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The Big Short

713 statements
140 feature instances
29 referencing feature instances

The Big Short	type	TVTItem
The Big Short	label	The Big Short
The Big Short	page	TheBigShort
The Big Short	comment	The Big Short is a 2015 comedy-drama film based on Michael Lewis' 2010 nonfiction book of the same title, directed by Adam McKay and featuring an All-Star Cast including Steve Carell, Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling, Brad Pitt, Marisa Tomei, Karen Gillan and Melissa Leo. Set in the mid-2000s, it follows several people in the financial industry as they begin to realize that the housing market is unstable, and that they can make big bucks by betting against it.The film was critically acclaimed on release, and earned five Academy Award nominations: Best Picture, Director, Supporting Actor (Bale), Adapted Screenplay (which it won) and Film Editing.
The Big Short	fetched	2024-03-06T17:31:03Z
The Big Short	parsed	2024-03-06T17:31:03Z
The Big Short	processingComment	Dropped link to Fanservice: Not a Feature - IGNORE
The Big Short	processingComment	Dropped link to Greed: Not a Feature - ITEM
The Big Short	processingComment	Dropped link to HoistByTheirOwnPetard: Not a Feature - UNKNOWN
The Big Short	processingComment	Dropped link to Metallica: Not a Feature - ITEM
The Big Short	processingUnknown	HoistByTheirOwnPetard
The Big Short	isPartOf	DBTropes
The Big Short / int_118a2d16	type	Hanlon's Razor
The Big Short / int_118a2d16	comment	Baum is put into an escalating one throughout the film, starting after realising just how corrupt and stupid they are during the meeting in Vegas, and another after the bailout, when he realises that his assumption that the crisis was caused by stupidity rather than malice might have been wrong, and that the higher-ups in the banks might have known exactly what a disaster they were causing and just didn't care.
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The Big Short / int_127fc252	type	Creator Cameo
The Big Short / int_127fc252	comment	Creator Cameo: The real Michael Burry can be seen in the background of Scion Capital making a phone call when Lawrence Field storms in to confront the film's Michael Burry.
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The Big Short / int_1439161f	type	Heroic BSoD
The Big Short / int_1439161f	comment	Heroic BSoD: Baum is put into an escalating one throughout the film, starting after realising just how corrupt and stupid they are during the meeting in Vegas, and another after the bailout, when he realises that his assumption that the crisis was caused by stupidity rather than malice might have been wrong, and that the higher-ups in the banks might have known exactly what a disaster they were causing and just didn't care. Burry has one himself when the mortgage default rate starts hitting the critical meltdown point but the value of the mortgage bonds and the CDOs instead go up in value, putting at risk his fund since this stretched the ultimate collapse of the market for longer than predicted. This is the point when he starts to realise how much fraud is within the financial system.
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The Big Short / int_14ed6ab7	type	Does This Remind You of Anything?
The Big Short / int_14ed6ab7	comment	Does This Remind You of Anything?: The S&P officer is wearing very dark glasses from an optometrist appointment, severely restricting her vision, while she explains to Baum that her firm saw nothing wrong with the subprime mortgage bonds. She later admits that they give the bonds high ratings, without even looking at them, in exchange for the bank doing business with them, because if they don't, another ratings agency (like Moody's) will. Immediately after explaining to Jamie how the SEC doesn't really do much to regulate the banks, Evie literally gets into bed with a banker (at least partially motivated by hopes of getting a job when she leaves the SEC).
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The Big Short / int_15210c8a	type	Sexposition
The Big Short / int_15210c8a	comment	Sexposition: Parodied. The film sometimes uses Fanservice while trying to explain an economic concept to the audience, but also gently chastises them for not understanding the topic; for example, a scene where Margot Robbie is Dining in the Buff while explaining subprime mortgages, which ends with Robbie telling the audience to fuck off.
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The Big Short / int_1759ff85	type	Four-Philosophy Ensemble
The Big Short / int_1759ff85	comment	Four-Philosophy Ensemble: Cynic: Vennett Realist: Shipley and Geller Apathetic: Burry and Rickert Conflicted: Baum
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The Big Short / int_18d15922	type	Title Drop
The Big Short / int_18d15922	comment	Title Drop: Just before Baum and Bruce Miller have their â€œAli vs Foreman of the financial worldâ€� debate, Vennett drops the movie's title in plural.
