Snowballing Threat

"My dad... is a villain. And he's only gonna get more powerful, and the more powerful he gets, the more people will listen to him, and believe him, and follow him. [...] The only way to stop this is to look evil in the face and say — no more."

— Soren, The Dragon Prince

If you're lucky, an antagonist will stay still as a fixed strength, and let the heroes formulate a plan to defeat them on their own timetable. At worst, they will grow in power roughly at pace with the protagonist, so that there can be a nice back-and-forth rivalry between the two in strength.

Sometimes, however, you're not lucky.

A Snowballing Threat is an antagonist (or antagonistic force) that rapidly (and repeatedly) gets more and more formidable the longer the narrative takes to deal with them, putting pressure and urgency on the protagonists to stop them while they still have a chance. Typically, this happens on an exponential curve, where over the course of an episode they treat the Sliding Scale of Villain Threat like a speedrunner leaderboard. Worst of all, usually every bit of power these foes acquire expands their ability to acquire even more power.

This can take many forms. Maybe it's a cult powered by faith that is growing in notoriety, or a Power Parasite accumulating more and more varied abilities. The evil could be capturing useful territory, multiplying in manpower, or physically growing in size. Or maybe it just gets Stronger with Age. In any case, the antagonistic force powerscales much faster than the protagonists, and our heroes need to act while they still have a chance to overpower them.

Unfortunately, there is quite a lot of overlap with You Can't Thwart Stage One. It will grow stronger. The narrative may even tease the audience by having the threat almost defeated by someone early on... but barely escape, balloon in strength, and easily steamroll the person on their next encounter.

In especially bad cases, only the audience gets to see the threat snowballing, adding tension as we desperately hope the heroes notice the problem before it grows wildly out of control.

Unsurprisingly, many horror monsters love this trope since it fosters a rising feeling of anxiety and dread that the foe will become unstoppable. This includes The Virus, Blob Monster, Horde of Alien Locusts, and others.

The actual speed and method by which the threat snowballs in power varies. Sometimes it can be a slow burn that takes place over months of neglect by the heroes — but just as often it can happen over the course of a single encounter if the threat can grow from the various people attacking it.

When applied as a videogame combat mechanic, this becomes an Increasingly Lethal Enemy. When you are this in a video game, it is a Rising Up The Food Chain Game / Unstable Equilibrium.

In superpower settings, this is frequently a consequence of Mana Drain, Adaptive Ability, and other Magikarp Powers.

Compare Race Against the Clock, which is an alternate way to put pressure and urgency on the protagonists.

Also compare From Nobody to Nightmare, Not-So-Harmless Villain, and Gathering Steam.

For more literal snowball threats, see Human Snowball.

These threats are often very plot significant, so beware of spoilers.

Threats to watch out for

Examples:

