Escalating Chase

The comedic equivalent of a Stern Chase, in which the protagonists are being pursued by an ever-increasing assortment of people they offended, probably including but not limited to cops.

In Anime, and animated settings in general, an Escalating Chase can turn into a Thundering Herd.

Examples of Escalating Chase include:

Comic Book

• Sin City has its fair share of chases for a comic series. The one shown early in A Dame To Kill For starts with one or two cop cars following the protagonists. More cars show up. Followed by at least one motorcycle... and then a police helicopter.

Film

• The Blues Brothers not only get dozens of Lemming Cops on their tail but also Jake's Psycho Ex-Girlfriend and the Illinois Nazis.
• In PCU, the compound payoff to a series of brick jokes set up by visiting Pre-Frosh Tom accidentally pissing off every student group on campus over the course of the movie. He invokes this by running around campus and antagonizing each of them in turn before leading them back to The Pit where Droz is organizing a party to raise money to pay all the various fines the protagonists have incurred throughout the movie.

Live Action TV

• At the end of practically every episode of The Benny Hill Show Benny is chased by a larger and larger crowd, to a fast rendition of Für Elise.
• The Dukes of Hazzard sometimes (but not always) used this technique. When this trope was employed, one of the regular characters (most often, Bo and Luke and not always in the General Lee) would chase the villians, but the villians would be able to keep ahead of the Duke boys before the other Dukes, Rosco and Boss, and Enos would join in the chase and ultimately run the bad guys off the road to capture them.

Tabletop RPG

• Paranoia adventure The Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues. At the end of the adventure the PCs are returning to Alpha Complex. They're pursued by the Cyberpunks, the Nouvelle Vaguers, the Studio Engineers, hostile natives, various joke monsters and all of the Vulture craft the Computer can scrape together.

Theatre

• In On the Town, the chase starts with a little old lady trying to get Gabey arrested for tearing a poster down in the New York City Subway. To her and a policeman are added Hildy's boss going after her for stealing a cab after he fired her, the man who built the dinosaur skeleton Claire and Ozzie destroyed, and finally Claire's judge fiancé, who does not understand why the protagonists have gotten themselves into so much trouble.

Video Games

• Mass aggro situations in MMORPGs can wind up like this very quickly.