History Main / CuttingCorners

* A ''WesternAnimation/RobotChicken'' sketch has NASA reciving only $1 for their annual budget, so they "go back to basics" by trying to send monkeys into space in various ways.

'''Dipper:''' I think the sky tram is broken. Also most of my bones.
--> '''Stan''': Hah! This guy!

** The episode "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS16E13MobileHomer Mobile Homer]]" has Marge cutting the family's budget and keeping a nest egg after Homer is denied life insurance, such as buying imitation cereal and coffee, having Maggie conserve her pacifier and not allowing Homer to use even fake money to buy beer.

** "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS10E23ThirtyMinutesOverTokyo Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo]]" has the family attending a seminar to help them save money after Snake robs their digital bank account. The host shows a photo of him on a fancy yacht with beautiful women and notes that he got the yacht on a bargain because it smells like cat pee, and that the women used to be men.

'''Dipper:''' I think the sky tram is broken. Also most of my bones.

* The film of ''Film/ASoundOfThunder'' makes an important plot point of mentioning that the [[TropeMaker trope-making]] and [[TropeNamer trope-naming]] ButterflyOfDoom situation from the original novella normally wouldn't happen because of a bio-filter that the TimeMachine has, but the CorruptCorporateExecutive running the Time Safari company shut it down to save on electrical bill money.

* A ''WesternAnimation/RobotChicken'' sketch has NASA reciving only $1 for their annual budget, so they "go back to basics" by trying to send monkeys into space in various ways.

* Rossweisse from ''LightNovel/HighSchoolDXD'' is one cheap Valkyrie. She only shops at 100 Yen stores ($2 Shops) and considers them a good first stop on a date, is seen fighting with old ladies for sale items, and only ever buys clothes on clearance - when Issei hits her with [[ClothingDamage Dress Break]], she's so upset she can't replace her outfit at the same price she [[SkewedPriorities forgets to cover herself]]. This is eventually revealed to be because Odin pays his Valkyries a criminally miserly wage; Rossweisse is easily enticed to ''formally defect'' when Rias simply offers her a better benefits package.

* An episode of ''WesternAnimation/HouseOfMouse'' has ScroogeMcDuck buying the club and performing all kinds of cost-cutting ways to save and make money, including having the lights become coin-operated, greatly decreasing the food supply and seating all the guests at one table. Later, Mickey tries to give him a taste of his own medicine by having the cartoons shown a tiny television and cutting off the electricity, but it backfires when [[YourApprovalFillsMeWithShame Scrooge commends him for it.]]

** "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS4E12MargeVsTheMonorail Marge vs. the Monorail]]": As part of his swindle, Lyle Lanley cut corners everywhere on the monorail: it had bad breaks, bad wiring, no fire extinguishers, the vehicle was itself recycled from a World's Fair [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking and the celebrity guest of one of the previous openings was pretty lousy]].

** It is eventually showcased on its continuation ''Literature/TheLostWorld1995'' that [=InGen=] couldn't do things well even on Site-B: for starters, [[SwissCheeseSecurity the computers installed on the Site have security so lax than anybody who fails repeatedly on hacking them will be pretty much provided with a free user password via the computer allowing them to reset it]], and the biggest doozie on the novel: [[spoiler:[=InGen=] was so cheap and careless in the disposing of the bodies of those dinosaurs that died at some point of the incubation process (they just dumped the bodies somewhere without even bothering to burn them), that ''all of the dinosaurs on the island'' are doomed to die by prion disease (the carnivores gorged themselves on the dead, rotting bodies and the disease will eventually reach the herbivores via infected wounds)]].

* On ''Series/KitchenNightmares'', one possible reason for the issues a restaurant might be facing is that the owner has been trying to reduce costs in ways that compromise food safety and/or quality.

* ''Film/{{Red}}'' lampshades the fact that government bureaucracies contract out important work to lowest bidders who tend to cut corners. This leads to absurdities like a top secret file room being protected by a state-of-the-art security door while the surrounding walls are made of cheap drywall that can be broken through with a single kick.

* ''Film/CapricornOne'': The reason why the astronauts are yanked out of their rocket to Mars right before launch, forced to pretend that they are flying to Mars ([[FakedMoonLandingHoax while being filmed on a studio]]) and [[spoiler:will be killed by the GovernmentConspiracy]] is because of the CrookedContractor who built the parts for the "Capricorn One" mission (who was also the lowest bidder) manufacturing a crappy life-support system [[spoiler:and re-entry heat shield]].

* In ''Film/{{Backdraft}}'' a CorruptCorporateExecutive and a CorruptPolitician conspired to implement unnecessary cut backs in the fire department. This resulted in the closing of multiple fire stations and the two men then made lots of money redeveloping the buildings. However, this left the fire department critically undermanned and a number of fire fighters died as a result because they had to fight dangerous fires without adequate backup, [[spoiler: and this triggers "Axe" Adcox's KillItWithFire-laden RoaringRampageOfRevenge]]..

** "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS10E23ThirtyMinutesOverTokyo Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo]]" has the family attending a seminar to help them save money after Snake robs their digital bank account. The host shows a photo of him on a fancy yacht with beautiful women and notes that he got the yacht on a bargain because it smells like cat pee, and that the women [[{{Squick}} used to be men]].

* ''Disney/BigHero6'': Allstair Krei is described by Professor Callahan as this when he approaches Hiro about investing his his microbots. [[spoiler:He speaks from personal experience, as it was him ignoring an irregularity in his portal experiment that led to the assumed loss of Callahan's daughter, something he tries to kill him for.]]

Somebody, such as a cheapskate or someone in financial trouble, needs to save money desperately. He does so buy conserving his money almost ridiculously by refusing to spend any money or buying extremely cheap items.

* On ''WesternAnimation/HeyArnold'', this is the cause of a teachers' strike at P.S. 118.

* Principal Pixiefrog from ''WesternAnimation/MyGymPartnersAMonkey'' sometimes does this, one example being having the school's Arctic wing melt and flood the halls because he cut off their air conditioning during a heat wave.

NoRealLifeExamplesPlease!

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* In ''Film/{{Backdraft}}'' a CorruptCorporateExecutive and a CorruptPolitician conspired to implement unnecessary cut backs in the fire department. This resulted in the closing of multiple fire stations and the two men then made lots of money redeveloping the buildings. However, this left the fire department critically undermanned and a number of fire fighters died as a result because they had to fight dangerous fires without adequate backup, [[spoiler: and this triggers Ax's RoaringRampageOfRevenge]]..

* While AdaptedOut of the movie, both the book and the TelltaleGames game of ''VideoGame/JurassicPark'' make an explicit mention of the fact that the technique of using [[LegoGenetics frog DNA to "patch up" the missing sequences of dinosaur DNA]] was a cheap option which was pretty much doomed to cause unpredictable mutations (the movie shows one of said mutations, causing some female dinos to become male, but it doesn't mentions that it was the cheaper option).