History GodzillaThreshold / RealLife

** This does exist for drugs if they are specifically known as drugs of abuse. In extreme cases, sometimes requiring being enrolled in a trial, one could be prescribed: ecstasy for PTSD and major treatment-resistant depression,[[note]]This, incidentally, should be distinguished from the administration of ecstasy and low-dose LSD--yes, ''that'' LSD--for PTSD, which (as of the mid-2010s) has been shown to be extremely and permanently effective on all patients, in combination with therapy, but remains experimental.[[/note]] opiates for treatment-resistant depression, psilocybin for intense migraine or cluster headaches and methamphetamine for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The condition has to be ''so'' severe that ''all other'' medication approaches (everything from antidepressants to antipsychotics to anticonvulsants to every possible cocktail of them) and doses ''and'' all non-medication approaches (everything from cognitive behavioral therapy to electroshock) have either failed, are failing, or bear too much risk for the patient ''and'' the addiction that will result from opiates or the potentially fatal side effects of a dose of ecstasy are better outcomes than suicide or disability so severe the individual is literally bedridden or suicidal.

*** The very first human inoculation against the disease. Pasteur wasn't sure it would work, and in fact it could have infected young Joseph Meister... But as he had already been bitten by a rabid dog the worst the inoculation could do was to kill him faster due the additional infection, thus he proceeded. Never mind that, not being a licensed physician, he could have suffered prosecution for it. In the end it worked, and you just don't prosecute someone for successfully curing what until then had been an incurable disease.

** Psychosurgery is still used today for extreme cases of depression or obsessive-compulsive disorder among others. When first described, lobotomy was seen as a progress so much its inventor, António Egas Moniz, received the Nobel Prize for Medicine on 1949.

* Any scenario that could theoretically lead to a [[WorldWarIII Global Thermonuclear War]]. (And to a lesser degree, anything that causes extensive use of biological weapons.) The concept of MutuallyAssuredDestruction however is an attempt at ''averting'' the trope, proposing that ''no-one'' could win any large scale use of nuclear weapons and that there is no possible way the Threshold could actually be reached.

By way of illustration of the commitment of the US military to this plan there was a standing order that the atomic bombs should be used as soon as they were "made ready". The expected rate was calculated to be three bombs per month up through at least November. At the time of the Japanese surrender, a third atomic bomb was being loaded for transport at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico. When the surrender notice came in, the shipment was stopped and President Truman asserted that there was to be no further use of nuclear weapons without his direct approval.\\

** As the Civil War raged on, freed black men began joining the Union Army; as many as 100,000 would eventually be under arms, and Lincoln gave them credit for helping to turn the tide of the war. The Confederacy had even more black men within its boundaries, but only 5,000 would ever wear the gray uniform[[note]]and mostly in noncombat roles, whatever Confederate apologists claim today[[/note]] because, as one Georgia official admitted, freeing slaves to fight for your independence to maintain slavery was basically giving up on the entire premise of the war.[[note]]Some of those black Confederates were marched through the streets of Richmond after their training; the public jeered and pelted them.[[/note]]

* The TropeNamer is a nuclear metaphor. In fact, Godzilla started as a purely antagonistic force and a metaphor of having a nuke used against you, then became metaphor for the idea of having to use a nuclear weapon once it was realized it would be cool if he fought other monsters.

So, after British sailors had boarded French ships docked in British ports, another group of British warships cornered four French battleships, six destroyers and a seaplane tender at an Algerian port. After they asked nicely several times for the ships to be turned over to them and were turned down, Admiral James Somerville sent a priority message to Churchill asking what he should do next. "Resolve the matter quickly", he was told, whereupon he gave the French one last hour to comply with Britain's demands. When they continued holding out after that, he gave the orders, and the British opened fire on the French ships, ''their own putative ally'', sinking all of them and killing almost 1,300 French sailors in the process.\\

The French were upset, to put it mildly, which the Germans tried to exploit for propaganda purposes, selling the British as untrustworthy barbarians and fickle allies; bitterness about this in France persisted for years after the war, particularly among the sailors' families, since the attack was ruled an act of war and not a crime. The example did, however, spur the French to scuttle some of their own remaining ships a few months later when they learned the Germans were going to seize them; and behind closed doors the Germans were grimly impressed by this show of determination to continue the war.