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Anime & Manga

Bleach: Once Aizen implants the Hogyoku into himself and it begins to synch with him, his spiritual power increases by leaps and bounds as it strengthens him, particularly when he starts fighting powerful opponents or recovers from deadly wounds. Every failed attempt to kill him just makes him that much more powerful, with his ultimate goal being to completely transcend all limits and become a Physical God that can replace the Soul King himself. He's only undone when Ichigo, who he allowed to run off for a round of Time to Unlock More True Potential in order to make him a Worthy Opponent who would push his evolution higher, powers up much more than Aizen expected, to the point evolving twice only made Aizen strong enough to actually land visible injuries on Ichigo before he gets blasted by Ichigo's Final Getsuga Tensho and the Hogyoku seems to take back most of its power-ups at the very last moment when it seemed ready to power him up again, allowing Aizen to be sealed away.
Dragon Ball:
- Cell in Dragon Ball Z starts out fairly strong, but not unmanageable as previous Arc Villains have tended to be. His first big encounter is against a freshly powered-up Piccolo who is more than a match for him, and to make matters worse for him, the other Z Warriors soon show up to back Piccolo up. He escapes, however, and rapidly gathers strength behind the scenes by absorbing more civilians, until he is strong enough to overpower Piccolo and Android 17 and attain his Semi-Perfect form, though even then he had to resort to trickery to get away from Android 16 long enough to pull it off. Even that, however, is nothing a day in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber can't prepare our heroes for... that is, until Vegeta decides to let Cell realize his full power and absorb Android 18 as well. Now in his Perfect form, Cell has become more than Vegeta bargained for, and no amount of training will allow the Z Warriors to defeat him... and this isn't even the strongest he gets.
- Ganos in Dragon Ball Super continuously grows stronger as he's in proximity to people stronger than he is. The bigger the difference in power, the faster his climb, which is why he was chosen for the Tournament of Power, a contest of the strongest fighters from different universes. Surrounding himself with the cream of the crop, Ganos begins the Tournament not capable of much but soon defeats opponents who had outmatched him mere seconds ago. Master Roshi notices Ganos's power climbing rapidly, realizes he will outdo even Goku and Vegeta if left unchecked, and zeroes in on him to eliminate him before that can happen.
Fate Series:
- In Fate/stay night [Unlimited Blade Works], Caster's "rule breaker" allows her to steal additional servants under her power, becoming functionally undefeatable after capturing most of the servants left in the game.
- In Fate/stay night: Heaven's Feel: The Shadow consumes more and more servants' mana and adds it to their own strength, slowly growing and compounding as a problem in the background.
Hunter × Hunter: The Chimera Ants are this across several different dimensions. First their colony naturally grows larger and larger over time. But each successive generation is also stronger than the last. They do another form of this when Nen gets introduced, and the ability to use Nen starts spreading throughout the hive. Finally once their King hatches he himself does this by successively consuming other humans to absorb their intellect and Nen.
Mob Psycho 100: Dimples starts a Mind Virus that slowly turns the entire city into a Hive Mind.
Naruto:
- Despite several variations of Power Copying and Mana Drain existing in the series, this trope is usually averted. The major exception to this is Kabuto, who over the course of several arcs collects and resurrects nearly every notable dead character to add to Tobi's military force, and continues to create and release even more throughout the war without reaching any limit.
- The Akatsuki do this politically, by slowly accumulating wealth and favors from the other nations.
One Piece: At the time of the story's beginning, the setting sits in the middle of a long political cold war, with the World Government at one end and the Four Emperors each occupying their separate corner at the other end, with nothing being able to shake up the status quo for decades. Now many young newcomers are rising up to shake things up, the main characters among them. One of these newcomers is Marshall D. Teach, better known as Blackbeard, who hid his candle under a wick in the service of one of the Emperors for all of his adulthood before finally making his move. When first introduced on-screen, literally no one in the world even knows about him (in a setting where Bounties are almost seen as Power Levels by the general populace, his bounty was always zero). He comes across as fairly powerful but relying on sneak-attacks and underhanded tactics to get ahead, and his little band of followers are demonstrated to be quite weak in the grand scheme of things. His plotting and scheming gradually gains him power and influence and additional crewmates, culminating in the tipping point when he gets the drop on his dying old captain, kills him, and steals his Devil Fruit, something thought as completely impossible. Two years after this he has become one of the Emperors himself, and he is still looking to climb higher.
Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Because Homura made a wish to go back in time and save Madoka's life, and then kept repeating the same month over and over in a time loop trying to save her, this raised Madoka's karmic destiny to absurdly high levels. This means she has the potential to become the most powerful magical girl in existence should she ever choose to do so, but since magical girls turn into witches when they fall into despair, this also means she will become the most powerful witch in existence—Kriemhild Gretchen. Repeating the loop an unknown number of times has made Kriemhild Gretchen massive enough to consume the entire planet, and every repetition of the loop just makes her even stronger. The threat only ends for good when Madoka wishes for the power to erase all witches before their births, including her own.

Fan Works

Codex Equus: The protodragons were a swarm of destructive, relentlessly aggressive monsters that rampaged through the world, breeding in ever-greater numbers and rendering everything they came across into ash and rubble. By the time that Tiamat and Bahamut brought them to battle, the progeny of the original pair covered the skies and had to be entirely exterminated to prevent a repeat crisis.

Films — Animated

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs: Flint Lockwood invents a machine that can convert water into any food he wants. It starts off as a wondrous miracle of science and Flint is hailed as a hero, but the machine eventually malfunctions. The food starts to grow steadily bigger, causing global climate change and crushing buildings, and both the machine and food begin turning sentient, developing a fortress around itself and having the potential to transform the entire world into food. Thankfully, the heroes stop the threat in time before the 11th hour could come to pass.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse: The Spot's goal is to become more powerful by absorbing the energy from as many Alchemax colliders as possible. The longer he isn't dealt with, the more energy he absorbs, and the more powerful he becomes.

