Sorting Algorithm Of Evil - Television Tropes & Idioms

Dragon Ball Z went so far as to give characters an explicit, numbered "Combat Rating", including villains. A very strong human had a rating of about 100, while the heroes' rating was over 9000. This held out until the middle of the third arc, when the devices that were used to calculate these combat ratings were destroyed; at this point, the Big Bad's strongest form had a rating of around one hundred and twenty million. Generally, however, the plot set up the progression well; Raditz arrived first, and called on a pair of stronger allies; the heroes went after their boss next; the next Big Bad was created from said boss's cells, plus those of the powered-up heroes, and so on. The final villain was a mild subversion because, while it was weakest in its final form, its unique physiology made it nearly impossible to kill. If you go back to watch the series again, you soon realize that even the first fight was equally as tough as the last. It seems the hero increases in power just enough to get totally beaten by the next big bad. While there are episodes where Goku casually dispatches villains who fought toe-to-toe with him in his youth, these are naturally filler.
- The last villain's last form wasn't necessarily the weakest. It may have been weaker, but it totally owned the fat version. Also, I wouldn't even call it its final form as opposed to original.
  - Actually, that guy has 2 fat versions, one being its weakest form after doing its Heel Face Turn, and the other being the first we see of him. Neither fights to their fullests, in any case.
- This was actually subverted in Dragon Ball GT, where the new Big Bad turned out to be pathetically weak, but had the ability to possess the bodies of the various insanely superpowered supporting characters surrounding the hero.
  - Unfortunately, the evil group after that appeared to be even weaker. Most of them only take a single episode, and only the last one actually posed any sort of threat (by absorbing the powers of the defeated 6).
- Similarly subverted in Osu! Kaitte kita Son Gokuu to Nakama-tachi, in which an alien menace arrives and is easily defeated, because it arrived a bit too late in the chronology, and everyone was so enormously powerful that it really didn't ever have a chance at all.
Robotech carried this off by declaring that Zentradi < Masters < Invid. Robotech: Shadow Chronicles added The Children of the Shadow to this progression.
Yu-Gi-Oh! and Yu-Gi-Oh GX presented villains not only in ascending order by menace, but also, for some reason, effeminateness. For instance, the first Big Bad in season 1 of GX was a withered old man; Season 2's villain was a younger, more strapping adult male. Season 3 had a Hermaphrodite Duel Monster. Of course, the effeminateness of the villain ties directly into...
- ... their personal interest towards the hero. At first, the Big Bad is usually just interested in a certain trinket or item carried by the protagonist, while the next is usually more interested in the protagonist's actual abilities and strengths. The biggest of the Big Bads always seemed to have some kind of intimate interpersonal relationship with the hero, which would border on Ho Yay (since both sides in this series were invariably male), if only the Big Bad wasn't trying to enslave/murder them for some deep, scarring betrayal they blame on the protagonist. There are only two exceptions: Dartz, in the Doma Story Arc, and the Big Bad of the Capsule Monsters arc, which, as far as the rest of the series is concerned, never even happened. Even the original series (never released beyond Japan and taking place before the anime we all know and love) has most of the villains being random thugs met in chance encounters, fitting into the algorithm perfectly.
The opposition on Sailor Moon also sorted itself out into ascending levels of power per season, starting with the Dark Kingdom (which could barely field a single youma at a time) all the way up to Galaxia, who threatened the entire universe.
- The only exceptions seem to be Eiru and En who, regardless of probably being weaker than the last villains, had to face senshi with unusually strong attacks. Naturally this filler was forgotten later. It also seems to have been the original M.O. of the Amazon Trio, explaining their penchant for disguising themselves; likewise, there aren't real arc villains either.
  - The strange thing is that the five big bosses of the villain groups (Queen Metaria, Death Phantom, Pharaoh 90, Queen Nehellenia and Sailor Galaxia/Chaos) are all portrayed as having the same dark power to destroy or conqueror the universe which would mean they were at the same level of power.
  - In the manga, it's because they're all the same villain being reincarnated.
- Codename Sailor V, set before Sailor Moon and telling the story of Sailor Venus before she became part of the group appropriately has a big bad who though a threat to Sailor V is an extreme small fry in the scheme of things. He's one step below the first arc's Quirky Miniboss Squad being an underling of Kunzite. The Codename Sailor V manga debuted before Sailor Moon but wrapped up shortly after.
Naruto largely averts the algorithm by including fights between characters much stronger than the hero(es) throughout the story. The first major enemy, Zabuza, is so strong that the Genin can't be expected to hold their own against him (the same goes for his Battle Butler, Haku, who is almost as strong as their sensei). In addition, the Big Bad, Orochimaru, shows up in the second major arc. For the longest time, even the strongest characters could, at best, manage a tie against him. Through this, the heroes gain strength until they're able to hang with the big boys on their own. Once Orochimaru was defeated, however, the series has been heading more towards this, as two (possibly three) major villains turned out to be even stronger than him. Granted, one of the more recent antagonists is an internal one with more of a threat for his political influence than his physical power, and neither Orochimaru nor Itachi were actually beaten by the protagonists being stronger (Orochimaru was beaten at his weakest and then by Itachi, while Itachi turned out to have lost on purpose).
Largely averted by Hunter X Hunter. A notable secondary sometimes-friend-sometimes-foe character, Hisoka the Magician is introduced as one of the most dangerous men alive. Nearly three hundred chapters later (where the series appears to have permanently stalled), he's still one of the most dangerous men alive. The various enemies that the lead characters meet fluctuate wildly between "can kill them with a sneeze" to "wotta wimp!", with no real bearing on what point of the story they're at chronologically.
Justified in One Piece: as Luffy and crew get further along the Grand Line, they can expect that tougher opponents will appear, since the Grand Line is said to get more and more dangerous as one travels along it, and only the most powerful pirates can survive there.
- Subverted with the Flying Fish Raiders, who are actually much weaker than the Straw Hats' previous enemies, and the Marine admirals, Mihawk, and Kuma, who have wiped the floor with the Straw Hats in all of their fights so far, though in Kuma's case they were all badly injured and their strongest member was down, so perhaps not a complete subversion there.
In Bleach, this trope's existence is acknowledged by the ghost/shadow/illusion/whatever of the Bount Arc's Big Bad Kariya. In fact, the reason for everything Kariya did in life was his desire to escape the neverending fighting the trope enforces.
- This also occurs in the wider series, with a cycle where Kurosaki Ichigo goes through a long list of tougher enemies as follows: get the crap beaten out of him by the enemy, somehow power up, fight again and he's now on equal terms, some mid-battle powering up, at which point he can just about stomp the bad guy and it's time for a new more powerful one... the process has now slowed down, but it's still present.
  - The seemingly slower level up is partially explained by the fact that fights are taking longer and longer to finish, not to mention that due to the many friends he has aquired who also need their epic level upedness...
  - This fails to mention the Espada, a group of 10 arrancar arranged in order on the basis of strength. Also somewhat subverted in that a few of them fight out of order, and some of them don't even go after The Hero. Further subverted with 10th Espada Yammy Who turns out to be Espada number 0, and was abusing this algorithm to his advantage.
- Bleach also has a major subversion in Aizen, who first appears several arcs before someone with his power logically should.
Monster Rancher mostly subverts this. Pixie is the first of the big bad 4, but stronger than Gali and Greywolf (it takes the entire team sans golem to beat Pixie, but only Moochi or Tiger to beat Gali and Greywolf). also they meet Moo (the Big bad) on the road quite early, and the encounter plays out like a Hopeless Boss Fight.
- Although it's played straight in a sense, since Naga is the strongest of the big bad 4, and after that it's Moo in his Dragon Body who is incredibly powerful. But is subverted again, because in the next series they're up against one of his captains, who is obviously much weaker than Moo was.
Averted in Rurouni Kenshin. The characters make a point of stating several times that the villain of the third arc, Enishi, while very powerful, is just not on the same level as the villain of the previous arc, Shishio. Enishi manages to make up the difference by striking while everyone's still recovering from the fight with Shishio, sending several of his henchmen to fight the heroes, using a style that seems specifically built to counter Kenshin's own, and fighting an extremely emotionally distraught Kenshin. There is some debate over whether Shishio was really as strong as he seemed, though, since he fought the heroes after they were all exhausted from other fights.
- This trope is invoked by Shishio's Dragon, Hoji, who feels that the weaker members of Kenshin's Nakama pose too much of a threat to ignore. So Shishio leaves the three strongest members of the Juppongatana to fight the heroes, and sends the weaker members to go fight the others.
D.Gray-Man would justify this, since the Akuma all have specific Levels... except that, as the heroes get stronger, they start fighting higher-leveled Akuma in larger groups.
In Yu Yu Hakusho, every villain is billed as the most powerful, strongest, blah blah blah. This begins with several C-Class Demons early on and ends with the heroes fighting S-Class demons at the end of the series. Somewhat justified in that the Spirit World set up a powerful barrier that prevented powerful demons from entering the living world.
Saiyuki inverts this with its seasonal big bads. The first series has Homura, the God of War. Reload has Dr. Nii's disciple Kami-sama, and Gunlock features Hazel, a mere priest from the west. It also plays with the trope by making the villains harder to defeat in other ways - Homura was unquestionably a bad guy, but is followed by Psychopathic Manchild Kami-sama, who just didn't work on the same level mentally. Then there was Hazel, who was in all appearances a good guy, creating a huge ethical backlash to fighting him.
