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Compare [[Changing of the Guard]].
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▲{{examples}}
== Anime and Manga ==
* One could argue this is what ultimately crippled ''[[Dragon Ball]] Z''. We go from a military commander who wants to be taller, to an evil demon king, to the proud and arrogant prince of Goku's race that can crush Goku and his friends with ease, to the ruler of the galaxies that ''commanded'' said prince, to a genetic amalgam created from various good and bad guys including said ruler, and the... what can probably be called abomination Majin Buu, who destroys planets and people for the hell of it.
* ''[[Sailor Moon]]'' held very tightly to its
* ''[[One Piece]]'' arguably comes with Plot Leveling built in. We start in the East Blue, the weakest of the four main seas. Then move up to the Grand Line, which lives up to its hype of being difficult to sail and survive. Finally, the sailors who travel across the Grand Line's second half, the New World, refer to the first half as "Paradise" out of comparison to the New World.
** However the author throws a curveball once in a while. For example, right after the Alabasta arc, which Luffy took two defeats to just barely win on his third try against Crocodile, was the Jaya arc, the main antogonist was Bellamy. It took Luffy [[Curb Stomp Battle|one punch]] to put him down, without [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|stretching]].
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== Film ==
* It seems possible that the writers of ''[[Pirates of the Caribbean]]: Curse of the Black Pearl'' were unprepared for sequels. The heroes went from battling undead pirates and local guardsmen to facing Davy Jones and the East India Company. Luckily, there was enough [[Canon Fodder]] and references to [[Noodle Incident
* The ''[[Back to the Future (film)|Back to The Future]]'' [[Two-Part Trilogy|trilogy]]. The final scene with the DeLorean flying out to rescue Marty's son was a joke scene, and wasn't intended to be taken seriously. High box office earnings and strong positive reaction, however, allowed the creators to follow through with more films. Furthermore, Marty's future is better insured by the end of the third film, as well as Doc Brown, who gets a wife, kids ''and [[Cool Train|a hovering time-traveling train]]''.
* ''[[National Treasure]]''. The main characters went from committing the one large crime of stealing the Declaration of Independence, to breaking and entering into almost every famous government building ever built. Then, they kidnapped the president. The writers were unprepared for a sequel, they had absolutely no plans for one. In fact, they changed the ending to avoid a [[Sequel Hook]].
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== Literature ==
* This seems to be the Modus Operandi for the [[Star Wars Expanded Universe]]. Can't think of a plot? Introduce another seemingly forgotten Sith faction from nowhere and build them up to be the greatest threat the galaxy has ever known. Done to such an extreme that the most recent [[Fate of the Jedi|main storyline series]] had Luke facing off against an [[Eldritch Abomination]] that was made out to be stronger than the Emperor. For the record, the Emperor has been used as a benchmark for enemy power levels.
* Done to extremes in the ''[[Skylark Series|Skylark]]'' series. The main hero and villain are geniuses at the start. And their brains are enhanced with each new book until they're capable of understanding five-dimensional physics and building spaceships with their brains. In case the earth getting destroyed wasn't a big enough threat, by the end of the series the whole ''universe'' is at stake. Instead of basic science-y weapons, they grab a team of psychic witches to translocate all the planets inhabited by the villainous race to a
** It is characteristic of [[E. E. "Doc" Smith]] - he does it in his other works too, including [[Lensman|the Trope Namer for]] [[Lensman Arms Race]]. If he starts a book with
* [[Terry Pratchett]]'s "Witch" books in the ''[[Discworld]]'' series were accused of this. Granny Weatherwax always had to fight a stronger foe - in this case, stronger meaning "better at mind magic" - until, as of ''[[
* Done by [[David Weber]] in ''[[Honor Harrington]]''; Honor gets roughly one promotion per book, and [[Lensman Arms Race|there's roughly one revolutionary advance in military technology per book.]] So while the [[Standard Starship Scuffle|big space battle]] of the first book is [[Standard Sci-Fi Fleet|one outgunned cruiser versus a disguised battlecruiser]] in a peacetime skirmish, the most recent books involve battles between hundreds of ships flinging [[Macross Missile Massacre|tens of thousands of nuclear missiles]] at each other in a galactic-level, multi-sided war. Honor has literally reached highest rank possible in ''both'' of the navies in which she currently serves. Weber intended to break the cycle by killing her off and letting her children [[Changing of the Guard|pick up where she left off]] about two books back, but co-author [[Eric Flint]] [[Take a Third Option|gave her a literal new lease on life]] by pushing the newest war up about 20 years and shifting the focus to [[Cast Herd|other groups of characters]] to keep from having to promote Honor so damn much.
