History Film / TheBigShort

* RefugeInAudacity: Several of the characters in the movie flaunt this attitude, proud of how much money they're making for essentially selling shoddy goods. This trope is deconstructed by the fact that the characters who engage in this attitude are shown as [[{{Manchild}} juvenile tools]] with no sense of responsibility or knowledge of the consequences of their actions and by showing the end results of applying this attitude on a systematic level.

* RefugeInAudacity: Several of the characters in the movie flaunt this attitude, proud of how much money they're making for essentially selling shoddy goods.

--->'''Baum:''' How much bigger is the market for insuring mortgage bonds than actual mortgages?
--->'''Chau:''' About twenty times.

** The stripper that Baum interviews has one when Baum explains to her that she's not going to be able to refinance her mortgage loans in case the home prices don't go up and instead she will be locked to pay the agreed monthly cost, which can go up to 200-300%. Baum has one when the stripper tells him she has five houses and a condo, confirming that there's indeed a bubble about to pop.

** Baum and the stripper he interviews share an OhCrap moment when he tells her that her monthly mortgage payments are likely to go up at least 200%, and she reveals that she has five houses and a condo, all of which have been refinanced.

* WretchedHive: The American Securitization Forum is played up like this in the film,aAnd it shows given how many of its attendants are clueless or neglectful of the impact that the default rate of the mortgages will have in the economy so long as they get their money.

* DidntSeeThatComing: Burry, Baum's team and Shipley and Geller all end up in the backfoot when the value of the sub-prime mortage bonds and the [=CDO=]s don't fall in value immediately when the mortage default rate start to hit criticality as they predicted but instead rise in prices. This is also the point when they start to realise just how deep in fraud is the entire system, far beyond their original expectations.

* HeroicBSOD: Baum is put into an escalating one throughout the film, starting after realising just how corrupt and stupid they are during the meeting in Vegas, and another after the bailout, when he realises that his assumption that [[HanlonsRazor the crisis was caused by stupidity rather than malice]] might have been wrong, and that the higher-ups in the banks might have known exactly what a disaster they were causing and just didn't care.

** As the crisis begins, Rickert eventually sells off Shipley and Geller's holdings for a large payday, but not as large as they wanted. He ultimately sells most of them to overseas banks, because the crisis hasn't caught up to them (yet).

* WretchedHive: The American Securitization Forum is played up like this in the film. And it shows given how many of its attendants are clueless or neglectful of the impact that the default rate of the mortages will have in the economy so long as they get their money.

** One of the biggest one is when Chau describes what syntethic [=CDO=]s are and he gives an estimate of how much money is tied up in what is essentially betting on the good performance of the [=CDO=]s which, as the film has pointed out before, are filled with high risk bonds that are essentially financial trash.
--->'''Baum:''' How much bigger is the market for insuring mortage bonds than actual mortages?

* DidntSeeThatComing: Burry, Baum's team and Shipley and Geller all end up in the backfoot when the value of the sub-prime mortage bonds and the [=CDO=]s don't fall in value immediately when the mortage default rate start to hit criticality as they predicted. This is also the point when they start to realise just how deep in fraud is the entire system, far beyond their original expectations.

** One of the biggest one is when Chau describes what syntethic [=CDO=]s are and he gives an estimate of how much money is tied up in what is essentially betting on the good performance of the [=CDO=]s.
-->'''Baum:''' How much bigger is the market for insuring mortage bonds than actual mortages?
-->'''Chau:''' About twenty times.

* ALighterShadeOfBlack: Jarred Vennett is just as greedy as the bankers he intends to profit from once everything crashes down, however he stands out for actually being honest on his greed and what he intends to do to Baum and his team and ultimately doesn't pull the rug on them with the shorts he sells them.
--> '''Jarred Vennett''': "When you come for the payday, I'll rip your eyes out. I'm gonna make a fortune. But the good news is you are not going to care because you are going to make so much fucking money. That's what I get out of it. You know what you get out of it? You get the ice cream, the hot fudge, the banana and the nuts. Right now I get the sprinkles, and yeah, if this goes through, I get the cherry. But you get the Sundae Vinny, you get the Sundae."