* The sheer amount of War material delivered by the United States is simply mind boggling. Hundreds of thousands of aircraft, hundreds of thousands of armoured vehicles, millions of small arms. One ammunition plant alone produced over a billion bullets in under a year. In 4 years American shipyards mass produced more Aircraft Carriers than the rest of the world had combined. The single minded focus the United States took towards war production resulted in guns bearing the mark of such un-gun companies as IBM (computers), Singer (sewing machines) and Smith-Corona (Typewriters).\\

The threat of the Axis powers didn't just provoke the United States into using nuclear weapons, but to create them effectively from scratch based only on theoretical arguments from prominent scientists at the onset of the war. The inflation adjusted cost of the Manhattan project was $20 billion dollars for the weapon and ''another'' $20 billion for the delivery system (the B-29). Neither of which had any guarantee of working when the projects commenced in 1942.

* In a strange subversion of this trope, Nazi Germany didn't itself pass the Godzilla Threshold until late in the war, well beyond the point where it would do any good. The perceived weakness of their enemies combined with the string of early victories convinced the Germans that the war could be won with only a partial economic mobilization. Such investments as long range heavy bombers and a nuclear weapons program were never seriously considered because a "short" war would have no need of such things. The Nazis also never broke with tradition and tapped their female population to work in the factories as it was deemed more important for them to raise the next generation of Nazi super-children. Despite all the heavy bombing, Nazi war production only reached its peak in 1944(!) after all the slack industrial capacity was finally turned over to the war effort and after the FascistButInefficient prior organization of the economy got replaced by the - equally ruthless but at least somewhat competent - Albert Speer.

Communism clearly represented an existential threat to the United States. Through the mid-1960's, fully half the Federal government's total budget was for defense. This government spending was funded by upper income marginal tax rates of 50-90%, something considered unthinkable today without the specter of global communism. Much like in World War 2, the United States took arms production UpToEleven, producing over 30,000 nuclear weapons and the bombers, missiles and submarines needed to deliver them.

* Similarly in Hong Kong, the government tends to have very large reserves and a reluctance to use them or interfere in the market. The one major exception is during the 1997 Asian financial crisis, right after Hong Kong's handover to China. Speculators including "the man who broke the Bank of England" Soros himself considered the city vulnerable and tried the same and attacked the Hong Kong dollar. The Hong Kong government (including the head of the central bank, Joseph "[[RedBaron Finance Tsar]]" Yam) massively mobilized its US dollar reserves to support the Hong Kong dollar, and spent $120 billion (equivalent to $15 billion USD, or $24 billion USD adjusting for inflation) buying up shares on the Hong Kong stock exchange to prevent a market collapse. It's still widely known to Hongkongers as the battle to "beat the [[NeverSmileAtACrocodile big crocodile]]".

* The King of Swaziland attempted to invoke this, declaring a five-year moratorium on sex with girls under 18 due to the AIDS epidemic in Southern Africa. Then he [[{{Hypocrite}} broke it with a seventeen year-old girl]].

* After UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, the new German constitution includes an article that makes it the ''duty'' of all German citizens to use any means neccessary to prevent any government from overthrowing the constitution and establishing another totalitarian regime, which includes the use of armed resistance. Part of this may have been due to an earlier invocation of this trope that ended catastrophically for Germany -- in the Weimar Constitution, during emergencies, the Chancellor could be allowed to rule by decree if the Reichstag consented for the duration of the emergency. Hitler took advantage of this to take over power following the Reichstag Fire.
* In the UK the military maintains a tradition of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_of_last_resort letters of last resort]]. In effect these are the "final orders" to the Captains of the four nuclear-equipped Vanguard-class submarines to be opened in the event of a complete breakdown in command and control as a result of nuclear attack and which nobody knows except the Prime Minister themselves. Technically ANYTHING can be ordered but in general the possibilities fall into four categories. One of which is to accept that deterrence has failed and not retaliate and one is to place the submarine under the command of an allied nation. The last two basically amount to the Godzilla threshold in that either a full nuclear retaliation is ordered or, perhaps most horrifyingly, for the Captain to simply "use their best judgement" which in effect amounts to a freedom to do anything he deems necessary.

