Wicked Wastefulness

Wastefulness is generally frowned upon in most societies, so it isn't surprising that a lot of media associates wastefulness with a poor moral character. Wastefulness is often associated with vices such as selfishness, short-sightedness, laziness, and irresponsibility. This can manifest itself in a number of ways:

1. When it comes to money, villainous characters will often be shown as reckless spendthrifts who spend money out of hedonism or a desire to show off their wealth, while the heroes are much more frugal by comparison.
   • If the villain is wealthier than the hero, then the villain's wastefulness is probably because they grew up in wealth and were never taught the importance of frugality while the hero had to be smart with his finances due to not having much money. Alternatively, if the hero is wealthier than the villain, then it will be because the hero's good financial sense results in them having plenty of money to spare, while the villain's reckless spending results in them going broke, even if they make a lot.
   • The hero and villain often differ in their attitude towards saving money in that the hero believes in the importance of saving, while the villain scoffs at the idea of saving money because they are either too short-sighted to understand the importance of saving, too concerned with appearances, or both. An especially prideful villain might even insist on wasting money trying to look rich even when they go broke.
2. The villain's wastefulness can also be reflected in how it affects others, especially those they are responsible for caring for.
   • If the villain has some kind of political power, then they will often use tax money on luxuries for themselves and/or self-aggrandizing projects rather than taking care of their citizens. Naturally, this tends to result in said citizens and the community as a whole suffering, which the villain will either not care about or try to "solve" by distracting the citizens with Bread and Circuses.
   • If the villain is an an abusive and/or neglectful parent, one of the ways they can mistreat their kids is by spending money they should be using for their kids on themselves, often to the point where their kids end up starving and/or sick. Variants involving abusive orphanage owners, abusive children, or evil caretakers can fulfill a similar role.
3. Media about environmentalism often show the effects of wastefulness on the environment by having people's wastefulness hurt said environment and exhaust the Earth's resources.
4. A post-apocalyptic setting will have villains who waste the world's limited resources hoarding them to themselves and their minions and/or by wasting them on self-aggrandizing status symbols.
5. In regards to food, the heroes will eat every bite of their food and only eat when they are hungry, while the villains will throw away food that is perfectly edible and gorge themselves rather than save food.

Supertrope to We Have Reserves, which involves villains being wasteful with their soldiers' lives, and Money to Burn as a specific exaggeration on money. Overlaps with Money Dumb, Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense, Ms. Red Ink, A Fool and His New Money Are Soon Parted, Gambling Ruins Lives, and/or Conspicuous Consumption if the villain is wasteful with money, Ecocidal Antagonist if the villain's actions destroy the environment, or Villainous Glutton and/or Tastes Like Disdain if the villain wastes food. More negative depictions of The Hedonist will often have wastefulness as a consequence of their pursuit of pleasure against common sense. Contrast The Scrooge, All Jews Are Cheapskates, and Thrifty Scot for characters who are overly concerned with saving money, and Money Fetish, Greed, Loves Only Gold, and Gold Fever for characters who desire to gain or horde money.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Blade of the Moon Princess: Inbe repeatedly steals from a small and starving village, showing up regularly to demand food payouts. However, we later see him eating a bowl of rice while complaining about the actions of Kaguya, at which point he decides he no longer wants the food — kicking it onto the floor and calling it "shabby". This makes the eavesdropping Tamakichi furious, as he and his mother never have enough to eat and the food came from the people of their village.
• Dragon Ball: Giran, an antagonistic tournament opponent, gets an enormous bucket of fried chicken, then only takes one bite from each piece before throwing it away. To make it worse, when a starving Goku attempts to pick up the chicken on the floor, Giran yells at him for stealing.
• One Piece:
  • Wastefulness is a particularly notable habit of the World Nobles, who often spend several million Beli on luxuries, some of which involve torturing people for no reason other than boredom. To make matters worse, the money they use for said depravity comes from the Heavenly Tribute, a tax that the various countries controlled by the World Government have to pay if they want to enjoy the various benefits it provides, and said tax is so high that many countries go destitute trying to pay it.
  • In the Wano arc, Kuroumi Orochi, the shogun of Wano, throws excessive parties even as many of his people starve, simply because he wants to run Wano into the ground due to his grudge against the Kozukis, the country's former rulers. During the raid on Onigashima at the climax of the arc, Luffy, who befriended a destitute girl named Tama, goes berserk and attacks some of Kaido's men, thus forfeiting the element of surprise, when he sees them casually throw out some red bean soup.