* ALighterShadeOfBlack: The protagonists may be [[AntiHero Anti-Heroes]] profiting off of an economic crisis, but what keeps them more sympathetic than the bankers they oppose is the fact that they had no hand in the events that led up to this point. Shipley and Geller actually try to warn the people what's going to happen once Rickert clues them in, to no avail.

--> '''Jarred Vennett''': "When you come from the payday, I'll rip your eyes out. I'm gonna make a fortune. But the good news is you are not going to care because you are going to make so much fucking money. That's what I get out of it. You know what you get out of it? You get the ice cream, the hot fudge, the banana and the nuts. Right now I get the sprinkles, and yeah, if this goes through, I get the cherry. But you get the Sundae Vinny, you get the Sundae."

* DesolationShot: At the end of the film, once the crash is in full swing, Shipley and Geller get to see the trading floor of the now bankrupt Lehman Brothers, all disorganised and filled with trash.

** Vennet starts his lemony narration, then appears in the flashback scene talking to the camera, assuring the audience that he is very cool.

A 2015 comedy/drama set during the mid-2000's as several people in the financial industry begin to realize that the housing market is unstable, and that they can make big bucks by betting against it. Based on Michael Lewis' non-fiction book of the same title, ''The Big Short'' is directed by Creator/AdamMcKay and features an AllStarCast (Creator/SteveCarell, Creator/ChristianBale, Creator/RyanGosling, Creator/BradPitt, Creator/MarisaTomei, Creator/KarenGillan and Creator/MelissaLeo).

The film was critically acclaimed on release and nominated for 5 Academy Awards: Best Picture, Director, Supporting Actor (Bale), Adapted Screenplay (which it won) and Film Editing.

* WhamLine: It's a ForegoneConclusion for the audience that there's going to be a total disaster, and most of the protagonists are aware of it and in a position to profit from it, but Baum discovering the extent of his own bank's projected losses leaves him [[StunnedSilence lost for words]].
-->'''Cathy:''' The long exposure is... [[OhCrap fifteen billion]].

-->'''Stripper:''' I have 5 houses....and a condo.

-->'''Vinny:''' How come you don't hate this guy? He's everything you taught us not to trust.\\

-->'''Stripper:''' I own 5 houses....and a condo.

* AdaptationNameChange: Many of the names were changed in the movie including Baum, Vennett, Shipley, Geller and Rickert. Of the central characters, Michael Burry and Baum's employees all kept their real names. Their real names are in the original book and their roles and behavioral traits don't change so it's very easy to associate the person with the character.

* AluminumChristmasTrees: Some may not believe that chefs will take meats that don't sell and convert them into stews or pies, days later. This practice is quite common, as restaurants have razor thin margins and need to maximize the shelf life of every single ingredient in their kitchens. Of course, Creator/AnthonyBourdain is the person explaining this, and he has never been shy over making frank comments about his own industry.

* AmbiguousDisorder: Michael Burry is portrayed as quirky, isolates himself from his employees, and having very awkward social skills. He communicates to his investors in very blunt e-mails and is insolent with his co-financier in a face-to-face conversation. The epilogue mentions that after his child is diagnosed with Aspergers, he feels he might have it too.
* AntiHero: The closest the story gets that anyone the audience can root for are Baum and Rickert, two jaded financial experts who both realize what's about to happen and are horrified about it. And even they aren't the good guys because they're using the looming crisis to make profits (and they know it). Averted by Vennet, who [[AntiVillain openly admits]] he's not the hero of the story.

* AtLeastIAdmitIt: Vennet is a smarmy douche, and never once pretends to be anything else. He openly tells his clients that he plans to rip them off in the endgame. He reminds the audience that he is decidedly not the hero of the film.

