History Main / NoBudget

* First ''VideoGame/MaxPayne'' game had a modest budget and most of what little development money Remedy had went into creating character models, most of which were based on developers, their friends or family members and people who worked in other companies in the same office complex where Remedy was located to cut down the costs. The distinct Graphic Novel cutscenes of the game were also selected due to budget issues and similarly casted with easily available people, most notably the games lead writer, Sam Lake, who played Max Payne.

[[folder:Films -- Animated]]

** It's more blatant on the current syndicated version, which also has families playing for points instead of cash. The Fast Money prize was originally $10,000, but it changed to $20,000 in 2001 which is still the same to this day. Fast Money losses are ''still'' $5 a point, which has been the same since 1976. [[note]](The Ray Combs-hosted pilots from 1987 offered $10 a point, the only change outside of celebrity shows.)[[/note]]

** Before, shows like ''Series/{{Idiotest}}'' or ''Emogenius'' also offered grand prizes of $10k, but scoring was in dollars, and there were still small bonuses in endgames. As of July 2023, only two ongoing shows score in dollars: ''Series/ChainReaction'' and ''Series/HeyYahoo''

* The Taiwanese version of ''Series/CashCab'' is so cheap, they deduct the cab fare from contestants' winnings. Early episodes also had extremely paltry prize amounts — the grand total given away on the premiere, after cab fare deductions? Less than US$1.

Oh -- uhm, hello! Sorry about the mess, uh, we couldn't afford hiring cleaners, and the light, well -- one lightbulb should be enough, right? No pesky {{lampshade|Hanging}}s blocking the light, too, although this is [[Administrivia/WelcomeToTVTropes TVTropes]], so I suppose no lampshades isn't really appropriate, eh? Heh -- oh, uh, [[BreakingTheFourthWall manager says we can't afford jokes like that]].

Sometimes the creators are skilled enough to make the best of it and produce a good work despite (or even because of) the limitations imposed on them. If something goes OffTheRails in an inspired way, they may be willing to ThrowItIn -- they are too broke and TooDesperateToBePicky. If this effort ultimately makes the show ''more interesting'' than it would have been if it were better-funded, compare SerendipityWritesThePlot. For the stubborn and resilient spirit required to keep doing creative work in such difficulty, compare TheShowMustGoOn. The KitschyLocalCommercial owes its charm to this.

* ''WesternAnimation/SausageParty'' has a reported budget of [[https://variety.com/2016/film/news/box-office-petes-dragon-sausage-party-florence-foster-jenkins-thursday-1201836357/ $19 million]] (though some sources claim [[http://www.econotimes.com/Sausage-Party-actor-producer-Seth-Rogen-Reveals-Small-$30-million-Budget-Critics-Predict-Possible-Box-Office-Flop-213451 $30 million]]). The cast is full of A-list talent -- who are not cheap to pay even on a low budget project -- so the amount of money put into actually animating the movie may be much lower. [[note]]Tellingly, shortly after release, many of the animators came forward revealing a hostile working environment at the hands of co-director Greg Tiernan due to said low budget.[[/note]]

* ''WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirlsMovie'' was originally budgeted at $25 million. It wound up being made for $10 million and it grossed $15 million domestically. What Creator/WarnerBros did with the rest of the budget is anyone's guess -- it sure didn't go towards promoting the film.

* Creator/RalphBakshi's ''WesternAnimation/{{Wizards}}'' was made on a $1M budget -- on the DVD commentary, Ralph admitted that the ''only'' way he was even able to complete the film was because he got veteran WesternAnimation/TomAndJerry animator, Irv Spence, to animate 75% of the movie. It tends to show more often than not, but Bakshi's studio was quite famous for cranking out animated films for less money than many movies spend on catering alone.

* Phil Tippett's stop-motion magnum opus ''WebVideo/MadGod'' was produced over a period of thirty years, with the majority of its funding being crowd-sourced-- and even that totaled only about $150,000.

* Most modern Creator/GameShowNetwork originals, especially since ''Series/AmericaSays''. These shows typically award champions a flat $1,000 and offer a top prize of $10,000 -- with exceptions of ''America Says'' ($15,000) and the new ''[[Series/{{Gambit}} Catch 21]]'' ($25,000). Losing a bonus round, even by ''just one question,'' wins nothing extra.

