trick off for the original TGM (starting at 5:11). Truly scary, even if the game is slightly easier.
- Tetris The Grand Master 3: Terror-Instinct: The sliding times decrease even faster. And once the lights turn off, the player has to make ten four-line clears. And then the same player has to max the grade on seven consecutive credits on a machine in order to unlock the best ending. You have to be really Belgium dedicated to pull that off.
- A Game Mod for the TGM clone NullpoMino allows you to play in invisible mode for not just one minute, but rather, 999 levels *
"levels" meaning "pieces dropped + lines cleared" . One of the best TGM players in the world can only complete 30% of it.
- Thrust: So you guided a heavy inertia-bound object out of all those tunnels without the gun-turrets, or unforgiving gravity and inertia killing you? Can you do it with reversed gravity? Can you do it with invisible tunnel walls? How about both?
- Metal Wolf Chaos: How fervored can the patriotism get? How evil can Richard get? How ridiculous can the plot get?
- To be fair, the main character is the President of the United States - as he says, it's his job to "make the impossible, possible."
- Metal Gear Solid: How bizarre can we make the bosses? A fourth-wall breaking telepath, a bisexual flamenco-dancing vampire, the former President of the U.S. in a tentacled battle-suit. A 100-year old plant-man sniper, I'm covered in bees!
- How much more blatant can the shots of Snake's ass get?
- How much longer could this damn Cut Scene get?!
- How utterly, ridiculously complex can we make the plot with this next random plot twist? And how many plot twists can we have in one hour? (Thirteen.)
- For Metal Gear Solid 4: How much more pain can we put Snake through? Wracked with coughs, sick with incurable diseases, hey, let's turn him into a genocidal epidemic-making machine, burn half his face off, shower him with microwaves...
- How much gayer can the male cast get? Quite a bit, actually. It never seems to put a damper on their manliness.
- How many more humanly impossible feats of battle prowess do we need before the fanbase stops believing that Raiden is an effeminate pansy?
- Portal uses this as a learning method, with the puzzles starting incredibly simple, then getting rapidly more complicated. Just how many portalling techniques can be combined in THIS test?
- Freelancer: How much firepower can the opponents pack? How huge is our next target? How much ships can the Order take on?
- It is also common in First Person Shooters. How many strong enemies can we make the One Man Army face at the same time? It dates as back as Wolfenstein 3D. Serious Sam take it to the absurd extreme.
- Plenty of Nintendo Hard games, do this, but Battletoads may be the best example. While playing through any given level (except for maybe the first two), players are likely to wonder how the game will possibly get any harder. Next level, they get their answer.
- Serious Sam: How many enemies can we cram into The War Sequence? The final levels are considered Scrappy Levels by some, Crowning Levels Of Awesome by others for taking it so far it becomes Nintendo Hard.
- I Wanna Be The Guy: How many times will The Kid die before he'll become The Guy? How many more spikes can fit into a single screen? How many more
apples giant cherries will fall into the sky within the lapse of the next double-jump? How many ridiculously glitched and unfair traps stand between you and safety on the other side of the Pit of Death? How many times will the Bosses freak out and glitch-kill you like Space Marines on crack-stims? How many times will you scream and tear out your hair before you finally snap and throw your computer out the window and goes to cry like a little girl in the corner of the room? How many times can one curse the name of the game's creator before realizing it is in vain?
- The 1992 arcade game Total Carnage. How many enemies can the game throw at you? How many power ups and point bonuses can it cram into the screen? How many armored military vehicles can you blow up like they're made of gasoline? How many parts of the first boss can you blow off? How utterly absurd can the final boss be? And perhaps most importantly, how angry will you get when you realize that even if you collect everything within your power chances are you won't collect enough and the game will mock you for it?
- Sin And Punishment for the N64 does this quite often, primarily in the amount of complete, chaotic confusion it induces. It starts off alright enough, with you fighting soldiers and mutant animals. This leads to a situation where you ride on the top of the elevator while a huge torrent of horseshoe crabs come cascading down on you whilst you are under attack by a giant laser moth. Then at the end of the stage Tokyo inexplicably gets covered by a sea of blood that comes out of nowhere, you mutate into an Evangelion-esque giant thing, and it all goes directly to hell, getting progressively more and more difficult, chaotic, and above all, baffling with each passing moment/cutscene/level, before finally climaxing with you standing on top of Earth and fighting an ENTIRE PLANET.