The classic example of the technology creep variety would be the Zeon mobile suits in Mobile Suit Gundam. They go from the rather pathetic Zaku which was designed for fighting conventional vehicles rather than other mobile suits, to the fast, heavily armed & armored, though somewhat unwieldy Dom to the powerful & agile Gelgoog, which nearly matches the Gundam's performance, with a few Ace customs & Super Prototypes along the way for flavor. This would be a fairly realistic setup... if the war had lasted longer than a single year. The novelization is somewhat better about this as the war drags on for two years & the Gelgoogs never show up. It also subverts this trope, as the antagonists use a slightly less advanced Mobile Armor to fight the Gundam in the climactic battle due to supply shortages and though the Gundam defeats it, it proves to be enough of a distraction that a Mauve Shirt piloting a lowly Rick Dom is able to finish Amuro off.
The entirety of battle in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is a combination of this and a Lensman Arms Race. The Big Bad actually goes explain why they intentionally do it. It does not work.
Digimon uses this alongside a set series of Evolutionary Levels (Baby, Rookie, Champion, Ultimate, Mega). The next enemy to beat is just one evolutionary step further down the line, which requires the team to go and reach another evolutionary level. This gets a little ridiculous in later series, where every bad guy seems to be the final "Mega" level and some are just that much more powerful then other Megas.
- The original Digimon Adventure had one of the better usages of this trope. First, there was Devimon, an evil Champion-level Digimon. Then there was Etemon, who was purely comical as opposed to the serious Devimon, but was at the Ultimate level and thus considerably stronger. Then came Myotismon, an Ultimate digimon of great strength who was the first Digimon in the show to evolve to Mega form. Then came the four Dark Masters, who were all Mega level. The last, most powerful enemy they faced, was Apocalymon, an instanely-strong Mega level, who beat the digidestined at first, but was defeated by their Grand Finale All Your Colors Combined attack.
  - The V-Tamer manga went a step further and introduced Arca Demon, which was the "Super Ultimate" Digimon ("Ultimate" being the Japanese term for Mega). Among other things, it killed Sigma's Piedmon (a Mega level) while still at Rookie level. In one hit. Its Champion level did the same to Seraphimon (a considerably stronger Mega) with about as much effort. Consider that for most Digimon, a single Evolutionary Level is often an insurmountable hurdle.
- Digimon Savers averts this, in that the first major "villain" they encounter is of the Mega/Ultimate level. Then, however, it turns out that he's not actually a bad guy, and the main antagonist becomes Gotsumon (a CHILD level digimon), the human-hating minion of the aforementioned bad guy. He ends up manipulating another Mega level digimon into attacking the humans, and then it's revealed that pretty much everything bad and the reason why digimon distrust humans is due to the actions of Dr. Akihiro Kurata - a human. Later, it appears that Kurata is going to be usurped by Belphemon, Kurata instead fuses with it and remains in control of it until his defeat. Yggdrasil rounds out the series as the penti-ultimate antagonist, but considering his actions are due to Kurata's own misdeeds, Kurata still remains the Main Villain of the series.
Played straight in Magic Knight Rayearth. While the first enemy the Power Trio faces, Alcyone, is a powerful Ice Mage in her own right, she's easily dispatched. Then come Ascot, Caldina, Lafarga and, finally, Zagato himself. While their power levels are all over the place, they have specific skills that make them increasingly dangerous, and it would have been easy for any of the later foes to eliminate the Knights had they been dispatched earlier. In particular, one wonders why, since Zagato knew all about the Magic Knight legend, why he didn't go after the girls himself as soon as they arrived.
- In the anime, Zagato does show up for a few moments to show the heroes just a tiny portion of his power. Had he actually attacked them, they would not have survived. Then again, exactly what Zagato wants to do isn't really too clear. He may not intend to kill the Magic Knights, regardless of what that will mean for him.
- Ascot himself is particularly guilty of this. Although his first few "friends" are indeed strong enough to squish the Magic Knights into paste, they have glaring weaknesses that the girls discover and exploit within minutes. However, his very last Summoned Monsters are titanic foes that can go toe-to-toe with the ancient Rune Gods, and continue to be powerful presences in the second arc whenever the Knights need rescuing. He always had access to them, so why he didn't call these right off the bat is a mystery to everyone.
Code Geass. Lelouch faces off with increasingly improving resistance from The Empire, but manages to cope because his allies also get better mechas over time. In the first major battle, he faces inept commander Prince Clovis and a bunch of regular Knightmares with his terrorist allies using mostly outdated Knightmares of their own, and they own the field... And then Suzaku shows up... Algorithm leaps somewhat later when Lelouch tries to do this again against much better leader Princess Cornelia, and his (different group) allies are totally slaughtered. He later however turns the tables when he tries this again, only using the enviroment to his advantage, supported by the JLF, and with Ace Pilot Kallen in a better mecha. He nearly has Cornelia beat... And then Suzaku shows up... again. Eventually his allies begin to power up faster than The Empire, and he's likely have won the war, if not for some extreme circumstances and misfortunes. Eventually Kallen's able to easily turn Suzaku's mech to scrap, even after it gets an upgrade. By the end of the series however, his terrorist army has gotten so good, that when he's forced to fight them, this time commanding the forces of The Empire, he's no match.
Played straight then subverted in History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi, in the manga at least. The storyline covered in the anime plays it straight, with Kenichi fighting stronger opponents as his skill improves; high school bullies, Ragnarok mooks, the Eight Fists of Ragnarok, and finally their leader Odin. Kenichi's struggle against YOMI, the next antagonist group subverts it. YOMI's leader Sho Kanou, touted as the strongest fighter of them all and inheritor of the styles of YAMI the series' Big Bad organization... is the second YOMI member Kenichi defeats. However Kenichi then gets his ass handed to him against another member of YOMI. Possibly justified since each of the YOMI members and their masters in YAMI believes that he or she is really the strongest; some of the YAMI members believed that Sho was unsuitable to be YOMI leader. That and Kenichi's fighting ability is highly dependent on the circumstances involved; even though he's practically superhuman at this point he's still slightly intimidated by high school bullies.
Eyeshield 21 and other such sports manga tend to increase in scope as the story goes on. Athletes face opponents from other cities first and other countries later.
- This is also played straight and subverted earlier in the manga, where the Devil Bats' first opponents are a very weak team, followed immediately by the uber-talented and powerful Ojou White Knights, then the moderately challenging but not all that Zokugaku Chameleons. But, naturally, once they get to the fall tournament, the easy games all happen first.
  - Sort of justified as it is a knock-out tourney so only the best get far.
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure both plays this trope straight and averts it. While the enemies fought in each series grow stronger the closer that you get to the end, the fact that each volume stars a different hero means that Big Bads don't necessarily have to be stronger than what came before. For example, while Dio of Part 3 was quite dangerous, he wasn't as immediate a threat to the world as the Pillar Men of Part 2.
Saint Seiya: By Law Of Chromatic Superiority, the heroes must first battle their peers, the Bronze Saints (and, later, their Evil Counterpart Black Saints) in a local skirmish for the Gold Cloth; then, the Silver Saints, who hunt them down for said Cloth; and finally, the Gold Saints, who never leave the Sanctuary. Then come the Asgardian God Warriors, who can give Golds a run for their money; Marine Shoguns, likewise; and then Hades' Spectres. The last foes they encounter are actual Gods, and the teaser movie for Chapter of Heaven hints that the Bronze Boys are raring to take on the Olympian Gods themselves.
- Subverted in the manga when Gold Saint Virgo Shaka seeks out and nearly kills Bronze Saint Phoenix Ikki before the actual plot even begins. Their battle, such as it is, is shown as an extended flashback.
Averted in Mahou Sensei Negima, where the first major antagonist that Negi faced (Evangeline) is probably the strongest adversary he's faced yet, only winning the fight by a combination of luck and the fact that Eva wasn't really taking the fight seriously.
- A big part of Negi's victory was that part of Eva's curse was still in effect (note that Chachazero could not move). When Negi first faces Eva and the Chacha puppets in her pocket dimension (where her curse doesn't affect her), he can barely last a few minutes.
This trope is straight out mocked in the second episode of Haruhi-chan. After being 'defeated', Asakura warns Kyon and Yuki that she is "the weakest of the radical four", which will now come after them. And above the radical four, are the top three leaders..!
Played straight for most of Fist of the North Star. Shin, Ken's initial rival and the man who engraved the seven scars on his chest, isn't even the strongest of the Nanto Seiken masters, but rather Souther, a character who is introduced a bit later and is shown to be immune to the effects of Ken's martial art at first. Jagi, the first of Ken's adoptive brothers to the appear in the story, is a petty thug who never truly mastered Hokuto Shinken, but is still stronger than the average mook, in contrast to Raoh, the eldest and the last one to appear, who is the Big Bad for most of the first series and ends up killing most of Ken's allies. Then there's Kaioh, the ultimate Big Bad of the second series, who was the only villain that was actually immune to Kenshiro's ultimate technique of Musou Tensei and almost killed him during their first encounter. Subverted in the final chapters of the manga, in which the final villain, Bolge, was just an average wasteland thug no stronger than Jagi.
In Buso Renkin, the series begins with the main characters fighting off animal- and plant-type homunculi. Then of course comes along a stronger animal-type homunculus, and then the humanoid homunculi, and then Victor, and then Victor AND the Alchemist Army, and then Victor in his third stage...
Justified in Star Blazers / Space Battleship Yamato. Initially, Desslok does not consider the Star Force a serious threat, and orders low-ranking shlubs Ganz and Bane to fight them. After Ganz and Bane's defeat, Desslok takes the threat more seriously and sends his best general, Lysis to fight them. After they defeat Lysis, then Deslok decides to take them on personally.

