In media, certain human activities are not portrayed in a manner one might think of as realistic, even in an otherwise realistic setting. While national or global economics may be portrayed unrealistically out of a case of research failure, on a more personal level, economics is often portrayed unrealistically for other reasons.
Perhaps due to the Rule of Cool or the Rule of Funny, certain aspects of main characters may be portrayed unrealistically. They may be identified with a particular item of clothing, odd habits, needing to eat more to live than an average person could consume safely, etc. Some characters become Wish Fulfillment and are given abilities or advantages which the fandom would enjoy possessing themselves. The Rule of Drama typically requires that a character be sympathetic and find themselves in undesirable circumstances. This acts to help prevent characters from becoming annoyingly one dimensional or unexciting. One way to do that without threatening the character directly is to create a financial difficulty or cause trouble with possessions, supplies, or food that one might trade for money, and the more painful, embarrassing, humiliating, or awkward, the better.
Life for both protagonists and villains can be harsh and cruel, but there is an insurance policy for recurring characters: Status Quo Is God. No matter how completely a humorous event devastates a character's finances or health, this, along with creative license, allows the author to restore them to their old circumstances. But Status Quo Is God cuts both ways. A character who is normally not wealthy can win history's largest lottery prize, but if so, they are likely to lose it within the next few episodes if not sooner. And just because a character can afford the loss of their home every other month and their clothes every other day does not mean they can afford a lifestyle where this happens less often.
Common forms of this include:
- Financial difficulties are caused by the plot, character development, and one's enemies, not the characters' own actions. Due to a combination of the Rule of Drama, the Rule of Funny, and Status Quo Is God, A character seems to have temporary financial troubles (usually lasting one episode or less) despite being financially stable for the rest of the series, both before and after.
- A character seems to have permanent financial troubles, regardless of earnings and assets.
- A character never seems to have financial or logistics troubles unless their adversaries cause it, or when absolutely required by the plot.
- The amount of money available for a particular expenditure is independent of other expenses, income, or logical need. For example, a character seems to have funding to allow them to spend unlimited quantities of money in one or all areas of their life without any lasting consequences. May be lampshaded or justified if others begin to suspect something suspicious is going on. In extreme cases, a character seems to have wealth beyond what one might expect to be physically possible within a given economy, consuming vast fortunes in every episode without any apparent significant impact to their bottom line.
- A character is expected to accomplish a task that usually requires an investment in equipment, supplies, etc. on a budget that would normally be almost useless in that effort.
- The economy just doesn't operate on normal principles.
Not to be confused with Hollywood Accounting, which is where a film studio makes up expenses to weasel out of paying anything based on a percentage of profit.
Sub-tropes:
Tropes where the character's financial troubles are caused by something external to their own actions:
- Broke Episode: An episode where the characters run out of money and have to make ends meet.
Tropes where the financial troubles are permanent, irrespective of earnings and assets:
Tropes where the characters have no financial or logistics troubles unless their adversaries or plot requirements cause it:
- Infinite Stock For Sale
- Infinite Supplies
- No Delays for the Wicked: The capacity of the villainous organizations to flawlessly perform their evil outright violates common sense or even laws of physics.
- Off Screen Villain Dark Matter: The villains can afford expensive equipment even though they're never seen committing any successful robberies.
Tropes where a character appears to be able to spend unlimited quantities of money in one or all areas of their life without any lasting consequences:
- Arbitrarily Large Bank Account
- Fiction 500: A character is wealthier than is possible in real life.
- "Friends" Rent Control: Characters live in a house or apartment that ought to be beyond their apparent income level but for some reason isn't.
- Improbable Food Budget
- One-Hour Work Week
- Organization with Unlimited Funding
- Suspicious Spending
- Unlimited Wardrobe: A character is always seen wearing a different outfit.
- Where Does He Get All Those Wonderful Toys?
Tropes where the character is expected to accomplish their tasks on an unrealistically small budget or set of resources:
Tropes where the local economy doesn't work normally:
- Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: In a video game, the stuff you need to buy gets more expensive as you progress.