- Katamari Damacy: Just how big can that ball of stuff get? Big enough to roll up a person? A cow? A giant octopus? The entire solar system? A supermassive black hole? Or how about quantity...say, a million roses?
- The Need For Speed series from Underground to Carbon. How cool can we make our rides? How many Cool Cars can we put in the game? How fast and furious can our races become? The answer to these questions is: Porsches, Lamborghinis and McLarens with custom paint jobs, tuning side skirts, spoilers the size of an Antonov wing, all of them capable of going beyond 400 km/h.
- Ancient Keeper (the unofficial expansion to Dungeon Keeper): While there are levels that are just very difficult battles, your very first fight would be considered impossible by the average winner of the original game. It gets worse from there. The expansion takes advantage of every subtlety the authors could find in the game physics, creature AI, and keeper AI.
- Guitar Hero. Witness the escalation from "Bark At the Moon" to "Jordan" to "Through the Fire and Flames" to "Satch Boogie" in the epic series of impossible bonus songs. Note that Bark At the Moon is neither a bonus song nor nearly as hard as the other songs in the list, and technically there are no bonus songs in Guitar Hero World Tour, so Satch Boogie isn't a true bonus song, and it also isn't quite as tough.
- Well, depending on your definition of what a "bonus song" is. Since Satch Boogie only appears in non-required gigs in Career mode (and you have to pay to perform at them), some say it counts. Regardless, "Pull Me Under" (which isn't too terribly hard) IS a bonus song for Guitar Hero World Tour in that it is ONLY unlocked by beating any career mode (you do not, however, have to do the extra gig "Sunni's Chariot" to unlock it, just playing it at the credits is enough). Yes, you HAVE to do it that way, because the quickplay songs cheat doesn't unlock it. It is worth every bit of effort, though.
- Ace Attorney: How epic can we make the court system? How over the top can we make the prosecutor? How about the witnesses? Can we make the murder plan even more convoluted? How insane can we make a Villainous Breakdown without simply have the person exploding?
- If you argue that Trilo (a ventriloquist's puppet) is a person in his own right, he actually does explode. A few times. Godot's visor also explodes from nothing but your logic.
- beatmania IIDX: How many notes can we cram in the space of a little over 2 minutes? 1,500? 1,800? 2,000? 2119? 2,626? (That last number includes Black Anothers, which aren't normally available)
- And on a directly related note, the above are the highest total number of notes in a song from those releases (Nageki No Ki's 2,000-note count was preceeded by Mei's 2,000-note count), not counting console-exclusive charts. remove the song length restriction, and you get a 4459-note endurance test that is immediately followed by - you guessed it - The first chart to hit 2,000 notes
- Additionally, all but ONE SP Black Another charts have gotten trumped by the same Another chart - The 2DX Empress One More Extra Stage Himiko, with 2119 notes in SP mode and 2194 notes on DP mode (which typically has FEWER notes than SP). To put the difficulty of this chart into perspective, the person clearing that chart has Full-Combo'd Icarus on Another, and the clear rate (due to HARD being forced on) is somewhere around 6% of all people that actually reach it. Considering the requirements to get this specific song (via normal mode, at least), a more accurate clear rate (out of all players) would be 0.035%.
- Steering things away from literal Beyond the Impossible - How ~fabulous~ can Ryu* and Dai get?
- Sam And Max: What insane thing can the duo try to stop that people should normally not even consider toppling? The Mob? The Presidency? The internet? Hell? What is the most insane way we can stop them? And how much more money can Bosco ask for?
- Mad World: Just how much blood can a single human spill? How many unique ways can Jack hilariously murder someone? How vulgar can the announcers get?
- Star Wars: The Force Unleashed: How much more EXTREME can the uses of the Force get? How much more severely can you overkill the next enemy? How much more severely can you kill the next group of enemies? What's the largest group of enemies you can overkill severely before you feel even an iota of remorse?
- The doujin Bullet Hell shooter ''HellSinker'' really illustrates this trope starting with Segment 5: You have to navigate your way through a labyrinth lined with guns while weird Magitek things fly through the walls to attack you, then fight an absolutely incredible boss with many forms of attack that summons various bizarre machines to attack you, then summons the final boss of the creator's previous game, Radiozonde, to fight you, then when you finally beat all of that back and whittle its armor down to zero, FATE CONTROL TERRA++ and it's freaking immortal and you have to time it out to win. This would easily qualify as the Final Boss of any other shooter, but it's just the halfway point, and it only gets more insane from there.