** In the early 2000's in Wisconsin, Chronic Wasting Disease (the Deer equivalent of Mad Cow) was starting to spread and become a problem. If left unchecked, the disease risked wiping out the deer population to the point where it may not recover. The Wisconsin DNR first tried to find a cure for the disease, or at least find what was causing it in the first place in hopes of preventing further infections. The methods didn't work, so they had no choice: They extended Deer Season by a week and ordered for hunters in the state to shoot more deer than usually allowed in order to thin the numbers to extremely low populations (and to make sure that nobody consumed the infected deer.) Thanks to careful monitoring by the DNR, the deer would recover to normal populations within a few years, and now the disease is barely even a problem anymore.
** In 2001, when a single case of foot and mouth was detected at an Irish farm, not only were all the animals at said farm culled, but the ''Irish Special Forces'' were sent in to kill all the wildlife in the area that could potentially be infected.
* The Crusades started when the Patriarch of Constantinople asked the Pope for help to fight off the Turks. However, at that point the Great Schism between Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodox Christianity was in living memory, and the Pope and the Patriarch had mutually excommunicated each other, each sect considering the other to be heretical. For a religious leader to even consider the help of people he considered heretics, you know it's this trope. The aftermath was [[NiceJobBreakingItHero exactly how you'd expect this trope to go]].

* Scarily enough, this is what the human body will do to ''itself'' when facing a severe infection. The immune response starts with proportionate responses like antibody production or fever... but when that doesn't work, the response gets cranked up to such high levels of inflammation that tissue damage ensues. At a certain point the person might actually die, but can't do anything about their automatic bodily processes shutting down an infection at all costs. What most people don't know is that the majority of modern disease-causing pathogens don't kill in and of themselves- the body does itself in, sort of like how it's NotTheFallThatKillsYou.
* The point of Kate Bornstein's book ''[[http://www.amazon.com/Hello-Cruel-World-Alternatives-Suicide/dp/1583227202 Hello Cruel World]]'', meant to provide alternatives to suicide for teens; some reviewers complained that said alternatives include things like drugs, alcohol and making a deal with the devil, but the idea is that if someone is considering killing themselves, almost anything, even if not the best choice in general, would be a better option. Then again, the point of the book is not to make the teens self-harm, but to distract them and keep them alive long enough for more "medically accepted" interventions to take place.

** This was even crazier during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII and later the UsefulNotes/ColdWar, at which times the country could be sealed into "the Redoubt", effectively a chain of fortresses in the mountains staffed with half a million men and equipped with anything from heavy weapons and tanks to DCA and artillery, all camouflaged in the Alps' charming scenery. Plus 2 months worth of supplies to hold a siege.[[note]]This plan was enough to have Germany think twice about invading Switzerland in 1940, at the height of their might. In the end they didn't deem it worth it.[[/note]]
** In the spirit of the redoubt, bridges and tunnels were set-up with demolition charges during the UsefulNotes/ColdWar to cut off all easy entries to the country, basically leaving potential invaders with the choice between mountains, lakes, rivers or more mountains.[[note]]They were deemed too dangerous and expensive (while it is also possible to attain the same effect with mobile equipment) in 1991 and the last ones were disarmed and removed in 2014.[[/note]]

* During three successive years of abnormally low drought in the mid-2010s, the city of Cape Town, South Africa, began imposing stricter and stricter restrictions on water use—no watering lawns or filling pools, things like that. But by late 2017 the rains had not returned and the city's reservoirs were mostly open sand pits. So, the city announced that if the situation continued, there would have to be a Day Zero, when it would stop supplying water to everywhere but its downtown and essential services (like hospitals) elsewhere in the city. As of January 2018 that date was set for April; fortunately the citizens' compliance with the water restrictions and some rain refilling the reservoirs has, as of this writing, pushed Day Zero into 2019 and averted the trope.
* In September 2018, Hurricane Florence began barreling towards the East Coast of the United States with North and South Carolina in its sights. With wind speeds around 140 MPH, a 500 mile radius and the potential for catastrophic destruction on the coast, North Carolina actually invoked its first ever in memory state evacuation to force everyone off the barrier islands (Outer Banks, Hatteras Island, etc.)