* TheBadGuyWins: A ForegoneConclusion for anyone who remembers the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2007-2009. [[spoiler: Sure, a lot of fat cats lost their money and some firms like Lehman Brothers went under, but the ending of the film leaves no doubt about it - the banking industry got out of the crash entirely regulation-free, shifting the blame to the poor, immigrants, and even teachers, while offering [=CDOs=] years later, repackaged as "bespoke tranche opportunities."]]

* BlackAndGrayMorality: While the banks are undeniably the villains of the movie, the protagonists are all making money off of their arrogance and stupidity and most of them are only doing it for that reason.

** Explicitly stated by the S&P officer, who points out that the main reason Baum's group want them to rate the [=CDOs=] more accurately (to identify them as junk, instead of AAA-secure) is because they stand to make a huge amount of money when the [=CDOs=] collapse.

** Baum himself is honest about how he views the insanely corrupt banking industry the further he goes into this mess. It leads to his caustic TakeThat speech about the financial sector's short-sightedness right at the moment when Bear Sterns collapses.

* CreatorCameo: The real Michael Burry can be seen in the background of Scion Capital when Lawrence Field storms in to confront the film's Michael Burry.

* TheCynic: Baum and Vinny's final phone conversation shows two different sides of this; Baum discovering that the banks might have known ''exactly'' what they were doing puts him into a HeroicBSOD, and he sounds almost broken-hearted when he tells Vinny "they just didn't care." Vinny responds with "Yeah, 'cos they're fucking crooks" as if it's obvious that they wouldn't, but he then naively states that there'll be loads of people going to jail and more regulation to make sure it doesn't happen again, to which Baum bets that they'll blame immigrants and poor people, and then the system will keep right on going. From this, it seems that Vinny is more cynical about individual people but hopeful about the system's ability to course-correct after an obvious failure, while Baum was the opposite.
* DespairEventHorizon: Baum is already a cynic who dislikes Wall Street in general, and he's grieving for [[spoiler:his brother]] but it's only in Vegas when he sees how corrupt and how dangerous the banks are that he truly lapses into a HeroicBSOD.

* DoesNotLikeShoes: Michael Burry is seen plenty of times walking around Scion office barefoot. His doubters use this to mock him, among his other weird traits. "So Mike Burry, who gets his hair cut at Supercuts, and doesn’t wear shoes, knows more than Alan Greenspan." ...Go figure, he sort of did...

** The S&P officer is wearing very dark glasses from an optometrist appointment, severely restricting her vision, while she explains to Baum that her firm saw nothing wrong with the sub-prime mortgage bonds. She later admits that they give the bonds high ratings, without even ''looking'' at them, in exchange for the bank doing business with them, because if they don't, another ratings agency (like Moody's) will.

** Burry alienates almost everyone who he was doing business with, although since he gladly walks away from it all, it qualifies as more of a BittersweetEnding for him. Baum and his associates profit immensely from the credit default swaps, but he is clearly heartbroken by his decision to go through with it. Shipley and Geller make millions but are horrified that no one in the media seems to care about the fraud that has taken place. Lastly, Vennett makes millions in bonuses after the bank profited from the swaps he sold and openly does not care about how the rest of the world was affected by the crash.
** We even see what happens to some of the minor characters and it isn't good. One of Burry's employees is shown in his new job, stocking shelves at a convenience store. The two mortgage brokers who Baum meets in Florida are now unemployed, shown trudging through a job fair looking for work. Saddest of all, the man who was renting the Florida house (whose landlord hadn't paid his mortgage) with his wife and young children is shown living out of a van.

** Vennet starts his lemony narration, then appears in the flashback scene talking to the camera and assuring us how cool he is.

