Serial Escalation/Comic Books
- Blue Beetle: 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 (Comic Book) get steadily more impressive until the end where he kills God.
- Nextwave: Agents of Hate. Take a normal super team, give each one of them a triple espresso shot of snark with a slug of Genre Savvy, exaggerate their character flaws and set them against increasingly ridiculous enemies. Throw away any aspiration of being taken seriously, then hang lampshades on everything fans like in comics. Then make it more ridiculous in the next volume. Then it 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 Golems, Goblins, Living Brains, Purple Soviet Apes, Laser Hawkings, 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, Cyclops Brontasauri, Samurai Siamese Twins, Chimney Sweep Gargoyles, Snakes on Planes, Wolverine Monkeys, A Giant Wolverine Ape, A Sentinel Robot, Hidden Men, Giant Cyborg Astronaut Tigers, Two Kinds of Little Green Men and evil trees. - DC One Million started out by creating a version of the Justice League of America 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, the original Superman had emerged from his Fortress in the Sun to defeat Solaris the Living Star with a Green Lantern ring supplied by J'Onn J'Onzz, who was now Mars's Genius Loci. He was then was reunited with Lois and his Kryptonian parents, recreated through some form of supercloning.
- One Million was by Grant Morrison. 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, you never find out why he's garroting Santa Claus. Did we mention it was with barbed wire?
- Occurs to some extent in Elf Quest: How much more evil can we make Winnowill in this story arc?
- 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 Up to Eleven.
- Red Hulk. How many popular characters can he effortlessly beat? How many ways can he violate the rules of the Marvel Universe just for something that looks cool? How many items can he tick off the Villain Sue 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 "Judge Dredd"??