* ''Literature/InTheRealmsOfTheUnreal'' author Creator/HenryDarger made the illustrations for his story by combining his original art with tracing over photos, coloring book pictures and comic-strip illustrations (he loved ''Little Annie Rooney'') of human figures and landscapes. He would find a lot of those, along with much of his art supplies, while dumpster diving, and also in newspapers -- he read all five Chicago papers every day. He also had a collection of children's books with line drawings[[note]]Several publishing houses put out nice editions of children's literature for unbelievably cheap prices, something like Dover Press does today[[/note]] and used those. His original nature settings (especially his amazing skies and flowers) were fine, but he couldn't draw human figures as well as he wanted, and he couldn't afford proper art training. What little spending money he did have, he used for editing the photos to his needs, including having enlarged photocopies made at the local drugstore.

* Music/{{Nickelback}}'s first EP, ''Hesher'', was recorded in a two month period between March and April of 1996 for $4,000 -- half of which was actually used for recording and the other half for buying drugs -- and was self-released by the group in their hometown. Only a thousand copies of it were made before the band ran out of money [[OldShame and decided the album wasn't worth keeping around]], making physical copies heavily sought after by fans.

* Wrestling/{{TNA}}'s budget went into a nosedive after they got cancelled from Spike and Panda Energy (the billion dollar company Dixie Carter's parents own) cut them off. By 2016 they were broke. They kept on paying their wrestlers and production team late, they were kicked out of their original headquarters and had to move into their merchandise warehouse, and they barely had enough money to do tapings. The annual ''Slammiversary'' PPV almost got canceled because they were so short on cash -- it's effectively the reason why Billy Corgan became minority shareholder. Even then Corgan only did so out of ignorance of just how true "no budget" really was and fled to the Wrestling/{{N|ationalWrestlingAlliance}}WA once he realized how hard TNA's recovery would be, Anthem of the Fight Network also having an interest in the company giving him a convenient way out.

** It's one of the cheapest plays you can put together if you can't afford safety equipment -- the fact that most of the scenes are at night means you don't even need many ''light bulbs'' -- except it's one of the plays that most ''needs'' safety equipment.

* The first WesternAnimation/MickeyMouse cartoon, WesternAnimation/PlaneCrazy, was an independent short made after Creator/WaltDisney had lost the rights to his character WesternAnimation/OswaldTheLuckyRabbit. The short was made on a shoestring budget of roughly $1,700 ($23,655 in 2015 money), and was singlehandedly animated by Creator/UbIwerks in just two weeks -- he had to crank out 700 drawings per day just to get the film done. The film was animated in Walt's garage, and their camera wasn't even capable of doing a trucking shot, so they had to [[OffTheShelfFX stack books below the background to give the illusion of it.]]

* Creator/{{Atlus}} was undergoing significant financial troubles during the development of ''VideoGame/Persona4''. This doesn't show too much during the actual game but is more evident with the game's choice of platform (it's a UsefulNotes/PlayStation2 game released in 2008) and internal data (the game is built as if it were a GameMod for ''VideoGame/Persona3'', complete with stacks of leftover assets from that game). This was mainly due to financial issues regarding Index Corporation, Atlus's parent company at the time, which eventually led to them being convicted of corporate fraud and declaring bankruptcy in June, 2013. Thankfully this issue stopped plaguing Atlus after they were acquired by the [[Creator/{{Sega}} Sega Sammy]] group.

* ''VideoGame/TheKingOfFightersXIV'', while being able to launch with a roster of 50 characters without having to resort to {{Moveset Clone}}s, was also developed on a budget too low to license a third-party UsefulNotes/GameEngine, resulting in it launching with graphics comparable to mid-90's CG. The game, however, was successful enough to have an update which improved its graphics, as well as making Creator/{{SNK}} able to afford an Unreal Engine license for ''[[VideoGame/SamuraiShodown Samurai Shodown 2019]]'' and ''VideoGame/TheKingOfFightersXV'', both of which have stylized graphics that look much better than launch ''XIV''.

* Many studios that opened up during [[UsefulNotes/TheDarkAgeOfAnimation the first 15 years of commercial TV]] churned out many cartoon shows with the most threadbare of budgets. Creator/HannaBarbera has been widely chided for this practice from 1957 to 2001.