* GoodCapitalismEvilCapitalism: Lewis Ranieri and his associates in the 1970s were the Good, as Ranieri's invention of the mortgage backed securities was born out of a desire to create new investments that were both profitable and carried little risk to stakeholders like state pension funds. The bankers in the modern day are the Evil as they completely ignored the economic and market fundamentals of the initial securities so they could enrich themselves at the expense of the public.
* HanlonsRazor: Played with; for most of the film, Baum assumes the crisis is down to idiots who are too short-sighted to realise what they're causing and this certainly applies to many of the (mostly low- or mid-level) people he meets. The mortgage brokers bear this out; when the stripper tells Baum they told her she could always refinance, Baum at first says they're liars (which they'd already proven in other areas), before admitting that in this particular case they probably are honestly wrong, which is proven by the WhereAreTheyNowEpilogue showing them looking for work. After the bailout, however, Baum realises that the upper-echelons of the banks might have predicted ''exactly'' what would happen every step of the way, and is put into a HeroicBSOD at discovering how heartlessly selfish and greedy people can be.
* HeelFaceDoorSlam: After they realize they were proven right, Shipley and Geller go to the press to tell their story, as a form of atonement. The journalist they talk to refuses to publish what they know, on the grounds that no bank would verify their information and would burn bridges.

* InfoDump: Done in a unique way: Rather than fill the audience in on complex financial things through traditional in-universe exposition, the film introduces celebrities to explain it, generally via less-complicated metaphors. We get Margot Robbie explaining mortgage bonds in a bubblebath, Creator/AnthonyBourdain using unsold fish to illustrate how banks handle unsold bonds, and Richard Thaler and Music/SelenaGomez at a blackjack table illustrating how synthetic [=CDOs=] work.

* InsaneTrollLogic: The logic behind Collateralized Debt Obligations ([=CDOs=]) are as follows: a bunch of unsold low rated BBB, BB, and B bonds that didn't sell because investors considered them too risky are packaged into a new investment. Because the bonds have different risk levels, the ratings agencies consider them a diversified investment and grant them a high A level rating. Some are rated AAA even though it is, at its core, individual low rated bonds.

** Jared Vennet is a total {{Slimeball}} and not only makes no attempt to hide it, but actively embraces what a douche he is.

** [[spoiler: DoubleSubverted. Vennet says that Baum became worried that the bankers whose recklessness crashed the system would escape punishment. Fortunately, Vennet informs us, the government stepped in and prosecuted the bankers, and rewrote the regulations in order to prevent another collapse. Except, that's a lie. Instead, he says, the banks used their influence with Congress to kill common-sense regulations and push blame onto poor people, immigrants, and teachers, and only a single banker was prosecuted out of all the big-shots who were guilty of fraud.]]
** Made poignant in a scripted version of the scene where Vennet shows off his bonus check. He got $47 million after making $20 billion for the bank through the swaps he sold. He then mentions his two bosses got $50 million in bonuses after they ''lost'' the bank $30 billion.
** Though subverted with the two sleazy mortgage guys from Florida. The end of the film shows them attending a job fair while appearing very defeated.

* LetMeGetThisStraight: Happens quite a bit, mostly when Baum, Geller or Shipley are finding out something about the banks attitude towards what's going on that they don't believe is possible. It's almost to the point of a RunningGag.

* LiteralMetaphor: Georgia, the financial auditor Baum and Vinny talk with is nearly-blind and has hard time reading even their card. She's literally turning the blind eye on the bad papers the banks are sending to her desk.
* {{Manchild}}: A lot of the supposed financial experts act in a very childish way. Examples include; the Florida mortgage brokers who act like high-school {{Jerk Jock}}s, playfully punching each other while in a room with experienced and serious hedge-fund managers, the various bankers at the shooting range in Vegas, who engage in over-the-top frat-boy cheers and chestbumps while supposedly entertaining clients, and the woman at Standard & Poors, whose petulant JustFollowingOrders justification prompts Baum to incredulously ask her if she's four. Lampshaded at the end when Geller and Shipley walk inside a (deserted) Wall Street office, and comment that they were expecting to find adults.

* NotDistractedByTheSexy: Whilst investigating the housing market in Florida, Baum attends a strip joint to talk to talk to strippers who have been sold bad mortgages by predatory brokers. [[HappilyMarried Baum is pointedly only interested]] in talking about finance to the stripper giving him a private dance.

