History Main / NewTechIsNotCheap

-->'''General Percell''': What would it take to get it done in six months?
-->'''Dr. Brazzelton''': ''[laughing]'' Fifty billion dollars, I...
-->'''General Percell''': ''[deadpan]'' Will you take a check?
* Film/BatmanBegins uses this to justify why there's an entire branch full of hardware for Bruce to 'borrow' from Wayne Enterprises.
-->'''Lucius''': [This armor] will even stop a knife.
-->'''Bruce''': Why isn't it standard issue?
-->'''Lucius''': The military didn't think a soldier's life was worth 300 grand.

* Strategy games sometimes have "miniaturization" effects - an eventual reduction in cost of hardware that isn't new as the player climbs higher on TechTree in corresponding fields, which leaves it a viable choice for some time.

* ''ComicBook/{{Robin|1993}}'': The expensive nature of the items used in crimefighting is highlighted in a few issues. When Bruce was out getting healed and Tim was acting alone as Robin and fighting the replacement Batman since he was willing to kill Tim was more careful with his tech and had to sneak into the Batcave for things despite Az!Bats trying to kill him and Tim being a capable inventor. After Tim's father went bankrupt he was also much more conscious of the ridiculous budget needed for even simple things like batarangs.

* ''TabletopGame/BattleTech'' [[ZigzaggedTrope zigzags weirdly]] where some types of new tech are hideously expensive (for instance, the Heavy Gauss Rifle costs half a million C-Bills straight out of the box) and other types are much less stressful on the budget (the Coolant Pod, a piece of emergency heat venting equipment, is just 50,000 C-bills) meaning it's easier to get the newer tech even after the HGR goes into mass production. It's also odd that, despite centuries of existence, the cost of certain extremely common pieces of equipment such as the medium laser has not changed. Meaning that a brand new medium laser still costs the same 40,000 C-Bills now, almost a thousand years after their introduction, that they did on release.

* ''WesternAnimation/DespicableMe'': A huge part of the plot involved getting loans and necessary capital in order to create the evil inventions for the evil plots. They had their own Villain Bank. ("Formerly [[MorallyBankruptBanker Lehman Brothers]]")

* ''VideoGame/Dishonored2'' invokes this trope with regard to Kirin Jindosh's clockwork soldiers. The soldiers are revolutionary, but they're an in-universe ObviousBeta (complete with recordings of Jindosh's voice describing the AI's thinking), and making one takes so long there are less than fifty in existence. Jindosh spends a lot of time trying to find a way to produce them more quickly and goes to the extent of [[spoiler: having Sokolov kidnapped and imprisoned so he could try to force him to help. In the end, Emily/Corvo deals with him before he can find a solution, and once he's dealt with the solution doesn't matter anymore.]]

* ''Webcomic/{{Narbonic}}'' features an extended time-travel subplot which establishes that it is difficult, but not impossible, to change your own history. Physical time-travel takes all the energy that exists in the Universe [[spoiler: or, as it turns out, in some other universe that's just out of luck.]]

* In some canons, one of ComicBook/SpiderMan's major plots is his budgetary restrictions on the expensive chemicals for his web shooters.

* This is often used as a justification for why ComicBook/IronMan doesn't make suits for every member of the Avengers, or police, or rescue services around the world: each suit is ridiculously expensive to make. Amounts quoted have been $4 billion to $7 billion ''per suit''. Additionally, each suit is often a SuperPrototype, a completely unique creation that doesn't have the advantages of mass production. When Tony ''does'' make armor for a larger group—for example, the guards at the supervillain prison known as the Vault—they were often explicitly cheaper and less powerful models than his "normal" armor.

* In ''Film/SpiderMan2'', when Doctor Octopus' tentacles convince him to try to build his fusion generator again, he specifically mentions needing to be able to fund it, which results in him robbing the bank where he has his first fight with Spider-Man.