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The Big Short / int_1994ba0b	type	Gone Horribly Right
The Big Short / int_1994ba0b	comment	Gone Horribly Right: A play of this trope. Everyone in the end gets away with big paydays on their bet against the financial system, but they also get a front row seat for the consequences from accurately betting that the system would fail.
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The Big Short / int_19fc58a2	type	A Lighter Shade of Black
The Big Short / int_19fc58a2	comment	A Lighter Shade of Black: The protagonists may be Anti-Heroes profiting off of an economic crisis, but what keeps them more sympathetic than the bankers they oppose is the fact that they had no hand in the events that led up to this point. Shipley and Geller actually try to warn the people what's going to happen once Rickert clues them in, to no avail. Jarred Vennett is just as greedy as the bankers he intends to profit from once everything crashes down, however he stands out for actually being honest on his greed and what he intends to do to Baum and his team and ultimately doesn't pull the rug on them with the shorts he sells them.
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The Big Short / int_1b70ccc6	type	The Cynic
The Big Short / int_1b70ccc6	comment	The Cynic: Baum and Vinny's final phone conversation shows two different sides of this; Baum discovering that the banks might have known exactly what they were doing puts him into a Heroic BSoD, and he sounds almost broken-hearted when he tells Vinny "they just didn't care." Vinny responds with "Yeah, 'cos they're fucking crooks," as if it's obvious that they wouldn't, but he then naively states that there'll be loads of people going to jail and more regulation to make sure it doesn't happen again, to which Baum bets that they'll blame immigrants and poor people, and then the system will keep right on going. From this, it seems that Vinny is more cynical about individual people but hopeful about the system's ability to course-correct after an obvious failure, while Baum was the opposite.
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The Big Short / int_1ba8eb64	type	Visual Pun
The Big Short / int_1ba8eb64	comment	Visual Pun: The transition scene at the end of the Las Vegas convention ends with a shot overlooking a highway with a giant billboard of Martin Short; literally, a "Big Short".
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The Big Short / int_1d18887f	type	Pay Evil unto Evil
The Big Short / int_1d18887f	comment	Pay Evil unto Evil: The original reason why Baum ended up giving Vennett's proposal the time of the day is because he wanted a way to get back at the banking industry for all the crap they have done so far and for being part of the reason why his brother committed suicide.
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The Big Short / int_1e7487cd	type	Breaking the Fourth Wall
The Big Short / int_1e7487cd	comment	Breaking the Fourth Wall: Ryan Gosling's Jared Vennett breaks it frequently, sometimes in the middle of a scene. Other characters do as well, although not quite as much. There are a series of celebrity cameos that directly address the audience in a series of self-contained cutaway scenes to help explain some of the complicated financial concepts shown in the film. When Vennett is making his pitch to Baum, he stresses in a racist way that his math expert is the best because he's Chinese and won a Chinese national math competition. In fact, he's so good, he doesn't speak English. "Yang" then turns to the camera and, in English, says his name is actually Jiang, that Vennett thinks stressing not speaking English makes Jiang "more authentic", and that he only placed 2nd in the competition. Honestly this movie is a great study on diegesis, blending in the above-mentioned celebrity cameos with the scene going on, and using asides in the middle of dialogue to explain something or make a quick joke.
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The Big Short / int_1eb8c95b	type	That Didn't Happen
The Big Short / int_1eb8c95b	comment	That Didn't Happen: The S&P officer admits that they rate the mortgage bonds very high — sight unseen — so the banks won't go to Moody's for their credit score.
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The Big Short / int_230d64	type	Screw the Rules, I Have Money!
The Big Short / int_230d64	comment	Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: Or want money. Or don't get paid enough to care about the rules. The SEC agent -Evie- Shipley and Geller meet in Vegas is happy to hobnob with bankers to try to get a cushy job instead of investigating them. And Georgia, the S&P executive, doesn't crack down on the bankers, because if she did they'd just go to S&P's competition instead.