Films — Live-Action

The Blob (1958): The Blob consumes matter all around it, growing exponentially larger in size.
Color Out of Space (2020): As the movie goes on, the titular Eldritch Abomination's hold over the main location and the family escalates horrifically since its landing. At first, the only obvious signs of the Color's presence can be dismissed (abnormal bugs and insects, and episodic blackouts among the human family), but it soon escalates to people and animals being horrifically fused into flesh golems, the family becoming trapped as the Color prevents them leaving the affected area, and the vegetation and very air becoming visually infected with the Color. Fortunately for the rest of the Earth, the Color simply goes back into space once its strength hits its zenith, albeit taking all life in the infected area with it.
Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019): From the moment he's awoken from his suspended animation, Ghidorah begins forming a tempestuous alien hypercane around himself, and it grows stronger the longer he's active, becoming a category 6 storm by the movie's third act. It's also heavily implied in the movie, and confirmed in the novelization, that Ghidorah's hypercane increasingly disrupts worldwide weather patterns as time goes on to cause even more storms around the globe, which could, in effect, ultimately blanket the entire planet in a perpetual hurricane. To say nothing of Ghidorah taking control of the other Titans and altering their behavior to make them his minions...
The Thing (1982): The titular creature is an extraterrestrial organism that has the ability to assimilate any lifeform it comes into contact with and create a flawless imitation in the process. Should an assimilated lifeform be revealed as an imitation, the creature will transform its body in an attempt to defend itself frequently sprouting extra limbs, fangs, and tentacles. Doctor Blair, one of the researchers at Outpost number 31, theorizes that, should the creature escape the Antarctic and reach civilization, all life on Earth would be assimilated three years after first contact with it.
Thor: Ragnarok: Odin's banished daughter Hela draws power from the nation of Asgard itself, which grows the longer she remains connected to it. When she first escapes from her imprisonment, Hela can only create daggers, but soon she can summon a Storm of Blades to wipe out an entire army by herself. At the height of her strength Hela becomes capable of creating swords so massive she can even stand on them. All the while her brothers Thor and Loki are trapped on Sakaar, unable to stop her as her growing power terrorizes the people of Asgard.

Literature

Codex Alera: The Vord are this in a number of ways; not only do the drones breed extremely fast, the queens (who are not only telepathic but also every bit as intelligent and resourceful as a very smart human) can create new forms of drones to counter the abilities and tactics of her enemies, and is also capable of learning and using the magic system of the setting. They first appear in book 2, where they have only recently emerged from hibernation and are building up their numbers in secret (and are still formidable threats to the heroes), but when they finally emerge openly in Book 5 and 6, it is a fully apocalyptic situation. By the end it is revealed that the Vord we saw were still limited in their ability to snowball by the fact that the first queen's "contamination" with human blood and behaviour altered her to the point that any other queens she spawns will try to kill her, meaning she has to make them sterile and then abandon them, rather than increasing the number of queens exponentially and coordinating with them all the while. It's unmistakably clear that without this restriction the non-Vord species of Alera would have been doomed from the moment they failed to hunt down and fully exterminate the first set of queens at the end of Book 2.
In Fate/Zero, Gilles de Rais has a book that can infinitely accumulate mana, which he uses to build up enough power to create an Eldritch Abomination.
In Goblin Slayer, a single goblin is a nuisance, twenty goblins is a serious threat to a small village, and a hundred can endanger a good-sized town. And the more they take, the faster they breed, as they reproduce by raping the women of the places they attack. Not helping this is the fact that the overstretched military only considers goblins to be a target worthy of their attention when they reach the hundred plus stage, leaving smaller infestations to the Adventurer's Guild. And since Adventurers are freelance mercenaries, they generally prefer quests where the pay is better than what small villages being attacked by goblins can afford, allowing the goblin threat to grow. The sole exception dedicated to actively keeping the threat down is the titular Goblin Slayer.
Harry Potter: Voldemort and his followers after the former's resurrection at the end of Goblet of Fire. Throughout the end of that book and the majority of the next book, the corrupt and inept Minister for Magic Cornelius Fudge actively denies Voldemort has returned and goes out of his way to suppress any idea of such among the wizarding public, severely hampering the heroes' ability to build up countermeasures while enabling Voldemort to smoothly rebuild and expand his forces under the radar, recruiting Death Eaters and giants to his cause; for a whole year. By the time the Ministry for Magic and the wizarding public do realize that the Dark Lord has returned, Fudge's inaction has cost the Wizarding World's chances against Voldemort dearly, with Voldemort's forces easily overthrowing the Ministry and taking control of the Wizarding World in Deathly Hallows.
In Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain, anyone with a Mad Science power can use the power to make valuable devices to sell for large sums to get more resources to make more devices... many of which are either better weapons or armor to become even stronger in a fight. Only Penny is shown doing this, however. She starts with a recycling machine and some raw materials. She builds some basic armor and an air cannon. By the time the first book is over, she built a drone capable of nullifying all guns in a large radius, a chemical tank that can take down another super with an absurd Healing Factor, a set of candy-themed weapons that can electrify or immobilize enemies, and a pair of gloves capable of creating explosions.
In The Serpentwar Saga, the enemy army grows larger with every victory it scores on the continent of Novindus, because all survivors from the defeated army are forced to join the enemy. Furthermore, the demon Jakar, who commands the enemy army, feeds on the life energy of dying humans, and grows larger and more powerful with everyone he consumes.
A Song of Ice and Fire:
- Robert believed Daenerys would become this if left alive, and so far he seems to have been right. Both her army and dragons have been snowballing in strength, amassing more and more power under her banners.
- This is how Cersei views the Tyrells' political power grabs. Their house words being "Growing Strong" probably doesn't help.
The Wheel of Time: The Chosen One Rand entrusts his new Wizarding School, the Black Tower, to Mazrim Taim despite his immediate misgivings, and doesn't follow up on evidence that Taim is The Mole. Over the course of nine books, Taim builds a personal power base within the Tower to subvert Rand's control, forcibly Turns many people there to the Shadow, becomes the first new member of the Dark One's Forsaken in over 3000 years, and joins the Final Battle on the Shadow's side with a force of powerful spellcasters.

