This trope describes when a particular element of a story or setting has been expanded to the point that there's a version to suit every viewer's preference. Another way to describe it might be "a taste for every appetite".
Sometimes this happens gradually, over the course of a series/setting —usually in response to fan demand or just because it's good marketing. In some cases it grows into a Plot Tumor proper.
A codifying example would be the Elf as portrayed in the Dungeons & Dragons tabletop roleplaying game, where the basic "Elf" player race found in the Player's Handbook quickly branches into Dark Elves and Wood Elves in the Monster Manual/Dungeon Master's Guide, and in other official sourcebooks includes Gold, Grey, Sun, Moon, Wild, Sea, High, infernal and celestial variants, Half-Elves and Avariel, just to name a few. Third-party books include countless further versions.
This trope is tied to most "Our x are different" Tropes, but isn't quite the same; this trope denotes the explosion of "difference" in a single series or setting, rather than just the varied interpretations of an idea between settings. The Cast Full of Pretty Boys and Improbably Female Cast can also be examples of this trope, since they generally exist to provide a large cast catering to a number of niche archetypes and fetishes/paraphilias.
The vast selection of deities in most polytheistic religions is a real-life Ur-Example of this trope.
Romance Games do this all the time. For Otome Games and Boys Love Games, there's a standard cast: The rich guy, the energetic, straightforward guy, the cool, aloof guy with glasses, the athletic guy, the guy who is pretty as a girl, the "cool older brother" type, and the suspiciously young-looking guy.
In a case where the setting Tastes The Rainbow on a cosmological level, it's probably a Fantasy Kitchen Sink where every conceivable mythological creature/hero/pantheon shows up at some point.
The title comes from the advertising slogan for Skittles candy.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Exaggerated in The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You. Each of the titular girlfriends have vastly different personalities with different dynamics between them, with more and more getting added to the harem as the series progresses.
- Gakuen Heaven is a Boys' Love series set at an exclusive high school that includes every archetype of guy there is - and all of them are hot.
- Negi's class in Negima! Magister Negi Magi is a walking case. It covers almost every imaginable female character trope appreciated in anime, and at least suggests most of the fetishes. If we extend that range beyond the class itself, we hit pretty much every conceivable form of romantic or sexual appeal at some point. As well dozens of iterations of Rule of Cool.
- Tsukipro provides this on three dimensions:
- First, its Cast Full of Pretty Boys - 63 of them, and 13 girls. Do you want a quirky, funny, fun squad? Try the Gravi and Procella juniors. The middles are more like typical protagonists, and the seniors are more mature. Want your idols even more mature and realistic - and fiery and a bit sexy? Try Fire-element based SolidS. Want simple realistic shining youth? Check Air-element based SOARA. They even have a live-action movie. And so on.
- And it's not just their looks, it's their musical styles as well. Each month of Tsukiuta has a separate composer, all of whom are well-known as vocaloid producers. Solids, Soara, and Growth all perform songs written by Akira Takizawa, a.k.a. John Zeroness, but he varies his style to that of their in-universe composer members, Shiki, Sora, and Mamoru, respectively, and they do genuinely sound unique.
- And on top of that, there's also The Multiverse — Space Opera? We have that. Steampunk? That, too. Traditional Japanese style dance olympics? On islands that form the petals of a giant flower! And so on.
- The entire point of the Ouran High School Host Club (the titular club, not the series itself) is to cram in as many different forms of female-aimed fanservice and types of hot guy as possible.
- Martial arts in Ranma ½ fit this trope perfectly. No matter what hobby, lifestyle or animal you can imagine - from flower-arranging to breaking and entering - somebody in the Ranma universe has made it into a martial art.
- The World God Only Knows makes sure to include every single female archetype found in a Romance Game — with a few curveballs to make the Genre Savvy protagonist's life harder.
- Saint Beast has bishonen of every shape, size, Character Alignment, archetypal personality, and shipping potential a fangirl could want. And they probably do cover the entire rainbow as far as hair colour goes.
- The class in Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei is like Negi's, but with severe personality disorders instead of fetishes (well, they're probably someone's fetishes....)
- Queen's Blade. If it's fetish material, then it's represented by a character in this universe. Examples include Lesbian Vampire Maid, Yandere Cat Girl warrior, and an Action Mom who can use her own huge tracts of land as makeshift pillows.
- Femme Kabuki is like the above except invoked and intentional In-Universe given they're a Meiji Era burlesque/Hooker with a Heart of Gold troupe that correspond to the fetishes of the day whether an Oiran Team Mom, a Token Mini-Moe saving herself for a boyfriend back home, a Tomboy and Girly Girl pair of Vitriolic Best Buds, Gorgeous Gaijin that's actually But Not Too Foreign or The Ingenue implied to be the star of the show.
