32 ‘That Escalated Quickly’ Moments from History

There might not be a single quote from the movie Anchorman that’s proved quite as timeless as “That escalated quickly.” Not that there’s a lot of competition, since most of the other quotes were worn out by the end of the fiscal quarter thanks to frat bros. “That escalated quickly” sticks around because it holds a certain timelessness, as proven by the fact that it applies to much of history.

The same way someone quickly found themselves impaled on a trident, so did non-fictional people in the past. In fact, a couple times, it might have actually been a trident. As proof of this phenomenon, Redditors shared cause-and-effect combos from history that fit the quote to a T, collected below.