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Escalating Chase

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The comedic equivalent of a Stern Chase, in which the protagonists are being pursued by an ever-increasing assortment of people they offended, probably including but not limited to cops.

A Sister Trope to Everyone Chasing You (just that trope doesn't require the chase happen one at a time).


Examples

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    Anime and Manga 
  • The first Ranma ½ Non-Serial Movie begins with Ranma chasing Happosai whilst being chased by Akane Tendo. As they run through the streets of Furinkan, they pick up all of Ranma's other rivals, his Unwanted Harem, and an assortment of bit-part characters, until eventually there is a huge crowd thundering after the three who started it.

    Comic Books 
  • Sin City has its fair share of chases for a comic series. The one shown early in A Dame to Kill For starts with one or two cop cars following the protagonists. More cars show up. Followed by at least one motorcycle... and then a police helicopter.

    Fan Works 
  • The Non-Bronyverse fic TD's Little Rarity has TD being forced to take care of a filly Rarity ala My Little Dashie. He gets worried that other people would find her and tries his best to hide her from others. Surprisingly Realistic Outcome occurs as his brony ex-roommate Ben finds out, and a fight between the two ends them with the authorities. Once they find out, TD does the first thing he thinks of: grab Rarity and high-tail it out of there. Of course, the rest of the dorm (primarily composed of bronies) notices TD and starts to pursue him too. Once TD gets into his car and tries to escape, an increasingly number of cars pursue it, including a fair number of police cars. A blockade forces him to stop, making TD being flanked by all of the cars, including the inevitable news chopper.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • The Blues Brothers not only get dozens of Lemming Cops on their tail but also Jake's Psycho Ex-Girlfriend, the Illinois Nazis, the National Guard, the Coast Guard, the Good Ol' Boys - basically, half of Illinois wants their heads on stakes.
  • The John Cleese movie Clockwise has Cleese's character going to a conference where he's to give a speech. Through the usual assortment of misadventures that happen in these kinds of movies, he ends up with quite a number of people chasing him. Being a comedy, they all manage to arrive at his destination before he does.
  • Dates back at least as far as 1909 and The Curtain Pole, in which Monsieur Dupont attempts to bring back a curtain pole that is at least fifteen feet long — too long to fit inside a moving cab, in other words. He winds up clubbing or antagonizing virtually everyone he passes, starting with the patrons of a bar, whom he whacks on the head as he enters looking for a ride. Then there's the owners of the cab that he steals, the parents of the baby carriage he knocks over, the farmer whose Fruit Cart he knocks over, the vendors at the open-air market he destroys, and more.
  • In PCU, the compound payoff to a series of brick jokes set up by visiting Pre-Frosh Tom accidentally pissing off every student group on campus over the course of the movie. He invokes this by running around campus and antagonizing each of them in turn before leading them back to The Pit where Droz is organizing a party to raise money to pay all the various fines the protagonists have incurred throughout the movie.
  • Buster Keaton in Seven Chances and the two-reeler "Cops".

    Literature 
  • A non-comedic version appears in the H. P. Lovecraft novella The Shadow Over Innsmouth, in which the narrator/protagonist ends up fleeing the eponymous town in the dead of the night with pretty much the entire (half-human) population at his heels.

    Live-Action TV 
  • At the end of practically every episode of The Benny Hill Show, Benny is chased by a larger and larger crowd, to a fast rendition of "Für Elise", or more commonly "Yakety Sax".
  • The Dukes of Hazzard sometimes (but not always) used this technique. When this trope was employed, one of the regular characters (most often, Bo and Luke and not always in the General Lee) would chase the villains, but the villains would be able to keep ahead of the Duke boys before the other Dukes, Rosco and Boss, and Enos would join in the chase and ultimately run the bad guys off the road to capture them.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Paranoia adventure "The Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues". At the end of the adventure the PCs are returning to Alpha Complex. They're pursued by the Cyberpunks, the Nouvelle Vaguers, the Studio Engineers, hostile natives, various joke monsters and all of the Vulture craft the Computer can scrape together.

    Theater 
  • In On the Town, the chase starts with a little old lady trying to get Gabey arrested for tearing a poster down in the New York City Subway. To her and a policeman are added Hildy's boss going after her for stealing a cab after he fired her, the man who built the dinosaur skeleton Claire and Ozzie destroyed, and finally Claire's judge fiancé, who does not understand why the protagonists have gotten themselves into so much trouble.

    Video Games 
  • Mass aggro situations in MMORPGs can wind up like this very quickly.

    Webcomics 
  • Sam Starfall deliberately provokes these on more than one occasion in Freefall. Being perhaps the most hated creature on the planet by way of being an absolute nuisance, it's not too hard for him.

    Western Animation 
  • The Amazing World of Gumball has this happen during one of the season finales in which all the Wattersons' actions over the past episodes catch up to them and the whole town starts chasing them.
  • Merrie Melodies: Chuck Jones' 1946 cartoon "Fair and Worm-er" is this trope by fact (although maybe not by spirit) — first the bird hunts the worm, then the cat the bird, then the dog the cat, then the dog catcher the dog, then the dog catcher's wife... the mouse... the random skunk... the everyone the everyone else... it must be the most chaotic mass chase ever animated.

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