* Both houses of the U.S. Congress have the power of "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contempt_of_Congress#Inherent_contempt inherent contempt]]": to jail a witness for refusing to comply with their subpoenas ... ''without'' the involvement of the other two branches of government (normally, that compliance is enforced through the courts, which takes longer). It has only been used once, by the Senate in the 1930s; [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurney_v._MacCracken the Supreme Court upheld it]].[[note]]As of this writing (May 2019), the House is considering its use on certain noncompliant officials of the Trump administration.[[/note]]
* Sino-Vietnamese relations have been historically ''turbulent'' - that is to say, China attempts to invade Vietnam nearly once every dynasty. The threshold was crossed when Phan Bội Châu struck up an alliance with the Kuomintang to get Vietnam out of the Vichy French regime's hands. China later became a very important strategic ally to Vietnam in the ensuing fight (the Indochina War and Vietnam War) in an EnemyMine situation, with the Communist Bloc in an united front. Four years after the fall of Saigon/Vietnamese reunification, the Chinese and Vietnamese went right back to shooting at each other.

* For the American federal political system, two words: constitutional convention. There's only ever been one before that replaced the Articles of Confederation with the United States Constitution. While plenty of people have proposed holding a another convention to update the Constitution, there's never been a serious movement to do so because everyone is terrified of what the new Constitution might look like based on who holds and attends it. If one were to be held, it would an admission by all sides that American politics are hopelessly broken beyond repair and the only possible solution is to throw the current system away and start from scratch.

** A [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_of_no_confidence#Parliamentary_systems confidence motion]], should it fail, brings down the government and forces new elections. For this reasons many countries that allow them limit who may bring them, and how often.[[note]]And when the opposition brings them, they usually fail since the ruling party or coalition unites rather than have to face new elections[[/note]]
** More extreme than a confidence motion is the option available to the government: [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prorogation prorogation]], basically asking the head of state to dissolve Parliament. Normally this is only done after elections have been called, when it makes sense (or as a break between sessions of the same parliament). But in some circumstances it has been done as a response to a difficult situation: [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Australian_constitutional_crisis#Dismissal Australia's 1975 constitutional crisis]], where the Governor-General took it upon himself to do the proroguing rather than do so on the PM's advice (largely because he had dismissed the PM, itself a Godzilla-threshold move) and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008%E2%80%9309_Canadian_parliamentary_dispute twice during Canada's 2008–2009 government]], without elections, when the ruling minority sought to avoid confidence votes and inconvenient investigations.\\

* The Medelin Cartel headed by the infamous Pablo Escobar was [[NGOSuperpower so powerful]] in the 80-90s. So powerful, they could afford to fight and take out the government itself. The supreme court, murdered. The president, assassinated. Policemen got a bounty on their head. A special incorruptible task force numbering 200 people, 30 were murdered within 2 weeks. Ultimately a shadowy vigilante group calling themselves 'Los Pepes' were the ones to dismantle his cocaine empire. They didn't care about the law, fighting Escobar's brutality with brutality. They were even likely to have received government assistance specifically to take down the infamous kingpin. You know you're past the Godzilla Threshold when the government itself sanctioned a vigilante group who'd PayEvilUntoEvil.

* On 1919, faced with the Spartacist uprising, the Weimar leaders, most of them belonging to the SPD, asked the ''Freikorps'', fiercely anti-democratic, far-right paramilitary organizations, to suppress the revolts, since the official military wasn't able to do so.

** There exists a drug called Melarsoprol, often informally nicknamed by the layman's-terms description of its recipe: "Arsenic in Antifreeze". Yes, that's mixing two poisons, each lethal in different ways, and the resulting substance is still every bit as lethally toxic[[note]]5% to 9% die ''from the treatment''[[/note]], but it's the only consistently effective cure for African trypanosomiasis, also known as "sleeping-sickness", a parasitic disease caused by microbes that are spread by specific insect-bites, most famously the tsetse fly.

