Just thought of a couple potential additions to the TV Tropes Wiki, but I'm not sure if they step on any preexisting toes.
The Lensman Arms Race
If a military conflict goes on long enough in a high-tech setting, each side will be struggling to gain and keep a technological advantage over the other. Sometimes, this process of escalation goes way over the top.
The title and best example of this trope comes from E.E. "Doc" Smith's Lensman novels (making this one of the Oldest Ones In The Book). Over the course of a decades-long struggle (that was only the surface of a deeper, eons-old war between cosmic beings using mortals as pawns), Civilization and Boskone went from ordinary starship battles to star-powered lasers, antimatter bombs, planets used as missiles, antimatter planets, faster-than-light antimatter planet missiles...
A second, in some ways even more ridiculous example is Smith's lesser-known Skylark series. By the final novel in the sequence, our heroes destroy two entire galaxies by teleporting every star from one into the close vicinity of every star in the other, causing each pair to collide and go nova, meanwhile teleporting every non-hostile world in the area to safe orbits around stars in a third galaxy, all while they themselves are safe in yet another galaxy entirely...!
Anime Example: Mobile Suit Gundam (original Universal Century timeline). At the start of the first series, the Federation has just produced the RX-78 Gundam, a high-power prototype mecha with the armor and weaponry of a battleship of the time, granting them a significant advantage over the first-generation Mobile Suits fielded by the Zeon Archduchy. By the end of that war, only a few months later, Zeon has built MS's that can just about hold their own against the Gundam and its mass-produced siblings. Seventy war-filled years later, the Victory II Assault Buster Gundam is three meters shorter than and half the weight of the RX-78, and boasts an inertialess drive system, a force-field, and more firepower than every Mobile Suit from the One-Year War put together.
Literary Example: Honor Harrington series by David Weber. (I leave it to bigger fans to fill in the details on this one.)
DuQuesne Karma
Sometimes, The Rival's struggle is completely hopeless. No matter what he does, no matter how hard he trains, no matter what technological marvels he invents or steals, the Protagonist is always, always three steps ahead of him.
Named for Marc C. "Blackie" DuQuesne, villain and antihero in E.E. "Doc" Smith's The Skylark of Space and sequels. DuQuesne is driven by the desire to prove himself intellectually and technologically superior to the hero, Richard Seaton, but repeatedly discovers that Seaton has already surpassed every new trick he can bring to bear.
Anime Example: This trope could easily have been called "Vegeta Karma."
--Sam
"Oh, there's crime here. I can smell it."
The Lensman Arms Race
If a military conflict goes on long enough in a high-tech setting, each side will be struggling to gain and keep a technological advantage over the other. Sometimes, this process of escalation goes way over the top.
The title and best example of this trope comes from E.E. "Doc" Smith's Lensman novels (making this one of the Oldest Ones In The Book). Over the course of a decades-long struggle (that was only the surface of a deeper, eons-old war between cosmic beings using mortals as pawns), Civilization and Boskone went from ordinary starship battles to star-powered lasers, antimatter bombs, planets used as missiles, antimatter planets, faster-than-light antimatter planet missiles...
A second, in some ways even more ridiculous example is Smith's lesser-known Skylark series. By the final novel in the sequence, our heroes destroy two entire galaxies by teleporting every star from one into the close vicinity of every star in the other, causing each pair to collide and go nova, meanwhile teleporting every non-hostile world in the area to safe orbits around stars in a third galaxy, all while they themselves are safe in yet another galaxy entirely...!
Anime Example: Mobile Suit Gundam (original Universal Century timeline). At the start of the first series, the Federation has just produced the RX-78 Gundam, a high-power prototype mecha with the armor and weaponry of a battleship of the time, granting them a significant advantage over the first-generation Mobile Suits fielded by the Zeon Archduchy. By the end of that war, only a few months later, Zeon has built MS's that can just about hold their own against the Gundam and its mass-produced siblings. Seventy war-filled years later, the Victory II Assault Buster Gundam is three meters shorter than and half the weight of the RX-78, and boasts an inertialess drive system, a force-field, and more firepower than every Mobile Suit from the One-Year War put together.
Literary Example: Honor Harrington series by David Weber. (I leave it to bigger fans to fill in the details on this one.)
DuQuesne Karma
Sometimes, The Rival's struggle is completely hopeless. No matter what he does, no matter how hard he trains, no matter what technological marvels he invents or steals, the Protagonist is always, always three steps ahead of him.
Named for Marc C. "Blackie" DuQuesne, villain and antihero in E.E. "Doc" Smith's The Skylark of Space and sequels. DuQuesne is driven by the desire to prove himself intellectually and technologically superior to the hero, Richard Seaton, but repeatedly discovers that Seaton has already surpassed every new trick he can bring to bear.
Anime Example: This trope could easily have been called "Vegeta Karma."
--Sam
"Oh, there's crime here. I can smell it."