Organization with Unlimited Funding

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

In Real Life, the world's largest corporations and government agencies often have a total annual cash flow that exceeds the Gross National Product of smaller nations, own fleets of multimillion dollar vehicles or multiple office buildings. But modern Real Life organizations like Wal-mart or the U.S. Defense Department would be on the bottom end of this scale at best.

Merely being an unusually successful Mega Corp is not enough to qualify for this list, nor is an Elaborate Underground Base (or more than one), as these assets may have been around for a while, acquired at a discount, or required to accomplish the organizations whole purpose for existance.

These organizations routinely accomplish feats whose mere existance in the setting could result in Fridge Logic or even straining Willing Suspension of Disbelief:

  • Construction projects that normally require hundreds or thousands of workers laboring for months or years are often accomplished before the next episode.
  • If the organization is responsible for a major national project, they will often build a spare just in case or for their own use.
  • The organization funds projects which apparently break the laws of physics using only wealth and the Rule of Cool or the Rule of Funny.
    • If some other convenient fictional trope makes something possible, it doesn't count. You don't buy sound in space when Space Is Noisy. It's not impressive to have Infinite Supplies when everyone else does. Building a Humongous Mecha is not noteworthy when any random scientist can make five in a weekend.
    • An example might be, in a setting Twenty Minutes Into the Future, while every other spacefaring organization is still working on commercial manned flight to the ISS or missions to the Moon or Mars, this organization is already secretly operating multiple interstellar vessels that could carry the space shuttle in their secondary cargo holds.

It pretty much goes without saying that any investor who owns more than 1% or so of one of these organizitions will be a member of the Fiction 500. If an organization is owned largely by one individual or a relatively small group, please file the example under Fiction 500, not here.

Compare Fiction 500, Mega Corp, Abusing the Kardashev Scale For Fun and Profit, Where Does He Get All Those Wonderful Toys?.

Examples of Organization with Unlimited Funding include:


Anime & Manga

  • The Liar Game Tournament Office appears at one point to blow ten quintillion yen on the first round of their tournament. That's 107.54 trillion U.S. dollars.
    • In fact, at the start of the story, the invitation read "...You are one of the 1 in 100000 people who have been entered..." which means, if it takes place all over the world, there's about 70 thousand people taking part, and since each of those people gets 100 million yen, the total amount for the first round is only 7 trillion yen, or 80 billion dollars (which to be fair, is still a lot.
    • As far as the Liar Game first round goes, they intended to recoup most of the money from the losers (whose debt is relatively low), and quite a lot of the rest of the money would remain in-game as players continued. They get 50% of the winning of dropouts; in effect, worst-case scenario for them, they can only lose 50% of what they put in. Which is "only" 40 billion dollars!
    • As the characters point out, it's actually a scam. They give each player 100 million yen, and require that each player pay back that amount at the end. Assuming no player goes bankrupt (which is a ridiculous assumption, but the company supposedly has hand-wavy powers to extract the money somehow), they'll never lose any money—the loser just pays the winner 100 million, and the company neither gains nor loses anything. But then the company also charges 50% of your net winnings if you drop out, which is pure profit for them.
  • NERV (UN Special Agency)- able to replace entire cities within days, not to mention the upkeep and maintenance of three giant biomechanical weapons. (Each with a budget equivalent to a small country.) Too bad the lunatics are running the asylum.
  • Momoka Nishizawa from Keroro Gunsou, even granted that her family has more than half the money on earth she spends insane amounts of money, mostly on trying to get closer to her love interest, Fuyuki. This goes to the point that there's actually an episode deticated to her trying to formulate an extremely low budget plan as a change of strategy (really, she'd get a lot further just buying a marriage certificate)
  • Celestial Being from Mobile Suit Gundam 00. Most of their construction efforts are already done by the start of the series, but they were apparently able to research, develop, prototype, test and construct the technologically superior Gundams and several other devices from bases on the moon and other planets, at a time when the block superpowers had recently developed the space elevators.


