An index for tropes dealing with lower class squalor, homelessness, and an overall lack of wealth or fiscal standing.
Contrast with Rich People, Luxury Tropes.
Tropes:
- Bankruptcy Barrel: When the character is wearing a barrel to show that they are poor.
- Barefoot Poverty: Some people are so poor that they can't even afford to buy a new pair of shoes.
- Basement-Dweller: A grown man still lives with his parents because he can't even afford his own house.
- Bath of Poverty: Bathing isn't a good experience due to being unable to afford proper plumbing.
- Beggar with a Signboard: Hobos hold up signs requesting money, food, or other things.
- Bindle Stick
- Broke Episode: One episode has the characters run out of money and have to find a way to make ends meet.
- Cardboard Box Home: Homeless people live in cardboard boxes.
- Crazy Homeless People: Homeless people are depicted as being mentally ill.
- Cutting Corners
- Disposable Sex Worker: Prostitutes and strippers tend to be at the very bottom of the socioeconomic ladder, thus making them easy prey for serial killers and rapists.
- Disposable Vagrant: Most people don't really notice or care about what happens to homeless people, which makes them easy targets for kidnappers and murderers.
- Dog Food Diet
- Dying Town: Small towns with economic hardships.
- Empty Fridge, Empty Life
- Fallen-on-Hard-Times Job: A person desperate for money will take on a job that they, and society, sees as unglamorous and/or undignified.
- Financial Test of Friendship
- Fingerless Gloves: Poor people often wear fingerless gloves.
- Forgot to Pay the Bill
- "Friends" Rent Control
- Hobos: Stereotypical homeless people.
- Homeless Pigeon Person
- Informed Poverty: A character is allegedly poor, but are apparently richer than they've claimed to be.
- Inner City School: Education tends to be abysmal in poor urban neighborhoods.
- Just Like Robin Hood: A thief who steals from the rich and gives to the poor.
- Kill the Poor: The poor are killed in an attempt to eliminate poverty.
- King of the Homeless: The self-appointed leader of a homeless community.
- Land Poor
- Lives in a Van: They live in a vehicle because they can't even afford a house.
- Lower-Class Lout: A jerkass who is poor.
- Mock Millionaire: A lower-class or middle-class person pretends to be upper-class.
- Ms. Red Ink
- Mundane Luxury
- No Budget: A creative project obviously didn't get much funding or resources.
- No Poverty: A society where poverty and squalor are nonexistent.
- Pauper Patches
- Penny Among Diamonds
- Perpetual Poverty: Despite having little money, these people always have just enough supplies and resources to survive.
- Pottery Barn Poor
- Poverty Food: Because food that's healthy and tasty is out of their budget.
- Poverty for Comedy: Being poor is Played for Laughs.
- Poverty Porn: Depictions of people living in extreme poverty in close detail to bring attention to them.
- Prince and Pauper: Two identical strangers, one upper-class and the other one lower-class, decide to switch lives and disguise themselves as each other.
- Rags to Riches: A poor person becomes wealthy.
- Rags to Royalty: A commoner becomes a member of the nobility.
- Rich Suitor, Poor Suitor: Someone has two love interests of vastly different economic backgrounds.
- Riches to Rags: A wealthy person becomes poor.
- Impoverished Patrician: A noble or aristocrat who has lost their wealth.
- Princess in Rags: Her Highness is now living in less than luxurious circumstances.
- Impoverished Patrician: A noble or aristocrat who has lost their wealth.
- Secretly Wealthy: A rich person pretends to be poorer than they actually are.
- Slumming It: A wealthy person pretends to be poor because they're curious about what life is like for the less fortunate.
- Slobs vs. Snobs: The eternal struggle between the rich and the poor.
- Starving Artist: An artist who doesn't make any money off their works.
- Starving Student: A student who's struggling to finance their education.
- Streetwalker: Prostitutes, who probably wouldn't be selling sex for money if they were rich.
- Struggling Single Mother: She's having a hard time raising her kid(s) with no father and little money to spare.
- Single Mom Stripper: So she turns to stripping or prostitution to put bread on the table.
- The Tramp
- Wallet Moths: Moths fly out of wallets or pockets to indicate the character has no money.
- War Refugees: Civilians who have been rendered homeless by the chaos and destruction of war, fleeing for their lives by staying in refugee camps or migrating to safer countries.
- Wisdom from the Gutter
- Work Off the Debt: If you can't pay, you'll have to work for the business until you've earned the money required to pay.
- Working-Class Hero: The protagonist is a member of the lower-classes of society.
- Homeless Hero: The protagonist lives a nomadic lifestyle for some reason.
- Working Class People Are Morons: Poor people are depicted as being dumb and ignorant because of their lack of education.
- Working-Class Werewolves: Werewolves are often depicted as being poor, at least compared to vampires.
- Wretched Hive: Urban ghettos, slums, shantytowns and the like are not pleasant places to live in, because of the rampant poverty and crime.
