History Main / SerialEscalation

* SerialEscalation/{{Roleplay}}

* SerialEscalation/Roleplay

This isn't meant to be confused with the buildup to season finales or a plot climax, but rather a consistent escalation in events that always exceeds what a viewer would expect. When this is done well, a new CrowningMomentOfAwesome is, at any given moment, just around the corner. When done poorly, what would constitute as a CrowningMomentOfAwesome can feel ordinary, or even absurd.

[[quoteright:350: [[IrregularWebcomic http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/sword_escalation_6829.png]]]]

For events that are actually impossible, go to BeyondTheImpossible.

Related to SequelEscalation, and RefugeInAudacity.

[[caption-width-right:350:Wait till you see the centuple one. [[labelnote:Fun fact:]]This was actually written [[HilariousInHindsight before]] [[StarWars Episode III]].[[/labelnote]]]]

->''''SeriousSam 3'' is a constant prelude to itself, an ode to destruction forever building to greater crescendos, an orgy of cartoon violence that keeps on inviting new participants instead of slowing down and catching its breath. Each new weapon marks a leap upwards in the scale of its [[UpToEleven increasingly absurd onslaught of enemies and crumbling scenery]], and each time you’ll think "good grief, this is ridiculous. There’s no way it can top this." [[SerialEscalation But it does]]. It always does.''

Compare {{Troperiffic}}, ExaggeratedTrope, LogicalExtreme, LensmanArmsRace, SortingAlgorithmOfEvil,PowerCreep.

-->-- ''Rock Paper Shotgun'' on ''SeriousSam 3''.

This isn't meant to be confused with the buildup to season finales or a plot climax, but rather a consistent escalation in events that always exceeds what a viewer would expect. When this is done well, a new CrowningMomentOfAwesome is, at any given moment, just around the corner. When done poorly, what would constitute as a CrowningMomentOfAwesome can feel [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotAwesome ordinary]], or even absurd.

[[caption-width-right:350:Wait till you see the centuple one. [[hottip:*:Fun fact: This was actually written [[HilariousInHindsight before]] [[StarWars Episode III]].]]

[[caption-width-right:350:Wait till you see the centuple one. [[hottip:*:Fun fact: This was actually written [[HilariousInHindsight before]] [[StarWars Episode III]].]]]]

Not to be confused with UpToEleven, where a series, group, or artist make a point of topping whatever was the latest, greatest thing (including if it was their own thing). To make a Serial Escalation is to create an enormous stack of such occurrences, generating a series of events that top the prior consecutively. Compare AwesomenessIsVolatile, which describes the hypothetical point at which such a process [[GoingCritical goes critical]], resulting in an explosion of awesomeness (or, as noted, in a [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotAwesome fizzle]] if the [[SmallNameBigEgo bomb is a dud]]).

->--''Rock Paper Shotgun'' on ''SeriousSam 3''.

Compare {{Troperiffic}}, ExaggeratedTrope, LogicalExtreme, LensmanArmsRace, SortingAlgorithmOfEvil

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[[folder:Anime]]

* Pretty much any anime set in a WorldOfHam will be subject to this.
* Every single fight scene in TengenToppaGurrenLagann is cooler and more CrazyAwesome than the last. And if you thought that's enough, in the second movie, they go ''[[UpToEleven beyond]]'' BeyondTheImpossible! It gets to a point where you realize that [[spoiler:Having the HumongousMecha pilot ''another'' HumongousMecha, which happens to be the ''moon'']] is just par for the course. For reference, [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUJzYSswcj0 here]] is a video that illustrates the size of the titular mecha. And, if you take the movies as canon, this is ''not even the biggest one in the franchise''. That one is '''one hundred times larger.'''
** It has been said that Super Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is 1.8% the size of the observable universe. To give you an idea of how inconceivably large that is, according to the numbers on the observable universe from TheOtherWiki, STTGL has a volume of about 7.38 × 10[[superscript:30]] light years cubed.
** Not only the sheer size, but also the abilities and massive firepower of the Mechs as the series goes on.
* ''GGundam'' 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 WriterRevolt.
** From the {{Gundam00}} manga, Mobile Suit Gundam 00V Battlefield Record, we have Setsuna's new Gundam after the Raiser was nearly totaled fighting Ribbon's suit. [[http://gundam.wikia.com/wiki/GN-0000GNHW/7SG_00_Gundam_Seven_Sword/G The 00 Gundam Seven Sword]]. It has ''seven'' blades as opposed to the usual one.
** Don't forget XN-raiser 00 Gundam.
* Movie 10: The Private Eye's Requiem, for the unnecessary CastHerd [[LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters pileup]]. How many of the 30+ regulars can fit in one movie?
* ''JoJosBizarreAdventure'' thrives on this. Each new installment of the 8-part (and still ongoing) saga has weirder powers, more sick-in-the-head ubervillains, more insane stunts, more {{mind screw}}...
** The 6th installment involves breaking out of a prison full of super-powered, extremely weird criminals and stopping a SinisterMinister from ''resetting the ENTIRE UNIVERSE as we know it to repeat past events again, starting from the beginning of time''. Part 7 is probably one of the saner storylines so far. Even though it's about a cross-country horse race which doubles as an attempt to stop a power-hungry President from gathering the ''mummified body parts of Jesus Christ'' and using them to conquer the world. Yeah...
* ''NeonGenesisEvangelion'': How can we [[ButtMonkey break Shinji]] today? What next happens to the characters that [[ThereAreNoTherapists no psychiatrist]] can help with?
* ''RebuildOfEvangelion'' makes the most spineless child of anime into a certifiable {{badass}} when he trumps his [[TakeALevelInBadass previous level]] again and again. Special mention goes to the Angels in general, which look far more [[EldritchAbomination freaky and bizarre]] than in [[Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion the original]] and the fights against them become increasingly epic. Possibly for cinematic effect, possibly for the hell of it, many aspects of the series are blown up to [[HolyShitQuotient incredible levels]]:
** Compared to her somewhat underwhelming introduction as a [[InformedAbility supposed]] AcePilot, Rebuild 2.22 has Asuka managing to take down a colossal Angel while falling from the sky, only to realize she destroyed the wrong part and then still manage to place 6 crossbow bolts right on each other's end, in the right core... And top it all off with what looks like an Inazuma Kick. In less than 70 seconds.
** Almost as if to trump this introduction, Kaworu's Evangelion Mk.06 was made its first appearance with him [[spoiler:stopping the Apocalypse]] with an unstoppable weapon while gently floating down from the Moon.
** The famous battle against the 13th Angel is BloodierAndGorier than the already insanely bloody and gory original, and even more horrifying. In the series the final attack is Unit-01 [[spoiler: crushing Toji's entry plug in his hand]], Rebuild has Unit-01 [[spoiler: crushing ''Asuka'''s entry plug ''between its jaws'']].
** The soundtrack is recorded with a richer, more powerful orchestra. "The Beast" epitomises this, being renamed "Les Bêtes" - pluralised and [[EverythingsSexierInFrench French]] - sounding utterly crazed and featuring facemelting guitar leads and [[PsychoStrings shrieking violins]].
* ''{{FLCL}}'': What will come out of Naota's head next? How many [[DoubleEntendre double entendres]] and [[FreudWasRight half-veiled sexual references]] can be packed into a single episode? How ''[[MindScrew impossibly bizarre]]'' can the plot ultimately become?
** And lets throw in a baseball-themed episode. Because why not?
* ''[[RanmaOneHalf Ranma ½]]'': Who's going to fall [[LoveDodecahedron in love with Ranma this time?]] What [[KiAttacks crazy move]] will Ranma [[MegaManning master this time?]] Just how [[{{Tsundere}} angry can Akane get with him this time?]]
** Slightly related to the first question: How many times can a man betroth his toddler son in exchange for food?
* ''SouseiNoAquarion'': How [[IncrediblyLamePun terrible a pun]] can Gen make? What [[ThisIsYourPremiseOnDrugs Saturday-morning-cartoon-on-acid]] lesson can the heroes learn? How over the top can the [[RuleOfSymbolism symbolism]] become? How can [[NewAge crystal power]] save the universe this week?
* ''MagicalGirlLyricalNanoha'': How much more powerful will Nanoha's [[WaveMotionGun magical cannon]] get? How much effort will she have to use to "[[DefeatMeansFriendship befriend]]" her latest ally? How much {{subtext}} can be inserted between her and [[TheLancer Fate]]? How [[RankInflation high can the rankings get]]? The answer to all of these questions, of course, is "infinity." Subverted with the character ability/power levels also. In first season, Nanoha and Fate were pretty damn powerful. So in ''A's'' the even more powerful Wolkenritter had to be enemies. However, in ''[=StrikerS=]'' flying is no longer a default case (see poor Teana, who doesn't even have NotQuiteFlight), unlike with the mains of previous two seasons, where even NonActionGuy Yuuno could fly, and some characters clearly on lower level than the oldbies.
* ''{{Maria-sama Ga Miteru}}'': How much more romantic [[{{Subtext}} subtext]] can they put in the relationships between the girls [[BaitAndSwitchLesbians 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'' [[LightNovels light novels]].
* ''DragonBallZ'' -- How big can we make this [[KiAttacks energy blast]]? What will the villain [[EarthShatteringKaboom blow up]] next? Just how blond and [[BattleAura glowy]] will Goku become next? How many of the cast will die and [[ResetButton be brought back to life]] by the Dragonballs? How many episodes will [[InactionSequence the battle last]]?\\
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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 (Though his powerlevel has dropped due to fatigue). So Goku had gone from 416 (him fighting Raditz) to 150,000,000 in barely over a year. And they just get stronger from there. Son Goku's power has to be considered to grow exponentially. Non-canonic numbers are hard to consider afterwards, as there are multiple ideas about the powerlevels beyond Frieza. Not that it removes any entertainment value. [[spoiler:(As a side note, ThisVeryWiki has EnsembleDarkhorse Broly from the {{Non Serial Movie}}s to have a power of 1,4 '''''billions'''''!!)]]\\
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Achieving the level of Super Saiyan was considered to be a myth and the equivalent of a Saiyan achieving [[AGodAmI 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 further ''beyond!''" Even the English dub voice actor went BeyondTheImpossible with that massive {{Kiai}} he was scripted to do! Truly, becoming an Super Saiyan 3 is this, if anything.
** It doesn't even stop there. In DragonBallGT, he goes Super Saiyan IV. Then Vegeta does it too. Then Goku and Vegeta do the FusionDance and become Super Saiyan 4 Gogeta; SS4 UpToEleven.
* ''MacrossSeven'' -- How much more ''[[CrazyAwesome ridiculously awesome]]'' can Nekki Basara get? First he's just the awesome front man to an awesome band, then he's flying his CoolPlane with ''an Electric Guitar for a joystick'' into the very center of a battle to wow his enemies with ThePowerOfRock.\\
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In the GrandFinale, [[YourMileageMayVary after he has redeemed/plunged an entire series from/into mehness and promoted it to awesome/awful]], [[spoiler:he speaks of how he wanted to sing to make a mountain move as a child, and today, he would move that mountain. Basara defeats the BigBad and saves ''every single'' life form in the galaxy from death '''with ThePowerOfRock alone'''.]] Truly, the fact that Nekki Basara ever existed in ''any'' medium is a feat of BeyondTheImpossible itself.
* ''SuperDimensionFortressMacross'' , [[TheAce Max Jenius]] outflew TheHero on his first combat sortie, steals the title of TheAce from ''Roy Focker'', fights the [[HotAmazon enemy ace]] in single combat and wins ''[[RuleOfThree three times consecutively]]'', then woos and marries her ''within hours'' of her third defeat, starting the first InterspeciesRomance and spawning not one but seven children -- who all apparently inherit some of his awesome. You'd think he'd call it quits at that point, but no, that's just what happened before ''MacrossSeven''.\\
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In ''MacrossSeven'', he's been promoted to command a [[TheBattlestar New Macross-class Battleship]] and the entire Macross 7 defense fleet, where he proves why he is worthy of the trope. He orders his crew to fire the [[WaveMotionGun Macross Cannon]] at empty space. The second the gun fires, the enemy fleet defolds directly in the beam's path and is instantly vaporized. Yes. He killed the enemy fleet with tactics before it even arrived. He later goes on to effortlessly fly [[spoiler:into the BigBad's lair, with a nuke, after all the best pilots in the fleet tried for several minutes unsuccessfully (except Basara, whose awesome has already been explained).]]
* ''OnePiece'' -- [[OverdrawnAtTheBloodBank How much freaking blood can Zoro lose in one fight?]]
* ''GashBell'': How big can we make a demon's next spell? How massive can we turn the Baou? How badly can the main characters be injured without being killed? Just how tearwrenching can we make the next protagonist [[NeverSayDie "death?"]]
* ''{{Bleach}}'':
** How insane will the fights get? How many more ridiculously strong power-ups will Ichigo stack on at once?
** How ridiculously strong are the Bankai of the [[strike: 7]] 11, (counting the Vizards) remaining Shinigami that have yet to release their Zanpakuto? A particularly interesting case is Zaraki, that beats most of his enemies by bashing them with his dull sword, and does not even know how to release the sword or use his powers properly.
** [[InactionSequence How much more talking will we go through before we fight?]] How about how much ''[[TalkingIsAFreeAction while]]'' we fight. Nice coat, by the way, I really like the white-on-black...
** How much GambitRoulette does Aizen have? [[strike:The only thing left for Aizen is the fact that he planned out the manga]]. Too late.
*** [[GambitPileup Who is the one that really planned everything, and planned for all the other planners to plan what they planned?]]''
** How much higher can the reiatsu levels rise?
** To give you an idea, they have now reached the point where simply ''being within a few kilometers of the fights'' can cause normal Hollows to explode.
** Officially, as of chapter 418, Kurosaki Ichigo, has went on ahead, and has absolutely shattered the power scale of Bleach. Even [[spoiler: AIZEN HIMSELF IN HIS SECOND HOGYOKU FORM]] called Ichigo's actions "Ridiculous". So far, Ichigo has [[spoiler: destroyed a mountain with a single sweep of his blade, caught Aizen's Zanpakuto bare-handed, and proceeded to smash a level 90 Kido, cast with a chant by Aizen, with his bare hands.]]
** How many more evolutions can Aizen have?
** How many people can [[MemeticBadass Unohana]] scare the shit out of just by [[DissonantSerenity smiling]]?
** How many villains will have the ability to MindRape?
* ''{{Naruto}}'' has been getting into this ever since the Killer Bee Arc. For example: how badass can we make Kumo? How insane can we make Killer Bee and A in comparison to the other characters? What can we do to top Konoha's destruction? How big will Naruto's Rasengans get?
** One word the '''''[[HolyShitQuotient THIRD RAIKAGE]]!!!!!!!!!'''''
** Of particular note is Naruto vs.[[spoiler: the [[{{Kaiju}} Kyuubi]], where the two go at it, Naruto with a little help, like cats and dogs. After getting a second wind, Naruto [[CurbStompBattle Curb Stomps]] the beast so hard it near instantaneously became a JerkassWoobie]] in some of the Fandoms eyes.
** Just how evil can [[spoiler:Madara Uchiha]] get? His status as a CompleteMonster has been trumping itself by the chapter, and he doesn't look to be backing up anytime soon.
** [[spoiler:Yakushi Kabuto]] joining this group is officially confirmed in Chapter 515.
** Episode 167 of ''Shippuden''. The action and animation are turned UpToEleven and the characters use moves and survive attacks that they'd never be able to pull off in the normal continuity, simply because [[RuleOfCool it looks cool]].
** [[spoiler: [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill How many more paper tags Konan can utilize?]] [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome You]] [[{{HSQ}} have]] [[LetsGetDangerous no]] [[TrumpCard fucking]] [[PaperMaster idea]] [[CrazyAwesome how]] [[{{Badass}} much.]]]]
** [[spoiler: How big can the Shinobi Armies get? How does 80,000 soldiers sound? How big can Madara's Zetsu Clone Army get? 100,000. This is a huge leap from part 1 where [[CompleteMonster Orochimaru]] thought he could destroy Konoha with just 100 Suna Ninja, Gaara, three summoned snakes, and himself.]]
** [[spoiler:How much weird flora and fauna that may or may not be summons nor tailed beasts can we introduce (I'm looking at you Turtle Island)? How much more CrazyAwesome can we squeeze out of dead-but-not-exactly characters? How much more PlotHoles will have to be made/solved/thrown around in order to stabilize the increasingly wildly-flailing reality of this universe? Believe me, one can never know.]]
** How AxCrazy can Sasuke get? How many times is he going to kill someone through sheer luck?
* ''MahouSenseiNegima'': How over-the-top and ridiculous can [[BoisterousBruiser Jack Rakan's]] improvised techniques become? He starts off by summoning a [[{{BFS}} 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 [[spoiler: destroys a pocket dimension by first disrupting the artifact maintaining (by flipping the owner's skirt, repeatedly) then generating a micro-black hole.]] This is [[LampshadeHanging 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.
*** Evangeline, as a 'High Daylight Walker', is said to be on a similar power level to the Dragon, and thus Rakan. Nagi, who [[spoiler: beat the pre-series Big Bad, a being that scared ''Rakan'' and is possibly the creator of Mundus Magicus]] is beyond even them.
** For reference, the demon god of the Kyoto arc was ranked at 8000, this is Rakan's new estimate on the Big Bad too.
** Rakan's response to a reality warper capable of turning a punch into a tea party, using the power that created Rakan's race and the world it lives on, and quite justifiably calling him a puppet?
--->Illusion? Puppets? Heheh, What about 'em? '''Screw that crap'''!
** Rakan then tops ''everything''. [[spoiler: Reality is warped so that he ''ceases to exist entirely'', prompting a HeroicBSOD and SuperPoweredEvilSide relapse in the KidHero. Rakan immediately ''wills himself back into existing'' temporarily, for the sole purpose of [[GetAHoldOfYourselfMan smacking Negi upside the head]]]].
*** [[spoiler:THEN HE DOES IT A THIRD TIME!!!!]]
*** Of course this creates one of the best and [[spoiler: saddest]] [[LampshadeHanging lampshades]] in the entire series with [[spoiler: Chisame breaking down crying saying that Rakan was the character that should have infinite cheats.]]
** Negi and Rakan's entire fight is turned into this. It starts with [[spoiler: Negi revealing ''his'' artifact, that lets him use all his partners' artifacts]] and builds through multiple rounds of NoOneCouldSurviveThat by Jack and IAmNotLeftHanded by Negi. Insert CrowningMomentOfAwesome for Jack, Negi, and Kotaru while we're at it until... [[spoiler: Negi applies the LightningBruiser concept ''literally'' to go [[strike: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 [[spoiler: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 [[spoiler:Eternal Negi Fever... on Negi]])
** Chapter 263: Ultimate extreme [[spoiler:KISSING]]. Where Negi [[spoiler: either ensouls a robot or ''bends the laws of pactio''. Take your pick.]]
*** Of course, there is [[spoiler: a third option, with Negi convincing a robot who does not believe she has a soul, to believe so, by kissing her. Or it could be all three. That is how far the power of Negi's kiss could go.]]
** [[TheSameButMore Thousand]] [[ShockAndAwe Thunderbolts]], [[FreezeRay Ending]] [[IceBreaker World]] (and [[HarmlessFreezing Freezing]] [[HumanPopsicle World]], its less deadly version), [[KillItWithFire Burning]] [[StuffBlowingUp Sky]], [[EverythingsCoolerWithLava Tearing]] [[DishingOutDirt Earth]], are called as [[FantasticNuke Ultimate spells]] of lighting, ice, fire and earth element respectively. We are shown that there can be something [[UpToEleven stronger]] when Negi combines the Thousand Thunderbolts with a lighting spear spell to create Titan Slayer, but in latest chapter [[spoiler: Evangeline show us her original spell: Endless White Nine Heavens, which combines Freezing World with lighting element. It takes all the bad guys out aside from the BigBad. And she only spent few months working on this spell.]]
* ''TsubasaReservoirChronicle'' and ''{{XxxHOLiC}}'': How {{squick}}y and [[MindScrew "Double-You-Tee-Eff?"-inducing]] can the characters' connections and relationships with each other get? How utterly convoluted could the GambitPileup get? How much angst can we pile up on Fay?
* ''PrinceOfTennis''. Basically, it's ''DragonballZ'', only MORE. With junior high school tennis.
* ''[[BoboboboBobobo Bobobobo-bobobo]]''. How more truly messed up can we make the villains, the heroes' techniques and the ENTIRE show itself?
* ''GetterRobo'': How [[CrazyAwesome 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 [[SlasherSmile crazy expressions]] get? How manly can the [[HeroicSacrifice 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 [[HolyShitQuotient awesome]]?
* ''DeathNote'': How much more audacious can L and Kira get in attempting to unmask each other? [[spoiler:At least in the first half. The second half reduces this tension immensely.]]
** Also, just how many more schemes can be added to the immense GambitPileup?
* ''ParanoiaAgent'': How screwed up and/or insane can the characters become?
* ''{{Baccano}}!'': How [[{{Gorn}} bloody]] can the violence get? How {{Badass}} can the characters be? How [[{{CloudCuckoolander}} weird]]/[[TheDitz dumb]]/''[[CrazyAwesome awesome]]'' can [[OutlawCouple Isaac and Miria]] get? How badly can karma fuck up [[ButtMonkey Dallas]] this time? How much can we screw over [[BreakTheCutie Czeslaw]] now? Just how [[CrazyAwesome batshit yet supremely awesome]] are [[PsychoForHire Ladd]] and [[HeroicSociopath Claire]] going to be in this episode? Will there ''ever'' be [[MoreDakka enough machine guns?]]
* ''KatekyoHitmanReborn'': How many more {{Bishonen}} are going to be introduced? How much larger is Tsuna's [[UnwantedHarem harem]] of possessive, dedicated {{Bishonen}} bodyguards going to get? How many more magical powers does the mafia have? Subtopic for the last question: [[spoiler:How many worlds does Byakuran exist in and can draw knowledge from?]] Answer: All of them. He's just {{crazy prepared}}.
* The whole of the ''{{Yu-Gi-Oh}}'' franchise. Almost every main villain ups the ante from the last. Early on, it's just some teenagers trying to contend with some jerkasses giving them a hard time. By the time Seasons 3 and 4 roll around they're fighting {{Physical God}}s from ancient Egypt and Atlantis. Season 5's villain plots to basically destroy the space-time continuum by re-writing history so TheBadGuyWins in the past. In ''[[YugiohGX GX]]'' it's a lot more easygoing at first, but the first real ongoing plot already involves saving the world, and by Season 3 we're into saving the ''multiverse''. Season 4 scales back a bit, not by much through, with a villain being [[AsLongAsThereIsEvil the embodiment of all darkness in the hearts of humans]] who was trying to instigate an AssimilationPlot. In ''[[Yugioh5Ds 5Ds]]'' saving the world begins almost immediately, and in the crossover film and the final seasons the villains are once again screwing with the timestream to re-write history. The final villain [[AGodAmI claims to be a god]]. Given that ''[[YugiohZexal Zexal]]'' just started we can't tell yet where it'll go, but Astral is apparently from another dimension so you can be sure at some point the multiverse will be endangered somehow.\\
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The gameplay becomes extremely over-the-top as well. At the beginning, it's only a few cards which make realistic combinations. By the end of Season 4, Yami Yugi can pull off a victory against Dartz's infinite-attack power monster by drawing precisely the right cards to reach {{Infinity Plus One|Sword}}. No, literally, ''his monster's attack is stated to be higher than infinity''. Season 5's villain was defeated by fusing three of the aforementioned Physical Gods into the embodiment of all light. ''GX'' and ''5Ds'' didn't get much better--''GX's'' final villain used cards that were the metaphysical embodiments of darkness, while in ''5Ds'' they opted for FauxSymbolism with the final villain using cards representing the ten aspects of the Sephirot and named after Archangels. And let's not get into the "card games on motorcycles"...
** Parodied in [[TheAbridgedSeries The Abridged Series]] in episode 52. This was about the time the show really [[UpToEleven turned things up]] in the Noah arc.
-->'''Yugi''': "Okay, since when did this show become AMAZING?"
* ''SengokuBasara'': How epic can the fights get? How [[strike:manly]] "[[GratuitousEnglish manry]]" and HotBlooded can the characters be? Is there any way the AnachronismStew and the historical inaccuracies can be even ''more'' [[RefugeInCool hilariously awesome]]? How gratuitous and engrishy can Masamune's [[GratuitousEnglish Gratuitous Engrish]] become? Can we cram any more [[HoYay blatant homoeroticism]] into this before Masamune and Yukimura actually start making out onscreen? How much of a [[CompleteMonster gigantic, creepy prick]] can we make [[WhiteHairedPrettyBoy Mitsuhide]]? Can OdaNobunaga possibly ''be'' any more ObviouslyEvil?
* ''ShinMazinger'' - What's more powerful than a RocketPunch? Turning your ''entire mecha'' into a Rocket Punch. Mazinger literally transforms into a giant golden fist.\\
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And they find a way to top ''that'' in the final episode, by a ludicrous degree!
* ''TheLegendOfKoizumi'': How high stakes can the mahjong get? How many politicians can we cram in there? How utterly ridiculous can we make it without losing the impression of trying to be serious?
* ''SaiKano''. How powerful can Chise get? Are there any other ways of destroying her life we haven't thought of yet?
* ''{{Gintama}}''. How ridiculously blatant can a parody be? How many poop jokes and DragonQuest references can be fit into one episode?
* ''{{Bakugan}}.'' How much more [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotAwesome ultimate]] can [[UpToEleven Drago, the ultimate bakugan]] get?
* The last twenty chapters or so of ''FullmetalAlchemist'' are basically an exercise in "How many [[Awesome/FullmetalAlchemist crowing moments of awesome]], {{Tear Jerker}}s, and [[HighOctaneNightmareFuel/FullmetalAlchemist things that make us want to hide under the bed]] can Hiromu Arakawa cram in?" It's an exponential curve, it turns out.
* ''HigurashiNoNakuKoroNi.'' How much more HighOctaneNightmareFuel can the creators unleash upon the viewers? How much more insane can the characters get? How much crazier can the [[NightmareFace facial distortions]] be? How [[MindScrew confusing]] can the first season be? How is the [[MindScrewdriver second season]] going to explain things? (Answer: awesomely.) For how long can [[spoiler: Rika and Hanyuu]] suffer in those worlds? How cruel can the HopeSpot be? How [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome awesome]] can the real happy ending be?
* ''PantyAndStockingWithGarterbelt'' is the new [[StudioGainax Gainax]] series that does to RefugeInAudacity and RefugeInVulgarity what TengenToppaGurrenLagann did to RuleOfCool. It became the new de facto WidgetSeries after one episode and after nine more, shows no signs of staying in one place for more than [[ThreeShorts eleven minutes]]. How much more vulgar, sexual and just plain weird can this series get, anyway?!
** [[spoiler:Enough to give us possibly the greatest GainaxEnding ''ever'' (at least until their next project)]].
* ''ToLoveRuDarkness'' does this with fanservice. Just how much ecchi can we make this Shounen manga?
* ''RedLine''- Just how much more insane does the race get? How many Anime and western flick references can be crammed into a movie. How much more can it go through this particular trope to higher limits than even the ''TropeNamer'' ''[[TengenToppaGurrenLagann itself?]]''
* ''{{Anime/Monster}}'' - [[CompleteMonster Just how bad can a character be before you, the viewer, stop sympathizing with them?]]
** How many more characters will get more focus...only to not to make it to the end?
* ''CTheMoneyAndSoulOfPossibility'' - EXTRAVAGANT DUEL IN ANOTHER DIMENSION WITH ECONOMIC TERMS AND IN THE GUISE OF ECONOMIC DEALS, anyone?
* ''ToAruMajutsuNoIndex'': Just how '''[[StoryBreakerPower ridiculously powerful]]''' can the villains be? No matter how powerful, Touma WILL beat him/her...just with his AntiMagic punch. On that note, how much more ridiculous insane/awesome can Accelator's application of his power be? How about throwing an entire freaking [[spoiler:building]] and slowing down [[spoiler:the Earth]] for five minutes?
** How huge can Touma's UnwantedHarem get?
* ''Anime/PuellaMagiMadokaMagica'' - Let's see here.... How many {{Wham Episode}}s can this TwelveEpisodeAnime have? What [[PoisonOakEpilepticTrees Poison Oak Epileptic Tree]] will be [[IKnewIt proven right]] this episode? How many more rifles can Mami summon up? (There's a reason why fans often call her skill [[FateStayNight Unlimited Rifle Works]].) How much shit can [[spoiler: Homura]] blow up? How much damage can [[spoiler:Walpurgisnacht]] take? Lastly, how much more powerful can [[spoiler: Madoka]] get?
** At some point, the audience ''[[{{Irony}} expects]]'' a WhamEpisode even after a WhamEpisode ''just aired''. Even if the said WhamEpisode is a case of IKnewIt, the [[HolyShitQuotient HSQ]] remains high.
* ''FistOfTheNorthStar'' - Just how cruel, sadistic and despicable can the next villain be?
* The ''{{Digimon}}'' franchise. Just how many digivolutionary levels can the digimon go through? How much more ridiculously powerful can they get? Then came [[CombiningMecha DNA Digivolution]], [[DigimonAdventure02 Armor Digivolution]], [[BishounenLine Mode change]] and [[DigimonTamers Biomerge Digivolution]].
** Then [[DigimonFrontier humans started getting in on the evolution]]. ''DigimonFrontier'' also concluded with the final villain having enough physical strength to piledrive the strongest of the heroes through a '''MOON''' and said heroes became the equivalent of the Japanese [[JapaneseMythology Storm God]], Susanoomon and with its blade, Zero Arms OROCHI, cuts not just through said villain, but '''SPLITS A PLANET IN HALF WTH IT!'''
** Then came along a main character named [[DigimonSavers Marcus Damon]]. Just how many digimon can he punch out by himself to allow his agumon to digivolve? Lets just say he goes all the way from a giant chicken to the equivalent of the Digital World's ''GOD''! To show how far the series went, the main digimon went ''beyond the Mega Level''.
** ''DigimonXrosWars'' in particular, with its several {{Shout Out}}s to the SuperRobotGenre, its full of this to levels even the previous series before it couldn't possibly acheive. Just how many digimon can be xrossed together? How much more Hotblooded can Shoutmon get? How much more strategic can Taiki get? How much more ridiculous looking and yet extremely awesome can Shoutmon's Digixros forms get?
*** [[spoiler: Shoutmon X7 Superior Mode. The ultimate crowning example of BeyondTheImpossible in the '''{{Digimon}} Franchise yet!''']]
* RioRainbowGate: How insane can Howard make his casinos? In episode 5, he opens up the "Sky Resort", a 25 story Glass pyramid with Multiple casino floors, a RidiculouslyHumanRobot girl, the world's largest waterslide (with KILOMETERS of tubes), and a ''Holodeck''. When he cuts the ribbon to open the building, it suddenly RISES UP, as it's revealed the pyramid is on top of a skyscraper. '''AND THEN THE WHOLE THING LAUNCHES INTO SPACE.'''
* OretachiNiTsubasaWaNai pushes how far can it can go with DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything. RefugeInAudacity, indeed.
* SilverDiamond has many characters capable of this, but [[TheGunslinger Chigusa]] is this trope personified: {{Improbable Aiming Skills}}, {{No Social Skills}}, {{The Determinator}}, {{Genius Ditz}}, [[HealingFactor THE Healing Factor]], or {{Accidental Pervert}}. You name it, chances are he's gonna absolutely destroy the standard for it.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Comic Books]]