** This does exist for drugs if they are specifically known as drugs of abuse. In extreme cases, sometimes requiring being enrolled in a trial, one could be prescribed: ecstasy for PTSD and major treatment-resistant depression,[[note]]This, incidentally, should be distinguished from the administration of ecstasy and low-dose LSD--yes, ''that'' LSD--for PTSD, which (as of the mid-2010s) has been shown to be extremely and permanently effective on all patients, in combination with therapy, but remains experimental.[[/note]] opiates for treatment-resistant depression, psilocybin for intense migraine or cluster headaches. The condition has to be ''so'' severe that ''all other'' medication approaches (everything from antidepressants to antipsychotics to anticonvulsants to every possible cocktail of them) and doses ''and'' all non-medication approaches (everything from cognitive behavioral therapy to electroshock) have either failed, are failing, or bear too much risk for the patient ''and'' the addiction that will result from opiates or the potentially fatal side effects of a dose of ecstasy are better outcomes than suicide or disability so severe the individual is literally bedridden or suicidal.

** There exists a drug called Melarsoprol, often informally nicknamed by the layman's-terms description of its recipe: "Arsenic in Antifreeze". Yes, that's mixing two poisons, each lethal in different ways, and the resulting substance is still every bit as lethally toxic, but it's the only consistently effective cure for African trypanosomiasis, also known as "sleeping-sickness", a parasitic disease caused by microbes that are spread by specific insect-bites, most famously the tsetse fly.

*** The Milwaukee Protocol is an experimental treatment for unvaccinated individuals that already present symptoms, and consists in ''putting the patient into a coma and shooting them up with a myriad of drugs''. Side effects include extensive nerve damage... But as it's rabies it can literally do no more harm-and even then, the success (read: survival) rate stands at 4 out of 35 treatments performed to date.

** The Catholic Church, which literally teaches that one can go to Hell for missing Sunday Mass, has canceled public church services.

* Usually, when a company CEO steps down, usually that means it is permanent. In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, Disney gave former CEO Bob Iger informal control of the company to get it through the crisis, even though eh wont hold the title of CEO, in order to ensure that Disney can come back stronger after the pandemic fades.

** Many major sports leagues and sanctioning organizations around the developed world have suspended and postponed their seasons, and in some cases, most notably in the case of the "March Madness" U.S. college basketball tournaments, canceled them altogether (The NCAA, just to be extra safe, canceled all the ''spring'' sports championships as well, which wouldn't otherwise have been held for a couple of months).

** In the modern era, syphilis may not seem like a terribly frightening disease. Yet it was the HIV of its era, potentially causing a dementia-like condition if left untreated. One of the only somewhat effective treatments was mercury injections, which would give you mercury poissoning but help wiht the syphilis.\\

* For the American federal political system, two words: constitutional convention. There's only ever been one before that replaced the Articles of Confederation with the United States Constitution. While plenty of people have proposed holding a another convention to update the Constitution, there's never been a serious movement to do so because everyone is terrified of what the new Constitution might look like based on who holds and attends it.

** In the modern era, syphilis may not seem like a terribly frightening disease. Yet it was the HIV of its era, potentially causing a dementia-like condition if left untreated. One of the only somewhat effective treatments was mercury injections, which certainly caused significant side effects but were preferable to tertiary syphilis.\\

* The UsefulNotes/ColdWar. Western nations often couldn't think of anything worse than seeing another nation fall to Communism, so if keeping the DirtyCommunists out meant backing ruthless right-wing military dictatorships in third world nations, so be it. The Commies for their part didn't have any problems with working with ruthless left-wing dictators to keep American Puppets out of power in various nations. Of course, even by those calculations, sometimes, the Godzilla Threshold wasn't quite met to the extent that going nuclear was worth it, which is why we didn't end up fighting nuclear war over Vietnam, Korea, Cuba, Angola, or any of a dozen other brushfire wars and proxy conflicts during that era. One of those conflicts was Afghanistan, where American political leaders basically thought, "A bunch of Fundamentalist Islamic guerrillas with terrorist tendencies can't possibly make the situation any worse than the Commies are, so let's give them a bunch of free guns."\\

** In the late 1990s, shortly after Apple, six weeks away from bankruptcy, staved that fate off by acquiring [=NextStep=] and thus bringing cofounder Steve Jobs back to run the company. Apple was not out of the woods yet, however, so Jobs got archrival Microsoft to acquire about 10% of the company, thanking its CEO Bill Gates during a live teleconference at one of Apple's events. While from a purely business perspective this might not have counted, from a ''cultural'' perspective it was, as Microsoft and Gates were seen by Apple's many fans as the absolute incarnation of evil at the time.

