This trope seems quite abused. The trope page clearly says: "To qualify for this trope, a terrible situation must have some final perfect push over the edge". However, it is widely used whenever anything, well, gets worse. It also seems to become a Pothole Magnet for whenever anything bad happens or something seems worse than something else, making it an annoying Verbal Tic. Just a few examples.

• Narutaru: "The anime opens with the most upbeat theme music imaginable and has a relaxed first episode. Things go downhill from there."
• Team Mom: "If it were a regular giant robot anime this ought be the role Misato fills in Neon Genesis Evangelion, but since it is Evangelion she fucking sucks at it."
• Tally Ho: "Balloon Belly: The fox gets one when he attempts to eat some of the basset hound's kibble. It goes away, of course... after the fiber kicked in."
• Take That Kiss: "In the final episode of School Days, Makoto and Kotonoha do this in order to stick it to Sekai. Needless to say, It Got Worse."
• Airheads: "Rex being called "trash" by station manager Milo is what causes the situation to degenerate from mere trespassing to hostage taking."
• Agony of the Feet: "For a similar effect, step on pieces of LEGO barefoot. Or a Barbie doll's shoe. Yes, still barefoot."
• A God Am I: "One of these men found a civilization of microscopic people, and quickly set himself up as their god. Though his fellow tried to talk him out of it, the newly deified pilot decided to stay as the god of these tiny people. Of course, this being the Twilight Zone, things went south quickly for him."

And so on, and so forth. I suggest changing the trope name to something more descriptive and less tempting, like "Bad to Worse".

edited 4th May '12 10:35:25 AM by Thainen

I agree, although the wicks will be a huge task.

Yes, rename needed due to egregious misuse as Stock Phrase and for Sink Holes.

I can take care of some of the wicks for correct usage, but there's going to be probably over half if not more than that as misuse in the wicks. Most of the usage on the wiki is as a Troper Tic.

The latter would make for a good short-term transitional solution while whatever unlucky saps (possibly including myself) get stuck sifting those 6537 (incl. redirects) wicks fix it.

edited 4th May '12 5:13:15 PM by tdgoodrich1

Obvious redlinking is obvious, whether it's a cut or a This Troper-style redlinking.

I think this is the reverse, and exactly the same problem, as I Got Better. That got renamed to Unexplained Recovery and handled in Special Efforts. I'd suggest doing the same with this.

Edit: Personally I don't need a wick check on this, but I'm rather certain I've seen a lot of useless potholes.

edited 5th May '12 10:11:47 AM by Feather7603

Doesn't help that the trope that sounds like it should be the inverse, It Gets Better, is actually more about a show getting better than the situation contained therein.

Not the reason it's in here, of course, but I wanted to mention that while we were on the subject.

That's another one I've seen lots of potholes to. However, I think they're more often actually correct. There's still probably a fair amount of misuse there too, though.

Hmm, how about renaming the trope to something like "From Bad To Worse" (so the examples added will be more to the point) , but leaving It Gets Worse and It Got Worse alive as redirects? This saves any wick and pothole work, while decreasing unfitting examples...

edited 5th May '12 5:19:24 PM by SS13

Of concern is its use as a Pothole Magnet/Troper Tic.

I did a quick random check (too lazy to type it up, and by the way, is there an easy way to do that without too much list-editing?), and most (70%?) potholes are when the situation seems good but gets worse. Leaving it as a redirect will not solve that problem, as the phrase indicates that that's okay use. We don't want that.

So the definition is basically a Calamity Coup De Grace? Yeah, big surprise that it gets misused for any time stuff starts going (more) downhill.

I was always thinking that this was something problematic - looks like full Stock Phrase suckitude.

Are we good for a rename and-then-redlink crowner?

Crowner stitched to thread.

I believe the pre-existing term is From Bad to Worse.

I was wondering why this wasn't in TRS after seeing it potholed all over the place.

Calling crowner in favor of renaming and faux redlinking It Got Worse.

Old crowner out, new crowner in.

Calling crowner.

Did the page, subpages and indexes, as well as the notes on Renamed Tropes and the FAQ thread.

Bumping for votes.

Ahem...crowner's already called. It just needs to be done (with the wicks)

There is now a Special Efforts thread to remove the sinkholes. All help is welcome.

Locking.