Close Anime & Manga

Subtly toyed with in Point Blank — the hero keeps killing his way up the chain of command without truly getting anywhere.
James Bond movies, however, frequently have the main villain's henchman reappear after the main villain has died and his plot has been foiled. Bond will then dispatch them, often by forcing a backfire of their trademark gimmick.
Kung Fu Hustle has a rather clearly evident Algorithm, starting with basic Axe Gang members that are countered by the Pig Sty Alley's three martial artists, who are then countered by the Axe Gang's hired Musical Assassins, who are then countered by the Landlord and Landlady, who are in turn countered by the Made Of Iron and superhumanly-fast Beast, who is in turn countered by the Heel Face Turn-ed Unsympathetic Comedy Villain Protagonist. In a slightly jarring subversion, the Beast attempted to use a pile of basic Axe Gang members to soften up the hero before properly fighting him.
Pirates of the Caribbean began with the enemies being a crew of cursed undead pirates. The second movie had them facing against the mythological Davy Jones. The third was a battle royal against Davy Jones and the entire British navy, with the God of the Ocean thrown in for good measure. Good thing they had the Pirate council and Elizabeth Took A Level In Badass.
The Lord of the Rings is an exception to the Sort Order of Evil — the Big Bad sends out his uber-henchmen first to get the Ring from Frodo.
- Resulting in a rather awkward situation in the literary version when said henchmen content themselves with stabbing him with a poisonous dagger and retreat instead of slaughtering everybody, as they're fully capable of doing, demonstrating that the algorithm exists for a good reason. Jackson's film tried to remedy this, with mixed results.
- However, it's stated that Sauron is slowing growing in power throughout the books, so the Nazguls aren't at full strength when they inflitrate the Shire.
- The algorithm is nicely averted in the book, when, after the war is over, the hobbits return home and are forced to deal with a bunch of thugs and an effectively powerless Saruman.
The Karate Kid had an annoying algorithm of villains, when one thinks about it. In the first movie Daniel-San was useless against his nemesis, but after receiving training he beat him. In the second movie was useless against his new nemesis, but after receiving new training he beat him. In the third movie was useless against his new nemesis, but after receiving new training he beat him. That means that the third nemesis was much better at karate than the Bad Ass nemesis of the second movie...
Each of the Terminator sequels introduced a more advanced Terminator model as the antagonist. Given they can be sent to any point in time Skynet likes, pretty much impossible to justify not just sending like 5 of the best the first time.
In the first Alien film, just one alien manages to kill off all but one crew member of the Nostromo, Ripley. In Aliens, she has to face an entire colony of them, including their Queen.
- However, Aliens is arguably the only film in the series (forgetting about Alien Vs Predator) to employ this formula in relation to the original — Alien and Alien³ were psychologically-inclined horror films concerned with Ripley's relationship with the alien, and Alien:Resurrection was an action take on the same general subject.