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The Big Short / int_237404cc	type	Ironic Echo
The Big Short / int_237404cc	comment	Ironic Echo: Early on, Shipley and Gellar can't even get past the lobby of the big banks to get into the coveted trading floors to make deals. The security at Lehman Brothers keeps telling them to leave. By the end, when the economy does crash, the two are able to sneak their way past the helpless guards at Lehman Brothers to get inside the now-vacant trading floor to see for themselves how bad it got.
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The Big Short / int_23ff95fb	type	Brutal Honesty
The Big Short / int_23ff95fb	comment	Brutal Honesty: Vennett is completely up front about how much a greedy scuzbucket he is, which is why Baum actually believes him when Vennett sells his pitch about the subprime mortgage bubble. Baum himself is honest about how he views the insanely corrupt banking industry the further he goes into this mess. It leads to his caustic Take That! speech about the financial sector's short-sightedness right at the moment when Bear Stearns collapses. This is also one of Burry's main traits, but more due to his lack of social skills than anything else. It tends to work against him, because people take his honesty for being crazy, if not delusional.
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The Big Short / int_24321e44	type	Only Sane Man
The Big Short / int_24321e44	comment	Only Sane Man: Most of the lead characters, who are surrounded by so many others in the banking industry blinded by their own greed to realize how crazy their subprime shell game had become. Even Burry and Rickert, with their personal quirks, are perfectly rational about what the hell is going on.
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The Big Short / int_245a7c37	type	Enraged by Idiocy
The Big Short / int_245a7c37	comment	Enraged by Idiocy: Mark Baum has no tolerance for anything he suspects is bullshit.
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The Big Short / int_2497e5b8	type	Atomic F-Bomb
The Big Short / int_2497e5b8	comment	Atomic F-Bomb: Burry ambles out of his office, calmly writes on the whiteboard that his fund is now running at -11% and dropping, shuffles back to his desk and shouts a huge one of these.
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The Big Short / int_2b2c66c3	type	Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor
The Big Short / int_2b2c66c3	comment	Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: Plenty of times, many of the people who are being reckless and/or fraudulent in the industry do so as if scamming people off their money to make a buck is party time.
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The Big Short / int_2e8441c9	type	The Bad Guy Wins
The Big Short / int_2e8441c9	comment	The Bad Guy Wins: A Foregone Conclusion for anyone who remembers the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2007-2009. Sure, a lot of fat cats lost their money and some firms like Lehman Brothers went under, but the ending of the film leaves no doubt about it - the banking industry got out of the crash entirely regulation-free, shifting the blame to the poor, immigrants, and even teachers. They even start offering CDOs again years later, rebranded as "bespoke tranche opportunities."
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The Big Short / int_3126c34a	type	Insufferable Genius
The Big Short / int_3126c34a	comment	Insufferable Genius: When the market doesn't collapse and even goes up, Burry and his sole remaining employee at Scion have a discussion about the possibility of Burry simply being wrong about his financial predictions. He humbly admits that there indeed might be such a possibility, and invokes this very trope for himself as a reason why he can't accept the fact he might have been mistaken. In the end, however, he gets validated, and the market crashes harder than even he expected. Plus, there is of course, this exchange earlier on:
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The Big Short / int_319e4a2f	type	Even Evil Has Standards
The Big Short / int_319e4a2f	comment	Even Evil Has Standards: Vennett is a self-admitted slimeball, but even he describes Wing Chau as a "real solid-gold asshole".
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The Big Short / int_35a858b3	type	Cluster F-Bomb
The Big Short / int_35a858b3	comment	Cluster F-Bomb: There is a LOT of F-word cursing in this movie.
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The Big Short / int_363f94c9	type	Awful Truth
The Big Short / int_363f94c9	comment	Awful Truth: Even after investing heavily in the collapse of the economy, Baum doesn't realize until witnessing firsthand, late in the game, just how corrupt, stupid and deeply screwed the entire financial system is.
