Economy Cast: Difference between revisions
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In adaptations, this often results from the creation of a [[Composite Character]] or characters to stand in for an entire group from the original work. Writers generally have to build up a back-story so the audience can care about a character, which has little payoff if we don't see much of them anyway. It is much easier from a director's standpoint to wrap one character in several incidental roles or just one overarching 'figurehead' role.
One danger of this is the marketing and executive branch of creating stories installs the [[Status Quo Is God|Status Quo]] on the
See [[Ghost Extras]] for when the non-core cast is on-screen but living in a separate universe. See also [[Two-Teacher School]] or [[Omnidisciplinary Scientist]]. A [[Very Loosely Based on a True Story|true story]] or [[Adaptation Index|adaptation]] may try to whittle down the cast by [[Composite Character|combining characters]].
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Take this trope to its logical extreme and you get a [[Minimalist Cast]]. For obvious reasons, it’s rare to find this co-existing with [[Loads and Loads of Characters]].
The trope is '''not''' about a character who fills more than one ''narrative'' role. An
{{examples}}
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* ''[[Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney]]'' takes this to an extreme; except for one-shot characters who turn up in single cases as suspects or victims, it has only one detective, Detective Gumshoe, who is the detective in virtually every case, as well as one judge (except in situations where a second judge is absolutely necessary, when his almost identical brother is introduced.) The game engages in frequent lampshade hanging over this, with Gumshoe often expressing disbelief at how often he ends up investigating a murder where Phoenix is involved.
** And when Gumshoe ''finally'' gets a break after Phoenix stops being a lawyer for ''Apollo Justice, Ace Attorney''? Ema Skye, a former one-shot character who replaced Maya Fey as Phoenix's sidekick in a past case, pretty much takes up Gumshoe's exact position, except relating to Apollo Justice instead. It takes her much less time to lampshade hang on this phenomona. (At least she manages to avoid being the victim of a pay cut during every case.)
** Characters occasionally refer to contemporaries-Gumshoe to other detectives, Edgeworth to a superior organization of prosecutors, and Maya to other residents of Kurain Village all come to mind-but the cast we actually see and interact with is the
*** [[The Dev Team Thinks of Everything|However, players can receive a different observation of the police chief every in-game day they can go to the precinct and "click" on the chief, and sometimes the results change during the day.]] Constant investigation will reveal the police chief spends a lot of time browsing the Internet and reading tabloids.
**** It goes even further than that. Click on the chief in any case of any game where you go to the department, and he's pretty much guaranteed to be saying something or doing something different. And you can get similar dialogue from the one detective who is always at his desk, usually either not doing his job or trying to write up a crime prevention slogan. They are, however, the only two members of the police you ever see in the precinct. Other than Detective Gumshoe, that is.
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