Live-Action TV

Doom Patrol (2019): Played with in season 2. From the outside, it seems like poor Dorothy is increasingly losing control of her Reality Warper powers and that the Doom Patrol must neutralize her before the monstrous Candlemaker is unleashed upon the world. The reality is that Dorothy is the only one capable of stopping the Candlemaker, but her father's constant attempts to discourage her from actually using her powers is holding her back. After he dies and is no longer around to discourage her, she easily brings the Candlemaker to heel.
Game of Thrones:
- The White Walkers are this due to growing in power from the upcoming Winter, while simultaneously strategically growing their forces as The Virus.
- The Sparrow movement in King's Landing grows under the nose of all the nobles until it can't be stamped out easily.
- In season 8, Daenerys retroactively becomes this.
Heroes: Syler, as he attains more and more abilities. Several times, people who intend to stop him fail due to new powers he's acquired since they've last met. It reaches a point where only other heroes with Combo Platter Powers have a chance against him.
Kamen Rider:
- Kamen Rider Fourze: The Cancer Zodiarts grows in power at an alarmingly fast pace during each episode of his tenure as Arc Villain. It's ultimately played with in that he gathers steam so quickly that it actually alarms the other villains, which combined with Cancer's immense ego means that as soon as the heroes manage to defeat him at the end of the arc, his fellow villains waste no time in finishing him off.
- Kamen Rider Ghost: The Gammaizers start out as a hivemind of dangerous unkillable golems, and only get worse from there, as the nature of their Resurrective Immortality makes them both stronger and smarter each time they revive one another. By the end of the show they've grown smart enough to usurp their alleged master and establish themselves as the actual Big Bad.
- Kamen Rider Zero-One subverts the trope with Kamen Rider Thouser, who makes use of his Power Parasite abilities in nearly every episode that he appears in to steal more and more of the abilities of every other character until eventually he has all of them. However, he started out already Unskilled, but Strong and doesn't have the mental fortitude required to seriously train, so adding even more abilities that he's never practiced with doesn't make him stronger, it makes him weaker.
Star Trek:
- The Tribbles are this due to being a multiplicative Introduced Species Calamity.
- In the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Where No Man Has Gone Before", when the Enterprise leaves the galaxy, two characters with ESP, Dr. Dehner and Gary Mitchell, receive a jolt of energy that starts increasing their Psychic Powers at an exponential rate. Before escaping, Mitchell kills a fellow crewman. If the Enterprise crew can't deal with them in time, they will become extremely dangerous to the rest of the crew and the ship.
Supernatural:
- In "It's the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester", it's said that Samhain possess the unique ability to summon and control all manner of supernatural beings, and the longer he is free the more dangerous monster he is able to draw to his presence. This is a big part of his potential threat that must be averted.
- Amara, the Big Bad of Season 11 and The Anti-God, starts off the season as little more than a soul-devouring, telekinetic child after her essence possesses a human baby upon being freed from her can, but she grows increasingly powerful as her vessel rapidly grows to adulthood. By the mid-season finale, she can telekinetically overpower and obliterate multiple demons and angels without any difficulty. By episode 18, she can curb-stomp Lucifer (one of the setting's older and more powerful entities), after she's been set back for several episodes by sustaining the angelic equivalent of a nuclear barrage. In the last several episodes, she begins infecting entire towns with a Rabid-creating and ultimately deadly mist which, despite the main protagonists' efforts, ultimately requires literal intervention from God himself to stop it, and she makes it clear that she's now on her way to erasing all the contents of the universe.