Close Films

Oddly subverted in the Lone Wolf gamebooks, then played straight. Lone Wolf actually manages to kill two of the Darklords in the first five books; each was the leader of the Darklords at the time of their deaths. Later, Lone Wolf goes on to fight more powerful opponents. Book 12 justifies the subversion by stating that the Darklords are severely weakened by clean air; they could only fight at full strength in utterly corrupted environments. After the Darklords are defeated, the trope is played straight, as Lone Wolf's victory managed to piss off Naar, the god that created the Darklords in the first place.

Close Gamebooks

A literary example comes from the Lensman series of novels, which worked up from interplanetary gangsters to an evil older than the formation of the solar system whose goal was domination of all intelligent life in the universe. These books justified the algorithm by revealing in each book that the Big Bad of this book was The Man Behind The Man of last book's Big Bad. Then again, the nesting that would be present in the beginning is somewhat mind-boggling.
- Which was present — the prologue of the first book was dedicated to describing it.
  - That prologue is actually a retcon. The original Lensman series consisted of Galactic Patrol, Gray Lensman, Second Stage Lensman, and Children of the Lens, all originally published in Astounding Stories magazine. In this version, the Eddorians weren't revealed as The Men Behind the Men Behind the Men Behind the Men until the last set of stories. When Doc Smith sold the rights to a book publisher, his editor felt the lack of foreshadowing made the series a bit silly and asked Smith to write a prequel introducing the Eddorians from the beginning. Smith took an old, unrelated novel of his, Triplanetary, added the prologue and tweaked the plot to fit the Lensman universe. He then wrote First Lensman to bridge Triplanetary with the original series.
Justified in the Harry Potter series. Voldemort starts off as a powerless relic of his former glory in the first book and slowly works his way back up to Big Bad over the course of the series. Thus, the threat Harry faces grows without the villain changing.
- Also averted: when Voldemort learned about baby Harry's existence, he set out himself to destroy him. It just didn't work.
Justified in the Honor Harrington series. The People's Navy starts out commanded by a bunch of inept bureaucrats and politically-appointed admirals, but the Committee of Public Safety's coup kicks most of the garbage out of the system and allows the best Havenite admirals to rise to the top. Then when Thomas Theisman overthrows Chairman Saint-Just and restores the original Republic, the State Sec apparatus and political commissars are cleared out, and the finest generals Haven has available can use whatever means they have at their disposal to fight the war. The second war does not start out well for Manticore.
Advertising copy for The Ghost King, R.A. Salvatore's 2009 Drizzt novel: "When the Spellplague ravages Faerun, Catti-brie falls into a deathlike trance, taking Regis with her. Drizzt, with the most unlikely ally of all at his side, seeks the help of Cadderly — the hero of the recently reissued series The Cleric Quintet. But even as his beloved's life hangs by a thread, Drizzt finds himself facing his most powerful and elusive foe, the twisted Crenshinibon, the demonic Crystal Shard he believed had been destroyed years ago. And the dragon he thought was destroyed along with it. And the mind flayer. And the seven liches that created the Crystal Shard in the first place. All in one godlike entity that calls itself the Ghost King." To calibrate the algorithm, it is the last book in R.A. Salvatore's eighth Forgotten Realms series.
- But then, Drizzt is a D&D hero, with complete stats - and quite strong enough to face a squid thingy and a dragon and a group of liches, with a good plan and a powerful cleric. Sounds better as an idea for a campaign than for a novel though IMO.

Close Literature

Buffy The Vampire Slayer generally had a far more dangerous Big Bad each season than the last. Again, good thing Adam didn't show up in season 1. By the end of the series, the only thing strong enough to be a serious inconvenience to Buffy was the personified root of all evil itself (an actual god had already been defeated).
- To be fair to that show in particular, though, the entire series is a coming of age story and the threats get bigger as they increase in metaphoric resonance with "being a grown-up". Of course, by the last two seasons most of that metaphor has flown out the window.
- Again to be fair, the Big Bads of seasons 2 and 6 don't really count. The Anointed One, the original Big Bad for Season 2, is a weak little kid vampire that's killed off pretty quickly, and replaced by Spike and Dru—vampires that are more brutal and can move around Sunnydale, but aren't really that scary or evil compared to The Master. When they're upstaged by Angelus, he is only threatening because of his personal relationship with Buffy. As for Season 6, The Trio are essentially joke villains, who Buffy is only unable to crush because of her various insecurities. When they're replaced by Dark Willow, this trope is played more straight, but again much of her threat is not so much her enormous power level but her personal relationship to the Scoobies. And she's defeated with The Power Of Friendship, too, not by the mighty Buffy, but the powerless Xander. In Season 7, the First Evil was incorporeal and couldn't directly hurt the heroes, so he had to rely on minions to carry out his work.
- There is also a theory that the Big Bad in season 6 was Neither the Trio nor Evil Willow, but life itself with all its ups and downs and hardships. This would add to the idea that season 6 does not really fit into the sorting algorithm.
Power Rangers usually uses this, with the villains choosing to create/summon progressively stronger monsters as the season goes on and the Rangers grow stronger. Justified somewhat in Jungle Fury where the Big Bad is a recently released sealed evil who has lost much of his power, and thus grows stronger throughout the season much as the heroes do. Also justified in RPM (which is superb at justifying, or at least lampshading, standard Power Rangers tropes) with the assertion that the evil Venjix computer virus is developing increasingly advanced technology over time.
Stargate SG-1 started out with Apophis, and it seemed like they were never going to get rid of the guy. But when they finally did, even stronger Goa'uld showed up. But that's okay, the team got good at dispatching Goa'uld. So Anubis shows up, with the full knowledge of the godlike beings who'd created the stargates. But they took care of him — though it was a close one. So, the universe is finally at peace, right? For almost a whole month before the Ori, who more or less actually are gods, show up.
- On the other hand, there may be something of a subversion as it appears that the most powerful and influential Goa'uld in history, Ra, was the one they killed off before they'd even gone to series.
- Also, the series has quite a few times hung a Lampshade on this, particularly through the Tok'ra, by pointing out that every time the Tau'ri defeat a System Lord an even worse one inevitably takes his or her place at the top.
  - This counts as explanation as much as Lampshade. By killing Ra, and others, SG-1 kept disrupting the Goa'uld balance of power, allowing more aggressive Goa'uld to sweep up now-leaderless forces and rise in threat level. They didn't cause Anubis, but probably sped up his timetable. They did make the Replicators more dangerous, by giving the nanotech precursor of the Replicators to the Asgard, from whom it was then captured. A self-application of Stop Helping Me? I know of no excuse for the Ori, however.
  - The Ori only found out about the Milky Way galaxy when Daniel Jackson and Vala accidentally warped over to their home galaxy and caused a scene. An unfortunate coincidence, perhaps, but still their doing. I guess we should mention that the Stargate Atlantis team woke up the Wraith and turned on the Asurans' hostility switch. Nice Job Breaking It Hero indeed.
- The last episode of Atlantis was essentially the concept of when the villains skip a few levels past where the heroes are expecting.
The first season finale of Heroes has Molly tell us at point-blank range that there is another, much bigger bad than Sylar, who hasn't shown up yet.
- Of course, the one Molly's scared of isn't even the Big Bad of Season 2; just the disciple of someone nastier.
- But the algorithm looks to be subverted as of the second season finale: Big Bad Adam may have become Sealed Evil In A Can but his successor appears to be none other than Sylar.
- Pretty much out the window with season four, where the Big Bad is a powerless government agent who leads SWAT teams with dart guns. Then again, Sylar's helping them...
24 is a serious offender, when the first season, "the longest day of" Jack Bauer's life, is about Drazen's personal vendetta against him and Palmer. The second is about a threatened nuclear attack on Los Angeles. This escalates to a successful nuclear attack at the beginning of Season 6.
- It happens within individual seasons as well. In season 1, the main antagonists of the first few hours are a pair of college kids, followed by a local gangster, and building all the way up to a very well-funded international terrorist group, plotting for the release of an ex-dictator with the help of a group of heavily-armed mercenaries.
  - And it happens from season to season also, with the Big Bad of season four actually working for the Big Bad of season five, with that Big Bad working for a minor villain in season six... and as it turns out, most of those villains were actually working for the Big Bad of season seven.
Partially seen, partially reversed on Charmed, which actually followed a Bell Curve of Evil. At first, the villains grew progressively more powerful, from warlocks, to demons, to the Source of All Evil himself. Once the Source of All Evil was blown to bits (3 consecutive times, too!) halfway through the show's total run, however, things went a bit downhill. Later Big Bads included a Well Intentioned Extremist angel, the Source's slightly less powerful rival, and finally the show's last Big Bad were basically the heroine's Evil CounterParts, who were roughly at the same power level they were.
Reversed on Mission Impossible, largely as a result of plot decay. While in the first few seasons the IMF went up against international terrorists, tyrannical dictators, and the Red Menace, later seasons mostly found them up against the Mob.
In the first season of Lost, the villains are mainly unseen: the monster in the pilot, then Ethan, about whom not much is known. The main antagonist is arguably "the unknown". The second and third seasons are more about the Others. The fourth season introduced the freighties, who made the Others look more like the "good guys" they've always claimed to be.
The new series of Doctor Who does this with their season finales. In the first season, a future earth is invaded by Daleks. In the second, the contemporary earth is invaded by Daleks AND Cyberman. In the third season the Master's invasion of the contemporary earth actually succeeds and he turns in into a dystopian wasteland. Then in season four Davros threatens the desintegration of all universes in all of reality. Since the writers where already forced to resort to Deus Ex Machina in the very first season, this troper wonder about the wisdom of this upping of the threat.
Farscape had an odd way of upping the ante each season while making old villains "join the team". First season had Captain Bialar Crais pursuing the protagonists with his one warship. At the end of the first season, Crais is usurped by Scorpius a rival commander of the Peacekeeper force, and Crais becomes an ally. By the third season, Scorpius is on the outs due to the machinations of the more politically powerful Commandant Grayza, so he tends to hitch rides and help out the heroes, although he clearly remains more evil than Crais. The fourth season does a switch half-way through and makes the evil reptillian Scarrans the main bad guys, supplanting the Peacekeepers for top evil.

