TVTropes Now available in the app store!
Open

Follow TV Tropes

Trope Finder

Go To

The TVTropes Trope Finder is where you can come to ask questions like "Do we have this one?" and "What's the trope about...?" Trying to rediscover a long lost show or other medium but need a little help? Head to Media Finder and try your luck there. Want to propose a new trope? You should be over at the Trope Launch Pad.

Find a Trope:

Describe the Trope:


Quasipinko Since: Feb, 2015
2025-06-19 08:39:13

Some related tropes:

Hellistics

Disaster Dominoes

Butterfly of Doom

Gathering Steam

Death of a Thousand Cuts

You're sort of describing the butterfly effect, like the Butterfly of Doom trope does, but in a more general and explicit way I guess?

Hellistics and Disaster Dominoes seem pretty close to what you want.

Edited by Quasipinko
Tropiarz Since: Sep, 2022
2025-06-19 10:38:29

Yes, but ALL of those tropes are about a negative situation. And I need a positive version of this.

Quasipinko Since: Feb, 2015
2025-06-19 21:05:53

Gathering Steam is the closest then, if you want positive spins.

Tropiarz Since: Sep, 2022
2025-07-10 01:30:57

Bump, because I still need it.

WarJay77 (Troper Knight)
2025-07-10 01:49:12

Evidently, a positive version does not exist

Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall
Ner0014reN Since: Aug, 2023
2025-07-10 04:48:04

>small, even meaningless acts of paying attention to details (or even basic frugality) add up into a windfall

Small Steps Hero

Scorpion451 (Edited uphill both ways)
2025-07-11 14:10:28

There's no exclusively positive version because there's no exclusively negative version. For example, when a Curious as a Monkey character sets off the Disaster Dominoes and they land on the villain, you have an Accidental Hero.

adding to the list of tropes about building up from many small efforts:

As a side note, there's dozens of sayings about this concept in English. Just to name a few, "Little strokes fell big oaks.", "the straw that broke the camel's back", "How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.", "everything counts in large amounts"...

Edited by Scorpion451
Florestan Since: May, 2015
2025-07-11 15:41:12

(I know the OP wants a positive version, so apologies for offering yet another negative version: Penny Shaving (also known as "Salami slicing"), when one steals small amounts at a time — each small amount generally unnoticeable — which ends up being quite sizeable when practiced for a long time.)

Tropiarz Since: Sep, 2022
2025-07-11 16:56:23

Um... Scorpion dear, you sure you even replied to the right ticket? ^^;

WarJay77 (Troper Knight)
2025-07-11 17:38:55

Their post is relevant enough to me, I don't see the confusion.

Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall
Veanne Since: Jul, 2012
2025-07-13 00:23:42

Scorpion has good points, hon. I think the whole concept is just too broad to cram it into a single trope. It's like - we don't have anything to cover Gricean implicatures in general (while we do have at least three tropes that deal with them), so simply either nobody thought these had something in common, or them having things in common isn't significant in fiction.

Tropiarz Since: Sep, 2022
2025-07-13 04:34:24

Guess I will just close the ticket then, because sieving on my own through related tropes (and those proposed here) gave me nothing that I could use for the thing I need it foo.

Top