Comic Books
- The Adventures Of Olivia is this when it comes to race, ethnicity and if nothing else occupation as the title character's a Black woman with giant afro-puffs, Mexican Lupe, Italian Anna, Jewish meganekko Naomi, South Asian Fatima, Sandy Shores, Native American Penny, East Asian Mi-Hy and rich-as-fuck and so, so '80s opulence Sylvia having theme episodes like being nurses, wearing bikinis or going to the gym.
Films — Live-Action
- Fighting robots in Real Steel show a tremendous amount of variation apart from their humanoid shape.
Literature
- Polytheism is parodied in Discworld, where there is a god for just about every niche you can imagine (Anoia, the Goddess of Things That Get Stuck in Drawers, is probably the most commonly-seen example.)
- The list for The Dresden Files isn't quite as numerous as some of the other examples, but Harry has faced off against three highly varied species of vampires, with another species mentioned offhand (thankfully, none of them sparkle). There's also just about any variation of faerie you can imagine (along with more than a few you'd rather not.) And most of a chapter in the second novel is devoted to explaining the various types of werewolves.
Live-Action TV
- Super Sentai / Power Rangers. Ignoring the multicolored spandex jokes, there's been a Ranger team for just about anything that falls under the Rule of Cool: dinosaur Rangers, ninja Rangers, car Rangers, space Rangers, beast Rangers, wizard Rangers, police Rangers, samurai Rangers, pirate Rangers, etc. The franchise has gone on long enough that some of these have been done twice or even three times.
Tabletop Games
- As above, the Dungeons & Dragons RPG illustrates this trope beautifully with elves, and occasionally dwarves (though the dwarves tend to have very little actual variety.)
- If elves are the best D&D example, dragons are certainly second. Chromatic (evil-aligned) and metallic (good-aligned) groups reside in the core books, along with not-quite-dragons like pseudodragons, drakes and fairy dragons, while later expansions introduce the various gem (psionic/neutral-aligned) varieties, shadow, fang, force, prismatic, sand, pyroclastic, stygian, and various oriental versions (once again, just to name a few.) Of course, dragons also seem to breed with anything that moves, meaning there are also countless "draconic" versions of other critters as well. There truly is a dragon for every season, and probably every hour as well.
- It was a joke for a while among the Exalted developers that the only perversion that didn't exist in Creation was Pyrohomonecropedobestiality: "Having sex with a dead underaged animal of the same gender that's on fire." Not that the game lacks the tools to make a god for such a purpose. Creation operates on a modified version of Rule 34: if it exists, there's a god for it. No exceptions.
- Clans and Bloodlines in Vampire: The Masquerade eventually became this.
- In Warhammer 40,000, there's a space marine faction for whatever particular flavour you like. The same is true of Imperial Guard, where every guard faction is an expy of a real-world military stereotype, complete with a faction who define themselves by surrendering.
- Japanese Romance Games do this all the time. Now imagine if every single beautiful woman from every single Eroge duke it out in a card game. That would be the general feeling of Lycee TCG. Characters that share archetype also share "colors" and Standard abilities, but each character has her (or hisnote ) unique Character ability.
Video Games
- Touhou Project. It's doing its best to include an Improbably Female version of just about everything from Japanese folklore, along with a few Chinese and Western myths.
- The Story of Seasons series is playing into this more and more each generation with their bachelors and bachelorettes. There's almost always a Girl Next Door, a weird girl, a Tsundere, et cetera, et cetera.
- The series' Spiritual Successor, Stardew Valley, follows suit with more than half of the marriage options being inspired by one or more from Story Of Seasons.
- The iDOLM@STER uses this as premise for including in the cast every possible Moe archetype.
- Shin Megami Tensei: The archetypal Mons series. If it's a supernatural creature or god from folklore (old or new), you can recruit it. And before/after that, you will kill it.
- Wild ARMs seemed to be going for this with its villains; you have a creepy Omnicidal Maniac, the Evil Overlord, who wants to Take Over the World, a gleefully sadistic Mad Scientist, the hot tempered Brute, the Tragic Monster with a history related to one of the main characters, a cool and collected Blood Knight with his wolf and the comic relief villain to round them all out.
Webcomics
- Homestuck has tons of characters, each with a set of hobbies and interests that appeal to almost every online subculture, from several flavors of Furry Fandom to retro gamers, Anime fans, and juggalos. The troll race also provides a variety of flavors, as troll culture has twelve castes each with their own blood color, super power, and special cultural traits.
Western Animation
- Total Drama - 22 contestants (with added 2, then 13, and by season six 14), each one more different than the other. Except Katie and Sadie, but that's their point.
- Lauren Faust has explicitly stated that she has designed the Mane 6 characters in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic to cover all the different personalities of girls.
- Lauren got put in charge of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic when pitching her Milky Way and the Galaxy Girls concept to Hasbro, which clearly has the above reasoning in mind.