Roleplay

Embers in the Dusk:
- The galaxy in general went even worse than canon Warhammer 40,000, with all kinds of "minor apocalypses" that must be stomped down before becoming too much of a threat, like degraded descendants of Men of Iron. Thankfully, at least the Tyranids are gone.
- For a few centuries, this becomes a major issue in the form of The Green Awakening, after Gork and Mork awaken and make the Orks an even worse example than in canon. Not only can Orks grow bigger, more numerous and more advanced, there is also the fact that the bigger WAAAAGH!!! receive more power, making the biggest ones a match for the Krork.
- The Void Dragon becomes stronger by conquering additional territories and converting them into factories to make additional forces. While never ignored, the Eldar spent centuries keeping Abaddon's Black Imperium strong enough to keep it contained in a limited territory until their allies grew strong enough to take over.

Tabletop Games

In the Gamma World adventure Legion of Gold, the Legion starts off as a few Centurion robots sent out to attack small human settlements. Each time it attacks a settlement, it captures some of the humans and takes them back to the Legion's base, where they are turned into legionnaires and join the Legion. Eventually, the Legion will be large enough to attack large cities.
Magic: The Gathering has Slivers. A lone sliver is not much of a threat, but if more show up, you are in trouble. Every sliver comes with a special power like the ability to fly, or deal double damage, or produce mana, or make more slivers. The dangerous part is that every sliver shares its ability with every other sliver. If you don't extinguish a sliver threat in its beginning stages, you will soon have to face a wall of powerful superbeasts.
Root has a few factions that need to be kept in check, lest they steamroll the whole forest. The woodland alliance for instance starts out as plucky little annoyances, using your troop movements to justify a rebellion. Once they have expanded far enough, they are almost impossible to contain again and you will only give them more power to fight back, when you try to cut them back to size.
Warhammer 40,000:
- The Tyranids are this, given their hyper-adaptive and all-consuming nature. The bigger a Hive Fleet gets, the more it adapts, evolves, produces more organisms and fleets so it can invade more systems and consume more, ad infinitum. Now that Hive Fleet Leviathan is attacking from both sides of the galaxy at once, it looks like the Tyranid threat is so widespread that it'll be consuming more biomass that the Imperium of Man or anyone else can incinerate from it. It's not just a matter of bodies, either. The Hive Mind is already a gestalt galaxy-conquering genius, it's always learning, and currently orchestrating the conquest of countless worlds at once. As it stands, trying to commune with it drives everyone instantly insane (less than a handful of psychically gifted beings have done so and lived). If this thing gets any smarter, it'll be beyond godlike.
- Genestealer Cults. As a Breeding Cult, their goal is to produce as many Half-Human Hybrid infiltrators as possible and get them spread out across all levels of society. If not rooted out and exterminated in time, their population will eventually reach a critical mass where their collective psychic signature summons the Tyranid hive fleets, at which point the entire planet is doomed.
- On a smaller level, Ork WAAARGHS are the product of this. Ork culture is anarchic and fractured but solely geared towards "fightin'", meaning one Ork will eventually get to the top of the heap. At this point, he'll start looking beyond his planet and batter together dozens of tribes into a system-wrecking crusade/pub crawl/party rampage known as a WAAAARGH. Many opposing factions (particularly Deathwatch Astartes outposts) focus on eliminating potential Warlords before the snowball gets this big, stopping the WAAARGH... at least until another Ork starts his own ascent.