* ''BlueBeetle'': 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?
* The achievements of the Saint of Killers from ''{{Preacher}}'' get steadily more impressive until the end where he [[spoiler: kills God]].

* ''{{Nextwave}}'': Agents of Hate. Take a normal super team, give each one of them a triple espresso shot of [[DeadpanSnarker snark]] with a slug of GenreSavvy, [[{{Flanderized}} exaggerate their character flaws]] and set them against increasingly ridiculous enemies. Throw away any aspiration of being taken seriously, then [[{{Lampshading}} hang lampshades on everything]] fans like in comics. Then make it ''more'' ridiculous in the next volume. Then it [[MadeOfExplodium explodes!]]\\
\\
The series reaches its high point (or "insanity nexus") with a series of six two-page spreads in issue #11 where the team fights their way through [[http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/double1.jpg Golems, Goblins, Living Brains, Purple Soviet Apes,]] [[http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/double2.jpg Laser Hawkings,]] [[http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/double3.jpg Naked Ninjas, S&M Iron Man Babies, Flying Windmill Men, Blue Skinned Space Pirates with Death Ray Peg Legs, Hamburger Shooting Bruce Campbell Elvis MODOKs,]] [[http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/double4.jpg Cyclops Brontasauri, Samurai Siamese Twins, Chimney Sweep Gargoyles,]] [[http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/double5.jpg Snakes on Planes, Wolverine Monkeys, A Giant Wolverine Ape,]] [[http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/double6.jpg A Sentinel Robot, Hidden Men, Giant Cyborg Astronaut Tigers, Two Kinds of Little Green Men and evil trees.]]
* ''DCOneMillion'' started out by creating a version of the JusticeLeagueOfAmerica 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, [[spoiler: the original {{Superman}} had emerged from his Fortress in the Sun to defeat Solaris the Living Star with a Comicbook/GreenLantern ring supplied by J'Onn J'Onzz, who was now Mars's GeniusLoci. He was then was reunited with Lois and his Kryptonian parents, recreated through some form of supercloning.]]
** ''One Million'' was by GrantMorrison. ''All'' Morrison's DC work is this.
* So, just how insane and ridiculous can {{Deadpool}} get today?
** More insane and more ridiculous. Obviously.
** 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.
** By the way, no, [[NoodleIncident you never find out why he's garroting Santa Claus.]] [[http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ld6e2iiaWM1qep8wlo1_500.jpg Did we mention it was with barbed wire?]]
* Occurs to some extent in ''ElfQuest'': How much more evil can we make Winnowill in ''this'' story arc?
* [[IronMan War machine]], one of his latest suits allows him to repurpose any weapon weather it's damaged or practically broken and attach it to his suit to become one living WMD, this might just seem out alittle out there but when you see him literally put pieces of a jet together to make a clawed gauntlet weapon and FLY at the same time or when he pulls pieces of a tank including treads and becomes a living breathing tank. To top that off implications that he can possibly interface with some of the deadliest weapons in the Marvel with no known limit mean he can always push his abilites UpToEleven.
* [[''Comicbook/TheIncredibleHulk' RedHulk]]. How many popular characters can he effortlessly beat? How many ways can he violate the rules of the MarvelUniverse just for something that [[RuleOfCool looks cool]]? How many items can he tick off the VillainSue checklist?
** Hulk often uses this trope himself to a lesser or greater extent depending upon the author. Just how mad/strong can he become?
* How many millions of people can be killed in Mega-City One in the latest catastrophe/big bad plot in "JudgeDredd"??
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Fanfic]]

* It's fortunate that Neon Genesis Evangelion and Warhammer 40,000 have already been mentioned, because ShinjiAndWarhammer40k 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 BatmanGambit 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 it weren't for the fact that the story's over, the {{Halo}} fanfic ''FanFic/EnemyOfMyEnemy'' could be taken as this. The armies of the two sides are ridiculously huge (numbering several million), and the weapons get more and more advanced with each reveal.
* Fanfic/DungeonKeeperAmi: How bad will Ami's [[AccidentalPervert undeserved]] [[VillainBallMagnet reputation]] get? What [[{{Magitek}} clever idea]] will she come up with next? [[ItGotWorse How bad a situation]] can she find herself in [[IronWoobie and pull herself ''out'' of]]? And just how much of an out-of-context problem can she become for the rest of the Keepers?
* Beginning a New Path, written by stargatesg1fan1, is an epic tale of HarryPotter and the Endless Crossover with a somewhat promising opening chapter... Which quickly boils down into a seemingly endless series of bad smut and over-the-top solutions to every problem (real *and* imagined) of an equal number of fictional realities. FourthWall? What are you talking about? [[spoiler: The author explicitly mentions himself as well as the cast of the movie, going so far as to have his main character ''merge'' with his ''dimensional counterpart'' and take over the production in order to make things ''right''.]] Crossovers involved include the StargateSG1 and its spinoffs, several ''other'' Harry Potter realities, JusticeLeague, AVATAR, ResidentEvil, and more - and none of these would be complete without the main character adding one or more girls from the new reality to his Harem.
* How long could {{Yu-Gi-Oh}} fanfic [[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6293387/1/Skin Skin]] possibly get? 500,000 words? 700? ''1,000,000''? The story isn't even half-way through according to the author, and while YMMV, a majority of the readers are in agreement with it only getting better as it goes on in its violent path of mind-screw dreams and over the top card-battles.
* The same as above can be said about DragonAgeTheCrownOfThorns. Counting almost 650,000 words, it has been a constant fount of epic gambits epic battle scenes, snarky humor, character developments and overall [[{{Badass}} badassery]] on the part of the seven Grey Wardens, culminating in the most recent chapters with [[spoiler:a BattleInTheCenterOfTheMind between the GuileHero / MagnificentBastard dwarven noble protagonist and the Archdemon, a confrontation that ends with the latter gaining a higher degree of sentience.]] All in all, there is no telling what will happen next because a major plot point has been changed, and it was definitely not the only one.
* Cornova and Jakayrta (writers of PokeWars) have a habit of making each battle more epic and destructive than than the last.
* The length of Ronan's penis in Fanfic/NarutoVeanganceRevelaitons. It starts out as a foot long, which is unrealistically long since Ronan is thirteen, then later descriptions have it as two feet long, then four feet long, then five feet long, and as of Chapter 34, '''forty-five feet long'''.
* The Oogakari in YetAgain might as well be the trope codifier for Fanfiction.
* [[FanFic/UninvitedGuests Uninvited Guests]]...well, let's say it starts from Yachiru burning entire 11th division brrack down while trying to bake a cake and currently at the point where the Gotei 13 using Komamura as [[spoiler: the filler villain in order to re-claim the PlotArmor that Aizen hi-jacked from Ichigo]]. Yeah, it's [[CrackFic that kind of fic.]]
* ThirtyHs. From space armor to groinsaws to killing the fuck out of planets using another planet's corpse and vampire cavemen on Mars, it might as well be called HarryPotter: SerialEscalation
* Fanfic/ImperfectMetamorphosis: How much worse can Reimu's day get? How can the situation get any worse? Exactly how much can we [[spoiler:push Reisen to the edge of despair?]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Film]]