Comic Books

• Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW): This version of Dr. Eggman forgoes a lot more pragmatic measures thanks to his limitless reserves. He is complacent in the face of his numerous failures and is assured that anything that his enemies destroy are both easily expendable and replaceable. This lack of long-term care towards some of his creations emphasizes how evil and wicked he is, considering that anything can just be rebuilt or replaced by him. Zavok, another villain in the comic, expresses his disgust at Eggman's lack of regard for his own infrastructure, such as when he would destroy one of his Eggnet Hubs just to kill him.
  Zavok: You would destroy such a crucial installation?
  Eggman: I can always rebuild. Taking you down while staying out of range of your EM-powers is Worth It!
  Zavok: Such a waste! And I hate waste!

Fan Works

• Chloè's Lament: In the new universe that Chloè creates as a result of her wish, Chloè and Marinette have not only swapped classes, the new Marinette's family is actually wealthier than Chloè's was in the old universe due to the fact that, unlike Andre, who constantly bought Chloè whatever she wanted, paid his employees extra to put up with her bratty behavior, and used his money and influence to keep her from suffering any consequences for her actions, Sabine and Tom raised Marinette responsibly and don't have to spend money catering to her whims or keeping her out of trouble.

Films — Animated

• Animal Farm (1954): After the pigs led by Napoleon make the farm a profitable enterprise for themselves, Benjamin the donkey spies into the farmhouse, and sees a pig taking a bite out of an apple, and then throwing it over his shoulder. The apple lands close to another pig, who brushes it away onto a pile of more apples that each only has one bite taken out.
• The Christmas Tree: Mrs. Mavilda is an Evil Orphanage Lady who spends the money she's supposed to be using on the kids on herself, glutting herself on fine meals while the children starve, and gambling the rest away. Worse, she actually seems to take sadistic joy in the fact that her gambling habit deprives the kids of necessities.
• The Lorax (2012): Unlike the original book, this adaptation makes it clear that the Once-ler doesn't have to cut down whole Truffula trees to make Thneeds — he only needs to pluck the tufts that grow on them, which will grow back in time. He even promises to do exactly this when the Lorax calls him out on it, only to be manipulated by his family into breaking the promise so they can speed up production. The Once-ler promptly goes Jumping Off the Slippery Slope, and only realises the damage he's caused when the last Truffula tree falls.
• In Pocahontas, while the settlers dig for gold, Governor Ratcliffe (the villain) takes one bite out of a drumstick before handing it to Wiggins to discard.

Films — Live-Action

• A Cinderella Story: One subtle aspect of Fiona's greed and cruelty is that she needlessly wastes water on keeping her lawn green in the middle of the California drought. Sam points this out to her, but she refuses to back down.
• The Dark Crystal: Apart from their Jabba Table Manners, the Skeksis are shown to be wasteful in their practices, including throwing away food that is only half-eaten. They are also the villains of the story.
• Dune (2021): The Harkonnens' water wastefulness for the sake of cruelty (aside from any other acts off-screen) is portrayed in this film by them having planted a big row of palm trees at the entrance of the palace that had to be watered daily with what the Fremen gardener says is enough water for five men (for each). When he hears this, Paul offers to get the trees cut down but the gardener declines saying that the trees are like Fremen: resilient (the fact the Harkonnens ordered him to do so under pain of death and he is still wary of the Atreides also factors). The Harkonnens make a point of setting the trees on fire when they massacre the Atreides.

