Basic Trope: A villain fails to pay upkeep for their minions and they suffer some negative consequence for it.
- Straight:
- Emperor Evulz has Alice Fed to the Beast but the beast died from starvation because he forgets about it when he's not feeding said beast would-be heroes.
- Emperor Evulz summons his mooks to attack Alice but they've deserted because he hasn't paid them this month.
- Exaggerated:
- The beast arena is filled with the remains of the beasts that have starved to death.
- Emperor Evulz's lair falls into disrepair because he didn't pay any of his staff, not just his mooks for the past few years.
- Downplayed:
- The beast is alive but very weak because Emperor Evulz can only afford to feed it a starvation diet.
- Emperor Evulz only has a few low quality mooks because that's all he can afford to hire.
- Justified:
- Emperor Evulz is too busy to worry about mundane things such as pay and maintenance.
- Emperor Evulz doesn't care about his mooks or beasts.
- Emperor Evulz has no money available.
- Inverted:
- Alice doesn't (or can't) pay the soldiers that accompany her, and she also doesn't (or can't) feed her Team Pet.
- Emperor Evulz orders the beast to be fed too much so it can use it can have limitless energy when needed. This backfires when Alice easily overpowers the fattened beast.
- Emperor Evulz is extremely lavish with paying and hiring only the best Elite Mooks he can get and he goes into debt.
- Subverted:
- Alice is thrown to the beast and figures that the arena is so decrepit that the beast within has died from neglect. She is promptly devoured by the very not-dead beast.
- Alice enters Emperor Evulz's lair and notices that it since it is so decrepit, Emperor Evulz probably couldn't afford any guards. She promptly runs into a horde of mooks that have just been hired.
- Double Subverted:
- The beast is healthy. The arena itself is neglected, as part of the grandstand collapses and kills the beast.
- The new mooks promptly quit once Emperor Evulz can't pay them.
- Parodied:
- Emperor Evulz's beast refuses to do his bidding until he gives it a belly rub.
- Emperor Evulz's beast is sick because a diet of mooks who have failed him is not well-balanced and lacking in essential nutrients.
- Alternatively, Evulz feeds so many people to the beast that the beast is morbidly obese and is in no shape to be a threat.
- Emperor Evulz pays his mooks a very low wage and as a result, the mooks give a hilariously bad performance at work.
- Zig Zagged:
- The beast survives the grandstand collapsing on it, only to slip on the debris and fall. Only to survive that fall and drop dead because it had a heart problem, as Emperor Evulz forgot to get a doctor for the beast.
- Alice learns that all the mooks have deserted Emperor Evulz since he hasn't paid them. But she soon runs into some freshly hired Elite Mooks. Then part of the ceiling collapses onto the mooks since Emperor Evulz also didn't pay his maintenance personnel. And when she gets to his doomsday weapon, it's in perfect working order since he hired the best technicians to maintain and repair it. But the "doomsday weapon" is also incredibly weak since he gave his mad scientists a puny budget and they could only afford substandard materials.
- Averted: There is no mention of the logistics behind the beasts or the death traps.
- Enforced: A video game where A Dungeon Is You game that is Nintendo Hard because there are no Easy Logistics there.
- Lampshaded:
- "Hey! Who forgot to feed Fluffy?"
- "My Evilness, why haven't you paid us this month?"
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited:
- Alice spots the decrepit arena and chooses to be Fed to the Beast, knowing that the neglected arena is a sign that the beastkeeper has been slacking off and the beast in question has probably died from neglect.
- Alice enters Emperor Evulz's lair with a lot of cash in hand as she knows the mooks haven't been paid and that they're easily bought off.
- Defied:
- Emperor Evulz makes sure to keep every part of his lair in tiptop shape and properly pay his underlings.
- Clay the psychopathic Scottish lefty decides to start raiding and pillaging every village out there as some kind of "profit", which he then gives to Emperor Evulz in order to help keep the entire operation financed and running.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Implied:
- A mook opens his wallet only to see a bunch of moths and dust inside.
- The local beast keeper instructs his salespeople to not sell anything to Emperor Evulz.
- Deconstructed:
- Emperor Evulz eventually goes bankrupt from having to constantly replace the beasts that have died from neglect.
- The seller of dangerous beasts (hey, it's a living) becomes suspicious of why Evulz keeps buying so many dangerous animals and refuses to do business with him.
- Emperor Evulz is mauled by the desperately starving beast.
- Emperor Evulz's reputation for stiffing his workers proceeds him and he is unable to hire any mooks.
- Emperor Evulz's mooks, being people of ill repute and favoring violent means of conflict resolution, decide to take matters into their own hands when they haven't been paid and they turn on Emperor Evulz and proceed to Rape, Pillage, and Burn his lair.
- Emperor Evulz's lair collapses and buries him because he didn't bother to spend money to keep his lair structurally sound.
- Emperor Evulz eventually goes bankrupt from having to constantly replace the beasts that have died from neglect.
- Reconstructed:
- Emperor Evulz has the beasts created by dark magic.
- Emperor Evulz enslaves the local populace to serve as his mooks.
- Emperor Evulz uses magic to ensure his lair will never collapse.
- Played For Laughs:
- Played For Drama:
- The beast is kept juuuust starved enough so that it will be ravenously hungry, and it's ultimately just another victim of Evulz's cruelty.
- One of the mooks is desperate for money, so he joins Emperor Evulz as he's lured by the promise of a steady, well-paying job. Unfortunately, not only is he rarely, if ever paid, he is treated little better than a slave. And he doesn't dare speak up for fear that Emperor Evulz will simply have him killed.
Oops. Looks like we Forgot to Feed the Monster again.