* The ''SpeedRacer'' [[Film/SpeedRacer movie]]. ''[[RuleOfCool All]]'' of it.
* The TerryGilliam short film ''[[MontyPythonsTheMeaningOfLife The Crimson Permanent Assurance]]'' takes this trope from the standard eleven and turns it all the way up to Aleph-Omega. It answers that simple question: How epic can [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotAwesome accounting]] possibly be? Answer: more epic than you can take. But not twice. Then you just [[DroppedABridgeOnHim drop a bridge on the whole thing]].
* The film ''Film/ShootEmUp''. How many people can Smith kill in this next fight scene? What crazy IndyPloy is he going to pull off to kill said people? What can he do that doesn't involve killing people in some [[RuleOfCool seriously awesome]] and [[RefugeInAudacity mind blowing]] way?
* The Australian MadeForTVMovie ''Scorched''. [[ItGotWorse How bad are things going to get?]] [[AnyoneCanDie How many more main characters are they going to kill off?]] Exactly how much of Sydney is now on fire, anyway?
* ''{{Terminator}}'': [[RasputinianDeath How much more damage will the next model take before it goes down?]]
* Half of ''TheDarkKnight'' is The Joker trying to continually top himself in just how brazen and strange his actions are, and Batman trying to keep up with him.
* The hilarious and rarely-seen Vincenzo Natali film ''Nothing'' takes this to the very extreme as [[spoiler:the two main characters gain the ability to wish the universe into nothingness, including themselves, leading to a finale where all that's left is the two characters' heads and a turtle on an infinite expanse of white light.]] also, it stars the guy who plays [[StargateAtlantis Rodney McKay.]]
* Holy crap, where to ''begin'' with ''TokyoGorePolice''? Damn near every scene in the movie tries to top the one before it in terms of sheer gore and ridiculousness. Hell, it ''starts'' with a chainsaw duel, and only gets better from there - one guy gets his hands cut off [[spoiler:And the person who does it puts up an ''umbrella'']], a teenager eats bugs out of a pencil box ''for no reason'', and creative use of stimulants gives the {{Big Bad}} the ability to [[spoiler:use the bleeding stumps of his legs as rockets!]]
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII: AdventChildren''. The director and animators basically adopted "SerialEscalation" as their entire philosophy when devising the fight scenes, starting with a [[RuleOfCool swordfight on motorcycles]] and just escalating from there. This is what happens the important characters in a movie are all [[CharlesAtlasSuperpower Charles Atlas superheroes]] in a RolePlayingGameVerse.
** Even more so in Advent Children Complete. Just compare the original fight against Sephiroth to the updated version. One is clearly more then the other.
* ''Film/{{Transformers}}: Revenge of the Fallen'' takes everything from the first movie and brings it UpToEleven. Number of robots? Size of the robots? Explosions and destruction of buildings? Jokes? Gratuitous shots of hot women? Also, pirate robots... ghost robots... zombie robots... robot Jesus... we've got it all!
* How many more [[LaserBlade lightsabers]] can we fit into the next ''StarWars'' movie? If having one bad guy [[DualWielding dual-wield]] was a great plan, why not have the next bad guy be a [[BizarreAlienBiology multi-armed cyborg]] with ''four'' of them?
** Star Destroyers? Those are hu-*[[ThatsNoMoon Death Star]]*. OK, nothing is ever going to be bigger than th-*Death Star II* SWEET JESUS!
* ''TheBluesBrothers'': How many police cars will crash in the next chase scene?
* ''FinalDestination'' series: How many more objects can fall off a shelf or table and accidentally flip a switch to activate/deactivate some machinery? How many more car doors will mysteriously fail to open from the inside when characters are trying to get out? How many more leaking or failing machines can the creators insert into the films? How many more elaborate can these accidents be contrived? How much more gory can the deaths get?
* ''TheBigHit''. The closing hero-on-villain battle scenes in this all-too-rarely-seen Mark Wahlberg/Avery Brooks comedy action thriller have hero and villain staging improbable escape after improbable escape from various certain-death situations. The scene comes as close as any film ever has to reaching the heights of a live-action Road Runner cartoon.
* ''Quick Change''. After witnessing a faux-medieval event in a poor Hispanic neighborhood with two men ''jousting on bicycles with rakes'', Loomis sums up the mood perfectly.
-->'''Loomis:''' [[BrainBleach It's bad luck just]] ''[[BrainBleach seeing]]'' [[BrainBleach something like that!]]
* ''HardBoiled''. How many more bullets can Chow Yun Fat fire? How many more people can Chow Yun Fat kill? How many more surely-fatal gunshot wounds can [[MadeOfIron Chow Yun Fat shrug off?]] How much further can we stretch credibility regarding [[ShotgunsAreJustBetter the detructive power of a single shotgun shell]]?
* ''ThePassionOfTheChrist''. How much more absurdly violent and cruel can the torture Jesus is put through get? The answer: a whole lot more.
** This is a good example of Truth in Television, as Roman crucifixions tended to be as torturous and violent as possible, culminating in an agonizing death nailed to a cross, in order to dissuade insurrection. They even had a special place just outside Jerusalem, amongst other cities in the empire, where the crucifixions took place specifically chosen for their visibility and which could be seen from the city.
* ''{{Inception}}'': How many layers of dreams can they go down?
* ''{{Felidae}}'': How much more BloodierAndGorier can a movie about a cat solving a mystery be?
* The ''PiratesOfTheCaribbean'' films. How to top the last installment?
* Parts of the climax of {{Tangled}} seem determined to outdo their predecessors at all costs. Look at yourself, Flynn. Now back to me. Knees apart. Now look around. Where are you? [[TheManYourManCouldSmellLike You're on a horse]]. Back to me. [[RuleOfCool The horse is now doing]] LeParkour. *[[EarWorm Old Spice jingle whistle]]*
* ''ScottPilgrimVsTheWorld'' is made of this trope. How much more awesome and ridiculous can the fights get? How much more hilarious can the puns get? How many viewers can be put off being too original?
* PeterJackson's (yes, ''that'' Peter Jackson) ''BrainDead''. The lawnmower scene at the end is possibly [[{{Gorn}} the most gory thing]] EVER depicted in film. It set the world record for most fake blood used in a movie! This gorefest doesn't even start until ''halfway'' through the movie.
* Bollywood action movies are often packed with crazy stunts that would make most of their Hollywood counterparts pale in comparison. It may be due to the fact that Indian audiences have more WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief, because the Westerners' one would be ruined if Hollywood movies were like that.
** [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oetM9ynocX8 This scene]] says it all.
* ''[[TwentyTwelve 2012]]'': [[SceneryGorn how bad will be the next disaster,]] [[JustInTime and how close the characters will escape it?]]
* ''Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey'': The final part is called "Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite," and after the weirdness in the previous parts of the film, the finale delivers a MindScrew that still ranks as one of the most enigmatic endings ever filmed. Additionally, from a production aspect, the filmmakers wanted to make science fiction more professional and realistic than ever before, and succeeded.
* The opening scene from the live-action adaptation of ''TheLionTheWitchAndTheWardrobe''. How do we go from showing Nazis leading an air raid on London and the mass evacuation of the city's children to the countryside, and up the ante, keeping it a movie families will still love while still being under Disney's watchful eye and still retaining that PG rating?
* One word. ''{{Avatar}}''. VisualEffectsOfAwesome like you cannot '''''BELIEVE''''', brought a resurgence in 3DMovie, been in DevelopmentHell for a very, VERY long time, and using technologies that weren't even AVAILABLE when it was being made, passed the multi-billion-dollar mark after opening week, even outgrossing Titanic, the director's previous chart-topper... this troper wonders how the sequels are going to survive without falling under {{Sequelitis}}.
* ''KungFuHustle'' takes {{Wuxia}} UpToEleven. And then [[MemeticMutation OVER 9000]] And then even further. [[EverybodyWasKungFuFighting How many more kung-fu fighting]] [[{{Badass}} Badasses]] fighting nothing but [[CurbStompBattle Curb Stomp Battles]] against one another can be squeezed into one single movie?
* ''RealSteel'': How much further will Ricky the EvilDebtCollector [[CompleteMonster sink]] before [[spoiler:[[HoistByHisOwnPetard he's brought to his knees by his own recklessness]]]]?
* The JamesBond series, even though the producers' motto is "Wildly beyond the probable, but never beyond the impossible", has plenty of this due to SequelEscalation. It starts with a [[DrNo fairly low key/budget thriller]]... followed by [[FromRussiaWithLove Bond taking down a helicopter]], [[{{Goldfinger}} driving an equipped Aston Martin]], [[{{Thunderball}} having ellaborate underwater battles]], and [[YouOnlyLiveTwice fighting a villain whose base is in an extinct volcano]]. (and that's just the first Sean Connery films!)
* ''TheHumanCentipede'' was followed by a sequel which the creator said made the original look like ''MyLittlePony''. There's going to be a third one, which the creator says will make the SECOND one look like DISNEY!
* The upcoming Japanese crossover film ''Film/KamenRiderXSuperSentaiSuperheroTaisen''. Total number of suit actors? '''Over 240'''. From ''both franchises''. Toei even admitted getting that many stunt people to fill all of those costumes was the toughest part of the movie.
** Let's put this in perspective here. ''Series/KaizokuSentaiGokaiger'' featured 199 Super Sentai. The 40th anniversary KamenRider movie ''Let's Go!! Kamen Riders'' featured 28 of them, plus the '''''many''''' extra Riders in the big finish. Now include those from ''Series/TokumeiSentaiGoBusters'' and ''Series/KamenRiderFourze'', put them altogether and you got one damn big movie!
* ''Film/DieHard'': how much will [[MadeOfIron John McClane]] be beaten? The action scenes also have this (the first has exploding floors/ceilings, the second exploding planes, the third has exploding trains and helicopters, and the fourth - just for starters - has [[CarFu cars being thrown into helicopters]])
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Literature]]

* In {{Harry Potter}} about [[spoiler:twenty-something people]] die, including [[spoiler:Harry Potter himself]]. ([[IGotBetter He gets better]].) How many people can you kill of in a seven book series?
** Especially considering how many bought it in the last book.
** It's a war. If there was a war where twenty-something people died in Real Life, people would be glad it wasn't more. However, considering it's a children's book changes things...
*** Actually, [[spoiler:At least fifty people die, in The Battle At Hogwarts alone. Harry sees their bodies in the Great Hall, separated from Voldemort's]]
* From the ''first chapter'' of ''Literature/ThePrincessBride'' 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 [[MacrossMissileMassacre many missiles]] can be fired off at once in an ''Literature/HonorHarrington'' battle? In the whole first book, covering months of time and multiple battle scenes, we saw perhaps dozens of missiles fired. By the last book, in the climactic battle, half a million are fired ''in the opening salvo''.
* ChinaMieville's ''Literature/IronCouncil'' - What sort of golem is Judah Low going to whip up this time?
* ''Pandora's Star'' features a battle in which a wormhole-jumping spaceship instantaneously warps around a planet fending off an enemy barrage. The adversary's response? [[spoiler: Open enough wormholes around the ship to blast it with ninety-six nuclear missiles from every conceivable angle. ]]
* The ''{{Lensman}}'' series is made of this with its LensmanArmsRace. ''Galactic Patrol'' starts with spaceships capable of ''[[FasterThanLightTravel ninety parsecs per hour]]'' and firing "super-atomic" explosives (which might be matter-antimatter explosives, since they liberate 100% of their mass-energy). 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.
** Um... not quite. The planet-sized antimatter bombs were never FTL, except in their transport from place to place. You're confusing them with the Nth-space planets. The Unit did not actually destroy Eddore; it was merely the 'chisel' for the shattering of the Eddorians' final lines of TELEPATHIC defence (and their subsequent destruction) by the Arisians' and Lensmen's telepathic 'hammer'. The planet remained intact.
** And you forgot the Sunbeam, which takes the entire energy output of a star and turns it into a {{BFG}}. And the bad guys were already working on a ''improved'' version that would be able to hit a target across ''interstellar distances''.
* ''TheDresdenFiles'': What [[CrazyAwesome mind-blowingly awesome]] trick will Harry pull this time? How many new scars can he get? How much more BadAss can Murphy become before she becomes the female equivalent of [[TengenToppaGurrenLagann Kamina]]? How bizarre and gory can the villains' tactics get? How much can we scale up the GambitPileup? How pretty can Thomas be? How's Harry going to top [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome The Dinosaur Incident]]? How much ass can be kicked? How many more mind-blowingly evil and powerful people can Harry piss off?
* And on that note, ''CodexAlera'': How outnumbered can the heroes be? What ridiculously over-the-top awesome plan is Tavi going to pull off next?
-->'''Doroga:''' [[LampshadeHanging You may have noticed that he does things...big]].
-->'''Bernard:''' Big?
-->'''Doroga:''' He saw that the creatures tracked him by heat. So he set the forest on fire.
** Part of Tavi's modus operandi is to get the enemy somewhere he can light a whole bunch of them on fire- hell, one time he not only did it once, but twice, and then followed it up in the climax of the action by- after his foes have used their magic to block out the sun- bringing the sun to them. Magical multiple refraction laser, activate!
* [[MatthewReilly Matthew Reilly's]] books. Where to begin? Oh, let's go with flying a stealth plane out of a collapsing ice cave, killing ''twenty men'' with ''one grenade'', pinning a man trying to kill you while missing a leg, crushing Humvees with a plane in an underground hangar, driving said plane into an elevator shaft large enough to ''hold'' planes with the elevator over fifty feet down, hijacking a ''space shuttle'', chasing down a ''ballistic missile'' with a ''plane'', getting on the other side of a car pinning you to a tunnel wall by ''driving up the wall and flipping the car over the other's roof'', getting a boat dragged by Boeing 747, flipping a double-decker bus over a wall so that it lands on its roof and rolls the right way up, killing a helicopter with an ''enemy-driven'' jet ski, having a convoy chase down a jumbo jet on an Egyptian highway, climbing from one plane to another while both are flying, a one-winged 747 sliding down a slope of spikes, a tsunami throwing a supertanker up a mountain, one man holding off a platoon from a citadel by using trebuchets, killing your enemy by decapitating them ''with a subway'', having an fight scene beneath a descending elevator, running thirty feet on the backs of caimans, and disarming a planet-destroying bomb from inside a tank that fell from a plane 30,000 feet up.
* ''TauZero'' concerns time dilation in a slower-than-light colony ship, the ''Leonora Christine''. To begin, it flies close enough to lightspeed that a 30-something-light-year journey will only take about a decade, from the point of view of the ship...but the main reason for this is the need to decelerate. When the ship's deceleration system is damaged and [[SpaceFriction the crew need to find a safe place to turn off the engines without being shredded by interstellar hydrogen]], they need to accelerate closer and closer to lightspeed, to increase the time dilation on-ship enough to be able to survive the journey... but the faster they go, the emptier space has to be to count as a vacuum...and the faster they have to go to be able to survive the longer and longer journey to the emptier stretches of space. It's made even crazier by the fact that the ship's objective speed only changes by the tiniest fraction of a percentage of the speed of light.
* For PaulBunyan and other TallTale figures this is pretty much the reason they exist, to make each subsequent story even bigger, more outlandish, and more absurdly implausible than the last. For example, after all the story's explaining how inhumanly large Paul is, there then come along story's like "Paul Bunyan's Cornstalk," where the titular stalk of corn grows so fast that, when Paul tries to chop it down, he's never able to hit it twice in the same place; by the time he makes a second swing of his axe, the stalk's grown so high that the first chop mark is over his head and out of sight!
* How many potential murderers will reveal to [[TheFatherLukeWolfeTrilogy Father Wolfe]] their motives and opportunity to commit the crime in ''Father, Forgive Them''?
* [[FearAndLoathingInLasVegas How much drugs can Duke and Dr. Gonzo put in their systems?]] Answer: a lot.
* The ''NewJediOrder'' series: how many planets and how many billion people are we going to obliterate/kill/sacrifice today while the heroes care little?
* {{A Song of Ice and Fire}}, [[HighOctaneNightmareFuel Red Wedding]]. Because [[spoiler:[[HonorBeforeReason Robb]]]] broke off an arranged marriage one of his daughters, [[spoiler: [[CompleteMonster Walder Frey]] has many of Robb's Bannerman and army massacred. [[AnyoneCanDie Then he kills Robb.]] [[UpToEleven Then he kills Robb's mother Catelyn Stark.]] [[HolyShitQuotient Then Arya Stark is nearly killed.]]]]
** Regarding Shagga, son of Dolf, who [[AnAxeToGrind has a thing for axes]]:
---> '''Kevan Lannister:''' The big hairy one wanted two axes, black steel, double-sided.
---> '''Tyrion Lannister:''' Shagga likes axes.
---> '''Lord Lefford:''' He still had that woodaxe strapped to his back.
---> '''Tyrion Lannister:''' Shagga is of the opinion that three axes are better than two.
* The longest sentence ever written in a story is apparently from a 2001 book called "The Rotters Club" which contains ''13,955 words''.
* Let's put it this way: there's a reason one trope got named ''{{Lensman}}'' [[LensmanArmsRace Arms Race]].

[[/folder]]


[[folder: Live Action TV]]