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The Big Short / int_3aec9e5e	type	Properly Paranoid
The Big Short / int_3aec9e5e	comment	Properly Paranoid: Ben Rickert doesn't want anyone to be able to know where he is at any given time and makes it as difficult as possible to contact him (even having multiple phone numbers). He's also positive that the NSA is monitoring phone conversations for certain keywords and phrases and tells Charlie and Jamie to watch what they say. Later on in the epilogue, Dr. Burry gets investigated by the FBI multiple times when he simply offers to tell Congress how he knew the crash was coming, proving Ben wasn't that paranoid.
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The Big Short / int_3bc88a7f	type	Foregone Conclusion
The Big Short / int_3bc88a7f	comment	It's a Foregone Conclusion for the audience that there's going to be a total disaster, and most of the protagonists are aware of it and in a position to profit from it, but Baum discovering the extent of his own bank's projected losses leaves him lost for words.
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The Big Short / int_3dfdc686	type	Time-Passes Montage
The Big Short / int_3dfdc686	comment	Time-Passes Montage: Two are used to mark moving from the 70s to the 2000s using a series of stills and clips of the intervening decades, and a shorter one to mark the mid-2000s.
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The Big Short / int_40cbee83	type	Wretched Hive
The Big Short / int_40cbee83	comment	Wretched Hive: The American Securitization Forum is played up like this in the film, and it shows given how many of its attendants are clueless or neglectful of the impact that the default rate of the mortgages will have in the economy so long as they get their money.
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The Big Short / int_40cc0c7e	type	Bittersweet Ending
The Big Short / int_40cc0c7e	comment	Burry alienates almost everyone who he was doing business with, although since he gladly walks away from it all, it qualifies as more of a Bittersweet Ending for him. Baum and his associates profit immensely from the credit default swaps, but Baum is clearly heartbroken by his decision to go through with it. Shipley and Geller make millions but are horrified that no one in the media seems to care about the fraud that has taken place. Lastly, Vennett makes millions in bonuses after the bank profited from the swaps he sold and openly does not care about how the rest of the world was affected by the crash.
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The Big Short / int_4782e60f	type	Jerk with a Heart of Jerk
The Big Short / int_4782e60f	comment	Vennett. He's a sleazy, tanned, over-slick guy, but not a Jerk with a Heart of Jerk like other characters, because he is at least honest and upfront with people.
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The Big Short / int_49a2599d	type	Platonic Prostitution
The Big Short / int_49a2599d	comment	Platonic Prostitution: Or a platonic strip club. Baum talks to a stripper about her mortgage situation, and eventually asks her to stop the stripping and talk to him more about her finances, promising to still pay her.
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The Big Short / int_4e3d253b	type	Downer Ending
The Big Short / int_4e3d253b	comment	The Downer Ending, specifically Burry's part of it. He offers to explain to the government how he foresaw the crash. They audited him four times instead.
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The Big Short / int_4e52a624	type	Screw the Money, I Have Rules!
The Big Short / int_4e52a624	comment	Screw the Money, I Have Rules!: Ben Rickert was a successful financial trader before he quit after becoming disillusioned with the markets and the people who work them. Charlie and Jamie eventually come around to share his opinions after realizing that their immense profit came with the suffering of millions of people.
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The Big Short / int_4e7c4536	type	Wham Line
The Big Short / int_4e7c4536	comment	Wham Line: It's a Foregone Conclusion for the audience that there's going to be a total disaster, and most of the protagonists are aware of it and in a position to profit from it, but Baum discovering the extent of his own bank's projected losses leaves him lost for words. Another is when a stripper tells Baum about her ownership situation. One of the biggest one is when Chau describes what synthetic CDOs are and he gives an estimate of how much money is tied up in what is essentially betting on the good performance of the CDOs which, as the film has pointed out before, are filled with high risk bonds that are pretty much financial trash.
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The Big Short / int_4ef92d0b	type	The Atoner
The Big Short / int_4ef92d0b	comment	The Atoner: Implied to be Ben Rickert's motivation for helping Shipley and Geller.
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The Big Short / int_4f84cdef	type	Smug Snake
The Big Short / int_4f84cdef	comment	Smug Snake: Vennett. He's a sleazy, tanned, over-slick guy, but not a Jerk with a Heart of Jerk like other characters, because he is at least honest and upfront with people. The two mortgage brokers in Florida talking to Baum and his team are only too happy to explain how they're getting rich fleecing their clients with terrible mortgages. Wing Chau, the inventor of "synthetic CDOs" whom Mark meets in Las Vegas. When Baum expresses disbelief at how he's created the "atomic bomb" of banking, Chau smirks and taunts him by asking how their net worths compare.