- Artistic License – Economics: The work's depiction of economics does not match how economics work in real life.
- Bulk-Buy Only
- Command & Conquer Economy
- Fiction Business Savvy: Basically any product you can come up with will sell.
- Global Currency
- Global Currency Exception
- Karl Marx Hates Your Guts: In a video game, you can't make a profit by selling goods you bought.
- Majority-Share Dictator: One person gaining just over half the shares of a company gives them unlimited powers over said company.
- Money for Nothing: Getting money is easy, spending it is next to impossible.
- Money Sink
- Post-Scarcity Economy
- Ridiculous Exchange Rates
- Ridiculous Future Inflation: In the future, everything will be way more expensive than they are now.
- Undisclosed Funds: It isn't specified exactly how much money a person pays or has to pay.
- Zillion-Dollar Bill: A dollar bill with a value much higher than any existing dollar bill.
Examples not fitting any of the above:
Anime & Manga
- Toriko: Inflation is practically a way of life in the series, especially when the main character eats and charges everything to his gold card (which has no limit).
Films — Live-Action
- Brink!: A plot point because of Andy's decision to skate for money as his father loses his job and the family needs a source of income. Despite that, the home is pretty impressive for what's perceived as a possibly lower middle class income family.
- Colossal: Gloria is broke enough to scrimp on food after a year out of work, yet has enough for certain supplies, phone service, and a plane ticket.
- UHF: While $75,000 isn't chump change, especially in 1989, it's treated as an insurmountable obstacle at first by people who are running what is, by that point, the #1 station in their market. They seem to run non-stop original programming and films at their own expense and have plenty of sponsors and commercials to support them. Basically, if they can afford to get Gorbachev over to do some mud wrestling, they can probably come up with $75,000. Of course, a dramatic last-minute telethon is much more entertaining than watching a television station manage its assets for an hour, so Rule of Drama and Rule of Fun rightly win the day.
- Under the Tuscan Sun:
- Frances gets $300,000 from the sale of her house, and isn't implied to have a great deal more sitting around. The villa she buys must be worth a million Euro...at least, not counting the renovation with crew. It doesn't quite add up.
- The scene where she makes her offer to the original owner heavily implies that it's a rather paltry sum. She's only sold the house because a pigeon flies over and... eliminates on her, which the owner takes to be a sign from God (or something like that). Francis goes over things like renovation expenses, as well, though it's never quite explained how much she actually has.
Literature
- Stage-Land: The Comic Man manages to make a living somehow despite giving away all the goods in his shop for free.
- Variable Star: The time travel gambit, Joel's sudden wealth... what does any of it matter when they're traveling 80 light years and everyone's going to be a dirt farmer at the other end? And how do the backers expect to profit? However, this reflects the same thing that happened with the colonization of the Americas, particularly the English colonies. Companies were founded and funded with the hopes of making big profits... somehow. Most didn't pan out.
Live-Action TV
- The Baby-Sitters Club (2020): In "Hello, Camp Moosehead! - Part 1", the arts counselor tells the campers that they have to buy camp-provided shirts to tie-dye, and the prices are exorbitant: $35 USD for a crewneck (regular) t-shirt, $50 USD for a sweatshirt. One little girl gets frozen out of the activity because her parents couldn't afford to send any extra money with her, and Claudia and Dawn later discuss how unfair this is.
- Black Mirror: With how much a dual-income, seemingly middle-class couple struggles to afford even the basic $300/month plan that Amanda starts off with, it seems that this trope is at play in "Common People". It can also be applied to the fact that the couple never appear to majorly adjust their lifestyle despite that struggle, apart from cutting back their discretionary spending and planning on Mike working crazy levels of overtime forever. Namely, fans have pointed out that they seem to live in a rather nice home that's also somewhat large for two people - selling and downgrading to a cheap rental, or keeping their home but taking on one or more roommates, would likely help just as much, if not more than Mike working longer hours. Similarly, neither Mike nor Amanda are ever shown looking for better-paying work or attempting to upgrade their skills to draw a larger income. Mike literally turns to self-harming on livestreams to make money, without the pair so much as discussing, say, moving, or any other potential ways to cut down expenses or increase income.