* ''MythBusters'': What [[AwesomeButImpractical ridiculously complicated automation]] are we going to construct to test this myth? How much [[StuffBlowingUp crap can we blow up?]] How badly can we totally maim the show mascot, [[CompanionCube 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? How much [[MoreDakka dakka]] can we use?
* ''Series/DoctorWho'':
** The season finales of the new 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 [[spoiler: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''.]]
** The fourth season finale tops even this, [[spoiler: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 next Christmas special tops even this, [[spoiler: with the master turning every single human on earth into a copy of himself, which is only the warmup to the Time Lords coming back from with the intent of destroying the entire fabric of space/time, to allow themselves to "ascend" and become creatures of pure consciousness.]] The only mercy is that RussellTDavies is stepping down after this, so he won't be tempted to top even this next time.
** [[ThisIsSparta British. Spitfires. Dogfighting. Dalek. Saucers.]] That is all.
** The Fifth season finale (before the example after this) has a great example.
--->"[[IncomingHam Hellooo Stooneheeeenge!]] Who takes the Pandorica, takes the universe! But bad news everyone, 'cause [[LeaningOnTheFourthWall guess Who!]] HAH! You lot, you're all whizzing about, its very distracting. Could you all stay still for a moment, because ''' I! AM! TALKING! '''
---> *Spaceships freeze in their tracks*
--->Now the question of the hour is [[ArmorPiercingQuestion who's got the Pandorica?]] Answer: [[OhCrap I do.]] Next question: who's coming to take it from me? Come onnnnnn! Look at me, no plan, no backup, no weapons worth a damn. Oh, and something else: I don't have [[ThisIsSparta anything. To. Lose.]]
--->So!
--->If you're sitting up there in your silly little spaceships with all your silly. Little. Guns, and you've got any plans on taking the Pandorica, tonight, just remember who's standing in your way. [[LongRunner Remember every black day I ever stopped you.]] And then, AND THEN, do the smart thing. Let someone else try first.
---> [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome *Cue shot of spaceships flying away* ]]
*** [[http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/The_Big_Bang The Fifth Season Finale]] tops even all those with [[spoiler: Daleks, Cybermen, Silurians, Judoon, Sontarans, Sycorax, Autons and more. In an alliance. To trap the Doctor. Which leads to most of time and space never having existed in the first place! Then, [[IGotBetter the universe gets better]], but at the cost of the doctor never having existed at all. (Okay, he gets better too. But barely!).]]. It is very unclear how Moffat can possibly top that next year, though he will probably try. And succeed, of course. He is, after all, Beyond the Impossible himself.
*** Considering the reason for those Cracks that lead to the finale is still out there, it's almost guaranteed.
** What will MattSmith [[RunningGag make cool next]]?
*** Stetsons. Because Stetsons are cool.
** Hell, [[StevenMoffat the Moff]] made the ''opening episode'' of Series 6, a WhamEpisode! If thats not BeyondTheImpossible, I don't know what is!
** How many levels of {{Badass}} can Rory take? How many times will he die [[IGotBetter and get better]]?
*** As an accompaniment to the aforementioned Fifth Season Finale, one particular exchange stands out:
--->'''Dalek''' : "You will be EX-TERM-INATED!"
--->'''[[spoiler: River Song]]''' : "Not yet. Your systems are still restoring, which means your shield density is compromised. '' [[DramaticGunCock Draws Pistol and adjusts it.]] '' One alpha meson burst through your eye stalk would kill you stone dead.
--->'''Dalek''' : ''Stops moving'' : "Records indicate you will show mercy! You are an associate of the Doctor's!"
--->'''[[spoiler: River Song]]''' : "I'm [[spoiler: River Song.]] Check you records again.
--->[[BeatPanel A pause.]]
--->'''Dalek''' : "...Mercy."
--->'''[[spoiler: River Song]]''': "Say it again?"
--->'''Dalek''' : "Mercy!"
--->'''[[spoiler: River Song]]''' : "One more time."
--->'''Dalek''' : ''Shaking'' "MERC-Y-Y-Y!"
** Season 6's finale involved River Song changing a ''fixed point in time''. ''History itself'' collapsed.
*** The Doctor managed to change the same moment safely through some [[{{LoopholeAbuse}} loophole abuse]] [[spoiler: He just had to be at the lake at the time, so the "Doctor" shot was actually the Tesselecta from a previous episode. The Doctor was inside it. Fixed moment? changed. History? intact.]] And then we get to what they were worried about. [[spoiler: the Question? [[{{TitleDrop}} Doctor Who?]] Yes, the show's name is a plot point now.]]
** How can Moff top himself next series?
** How can we endanger the universe next series?
* ''[[StargateVerse Stargate]]'':
** What horrible new SealedEvilInACan will our heroes stumble into and fight for [[SoLastSeason all of the next season]]? What [[LensmanArmsRace absurd new weapons]] will they [[MacGyvering jury rig]] to destroy them? [[NotQuiteDead How many more times can we kill]] [[ButtMonkey Jackson]]? How much more can the [[NeglectfulPrecursors Ancients]] screw up? How powerful can the [[LostTechnology 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?
** Oh, and [[RememberWhenYouBlewUpASun remember when they blew up a sun]]?
** And then a Solar System, and then (nearly) a whole Alternate Reality.
** Fact is [[StargateVerse Stargate]] knows how to make sweet sweet love with this trope and apply just enough [[RuleOfCool Rule of Cool]], [[LampshadeHanging Lampshade Hanging]], and [[ContinuityNod Continuity Nods]] to keep it up for eight years, (ten with the reboot).
* ''[[TwentyFour 24]]'':
** How [[GambitRoulette bad a day]] can [[{{Badass}} 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? [[GunsAkimbo 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.
*** And how many traitors can appear in these 24 hours?
* ''TopGear'':
** What ridiculously hard task can the producers 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?
** A space shuttle that almost worked. The only reason it didn't? One single bolt did not come loose.
** I know. Let's drive to the North Pole!
* ''TheMiddleman'': How many awesome pop-culture references can they fit in this week? How much stranger can they get? Can they possibly top ''[[ZombieApocalypse trout zombies]]''? Yes, yes they can.
* ''ItsAlwaysSunnyInPhiladelphia'': How horrible can the people in get?
* ''{{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 [[CassandraTruth keep the police from believing him right off]], is to [[RefugeInAudacity commit incredible crimes]]... and we're [[strike:a season]] two seasons past the victim being killed by a tyrannosaur.
* ''[[BuffyTheVampireSlayer 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".
** And how much more dangerous can each season's BigBad get?
** What kind of sadistic trauma can we inflict on Dawn this time? Her mother and sister dying within months of each other? Her sister coming back from the dead and ignoring her? Her mother figures breaking up, one of them trying to kill her, the other dying, the first one trying to kill her again and then leaving for months? Her sister treat her like shit again? Turn her into various mythical creatures? It's a wonder the girl didn't snap and slaughter them all.
* ''Series/{{Heroes}}'':
** How [[IdiotBall dumb]] can Peter/Mohinder/Hiro get? How many times can we get Claire to cry? How much [[DarkerAndEdgier 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?
*** Infinitely, often, loads, virtually all of them, virtually none of them, 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 [[spoiler:by Peter exploding]]; the second season had him getting shot several times [[spoiler:by Peter who came from the future]] (don't ask); the third had him getting his throat slashed [[spoiler:by Sylar]], which threw in a new twist by [[spoiler:having Matt mindbend Sylar into permanently transforming as Nathan]] (Again, don't ask). [[spoiler:It appears that they will be stopping this- Nathan has been KilledOffForReal as of the latest episode.]]
** How much Sylar can we inject into this week's storyline...just because?
* ''MadanSenkiRyukendo'': What [[BigDamnHeroes act of heroism]] will Kenji pull off? How much further can he be [[MyKungFuIsStrongerThanYours powered up]]?
* ''TomicaHeroRescueForce'': How [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotAwesome needlessly cool]] can this show make the {{Rescue}} genre? What kind of WaveMotionGun will be used to save the city this week?
* ''TomicaHeroRescueFire'': What can we [[InfernalRetaliation set on fire]] as the MonsterOfTheWeek? What's the new finisher? Projectile cars? A hurricane? Rainbow Road?
* ''{{Lost}}'': What ArcWords are going to come up? Can Ben Linus be even more of a CrazyPrepared MagnificentBastard? How many more questions can they create by answering one of them? Who can they give ADayInTheLimelight to (I mean, we have to get to the dog eventually)? Will they drop hints on a AlternateRealityGame? What type of FlashbackTwist can they do, how about a FlashForward, 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 [[SaturdayNightLive 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!
* ''TheRedGreenShow'': is there any limit to what can be cobbled together out of old parts, lawn mowers, duct tape, K-cars, and the Possum Van? In the SeriesFinale, he made a perpetual motion machine. With corn.
* ''BattlestarGalactica'': How could things possibly get worse? Who hasn't had anything life-alteringly horrible happen to them recently?
* How exuberant and disturbingly ambitious can [[WhereInTheWorldIsCarmenSandiego Carmen Sandiego]]'s crimes get? What priceless relic/building/''country'' will she steal next?
* What crazy unrealistic situation will happen next week on TheSecretLifeOfTheAmericanTeenager? How stupid and unrealistic will the characters' behavior be? How much longer can they talk about sex before they'll be forced to address another issue of teenage life? Who's the next girl to get knocked up?
* ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'':
** How much worse can everyone's Daddy Issues get? And how much more emotional torture can the boys take before they top themselves?
** How much [[ItGotWorse worse]] can [[CrapsackWorld the world]] get? Can [[OurAngelsAreDifferent the angels]] be even [[JerkAss bigger dicks]] this week?
*** On that count, how will [[JerkassStu either brother]] be able to out-dick even the angels in the later episodes?
*** Also please note that they are several seasons past fighting LUCIFER. The CrapsackWorld has been getting progressively ''worse'' from there.
** How much more people can die (and be resurrected)? How many more times will Dean die? Him dying has almost become a RunningGag.
* NinjaWarrior, 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, which is only the second obstacle in Stage 2.\\
\\
The show goes UpToEleven. In the 25th competition, the two obstacles that were already arguably the most difficult, the Salmon Ladder and the Cliff Hanger, were both ''upgraded''. The Salmon Ladder now has a second Ladder to climb up, and the Cliff Hanger(stage 3)... well, [[http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/300px-Ultimatecliffhanger1_4821.png just look at it.]]
* 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.
* ''PushingDaisies'':
** How hilariously cartoonish [[strike:can]] [[TooGoodToLast could]] the murders be? ([[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] by Emerson in "Smell of Success")
** How awful could [[DarkAndTroubledPast Ned's childhood]] get? He's like an onion of trauma, you just peel away one damaging event after another.
* MysteryScienceTheater3000: 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?
* ''Series/TheGoodies'':
** While the show itself is not an example, one episode has [[GadgeteerGenius 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 [[spoiler: dragging Britain outside the five mile limit for a pirate ''country''.]]
** The show itself could be an example. What new assignment will make [[HilarityEnsues hilarity ensue?]] How many [[IncrediblyLamePun Incredibly Lame Puns]] can be worked into an episode? What new [[MadScientist insane]] [[GadgeteerGenius gadget]] will Graeme think up? Can Bill Oddie's background songs ''be'' [[EarWorm catchier]]? What next overblown monologue will Tim lead about England while [[SorryILeftTheBGMOn playing his record]] of ''Land Of Hope And Glory''? And most importantly, (how) ''can the [[BottleEpisode episodes set in one place really be as good as the others]], if not better?''
* How much more offensive can [[MockTheWeek Frankie Boyle]] get? Since he's left the show, not very.
** But then came [[FrankieBoylesTramadolNights Tramadol Nights]].
* Carl Sagan in ''{{Cosmos}}'' used this to explain the concept of eternity and infinity: He described the ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googolplex 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 [[MindScrew 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. Googolplex is one of the ''smaller'' examples of a Really Big Number. To put the insignificance of googolplex into perspective, most people's concept of ''infinity'' is much, much smaller than, say, the first (of 64) terms used to describe Graham's Number.
* Win, place and show must go the second season of ''{{Lexx}}'', in which the BigBad managed to convert ''every piece of matter in the universe'' into one of his robots (except the Lexx and its passengers.) Our heroes ''s till'' managed to [[spoiler: defeat him, by causing the universe to collapse and create a wormhole through which they escaped.]] And to top that? In season 3, they [[spoiler:destroy Heaven and Hell. As in, actual Heaven and actual Hell.]]
* ''TheThickOfIt'': How much darker can satire get? How much harder can Malcolm's veins throb? How much more baroque can the swearing get? How much more shit can we pile on [[strike:Glenn]] every single character?
* ''[[DoubleDare1986 Double Dare]]'' How much more messy could this show get? How much more ridiculous can the stunts get? How much more can the host who suffers from OCD (!) take before even showing it on camera?
* ''{{iCarly}}'': How many more things can Spencer set on fire? Exactly how sadist can you make a SadistTeacher? How long can the WordOfGod continue to ShipTease both sides? How neurotic can Mrs. Benson get? How much abuse can be heaped on poor defenceless Freddie? How much more FetishFuel and LesYay can they pack into a childrens television show?
* Warp Factors in ''StarTrek'' can get a little out there in how fast something is supposed to be going. And then you get to Warp 10, which according to the Technical Manual is so fast that you are occupying ''every point in the universe SIMULTANEOUSLY.''
** Ironically, saying warp 10 was impossible was supposed to ''rein this in.'' However, they merely made warp ten go from meaning "ten times faster than warp one" to "infinite speed" (whatever ''that's'' supposed to mean) and ships are still TravelingAtTheSpeedOfPlot.
*** And then Trans Warp was FASTER.
* ''SuperSentai'', from [[GoGoSentaiBoukenger 2006]] onward: "How many mecha can we cram into a single formation, and in doing so how many {{Mecha Expansion Pack}}s can we introduce?" Fans in the PeripheryDemographic aren't exactly pleased.
** ''Series/KaizokuSentaiGokaiger'' has finally outdone themselves with regards to team-ups, just look at the page image for it. God only knows what'll happen in the next anniversary...
* In ''KamenRider,'' it's "how many more forms?"
* ''Series/TheATeam'': How many rounds of ammunition can they [[ATeamFiring pointlessly waste]] today? How many cars/jeeps/trucks will flip over? Will they destroy more property than in the last episode? Can [[CrazyAwesome Murdock's]] latest delusion be any funnier and/or more ridiculous than the last one?
* ''{{Bones}}'': In what ridiculous location or circumstance will the next mangled mystery corpse be discovered? How terribly can we mangle it and still show it on-screen, before the censors tell us to knock it off with the gorn, already?
* {{MindFreak}} is pretty much based on this trope. From Criss Angel being BuriedAlive ''twice'' to him predicting someone trying to kill the president with a grenade.
* DeadliestWarrior: how much [[{{Gorn}} gorier]] can the tests get? How much trash talk can the groups dish out ot each other? How BadAss, [[CompleteMonster Evil,]] and [[AxeCrazy Savage]] can the warriors get?
* In ''{{Survivor}}'', about 15/20 of the players were stupid beyond all belief, never learning to keep an eye on the idol hunting Russell and practically lining themselves up to be voted out one by one. It was assumed there'd never be such a stupid cast ever again...but ''Redemption Island'' takes the cake for dumbest cast ever. When you're playing with someone you already know from the show, that puts a pretty big target on their back. When you're playing with people who have played the game ''multiple times'', were known as the best players in the show when they played, have [[SpotlightStealingSquad been the sole focus of their seasons]], and managed to get shows slanted to keep them around as long as possible, that doesn't just put a target on your back. [[OverlyLongRunningGag That basically straps a huge billboard lit with neon to your back reading, "Vote me out - I'm a threat! I'm gonna win!"]]. The ometepes literally ''ignore'' that "vote me out!" billboard on Rob's back and, not surprisingly allow him to win. After the foolish players in ''Samoa'', that amount of sheer stupidity really says something.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Music and Sound Effects]]

* [[{{Kiss}} KISS]]. How much pyrotechnics can they fit in this show? How much blood can Gene spit up this time? How high can the drums go now? How much more creepy are half their songs this year? How much body hair can fit on 1 human being? How much more awesome can their music get?
* TomLehrer's parody song "I Hold Your Hand In Mine" manages to get {{squick}}ier (and funnier) with ''every verse''.
** Then there's "I Got It From Agnes," with the increasing {{squick}} that never enters DudeNotFunny.
** For those who've never heard those songs, "I Hold Your Hand In Mine" is about a man holding his lover's hand [[spoiler: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: [[spoiler: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: [[spoiler:[[TheDeepSouth 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. 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 subtext can we fit in a single verse? How many ludicrously overblown solos can Herman Li and Sam Totman manage?
* And as DragonForce 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 [[LargeHam 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 [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome crowning moment after crowning moment]].
* 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...
---> '''StephenColbert''': The band Rush is here! Either that or a drum factory exploded in my studio.
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gx02KOGhjes This]] rendition of [[TykeBomb Flandre]] [[{{Touhou}} Scarlet's]] [[AwesomeMusic/{{Touhou}} theme]] starts out fairly playable, and then it adds more and more notes until only a computer could play it. Seriously, [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sz0x57K9sRg here's a video]] of a ''player piano'' failing the song.
** As an aside, the (incorrect) video title refers to ''[[http://www.well.com/user/bryan/waltz.html Faerie's Aire and Death Waltz]]'', which has no relation to the actual video except for the fact that both pieces are practically unplayable normally (for completely different reasons).
* TheLonelyIsland's [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pXfHLUlZf4 entire]] [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NisCkxU544c musical]] [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7yfISlGLNU output]] runs on this trope.
* {{Pink}} in concert. How much more insane can this woman's stunts get? The "Try This" tour had her doing an aerial spin while singing. So the "I'm Not Dead" tour had her doing a Cirque de Soleil performance. While singing. And no net. And then a big aerial stunt at the end. So the "Funhouse" tour has her singing while doing a trapeze act ''that starts out with her blindfolded''.
* {{U2}}'s [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U2_360°_Tour 360º Tour]]. If you thought the Zoo TV tour was big, then the Pop Mart tour out Spinal Tap-ed [[ThisIsSpinalTap Spinal Tap]]. Then, after a few comparatively low-key tours, the 360º tour was even more of a spectacle than Pop Mart was.
* TwoStepsFromHell, how much more epic can they honestly get? Just about everything they make is already a [[CrowningMusicOfAwesome Crowning Music of Awesome]].
* Metal in general has "How METAL can we make the guitars?" It starts with making them pointy, then making them shaped like dragons, then adding double necks, then...well, look at the picture.
** And if that wasn't enough, there's another quad guitar user named Michael Angelo Batio who can actually use the guitar to its full potential. Left-handed by birth, ambidextrous by training, able to play two guitar necks with one hand each at the same time or switch his hand over and under a guitar neck in rapid alternation for a distinct sound... He can do a lot more, but the general rule is that almost all of it is very technical and too fucking fast to believe. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-XfnkLdkjo Even shown when he was in a]] HairMetal band, of all things.
* The Italian powermetal band [[AffectionateParody Nanowar]] [[RhapsodyOfFire Of Steel]] manages to put the essence of [[SymphonicMetal symphonic]] epic {{Power Metal}} into five seconds of song, even beating most {{Grindcore}} songs in shortness. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twc6s_Gq9No The song]] is called "Power of the power of the power (of the Great Sword)", which takes longer to say than the song goes.
* Some examples in the LoudnessWar. Taken to its logical conclusion with the Stooges' ''Raw Power'' remaster and Hypocrisy's ''Virus''.
* {{Tool}}'s song Schism. How many uncommon time signatures and switches between them can we pack into a single song? [[spoiler:47]]
** Topped by The Dance of Eternity by Music/DreamTheater which manages a grand total of [[spoiler:104]] time signatures changes in 6 minutes.
*** Not to mention that The Dance of Eternity is shorter than Schism.
* The [[LostEpisode ever evasive]] ''twenty-seven minute'' long version of [[TheBeatles Helter Skelter]].
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glJU4wMFvdk Daniele Gottardo]]. How much more BadAss can waltz sound? How does it feel when SteveVai '''himself''' [[InSovietRussiaTropeMocksYou subscribes to you?]] Now this is damn impressive.
* Styrman Karlssons äventyr med porslinspjäsen (Chief Mate Karlsson's adventure with the porcelain pot). The entire song is sillyness getting sillier and sillier- and the main character getting more badass. The song starts out with him stepping in his chamber pot when he is going to the navy ball, and it gets stuck on his foot(it would seem the pot is icredibly durable for porcelain). Since he can't get it off his foot, he smears it with shoe polish so it shines black. Then he dances so well he gets promoted to Captain... and the next verse tells us how he is every pirate's worst nightmare- partly due to the powerful kicks he can do with the pot on his foot. Then he falls of the ship in the middle of the sea... [[{{Determinator}} and sails home using only the pot and his coat]]. And then he meets his wife... who has her foot stuck in a chiffonier. [[LittleMissBadass And she went all the way down to the port like that]].
[[/folder]]


[[folder: ProfessionalWrestling]]

* What ridiculously awesome move will somebody pull off next? What dastardly act will the {{Heel}} perpetrate to make the feud evem MORE personal? [[InvincibleHero What kind of stacked odds will John Cena face and overcome?]]
* ProfessionalWrestling as a whole was the definition of this trope in the Monday Night Wars as the main promotions one-upped themselves while the indy promotions (namely ECW) did more and more outlandish things in order to just stay noticed. How violent can hardcore wrestling get? How high will a wrestler fall as part of a stunt? How contrived can the flippy moves get? It got so bad in the late 90s that the WWE now is purposely defying this to the point of inverting it.
* Ladies and gentlemen, [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYigyRFrH5k the greatest counter ever]].

[[/folder]]


[[folder: Tabletop Games]]

* ''{{Warhammer 40000}}'' asks you a few simple questions: How much [[CrapsackWorld worse]] can we make this galaxy? How many [[KnightTemplar atrocities]] can we get the [[ChurchMilitant Imperium]] to commit today? How many more [[RedShirtArmy Imperial Guardsman]] can we kill in ''this'' battle? How much more hopeless can the wars against the [[BugWar Tyranids]] and [[RobotWar Necrons]] become? What further [[CosmicHorror madness]] can spew from the [[NegativeSpaceWedgie Eye of Terror]] this week? And most importantly of all... how much [[MoreDakka Dakka]] can we fit into one vehicle?
** 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 [[HumongousMecha Titan]] and kill the people inside. For his next trick he'll try fitting it with a fully functional 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''.
** How much bigger of a threat can [[CiaphasCain Ciaphas Cain, Hero Of The Imperium]] [[FakeUltimateHero defeat by accident]]? How uncertain can his heroism/dirty cowardice be? How many times can Jurgen save the day without making it into the histories? How much more {{Subtext}} can we pile in?
** Even on the mundane note, a boltgun (standard small arms) weighs about 7.5 kilograms and fires .75 caliber rounds. That's right, it weighs twice as much as a modern M16, has ''three times'' the barrel diameter, and fires ''armor piercing high-explosive rockets'', ''and'' manages to have a 50% larger standard magazine to boot. It is amazing what players take in stride.
** While it may not be as {{Egregious}} an example, the swords in this universe run on combustion engines, the tanks (designed by [[NinjaZombiePirateRobot superhuman werewolf]] [[SpaceWolf space vikings]]) are powered by hydrocarbon-fission-fusion cells, and the space ships are powered by SLAVE LABOR.
* When played right, the game ''{{Exalted}}'' is basically the Do It Yourself version of SerialEscalation.
* {{Scion}} starts at 11 and the books actively encourage the players and Storyteller to see how far they can push the meter up.
* Part of the DungeonsAndDragons community enjoys turning a GameBreaker UpToEleven. Some call us "{{Munchkin}}s", but we prefer "theoretical optimisation". Notable exploits include turning ''[[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Locate City]]'' into a tactical nuke (which sadly does not work RAW), implanting your mind into [[MixAndMatchCritters 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 level 1 Divine Kobold Paladin with arbitrarily high stats and [[MegaManning all abilities in existence useable at will]].
** The /tg/ board on [[ImageBoards 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''.
** The 3rd Edition Epicevel Handbook explicitly encouraged the Dungeonmaster to do this to the players with ridiculous and unfair challenges on the grounds that the players will have the resources to deal with them. How far can the Dwarven Defender swim through lava?
* ''{{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?"
* ''SpiritOfTheCentury'' 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 guaranteed to go UpToEleven.
* ''TabletopGame/DontRestYourHead'' has the same mechanic that is slowly wearing you down and making you more powerful at the same time, pretty much guarantreeing you'll push a little further 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 that's so over the top you could call down the four Horsemen, or an army of ninjas, or make enough ants crawl out of your skin to consume the city. It gets pretty intense when you're creative.
* ''{{FATAL}}''. At any given point, you will be unable to believe it could possibly get any more complicated, poorly worded, and deeply broken in its attitude towards sexuality. And then you will turn the page and find a dildo that makes you give birth to another dildo. BrainBleach may be necessary.
* ''{{Mekton}}'' doesn't usually indulge in it (the system is somewhat inclined towards the RealRobot rather than SuperRobot series), but it does have Excessive Scale. For when you need to build [[{{Transformers}} Unicron, Primus]], [[StarWars the Death]] [[ThatsNoMoon Star]], or the TengenToppaGurrenLagann.
* ''MagicTheGathering'':
** Early expansions made a game of one-upping each other, with every other expansion introducing a new "largest creature in the game." First there was the 8/8 [[http://magiccards.info/al/en/103.html Force of Nature]] in ''Alpha'', then the 9/9 [[http://magiccards.info/aq/en/11.html Colossus of Sardia]] in ''Antiquities'', then the 10/10 [[http://magiccards.info/dk/en/29.html Leviathan]] in ''The Dark'', then ''Ice Age''[='s=] 11/11 [[http://magiccards.info/ia/en/89.html Polar Kraken]], and finally the 12/12 [[http://magiccards.info/mr/en/280.html Phyrexian Dreadnought]] in ''Mirage''. The process was spoofed in ''Unglued'''s [[http://magiccards.info/ug/en/28.html B.F.M. (Big Furry Monster)]], a 99/99 creature so big that he takes up two cards and wears "[[ContinuityNod krakens and dreadnoughts for jewelry]]", and it was nostalgically revisited in ''Coldsnap'', which introduced [[http://magiccards.info/cs/en/37.html Jokulmorder]], a 12/12, as a nod to the set's gimmick of supposedly predating ''Mirage''.
** ''Unglued'' had cards with both [[http://magiccards.info/ug/en/53.html the longest]] and [[http://magiccards.info/ug/en/36.html the shortest]] names in the game at that time. Not to be outdone, ''Unhinged'' introduced [[http://magiccards.info/uh/en/107.html a card whose name is so long it wraps completely around all four sides of the card]] and [[http://magiccards.info/uh/en/23.html a card with no name at all]].
** ''Unglued'' also contained the card(s) with the largest mana cost, the aforementioned [[http://magiccards.info/ug/en/28.html B.F.M.]], whose 15 black mana symbols stretched across the entire top line of the card. Once again, ''Unhinged'' decided to top it with [[http://magiccards.info/uh/en/121.html Gleemax]], a card which costs 1,000,000 mana. Yes, that's one million mana. I hope you brought your [[http://magiccards.info/uh/en/124.html Mox Lotus]].

