The code currently assumes that once a block file is 'left', it and its corresponding rev file can be flushed, and won't be written to any further.

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/e8e79958a7b2a0bf1b02adcce9f4d811eac37dfc/src/validation.cpp#L1742-L1743

(Flushing here additionally means to get rid of pre-allocated unused space.)

This is the case for the bl(oc)k files, but it turns out to not be the case for the rev files. During an IBD up to ~200k blocks, the following excerpt (one of several) was encountered (grepping out irrelevancy):
```
[...]
2020-01-07T14:19:09Z Pre-allocating up to position 0x7000000 in blk00013.dat
2020-01-07T14:19:13Z Pre-allocating up to position 0x8000000 in blk00013.dat
2020-01-07T14:19:14Z Pre-allocating up to position 0xf00000 in rev00013.dat
2020-01-07T14:19:16Z Leaving block file 13: CBlockFileInfo(blocks=1099, size=134068483, heights=183531...185655, time=2012-06-08...2012-06-22)
2020-01-07T14:19:16Z Pre-allocating up to position 0x1000000 in blk00014.dat
2020-01-07T14:19:17Z Pre-allocating up to position 0x100000 in rev00014.dat
2020-01-07T14:19:20Z Pre-allocating up to position 0x1000000 in rev00013.dat
2020-01-07T14:19:20Z Pre-allocating up to position 0x2000000 in blk00014.dat
2020-01-07T14:19:24Z Pre-allocating up to position 0x1100000 in rev00013.dat
2020-01-07T14:19:26Z Pre-allocating up to position 0x3000000 in blk00014.dat
2020-01-07T14:19:27Z Pre-allocating up to position 0x1200000 in rev00013.dat
2020-01-07T14:19:30Z Pre-allocating up to position 0x200000 in rev00014.dat
2020-01-07T14:19:33Z Pre-allocating up to position 0x300000 in rev00014.dat
2020-01-07T14:19:35Z Pre-allocating up to position 0x400000 in rev00014.dat
2020-01-07T14:19:37Z Pre-allocating up to position 0x500000 in rev00014.dat
2020-01-07T14:19:39Z Pre-allocating up to position 0x600000 in rev00014.dat
2020-01-07T14:19:42Z Pre-allocating up to position 0x700000 in rev00014.dat
2020-01-07T14:19:43Z Pre-allocating up to position 0x4000000 in blk00014.dat
2020-01-07T14:19:45Z Pre-allocating up to position 0x800000 in rev00014.dat
2020-01-07T14:19:49Z Pre-allocating up to position 0x900000 in rev00014.dat
[...]
```

But the only time we flush (and truncate the files to their correct size) is when we leave a block, and we already left block 13 here, so the rev files above end up with pre-allocated space that is never used. This is related to #17827.

This seems to repeat itself for every file that ended up larger than expected in https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/17887#issuecomment-571591432. (Note: #17887 is not a fix for this issue. #17887 makes the impact much smaller by fixing a separate blow-up bug, but it does not address re-flushing re-opened rev files.)

const Consensus::Params& consensus_params,
    CBlockTreeDB& blocktree,
    std::set<CBlockIndex*, CBlockIndexWorkComparator>& block_index_candidates)
{
    if (!blocktree.LoadBlockIndexGuts(consensus_params, [this](const uint256& hash) EXCLUSIVE_LOCKS_REQUIRED(cs_main) { return this->InsertBlockIndex(hash); }))
        return false;
    
    std::vector<std::pair<int, CBlockIndex*> > vSortedByHeight;
    vSortedByHeight.reserve(m_block_index.size());
    for (const std::pair<const uint256, CBlockIndex*>& item : m_block_index)
    {
        CBlockIndex* pindex = item.second;
        vSortedByHeight.push_back(std::make_pair(pindex->nHeight, pindex));
    }
    sort(vSortedByHeight.begin(), vSortedByHeight.end());
    for (const std::pair<int, CBlockIndex*>& item : vSortedByHeight)
    {
        if (ShutdownRequested()) return false;
        CBlockIndex* pindex = item.second;
        pindex->nChainWork = (pindex->pprev ? pindex->pprev->nChainWork : 0) + GetBlockProof(*pindex);
        pindex->nTimeMax = (pindex->pprev ? std::max(pindex->pprev->nTimeMax, pindex->nTime) : pindex->nTime);