History Main / EconomyCast

* On ''Series/{{NCIS}}'', whenever they have a case that goes into FBI territory it is always something Gibbs' best friend Senior Special Agent Tobias Fornell has been working on for years, no matter what area the investigation is looking into (organized crime, homeland security, catching serial killers, smuggling, etc.). This has been {{Lampshaded}} a few times, once they showed his office was overflowing with paperwork and he complained the weight of the world was on his shoulders. Another time they showed Tony Ziva and [=McGee=] going through his case load and commenting on how diverse it was.

** Not to mention, the hospital appears to employ maybe three nurses tops and zero technicians.

* ''Series/SecretArmy'', from the creator of ''Colditz'', had roughly six german soldiers serving under two officers to track down Allied airmen in the Brussels area.

* As the page quote suggests, this often happened with enemy races on the original series of ''Series/DoctorWho''. It was most painfully obvious with the Daleks, because by the time the show hit the 1970s the producers only had three very beat-up Dalek casings on hand and no money to build more. (The 1972 story "Day of the Daleks", for example, could not hide the fact that the attacking band of Daleks from the future consisted of exactly three Daleks.) Some stories, going back to the very first Dalek adventure "The Daleks", featured (very unconvincing) photo blow-ups of Daleks for background shots. Of course, with the advent of CGI, the new series expends some effort in the opposite direction, showing thousands and thousands of Daleks in one shot at the end of "Bad Wolf" (2005), though the Daleks were reintroduced earlier in the season with a single Dalek (in "Dalek").
** A LampshadeHanging in "Terror of the Zygons" that was very similar to the page quote but actually on screen; the Zygons declare their plan to TakeOverTheWorld and the Doctor replies "Isn't it a bit large for just the six of you?"

Take this trope to its logical extreme and you get a MinimalistCast and often an EternalEmployee. For obvious reasons, it's rare to find this co-existing with LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters.

* ''Series/GameOfThrones'' has the largest cast on television and yet still must struggle with this, given that [[Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire the book series it's adapting]] has [[LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters a cast of thousands]]. To simplify things, large groups that aren't central to the story tend to be represented by one or two characters. Grey Worm represents the Unsullied, Daario Naharis appears to be the only member of the Second Sons, and Meryn Trant represents the King's Guard whenever the King's Guard needs to do something assholish. Other groups, such as Dany's Dothraki followers, are theoretically still present but in practice never make any appearances to save on hiring extras.

** The original ''[[VisualNovel/PhoenixWrightAceAttorney trilogy]]'' takes this to an extreme; except for one-shot characters who turn up in single cases as suspects or victims, it has only one detective, Detective Gumshoe, who is the detective in virtually every case, as well as one judge (except in situations where a second judge is absolutely necessary, when his almost identical brother is introduced). The game engages in frequent LampshadeHanging over this, with Gumshoe often expressing disbelief at how often he ends up investigating a murder where Phoenix is involved. It should be noted despite the extremes in which it goes to, the series still has LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters.

* There are only five named, voiced characters in ''WesternAnimation/{{Home}}''. On the other hand, there are thousands of both human and alien extras.

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* In ''Pinball/WHODunnit'', despite having a hotel full of people and a lifetime of business associates, all of the happenings in Tony's Palace revolve around the same five suspects.

-->-- Gag line by '''Ian Marter''' (Harry Sullivan in ''Series/DoctorWho'')

When any necessary role in a series is essentially represented by only a single person, even if it would be more realistic [[CastCalculus to have several.]] Instead of coming across a dozen different police officers depending on the nature of the crime and who's on duty that day, our heroes always deal with the same lieutenant. Or there's one doctor who treats every injury, from broken legs to melanoma. Or why a starship captain and the main bridge crew are always the ones going on away missions. This is mostly a way to avoid having to keep track of too many characters,.