[[/folder]]


[[folder: Theater]]

* A common Improv game is called "Yes, And" fits this trope. Someone says something mundane, and someone else adds "Yes, and...!" attempting to top the person who spoke before them. If it doesn't end with a ridiculous EvilPlan to TakeOverTheWorld, someone wasn't playing correctly.
** Actually, that's an Improv technique. You confirm a person's plan and then add onto it. "Let's go to the park!" "Yes, and then we can feed the ducks!" And then it will get crazy.
** Improv in general tends towards this by design; the cardinal rule of improv is to never say no to your partner (otherwise the scene loses momentum fast). "Yes, And" simply turns it UpToEleven.

[[/folder]]


[[folder: Video Games]]

* In the indie 4X RTS, ''Star Ruler'', you can [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJJEMmzKzR4 build ships larger than the galaxy]]
* So what the hell else can we build in {{Minecraft}}? Another mass mob holocaust? A mincart station that has hundreds of destinations? Another giant creeper statue? Replacing every block with TNT?
* ''{{Disgaea}}'': How epic and shiny can the attacks get? How high can the [[PowerLevels damage and level caps]] go? How many {{Badass Lolita}}s can we cram into the game? How cracktacular can we make the [[OnTheNext next chapter preview]]? What hilarious but utterly depraved deed will our [[CardCarryingVillain "heroes"]] try now? How hard can we smash the [[NoFourthWall fourth wall]] this time? Just how evil and powerful is BonusBoss 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.
** Well, the damage cap has been shown to be ''[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iShBtnYm3B4 over 3 trillion]]''...
** Over ''[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOqrRUcjDQ8&NR=1 1.1 Quadrillion,]]'' actually.
** Technically, both of them simply stop attacking. so there is no confirmation of attack cap.
** In the third game, there is absolutely ''[[{{Cap}} no cap]]'' to stats. Videos feature damage so big, it [[ReadingsAreOffTheScale goes off the scale]] - last digits ''don't fit on the screen''.
* ''FinalFantasy'' started off with 3-digit HP totals party members and bosses with 4-HP digit totals. ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyII'' upped it to 4-digit party members and 5-digit HP bosses. ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyV'' introduced the ability to attack eight times a turn. ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI'' took the same ability and made it compatible with Quick, allowing ''sixteen'' attacks a turn. ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII'', certain Limit Breaks allow fifteen attacks at once, eighteen attacks at once, etc. Then came ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVIII'', where Squall's Lion Heart can do over ''two-hundred and fifty thousand damage in one attack'', making it one of the most powerful moves in the entire series! Since VIII, most game have incorporated the ability to break the 4-digit damage limit in some fashion. Then came ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX'': in the PAL release, Anima's attack hits 16 times, and ''every'' attack can break the damage limit and do 99,999 damage. That adds up to a damage cap just under 1,600,000!. Then trumped in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII'' where the damage cap with a Genji glove is 999,999. Not currently sure if anyone has managed to hit it yet.
** Also, how ridiculous can the [[BonusBoss optional superbosses]] get? I started it off with the BossInMookClothing Warmech, who did obscene damage but abided by the 4-digit HP max of bosses in the game. V had Omega and Shinryu, who were even more devastating and had 5-digit HP totals higher then anything else in the game. VII had Ruby and Emerald Weapon who were more deadly still and have 800,000 and 1,000,000 HP respectively (each over ten times that of the final boss). VIII featured Omega Weapon who had over a million HP and attacks that were virtually unsurvivable unless you used items or abilities that made you [[NighInvulnerability temporarily invincible]]. In IX Ozma was seemingly a step back with only a 5-digit HP total but made up for it by having [[LightningBruiser damage dealing abilities on par with its predecessors and being faster then seemingly all of them put together.]] X had a whole arena of [[BonusBoss bonus bosses]], many with HP totals higher then Omega Weapon, but the strongest was Nemesis, who had ten million HP but even he was weaker then non-arena superboss Penance who had ''twelve million HP'' a well as independantly acting arms each with half a million. XII was even worse with Yiazmat who has over ''fifty million HP'', can ''trick you into restoring all of it,'' doubles its stats and halves the damage cap of damage dealt to it when it nears death, and can combo for over a hundred thousand HP.
** Without a doubt, the most insane opponents in the franchise yet have to be those found in XI; Pandemonium Warden actually morphs into a number of the game's ''other'' high-end notorious monsters, was so overpowered it beat a group after a marathon fight that lasted over ''eighteen hours'' and was eventually nerfed until it could be semi-reasonably defeated. However, the same can't be said of Absolute Virtue, who has nearly every job's [[EleventhHourSuperpower 2-hour ability]] at its disposal but can seemingly use them [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard without any sort of time restriction]] and has been updated so that ''any'' past method used to defeat it doesn't work anymore and has yet to be beaten by anyone in its current state. Additionally, estimating HP totals for Absolute Virtue is moot as one of its 2-hour abilities allow it to ''restore all of it,'' which it can use as often as it wants and no one yet knows how to negate it.
* ''RatchetAndClank'': Think we can't make the {{BFG}}s any bigger? Think we can't make the weapons any stranger? Oh, how wrong you are.
* ''{{Scribblenauts}}'': 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 is a reason this game was a breakaway hit at E3.
** How can the sequel ''possibly'' push it a level higher? ''By adding adjectives.'' Robot skateboarding Elvis, here we come!
* ''KingdomHearts II'': How many more ridiculous cool [[ActionCommands reaction commands]] and {{cutscene}}s can you put in this game? The game's final level ends with an area where you can [[spoiler:cut in half, and casually kick around ''skyscrapers'']].
** The final boss of the first Kingdom Hearts was [[spoiler: a magical spaceship.]] With [[spoiler:a giant shirtless man attached to it by tentacles.]]
** The [[TheWarSequence one-man war]] against a thousand Heartless. Complete with kill counter!
** How hardcore can we make Mickey flippin' Mouse?
** or when you Deflect hundreds of lightsabers.
* ''PhantomBrave'': What ordinary object will become the next [[InfinityPlusOneSword Infinity Plus One]] [[strike:Sword]] [[strike:fish]] [[strike:crate]] [[strike:flower]] pastry? Will you give it to the undead male lead, the 13-year old girl, the talking rabbit, the anthropomorphic bottle, or the [[EverythingsBetterWithPenguins exploding penguin]], [[VerbalTic dood]]?
* ''SuperRobotWars'': How many [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome Crowning Moments Of Awesome]] can each character get? How [[strike:over the top]] and [[LargeHam hammy]] can Sanger Zonvolt get? How [[StuffBlowingUp Ex!plo!sive!]] can the attacks get? How powerful can the BigBad be? What new problem can [[TheWoobie Latooni]] have?
** EndlessFrontier (How many [[GagBoobs gags]] will be shown about Kaguya Nanbu? or how many euphimisms will be inserted into dialogue regarding boobs?)
** In that sense, [[WMG/SuperRobotWars which character close to Latooni is next in line to get into trouble, and how big?]]
** Which series will get included in the next game and how high will the HolyShitQuotient get as the crossover antics ensue? And most importantly: who will get the fail [[BrightSlap smacked out of them next]]?
*** Bright [[GetAholdOfYourselfMan Slapped the fail out of]] ''[[NeonGenesisEvangelion Shinji]]''. [[CatchPhrase Nuff Said]]
* {{Arika}} has escalated the difficulty of ''VideoGame/{{Tetris}}'' in its ''TetrisTheGrandMaster'' series of arcade games released in Japan. Each game itself also escalates well past the mechanic in ordinary ''Tetris'' where the pieces fall faster and faster.
** In ''Tetris The Grand Master'', halfway through the game, at level 500[[hottip:* :"levels" meaning "pieces dropped + lines cleared"]] (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. This is called "20G" and has since become common in ''Tetris'' products.
** ''Tetris The Absolute The Grand Master 2 PLUS'': By level 900 (~270 lines), the time to slide each piece into place decreases to not much more than a quarter second. At level 999 (~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 [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zUAZuTONP0 this player]] can't do it.
** ''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 [[{{UnusualEuphemism}} Belgium]] dedicated to [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwC544Z37qo pull that off]].
* The fan game ''[[http://code.google.com/p/nullpomino/ NullpoMino]]'' has a mode named "Phantom Mania" which further escalates the ''TGM'' series' invisible Tetris concept. The mode allows you to play in invisible mode for not just one minute, but rather, '''999 levels.''' One of the best ''TGM'' players in the world can ''only complete 30% of it.'' It is, however, good training for [=TGM2=] and 3's invisible credit rolls; one player who plays this mode a lot ended up going from M rank in [=TGM2=]+ 's Master mode to GM ''within 48 hours.'' Many other players with M rank have been stuck at M for over a year. ''[[http://pineight.com/lj/ Lockjaw]]'' has two invisible modes: one that hides the blocks in the well as in ''TGM'' and ''[=NullpoMino=]'', and another that hides only the falling piece. The latter is intended to teach proper "finesse", or the most efficient sequences of keypresses to place a piece in any given position.
* ''{{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?
* ''MetalWolfChaos'': How [[HotBlooded fervored]] can the [[PatrioticFervor patriotism]] get? How [[KickTheDog evil]] can [[EvilChancellor Richard]] get? How ridiculous can the plot get?
* ''MetalGearSolid'':
** 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, [[AC:I'm covered in bees!]], said fourth-wall breaking psychic back from the dead and possessing the body of a female cannibal puppeteer dependent on her PowerArmor to live, a sapient helicopter who uses a railgun like a sword and shoots smaller helicopters and is also a {{Vocaloid}}...
** How much more [[{{Fanservice}} blatant]] can the shots of [[EstrogenBrigadeBait Snake's ass]] get?
** [[UnskippableCutscene How much longer]] could this damn CutScene 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 ''MetalGearSolid4'': [[{{Determinator}} How much more pain]] can we put Snake through? [[spoiler: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? Well, they're giving him another starring role to try again. [[FailureIsTheOnlyOption Good luck with that.]]
** How much weight can we have Big Boss bench? How about the majority of a hundred-foot-tall, two-hundred-foot-long tank made of guns?
* ''VideoGame/{{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?
** [[UpToEleven Turned Up To 11]] in the advanced test chambers in the "Still Alive" re-release.
* ''VideoGame/{{Portal 2}}'' has the player, at the very ending of the game [[spoiler: shoot a portal to the freakin' MOON!]].
** It actually [[MakesSenseInContext makes sense]], as earlier on in the game it is explained through an audio message that the portal wall material is made from ''moon'' rock.
* ''{{Freelancer}}'': [[MoreDakka How much firepower can the opponents pack]]? How huge is our next target? [[ZergRush How much ships can the Order take on]]?
* It is also common in {{First Person Shooter}}s. How many strong enemies can we make the OneManArmy face at the same time? It dates as back as Wolfenstein 3D. Serious Sam take it to the absurd extreme.
* Plenty of NintendoHard 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.
** Finishing the game by yourself is considered an achievement. Taken UpToEleven by these two guys who actually finished the game in [[http://screwattack.com/videos/I-Win-at-Battletoads TWO PLAYERS MODE]]. No cheats (not that it'll help), no assists, on a classic NES. They used a PAL cartridge which fixed a GameBreakingBug, if you wanted to know.
* ''SeriousSam'': How many enemies can we cram into TheWarSequence? The final levels are considered [[ThatOneLevel Scrappy Levels]] by some, [[Awesome/VideoGameLevels Crowning Levels Of Awesome]] by others for taking it so far it becomes NintendoHard.
* ''IWannaBeTheGuy'': How many times will The Kid die before he'll become The Guy? How many more [[SpikesOfDoom spikes]] can fit into a single screen? How many more [[strike:apples]] [[strike:giant cherries]] delicious fruit will fall into the sky within the lapse of the next double-jump? How many [[KaizoTrap 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 [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard freak out and glitch-kill you]] like [[{{Warhammer 40000}} 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?
** Let's put it this way: even counting all difficulties, the running list of players who've finished is still only in the mid ''hundreds''. The game has been played by many thousands. When someone says "I beat it", [[BadassBoast people are awed by it]].
*** And when someone beat it on Impossible, ''the game's creator didn't believe them''.
* The 1992 arcade game ''TotalCarnage''. 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?
** Its name is quite apt.
* ''SinAndPunishment'' 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.
** Not just a planet. One of the former members of LeResistance transformed into ''CLONE EARTH''.
** This cements Treasure as the [[StudioGainax Gainax of videogames]] with most of their works being similarly [[MindScrew bizarrely themed]].
* ''KatamariDamacy'': 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 ''NeedForSpeed'' series from ''Underground'' to ''Carbon''. How cool can we make our rides? How many {{Cool Car}}s 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''.
** Invoked with the new ''Hot Pursuit'': Now, you can change said ''Porsches, Lamborghinis, and [=McLarens=]'' into cop cars and use them to chase down OTHER ''Porsches, Lamborghinis, and [=McLarens=]''. There's even a cop '''Bugatti Veyron''' featured!
* ''AncientKeeper'' (the unofficial expansion to ''DungeonKeeper''): 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.
* ''GuitarHero''. Witness the escalation from "Bark At the Moon" to "Jordan" to "Through the Fire and Flames" to "Satch Boogie" in the epic series of 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). [[NoFairCheating 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.
** DragonForce's "Fury of the Storm" will be featured in the upcoming ''GuitarHero: Warriors of Rock''. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ydxcrbqi2g Take a look at the solo]].
* ''AceAttorney'': 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 VillainousBreakdown 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. [[spoiler: Godot's visor also explodes from nothing but your ''logic'']]. Not "exploding" ''per se'', but, In ''Investigations'', [[spoiler:Ambassador Alba ''loses pieces of his face''. '''''Several times'''''.]]
** One breakdown in particular may be MORE spectacular than exploding: [[spoiler: Dahlia Hawthorne ''is sent to hell.'' Yes, she's a ghost at the time, but still, ''she was sent to hell.'']]
* ''{{beatmania}} IIDX'': How many notes can we cram in the space of a little over 2 minutes? [[http://www1.ocn.ne.jp/~hibroad/score/5/v_taka.html?2AC00 1,500]]? [[http://www1.ocn.ne.jp/~hibroad/score/11/aa_amuro.html?2AC00 1,800]]? ''[[http://www1.ocn.ne.jp/~hibroad/score/13/_nageki.html?2AC00 2,000]]?'' '''[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpGqta43cyQ 2119]]?''' '''''[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqkWIWbO14c=18 2,626]]?''''' (That last number includes [[HarderThanHard 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. [[BrutalBonusLevel remove the song length restriction, and you get a]] [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCEL__H9678 4459-note endurance test]] [[BrutalBonusLevel that is immediately followed by - you guessed it -]] [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yW34iG4bsQw 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 [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpGqta43cyQ 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 - [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kwv_vPIL4IQ How]] [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_p_qs3P6nSw ~fabulous~]] [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfqS-oCnSfc can Ryu* ]] [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ooIh7zJ_7A and Dai get?]]
* ''SamAndMax'': 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?
* ''MadWorld'': Just how much blood can a single human spill? How many unique ways can Jack hilariously murder someone? How vulgar can the announcers get?
* ''StarWars: TheForceUnleashed'': How much more EXTREME can the uses of the Force get? How much more [[VideogameCrueltyPotential severely]] can you [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill 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?
** Remorse?
** Oh, but it is further in the sequel novelisation. HE TELEKINETICALLY BLOWS UP A CRUISER.
* The doujin BulletHell 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, [[MindScrew FATE CONTROL TERRA++ ]] and it's freaking immortal and you have to time it out to win. This would easily qualify as the FinalBoss of any other shooter, but it's ''just the halfway point'', and it only gets more insane from there.
* ''{{Touhou}}'':
** How much more [[ThatOneBoss sadistic]] can the [[BulletHell spell cards]] get? How many more [[LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters characters]] can be crammed into one FantasyKitchenSink? What kind of EldritchAbomination will our BadassNormal heroines [[DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu blast out of the sky?]] Can [[CrowningMusicOfAwesome the themes]] actually become [[SerialEscalation more awesome?]] And just how many more [[Memes/{{Touhou}} memes]] can be spawned before the internet utterly consumes itself?!
** How many more bullets can ZUN stuff into the screen before the game breaks? How many more crack pairings can be made? How much more of image sites like Danbooru can be overrun with Touhou images?
** For the Record, [[RealityWarper Yukari Yakumo]] is probably this Trope Incarnated. You want proof? Here's some food for thought. All Touhou games have a [[HarderThanHard Lunatic]] [[ThisIsGonnaSuck Difficulty]]. All Touhou games have an [[BonusStage Extra Stage]]. Yukari resides on Perfect Cherry Blossom's ''Phantasm'' Stage, which is ''to'' the Extra stage what Lunatic difficulty is to Normal difficulty.
* ''[[DonPachi DoDonPachi: DaiFukkatsu]].'' BulletHell is an [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTn0I3xnVMc understatement]].
** SerialEscalation in its truest form: [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsWhVhgEEV4 BLACK Label Hibachi]]. Also, it's currently theorized that, to get to the TrueFinalBoss BEYOND that boss, you have to no death the entire game plus Hibachi. Watch the video and see exactly how SerialEscalation that seems.
** And here's said True True Final Boss, [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TI25niUOtbc Zatsuza]].
** Mushihime-sama http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVQdbcsXDrE.
* ''PumpItUp'':
** Stepcharts that make ''DanceDanceRevolution'' look as easy as ''YouHaveToBurnTheRope''. There's stuff like [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0b1n9-QhC6A "Love Is A Danger Zone 2"]] on Nightmare difficulty and [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUOEzHrxmkE "Final Audition Episode 2"]] on [[HarderThanHard Another Nightmare]] difficulty. And the best part? Unlike DDR and ''InTheGroove'', 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.
** The BonusBoss song [=RAW=], which is [[KobayashiMario literally impossible]].
** [[http://youtu.be/5SZrliXM9Ms Hey! What are you-trying to do?]]
* Given that s/he already [[spoiler:has a fleet/army of alien monstrosities out to kill him/her personally]], [[CosmicPlaything how much more]] [[IronWoobie screwed can]] [[MassEffect Shepard]] get? [[{{Badass}} And how much more awesome?]] How many things will blow up? How many [[DysfunctionJunction messed-up squad members]] will s/he get? How much more can the series go LighterAndSofter and DarkerAndEdgier ''simultaneously''? [[{{Troperiffic}} How much more tropes can we add to the games before we break the wiki]] ''[[{{Troperiffic}} again]]''?
** Given that s/he's now [[spoiler:set to face trial for the deaths of 300,000 batarians, s/he can get screwed a lot more.]]
** To get an idea of how troperiffic the ''MassEffect'' series is, consider this: the series' page had to be split into three - one for [[MassEffect the series in general]], one for [[MassEffect1 the first game]], and one for [[MassEffect2 the second game]] - because it had so many characters it was making the wiki crash. Then, the series' main page was split into nine pages - three for the three ExpandedUniverse novels and six for the tropes - ''and'' the second game's page was split into four pages in order to handle all the tropes. Not only does this not take into account the various sub-pages, such as the Crowning Moment of [[Awesome/MassEffect Awesome]], [[Funny/MassEffect Funny]], [[Heartwarming/MassEffect Heartwarming]] and ''[[Characters/MassEffect THREE]] [[Characters/MassEffect1 Character]] [[Characters/MassEffect2 pages]]'', but ''the series isn't done yet''. It's got a grand total of six pieces of media - three of which have nothing more than their own page and one that isn't even released yet - and the series has '''''OVER THIRTY PAGES'''''.
** [[AbusivePrecursors How much lower can the Reapers set the bar for fictional precursors?]]
** Given gameplay escalation in how big the enemies you are expected to kill on foot with a rifle are getting, are they going to throw two Geth Colossi at Shepard in ME3? Three Thresher Maws? A completed Reaper?
*** Five words: [[spoiler: [[CoolVersusAwesome REAPER VERSUS COLOSSAL THRESHER MAW!!!!]]]]
* DragonAge: Origins had a [[OurDragonsAreDifferent High Dragon]] as a BonusBoss, which was really frakking hard. DragonAge2 upped the ante by giving you a ZergRush of little dragons to fight while the High Dragon spat fireballs at you. What's next? [[DualBoss Two High Dragons?]]
* ''{{EverQuest}}'': With [[CapcomSequelStagnation fifteen]] [[ExpansionPack 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 [[AllPlanetsAreEarthLike been to the moon]]; in the fourth we [[GodIsDead killed most of the gods in their own homes]] ([[IGotBetter they got better]]). By expansion thirteen we had gone to [[AfterTheEnd a parallel world]] of sorts, killed an overlord of sheer [[AsskickingEqualsAuthority brutal evilness]], unwittingly [[GodsNeedPrayerBadly helped]] a [[AGodAmI 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 [[OminousFloatingCastle and his gnomish cohorts]]. Most recently, we saved the timestream and all reality as we know it from [[GiantSpaceFleaFromNowhere a guy]] who was secretly [[TheManBehindTheMan 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 [[KingdomHearts the heart of the world]] from being corrupted by evil energies, apparently.
* ''{{Metroid Prime}}: Hunters'' has the character [[IcePerson Noxus]], whose weapon fires plasma cooled to near absolute zero! It's hard to imagine a supercooling device of that magnitude fitting inside a weapon in which one's arm must also fit, and which one must be able to lift with relative ease.
* Paraworld has one one of the most AwesomeYetPractical weapons of all time. Its an Anklyosaurus, with a catapult strapped to its back, that fires [[AbnormalAmmo ''Velociraptors'']].
* In ''Giga Wing'', a score of one million points is ''nothing''--the best scores have [[PinballScoring 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!''
* ''ViewtifulJoe'' seems to anticipate ''TengenToppaGurrenLagann'' by having each of Joe's mechs [[TransformingMecha 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''.
* "UminekoNoNakuKoroNi". How badass can Battler get? [[spoiler: 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 cruelly can Beatrice kill people? [[spoiler: 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? [[spoiler: He hasn't yet. But there's a whole lot of them, take my word for it.]] How convoluted can the mystery get? How bizarre can the magic scenes become? How ''awesome'' can the music be?
* ''AceCombat''
** Asks you how [[GameBreaker 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 GameBreaker 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 AirstrikeImpossible missions get? WolfpackBoss? Single superfighter? Screw that, have a superfighter WolfpackBoss!
* ''WorldOfWarcraft'':
** What new leader of legions of undead or demons can we kill today? [[DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu 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 much worse can Azeroth get?
** That said, the lady armor stopped getting skimpier rather early on. The game is rated T by the ESRB, so there's a bit of a hard line, not to mention the fact that once players arrive in the polar continent of Northrend (presently the highest-level content) the clothes, rather sensibly, cover more. All the rest is quite true though.
** The next expansion, Cataclysm, will bring to Azeroth a global...[[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin well, you know]]. The old zones will be forever changed in increasingly extreme ways; some places are getting cut with deep chasms or blown to smithereens, whereas others are becoming lush and green ''where previously there were deserts''.
** The fandom often joke about bosses that are brought back for later content. The Sunwell event brought back Kael'Thas "[[MemeticMutation Tempest Keep was merely a setback!]]" Sunstrider, Wrath of the Lich King resurrected Kel'Thuzad, and the Argent Tournament patch restored Anub'arak, but the real kicker is Fall of the Lich King, where all three of the Blood Princes from previous dungeons returned for a single raid encounter ([[AscendedMeme And one of them did the "merely a setback" line]])).
*** One of the Lich King's agents, the BlackKnight, takes it still further - after being killed once as a human, he is brought back as a rotting zombie with additional power up. After you kill him in this form, he stands back up as a bare skeleton. And after ''that'' he immediately comes back as a ghost.
**** Then again, he ''is'' the [[MontyPythonAndTheHolyGrail Black Knight.]] Would you expect any less?
* ''DevilMayCry''
** 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''.
** Pffh. DMC 4 was a breeze compared to DMC 3, even on Hell and Hell mode. With the enemies' skill level bumped down to "Normal" and 3 revives per checkpoint, any decently skilled DMC player can win without much hassle. The Dante boss fight can be problematic if you don't know how to counter him properly; otherwise, it's a cinch. DMC 3 Dante Must Die on the other hand...picture this scenario. You're on a giant chessboard, fighting 16 chess pieces. Killing the King kills the other 15 pieces, similar to checkmate on an ordinary chess game. Problem is, the Bishops can heal pieces (usually the King) and the Knights can summon other pieces, making the fight a non-stop, clusterfuck uphill battle. On Very Hard, it's a challenge to destroy the King. On Dante Must Die, with the blue aura surrounding the King and the other pieces (which significantly increases their defense and vitality), it's absolute hell. And that's the first fight of level 18. THEN you have to fight at least SIX other bosses you fought earlier in the game, CONTINUOUSLY. And now, the voice you're hearing is you, screaming.
* The SuperMarioBros 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 [[strike:a bunch of his Koopa Troopas]] the Koopalings hide out in a cake. ''They then stuff Princess Peach into the cake and take onboard one of Bowser's airships.'' Holy shit.