Comic Books

  • SHIELD from Marvel Comics is show having fleets of building size helicariers.
    • In the Ultimate Marvel universe, Nick Fury's reply to concerns about funding a weapon to fight off Galactus is: "I could have every human being on earth dressed in solid gold underwear. Tomorrow."
  • In All-Star Superman, Project Cadmus director Dr. Leo Quintum explicitly states he has unlimited resources. Not surprising since as a good aligned Mad Scientist his inventions must make millions in this non-Reed Richards Is Useless world.


Film

  • In On Her Majesty's Secret Service it's mentioned that Bond girl Tracy's father has ties to the most powerful crime organization on Earth. Bond replies that Spectre is larger.


Literature

  • The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy features a few, perhaps most notably Magrathea, the planet whose sole industry is building custom-made planets. Yes, artificial planets. It became so wealthy that the rest of the galaxy's economy collapsed, leading the Magratheans to put themselves into suspended animation until people could afford their services again.
  • Being post-scarcity means every member of The Culture has unlimited funds to do whatever they want.
  • The hundreds (thousands?) of Dark Hunters get paid every month with a wheelbarrow-sized pile of gold and precious gems by Athena, who doesn't seem to grasp the idea of direct deposit. Consider that this has been going on for over a thousand years, and you get quite a pump into the local economy (and the world economy at large).
  • The Terran Trade Authority, from the book series of that name, which manages the economies of multiple extrasolar systems and has managed the logistics for interstellar wars fought by its sister organization, the Terran Defense Authority. One branch of the TTA, the Central Administration, owns its own city, mainly to store records, which is surrounded by forests to supply the paper necessary to allow paper records to be maintained alongside its electronic files.


Live-Action TV

  • In Stargate SG-1, being larger, better equipped, and more advanced than any other two foreign Air Forces combined is just one of several useful tasks the USAF accomplishes. It also operates Stargate Command, a "billion-dollar-an-hour operation" - and rents Russia's stargate whenever theirs goes missing, has built a fair number of starships that allegedly each cost more than the entire GNP of the state of New York, and presumably operate other secret projects as well. But then, keeping two galaxies safe ain't cheap.
  • Torchwood One, of Doctor Who: They built One Canada Square/Canary Wharf/Torchwood Tower purely to investigate a weird rift at the top?
  • The Federation in Star Trek was able to recover from having its fleet annihilated in less than a year.
    • While less than a year seems rather unrealistic, it took the USA about 2 years to turn into the mightiest producer of weapons ever. In 1941 the USA produced 1,430 Medium Tanks and AFVs. In 1943 it was 28,164. In 1941 the USA produced 8,395 combat aircraft. In 1943 it was 53,183. And this was without the assistance of technology that can literally create something from nothing (i.e. the replicator).
  • A late first season episode of Quantum Leap had Al appearing before a congressional committee to justify keeping the Project going at taxpayers' expense. Meanwhile in The Past Sam was helping a young woman pass the law school exam. When he was successful the head of the committee suddenly became the woman he had been helping, who approved the funding. Ever since then, there were no questions as to the budget of the Project.
  • The Company from Heroes fits this to varying degrees throughout the show's run, most closely when it was run by Bob Bishop (who had the power to turn anything into gold) during Volume Two, who identifies himself as the Company's "financial source."


Magazine Articles

Forbes magazine lists 25 of the largest fictional corporations here.


Tabletop Games

  • Arguably many if not all the major factions in Warhammer 40,000. As the TV Tropes entry states "Entire planets with populations of billions are lost due to rounding errors in tax returns."