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The Big Short / int_51c70be6	type	Obliviously Evil
The Big Short / int_51c70be6	comment	Obliviously Evil: Shipley and Geller don't really understand the implications of the economic collapse they plan to profit off of until Rickert gives them a brutal reality check. None of the on-screen people we see contributing to the crisis seem to fully realise what they're doing; yes, they know they are variously ripping-off ordinary people, passing their own gambling risk off to other businesses and using dishonest ratings to make it all work, but they all seem to think they're engaging in harmless book-cooking rather than catastrophically undermining the global economy. Baum works on this assumption throughout (and his angry rant about the unsustainability of fraud assumes stupidity rather than malice), but he broken-heartedly revises his opinion after the bailout.
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The Big Short / int_55bf1a48	type	At Least I Admit It
The Big Short / int_55bf1a48	comment	At Least I Admit It: Vennett is a smarmy douche, and never once pretends to be anything else. He openly tells his clients that he plans to rip them off in the endgame. He reminds the audience that he is decidedly not the hero of the film.
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The Big Short / int_56515a39	type	Artistic License â€“ History
The Big Short / int_56515a39	comment	Artistic License â€“ History: The film is kind enough to acknowledge when the events portrayed deviate from what really happened.
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The Big Short / int_57de4e72	type	Beauty Inversion
The Big Short / int_57de4e72	comment	Beauty Inversion: Most of the cast are played with unflattering haircuts and realistically uneven skin tone. Bale and Carell are especially notable in that regard. Those who aren't, like Gosling, have what appear to be badly dyed black hairnote actually a bad wig and fake tans.
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The Big Short / int_590c9142	type	Metalhead
The Big Short / int_590c9142	comment	Metal Head: Burry, who likes to work listening to heavy metal, and even plays the drums.
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The Big Short / int_5b12f598	type	Million to One Chance
The Big Short / int_5b12f598	comment	Million to One Chance: Baum and Vennett only end up in business together due to a wrong-number phone call on Vennett's part.
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The Big Short / int_5ca80293	type	Pragmatic Villainy
The Big Short / int_5ca80293	comment	Pragmatic Villainy: The biggest difference between Vennett and the banks he works for is that he recognises how short-sighted and self-destructive is the level of fraud being done in Wall Street when being honest could earn them more sustainable profits. Notably, while his co-workers were quick to pop bottles of champagne after making their deal with Burry, he instead questioned why someone would invest over a billion dollars in what was seemingly a foolhardy deal and had his team investigate and run the numbers on the housing market.
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The Big Short / int_5ce7dbb9	type	Central Theme
The Big Short / int_5ce7dbb9	comment	Central Theme: Outside of the whole "financial systems are capable of really fucking over the layman" thing, the movie discusses the idea of personal incentive versus moral obligation - if the entire market really is as stupid and corrupt as they seem, then the protagonists have no financial incentive to do anything other than bet against it. At the same time, none of them like this situation, and all three groups of protagonists go through either a Heel Realization or an outright Heroic BSoD in dealing with the fallout of what's about to happen. It's a movie about profiting off a bad situation when there's no way to stop it from happening, and the film explores each character's reaction to the eventual market collapse: Baum becomes forlorn with what he's done, Shipley and Geller get totally disillusioned with the banking world, and Michael outright quits finance in disgust.
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The Big Short / int_5da3f522	type	Big Brother Is Watching
The Big Short / int_5da3f522	comment	Big Brother Is Watching: According to Ben Rickert. Shipley and Geller have to use 14 different phone numbers to call him.note The scene is set a few years before Snowden would expose said monitoring program to the public, making Ben Properly Paranoid.
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The Big Short / int_5f4097ba	type	Not Distracted by the Sexy
The Big Short / int_5f4097ba	comment	Not Distracted by the Sexy: Whilst investigating the housing market in Florida, Baum goes to a strip joint to talk to strippers who have been sold bad mortgages by predatory brokers. Baum is pointedly only interested in talking about finance to the stripper giving him a private dance.