Literature

• Chronicles of Ancient Darkness: In this Stone-Age setting, the main antagonists like demons and the Soul Eaters tend to kill animals without using every part of the corpse as the clans the heroes live in do in accordance to an ancient pact that demands it as a show of proper respect for the prey.
• The Divine Comedy: In Inferno, Dante depicts wastefulness of resources as a mortal sin. In the Fourth Circle, the squanderers are imprisoned alongside the hoarders, with their punishment being engaging in an endless and futile battle by rolling huge stones at one another.
• Dune: Arrakis is a desert planet, where water is at a premium and most of the population are permanently underhydrated and malnourished. Under the dog-kicking rule of the Harkonnens, it was customary at banquets for rich guests to dip their hands in bowls of water by the door, slopping much of it onto the floor in the process, then dry their hands and toss the towels into the corner, where other guests would casually tread on them (passing beggars would be allowed to drink squeezings from them later). Duke Leto Atreides is disgusted when he finds out, and orders the custom abolished and the water distributed to the beggars.
• "The Girl Who Trod on the Loaf" tells the story of a vain girl ending up in Hell for being wasteful. After she tosses the loaf that she was meant to give to her mother to use it as a stepping stone and keep her shoes clean, her shoe gets stuck to the bread, and she sinks into the muddy pool.
• Gods and Warriors: Koronos, the ruthless patriarch of the House of Koronos and the High Chieftain of Mycenae, uses only new drinking vessels and shatters them after using them exactly once. This proves to be his undoing in the final book as Issi acquires for Hekabi a potsherd from one of Koronos' shattered vessels so that the wisewoman can use it to curse him.
• Harry Potter: The Gaunts were an old pureblood-supremacist family whose pride and desire to show off their wealth resulted in them squandering it and sending their family into financial ruin.
• The Hunger Games: In Catching Fire, Katniss and Peeta are able to fully appreciate the decadence of Panem during the Victory Parade dinner in the Capitol, when they see people drinking emetics to eat more food. It's the sole instance of Peeta losing his calm: he flatly tells Katniss that maybe they shouldn't calm the crowds down across Panem.
  All I can think of is the emaciated bodies of the children on our kitchen table as my mother prescribes what the parents can't give. More food. Now that we're rich, she'll send some home with them. But often in the old days, there was nothing to give and the child was past saving, anyway. And here in the Capitol they're vomiting for the pleasure of filling their bellies again and again. Not from some illness of body or mind, not from spoiled food. It's what everyone does at a party. Expected. Part of the fun.
• Magister Trilogy: Magic is Cast from Lifespan, so it's rarely used wastefully — except by the Magisters, who cast from other people's lifespan, and think nothing of using magic to dye their clothes.
• A Song of Ice and Fire: In A Dance with Dragons. Just in case the wickedness of Bastard Bastard Ramsay Bolton (née Snow) was not evident from his hobby of flaying others, he enjoys throwing feasts at the expense of his bannermen. At a point when most people are worrying about having enough food to last through a years-long winter, he ends up forcing a lord to slaughter the cattle set aside as breeding stock, which were the only animals left.
• The Stormlight Archive: Queen Aesudan's misrule escalates to the point that she cancels food aid to the poor but holds lavish parties for her sycophants while her country suffers. It prompts a Turbulent Priest to denounce her, setting off a wave of civil unrest. However, her actions are at least partly influenced by the Eldritch Abomination Ashertmarn, Heart of the Revel.
• Warrior Cats: One rule in the Warrior Code is to only kill prey for food. Tigerstar, tyrannical and racist dictator that he is, is shown ignoring this rule. On one occasion, he left dead rabbit around just to bring dogs into the ThunderClan territory. In a more blatant case, he was later shown to have killed a vast amount of prey solely to build himself a pile of bones in the "TigerClan" camp.

Live-Action TV

• House of Anubis: The Sinners perform a variety of petty acts as part of their goal to spread chaos. A common tactic involves ruining or wasting food. Patricia once throws KT's food in the trash, condemning her to go hungry just out of cruelty. In another instance, Fabian is shown ruining the milk at breakfast by contaminating it with jam.
• True Jackson, VP: World-famous supermodel Dakota North is introduced as being extremely wasteful of her items as well as extremely rude to other people. Her Establishing Character Moment features her literally throwing phones away simply for being out of battery or the wrong color, while completely ignoring True's attempts to talk to her.

Tabletop Games

• BattleTech: In-universe, this is how the Clans originally viewed the Inner Sphere — rich and bloated on its excessive consumption of frivolities. In reality, a big part of why the Inner Sphere was so much more economically powerful than the Clans (aside from having a considerably larger population base and number of planets) is that the Clans' frequently stated abhorrence to waste was done in a penny-wise, pound-foolish manner. They saw it as a wasteful extravagance to actually invest in anything other than the warrior caste that ran everything: low caste laborers and merchants were provided with basic necessities as long as they could work, then left to die once they were unable to. Small wonder that within a few decades of invading the Inner Sphere, most of the invader Clans decided that they actually liked the Inner Sphere's lifestyle better.
• Dark Sun: While many of the Dragon Kings love Conspicuous Consumption of various flavors in a world where survival is a brutal ordeal, the entire mul race is seen as one of the most evil and the most wasteful. Muls are Half Human Hybrids of dwarf and human, and are sturdy, strong, and tireless workers and warriors, but the resulting child is short-lived, mostly sterile, and potentially lethal to the mother in delivery. For this reason, they're usually created through force and Breeding Slaves. On top of all the other kinds of evil this represents, they're also wastefully sacrificing a woman's life for something that'll be gone in less than one generation.
• Forgotten Realms: Nobanion is a Lawful Good deity whose dogma teaches that people should only eat when hungry and never gorge without need and that if people don't waste anything, there would be plenty for all.