- Castle (2009): China buying up US debt has been a right wing talking point for years, but China calling it in as the inciting incident of "Linchpin" couldn't cause an economic collapse. That's not how international finance works.
- Defying Gravity: In order for the space program to get ten billion in funding For Science!, the Antares crew is supposed to do a candy commercial from space. There's no indication of Ridiculous Future Inflation, so how could it possibly be worth that much?
- Liv and Maddie: In the Season 3 premiere, Maddie and Joey buy last-minute plane tickets to Los Angeles from Milwaukee, which costs roughly at least $300, and then when in Los Angeles, Maddie follows this by buying a ticket to Australia, which costs at least $1,000. The show makes no attempt to explain how two unemployed 15-16-year-olds could afford upwards of $1,600 in plane tickets.
Probably, Liv is acting Aunt Pennybags behind the scenes. Her four-year stint in Hollywood earned her enough money to run her family on the current scale for a few years, if not for life, so as long as Liv is willing to support her financially, one adventure or two would not be a problem. Also, she finished filming a movie and released a few songs both as an individual and as part of a band by that time; those all add up. This is not, however, expressly explained, and Maddie still spent an extra thousand dollars on her own accord.
Hammerspace may be in effect because the Rooneys, especially Joey and Parker, tend to obtain and have things they shouldn't logically have in their possession. The same might be true for Maddie as well. That's also not getting into how Parker was able to build a military-grade tunnel in Los Angeles, materials for which are near-impossible for him to even acquire without a ton of money, or even salvage.
Visual Novels
- Daughter for Dessert: MC uses $250,000 that Lainie swindled out of her family lawyer to: a) launch his diner; and b) keep it open through nearly two decades of slow business. In reality, the startup costs of a diner would eat up well over half of that sum, and even if the diner loses only $5,000 per month, the money would run out well before the ten-year mark.
- Double Homework: In Johanna’s and Tamara’s epilogue, the boutique that Tamara opens makes enough money for them to buy a house (not a big one, but good-sized). A few months of sales from a small, new retail outlet is not nearly enough for a down payment on a house, especially with a startup loan to pay back—to say nothing about the credit score required for a home loan, which three teenagers probably wouldn’t have.
- Melody (2019): The fancy perfume that Melody wants to give Amy for her birthday. She and MC can give it as a joint gift... if MC took Amy up on her offer to pay him extra for the threefold increase in his workload. It’s a stretch that a college student who doesn’t work and a music tutor who teaches three classes a week can afford a perfume whose real-life counterpart costs about US $150 for a 3.4-ounce bottle.
Web Originals
- Imperium Offtopicum: Ironically, the economy gets wackier the more "realistic" the model is (with the qualified exception of Sonereal's, but those are Harder Than Hard).
Western Animation
- Futurama: There's been zero inflation since Fry was frozen, so most things cost about the same as they did in 1999. But even though inflation somehow hasn't existed for the last thousand years, interest has, so the 93 cents Fry left in his bank account (briefly) turn him into a billionaire.
- Phineas and Ferb: Over the course of the summer, the Flynn-Fletcher family takes at least two family trips to London, a vacation in Hawaii, a road-trip in a rented RV, and a trip to Africa. Apparently, they run a very successful antique shop.
- The Proud Family: Oscar runs a factory for his snacks and the only staff are himself and Mr. Chips the monkey. Considering how poorly his product does, and how abysmal his financial situation is compared to Wizard Kelly or the Boulevardezes, it would otherwise be impossible for him to maintain his factory even with free labor from a skilled monkey.
- Star Wars: The Clone Wars: In "Crisis at the Heart", the Republic is in urgent need of funding for their military efforts. Governments relying on loans from banks to finance their wars was a thing back in the 17th century. Not so much in the modern era, where money is recognized as a dream created by governments.