When any necessary role in a series is essentially represented by only a single person, even if it would be more realistic [[CastCalculus to have several.]] Instead of coming across a dozen different police officers depending on the nature of the crime and who's on duty that day, our heroes always deal with the same lieutenant. Or there's one doctor who treats every injury, from broken legs to melanoma. Or why a starship captain and the main bridge crew are always the ones going on away missions. This is mostly a way to avoid having to keep track of too many characters.

Take this trope to its logical extreme and you get a MinimalistCast. For obvious reasons, it's rare to find this co-existing with LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters.

* Lampshaded repeatedly in ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons''. It is heavily implied that Wiggum, Lou, and Eddie are the only three cops employed in the whole town of Springfield, and Dr. Hibbert and Dr. Nick are the only two doctors. Minor well-known characters such as Gil and the Squeaky-Voice Teen appear to hold every single low-level job in the town, and almost every major recurring character goes to the same church.

* ''WesternAnimation/PBAndJOtter''. It's implied the [=Watchbirds=] are the only law enforcement in the community, and Dad's General Store appears to be the OnlyShopInTown. Also, Doctor Molar Fox appears to be the town's only doctor/dentist, while {{Fanon}} holds that Mayor Jeff has been mayor for an ungodly amount of time.

* ''WesternAnimation/PBAndJOtter''. It's implied the [=Watchbirds=] are the only law enforcement in the community, and Dad's General Store appears to be the OnlyShopInTown. Also, Doctor Molar Fox appears to be the town's only doctor/dentist.

See GhostExtras for when the non-core cast is on-screen but living in a separate universe. See also TwoTeacherSchool or OmnidisciplinaryScientist. A [[VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory true story]] or [[AdaptationIndex adaptation]] may try to whittle down the cast by [[CompositeCharacter combining characters]].

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* ''Film/HalloweenII1981'' - Haddonfield hospital seems incredibly understaffed, especially for a Halloween night. Dr Mixter appears to be the only doctor on call, Bud and Jimmy are the only paramedics and Karen, Jill, Janet and Mrs Alves are the only nurses.

* ''Film/HighAndTight'' makes the Olsens orphans and Vinnie, Ryan and Sara's parents absent to avoid having more cast members.

* ''Literature/HarryPotter'' - Hogwarts seems to have rather small class sizes if you think about it. JK Rowling has bluntly said she's amazed she could come up with forty or so students she could remember in Harry's year. It's also never clear if Harry, Ron, Neville, Dean and Seamus are the only Gryffindor boys in their year (as they all share a dorm), and Hermione, Parvati and Lavender with the girls. Notably in the books, the houses all have classes separately apart from the occasional joint periods; in the film they had the whole year in class together to make the scenes look fuller.

* In ''VideoGame/RatchetAndClankUpYourArsenal'' Captain Quark assembles the Q Force, an elite team of specialists to help him save the day. Who are these specialists? Why nothing more than a bunch of random NPC's you met in the first game.

* Only Three [[spoiler:later four]] male idols exists in ''VideoGame/Idolish7''. [[JustifiedTrope Then again,]] they're relevant to the plot.

* ''WebVideo/TheGumdrops'' - WordOfGod is that this is the reason episodes usually have only a small percentage of the main cast. The first episode 'Miss Lucy' is the only one to have all seven characters together - and it was actually the fourth one filmed because it was that hard to get people on set at the same time.
* ''Franchise/{{Noob}}'' is set in a {{MMORPG}}, yet only two guilds are ever seen in the main faction, the Empire: the titular Noob guild and the main roster of the elite Justice Guild that happens to be former team of Noob's leader, the one that Noob's lancer wants to join and to include the younger brother of Noob's healer. Justice has close to two hundered members according to the novel version, but the fact that only the same handful of members are ever seen is so proeminent that some viewers of the webseries version raise eyebrows when a piece of dialogue alludes to the other members. Roxxor guild from the Coalition has the same problem as only their main roster is ever seen as well. The guild of Gaea Admirers has an unspecified number of members, but Meuhmeuh is the only one the has been seen more than once, which makes him look like Gaea's self-appointed personal assisstant and bodyguard within the guild.