* ''VideoGame/SuperMarioGalaxy'': It's just a battle between a plumber and a big turtle. How epic can they get this to be? [[spoiler: Try having the final showdown set in the center of a sun that's in the center of the goddamn universe. Then punching said giant turtle into the magma of said sun, causing it to explode into a black hole that temporarily sucks in all existence. Good lord.]]
** While we're at it, just how many things has Bowser survived? [[VideoGame/SuperMarioSunshine Falling thousands of feet]] , [[SuperMarioBros being engulfed by lava]] , [[VideoGame/NewSuperMarioBrosWii being crushed by a castle]] , [[VideoGame/PaperMario being blasted the world's resident godlike entities multiple times]] , [[VideoGame/SuperMarioGalaxy being caught in a black hole's epicenter]]... [[VideoGame/NewSuperMarioBros And when he does die? He's revived as an invincible moving skeleton.]] Bowser will never be wiped out.
* PrinceOfPersia:
** The Sands of Time: How many death-defying leaps will you make in the next few minutes? How many times will you ''run along a wall''? How high can the next WallJump shaft get? How many times will the Prince talk to himself? How many times will he mention it? How many insane acrobatic moves can you cram into the next fight?
** In the reboot: What immensely tall, ''vertical'' cliff will you slide down next? How long will you be beating up an enemy ''in mid-air''? How long can you go without touching the ground? How much will the Prince [[DeadpanSnarker snark]] in the next few minutes? Which snarks will stink and which will be funny?
* {{Bayonetta}}:
** Pretty much made to be a distillation of this trope. To put things into perspective, the very, very first taste of gameplay, before even the prologue, consists of a battle against an army of angels on a broken clock tower. A broken clock tower ''currently falling down the side of an enormous cliff.'' And it only ramps up from there. By the climax, the HolyShitQuotient climbs every ten seconds or so, as you pull off more and more increasingly insane stunts, including but not limited to:
** [[spoiler: Surfing the middle of a street on a river of ''molten lava'' using a ''dead angel'' as a surfboard.]]
** [[spoiler: Shooting your [[CompleteMonster monster of a father]] in the face. With ''[[ImprobableWeaponUser lipstick]]''.]]
** [[spoiler: Escaping the Earth's atmosphere by driving up the side of a titanic rocket with ''a motorcycle''.]]
** And of course, the coup de grace, [[spoiler:[[DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu KILLING GOD]]. '''[[CrowningMomentofAwesome By punching her into]] [[HurlItIntoTheSun the sun]]'''.]]
* How much more overtly over the cop can Bayonetta's sexuality get?
* Smoke's [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxTBLKH4tZ4 fatality]] in MortalKombat 3.
** "Smoke Wins". What a helpful disclaimer.
** "Flawless victory". Some would disagree with that.
** Returns in Mortal Kombat Gold as Cyrax`s fatality. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bTFTs4Xtsc&fmt=18 Just in case one time isn`t enough...]]
* What new ways will the [[{{Metroid}} Space Pirates]] find to kill [[TooDumbToLive themselves]] and [[CompleteMonster others?]] How many times can Ridley [[IGotBetter come back?]] How many more planets can Samus [[EarthShatteringKaboom blow up?]]
* Crytek keeps doing this with their games' graphics. First came ''FarCry'', which could only be maxed out by a perfectly top-of-the-line rig, and even now is beyond many stock computers. Then ''{{Crysis}}'', which was designed so that it couldn't be run on max on any existing computer. It literally couldn't be run on anything that existed. Currently, it can be done, but it needs seriously powerful components. Surprisingly, Crysis 2 was actually pretty reasonable on launch due to being [[{{PCVsConsole}} optimised for Consoles]]. Then they released the DX11 & Hi-Rez Texture Pack for the PC version and unless you've got at least a ''pair'' of cutting edge graphics cards, you'll be playing a slideshow.
* The ''DynastyWarriors'' series, which is already heavily fueled by WhatDoYouMeanItsNotAwesome moments, has finally achieved a critical mass of insanity in ''Strikeforce,'' where historical Chinese figures can basically go nuclear and achieve Super Saiyan status.
* ''Left4Dead 2''. Expert difficulty, which does tons of damage to you and you can die quickly? No problem. Realism mode, where you can't respawn, don't have auras to track each other, and have Witches kill you in one hit? Fair enough. Now combine the two. Good luck in getting that achievement.
** Recently the ante has been upped with ''Realism Versus''.
** Some of the other mutations have also gone past the impossible. Up to 4 special infected trying to attack the team at once? Try ''eight special infected at the same time'', which can include doubles of the same type (Hard Eight)!
** Thought that was hard? How about the newest mutation (Taaannnnkk!), in wich all special infected are tanks, and you only have pills to refill your health!
* The only thing that matches the [[CrazyAwesome cunning]] of ''DwarfFortress'' players is their [[{{Pride}} hubris]]. Defeating the [[LegionsOfHell unspeakable demons]] spawned from glowing pits in previous released had become mundane, and the most ruthless and terrifying entity in DwarfFortress [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential were its players]]. So the [=DF2010=] release decided to up the ante. [[spoiler:If you [[DugTooDeep dig too deep]], you will arrive in ''[[PhysicalHell Hell itself]]''. Then you will be {{Zerg Rush}}ed by ''hordes'' of demons, who are more than a match for an ordinary army of dwarves ''individually'', and do not suffer from ConservationOfNinjutsu; in fact, since a lot of them [[BlobMonster have no organs]] they can only die by being [[HalfTheManHeUsedToBe snapped in half]] and some have a single-part body and are evidently ''functionally immortal''.]] After several months, [[LordBritishPostulate this challenge has proven insufficient]]; several enterprising players have conquered it and ''claimed [[spoiler:Hell itself]] as their new home'', eagerly awaiting the next iteration of "Hidden Fun Stuff".
** And if military achievements aren't enough, you need only look towards the construction projects that players have made. When a fortress isn't enough, you build a statue of your king. When that isn't enough, you have it [[http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/4/48700/1239379-7_headshoots_super.jpg pour an endless mug of lava into a volcano in honor of the fallen]]. When that isn't enough, you remove the "into a volcano" part and turn it into a weapon of mass destruction. When that isn't enough, you ''build a Turing-complete computer that's operated with hand-pumps and water pressure''.
** And that's merely the players' achievements. The developer (one guy, with a little help from his brother) is constantly pushing the game's "fantasy world simulation" elements far BeyondTheImpossible. 2010's big update - among ''many'' other things - changed the combat system to determine damage to individual tissue layers, gave eyelids the function of removing grime from eyeballs (in such a way that an entity who loses an eyelid in battle will have to manually clean his own eyes), and created a random disease/poison generator that can result in an EldritchAbomination whose breath causes your eyes to melt out of their sockets. And the randomly-generated world is constantly becoming more detailed, already generating a rich history of wars, heroic battles against legendary monsters and [[EldritchAbomination Forgotten Beasts]], and religious worship of Gods and Demons - all of which have a visible, if minor, impact on actual gameplay.
* ''GodOfWar 2''. Now, its predecessor was already plenty epic, but in GoW2 you get to climb up a magically animated Colossus of Rhodes, smash it to bits inside and out, then go mano-a-mano with frigging Zeus himself. All of this in the ''first'' level. It goes beyonder and beyonder from then on.
** God Of War 3 goes even ''further''. The first boss fight is frikken '''Poseidon''' who takes the form of a massive water/horse/''thing'' while you are riding ''Gaia''. After cracking open the chest of Poseidon you are thrown ''into'' it and come out the other side with a human sized Poseidon and then you get to beat the shit out of him from '''his perspective'''. And when he finally dies a ''tsunami'' erupts from his corpse and drowns everything but Olympus.
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2or09tBlLs Pluto The First (Challenge)]] from ''DanceDanceRevolution X2''. I thought it couldn't get any worse than Pluto Relinquish.
* ''TraumaCenter'' and ''Trauma Team''. How much more insane can the diseases get? How many more bizarre supernatural powers can surgeons have? What about the other characters? A ninja endoscopist? A superhero orthopedist? A first-response agent who can see ghosts?
* [[http://ninjakiwi.com/Games/Action/Play/Destructo-Truck.html Destructo-Truck]]. There's an achievement for breaking the speed of sound. '''In a truck'''. There's a JATO rocket upgrade right out of the DarwinAwards, and that's not even the most excessive option - the next one, ''twin F16 afterburners'' is described as "stupidly powerful".
** And after ''that'', it's a '''moon rocket thruster'''.
* ''VideoGame/{{Prototype}}'' takes itself [[CrazyAwesome so over the top]] that it never so much as ''considers'' stopping at UpToEleven. The plot is as follows: [[PersonOfMassDestruction Alex]] [[ImAHumanitarian Mercer]] is sent into an UnstoppableRage over being infected with [[TheVirus a virus]], causing him to go on a RoaringRampageOfRevenge against an [[SemperFi entire fucking army]] that's backed by ''another'' [[ArmiesAreEvil entire fucking army]] (this one comprised entirely of [[PsychoForHire psychos for hire]]), plus a goddamned ZombieApocalypse and a BigBad [[spoiler:that goes OneWingedAngel on him]], and he ''[[OneManArmy kicks the shit out of them all]]''. ''By himself''.''The whole game'' is a CrowningMomentOfAwesome.
** How much [[MadeOfIron damage can Alex regenerate from?]] [[LovecraftianSuperpower How much gorier can the superpowers get?]]. How many tanks, helicopters and APCs can he hijack/destroy with a whip, claw, hammer, blade, super-jaws-of-life-esque-arms, armor, and shield, all made out of ''himself''? Or more correctly, made out of [[IAmAHumanitarian the countless soldiers, zombies, and civilians he devours]]. How much of a bastard can most of the main characters, ''[[RefugeInAudacity including the protagonist]]'', turn out to be? [[spoiler:That last one goes to pot a bit when Alex grows a conscience, but at least the Blackwatch ups the ante on their front to make up for it.]]
** Now there's a [[{{Videogame/Prototype2}} sequel]] on the way. Thus far, we've seen the ''new'' protagonist turn living, screaming people into tentacle-y grenades; supplex a tank; uppercut a helicopter; and rip multiple soldiers to shreds at once using sticky, springy tendrils that cross entire streets and fling cars around. His mission is to [[RogueProtagonist fight Alex Mercer]]. The code is in Alpha. ''It can only get more insane.''
* [[RockBand Rock Band 3]]. Let's start with the 25-key [[strike:keyboard]]''keytar'' controller, throw in a new option that requires you to actually play the real part, and end with a 6-string 17-fret midi guitar controller developed specifically for the game.
** Rock Band 1 (although derided for being easy in comparison to Guitar Hero 3) had Green Grass & High Tides, which took 2 years and change for a guitarist to FC.
** And the pro final songs on disc for Rock Band 3 were Roundabout (Keys) and Crazy Train/Freebird (Guitar). Trumped somewhat later when they released Pro Guitar Dragonforce.
* Mamono Sweeper. It starts out [[http://www.hojamaka.com/game/mamono_sweeper_easy/en.html easy]], then harder with larger boards like the original [[{{Minesweeper}} minesweeper]], then proceeds to the [[http://www.hojamaka.com/game/mamono_sweeper_ex/en.html extreme mode]], which has more "mines" per area, then [[http://www.hojamaka.com/game/mamono_sweeper_b/en.html blind mode]] which plays exactly like the actual minesweeper, i.e. ''touch the mine and killed''. The hardness does not end here. The extreme and blind modes are then combined into the [[http://www.hojamaka.com/game/mamono_sweeper_h_ex/en.html huge]][[http://www.hojamaka.com/game/mamono_sweeper_h_b/en.html mode]]. Who knows if more harder modes are out?
* ''[[SuperSmashBros Super Smash Bros. Brawl]]''. Holy shit, forget "SerialEscalation'", try "Serial ''Acceleration''". Where to begin with how insane this game is?
** The ridiculous number of trophies, stickers, stages, and characters can take an eternity to locate, particularly the former two. It's doubtful whether or not it's even possible to get that coveted OneHundredPercentCompletion.
** The entirety of the Adventure mode. ''It's not even a '''mode''' so much as an '''ENTIRELY INDEPENDENT GAME''''', complete with bosses, cutscenes, plot twists, incredibly difficult platforming segments... the list goes on and on...
** The items. You could spend forever trying to find item combos and such, but the arsenal itself is over-the-top crazy.
** The Masterpieces. They included playable demos of many of the characters' most famous games. Really more of an advertisement for the Virtual Console, but still... wow.
** Custom stages. [[StopHavingFunGuys Now the purists can make fair and balanced stages on their own.]]
** Easter eggs. In the cargo ship that is this game, good like finding all of them. But they're there.
** The number of modes. Despite the large number available at default, there are still more to find. Really.
** To really see how Brawl escalates, just look at any given aspect of its predecessor, Melee. ''[[ThisIsSPARTA Every. Single. Aspect. Of. Melee. Has. Been.]] [[UpToEleven Taken. To. Eleven.]]''
*** Except for the [[TitleScream ANNNNNNNNNOUUUUUUUU]][[LargeHam NNNNNNNNCEEEEEEEEEEERR!!]]
*** That, and the speed, as Brawl is definitely slower than Melee.
*** Event Matches too. There were 51 of them in Melee. Now there are 41.
**** Averted this aversion if you include the 21 Co-Op Events, though.
* The Fusions in ''The World Ends With You''. Sure, transversing dimensions is fine, but summoning ''the moon''?
** See the madness for yourself [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2-pT2622TY here]].
** In fact, the whole game itself is madness.
*** [[ItMakesSenseInContext It just needs more candy canes.]]
* TheSims had 7 [[ExpansionPack expansion packs]]. Then Sims 2 came out and got 8 expansions, plus 9 stuff packs. One can only wonder how many Sims 3 will get...
* [[CommandAndConquer Red Alert]] series, of course. How [[AllTheoriesAreTrue implausible]] [[AlienSpaceBats and convoluted]] can AlternateHistory get? How [[CrazyAwesome utterly]] [[SchizoTech batshit insane]] can SovietSuperscience get? How more [[LargeHam over-the-top]] can acting get before [[DivideByZero collapsing into some sort of Ham Singularity]]? ''[[ShockAndAwe Just]] [[TeleportersAndTransporters how]] [[FlyingSaucer much]] [[MindControl more]] [[EverythingsWorseWithBears ridiculous]] [[MilitaryMashupMachine can]] [[HumongousMecha units]] [[IfItSwimsItFlies get]]?!''
** Ditto on the Tiberian series. How much more contaminated can the world get? How much longer is the devs gonna tease the playerbase about Kane's origins? How much more advanced can the brotherhood be? How many more ways can tiberium screw over the planet? How much more incompetent is GDI? It's even more ironic considering every single game ends on a hopeful note for the good guys, only to have everything go to shit even worse in the next one.
* ''AlienSwarm'' got an update that makes the game much harder than it already was. Many people complained that Insane difficulty wasn't hard enough! What did Valve do? Added Brutal difficulty, which is so hard that ''none of the developers could finish a mission!'' Oh, is that not hard enough? Now try it with Hardcore Friendly Fire enabled, where all friendly fire does full damage to players! And yes, there's already and achievement for beating a mission on Brutal with hardcore friendly fire turned on.
* ''AssassinsCreed'': How [[CombatPragmatist brutal]]/awesome can we make {{Counter Attack}}s and the other killing moves? [[GroinAttack Crotch stomps?]] [[SpamAttack Multiple slashes]] [[SlashedThroat to the throat]]? Child's play! WordOfGod on ''Brotherhood'' promises being able to attack multiple enemies with one counter. The possibilities if it's pulled off well...
* ''IrisuSyndrome'': Exactly how ''fucked up'' is the plot? How insane can Irisu [[spoiler:and Uuji]] get? How many [[FridgeHorror minor details]] can the author scare us with? Until ''Kai'' comes out, we may never know...
* ''dotHack//GU'': How many times, throughout the series, do the epitaph users "give their powers" to Haseo? By the end of the game, there really was no place to go, as Haseo had already absorbed the power of the eight epitaphs about three or four times before the ultimately final fight.
* ''BatmanArkhamAsylum'' is supposed to have a sequel that's even ''darker.'' Just... ''how?''
* ''MuramasaTheDemonBlade'' has a chapter where the Jinkuro-posessed Momohime ''storms the gates of Hell'' to get the sword he needs for the Soul Transfer. When it's revealed that the sword isn't in Hell, Jinkuro decides on the spot to ''storm the gates of '''Heaven''''' instead and battle the gods to change his fate!
* ''ResonanceOfFate'' has the most impossible gun maneuvers ever. The characters can hover in mid air firing their guns, and they can literally leap across the entire battlefield. Not to mention Vashyron has a maneuver where he jumps, bounces off of his back and flips back up, all while firing his gun.
* The upcoming ''ProfessorLaytonVSAceAttorney'' CrossOver game is apparently so CrazyAwesome that one of its videos' [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gufhYicCUs4 view count can't keep up to its likes and comments count]]. (At least for the first day its posted; the likes count was more than four times as much and the comments count was more than three times as much)
** Is it even possible for a single YouTube video to have ''69 honors at once?''
* On the subject of ''ProfessorLayton''... how much more bizarre can the plot twists get? How much more badass can a gentlemanly archaeology professor be? How many puzzles can we cram into the game before the whole thing becomes nothing but a sequence of {{Big Lipped Alligator Moment}}s?
* If you don't do something Crazy Awesome during the TUTORIAL of ''VideoGame/JustCause'' 2, '''you're doing it wrong.''' Once that's done, you can [[StuffBlowingUp blow up]] enough stuff to have the military send a dozen jeeps, several helicopters, and a ''tank'' after you. You can have a carsurfing gunfight during the chase. You can attach anything to anything else - like a speeding car to the road in front of the car, or a bad guy to a fighter plane. Using your grappling hook, you can hijack numerous helicopters without touching the ground. You can planesurf. And during the finale, [[spoiler:[[RidingTheBomb you can surf nuclear missiles]] [[ItMakesSenseInContext and disarm them while fighting a midget dictator]].]]
* [[VideoGame/{{Worms}} Worms Armageddon]] still has patches coming out for it '''''10 YEARS AFTER RELEASE'''''.
* ''SplitSecond'': How many more things can you blow up in a single race? How big can the objects involved be? Jumbo jets? Cruise ships? Nuclear reactor cooling towers? ''An entire dam''? How fast can you drive while dodging a helicopter's missiles? How close behind the truck dropping ExplodingBarrels can you drive?
* {{Pokemon}}: It looks like the creative process for the [[OlympusMons main legendaries]] has become this. Generation I has the [[GeneticEngineeringIsTheNewNuke strongest Pokémon ever created]]. Gen. II has ''two'' main legendaries, both of whom are major deities/creatures from Japanese (Lugia is Owatatsumi, the Dragon God of the Sea) and Chinese (Ho-oh is [=FengHuang=], the immortal phoenix whose stature in Chinese culture is equivalent to that of the ''[[DragonsUpTheYinYang dragon]]'') mythology. However, ''Gen. III'' has ''three'' major legendaries, who represent (and are said to be ''the creators of'') the continents, sea, and sky. Not to be outdone, ''Gen. IV'' has you catching the Pokémon controlling/representing ''time, space and antimatter/death'', not to mention the Event Pokémon Arceus who is essentially ''Pokémon'''s equivalent to ''God''! And NOW Pokémon Black and White has you getting two Pokémon based off of ''yin and yang in Taoism'' (with a third representing ''both''), on top of the fact that you can now get a trio of legendaries based off of ''kami'' in Shintoism!
** Oh, by the way, the Yin-Yang dragons have a side helping of FireIceLightning.
** You seem to be forgetting the fact that after 14-15 years, we have achieved '''''649''''' Pokémon.
*** And you GottaCatchEmAll!
* ''DonkeyKongCountryReturns'': How big a Punch can he make it? [[spoiler: Enough to ''[[SugarWiki/AwesomeMoments punch the moon]]'' into the Tikis' tower]].
* Practically the whole game of AsurasWrath looks to be this trope made manifest. In the first of two episodes you can play in the demo, Asura (who is man-sized) fights a fatman the size of the Empire State's Building with his bare fists, then continues to fight said fatman who's grown to be larger than the Earth and is trying to crush him with a fingertip the size of Texas. In the second, he fights a BlindWeaponmaster... on the Moon. And then he's launched from the surface while performing a BarehandedBladeBlock on a sword that's longer than the diameter of Earth... which he's then impaled on. It comes out the other side of the planet like a volcano. There needs to be a new trope if the game has any more of this over the top insanity.
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-f3woBOc8pY Asura's Wrath]]. As if that wasn't enough, [[spoiler: That planet sized buddha? Its one of the weakest and presumably, earliest bosses in the '''Whole Game'''!]] Looks like ''{{Bayonetta}}'' has some competition in this department, now.
** It topped itself again. By fighting with Asura's OldMaster Augus on the moon and getting plunged back to earth by usage of one of the biggest swords in video game history. The game trailers show so far this trope is definately in full play, [[UpToEleven and how]]!
*** Said BFS Augus has is [[http://www.joystiq.com/2011/09/16/overheard-tgs-just-how-long-is-that-sword-in-asuras-wrath/ 380,000]] KILOMETERS in length. BeyondTheImpossible indeed.
* Can ''SplinterCell'' protagonist Sam Fisher get any more [[{{Eagleland}} American]]!? At one point in ''Conviction'' he actually stabs a terrorist with an American Flag without missing a beat . Made all the better by the fact that the terrorist-gangster in question is a CompleteMonster with several KickTheDog moments who most players have wanted to brutalize for the entire game.
** It's optional, and technically he just stabs him with the flagpole... on the other hand, the beating during which this can happen is happening inside the Washington, D.C. headquarters of Third Echelon, Fisher's former organization that actually hired on this gangster.
* How hard can we push the ''{{ARMA}}'' series against the Realistic end of the FacklerScaleOfFPSRealism?!
** Not much more when it comes to infantry, but a good bit when it comes to vehicles, particularly aircraft -- the ''[[SimulationGame Digital Combat Simulator]]'' series has them beat there.
* How much longer can we delay VideoGame/DukeNukemForever?
** Wrong question. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XsnH_994Jo How far]] will the developers take RefugeInAudacity?
** Wrong again. How much longer can the [[LoadsAndLoadsOfLoading load times]] get?
* How insane can we make the Shadow bosses of {{Persona 4}}? In order of appearance, Yosuke's is a frog-thing with a ninja grafted onto it's back, Chie's is a dominatrix banana-head that sits on top of a tower of schoolgirls, Yukiko's is a firy bird that can summon an evil price doll, the less said about Kanji's shadow the better, Rise's is a satellite-faced swirly-colored stripper, Teddie's is just downright frightening, and Mitsuo's is a floating baby with an eight-bit character for a shield.
* What ridiculous plan are the minions of darkness going to concoct to bring [[{{Castlevania}} Dracula]] BackFromTheDead this time? How much hammier can the voice acting get? How much bigger can the weapons get? What new attacking system can we add this time? How much better can the soundtrack get?
* Just how hard can the last boss of the ''VideoGame/ArcanaHeart'' fighting games (as well as fighting games in general) [[SNKBoss get]]? [[UpToEleven Really]], [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEzi4soBnJc REALLY]] hard, thats how.
* The {{Rance}} Series. How CrazyAwesome can the HeroicComedicSociopath get? How many dozens of women will he rape this time? How many [[PlayingToTheFetishes fetishes]] can they pack into the sex scenes? How [[RefugeInAudacity offensive]] can the ComedicSociopathy and DeadBabyComedy get? [[BetterThanItSounds How suprisingly good can the plot get?]] [[WorldOfBadass How badass can they make the other named characters?]] '''[[LongRunner Just how long will the original storyline series go on?]]'''
** It should be noted that this series [[OlderThanTheyThink is older than anything else on this list.]]
** WordOfGod has stated that the series will end after the 10th game. The series is currently at the 8th. As of this edit, ''they're releasing an expansion pack''.
* RuneScape. How insanely high-leveled can they make a monster? Currently, the most insane monster is Nex (level 1001). For reference, a PC can only achieve 138 (which is all combat stats at lv 99, including summoning and prayer.)
* ''VideoGame/{{MOTHER 3}}''. What horrifying new Chimera will you fight next? How much more abuse will [[TheWoobie Salsa]] be put through? What unbelievable feat of badassery will the [[BadassAdorable adorable]] characters pull off? How many more terrible things can an immortal PsychopathicManchild do? How can said PsychopathicManchild still remain a sympathetic villain? How much more severe can we make the MoodWhiplash this time? Just how much [[WidgetSeries stranger]], [[CrowningMomentOfFunny funnier]] and [[TearJerker more heartrending]] can [[{{Utsuge}} this game]] ''possibly get?''
** How bizarre will the next boss be? [[spoiler: The ghost of Beethoven, a tank, a bass guitar, a pile of garbage, a living generator, a biomechanical caribou, a robot gorilla with wrecking balls for hands, an ''animate whirlpool''...]]
* {{BlazBlue}}
** Calamity Trigger, the first game, starts with being a rather standard fighting game, except for its overly absurd PinballScoring: You pick a character, go through 10 fights and have to beat an Unlimited character (essentially an SNKBoss) to win the game. But the game has a bonus boss, which is absurd even for Unlimited standard.
** Then you can try going through the Score Attack mode, which pits you against all 12 playable characters in the game, all at the highest AI difficulty, with the last four bosses being Unlimited characters.
** Then Continuum Shift, the sequel, adds two more characters to the roster, one of which comes with an Unlimited mode as a final boss, and thus adding them to the Score Attack mode. That means 14 characters in a row, with the last five being {{SNK Boss}}es.
** Then Continuum Shift II adds even more characters, but surprisingly its Score Attack mode is reduced to fighting 10 normal characters. The reason for this is (unfortunately) simple: [=CS II=] has a second Score Attack mode named Unlimited Mars mode, where every enemy you fight is in Unlimited mode. To rephrase: that's almost a dozen characters, all of which are {{SNK Boss}}es.
** Continuum Shift II Extend slows the escalation somewhat by merely adding one additional characters as well as adding more move pool to the already-broken Unlimited characters.
* The ''ApeEscape'' series. How many monkeys must be captured for OneHundredPercentCompletion? How large-scale can [[DiabolicalMastermind Specter]]'s plans get?