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Warhammer 40000 poses an unusual problem for the algorithm: start with the Tau, but then where do you go? Seriously, read the its article on Scary Dogmatic Aliens.
- This troper feels a good order would be Friendly Communist Tau > Aloof Space Elf Eldar > Repressive fascist humans > Bloodthirsty Orks. After that it sort of breaks down into a three-way tie between the all-consuming Tyranid hordes, the forces of Chaos that are so bad that Nurgle, the god of pestilence and horrible diseases, is the "nice one", and the Necrons who want to kill everything and are controlled by semi-gods who eat stars when they're not eating souls of the dead. All three are bad enough and mysterious enough that they can and sometimes do jump up on the Sorting Algorythm of Evil past each other as another aspect of their backstory is revealed. The forces of Chaos, who are clearly the most evil, would probably be the most threatening if not for the fact that they are led by General Failure. The Tyranids just want to eat you and the Necrons just want to eat your souls, but they're both good at what they do. Whenever one bad group is temporarily kicked out of Imperial space, one of the other big bads comes back and is now twice as nasty. It's an unpleasant universe to live in.
- The Imperium also use this trope to determine forces sent on a planet — the worse it gets, the more Elite Mooks, Tank Goodness and Humongous Mecha are sent (and they have different sizes of mecha and tanks to consider also). Worse comes to worse, they call down Exterminatus on the planet. By Nuke Em, we mean the planet.

