Over the top
"Excessive, exaggerated, or overdone."
The phrase comes directly from First World War trench warfare. "Going over the top" meant literally climbing up and out of the trenches to advance across no man's land toward enemy lines, an extremely dangerous manoeuvre that exposed soldiers to machine gun and artillery fire. By the 1930s, the literal wartime phrase had shifted into general use for anything reckless, extreme, or excessive.
Sources: Documented in First World War military accounts from 1914 to 1918; figurative use recorded from the 1930s, cited in the Oxford English Dictionary.
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