[[/folder]]


[[folder: Webcomics]]

* ''Webcomic/TheAdventuresOfDrMcNinja'': How far can we stretch RuleOfCool and RuleOfFunny? 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? Can a moustache get more epic if we put it on a dinosaur?
* ''Webcomic/CaseyAndAndy'': 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?
* In ''Webcomic/EightBitTheater'' you can notch three arrows to one bow and then notch three arrows to [[DualWield ''two'' bows]] and then you can add [[BeyondTheImpossible more bows than a two armed human could possible carry]].
** On a different note: just how much time can the author put between setting up a BrickJoke and having it come back? At first, they happen within about [[http://www.nuklearpower.com/2001/08/16/interlude-00-hes-a-fighter-not-a-webcomic-artist/ 350]] [[http://www.nuklearpower.com/2004/03/30/episode-401-civility-before-hostility/ strips or so.]] Now we're seeing jokes come back after ''nine years''.
*** Particularly notable since THAT brick joke was from the first battle Fighter and Black Mage faced (a giant) TO THE FINAL BATTLE before it came back. Yes, almost literally ''the entire comic''!
* The fight against Demonhead Mobster Kingpin in ''ProblemSleuth''. How will our heroes top their last utterly ridiculous, over-the-top and incredibly awesome attack? [[spoiler:Answer: [[http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=4&p=001708 Sepulchritude]].]]
** AndrewHussie has gone on to use ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}'' as a vehicle in which he can turn shit UpToEleven, and then turn it UpToEleven again without resetting it from the first time. Repeatedly. He's actually said that the entire ending of ''ProblemSleuth'' would be considered a regular ''Homestuck'' panel by now, and he's probably right.
--> '''Andrew''': There was only one sure thing I knew when starting [[Webcomic/{{Homestuck}} HS]]. That was that this thing would go batshit insane in ways I couldn't begin to imagine. In fact, it was practically the mission statement.
** In a more meta-example, there was the [=AlterniaBound=] Flash update on October 25, 2010. When it went live, the traffic crashed the site, which was expected given how heavily anticipated the update was. What ''wasn't'' expected, however, was it also ''crashing [[{{Newgrounds}} the mirror site Hussie uploaded it to]].''
--->'''Andrew on {{Twitter}}''': ok i quit putting stuff on the internet forever because THE INTERNET CAN'T HANDLE ME
** The exact same thing happened exactly a year later with the End of Act 5 update on October 25, 2011. As much as Hussie and his team tried to be prepared for the inevitable, the Newgrounds mirror - not to mention ''the entire Newgrounds site itself'' - was torpedoed [[UpToEleven WITHIN MINUTES OF IT BEING POSTED]].
--->'''Andrew''': [[CrowningMomentOfFunny Well,]] [[{{Understatement}} that didn't work]].
** This trope also applies to the the flashes. First they were nothing more than simple short animations with catchy but basic music. Then walkaround games were introduced, and the flashes just kept getting bigger and more impressive (helped by very hard-working music and art teams), culminating in Cascade, fifteen full minutes long and containing quite possibly as many [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome Crowning Moments Of Awesome]] as all the other flashes combined.
* How many {{Shout Out}}s can SecondEmpire cram into this Comic? Into this chapter? into this page? Into this ''panel''? Into '''[[PunctuatedForEmphasis This.]]''' '''[[HolyShitQuotient Single.]]''' '''[[BeyondTheImpossible Sentence?]]'''
* Schlock Mercenary did it [[http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20050720.html here]], which invokes this trope once you realize that [[spoiler: 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.
** [[{{Fiction500}} "I have a team of accounts whose sole job is to count the accounts who keep track of my accountants."]]
* ''IrregularWebcomic'' has just taken [[{{Comicbook/X-Men}} Wolverine's]] [[BadAss Bad Ass-ness]] and Coolness UpToEleven [[http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/2317.html here]] (read the annotation just how crazy this is). A lot of the idea originates from {{xkcd}}.
* The entire run of ''[[http://www.samandfuzzy.com/d/20050720.html 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 [[spoiler: record label (WTF?!?)]]. Oh yeah, and The King is alive on a remote island somewhere. It starts getting into [[MindScrew MindSccrew]] territory pretty quickly.
* ''Webcomic/WarbotInAccounting'': Just how hilariously depressing can Warbot's life get? Arguably, [[http://www.nuklearpower.com/2009/04/15/warbot_003-online-dating-service/ this early one.]]
* ''Webcomic/SluggyFreelance'': 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?
* MobTies: How drunk can Sidney Burns get? How strong can Sidney Burns' punches be? What insane, awesome, or funny antics will the cast be up to this issue? How many {{Shout Out}}s can the author fit into an issue? How big is this Issue's WhamEpisode going to be?
* {{Sonichu}}: How blatant mixed messages about minorities and women can Chris make? How much more will the [[ScheduleSlip schedule slip]]? How overpowered can {{Mary Sue}}s become?
* ''BittersweetCandyBowl'', How much of a beating can Alejandro take and still be okay? Confrontation did '''not''' answer the question.
** Daisy has '''[[http://www.bittersweetcandybowl.com/c62/p17.html 18]]''' extracurricular activites while being an "A" student in a schedule full of Honors courses.
* {{Looking For Group}}: How many lines can Richard cross?
** How can we make Richard maim/kill/fwoosh his enemies ''this time?''
* {{VGCats}}: Leo and Aeris had an argument that resulted in [[http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=269 Leo being aborted from time.]] However, this is immediately trumped in [[http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=271 the next strip]] he comes back.
* From ''{{Webcomic/Bug}}'': "[[http://www.bugcomic.com/comics/sexual-harassment/ Hey, check it out.]] [[ShockSite 7 girls 5 cups]]."


[[/folder]]


[[folder: Web Original]]

* How apathetic can Ryney be? How intelligent can the magical bears riding velociraptors be? [[TheMysterySphere How long can this series keep having a coherent plot in spit of those things?]]
* MontyOum's videos, including ''{{Haloid}}'' and the ''DeadFantasy'' series: How many different video game characters can we stick in this CrisisCrossover? How insanely over-the-top can the fights get? What gigantic building will the fighters destroy next? And most importantly, how much FanService can he stick in there?
** And now that he works on RedVsBlue, how much more epic can the next fight scene be? How much crazier will Tex's methods of punching people in the face get? How many more times will Grif get hit in the balls? How many different ways can we screw up Church's life ''this'' week?
* WebOriginal/TheAngryVideoGameNerd. Many things, but mostly: [[ClusterFBomb how many times can he cram the word]] ''[[ClusterFBomb fuck]]'' [[ClusterFBomb into a 15-minute video]]? Also, how bad will the next game to be reviewed suck? How pissed off can he get? How many creative ways to destroy games can he come up with?
* The goal of MyOpinionsOnEveryPokemonEver is to [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin write opinions about every single Pokémon]] that stretch several paragraphs.
* How long can two people on Livejournal stretch "[[http://community.livejournal.com/metaquotes/7187472.html?#cutid1 some people find improper grammar sexy]]" and continue coming up with things like "No gerunds before marriage. I'm still a lady"?
* TimeCube: How much more insane can this get? How many more big bold letters can be fit on this page? How loud can you imagine him shouting this? [[ItGotWorse Oh God! There's a second page of this?]]
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCdmiZyyGjQ This]] video of "Top 60 Ghetto Names". You may have to pause on "Watermelondrea" [[CrowningMomentOfFunny due to intensive laughter]]. The last one is... [[spoiler:[[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking Courtney]]]].
* [=BriTANick=] sketches. Each sketch generally starting off somewhere normal and increasing in absurdity until reality pretty much collapses. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbVylFKfisU&feature=channel This sketch]] distills the concept into two people talking - Brian wants to know what a particular line from ''TwelfthNight'' is, and Nick's incorrect answers go from 'wrong part of the play' to 'wrong play' to 'wrong author' to 'frying pan' all the way up to [[spoiler: quoting a section of a suicide note penned by Brian's dead ex-girlfriend]].
* How many pop culture references can you cramp together in a single joke? [[AzumangaDaioh Azumanga]] [[ChristopherWalken Cowbell]] [[GuitarHero Hero]] [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlqLLZQLNiA]]
* How much more of an offensive, jerkass-ish douchebag of an ''asshole'' can [[DoctorHorriblesSingAlongBlog Captain Hammer]] be?
** Even worse. During the filming, NathanFillion was told for the first time in his life this line:
---> You are not [[UpToEleven cheesy enough]].
* Welcome to "AtopTheFourthWall"... and yes, Virginia, [[spoiler: '''there IS a "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians" comic.''']]
* How incredibly esoteric, obscure a character can {{Akinator}} guess next?
* [[MarkDoesStuff Just how]] [[MarkReadsTwilight unprepared]] [[MarkReadsHarryPotter can Mark be?]]
* How many times can the [=YouTube=] account for ''{{Yu-Gi-Oh The Abridged Series}}'' get cancelled and reinstated? It's happened seven times now.
* ''EpicMealTime'' boils down to this trope applied to food. To wit: their early endeavour of putting ''five'' different kinds of bird meat in a pig, and a few episodes later they ''broke the 100,000-calorie barrier''.
* Just how stupid can the people quoted on {{FSTDT}} get? Refer to the site's page for more information.
* WarriorsOfGenesis: Everyone in this whacked-out world is a fan of this trope, it actually makes the viewers remember something [[TengenToppaGurrenLagann else]].