* After starting as a low-level CIA analyst in ''[[The Hunt for Red October]]'', [[Tom Clancy
== Live
* ''[[Stargate]]'' falls victim to this, but usually manages to make the upgrade interesting.
** They started by defeating a single Goa'uld (Ra) who had a single ship in [[The Movie]].
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* ''[[Chuck]]'' used this when, after his father rid him of the Intersect Mark I, Chuck intentionally downloads the Intersect Mark II into his brain which comes with [[Suddenly Always Knew That]] powers in addition to intelligence information.
* ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' went through this in the first five seasons. First season: Vampire (the master). Second season: Three vampires, all especially vicious (Spike, Dru & Angelus). Third season: A "true" demon (the Mayor). Fourth season: A Demonic cyborg (Adam) and a military installation (the Initiative). Fifth season: A god (Glory). Sixth season broke with the formula: its [[Big Bad]] {{spoiler|was made out to be three rather ineffectual, if evil, nerdy wannabe villains. They were [[Bait and Switch|switched out]] in favour of Willow in the last few episodes. She}} may have been at about the same power level as Glory by that point, but the seventh season ramps it up again with The First Evil and an army of uber-vamps. Eighth season (in the comic books) has the [[Flying Brick]] Twilight, who may outdo {{spoiler|Willow}} and Glory just with his level of invulnerability.
* ''[[Doctor Who]]'' has been doing this, most obviously since the new series started in 2005. [[Doctor Who/Recap/
** The sixth season finale features {{spoiler|the (almost) final death of the Doctor, which is arguably ''worse'' than the universe not existing.}}
* ''[[Supernatural]]'' starts with the boys hunting monsters and ghosts, which leads to them hunting demons, which are the strongest foes they face for a while. As the demons they face keep getting more and more powerful, eventually angels enter the mix, and somewhat surprisingly, they're not all friendly. Of course, [[Satan]] is a bit of a pain in the ass later, and most recently, this has all been taken to its logical conclusion with the newest [[Big Bad]] being somewhere around Death and God's level in terms of power.
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* [[Sierra]] dropped the ball with this one and their ''[[Quest for Glory]]'' series. After the first one, where you save a small Barony, you jump immediately to saving the entire world from an evil genie. There's not much they can go from there, so you then save the world from an evil demon, followed by saving the world from an evil vampire, and finally saving the world from an evil dragon. Each one plays itself up like it's somehow worse than the one before it, even though the end results are pretty much the same.
** Sierra did try to avoid this though. Originally the Hero was going to essentially go from the second game into what became the fourth game. They inserted the third game when they realized the going from foiling a wizard's plot to summon an evil genie to defeating an eldritch horror was a bit of a jump.
* The ''[[Metal Gear]]'' series of games went to increasingly absurd lengths ([[Deconstructor Fleet|naturally]]) to justify Solid Snake's continual returns from retirement. ''[[Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake]]'' involved a replacement for petroleum and theft of nearly every nuclear weapon in the world. ''[[Metal Gear Solid]]'' involved genetically engineered super soldiers, a clone brother who took the [[Cain and Abel]] trope too much to heart, and ''invisible'' nukes. ''[[Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty]]'' involved mass-produced Metal Gears, an anti-Metal Gear, a third clone brother, a kidnapped president, a Metal Gear ''fortress'', and [[Gainax Ending|whatever the hell happened at the end]].'' [[Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots]]'' had to work hard to top that, but it did. ''[[Metal Gear/Awesome|And it was awesome]]''.
** To give some perspective, ''[[Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater]]'', a prequel to the rest of the series, revolved around... destroying a 1st generation superweapon and assassinating a defector. Plus there was something about getting ahold of enought money to take over the world in there...
* Bowser, of ''[[Super Mario Bros.]]'', has gone from locking a Princess in a castle to cursing her whole castle with creepy dreamworld-doors, to lifting it up into space, to trying to take over galaxies. But, of course, Mario wasn't lazy either. He went from "my only move is to jump on your head" to literal kick-boxer to using the power of the stars. Oh, the number of his power-up-items also increased rapidly.
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[[Category:Plots]]
▲[[Category:Plot Leveling]]
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