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The Big Short / int_60b21fa3	type	The Lancer
The Big Short / int_60b21fa3	comment	The Lancer: Vinnie, to Baum.
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The Big Short / int_61b8f9e2	type	Bunny-Ears Lawyer
The Big Short / int_61b8f9e2	comment	All of the bankers Burry met with in 2005 have a big one in 2008 when they realize the Bunny-Ears Lawyer wasn't insane, but predicted their current crisis. Goldman Sachs in particular gets a comeuppance moment.
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The Big Short / int_648c3646	type	Enlightened Self-Interest
The Big Short / int_648c3646	comment	Vennett is upfront about the fact he only cares about making money for himself, but when Baum tells him he wants to buy more swaps from him after meeting with the Merryl-Lynch CDO manager, Vennett warns him that doing so could result in Baum's fund going bankrupt from having to pay the collateral calls until the bonds collapse. How much of it is genuine care and how much Enlightened Self-Interest (since his own profit would be far smaller if Baum goes under) is up for debate.
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The Big Short / int_649f5bec	type	Creepy Souvenir
The Big Short / int_649f5bec	comment	Creepy Souvenir: Maybe not creepy at first glance, but from every bank that Burry visited to bet against their mortgage bonds, he asked for or just pocketed one of the banks' monogrammed coffee mugs. Since Burry was certain he was right, in his mind he was taking a keepsake from every one of the banks that he knew would go under; in effect, a piece of what would soon be their corpses.
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The Big Short / int_658854ee	type	I'm a Doctor, Not a Placeholder
The Big Short / int_658854ee	comment	Burry, the constantly drumming, monologuing, and shorts-wearing financial investment genius. And he's a doctor by education.
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The Big Short / int_69cce3dc	type	Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!
The Big Short / int_69cce3dc	comment	Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: Geller has such a moment while he and Shipley call Rickert to discuss how illogical it is that the mortgage bonds have hit the critical default rate yet the bonds and CDOs have gone up in value, as that would mean that either the banks have no idea how to rate the bonds, or, they are aware and are deliberately hiding how worthless they are.
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The Big Short / int_6d332aea	type	Driven to Suicide
The Big Short / int_6d332aea	comment	Driven to Suicide: Mark Baum's brother, before the events of the film. The details aren't made specific, but it's suggested that it had to do with financial troubles. Mark is understandably haunted by it.
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The Big Short / int_6d57a234	type	Lemony Narrator
The Big Short / int_6d57a234	comment	Lemony Narrator: Vennett narrates the story in the third person while constantly Breaking the Fourth Wall, dropping opinions, hanging lampshades, and generally messing with the audience.
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The Big Short / int_6edc54d5	type	Here We Go Again!
The Big Short / int_6edc54d5	comment	Here We Go Again!: Dr. Burry is now betting against water, which means he's predicted another shortage in the future. The Miami estate agents are seen at the end of the film at a seminar detailing how to turn the economic crisis to their advantage - typically done by buying foreclosed or repossessed homes at knock-down prices and renting them out. Many of the companies doing this have profited immensely from the huge increase in the rental market as well as creating Rental Backed Securities. The banks as of 2015 have repackaged CDOs, which means that another economic slowdown is imminent.
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The Big Short / int_72757e0d	type	"Not Making This Up" Disclaimer
The Big Short / int_72757e0d	comment	"Not Making This Up" Disclaimer: One of the fourth wall moments is used to mention how unbelievable but actually true it was that Baum was lecturing about the failures of the subprime mortgage market against a Bear Stearns investor as a run on Bear Stearns' stock occurred. This contrasts the earlier Contrived Coincidence of Geller and Shipley finding a copy of Vennett's pitch in the lobby of the J.P. Morgan Chase building, where the movie admits that it was made up for dramatic effect, and quickly details the complicated, but mundane, actual events. Another occurs when Baum interrupts the keynote address at an investors' convention to tell him that that there is a zero percent chance that things will not get worse, then gets interrupted by a call on his cell phone and walks out before the speaker can respond. Vennett assures the audience that it actually happened.