Close Tabletop Games

The videogame Final Fantasy XII has a few major exceptions to this. Many of the early stages have extremely powerful enemies wandering around that eclipse the normal small fry. A normally leveled party at this point has absolutely no chance against them, and are advised to avoid them at all costs... though a few determined level grinders choose to go after them anyway, for the experience they give makes it very easy to reach level 50 before even fighting the first boss.
The first two Final Fantasy games avoided this trope entirely; walking ten feet from the starter town led you into the midst of insurmountably powerful enemies.
Played painfully straight in Baldurs Gate, in which your character is targeted by various trained assassins. It starts with some utterly worthless mooks who pose no threat to even a 1st level character (they're actually less dangerous than giant rats). Then comes a moderately powerful spellcaster with the questionable MO of approaching your party in the middle of the street, loudly boasting that he is a master assassin, and proceeding to engage all of you (plus one or two guards) at once. And so on, until you finally meet the godlike Big Bad himself and easily dispatch him with all the loot and experience you've taken from his minions.
- Not quite as Wall Banger terrible as you think when you think about it. After killing each assassin, you can find the assassination order that they hold. The reward for killing you starts at a paltry 50 gold pieces, which no self-respecting assassin is going to bother with. By the mid-game, the offer increases to 1000 gold pieces, which makes the higher-level assassins take notice. By the end game, the Big Bad isn't even bothering with assassins anymore, sending his personal army to take you out.
- Also averted somewhat, however; the games allows you to wander wherever you want, and some of the starting areas are directly adjacent to areas with creatures that can kill you in one shot if you're still very low level. The Ankhegs in the area north of the Friendly Arm Inn spring to mind.
- It's also averted in the very beginning. The Big Bad hunts you down personally and your foster father pulls a You Shall Not Pass Heroic Sacrifice to give you the chance to escape.
Exception: In the MMORPG City Of Heroes, Paragon City is divided many different zones, each of which has its own difficulty level. But except for a few limited-access areas, characters can go (and possibly die) anywhere they want in the city.
- Most MMORPGs are structured like this; the only thing stopping a low-level character from reaching high-level areas are the powerful monsters. The sorting algorithm is there, just pointed out as how you should do things, not enforced. Typically, the very high-level areas are an inordinately long walk from the low-level areas, or behind a locked door for which the key is easily acquired on the high-level side, in order to at least suggest the intended progression. However, not always: the Forsaken starting area in World of Warcraft contains a mid-level dungeon in one corner, and is directly adjacent to one of the max-level areas, with some helpful NPCs hanging around to tell new players not to go past; and the Blood Elf and Night Elf starting regions aren't much better.
- One could teeechnically consider all of City of Villains this trope incarnate.
Inverted in Half Life 2: Episode One, where the Combine forces become gradually weaker as the protagonist moves from the Citadel (the previous game's Supervillain Lair, where he starts) all the way to the outskirts. The player also gets gradually depowered in the process; first, his Eleventh Hour Superpower reverts to being the normal Gravity Gun, and near the end, his sidekick Alyx stops following him.
The PC game Vivisector: Beast Inside has this in abundance: the animalistic enemies are faced based on their level of feralness and anthropomorphism. The Human enemies also get stronger as the game goes on. In a subversion, though, the final leg of the game contains "unfinished" versions of the animal enemies that are pathetically weak and easy to take out..
Strangely included in Final Liberation: even if the game allows the player to get stronger units and a better army as he wins battles, the opposing forces will always have the same overall level as the player's army.
Infamously present in the otherwise-excellent Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, where the entire universe is exactly as powerful as you are at any given point in the game. One can (and often does) complete the game's main quest while remaining at level 1; paradoxically, this makes your boss encounters much easier. In other words, the game punishes you for playing it as it was intended. As you progress, wolves suddenly become extinct throughout the entire game area, only to be replaced with bears, mountain lions, ogres, etc., etc., etc. This editor was so annoyed by this that he was forced to use mods which deliberately make the game extremely difficult from the very beginning, thereby giving you some sense of accomplishment.
- Really? I recall the game having a difficulty slider and a developer at some point (or maybe it was the manual) saying it was there to allow the player to change it as they played to allow themselves to be challenged more. Unless you're just too 1337 and the hardest setting was too easy for you.
  - It's not so much the difficulty of the game, but the lack of any sense of accomplishment in levelling up. Sure, being an uber level 35 warrior is nice, but not if common marauders are wearing the exact same super-armour as you. Furthermore, as you level in the vanilla game it actually becomes harder unless you plan your levelling extremely carefully in order to pick up all skill boosts and so on. The difficulty slider just tries to avoid the issue.
  - Actually, it's pathetically easy to make a character who is legitimately maxed out in almost all skills in the game, but has stayed level 1. Your character level is based on your class skills, but there's nothing that says you have to develop those skills. You can easily power-level every other skill in the game, getting all the benefits thereof, and still be level 1, and thus have all the opponents scaled for level 1 characters. Maxed out Alchemy, Destruction, Chameleon and Restoration at level 1 pretty much lets you treat all opposition as though they were made out of wet tissue paper.
Present in NetHack: The game generates enemies of level equal to the average of your level and the current dungeon depth. This avoids Oblivion's "every level is just as tough as you are" while still providing the same progression.
While present in most (if not all) Roguelikes, it's also slightly averted in some, such as Dungeon Crawl where there's a chance some of the most powerful enemies in the game will spawn on the first couple of levels of the dungeon, not to mention Sigfried who kills more P Cs than any other named enemy in the game; or ADOM which can spawn horrifyingly out-of-depth monsters (especially in the Dwarven Halls early in the main dungeon, where the PC can encounter Balors, Ancient dragons, etc.)
This trend seems to be notably missing from the individual episodes Quest For Glory series of PC RP Gs, while still being present in the larger arc of the game. For instance, if you attempt to venture into the forest when you first begin Quest For Glory 1, you will almost certainly not escape alive without prior knowledge of its layout. As you acquire skills, equipment, items, and experience, you are soon able to survive the forest during the day — but you still had better stay the hell out of there at night. Even as a top-level player, a nighttime venture in the forest is nigh-suicidal, thereby really giving it a sense of menace that seems to be missing from modern, dumbed-down kid-friendly RP Gs. However, as you progress from game to game, enemies as a whole become globally stronger so as to keep up the challenge. A Quest For Glory 1 character imported into Quest For Glory 4, for instance, would probably be killed from the suspense alone.
- ...at least, that might happen if each game didn't up the minimum skill level. A Qf G 1 character maxes out their stats and skills at 100, but the minimum for Qf G 4 is 200 (for imported characters), so they become twice as awesome by virtue of being imported. Which is still horrifically weak for the fourth game: the freaking bunny enemy will probably pose a challenge.
Super Smash Bros Brawl. The story mode begins against the robotic Ancient Minister, then onto the Nintendo villains, led by Ganondorf and Bowser, then the series' perennial antagonist Master Hand and finally Tabuu, ruler of Subspace.
Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance justifies this somewhat. Early in the game, your group is not seen as a big threat, then you journey through independent countries that the bad guys have less control in. After you make it to enemy territory, a knight questions why Big Bad Ashnard is spreading his force so thin near the end of the game. Ashnard's response is that he's fascinated by the strength of the group and it's implied he wants to personally fight the strongest force possible. Also, he's just plain vanilla crazy.