Video Games

Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown: Part of why the Final Bosses are such a threat to the world is that they are highly-advanced drones that start to analyze Trigger's combat abilities and as a result better themselves in the process, having already been built on the combat data of Mihaly, another top-notch fighter pilot (who Trigger had defeated a few missions ago). Thus other characters make a big deal of the fact that they are also trying to use the Space Elevator to transmit that data to drone facilities all around the world, and should that happen, humanity will be doomed to a Forever War carried on by warfare amongst impossible-to-defeat drones.
Chimera Beast is an unreleased arcade game where you play as an Eater, a member of a species of Horde of Alien Locusts. Your Eater is initially as large and powerful as single-celled organisms, but as it devours the creatures around it, it gains their traits and grows in size throughout the levels. By the end of the penultimate stage, the house-sized Eater singlehandedly ends the ecosystem by destroying humanity's nuclear reactor. Should the player play their cards right, the Eater will even destroy the planet and move on to consuming other planets, including Earth.
Some perks in Dead by Daylight give either Survivors or Killers more power as more conditions are filled during a match. A specific example is the Hex: Devour Hope perk, unique to the Hag. With every successive hook rescue while the Killer is far away, they gain a token. Two tokens give a temporary Haste effect after hooking a Survivor. Three tokens permanently make the Survivors Exposed, making it easier to down and hook them. Five tokens allow the Killer to kill any survivor by their own hand, bypassing whatever hook state that Survivor may have. This all hinges on a Hex Totem remaining in play during the match, giving Survivors incentive to try and find it and destroy it lest the Killer become way too dangerous.
In Deep Rock Galactic, the Point Extraction mission type has the team mine large aquarq minerals from the surrounding environment and deposit them in a minehead platform. The longer the mission goes on, the stronger and more frequent the incoming waves of hostile glyphids become. While the minehead is armed with several auto turrets (and this is the only mission that DRG sees it necessary to supply its employees with extra firepower), they and the dwarves can only output so much, and it's just a matter of time before the cave is buried in so many fangs, claws, and acid to the point that you will be overwhelmed. If you don't work fast, you're not coming home.
Doom Eternal: Samuel tells the Doom Slayer that the longer the Icon of Sin is alive on Earth, the more powerful it will become until it will eventually become so strong it'll be able to collapse the entire universe into Hell. This does not affect gameplay, as the Icon of Sin has the same level of strength and health no matter how long it takes for the player to beat the final act and reach it.
Honkai: Star Rail: The Propagation Aeon Tayzzyronth did this in the past via their Horde of Alien Locusts. We play through their rise and fall in the Swarm Disaster gamemode, where its snowballing nature is represented with Increasingly Lethal Enemy gameplay.
Katamari Damacy: From the perspective of everyone else on earth, this is what you are. Bonus points for being literal, as your Katamari exponentially grows in size to consume everything it touches via rolling.
In NieR: Automata, you first fight Adam mere moments after his birth. He begins the battle at level 1 and can barely do anything to you. But as you fight him, he analyzes your abilities and rapidly levels up, until he eventually escapes. The next time you see him, he is a legitimate threat, and one of the last bosses of the game's first two routes.
Most antagonist roles in Space Station 13 feature Gathering Steam mechanics, becoming more dangerous as they complete their objectives. This is especially true of faction-based antagonists that forcibly recruit other players to join them, such as the Revolution or the Blood Cult — if caught early, they'll be no match for the station's security forces, but if allowed to fester they can eventually outnumber the remaining innocent players.
Stellaris: The Prethoryn Scourge Crisis faction functions like this. Once they attack in earnest, unlike The Unbidden or The Contingency, who start off with a fixed number of spawners and can be worn down by gradually destroying them, the Prethoryn can use Infestors to turn worlds into an Infested World, which start churning out more and more Scourge fleets to help them conquer the remainder of the galaxy faster. Fail to deal with them in time and they'll...well, swarm you with sheer numbers.