[[/folder]]


[[folder: Western Animation]]

* ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheBraveAndTheBold''. How much more awesome can The Bat get? What gadgets does have have this time? [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome Did the Batmobile just turn into a]] HumongousMecha?
* Someone tell us that there is no challenge between the writers to make [[FamilyGuy Quagmire]] progressively [[{{Squick}} squickier]] in his sex mania.
** Speaking of ''Family Guy'', how huge are those fights with the giant chicken?
* In some episodes of ''TheSimpsons'', Homer's AmusingInjuries are rendered this very way.
* ''SouthPark'' is essentially fueled by this trope. [[MemeticMutation Now ''you'' can ride like Mr. Garrison!]] [[http://pagesperso-orange.fr/mike.werner/BlogPics/MonoCycle.jpg]]
* How much more brutal can {{Metalocalypse}} get.
** Blacker than the blackest black times infinity?
** And what line will Doctor Rockzo cross next to get more cocaine?
* ''AvatarTheLastAirbender'' does with its titular bending. Katara, for instance, goes from requiring a water pouch at all times, to bending her sweat, to bending the water in her opponent's bodies.
** [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] in that the characters all spend massive amounts of time in training - ability escalation is to be expected when you work hard and practice constantly.
* InvaderZim ''loves'' this trope. Some of the best examples? There's Zim [[DisproportionateRetribution flooding an entire city]] because Dib hit him with a water ballon, there's Dib hacking into advanced Irken machinery from his laptop, there's GIR [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotAwesome knocking Dib through a brick wall with a projectile sandwich]]... It just goes on.
** He didn't just flood the city. He used Irken space-based technology to vaccuum ALL THE WATER ON EARTH INTO ONE WATER BALLOON and deploy it from SPACE onto Dib. He flooded EVERYTHING ON THIS SIDE OF THE PLANET.
** Not to mention all the [[PersonOfMassDestruction catastrophes that Zim's caused]]: killing two previous Tallests, destroying several planets on his own, creating [[EldritchAbomination every kind of horrible, twisted monstrosity imaginable]] and starting a massive power failure when he was '''two minutes old.''' Also, most of that was unintentional.
*** He put the fires out!
**** He made them worse!
***** Worse? Or ''better''?
*** ''He piloted a goddamn planet. In a duel against Dib.''
* YellowSubmarine: How pyschedelic can we make it? [[spoiler:Very, very pyschedelic. It's all in the mind y'know.]]
* ''TimeSquad'': In the span of two seasons (each with 13 episodes consisting of two shorts [except for episode seven of season 1, which had three]), the show managed to pack enough HoYay (most, if not all, of which was centered on The Larry 3000 as he did act like [[StarWars C3PO]] if he were more effeminate than usual) to make Ren and Stimpy (from the original series and the Adult Party Cartoon series) look like PlatonicLifePartners. What's more, the censors were completely oblivious to it. Maybe they ''did'' ask Dave Wasson (''TimeSquad'' show creator) to tone down some parts, but with [[GettingCrapPastTheRadar the stuff the show got away with]], how would you know what was originally supposed to be there?
* WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic has [[ShrinkingViolet Fluttershy]] who can stare down a cockatrice and then a dragon.
** Another features [[HotBlooded Rainbow]] [[EnsembleDarkhorse Dash]] [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome flying so fast, it causes a sonic boom, in addition to some sort of colorful spacial rift.]]
** On a meta-note, how much fanmade materal can [[FanCommunityNickname Bronies]] create? How much of an influence is the subculture having on the Internet in general? It's staggering...
** And on ''another'' Meta note, how much [[LargeHam hammier]] can TabithaStGermain make her characters?

[[/folder]]


[[folder: Real Life]]


* How many blades can they fit onto a razor before it just becomes too ridiculous (well... MORE ridiculous)?
** [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4F7TMlrDXtw This many.]]
** [[IrregularWebcomic Or]] [[http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/1186.html this]] [[MoreThanInfinite many]].
** [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUjh4DE8FZA&t=02m38s Blades inside blades inside blades!]]
** 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 [[FlamboyantGay flamboyantly gay]] can the designers be before they create a black hole of {{Camp}}?
** The second one, thankfully, only applies to the American continents, as European fashion shows now have minimum weight requirements.
*** So many costumes never intended for mass manufacture were deliberate hyperbole, to make one statement or another. For example, to underscore a theme the maker has gotten into lately, for another example, to lampoon the same that's been overused.
* How much MoreDakka can a [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klxfNWC1b0A&feature=related Nerf]] [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOm0Np9zn_o gun]] [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5BBfyvr_pQ&feature=related have]]? If they get much more powerful you'll need a license to carry one...
** No licenses yet, but the Raider's drum holds 35 rounds.
* Computer technology does this [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law every few years]]. Remember when a terabyte hard drive was absolutely unthinkable?
** Remember when ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sd_cards#SDHC_cards_with_greater_than_32.C2.A0GB_capacity 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.
** Not so many years ago, when one gigabyte hard drives were on the horizon, PC Magazine did a spoof glossary of computer terms that included the following definition: "Terabyte: A unit of storage so massive it would take the average user two months to fill." At the time, it was a hilarious over-the-top commentary on how people's expectations of what would be "more than enough" capacity tended to get continuously modified as time passes. Now, it's simple truth if you download HD movies or the like.
*** Speaking of storage, back when [=CDROMs=] were first introduced, most of them were in fact barely filled up (many actually containing the equivalent of just a dozen 5 1/4" floppy disks, just a drop compared to the media's 700 Megabyte capacity). One article from an issue of AmigaWorld magazine back in those days commented about the problems of ''what to fill them up with'' during a review of a CDROM drive for the {{Amiga}} 500. Now compare that to today's Blu-Ray technology, with one rewritable variant announced to have a capacity of 200 Gigabytes.
*** This is in fact called the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebound_effect_%28conservation%29 Rebound Effect]]. To summarize, when something is increased, we we find ways to use more of it. For example, take a terabyte hard drive, now take it to the 1990s where 3 1/2 inch floppy disks where used. Each floppy disk has 1.4 megabytes each, to everyone in the 1990s, a terabyte hard drive had pretty much unlimited storage. Now take it to the present, 2011 at this time. Blu-ray quality movies, games that are stored on [=DVDs=] which where once used only for movies where the large memory was necessary. Not to mention all of the crap we forget to delete and a terabyte hard drive fills up fast.
** On computing power, we've went from $1000 per GFLOP (a measurement of computing power) in 2000, to $1.80 in 2011. In fact, it's possible to build a supercomputer class machine for less than $3000 if you pick the right parts.
* The classic joke "TheAristocrats". How much more vulgarity can we jam in before the inevitable punchline?
* ''[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_gcPGI-ZMI Modern Samurai Machii Isao]]''. After cutting a mushroom's canopy, a pea pod (both ''length''wise) and an Airsoft bullet ''as it was shot at him'', what will people want to see him cut next?
* '''Automotive Industry''': How fast can a production car go? [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaguar_XJ220 217mph?]] [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLaren_F1 240?]] [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koenigsegg_CCR 250?]] [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugatti_Veyron 253?]] [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSC_Aero 256?]] How about '''[[http://www.autoblog.com/2010/07/04/bugatti-veyron-16-4-super-sport-sets-land-speed-record-at-267-81/ 267?]]''' (set by the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport Edition. It has a 8 litre, W16, quad-turbocharged engine tuned up to '''1200''' horsepower. Stop and think about this for a second: it goes from zero to sixty in ''one hundred and twenty feet''.)
** Meanwhile, aerospace engineers look at it and giggle. Moving in only two dimensions, in a straight line, and with no cargo aboard. On the other hand, the aerospace industry has been challenging the Impossible for speed (speed of sound, impossible? Naw, there's several planes that do twice that, while carrying the weight of five Veyrons in cargo alone), distance (landed on the Moon in the sixties, didn't go back...want to travel from one side of the continent to the other? Sure, just buy a ticket.), agility (the heart of every airshow. Can the Veyron do its quarter mile while upside down?) and size (Can a million pounds of metal, flesh, and cargo fly across the Atlantic? Yes, just ask the Antonov A225 and Airbus A380).
** That's nothing compared to experimental cars. The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThrustSSC ThrustSSC]] managed to reach 763 mph in 1997. Now, there's another car being made, the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodhound_SSC Bloodhound SSC]] being developed to be able to reach a speed of 1,000 mph. If you're wondering, SSC actually does stand for Super Sonic Car.
* 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")
%% For the nameless troper that tried to natter about bursting a bubble here by bringing up pure capsaicin, note that this example is the world's hottest "food product," NOT SIMPLY CAPSAICIN CONTNET. Pure capsaicin is NOT A FOOD PRODUCT. This is more about "how hot can we make it while still technically being edible?"
* A TexMex restaraunt chain called Tijuana Flats has provided the answer to the question of how spicy hot sauces can get. Its hottest sauce is maybe ''725000'' Scoville units and approximately '''5 times hotter that the former World's Hottest Hot Sauce''', and their absolute hottest product, Chet's Gone Mad (a chili powder) is about ''' ''1.5 million Scoville units,'' ''' more than enough to actually feel burning on your skin if you placed some on there. Naturally, anyone without a mouth of adamantine should really not try this.
** [[Music/IronMaiden Nicko McBrain's]] restaurant "Rock N' Roll Ribs" has a hot sauce called the Run to the Hills Sauce measuring ''1 million scoville units''. When someone complained it wasn't hot enough they made the Die with your Boots on Sauce. The guy who complained about the Run to the Hills Sauce couldn't take one bite of the new one.
*** Apparently now the menu has a Maiden reference that further notices the escalation: Mild, Medium, Hot, Die with your Boots On, and Heaven Can't Wait.
* The search for the world's hottest pepper. As of early February 2011, the hottest pepper -- the Infinity Pepper -- clocked in at 1,067,286 scoville. Two weeks later, February 25th 2011, it was displaced by the Naga Viper pepper, which registered 1,382,118 SHU,
* 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!
** Or how MANY? For instance, let's take the Ohio class SSBN. Working small and going large, warheads. Each one ten times as powerful as the combined nuclear power dropped on Japan in WWII. Each Trident D-5 carried eight of those (although international negotiations got that reduced to five...that's 'arms reduction' in politician-speak). An Ohio class could carry up to twenty-four Tridents. We had over fifteen Ohio class boats on the register. Warheads, missiles, boats, bombs, how many cities could we fry? (and that's just ONE class of subs-there were preceding classes with the smaller Polaris missile, and many, MANY land based ICBM silos and plane-launched weapons)
*** It was said that during the heyday of the Cold War both sides had enough nukes to destroy each others every town and city at least 24 times over, and basicly whole human civilization at least a few times over for good measure.
* [[http://www.apple.com/ipodclassic/gallery/#image5 How]] [[http://www.flickr.com/photos/nez/1346068786/ much]] [[http://www.flickr.com/photos/earlysound/3350598708/ smaller]] [[http://www.techlivez.com/2009/03/apple-unveils-smaller-4gb-ipod-shuffle-for-79/ can]] our [=iPods=] get? Answer? [[http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/gallery/image_med/9337/ NOT ENOUGH]].
* How much more realistic will our videogames get? Eventually those AIs will develop minds of their own and [[AIIsACrapshoot take over the Earth's video game industry]]!
** [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyCyzB0CedM This, although a parody]], is as realistic as you can get without actually hurting someone.
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaQKMiEAeEs How many decorations will Christmas fanatics put up without getting out of hand?]]
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASG6r9rhwcE How many cats can a crazy cat lady own before they suffocate the house?]]
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=BNR74UCidBI&feature=player_embedded This speaks for itself.]]
* How long can a tennis match be? 11 hours and 5 minutes over 3 days, answer courtesy of John Isner of America and Nicolas Mahut of France in the FIRST ROUND of the 2010 Wimbledon tournament. On the first day, it was a routine four-setter, suspended due to darkness. On the second day, they took the court at 2 p.m. and left at 9 when it was too dark at 59-59 in the fifth set long-game. The final score for the fifth set was 70-68. Records set: longest match, longest game, most games in a match/set, most aces fired (112 to 103)
** Adding improbability to absurdity: Isner and Mahut drew each other in the first round the following year. This is only the 8th time a back-to-back first round draw has happened in the 125 year history of Wimbledon.
* We're used to the ridiculous stuff they serve at county fairs. No one bats an eye at things like deep-fried Snickers, or chocolate-covered bacon. But how would you feel about deep-fried butter?
** As of 2011, we have [[http://friedkoolaid.com/ deep-fried Kool-Aid.]]
* The [[BurgerKing Whopper]]. How many more patties can we fit between two buns?
** [[http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/national/beefed-up-hungry-jacks-whopper-has-12-meat-patties/story-e6freuzr-1225793184817 Twelve.]]
** Try the [[http://www.japanator.com/the-mega-tamago-by-mcdonald-s-japan-cannot-possibly-end-well-10863.phtml Mega Tamago]] from [=McDonald's=] Japan. 3 Patties, Lettuce, Cheeze, 2 strips of Bacon, and a Fried Egg.
*** They also offered for a limited time the [[http://www.burgerbusiness.com/?p=3519 Big America]] series of burgers, all of which are variants of the Quarter Pounder, stuffed with MoreDakka.
*** And they also have the Mega Mac, which is the Big Mac with 4 patties instead of the usual 2.
* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwerer_Gustav How ridiculously gigantic]] can a gun be made with 20th century technology?... Possibly one which equates in destructive power the early atomic bomb, or which could [[NinjaPirateZombieRobot fire]] an early nuclear bomb as a shell and it would still be too small for it?
** [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-3_cannon And then there's this.]] Good thing Hitler never got them working.
** [[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Davy_Crockett_%28nuclear_device%29 The Americans built artillery guns that fired actual nuclear weapons.]]
*** I see your nuclear recoilless rifle and raise you a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_Annie 280mm nuclear howitzer]].
* "Minimally-invasive" surgeries. These days, many surgeries can be performed in such a way as to cause less shock to the body, by making smaller incisions and using smaller instruments. There's still recovery time, but it's much less than previous methods.
* Fetishes, how many things can we put up here? How much will this stretch? How much insane amounts of squick can we squeeze out of this one scene?...
* The rôti sans pareil ("roast without equal")? This dish was a monstrosity dreamt up by the French (who else?) in the 19th Century. It consisted of a bustard stuffed with a turkey stuffed with a goose stuffed with a pheasant stuffed with a chicken stuffed with a duck stuffed with a guinea fowl stuffed with a teal stuffed with a woodcock stuffed with a partridge stuffed with a plover stuffed with a lapwing stuffed with a quail stuffed with a thrush stuffed with a lark stuffed with an ortolan bunting stuffed with a garden warbler. [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking And an olive.]]
** Supposedly, a true gourmand would just eat the olive. ''Only'' the olive.
* How long can Roger Gracie's winning streak at the World Jiu-Jitsu Championships (aka the "Mundials") go? Before the 2011 Mundials, it's already at least fifteen (including an opponent being unable to compete in a divisional final).
** The original question, "how many times in a row can Roger Gracie submit his opponents," ended up being answered with an unprecedented ''sixteen'', including ''all nine'' of his 2009 opponents (by the same white belt-level chokes from the same position no less!) and all but one of his 2010 opponents... who only survived long enough to lose by points, 13 to 2. All of them were fellow BJJ black belts, by the way.
** How long can Roger Gracie go without tapping out (being submitted) in competition? It's already been ''A DECADE'' and at least ''SEVENTY'' confirmed bouts. (He reportedly last tapped in competition back in 2000 when he was a blue belt, the rank above white belt, and his few losses were almost all on points.)
* People figuring out how to play "Flight of the Bumblebee" faster and faster on various instruments, such as [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8alxBofd_eQ&feature=related piano]] and [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjphgtnWONw&t=1m50s accordion]] ([[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVbuIZ-5-8o and more]] [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFNNPZsO7-Q accordion]]).
* The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010%E2%80%932011_Belgian_government_formation 2010-2011 government formation]] in UsefulNotes/{{Belgium}}. Normally, when a parliamentary democracy votes, no party has a clear majority, and circumstances demand coalition government, it takes no more than 30 days for a coalition to get itself together. If there's a particularly close result or if a particularly unsavory party has won a lot of seats, it might take take three to five months. This government formation has taken about a ''year''. And the news out of Brussels thus far has not been pleasant (former PM and current EuropeanUnion President Herman Van Rompuy has made some rather pessimistic noises about the prospects), making it possible that Belgium will reach 13 June 2011 without a permanent government--a ''whole year''. A term of the Federal Parliament is four years. Yeah.
** To give some perspective, this is (naturally) history's longest-ever government formation. Second place is UsefulNotes/{{Iraq}} in 2009-10, which took 249 days (about eight and a half months)...but Iraq is a young democracy, with really ''nasty'' sectarian and ethnic politics, and foreign powers meddling in pretty much everything. Oh, and [[TheWarOnTerror the war]]. Don't forget the war.
*** Well, as of today, Belgium is still strugglin' to do it !
*** The way things are looking now, it seems formation will be finished just short of the 500 days mark.
*** Wrong. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010%E2%80%932011_Belgian_government_formation It took a whole 541 days.]]
* Throughout his career, Evel Kneivel broke 433 bones. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, that's the most broken bones survived by a person in one lifetime. Granted, motorcycling stunts are dangerous, but still...433 bones. That's like breaking every bone in your body twice, and then some!
* WorldWarII. By the time it was finished, a huge number of cities were utterly devastated, [[SchindlersList a major ethnic group was nearly eliminated]] (at least in Europe), [[CityOfLifeAndDeath atrocities of astonishing cruelty were commonplace]], and entire classes of weapons (nukes, missiles) had gone from science fiction to killing hundreds of thousands. Within a few years of its conclusion, [[RedScare communism had gone from a fringe movement to a world force]], and [[TheBritishEmpire the great Europe-dominated empires]] were transforming into the "Third World".
** And as long as there were evil in World War II, [[Awesome/WorldWarII there were good too]]...
* Just how big can can crazy people get their building ideas? [[http://www.cracked.com/article_19198_the-5-craziest-buildings-ever-proposed-with-straight-face.html Pretty big.]]
[[/folder]]

* The upcoming Japanese crossover film ''Film/SuperheroWarsKamenRiderVsSuperSentai''. Total number of suit actors? '''Over 240'''. From ''both franchises''. Toei even admitted getting that many stunt people to fill all of those costumes was the toughest part of the movie.

* TheAngryVideoGameNerd. Many things, but mostly: [[ClusterFBomb how many times can he cram the word]] ''[[ClusterFBomb fuck]]'' [[ClusterFBomb into a 15-minute video]]? Also, how bad will the next game to be reviewed suck? How pissed off can he get? How many creative ways to destroy games can he come up with?

* Just how hard can the last boss of the ''ArcanaHeart'' fighting games (as well as fighting games in general) [[SNKBoss get]]? [[UpToEleven Really]], [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEzi4soBnJc REALLY]] hard, thats how.

* TheHumanCentipede was followed by a sequel which the creator said made the original look like MyLittlePony. There's going to be a third one, which the creator says will make the SECOND one look like DISNEY!

* [[{{Worms}} Worms Armageddon]] still has patches coming out for it '''''10 YEARS AFTER RELEASE'''''.

** Let's put this in perspective here. ''Series/KaizokuSentaiGokaiger'' featured 199 Super Sentai. The 40th anniversary KamenRider movie ''Let's Go!! Kamen Riders'' featured around 40 of them. Now include those from ''Series/TokumeiSentaiGoBusters'' and ''Series/KamenRiderFourze'' and put them altogether and you got one damn big movie!

** And that's merely the players' achievements. The developer (one guy, with a little help from his brother) is constantly pushing the game's "fantasy world simulation" elements far BeyondTheImpossible. The last big update - among ''many'' other things - changed the combat system to determine damage to individual tissue layers, gave eyelids the function of removing grime from eyeballs (in such a way that an entity who loses an eyelid in battle will have to manually clean his own eyes), and created a random disease/poison generator that can result in an EldritchAbomination whose breath causes your eyes to melt out of their sockets. And the randomly-generated world is constantly becoming more detailed, already generating a rich history of wars, heroic battles against legendary monsters and [[EldritchAbomination Forgotten Beasts]], and religious worship of Gods and Demons - all of which have a visible, if minor, impact on actual gameplay.

** The 3rd Edition Epic Level Handbook explicitly encouraged the Dungeonmaster to do this to the players with ridiculous and unfair challenges on the grounds that the players will have the resources to deal with them. How far can the Dwarven Defender swim through lava?

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 12,000,000 (Though his powerlevel has dropped due to fatigue). So Goku had gone from 416 (him fighting Raditz) to 15,000,000 in barely over a year. And they just get stronger from there. Son Goku's power has to be considered to grow exponentially. Non-canonic numbers are hard to consider afterwards, as there are multiple ideas about the powerlevels beyond Frieza. Not that it removes any entertainment value.\\

** It has been said that Super Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is 1.8% the size of the observable universe. To give you an idea of how inconceivably large that is, according to the numbers on the observable universe from TheOtherWiki, STTGL has a volume of about 7.38 × 10 to the power of 30 light years cubed.

* ''TheGoodies'':