- The sequel's Endgame played it straight. The first part had you fight a politician who was blessed by a goddess. Then you fight the Black Knight, who has also been blessed. Next, you fight an army of dragons led by their king, Dheginsea, who in addition to being blessed is also am ancient being who helped defeat the goddess of chaos. Next comes another ancient being who is also blessed by the goddess. Finally, you reach the damn goddess who blessed the bastards from before.
Drakengard follows this formula for The Evil Army that Caim is fighting across the vast breadth of the land. By the end of the game, he's fighting the gods themselves, and then the Mother of the Gods, but you don't know that at the time. It is important to note that according to series canon he never actually fought the gods, as they went with the one ending of the five that was bittersweet and not a downer.
Used and subverted in Prince of Persia: Warrior Within. With an almost Wide Open Sandbox style to the game and more difficult enemies, you can go back to the beginning and fight the guards that you initially had to dispose of with a stick! Using the most powerful weapon in the game, the Water Sword, you can beat them with one hit. The Two Thrones had something similar with the Fathers' Sword, if you got a solid hit on most footsoldiers they were gone.
Partially Inverted in Wild ARMs 4. The game seems to follow this trope until you face an ancient demon with total control of space whose lover you just killed. When the enraged demon goes after you, you're only able to kill her because she expends too much energy creating and supporting Another Dimension designed to kill your party and she goes after you again despite her wounds to ensure she takes you out while collapsing the dimension. Her death causes Lambda's strategist to propose a plan to have the remaining Brionac Lieutenants attack the heroes all at once, which gets rejected because The Omniscient Council Of Vagueness had other ideas. From that point on, it seems like you fight the Quirky Miniboss Squad in descending levels of power, culminating in a battle against a scientist who just stands there while you wail on him.
Subverted (perhaps unintentionally) in Painkiller. While the first boss is a skyscraper-sized undead giant that requires massive amounts of punishment to bring down, the following bosses get successively smaller. The 4th boss is "only" about King Kong sized, and the final boss (Satan himself) is a pathetically easy Puzzle Boss who can literally be killed in seconds.
Play largely straight in Season 1 Sam and Max Episodes, where each episode's villain was secretly The Man Behind The Man of the previous episode's villain, and would increase in important from local criminals all the way up to President Abraham Lincoln, the Internet itself, and finally the Big Bad himself. Mildly subverted in the end, as the Big Bad was revealed to have been, all along, an annoying recurring secondary character that had appeared throughout the season. Though the first episode villain was acting alone.
Lampshaded in Perfect Cherry Blossom in the Reimu's Extra Stage, which consists of a midboss fight against Chen, the boss of the second stage. When you meet Ran, her master and boss of the stage, Reimu notes that she has already fought Chen but didn't think it was anything special because she was a Stage 2 boss.
- Also subverted in Mountain of Faith, where the first midboss you encounter is supposedly a god, yet goes down in less than two minutes. Even less if Marisa B's power level is between 3.00 and 3.95
Seemingly subverted in the final boss fight in Zelda: The Twilight Princess: Ganondorf goes from gargantuan teleporting boar, to a demon head made of pure energy (Sadly, you run from that fight), to a man on horseback who can summon ghost horsemen at will, to a final fight between you and him on foot with swords. Somehow, though, the difficulty ramps up with each successive battle.
- Bishonen Line.
Most Might and Magic games starting with #3 follow the trope. You start the game in the easiest town and the more you move away from this town the harder the game becomes. Might and Magic III had a very tough dungeon (the aptly-named Maze From Hell) not too far from the start point but it was locked and could only be entered much later in the game. The trope is completely subverted in Might and Magic VI though. In this game, the starting area has 3 dungeons: Goblin Watch, the starter dungeon; the Abandoned Temple, a slightly harder and longer dungeon meant to be completed next; and Gharik's Forge, one of the most difficult areas in the entire game (possibly the series) and meant for the second half of the game. The Forge is unlocked and the only way to tell it's best left for later is to enter it and watch the entire party get slaughtered within seconds.
Shadow Hearts Covenant takes this to an extreme. Every time the heroes defeat the apparent Big Bad threatening to destroy the world, a new one appears to, yes, threaten to destroy the world. Somehow it gets softer each time; starting with the threat of demonic global annihalation, and ending with the threat of having the war-torn recent history rewritten into a more peaceful one by the unusually benevolent final Big Bad.
While they aren't exactly evil, the peak bosses in SSX 3 follow this pattern roughly; The boss of Peak One is arrogant upstart Mac Frasier, followed by the gargantuan, destructive human wrecking ball Nate Logan on Peak Two, and finally Psymon Stark, an unstable musclehead who might be violating his parole by competing, on Peak Three. Note that if you're playing as any of these guys, the peak boss is changed to 11-year old Griff Simmons on Peak One, riot grrrrrrrl Zoe Payne on Peak Two, and megalomaniac egotist Elise Riggs on Peak Three.
Justified in Okami: Orochi's flunkies, the Spider Queen and Crimson Helm, pose very little trouble, and the Orochi himself is severely weakened after awakening from a 100-year imprisonment. The other major villains are already active presences in the world, but they are likewise diminished and can't regain their power, or even cause harm beyond their immediate area of influence, until they absorb the malevolent Life Energy of their slain brethren... culminating with Yami, Lord of Eternal Darkness, who takes all their evil power unto itself.
Lampshaded in the end of the X-COM: Apocalypse Lets Play: As a bonus, after the game's done, there's a scene with what would've happened had the aliens sent their biggest and baddest ships through first. It's not pretty.
Not just played straight, but formalized in [1], in which you fight your way up the ranks of the official top ten assassins.
Partially averted in the early Pokémon games as Viridian City, the first town Ash travels to, was the home of the game's most powerful Gym Leader. The gym, however, is closed when he arrives and does not reopen until he has beatean everyone else and come back.
- Played straight in all the games, though, in that it railroads you into facing the gym leaders in a specific order, with a couple of variations. It raises the question of how many of the trainers born, say, on Cinnabar Island abandon their quest quickly.
Subverted in Tsukihime and its sequels. The power and abilities jump all over the place. Nero Chaos is easily the strongest adversary, much tougher than Roa or any of his opponents so far have been. Satsuki presumably comes after this at some point and doesn't amount to much yet. Then we have Kagetsu Tohya with Nanaya, someone Shiki can't beat, then Kishima Kouma who mainly has the advantage of almost literally being made of iron. Not much good against Shiki's eyes, though. Wallachia really only seems to be a problem because even Shiki's eyes can't kill him normally. In direct combat he appears to be rather weak.
Double Subverted in Devil Survivor. In most routes you have to defeat the remaining 3 heavenly kings (events in the story have already removed the 4th). Atsuro notes that it is not the normal order to go after the strongest first (see quotes page). When you go to tackle the the second, it turns out the third is with him as well (wisely deciding to fight the people who defeated the strongest of the 4 at the same time) and the map is full of Demonic Spiders.
Inverted in the Japanese version of Wolf Fang, where picking the harder routes will give you an easier final stage, which reflects how much of the enemy forces remain. The final bosses are still very hard.
A justified example occurs in Prototype. The weapons and gear the Blackwatch are deploying to Manhattan become more and more sophisticated as the infection worsens and they begin to understand and counter both Mercer and the progressing infection's capabilities. Similarly, the infected armies begin to grow in effectiveness as they develop and evolve.
Largely averted (or deliberately subverted) in the Fallout series. When you're just starting out as an inexperienced wanderer, combat is pretty brutal, especially if you're playing a character that isn't built for it, and especially since the game doesn't stop you from wandering anywhere you like right from the beginning, meaning that you could end up encountering enemies that are far too powerful to handle at your current level. Once the XP and the ammo start rolling in, however, you can pretty much tear the entire world up at your leisure.

