Serial Escalation/Western Animation


 * Batman the Brave And The Bold. How much more awesome can The Bat get? What gadgets does have have this time? Did the Batmobile just turn into a Humongous Mecha?
 * Someone tell us that there is no challenge between the writers to make Quagmire progressively squickier in his sex mania.
 * Speaking of Family Guy, how huge are those fights with the giant chicken? The most recent one involves time travel, cloning, and a space shuttle among other things.
 * In some episodes of The Simpsons, Homer's Amusing Injuries are rendered this very way.
 * South Park is essentially fueled by this trope. Now you can ride like Mr. Garrison!
 * 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?
 * Avatar: The Last Airbender 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.
 * 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.
 * With each passing season, the series basically does this with the powers of every major character.
 * The sequel series, The Legend of Korra, has this with Lin Beifong. In just about every episode she is in, she continues to be more Badass. From swinging on her metal cables in the Pro-bending stadium to save Korra in Episode 6, to outright tearing apart a Mini Mecha on her own in Episode 7, and then being an outright One Woman Army and saving her men from an Equalist base in Episode 9.
 * Invader Zim loves this trope. Some of the best examples? There's Zim flooding an entire city because Dib hit him with a water balloon, there's Dib hacking into advanced Irken machinery from his laptop, there's GIR 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 catastrophes that Zim's caused: killing two previous Tallests, destroying several planets on his own, creating 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.
 * Yellow Submarine: How pyschedelic can we make it?
 * Time Squad: 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 Ho Yay (most, if not all, of which was centered on The Larry 3000 as he did act like 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 Platonic Life Partners. What's more, the censors were completely oblivious to it. Maybe they did ask Dave Wasson (Time Squad show creator) to tone down some parts, but with the stuff the show got away with, how would you know what was originally supposed to be there?
 * My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic has Fluttershy who can stare down a cockatrice and then a dragon.
 * Another features Rainbow Dash 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 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 hammier can Tabitha St Germain make her characters?
 * SpongeBob evoked this with Mr. Krabs crossing the Moral Event Horizon. Eventually they stopped at "Cent Of Money" where he may or may not have raped Gary along with other acts of torture.