- Touhou: How much more sadistic can the spell cards get? How many more characters can be crammed into one Fantasy Kitchen Sink? And just how many more memes can be spawned before the internet utterly consumes itself?!
- Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTn0I3xnVMc. Bullet Hell is an understatement.
- Pump It Up has stepcharts that make Dance Dance Revolution look as easy as You Have To Burn The Rope. There's stuff like "Love Is A Danger Zone 2" on Nightmare difficulty and "Final Audition Episode 2" on Another Nightmare difficulty. And the best part? Unlike DDR and In The Groove, where most players see double-pad play as an optional challenge, if you are a top-tier Pump player, you are expected to play double-pad charts.
- Pokemon started out just being collecting wild animals in a highly bizarre parallel world. By this point, it also involves collecting evolutionary throwbacks of billions of years ago, creatures that created the world itself, the creators of space and time, the creators of mind and spirit, and even the freaking creator god of the world itself. Overreaching much? That's putting it lightly.
- EverQuest: With fifteen expansion packs and another on the way, it's difficult for an outsider (and many of EQ's longtime fans) to fathom the question, "How far will we go in finding new threats to the world of Norrath's safety?" By the third expansion the players had already been to the moon; in the fourth we killed most of the gods in their own homes (they got better). By expansion thirteen we had gone to a parallel world of sorts, killed an overlord of sheer brutal evilness, unwittingly helped a malicious new god come to power, then killed the new god, and then killed him again because he didn't stay dead. Also, we defeated a ridiculously powerful dragon and his gnomish cohorts. Most recently, we saved the timestream and all reality as we know it from a guy who was secretly pulling the puppet strings behind the evil overlord from eight expansions ago. How exactly is the dev team supposed to top that? By sending us to stop the heart of the world from being corrupted by evil energies, apparently.
- Paraworld has one one of the most Awesome Yet Practical weapons of all time. Its an Anklyosaurus, with a catapult strapped to its back, that fires ''Velociraptors''.
- In Giga Wing, a score of one million points is nothing—the best scores have 14 digits. And then in Giga Wing 2, 14-digit scores become crappy scores—you'll be having as many as 17 digits by the end of a single-credit run. And finally, in Giga Wing Generations, you might as well express your approximate scores in scientific notation: they can be as many as twenty digits long!
- Viewtiful Joe seems to anticipate Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann by having each of Joe's mechs transform into the head of an even larger robot. Thankfully, the largest mecha in the series is only a little bit smaller than the sun.
- "Umineko No Naku Koro Ni". How badass can Battler get? Badass enough to solve the mystery of Rokkenjima and then totally bring Erika to tears by rubbing it in her face and completely tearing apart her pro-mystery solution. How cruel can Beatrice kill people? Try slicing open their bodies and stuffing candy into their stomachs, then arranging them around a Halloween feast. And let the innards ooze onto the carpet and mix with the jam that also spilled out of their stomach. How many new magical characters will get introduced to make Battler reconsider his anti-fantasy approach? He hasn't yet. But there's a whole lot of them, take my word for it.
- Ace Combat asks you how Game Breaking the superfighters can get. We've had at least two with special weapons that can one-shot entire missions, and one wonders how to go up from there. To put things into perspective, the superfighter from 2, the XFA-27, is merely a mid-tier plane in X.
- It gets even more over the top in X than merely having superfighters. Not only do you get access to a huge array of superplanes, you can tune them to your desired performance with parts! That already Game Breaker superplane? Dialed up to eleven. Proper tuning turns the aforementioned XFA-27 from a "mid-tier" plane to one of the very best aircraft in the game.
- How messed up hard can the bosses and Airstrike Impossible missions get?
- World Of Warcraft: What new leader of legions of undead or demons can we kill today? Did we kill all the old gods yet? How big can we make the dragons? How big can we make the weapons they drop? How big can we make the shoulders they drop? How many spikes can we put on said shoulders? How can we make the quests more entertaining? How much gold can we charge for one item? How awesome/crazy looking can we make the next mount? How many steroids can we feed the male characters? How skimpy can we make the females' armor? What will those crazy gnomes/goblins invent next?
- How hard can Devil May Cry get? Well, for the 4th game's Dante must die mode, we have a boss fight you can't win without either ridiculous levles of skill and luck, or a ton of healing items and at least one ressurection. After that, there's a silly joke mode, where everything, including you, dies in one hit. What's that you say? A mode where all the enemies are on normal difficulty, but you still die in one hit, so you cannot even get past the first level unless you're skilled beyond reason? Perfect.
