The superharmonic instability is pervasive in large-amplitude water-wave problems and numerical simulations have predicted a close connection between it and crest instabilities and wave breaking. In this paper we present a nonlinear theory, which is a generic nonlinear consequence of superharmonic instability. The theory predicts the nonlinear behaviour witnessed in numerics, and gives new information about the nonlinear structure of large-amplitude water waves, including a mechanism for noisy wave breaking.