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The Big Short / int_72d30083	type	Cheaters Never Prosper
The Big Short / int_72d30083	comment	Cheaters Never Prosper: Explicitly stated by Baum at one point. Sadly, this trope gets subverted late in the movie as Baum realises that the banks were counting on a bailout from the government in case something like this happened, essentially being able to get away from the collapse with a slap on the wrist by virtue of being too big to fail.
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The Big Short / int_737a65f4	type	The Watson
The Big Short / int_737a65f4	comment	The Watson: Baum and his team take this role when talking to Vennett about the possibility of shorting the mortgage bonds.
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The Big Short / int_75979171	type	The Cuckoolander Was Right
The Big Short / int_75979171	comment	The Cuckoolander Was Right: Michael Burry earns skepticism, derision, and rebellion from his mentor and his investors for shorting the housing market, but he refuses all attempts to pull out and is eventually proven correct when the bubble bursts.
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The Big Short / int_780e2082	type	Slimeball
The Big Short / int_780e2082	comment	Jared Vennett is a total Slimeball and not only makes no attempt to hide it, but actively embraces what a douche he is.
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The Big Short / int_793e580c	type	Good Capitalism, Evil Capitalism
The Big Short / int_793e580c	comment	Good Capitalism, Evil Capitalism: Lewis Ranieri and his associates in the 1970s were the Good, as Ranieri's invention of the mortgage backed securities was born out of a desire to create new investments that were both profitable and carried little risk to stakeholders like state pension funds. The bankers in the modern day are the Evil, as they completely ignored the economic and market fundamentals of the initial securities so they could enrich themselves at the expense of the public.
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The Big Short / int_7a08e8d1	type	They Call Me MISTER Tibbs!
The Big Short / int_7a08e8d1	comment	They Call Me MISTER Tibbs!:
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The Big Short / int_7d89315b	type	"The Reason You Suck" Speech
The Big Short / int_7d89315b	comment	"The Reason You Suck" Speech: Mark Baum gives one directed towards the fraudulent banking system (and fraud itself) during his debate with still-bullish investor Bruce Miller. Rickert gives one to Geller and Shipley for celebrating a particularly lucrative deal they've made, pointing out that the huge payday they're banking on is going to come at the expense of people's homes, jobs, savings, lives, and the entire American economy.
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The Big Short / int_7febc23b	type	Establishing Character Moment
The Big Short / int_7febc23b	comment	Baum, to a lesser extent. He has trouble keeping his opinion to himself, and as his Establishing Character Moment shows, doesn't seem to get or respect the rules of a therapy group.
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The Big Short / int_801a35a5	type	Only the Leads Get a Happy Ending
The Big Short / int_801a35a5	comment	Only the Leads Get a Happy Ending: The protagonists all profit off of the collapse while most people suffer. Notably, the leads fully realize this, creating the film's Downer Ending.
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The Big Short / int_805deb6e	type	Small Role, Big Impact
The Big Short / int_805deb6e	comment	Small Role, Big Impact: Lewis Ranieri (Rudy Eisenzopf) only appears in a flashback scene in the first few minutes of the film. However, because he was the person who first suggested the idea of mortgage-backed securities in 1977, he is responsible for the inflation and eventual bursting of the housing bubble that drives the actions of every major character in the rest of the film. Jared Vennett even observes in his opening narration that most people have never heard of Ranieri, and yet he has had a greater impact on our lives than the social media revolution.note After the subprime crisis, Ranieri told a CNN interviewer that he still believed the idea of mortgage-backed securities was sound, but that it had been misused to create mortgages that the borrowers had no hope of repaying after their "teaser" interest rates reset.
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The Big Short / int_81414673	type	AM/FM Characterization
The Big Short / int_81414673	comment	AM/FM Characterization: Michael Burry listens to heavy metal music at a very loud volume while working.
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The Big Short / int_823c6e3e	type	Large Ham
The Big Short / int_823c6e3e	comment	Large Ham: Vennett indulges in this when Vinnie and Baum agree to deal with him.
