Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Give a man a bigger fish, and he'll eat for a little longer than that

Blue: "The deeper you go, the more nightmares there are!! THERE'S ALWAYS A BIGGER FISH!!!!"

Stephen Strange defeating an outer god by placing them both in a ten second groundhog day loop until the god said "uncle" is probably the best curveball against a big fish I've ever seen.

Personal favorite is Morgoth. Sauron is just the errand boy to Actual Satan and all of LotR is him trying to steal his boss' job.

One piece bounties are such interesting way to create the idea of power levels because bounties are explicitly propaganda by the world government meaning higher bounty might mean you are stronger however it is measure of how much of threat you are to the powers that be.

When you reach the biggest fish, it cycles back around because there's only one fish, so it's the smallest by default. Then comes two fish, red fish, and blue fish.

If you think about it, the Avatar State got used way more as an indicator for Aang's emotional well-being more than it got used for combat potential. He used it once in the series premiere to get back onto Zuko's boat, he channeled Roku at the Winter Solstice, channeled the Ocean at the siege of the North, and fought Phoenix King Ozai. That's all the times the Avatar State offered a combat advantage in the series.

"Once you beat the biggest bad, you can't just keep beating the same bad"

- Doofenshmirtz enters the room

What's this? This Trope Talk hasn't been taken down?

(for real, sorry you guys have been facing that lately - keep up the good work!)

Blue recoils at the title

One thing I found really interesting about the Kung-Fu Panda trilogy is that they went the "fighter, mage, thief" approach to their villains: Tai Lung was the ultimate physical fighter, Lord Shen was cunning and crafty and utilized cannons, and Kai has magic in the form of siphoning chi and being essentially a ghost. One of the directors of the third film even said about Kai, "You can't go brawler because Tai Lung was brawler. You can't go smarter because Shen was smarter. Where can you go? You have to go supernatural, bigger, and even more intimidating."

My absolute favorite example of this trope are the Seadragons in the How to Train Your Dragon books specifically. The whole first book is about this tribe of insanely macho Vikings who keep their pet dragons in line by yelling at them, until an apocalyptically huge dragon named The Green Death shows up to eat them. There’s no way to tackle the problem physically, and the only person who can actually stop it is Hiccup, who has a conversation with The Green Death and tricks him, using the skills he learned by actually talking to his dragon Toothless as an equal. Hiccup, as the weakest and smallest member of his tribe, saw the flaws in might-makes-right before anyone else did, and so only he could actually fix the bigger picture issues.

The consistent thing across the series that makes Hiccup a hero is his ability to actually address the bigger picture. When everyone else only imagines the immediate problem of trying to train a dragon, Hiccup worries about the sort of society that training would create. When the world is ending, Snotlout is still focused on his rivalry with Hiccup, Hiccup is fully ready to forgive him and accept him as an ally, since they’re gonna need all the help they can get to stop the apocalypse. And when all the other humans are focused on the extermination of dragons as a species to stop their rebellion, Hiccup realizes the only way to prevent the war from ending in tragedy is the abolishment of slavery and the complete upheaval of his society. Hiccup is strong because despite being the smallest and meekest person in his world, his nature as an outcast lets him see what really needs to change.

God those books were so good

For a second I was like “I don’t remember this one though?” And then realized it wasn’t a reupload XD

I’ll never forget the way Squirrel Girl beat Galactus.

A version of this trope I enjoy is 'small fish previously beaten comes back as a bigger fish and they're using their previous knowledge of Hero to counter them HARD'

I do like how Jojo's power system lends itself to not really need the archetypical Bigger fish
Part 1-2 do follow It as pillar men are basically vampirer vampires but the stand system introduced in part 3 keeps protagonists human so there's always the fact that everyone is actually really squishy, so really specific powers can flourish against really op shit if done correctly

“If you ended last season fighting God, now you have to beat Turbo God with a beefier halo and twice as many wings!” Congratulations Red, you’ve successfully summarized the Gnostic faith.

I think this is why ONE PUNCH MAN works so well for its concept.
There IS always a bigger fish. But One Punch Man is the wall.

You CAN fight him! But he always kills with one punch.

And when he's ranked, ranked against other heroes, ranked for his pure ability to help wherever; he's ranked POORLY because he's a gimmick. He's the guy who murder kills everything instantly. He's not super-man, who can save people under rubble safely, or take down a target without killing them. He's one punch man. He kills with one punch.

2:20 "[...] supposed to be the best by default!" Ah, I was wondering where you'd sneak in the DBZA reference :)

Whatever you do, DO NOT take a shot each time you hear 'fish.'