Western Animation

Ben 10:
- The Megawatt's continuously duplicate themselves as they acquire more energy.
- The Naljian Destructor mimics multiple characters' powers and abilities over the course of a fight, becoming nearly undefeatable.
- Vilgax defeats heroes and takes their powers repeatedly in preparation for fighting Ben.
- In Ben 10: Ultimate Alien, Kevin seems to be doing this when his Horror Hunger drives him insane. Even so, despite Kevin accumulating immense power (which should include all of Ben's), this trope ultimately gets subverted as Ben easily defeats Kevin once he chooses to take the fight seriously.
- In Ben 10: Omniverse, Charmcaster accumulates other characters as totems.
Code Lyoko: In season 2, it is discovered that activating a return to the past doubles the supercomputers processing power — i.e. XANA's power. This means the Lyoko Warriors have been quadratically scaling XANA's power throughout the entire series, and they are forced to keep doing so until they can find a way to stop XANA.
Danny Phantom:
- Ember's power is directly proportional to how much she is adored and rapidly grows over the course of her debut episode.
- Desiree's power scales higher as she grants more wishes.
The Dragon Prince: Soren directly characterizes Viren as this type of threat after personally witnessing the powerplays that got him to where he is. It's a big part of why he advocates everyone to draw a line in the sand and stop him now, rather than retreat and hope they can do so later.
Justice League:
- Amazo. Over the course of "Tabula Rasa", the android copies each of the Justice League's abilities, while also negating their weaknesses.
- In "Dark Heart", a Grey Goo lands on Earth and threatens to transform every bit of the planet it consumes into more of its army.
The Legend of Korra:
- Vaatu does this over the course of "Beginnings" as he feeds on more and more chaos in the world, while simultaneously weakening Raava.
- The Red Lotus' early escape sequences play out like this, as each additional member makes them harder to stop.
- Kuvira is a political variant of this. Every military state she acquires expands her resources and manpower further, which she then leverages to take her next target.
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
- The Parasprites exponentially multiply as a threat over the course of "Swarm of the Century". After all but one of them are eliminated, it happens again.
- The Sirens start out very weak but grow in strength as their music allows them to draw magic from more and more people's strife.
- Lord Tirek starts out weak and frail, but over the course of "Twilight's Kingdom - Part 1" and "Part 2", he rapidly powerscales above everyone else in the series (while evading every attempt to stop him early). It comes to the point that the Alicorns need to combine their power into one body just to have someone who can still match up to him after they fail to stop his rise.
Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated: The Anunnaki who possesses Nova's image describes the Evil Entity as such in "Come Undone", stating that from the moment it's freed from its can onto the Earth, it'll "grow more powerful every second." As soon as the Entity is both freed and has gained a vessel, it destroys Crystal Cove, grows increasingly larger as it devours all the residents, and it's explicitly stated that the end result of the Entity's rampage will be it obliterating the Earth and devouring the entire observable universe.
She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: Downplayed with Horde Prime's infection. While he captures and mind-controls more and more characters to bring into his thrall, he doesn't actually need to add their strength to his own. He is mostly just doing it to damage the Princesses' morale.
Star vs. the Forces of Evil: Eclipsa's daughter, after she starts sucking up everyone's souls.
Teen Titans (2003):
- Inverted with the Brotherhood of Evil. Instead of getting stronger, they methodically reduce the power of the Titans across season 4, namely by secretly monitoring their movements and the locations of new recruits, so that when the time came, the Brotherhood could wipe the Titans out in one fell swoop.
- Inverted (in a different way) during the finale, as more and more of the Titans show up for the final battle to stop the Brotherhood or are freed from captivity.
Xiaolin Showdown:
- The Sapphire Dragon gets more powerful as it turns more and more people into sapphire, which is stated to be a threat to the whole world.
- Mala Mala Jong becomes stronger as it amasses more Shen Gon Wu into itself.
X-Men: Evolution: Rogue has the ability to absorb other mutants' powers through skin contact. As she gradually accumulates more abilities, she becomes an unstoppable force that nobody manages to contain. In her debut, it happens by accident, and she does it again later while undergoing Power Incontinence. Near the end of the series, she does it again under mind control, first copying her friends' abilities while they are asleep, and using those powers to steal even more powers afterwards.

Real Life

If a fire breaks out and isn't handled immediately (or worse, is unwittingly given more fuel in an attempt to snuff it out), there is a very real danger of it soon spiraling out of control, engulfing its surroundings in a huge blaze. The risk of casualties mounts quickly as more of the area is ignited. Wildfires are notorious for this during summer, as the dry conditions and intense heat are perfect for a massive firestorm to kick off.

Snowballing Threat

Threats to watch out for

Examples:

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