Video Games

  • In F.E.A.R., not only did Armacham Technology Corporation build several major underground facilities, including one underneath an elementary school, a massive underground vault specifically to test and contain a world-endingly-powerful psychic, a full-size hospital (as in, they built the actual hospital building underground, inside a cavern complex), multiple underground storage facilities for the immense clone army, they also built an equally huge underground tram system connecting these facilities together. They also operate the massive clone army mentioned above, which comes complete with their own customized battle armor, ninjas, super-heavy combat soldiers, Hind attack helicopters, armored personnel carriers, and powered armor units, and a second army of private mercenaries with their own armor and air support. For a simple arms manufacturing company, Armacham has the money, technology, and manpower to overthrow most Third World countries without much difficulty.
    • Armacham even has it's own airforce. Also, the Replica's powered armor units that are coming crashing down throughout the events in Origin? Those are being deployed from orbit. Note that this actually makes some sense, too, as Armacham is supposed to be an aerospace corporation, but it still takes a ridiculous amount of funding to get Replica troops into giant power-armor units in orbit.
    • The third game really takes this through the roof: Armacham has been fighting a full-scale war against Alma for nine months in Fairport (the first two games take place over the course of just a couple days). With very heavy casualties all the while. Exactly where are they getting all this personnel?
  • Team Fortress 2: Reliable Excavation Demolition (RED) and Builders League United (BLU) each control half the Earth, utilize armies of paper-pushers to solve problems, and have enough money to finance Death Rays, bombs, and rockets and outfit their mercenaries with guns that would be impossible today - in particular, they can resurrect the dead and build ammunition and health dispensers that defy the laws of thermodynamics, cloaking devices, and teleporters, on a whim. In the sixties.
  • The Umbrella Corporation, from the Resident Evil series is so absurdly rich and powerful that they own several islands, as well as research bases in Antarctica, on a Cruise ship, and basically the entirety of Raccoon City. All in secret, mind you.
  • Pretty much any of the major megacorps in the Armored Core universe. Seems like every game at least two of them are pulling out as many harebrained superweapons and hail mary military actions as Those Wacky Nazis or worse. They probably have different megacorps in each numerical sequel simply due to them going bankrupt! And of course EVERYONE has a supersoldier program running. And the sheer sizes of some of their facilities and spaceships are obscene.
  • The Patriots, who've managed to build what can only be described as a world-domination AI supercomputer which has its hooks in nearly every military on the planet by Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. And just in case it's destroyed, there are 4 identical backup A Is ready to take over. They also funded the Les Enfants Terrible project, which covertly perfected human cloning in the 1970s.
    • The Patriots acquired these funds from the similarly-funded Philosophers, who covertly bankrolled the allies in World War Two and had a massive surplus once it was finished.
  • Hideously averted in X-COM, the man in washington will happily cut your funding even when the flying saucers are tearing up the white house.
  • Mass Effect 2 has Cerberus, a privately-backed military group with enough funding to operate many research facilities throughout the galaxy, build an improved version of one of The Alliance's most expensive starships, and bring a person back from the dead. They do note that the previous projects took a huge chunk out of their expenses, but they never seem to be hurting for resources throughout the game.
    • Not necessarily. Given that it was stated to cost a ridiculous number of credits (somewhere in the billions) to resurrect Shepard, and an even greater sum of money to fund the creation of the second Normandy, you'd think they could easily spare a quarter million for operational upgrades at the onset of the mission (which would easily let Shepard buy everything there is to buy in the Galaxy,) but instead they're incredibly tight-fisted with cash, only awarding a small dribble of funding when Shepard completes side-quests, and in some missions an After Action Gag even states that the money from the mission isn't coming from Cerberus but from other sources, like a mega-corp the mission benefited. Perhaps resurrecting the greatest human to live in recent time and building a brand new ship for said person wiped Cerberus' bank account out?
    • Or perhaps Shepard is just too proud to ask for more money and prefers to handle it him/herself.
    • By the third game, Cerberus is capable of waging war against the galaxy.


Web Original

  • In the Global Guardians PBEM Universe, TAROT, a Nebulous Evil Organization out to control the world's economy, has monetary resources on the same level as a mid-sized nation, and easily outpaces most of the world's smaller nations.
  • The apparently unlimited resources of the SCP Foundation have been commented on even by its own writing community. Somewhat justified in that they control artifacts that actually can produce infinite resources, although often with unpleasant side-effects.
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