** One of the fourth wall moments is used to mention how unbelievable but actually true it was that [[spoiler: Baum was lecturing about the failures of the subprime mortgage market against a Bear Sterns investor as a run on Bear Sterns' stock occurred.]] This contrasts the earlier ContrivedCoincidence of Geller and Shipley finding a copy of Vennett's pitch in the lobby of the J.P. Morgan Chase building, where the movie admits that it was made up for dramatic effect and quickly details the complicated actual events.

** Burry's fund in particular is hit hard, as it is managed by him alone, and he begins to need to layoff employees as his fund moves into the red. He later uses his fiduciary power as fund manager to stop people from withdrawing their money entirely, which leads to his e-mailbox and phone blowing up, and then eventually to investor lawsuits. [[note]] The investors who stayed the course wound up profiting in total around [[http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2010/04/wall-street-excerpt-201004 $700 million]] when the crash finally came.[[/note]]

* PlatonicProstitution: Or a platonic strip club. Baum talks to a stripper about her mortgage situation and eventually asks her to stop the stripping and talk to him more about her finances, promising to still pay her.

* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: Mark Baum is one as he's willing to listen to Vennett's pitch that has been rejected by just about every other fund in the city, but also do some investigating of his own just to make sure he's correct.

* RightHandVersusLeftHand: Once the collapse started showing up, and learning about which individual bonds were imploding, Baum realizes that some of the shorts they bought looped back around to be paid out by his own financial group. The dread on his face is clear and he says "All this time I've been wondering who I'm shorting against..."

* SelectiveObliviousness: Seen repeatedly throughout most people involved in the housing and financial markets throughout the film. Even when data of a looming apocalypse is laid out in front of them they refuse to believe it.

* ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney: Or want money. Or don't get paid enough to care about the rules. The SEC agent Shipley and Geller meet in Vegas is happy to hobnob with bankers to try to get a cushy job instead of investigating them. And Georgia, the S&P executive, doesn't crack down on the bankers because if she did they'd just go to S&P's competition instead.

** Vennett. He's a sleazy, tanned, over-slick guy, but not a JerkWithAHeartOfJerk like other characters because he is at least honest and upfront with people.

** Baum and his associates are left speechless after Vennett explains how utterly broken the sub-prime housing market it, and the impending bubble that's about to burst and take the entire US housing market with it.

* TwoScenesOneDialogue: Geller, on a phone conference with Shipley and Rickert -- the latter of which is trying to hang up for a colonic appointment -- suggests they buy more swaps after figuring out that they're going to make a huge profit off of the housing collapse. Shipley disagrees loudly. Meanwhile, Vennett returns to Front Point and expects his payout. Both Front Point and Shipley start screaming variations of "No" and obscenities, leading to this blink-and-you'll-miss-it joke:

* XanatosGambit: Vennett's entire deal. His plan doesn't hinge on the housing bubble actually collapsing, only on someone buying into his conviction that it will. As soon as Frontpoint Partners is in, he has already won regardless of how the situation turns out.

* HeelRealization: When Rickert spells out the consequences of what's about to happen with housing and the entire economy, Shipley and Geller suddenly feel like bad guys when they realize how much the collapse they'll be profiting will harm millions of ordinary people.

* TheCynic: Baum and Vinny's final phone conversation shows two different sides of this; Baum discovering that the banks might have known ''exactly'' what they were doing puts him into a HeroicBSOD, and he sounds almost broken-hearted when he tells Vinny "they just didn't care." Vinny responds with "Yeah, 'cos they're fucking crooks" as if it's obvious that they wouldn't, but he then naively states that there'll be loads of people going to jail and more regulation to make sure it doesn't happen again, to which Baum bets that they'll blame immigrants and poor people, and then the system keep right on going. From this, it seems that Vinny is more cynical about individual people but hopeful about the system's ability to course-correct after an obvious failure, while Baum was the opposite.

* {{Sexposition}}: Downplayed - the film sometimes uses {{Fanservice}} while trying to explain an economic concept to the audience, like with the DiningInTheBuff scene and the stripper.

** After Baun discovers that his own bank is about to suffer losses that leave even his ''most'' pessimistic worries in the dust, he just gapes mutely for a few seconds.