Beleaguered Benefactor

"You don't earn earthly money for killing ghosts, you get Heaven Coins! And when you take out the motherfuckin' city, every time you take out a ghost, I have to pay for it with my earthly cash!"

— Garterbelt, Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt

In many stories requiring a character a team, heroic or otherwise, to have grand schemes, there needs to be someone to fund their endeavors if they aren't independently wealthy. After all, big plans or grand spectacles aren't cheap. That's where The Team Benefactor comes in.

However, sometimes the same team or character's exploits hemorrhage the benefactor's bank account since while rich and wealthy with an Arbitrarily Large Bank Account, their wealth isn't infinite and expenses can add up, even for a Fiction 500. Expensive and irreplaceable equipment is broken too often, too much collateral damage is made, and bills outweigh the gains much to a benefactor's displeasure.

That's when this trope occurs. This trope is when the benefactor of a team or character is notably financially or personally distraught by the actions of the party they support. At best, they'll gripe and complain, but still begrudgingly fund their associates. At worst, they'll cut their associates off completely out of disgust or demand to be compensated due to being in financial ruin. At times the trope can veer into familial ties where a rich parent or Uncle Pennybags gets fed up with the spending habits of their charge. See Beleaguered Boss, Da Chief and Da Editor for other bosses often exasperated by their subordinates.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In Hellsing, Sir Shelby M. Penwood often expresses displeasure at how Arthur Hellsing and later his daughter Integra continuously ask him to provide for whatever equipment they need to ridiculous levels. This even extend's to Penwood's grandson who Integra casually asks for a new helicopter.
• In Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt, Garterbelt constantly gripes how the Angel duo's Destructive Savior tendency to wreck the city to stop the Ghost of the Day causes collateral damage that he has to pay with his earthly cash. This habit eventually means the church they all live in starts falling apart due to Garterbelt not being able to afford repairs and the angels having to take jobs to earn money.
• Spy X Family: While Sylvia Sherwood normally isn't subjected to this on account of Twlight/Loid Forger being The Ace and managing funds very well, she does explode at him after (due to some pressuring from Frankie) he rents out an entire castle, a plane, and the services of all available WISE agents so that he can have them enact an episode of Spy Wars (it's his way of congratulating Anya for getting into Eden Academy) and puts the cost as mission expenses. She's amazed (and slightly impressed) that Loid's response to her indignation is to had her another bill - in this case, the one for Anya's uniform (which, on its own, is a legitimate expense, since Anya's getting into Eden Academy is a necessary part of the operation, so the cost of the school uniform is essential).

Comic Books

• Batman becomes this trope at times when working with the Justice League, often angrily snarking when his teammates damage expensive equipment that he ends up paying for to repair.

Literature

• Downplayed in Kris Longknife: Audacious. Up to now, Kris has commonly used her trust fund to buy her way out of many problems, but in the middle part of this book she burns so much cash buying access to various databases while doing some Hollywood Hacking to get around New Eden's Orwellian editor planetary government that she's actually in danger of having to touch the principal instead of just the interest dividends.

Live Action TV

• In The George Lopez Show, Vic Palmero was this for his family and a deconstruction of The Team Benefactor. Vic, who grew up in poverty and worked hard to become a wealthy cardiologist, wanted to provide his wife and children the things he didn't have growing up by catering to their every need. Unfortunately this only resulted in his wife becoming a Rich Bitch who cheated and divorced him and his children become variations of Entitled Bastard, to the point his two oldest children became a dysfunctional con artist and Serial Spouse respectively that he would cut off completely. He rarely speaks to any of his children other than Angie and displays envy of his son-in-law George for having a greater work ethic than his own children.
• A Mr. Exposition/Technology Variant occurs in the Supernatural episode "Weekend at Bobby's". Bobby gets fed up with being the constant Voice with an Internet Connection for the Winchester brothers and blows up at them about the fact that he has problems that need solving too. Chief among them is that Crowley currently has dibs on his soul—a situation he only got into because the brothers were targeted by the archangels in the previous season which made Crowley target Bobby for leverage. Sam and Dean immediately drop everything to help him resolve that issue.
• In Person of Interest, Team Machine is forced to go into hiding under new identities when the new Master Computer, Samaritan, comes online, which cuts the team's financial backer Mr. Finch off from his Arbitrarily Large Bank Account. Within a couple episodes after the Time Skip, they're able to acquire a new, albeit smaller, slush fund from money they seize from The Mafiya.
• Alan Garner ends up making his exasperated well-off parents this trope in the TheHangover series, essentially blowing much of their money on his insane escapades or whatever amuses him. This reaches its limit in the third film after Alan's incident led to the death of a giraffe he stole from the zoo. Alan's father berates him as a complete waste and is ready to cut him off, but ends up having a heart attack from the stress his son has caused him.