Close Video Games

Lampshade hung in this ''Zelda Comic'' strip.
Lampshade hung in the first The Order of the Stick book Dungeon Crawlin' Fools. The evil lich Xykon literally orders his minions to be placed throughout the dungeon in order of weakest to strongest as they approach his lair and orders them to be placed in small groups only. He does this expecting to be entertained as he watches the PCs hack their way through the dungeon on his scrying ball. Also, he secretly wants them to reach him.
- Otherwise averted later in the comic proper. After 600 strips, despite being defeated by an unarmed Fighter and acting like a buffoonish Harmless Villain, Xykon himself proves to be Not So Harmless and remains the most powerful and dangerous foe in the series, with the possible exception of the Monster in the Darkness or the Snarl.
  - Well, the Three Fiends might be more powerful, and are certainly far more cunning, but it's unclear at this stage if they'll take over the role of Big Bad or stay content playing Chessmaster on the side.
Lampshade hung (yet again) in this RPG World strip.

Close Web Comics

As the Dimensional Guardians from the web fiction serial Dimension Heroes continue on their journey, the Dark Overlords, despite having equal control over Creturia, seem to escalate in power. Interestingly, their forces do, as well.

Close Web Original

Jackie Chan Adventures justifies this by saying that, due to the cosmic Balance Of Good And Evil, if one evil is destroyed, it causes another, stronger evil to fill in the gap (the heroes, of course, only receive the Old Master's warning right after the villain's been destroyed, which leads to their Sorting Algorithm issues). Other than that, the series more or less kept Big Bad Shendu as the strongest foe of choice.
In an aversion, while he's received some upgrades over the years, Megabyte from ReBoot is not only still the main villain, but with the exception of the now-deleted virus Daemon, he seems have become the most powerful virus in existence!
In Code Lyoko, XANA's power increases every time they return to the past. So, though the Lyoko Warriors get better at fighting them, new and tougher monsters appear on Lyoko, and the specters sent to the real world gain greater powers and versatility over time.
Avatar: The Last Airbender is an interesting variation. They started with Anti Villain Zuko, who was superseded by Admiral Zhao as the main threat. After Zhao's death came Zuko's Magnificent Bastard Psycho For Hire sister, the main threat for the second season, who posed far more of a threat than Zuko and Zhao combined and whom Zuko rejoined in the season finale. The variation comes from the Fire Lord being identified as the Big Bad from the very start of the series, both the audience and the protagonists fully aware that no matter how many enemies they face he would remain their ultimate goal.
- This is not only a variation, but also pretty much a justification. Zuko was sent out, while everyone was more or less convinced, that there was no avatar to be found, because he vanished about a decade ago. Suddenly the guy is back AND Zuko fails. Ozai being the king and all is probably prety bussy leading a war 'n stuff, so he sends the one person he actually believes to be strong enough and he only fights the avatar once it's inevitable becuase he's standing in front of him.
- Of course, after seeing how much of a Magnificent Bastard Azula is, many thought that she would end up being the ultimate enemy, and planned to usurp her father. However, we eventually discover that he's not only much stronger than her, he's much stabler, which really comes in handy.
  - Ozai is also the only character in the series who can truly command Azula's loyalty. This actually establishes him as more evil than she is- Azula seems to genuinely love her father, if no one else. He repays this by using her up and casting her aside so he won't have to share his glory. And as anyone who's seen the series can tell you, being more evil than Azula pretty much puts you at the end of the Algorithm by default.
Surprisingly, The Fairly Oddparents... Timmy first starts off having to deal with mean babysitters and school bullies, eventually upgraded to his crazy fairy-hunting teacher. Now he routinely has to deal with the Xanatos Gambit-loving Pixies and Anti-Fairies who seem to be content with nothing less than the total domination and remaking of both Earth and the magical world.
- To be fair, this could simply be a result of him getting deeper into the world of magic, where the stakes are higher.
  - Where would Norm the Genie be on it?
- Then there is The Darkness which is a threat to the normal galaxy and magical universe and Timmy is thrown right in the midst of it.
Inverted in Ben 10, where each progressive seasons' Big Bad would actually be less powerful than the previous one (along with having smaller plots and fewer episodes dedicated to their plot arcs). Season 1's Big Bad was the hero's Arch Enemy, the most feared alien in the galaxy, bent on galactic conquest, who punches mountains apart and bodyslams buildings hard enough to make them explode. The following seasons featured as Big Bads an 11-year-old who shared the hero's superpowers and whose sole goal was getting revenge on the hero, an alien ghost who "only" wanted to Take Over The World, and finally a guy in Powered Armor who only appeared in one episode (albeit a 2-part, 1 hour one), who had to assemble a team of previous secondary villains to do all his fighting for him, and whose big plan was basically to steal a Applied Phlebotinum battery that allowed his power armor to shoot Eye Beams.
Subverted in WITCH, where the relative power levels of Big Bads, Dragons, and Mooks seem to spike up and down from time to time. The most powerful evil entity in the series is Prince Phobos, fought by the girls at the end of season one and a bit at the end of season two. He's always dangerous, and always requires the guardians to pull some kind of Xanatos Gambit to beat. Season two's villain is Nerissa, less powerful but more cunning than Phobos. Season two's Quirky Miniboss Squads elevate in power throughout the season (from Phobos' former mooks to custom-created elemental monsters and finally to the former Guardians themselves), but despite this, Nerissa's power remains generally the same, even as she absorbs Hearts throughout the season. Nerissa frequently runs from the guardians rather than fight them, as she gets trounced whenever she faces them directly. She's still a threat because of her planning, however. By the end of it all, the final battle of season two is against a bad guy who's as powerful as Phobos and Nerissa combined: The Dragon Cedric, who has consumed Phobos in order to absorb his and Nerissa's powers, along with the powers of the former Guardians, but because he doesn't know how to shot elements, he goes down in a few minutes in spectacular fashion.
In its four movies, Danny Phantom played with this one a bit. In each successive movie, the villain's physical power and general imposingness decreased, but their actual threat level increased. The first movie villain, Pariah Dark, was by far the most powerful character in the series (four Dannys in four Humongous Mecha could barely restrain his de-powered form), yet he only managed to control the town for a day. Next came Danny's Magnificent Bastard future self, followed by a frail ringmaster named Freakshow who nonetheless manages to warp the entire country to his liking. The biggest bad of the series ultimately turns out to be an asteroid.
- This happens in the series itself. Danny's first major foe was a Lethal Chef who did little more then throw a pissy fit over a changed menu. Slowly, but surely he combats more appriorate villains ranging from The Hunter, the Big Bad, a sadistic emotional sucker, and even his own Bad Future self. By the last season, he's battling ghosts with God-like powers.
Played straight with the Big Bads of the first four seasons of Teen Titans. In Season 1 we have Slade, who is very cunning, but is only one Badass Normal up agaisnt a superpowered team. He returns in the next season, this time with arguably one of the most powerful characters in the series as his dragon — a pity she turned out to be uncontrollable. In season three we had Brother Blood, a Diabolical Mastermind with formidable psychic powers who could take all the Titans at once with ease, and was only stopped by Deus Ex Machina. In season four the team faced off against the demonic personification of evil, Trigon. Season five, however, subverts this trope- the Brain is a great chessmaster but is physically powerless, and though his worldwide supervillain organization makes him very dangerous to the Titans, he's nowhere near the level sheer destructive power that Trigon was packing.
Justice League makes it clear that they formed (and reformed) the league because they aniticipated progressively stronger enemies. In a neat inversion, the Legion of Doom was organized specifically because the league was so powerful and the bad guys needed some sort of fraternity to put them on a similar level.
Played straight with the epic multi-parters on Gargoyles. "Awakening" had Demona and Xanatos, who are certainly dangerous enemies but weren't really trying to do anything beyond controlling Goliath and his clan for use in their future schemes. In "City of Stone", Demona has aquired a spell that lets her turn the entire human population of New York to stone, making her much more dangerous. In "Avalon", the enemy is the Archmage, who is made even more powerful by the Artifact Of Doom he's toting. In "The Gathering", the clan is up against Oberon, a being with godlike powers and no morals beyond his immediate whims. Finally in "Hunter's Moon" Demona's back again, this time with a virus that can destroy all non-gargoyle life on earth, making her even more dangerous than Oberon, even though she's far less powerful. Averted in the bulk of the series, though, where they face enemies of varying power-level throughout.

Close Western Animation

A subtle example occurs in Spider-Girl with the villains Earthshaker, Mr. Abnormal, and Killerwatt. All three of them were defeated by Spider-Girl early in the first series, and don't reappear for several years real-time. When they finally reappear, they've been drafted to serve in a government super-team, but do a pretty poor job of it. While they were credible threats to Spider-Girl early in her career, their ineffectiveness is now Lampshaded by everyone from Carnage to Agent Maria Hill of SHIELD to Spider-Girl herself.

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Any sort of multi-round elimination tournament, from spelling bees to professional sports championships, works a lot like this: the first round includes (and eliminates) the less-skilled participants, then the moderate ones get culled in the second round, and so forth, until only the top two contenders are left to face off for the trophy.
- Bracketed tournaments often "seed" the teams/participants. In the very first round, the participant who is most likely to win is pitted against the participant who is least likely to win. This practice tries to avoid situations where the best and second best participants face off in an early round (giving the third best a go at number one without having to go through number two). When the competition results are uninteresting (first seed places first, second seed places second, etc) the people who drew up the competition brackets sit around and congratulate themselves.

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