- The Super Mario Bros games: how much more ridiculous can Bowser's plans to kidnap Peach get? Currently topped with New Super Mario Bros Wii, which has Bowser Jr. and a bunch of his Koopa Troopas hide out in a cake. They then stuff Princess Peach into the cake and take onboard one of Bowser's airships. Holy shit.
Webcomics
- The Adventures Of Doctor McNinja: How far can we stretch Rule Of Cool and Rule Of Funny? What crazy-awesome foe can we throw at Dr. McNinja this time, and what over-the-top, adrenaline-soaked method can he use to bring it to its knees? How epic can a moustache be? When you're so far Beyond The Impossible, what's left to go beyond?
- Casey And Andy: What madcap new invention will they come up with next? How many different ways can they find to blow themselves up? Will Bob be there too?
- Three words: Glorious Chainsaw Method. Lampshaded in the comic by Black Mage.
- Seven more words: Make your swords like things unto chainsaws.
- The fight against Demonhead Mobster Kingpin in Problem Sleuth. How will our heroes top their last utterly ridiculous, over-the-top and incredibly awesome attack? Answer: Sepulchritude.
- Schlock Mercenary did it here, which invokes this trope once you realize that the object they were intimating would be used to ram the Andromeda Galaxy was THE MILKY WAY GALAXY!
- That's not impressive at all, they're already on a collision course!
- In a few billion years or so, without intervention.
- Irregular Webcomic has just taken Wolverine's Bad Ass-ness and Coolness beyond beyond Beyond The Impossible here (read the annotation just how crazy this is).
- A lot of the idea originates from xkcd.
- The entire run of Sam and Fuzzy is one big long chain of how much weird stuff can fit in one story line. We start with an anthropomorphic teddy bear and a demon possessed freezer. Then add a secret agent taxi driver, a ninja mafia, an alien invasion of a major US record label (WTF?!?). Oh yeah, and The King is alive on a remote island somewhere. It starts getting into MindSccrew territory pretty quickly.
- Warbot In Accounting: Just how hilariously depressing can Warbot's life get? Arguably, this early one.
- Sluggy Freelance: What can we reference from our 10+ year history in this story arc? What character did we forget to give a month's worth of development?
Web Originals
Western Animation
- Someone tell me that there is no challenge between the writers to make Quagmire progressively squickier in his sex mania.
- South Park is essentially fueled by this trope.
Truth In Television
- How many blades can they fit onto a razor before it just becomes too ridiculous (well... MORE ridiculous)?
- This many.
- Or this many.
- There's a several-years-old joke in Russian that ends with "twenty-eighth polishes the jawbone."
- The Fashion Industry: What ridiculous creation will be touted as "the next big thing"? How obscenely emaciated must the models be before they can even audition? How flamboyantly gay can the designers be before they create a black hole of Camp?
- The second one, thankfully, only applies to the American continent, as European fashion shows now have minimum weight requirements.
- Computer technology does this every few years. Remember when a terabyte hard drive was absolutely unthinkable?
- Remember when 32 gigabyte SD Cards were?
- Or when a gigabyte was the realm of supercomputers? Now a camera has more memory than a Cray formerly used in colleges.
- The classic joke "The Aristocrats". How much more vulgarity can we jam in before the inevitable punchline?
- Modern Samurai Machii Isao. After cutting a mushroom's canopy, a pea pod (both lengthwise) and an Airsoft bullet as it was shot at him, what will people want to see him cut next?
- How insane can Real Life get? It seems like a legitimate Beyond The Impossible.
- The commission into the Victorian bushfires of February 2009 recommended the addition of a new bushfire danger level called "beyond extreme". (It has since been named "Catastrophic - Code Red")
- The cold war nuclear arms race. How powerful can the nukes get? The Czar Bomba was around 5,000 times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima!
- How many smaller applications can we adapt nukes to? Nuclear artillery, nuclear bazookas, and this Troper suspects people were working on nuclear hand grenades.
- Black Holes and other such celestial bodies like neutron stars, which are so heavy they practically break the normal laws of physics!
- Graham's number, the largest number with mathematical use. According to The Other Wiki "it is not possible, given the limitations of our universe, to denote Graham's number, or any reasonable approximation of it, in a conventional system of numeration."
Close Truth In Television
TV Tropes Wiki
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