More Than Infinite

"Your Divine Serpent's strength may be infinte, but it's still not enough; for now there is a force beyond infinite!"
Yami Yugi to Dartz, Yu-Gi-Oh!

The scenario is thus: you are facing down a god-like being whose powers really are impossible for you to match. They are infinite in their potential, going way infinitely into googolplex-in-base 13 levels. There is absolutely no way you can defeat it, until...

Some Deus Ex Machina gives you the chance to pull off a wicked combo that somehow calculates your power level past your opponent's; whereas they have infinite power, yours is More Than Infinite, and under that kind of might, they don't stand a chance.

Usually only reserved for a Big Bad that is so massively omnipotent, our mortal protagonists need a miracle to to turn things around. Of course, if you have to use this trope, then you've already got an absurd scenario that strains the Willing Suspension of Disbelief to the shattering point, and/or showing just how Mary Sue/Marty Stu your hero really is.

Not to be confused with Up to Eleven, There Is No Kill Like Overkill, or Over Nine Thousand. Tentatively related to My Kung Fu Is Stronger, but only applies if the being your kung fu is stronger against is an omnipotent being.

[1]

The Infinity+1 Sword does not work this way.

Examples of More Than Infinite include:

Anime and Manga

  • Three examples of this are shown in the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime:
    • First, Yugi Mutou, to defeat a monster with infinite attack, brings out all three Egyptian God Cards, then sacrifices two of them to make the third one - whose power would've already gone to infinite by the two sacrifices - More Than Infinite to crush it.
    • At the end of the Doma arc the Big Bad, Dartz somehow managed to summon a monster with infinite attack points. Yugi responds by having two of his monsters attack, bouncing the attack between then until it reached infinity and then having a third monster attack to exceed infinity and destroy Dartz' monster.
    • During the show's Memory World arc, to defeat the Big Bad Zorc Necrophades, one of Atem's priests (who disturbingly resembled Yugi's grandfather) summoned Exodia, a monster who was apparently so powerful (in the anime, his total ATK was infinite), he needed to be split up into five pieces. Even so, Zorc exploited the fact that Exodia needed the priest's life energy to remain manifest, draining that energy in the fight while he remained More Than Infinite thanks to his power being sustained by the darkness.
    • In the real Yu-Gi-Oh! trading card game all of the examples above would lose to 'The Wicked Avatar', whose ATK is equal to the ATK of the strongest monster on the field plus 100. This is put to the test when it's used in the Yu-Gi-Oh! R manga; it's able to dominate virtually everything used against it, including Kaiba's Blue-Eyes and Yugi's Slifer the Sky Dragon (an Egyptian God whose power level is variable depending on the number of cards in its controller's hand, and who can reduce an opponent's monster's ATK and DEF by 2000, when that monster's summoned, an ability that, of course, did nothing to The Wicked Avatar). It was only taken down by Yugi's Obelisk the Tormentor, after it uses its effect to power up its ATK to infinite. However, in this case, it's a subversion, as the game physics for the manga actually follow real-world mathematics and consider "∞ + 1" to still be equal to "∞", meaning both monsters are considered to have equal ATK and, thus, do each other in.
  • This was bound to happen eventually on Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, the Trope Namer of Beyond the Impossible. In the final showdown, the effectively omnipotent Big Bad throws a Big Bang at the good guys. One of them then absorbs the attack (via Heroic Sacrifice) and channels its power into the good guys' Indescribably Humongous Mecha, making its power More Than Infinite and allowing them to finish off the enemy.
  • In Digimon V-Tamer, Taichi and Zeromaru discover a level of Digivolution beyond Ultimate, appropriately named Super Ultimate. (Note that the "Ultimate" level is called "Mega" in earlier translations).
    • Which makes one conversation in the English dub of the first series rather Hilarious in Hindsight. When Miyotismon becomes VenomMiyotismon, a Mega-level Digimon, the team had up until that point, only seen Digimon as high as Ultimate (or what was called "Ultimate" in the dub) and were completely incredulous that there would be a level beyond Ultimate, saying something to the effect of "What is he, then? Super-Mega-Ultimate!?"
  • Inuyasha: When Sesshoumaru is rendered weaponless, Naraku decides that's the perfect moment to steal the last jewel shard that Sesshoumaru is protecting. He does this by releasing the dark will of the Shikon no Tama itself. Not only is this the most powerful evil in the entire story, but it actually strategies as well, targetting Sesshoumaru's only arm to render him incapable of fighting. Both Inuyasha's Infinity+1 Sword and Sesshoumaru's Healing Shiv Situational Sword are neutralised during the fight culminating in Sesshoumaru being Impaled with Extreme Prejudice through the heart. At that point, Sesshoumaru gets so angry that he pulls a sword right out of his very soul, his true power given physical, weaponised form. Bakusaiga is immediately lampshaded as being something Naraku doesn't stand a chance against and Naraku therefore has to kidnap Rin and trap her inside his body for the rest of the story to ensure Bakusaiga can't end the story with a single swing.

Card Games

  • Magic: The Gathering has many infinite loops that can allow a player to, say, gain infinite life or deal infinite damage, and lots of rule space is devoted to making sure the game doesn't blow up when two of those loops collide. Essentially, "infinity" translates into "whatever really big but still finite number you want", so if your opponent comes along with another infinite loop later on, they can choose a number bigger than the one you chose.
    • Infinite damage loops tend to end when the thing they're damaging (usually a player) runs out of whatever it is that damage depletes (life for players, loyalty for planeswalkers, or toughness for creatures), or when someone renders the damage irrelevant.
    • Infinite loops that perpetuate themselves without any input from players (such as three Faceless Butcher creatures without any other creatures in play, which will repeatedly exile each other and return each other to the battlefield) which don't incrementally progress toward a win condition instead result in a draw if no player can interrupt them.

Fanfic

Literature

  • At the end of a Star Trek: The Next Generation novel trilogy based on the history of the already-omnipotent being Q, he is forced to absorb the equally-powerful Calamarain to become a More Than Infinite composite being to fight off another omnipotent, yet insane, being; the explanation given was that depriving an omnipotent being of his grasp of reality makes him even more omnipotent, essentially meaning Q had to become More Than Infinite to stop a being that's already gone More Than Infinite. (This is not series canon, by the way).

Live Action TV


  • Kamen Rider OOO explains that OOO's name is an infinity symbol plus an O; thus, his true power is literally More Than Infinite. However, he hasn't yet reached this level.

Webcomics

  1. It should be noted that there are degrees of infinity; the number of points in a line is less infinite then the number of curves that can be drawn on a plane, but more infinite than the number of integers; this still doesn't make most "more infinite than infinite" plot points make any sense, though. There's also a notion from mathematics and computer science of something being having unbounded size but still being finite. This just means that the thing, call it Attack Power, could grow to any arbitrarily-large finite number on command, but won't actually become infinite. An unboundedly finite number can still be smaller than any larger number or than any infinity.
This article is issued from Allthetropes. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.