Video Games

• Persona 5: Part of the reason why Kaneshiro, a Yakuza boss, represents the sin of Gluttony rather than Greed is that he desires money solely to use it on frivolous luxuries rather than any type of long-term goal. Said money primarily comes from dealing drugs, blackmail, and sex trafficking.
• The Simpsons Game: "Lisa the Tree Hugger" sees Lisa and Bart team up against Mr. Burns who, in keeping with his depiction in the series, is planning to cut down a forest full of massive trees and turn each one into a single toothpick.
• The Sims 3: If you throw away a meal, the sim who prepared it will get a brief negative moodlet which says "there are starving children in Strangetown".
• Warframe: Grendel's backstory gives us Karishh, the ruler of the city of Riddha. He's described as a "violet-scented brute", had twelve(!) grafted stomachs, and held lavish feasts for himself and his sycophants while the citizens of Riddha starved. Fittingly, it's implied that Grendel ate him after freeing the city from his rule.

Web Animation

• Trouble Busters:
  • Alan and Aaron are brothers-in-law who make the exact same amount of money, but unlike Alan, who's humble and only spends what he needs, Aaron and his wife Sandra are arrogant show-offs who end up in debt because of their constant need to spend money on expensive status symbols. Even after going into debt, they still insist on indulging in wasteful luxuries because of their obsession with status.
  • Mark and Ariel are an arrogant husband and wife who make good money working at a hospital, but are in deep debt to loan sharks and incapable of paying their credit card bills because of their poor spending habits, with Mark buying his affair partners several luxury items, and Ariel constantly borrowing money from her friends.

Webcomics

• Kill Six Billion Demons: The God-Emperor Mottom feeds her Decadent Court with the pillage of 111,111 worlds and is associated with Gluttony. To host a one-on-one audience with Allison, she has a huge dining hall filled with a feast fit for hundreds, just to show off.
  Allison: Are you...just going to throw this all away? Why?
  Mottom: Wrong question, dear. "Why" is a question of the weak. The proper question is "Why not?"

Western Animation

• Captain Planet: Being a show about environmentalism, there are a number of episodes that show the consequences that wastefulness has on the environment.
  • In general, Hoggish Greedly tends to be the most prominent villain in this regard, as he represents the dangers of overconsumption and waste. His plots usually involve destroying entire ecosystems via various destructive and wasteful practices such as dynamite fishing, strip mining, and clear-cutting forests.
  • The episode "The Dream Machine" has Zarm using the titular machine to create various, unnecessary luxuries for a group of villagers, which results in their resources being exhausted due to said machine using them up to create the aforementioned luxuries. Being a War God, Zarm's purpose for doing this is to start a war by manipulating the villagers into invading another village for basic necessities such as clean water and grain.
• The Simpsons:
  • Homer's boss Mr. Burns is comically miserly toward his employees, but lives an incredibly wealthy life full of frivolous luxuries. In one episode, it's shown that rather than make his bed, he has it incinerated and gets a new one delivered every day.
  • Similar to Burns, Krusty the Clown has been shown to be very wasteful with his wealth just because he can, one episode has a Running Gag where he kept lighting his cigars by burning 100 dollar bills and later moved on to lighting a copy of Action Comics Issue 1 and a pearl necklace.
  • Subverted in another episode where Homer Simpson starts splurging some of his money due to a big investment opportunity he was confident will make him rich, to celebrate he buys cigars for all the patrons at Moe's tavern and lights his cigar with a dollar bill. Only to then extinguish the flame and place the singed dollar back in his wallet.
    Lenny: Hey Homer, how come you got money to burn? Or singe, anyway?
• The Spirit of '43: This trope is mixed with Good Angel, Bad Angel; the "Good Angel" is represented by the Thrifty, Donald's frugal side who warns Donald to save money to pay his income tax, while the role of the "Bad Angel" is the Spendthrift, Donald's more hedonistic side who wants Donald to blow his money on idle pleasures. Being a Wartime Cartoon made during World War 2, the cartoon portrays the Thrifty as a patriot who's doing his duty to his country, while the Spendthrift is a spy trying to help the Axis by convincing citizens to blow their tax money.
• Yogi's Gang: Mr. Waste is a unique example of this trope in that he thinks wastefulness is good and being frugal is bad, meaning that he goes out of his way to be wasteful. He does things such as throw away perfectly good food after one bite, replace clothes after wearing them only once, and creating extra rooms in his house so he doesn't have to sleep in the same place twice. As a result of his lifestyle, the islands that he lives on are wastelands because he used up all of their resources.

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