* As noted on the BannedInChina/UnitedStates page, the United States values free speech highly takes a fairly hard line against any form of censorship from the government with one major exception: [[PaedoHunt child pornography]]. Child porn is practically the only form of speech and media that that is mostly completely illegal to create, consume, or disseminate, something that the courts have consistently upheld in spite of the First Amendment.

* As noted on the BannedInChina/UnitedStates page, the United States values free speech highly takes a fairly hard line against any form of censorship from the government with one major exception: [[PaedoHunt child pornography]]. Child porn is practically the only form of speech and media that where it is mostly completely illegal to create, view, or disseminate, something that the courts have consistently upheld in spite of the First Amendment.

** Cardiopulmonary resuscitation involves forceful, sustained crushing force to the patient's chest, almost always resulting in multiple broken ribs (if done correctly) and quite possibly abdominal distension and aspiration pneumonia. An acceptable risk given that the patient is clinically dead and every effort is now solely focused on keeping oxygenated blood pumping through the brain until defibrillation is possible.

** More extreme than a confidence motion is the option available to the government: [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prorogation prorogation]], basically asking the head of state to dissolve Parliament. Normally this is only done after elections have been called, when it makes sense. But in some circumstances it has been done as a response to a difficult situation: [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Australian_constitutional_crisis#Dismissal Australia's 1975 constitutional crisis]], where the Governor-General took it upon himself to do the proroguing rather than do so on the PM's advice (largely because he had dismissed the PM, itself a Godzilla-threshold move) and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008%E2%80%9309_Canadian_parliamentary_dispute twice during Canada's 2008–2009 government]], without elections, when the ruling minority sought to avoid confidence votes and inconvenient investigations.[[note]]New British PM (as of this writing) Boris Johnson has refused to rule prorogation out as a strategy to get Brexit done[[/note]]

* AncientRome had provisions for this during the Republic: when an enemy appeared invincible and on the verge of overrunning Rome, the Senate chose the man best suited to deal with that enemy and made him a dictator, giving him absolute power for six months and with no legal way to make him pay for anything he did during his term. It usually went well, as they would follow the example of {{Cincinnatus}}, who, upon defeating an enemy coalition that had surrounded the Roman army (thus prompting him being named dictator) within the first half of his term, resigned and returned to his farm, and, after being named dictator AGAIN to deal with a coup, he defeated the coup in one day and immediately resigned AGAIN. Then there's the two times [[UpToEleven that wasn't enough:

** More extreme than a confidence motion is the option available to the government: [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prorogation prorogation]], basically asking the head of state to dissolve Parliament. Normally this is only done after elections have been called, when it makes sense. But in some circumstances it has been done as a response to a difficult situation: [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Australian_constitutional_crisis#Dismissal Australia's 1975 constitutional crisis]], where the Governor-General took it upon himself to do the proroguing rather than do so on the PM's advice (largely because he had dismissed the PM, itself a Godzilla-threshold move) and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008%E2%80%9309_Canadian_parliamentary_dispute twice during Canada's 2008–2009 government]], without elections, when the ruling minority sought to avoid confidence votes and inconvenient investigations.

* Similarly in Hong Kong, the government tends to have very large reserves and a reluctance to use them or interfere in the market. The one major exception is during the 1997 Asian financial crisis, right after Hong Kong's handover to China. Speculators including "the man who broke the Bank of England" Soros himself considered the city vulnerable and tried the same and attacked the Hong Kong dollar. The Hong Kong government massively mobilized its US dollar reserves to support the Hong Kong dollar, and spent $120 billion (equivalent to $15 billion USD, or $24 billion USD adjusting for inflation) buying up shares on the Hong Kong stock exchange to prevent a market collapse. It's still widely known to Hongkongers as the battle to "beat the [[NeverSmileAtACrocodile big crocodile]]".