* The Creator/WalterLantz cartoons were made on low budgets, resulting in rather [[OffModel sloppy-looking animation]] throughout the 30s and early-40s, [[ArtEvolution though they cleaned up afterwards]]. Tellingly, Lantz and his crew didn't have much trouble keeping up when UsefulNotes/TheDarkAgeOfAnimation set in and this became the rule rather than the exception, allowing them to stay in the theatrical cartoon business until 1972, at which point the only other studio producing theatrical cartoon shorts was Creator/DepatieFrelengEnterprises.

* The qubo version of ''WesternAnimation/VeggieTales'' is this. As it was basically new framing material for an already-existing DirectToVideo series, the new segments only used two voice actors (with the exception of Lisa Vischer playing Junior in one episode), some of the segements used stock footage or images (this is especially noticeable in the Pa Grape's Home Movies segments, which uses footage of black and white educational films), and in some episodes (specifically the second season), animation from earlier framing segments is recycled.

-->'Cause we've overspent out budget, could not have,\\

* ''VisualNovel/PlumbersDontWearTies'' was very cheaply shot even for a 1990s FullMotionVideo game, and most of the time it fails at being full-motion. Low production values are evident even in the game interface (what there is of it, anyway).

* Voivod's "Ravenous Medicine" is probably one of the cheapest, lamest, and {{Narm}}iest metal video you will ever see, but let's just say [[SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic it makes up for it big time]].

->'''Leafy:''' I was wondering, [[BatmanCanBreatheInSpace how are we in space yet able to talk, paddle, breathe, and not explode?]]\\

* Creator/{{Atlus}} was undergoing significant financial troubles during the development of ''VideoGame/Persona4''. This doesn't show too much during the actual game but is more evident with the game's choice of platform (it's a UsefulNotes/PlayStation2 game released in 2008) and internal data (the game is built as if it were a GameMod for ''VideoGame/Persona3'', complete with stacks of leftover assets from that game). This was mainly due to financial issues regarding Index Corporation, Atlus's parent company at the time, which eventually led to them being convicted of corporate fraud and declaring bankruptcy in June, 2013. Thankfully this issue stopped plaguing Atlus after they were acquired by the [[Creator/{{Sega}} Sega Sammy Corporation]].

* A few of [[Creator/{{Atlus}} Atlus's]] games in the late 2000s to early 2010s were produced with lower budgets than some of their other games and were even forced to re-use assets from previous games to help complete them. A major example is the original base release for ''VideoGame/Persona4'' which was released on the Playstation 2 in 2008 in Japan and 2009 in America instead of the Playstation 3 which was already out for two years and uses similar assets to ''VideoGame/Persona3'', the previous game with sprite data for the main characters of that game still existing in the code. This was mainly due to financial issues regarding Index Corporation, Atlus's parent company at the time, which eventually led to them being convicted of corporate fraud and declaring bankruptcy in June, 2013. Thankfully this issue stopped plaguing Atlus after they were acquired by the [[Creator/{{Sega}} Sega Sammy Corporation]].

* Creator/{{Atlus}} was undergoing significant financial troubles during the development of ''VideoGame/Persona4''. This doesn't show too much during the actual game but is more evident with the game's choice of platform (it's a UsefulNotes/PlayStation2 game released in 2008) and internal data (the game is built as if it were a GameMod for ''VideoGame/Persona3'', complete with stacks of leftover assets from that game).

* A few of ''Creator/Atlus'' games in the late 2000s to early 2010s were produced with lower budgets than some of their other games and were even forced to re-use assets from previous games to help complete them. A major example is the original base release for ''VideoGame/Persona4'' which was released on the Playstation 2 in 2008 in Japan and 2009 in America instead of the Playstation 3 which was already out for two years and uses similar assets to ''VideoGame/Persona3'', the previous game with sprite data for the main characters of that game still existing in the code. This was mainly due to financial issues regarding Index Corporation, Atlus's parent company at the time, which eventually led to them being convicted of corporate fraud and declaring bankruptcy in June, 2013. Thankfully this issue stopped plaguing Atlus after they were acquired by the [[''Creator/{{Sega}}'' Sega Sammy Corporation]].

* The original ''Series/PressYourLuck'' on CBS became this during its third and final year (1985-1986), when, after the colors on the big board changed, the dollar amounts in Round 2 began taking a nosedive (Round 1 was virtually unchanged, save for the addition of Add-A-One, and a $250 increase in #10), Pick-A-Corner began resulting in many conflicting and anti-climactic choices, and many of the $2,000 and $2,500 slides were gone to make way for $500 and $1,000 ones. Pick-A-Corner would be dropped by the final month of episodes.