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* As the page quote suggests, this often happened with enemy races on the original series of ''Series/DoctorWho''. It was most painfully obvious with the Daleks, because by the time the show hit the 1970s the producers only had three very beat-up Dalek casings on hand and no money to build more. (The 1972 story "Day of the Daleks", for example, could not hide the fact that the attacking band of Daleks from the future consisted of exactly three Daleks.) Some stories, going back to the very first Dalek adventure "The Daleks", featured (very unconvincing) photo blow-ups of Daleks for background shots. Of course, with the advent of CGI, the new series expends some effort in the opposite direction, showing thousands and thousands of Daleks in one shot at the end of "Bad Wolf" (2005), though the Daleks were reintroduced earlier in the season with a single Dalek (in "Dalek").\\
A LampshadeHanging in "Terror of the Zygons" that was very similar to the page quote but actually on screen; the Zygons declare their plan to TakeOverTheWorld and the Doctor replies "Isn't it a bit large for just the six of you?"

* Zig-zagged by ''Anime/{{Pokemon}}'' with the creation of the Nurse Joys and Officer Jennys[[note]]In Japan, they are simply called "jōi" (a pun on "josei issha"[female doctor], or "joi" for short), and "junsaa", which is another name for a police officer.[[/note]], a large number of characters [[InexplicablyIdenticalIndividuals who are all essentially identical]] in appearance, role and personality, which saved the writers having to create a new character every time the travelling heroes went to a Pokemon center or got involved in a crime.

* ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' will often have some characters physically appear for cameos without any lines - saving them the trouble of bringing their voice actors in unnecessarily. Notably in the 2017 movie, Cheese Sandwich has a non-speaking cameo so as not to bring back Weird Al Yankovich for the sake of one scene.

* ''Series/Babylon5'' did it's best to avert this, but still had to struggle with the realities of being a relatively small-budget sci-fi TV show, and used all the tricks in the book to overcome the limitations. Commentary for one episode reveals that, in a scene involving a constant stream of injured Narn refugees, the "hundreds" of Narn are all the same dozen-or-so extras cycling through the same door over and over again with different bandages on.

* ''Literature/TheWorstWitch'' (1998 series) had four years' worth of students at Cackles, but scenes in the Great Hall involving the whole school looked quite small (there's around twelve in Mildred's year alone). And there only appears to be four teachers, one caretaker and one cook (in the book there were three). This would be just about plausible (one teacher could take each year at a time in classes) if there weren't scenes where Mildred's year are in class, and the other three teachers were freely walking around or chilling in the staff room.

One danger of this is the marketing and executive branch of creating stories installs the [[StatusQuoIsGod Status Quo]] on the Economy Cast, and [[SquarePegRoundTrope characters aren't allowed to develop too far]] out of their roles.

* Almost every single retail worker job in ''WesternAnimation/TheAmazingWorldOfGumball'' is staffed by one character, Larry. The ramifications of this are frequently played with, such as him quitting all his jobs causes the city to turn into a post-apocalyptic hellscape.

* ''Series/StargateSG1'': Having a [[ColonelBadass Colonel]] lead a team with just four people is really unusual, in RealLife Colonels typically command much larger companies. Though it's not that strange based on the "official" mission profile of SG-1 being special forces recon. Most of the antagonists are not secretive, so sending a larger force to cover more ground is unnecessary.

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* ''Franchise/StarTrek'' is a particular offender, with [[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine DS9]] as the stand out because the main cast is supposed to be running a war, yet several episodes have most and/or ''all'' senior members of staff going on risky missions in the middle of nowhere. ''[[Series/StarTrekVoyager Voyager]]'' might get something of a pass, since the general premise was a single ship stranded in the middle of nowhere, with half of the crew having been killed when the ship was dragged across the galaxy and only a small number of replacements from the former Maquis crewmembers they were chasing.