So you've got a character who grew up poor or even modest economic standing and wound up becoming wealthy and successful as an adult. Even better, their wealth hasn't done much to change them and they still remember where they came from.
On the flip side, you have their children. Unlike parents, they've reaped the benefits of their parental wealth and have grown up in a life of luxury. They are ignorant of what it means to be poor or middle-class and take all of their material wealth for granted. They might be utterly unpleasant Spoiled Brats, or Spoiled Sweet and just not know any better at first.
This difference will lead to conflict between the two generations as the kids struggle to understand how their parent grew up and how lucky they are to live in such an environment while the parent is concerned by their materialism.
This frequently shows up in The City vs. the Country plots if the parent had grown up in a small town and brings their city kids to show them what life there is like.
Compare Trade Your Passion for Glory, The Generation Gap. Contrast Lonely Rich Kid and Trophy Child, where it's usually the rich parents being snobby and the kids suffering as a result. See also Royally Screwed Up, for when it appears in a royal family.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Anime & Manga
- Most of the problematic students Eikichi Onizuka has to deal in Great Teacher Onizuka are Spoiled Brats whose parents were salary people they got successful at some point. They may have more material comforts, but they suffer from Parental Abandonment because their parents are Married to the Job.
- One Piece: Normally, Celestial Dragons (aka World Nobles) are a bunch of aristocrats who view themselves way above humans, and they're known for not only their vanity but also their tendency to abuse common people on a whim, without any repercussion because they're protected by high ranking Marines. Donquixote Homing, however, was more humble than most of them, thinking of himself as "only a human" and chooses to live closer to the common people while his fellow nobles looked down on him for his decision. His son, Rocinante, was also every bit as humble and personable as him. However, his other son, Doflamingo, is very much a typical World Noble who looks down on commoners and hated his father for separating his family from the rest of World Nobles.
Comic Books
- Crossed: In the Wish You Were Here arc, Skip is one of the most important and at times pampered people in the group of survivors, largely due to being able to drive and maintain their only motorized boat, but is fairly laidback and helpful, while his son Lance is considered to be a Spoiled Brat often sneering at people and trying to "copy his dad's cool" according to the narrator (although he also speculates that this is Lance's way of trying to cope with the trauma and that he's more Sour Outside, Sad Inside).
- Disney Ducks Comic Universe: Howard Rockerduck was a Self-Made Man from prospecting who looks back on his humble roots nostalgically, while his son John looks down on everyone poorer as "peasants" to their faces, and brushes off his father's constant reminders that he was poor too once.
- Planetary: Bret Leather was a progressive 1930s newspaperman and conflicted vigilante, while his son William grows up to be a supervillain due to resentment about not inheriting any powers he feels that he was "cheated" out of, due to probably not being Leather's biological son.
- The Walking Dead: Maggie is a strong leader, who maintains decent ties to the community and good leadership ethics, while the final issue reveals that her son has become a completely Spoiled Brat as society is re-established due to the single Maggie being too busy running things to raise him, as well as the sense of deference being her son apparently gave.
Films — Live-Action
- In the Disney Channel movie Cow Belles, Reed Callum is a humble, hard-working, and kind-hearted owner of a dairy factory, employing tons of people in the town. His daughters are spoiled, lazy, and painfully naive about how the world works. The plot of the movie involves the two of them working at the dairy and undergoing Character Development, after having accidentally destroyed someone's car and set their kitchen on fire.
- Grown Ups: Adam Sandler's character is a wealthy Hollywood talent agent who came from a small New England town. Worried that his kids have become too spoiled (his daughter is more Spoiled Sweet but his sons are bratty) he brings his family back to his hometown to hang out at a lake house with his old friends and their families and teach them how to have fun like normal kids.
- Hannah Montana The Movie: Robby Ray takes Miley on a private jet, which is supposedly taking Miley to World Music Awards in New York, to their hometown in Crowley Corners, Tennessee for her grandma's birthday, because he's become fed up with her recent diva behavior as Hannah Montana. It's played with in that Miley did grow up in the town when she was younger, but her LA lifestyle has caused her to forget where she came from.
- Knives Out: Harlan Thrombey, a Self-Made Man who became wealthy through his mystery novels, has realized that all of his descendants have become a bunch of spoiled jerks thanks to his money.
Literature
- Absolute Power 1996: Mr. Baldwin is a reasonable philanthropist who appreciates being spoken to frankly. His daughter Jennifer, while not a completely unsympathetic character, flippantly has a guy who offended her (by having her fiancee work late) fired and doesn't know the value of hard work.
- Brewster's Millions: Colonel Drew the banker is a man who isn't too proud to accept help and remains grateful for receiving it, while his daughter Barbara is a bit spoiled, coldly dumping her fiancee due to considering him a spendthrift (although in the 1945 movie she was more Spoiled Sweet).