Western Animation

• In The Princess and the Frog, Prince Naveen's parents were implied to be this trope as despite being their oldest son and heir, Naveen's extravagant lifestyle and hedonistic party guy mentality leeched from the family wealth so much that his parents decided to cut him off for good and exiled him to America as punishment.
• In OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes, the villain investors for Box More are constantly annoyed with Lord Boxman's antics and obsession with destroying Lakewood Plaza, rather than doing his job of producing robots for them to sell, often threatening to cut his funding because of it. It eventually gets to the point where they are more interested in funding Box More once Darrell takes over and Boxman is no longer around to waste their money and resources.
• In Despicable Me, Mr. Perkins, the owner of the Bank of Evil, expresses his reluctance to give Gru funding for his moon heist plan unless he has the mentioned shrink ray, pointing out how very few of Gru's schemes actually wind up turning a profit. It's after the girls interfere with Gru's video meeting does Perkins decide to completely cut all ties with him, even when Gru has the shrink ray in his possession.
• In Johnny Test, the scientists of Porkbelly University are often this in regards to Susan and Mary's experiments. A notable example in "Johnny Test in 3D" where the scientists supporting the girls' experiment to turn salt water into drinking water grow more frustrated after their many failed attempts. The experiment eventually succeeds, but it now costs 2.4 million dollars to produce just one glass of water to make up for all the wasted time and research money.
• Occurs for the Monarch in The Venture Bros. where he finds out the family fortune left to him by his deceased parents that he's repeatedly drawn from to fund his supervillain antics has run dry. The account he's had at for decades at the bank he draws his wealth from is now listed as overdrawn and he resorts to bank robberies to get by.
• Happens to Mr. E in Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated where as the head of MegaCorp Destroido, he is responsible for all its environmental damage and dangerous products, eventually aiding the Mystery Team and Professor Pericles in his plans. Eventually Professor Perciles' schemes grow out of control by the episode The Horrible Herd and Mr. E spends the entire episode griping about Pericles wasting Destroido's money and the lives of dozens of his best scientists on ravenous mutant cattle and missile launchers, which eventually results in Mr. E trying to lock Perciles out of any control over his company.
• Cecil Tunt, arguably the Token Good Teammate of the incredibly messed up Tunt Family and brother to Cheryl Tunt, from Archer is ultimately this to a comical degree. Despite his good intentions, he is revealed to be overly philanthropic, which is unfortunately coupled with the fact that he is also a terrible businessman. Several of his charities are useless/poorly conceived (i.e. "One Laptop per Child Soldier" became one thousand laptops per warlord) and have effectively bankrupted him and made him desperate enough to try to steal his own sister's inheritance. In "Sea Tunt: Part II", it was revealed he gave Murphy an incredibly large salary three years in advance, an act that led Murphy to describe Cecil as "the world's worst negotiator." Cecil also approved the budget for Murphy's $200 million underwater research facility without reading it, a facility that by Murphy's own admission produced very little research of any scientific value.

Real Life

• Under the 1917 Canon Law Code of the Catholic Church, persons holding the right of patronage on a Church position were entitled to a part of the income of the benefice linked to this position if they had pressing financial needs, sometimes caused by supporting their benefice. In particular, Canon Law disposition focuses on patrons who suffer financial difficulties unrelated to any fault of their own and who ask permission to perceive income from the benefice they or their ancestors created. A Quotation of the legal disposition:

With due regard for the execution of burdens and the honest support of the beneficiary, if there is a surplus of goods obtained from equity or from the assets of the church or of the benefice, as often as the patron , through no personal fault, has been reduced to poverty, even if the patron has renounced his rights for the convenience of the Church, [ for the patron] to receive a payment within the limits of the foundation, even if at the time [another payment] was reserved to the patron, if this is not sufficient to lift him out of poverty.

—C. 1450 CIC/1917

• In United Kingdom, some landowners, as "lay rectors", are under chancel repair liability, meaning they are on the hook for funding repairs at the chancel of a given Anglican church. Such liability is limited, meaning that, in some cases, it can attain a very high sum just for repairs.
  • Andrew and Gail Wallbank, of Warwickshire, had to sell Glebe Farm on 2009 in order to pay off £230,000 for the repairs and the legal costs for their church.

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