- Every Breath You Take: Robert "Bob" Wakeling founded his own real estate business and worked hard to make it a success, with his wife Virginia supporting him throughout their decades-long marriage. Virginia understood and appreciated putting in time and effort to earn your fortune rather than just coasting by on inherited wealth. She was also heavily involved in charitable causes, wanting to meaningfully give back to society. Her children, having been born into immense wealth, don't appreciate this as much. While daughter Anna isn't a layabout and is devoted to the family business, she can be snobby towards those she sees as lesser. Son Carter has never had much interest in the business and lives an indulgent lifestyle, with his mother at one point saying he was almost as bad as his cousin Tom with his entitled and blasé attitude towards money. It's rumoured and confirmed that Virginia had intended to change her will to keep her children humble and hard-working; while they'd keep their father's business to run, she would leave her millions to charities.
- In the J.A. Johnstone novel The Last Gunfighter Savage Country, Pamela Tarleton is a Spoiled Brat heavily indulged (yet ignored) for most of her life after her mother died. Her father Clark is a Self-Made Man whose comfortable talking with lower-class people and acknowledging his daughter's snottiness. Ultimately though, Clark is a Corrupt Corporate Executive trying to slaughter the local Native American tribe and is acting nice to try to throw off suspicion.
Live-Action TV
- Cobra Kai: Daniel LaRusso, who was very much working class in the original The Karate Kid movies, is now the wealthy owner of several luxury car dealerships. While at the family's country club, he laments that he would've given anything to hang out at a place like it when he was a kid, while his children, especially his Spoiled Brat son, take it for granted.
- The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air: Philip and his wife Vivian are down-to-earth and well-adjusted people, who are also very wealthy thanks to their careers as adults, with especially Philip being a Self-Made Man who overcame the difficulties of the pre-Civil Rights era. Their two oldest children, Hilary and Carlton, are stuck-up and spoiled Upper Class Twits who brag about their family's wealth. Their third daughter Ashley, however, is levelheaded like her parents.
- In Full House, Danny has a successful career as a talk show host, but remains humble and rarely indulges in spending excessive money, except when he's freely loaning it to friends and family. His three daughters, however, can be bratty or selfish, and sometimes have to be reminded of their good fortune; in one episode, Danny imagines them growing up to be full-on Women-Children who still live at home and mooch off of him. While oldest daughter D.J. and middle child Stephanie gradually grow out of this trope to become level-headed and responsible teenagers, Michelle, The Baby of the Bunch, takes longer and needs to learn the most lessons about not being greedy or entitled. It's justified in that Danny deliberately coddles her because he is reluctant to allow her to grow up.
- The George Lopez Show: In one episode, Max and Carmen anger George when Carmen signs up for an expensive cell phone plan so she could get an advanced phone model and Max carelessly breaks his toy trucks under the assumption his parents will just buy him more. In an effort to show them just how lucky they are to have a comfortable middle-class lifestyle, he forces them to spend the weekend at his mother's house and see what his poverty-stricken childhood was like.
- In Graceland, Carlos Solano is a wealthy and powerful drug lord, but he makes a point of living simply and humbly. His son, Carlito, on the other hand, is a flamboyant Psychopathic Manchild.
- Hemlock Grove: In the first season, secondary character Sheriff Sworn is a man of status and power in the town, has a fairly nice house, and seems to be humble and open-minded throughout most of his screen time. His daughters (who grew up without a mother) are, well, Bratty Teenage Daughters with slight bullying streaks, although they do get better watching their best friend go crazy and the town become consumed by paranoia about werewolves.
- Little House on the Prairie: Nels Olesen, owner of the Walnut Grove Mercantile, is the humble parent –- and we do mean that in the singular. His children, Nellie and Willie, are spoiled rotten ... all thanks to the other parent, one Harriet Olesen (who is co-owner of the Mercantile). Nels, despite the family's wealth, relies on small-town values of hard work and dedication, and humility while the others in the family think of themselves as socially elite.
- In Motherland: Fort Salem, Petra Bellweather is a war hero, descended from a long line of war heroes. Her daughter Abigail, on the other hand, is an arrogant brat who expects special treatment in the army because of her family's name.
- Murder, She Wrote:
- In "Its a Dog's Life", Denton Langley is fairly humble for a multi-millionaire, and in his Spiteful Will makes it clear how much he loathes his children and granddaughter for their entitled, mooching behavior before leaving most of the money to his dog. For the most part, their actions for the rest of the episode don't exactly prove him wrong.
- In "Paint Me a Murder" wealthy artist Diego Santana remains a gracious, charitable man in his old age while his son Miguel (although not that bad of a guy) is a gambler who has needed his father to bail him out of trouble in the past.
- While not exactly wealthy, Dr. Jocelyn Laird in School for Scandal is a humble, respected academic while her daughter Daphne is a somewhat flippant author of steamy sex novels who seems to like trolling people. Subverted with the reveal that this an act; Jocelyn is the actual author of the books while Daphne is the figurehead and they pretend to be estranged to keep people from suspecting the truth, as it would damage Jocelyn's academic reputation.
- Arthur Constable (heir to the earldom) from "It Runs in the Family" is a (relatively) modest-living, polite man who is in no great hurry to inherit wealth and interacts affably with lower-class people even without considering that he married one. His son Derek is a sulking, sharp-tongued Spoiled Brat who stalks off to play tennis, gives the stink eye to lower-class people, and casually demands the money for an expensive skiing vacation. It's implied part of this is due to the influence of his mother and her Inferiority Superiority Complex. Near the end of the episode, his father decides to cut him off until he learns responsibility.
- In the two-parter "Mirror Mirror on the Wall", Hank Shipton is a generally pleasant, even-tempered guy despite his marriage to a wealthy mystery writer and prefers a simpler lifestyle, while his son by a previous marriage is a troublemaker who loves riding the gravy train.
- In "Curse of the Daanav", Seth's Self-Made Man brother Robert Hazlitt is ultimately shown to be unashamed of his modest beginnings as he and Seth fondly reminisce about old times. His daughter Caroline is a more acid-tongued person who is $32,000 in debt over clothes shopping and is openly resentful of her new stepmother for threatening her inheritance (although her brother seems nicer and dutiful, except when his sports performance is critiqued).
- A step-parent version in "Murder in the Electric Cathedral". Carrie McKittrick is a very well-intentioned old woman who inherited a lot of oil money from her husband and doesn't seem to flaunt it, but her stepson (who she raised for most of his life) and his son are both sour and grasping.
- A Parental Substitute version in "For Whom the Balls Toll". Real estate man Walter Gilrich is a Nice Guy who opposes the idea of demolishing a historical landmark and is very approachable and down-to-earth, while his kid brother and business partner Eugene (who he raised and put through school after their parents died) is a reckless guy who racked up a bunch of debts and wants to just demolish away while showing no sympathy or approachability towards people who want to debate this with him.
- Pete Grimaldi from "Crimson Harvest" is a retrospective example (given that he's killed early on and his flaws are described by others). While not without some better qualities, he apparently wanted to take some easy money by selling the winery, urging his hard-working mother to do so when according to a family friend, this wasn't what she really wanted, while also being an A-hole to his adoptive brother. Said adoptive brother and Paul's biological sister are better, wanting to keep the winery open and working hard to this (although they're still at each other's throats a lot).
- Parks and Recreation: The Sapersteins. While Dr. Saperstein is a mildly antagonistic force to Tom, he is otherwise a fairly decent guy, in contrast to his Spoiled Brat children (whom he considers disappointments).
Video Games
- Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines: Wong Ho is a kind-hearted, polite, honest businessman who's devoted his life to improving his community. His daughter is spoiled and so rude that, after she's kidnapped, she insults the Player Character rescuing them and complains about the rescue. Even Wong Ho admits that she has a bad personality.
Western Animation
- American Dad!: In a Thanksgiving episode, "There Will Be Bad Blood", Stan feels his kids are getting too spoiled, so he takes them to his half-Native American brother Rusty's house to show them how good they have it, expecting him to live in some kinda hovel. To the Smiths' shock, Rusty and his family are quite wealthy as the land inheritance he got from their grandfather had a copper deposit in it that he managed to mine. In fact, Rusty tells Stan that he had his family go to Stan's house the previous year to show his family how good they have it (despite the fact the Smiths live pretty moderately).
- Big City Greens: The show's main antagonist, Chip Whistler, is a Jerkass Spoiled Brat. The season two episode "Reckoning Ball" reveals that his father (and owner of the Wholesome Foods corporation), is a humble, kind-hearted Self-Made Man who does not approve of his son's petty vendetta against the Green family.
- DuckTales (2017): Scrooge McDuck went from a humble shoeshine in Scotland to the richest duck in the world. When his family moves in with him, he's frustrated to find that Louie has become entitled and lazy and vows to teach him the value of hard work. There’s also the fact that Louie simply isn’t ready for the burden of enormous wealth.
- Gargoyles:
- Fox's father turns out to be Honest Corporate Executive Halcyon Renard. He says that he would gladly give her his company if she turned away from her criminal ways, but she finds the idea of stealing it out from under him more entertaining.
- Her boyfriend/husband, Xanatos, is a "Well Done, Son" Guy despite the fact that he's a billionaire Corrupt Corporate Executive and his father, Petros, is an immigrant fisherman. The younger Xanatos doesn't seem to understand that Petros would be prouder of him if he cared less about money.
- Lilo & Stitch: The Series: Lilo's rival Mertle is somewhat implied to be a bit wealthy due to her father's business (though we never see him in the series) not to mention an aunt who works in the entertainment business, leading her to be very spoiled and haughty. Her mother however exhibits none of these traits and is very courteous and kind, if not a bit clueless here and there.
- Littlest Pet Shop (2012): Zig-zagged a bit when it comes to the Biskit Twins. Their father is a bit of a Corrupt Corporate Executive who owns the rival pet shop store but values hard work and does try to impart some of these ethics in the twins who are utterly spoiled to a tee. Their mother, who arrives late in the series, however, couldn't be more opposite as she is very kind and friendly.