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The Big Short / int_82a631b8	type	Present-Day Past
The Big Short / int_82a631b8	comment	Present-Day Past: Mostly averted. The cell phones and other electronics match 2005 when the film's main plot begins, but advertisements on billboards and on screens, as well as the celebrity cameos, are very clearly from 2015. No attention was paid to making sure the background vehicles were period appropriate, as numerous cars seen were of a later manufacture than the scene's setting.
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The Big Short / int_8767b1f3	type	Black-and-Gray Morality
The Big Short / int_8767b1f3	comment	Black-and-Gray Morality: While the banks are undeniably the villains of the movie, the protagonists are all making money off of their arrogance and stupidity, and most of them are only doing it for the money. Ben Rickert calls out his teammates about it when the two start dancing over the deals they made. Explicitly stated by the S&P officer, who points out that the main reason Baum's group wants them to rate the CDOs more accurately (to identify them as junk, instead of AAA-secure) is because they stand to make a huge amount of money when the CDOs collapse. Casey, the Wall Street reporter that refuses to publish Shipley and Geller's story as the CDOs begin to fail, is certainly helping the ultimate crash become even worse by staying silent, but as he himself points out, he has his own family to look out for and attempting to cover their claims would certainly burn all the bridges he had made in his career with the financial industry, if not end up killing his career.
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The Big Short / int_8b4f491c	type	Villainy-Free Villain
The Big Short / int_8b4f491c	comment	Villainy-Free Villain: Jared Vennett is a Villain Protagonist version. He is personally a selfish and greedy slimeball, but he is completely honest in his financial dealings throughout the film even when he'd stand to gain by exaggerating about the scope of the crisis and the other protagonists stand to gain millions if they do what he says.
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The Big Short / int_8bf8adfa	type	Just Before the End
The Big Short / int_8bf8adfa	comment	Just Before the End: A variation, the movie covers the build-up to the ultimate financial collapse of 2008 and the leads are only able to find a way to come ahead by betting against the system but are unable to stop the crash at all.
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The Big Short / int_8cf6aa	type	Literal Metaphor
The Big Short / int_8cf6aa	comment	Literal Metaphor: Georgia, the financial auditor Baum and Vinny talk with, is nearly-blind and has a hard time reading even their card. She's literally turning a blind eye to the bad papers the banks are sending to her desk.
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The Big Short / int_8f9f71a8	type	Crazy Enough to Work
The Big Short / int_8f9f71a8	comment	Crazy Enough to Work: Shipley and Geller decide to short the AA tranches, betting on the fact that they are just as filled with garbage loans as the B ones but will be cheaper to short because the ratings are being taken at face value. They were right.
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The Big Short / int_916c72b3	type	Rule of Symbolism
The Big Short / int_916c72b3	comment	Rule of Symbolism: Baum's friend at the ratings agency is literally near-blind.
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The Big Short / int_958a7bef	type	Layman's Terms
The Big Short / int_958a7bef	comment	Layman's Terms: Whenever some complicated financial concept comes up, a celebrity appears to explain it in terms we can understand. Subprime loans = loans unlikely to be paid back = shit. CDO = package of subprime loans = pile of leftover food that a chef throws into a pot and serves as a fresh meal. Synthetic CDO = chain of increasingly large bets on subprime loans.
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The Big Short / int_9591377d	type	Heel Realization
The Big Short / int_9591377d	comment	Heel Realization: When Rickert spells out the consequences of what's about to happen with housing and the entire economy, Shipley and Geller suddenly feel like bad guys when they realize how much the collapse they'll be profiting off of will harm millions of ordinary people.
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The Big Short / int_973d220f	type	Never My Fault
The Big Short / int_973d220f	comment	Never My Fault: Georgia, an executive at Standard and Poors, excuses the fact that the rating agencies are basically selling out their assessments instead of properly rating the bonds first by saying that if they don't their competitors will simply give the banks what they want and run them out of business. When Baum calls her out on this, she then deflects her own hand in the fraud by saying she's under her boss' orders to do so.
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The Big Short / int_97fa0a10	type	Mass "Oh, Crap!"
The Big Short / int_97fa0a10	comment	Mass "Oh, Crap!": All of the attendants to Baum and Miller's debate have this reaction when they realise, after being told that Bear Sterns has fallen 38% during their conversation, that Baum is indeed in the right and Bear Sterns has entered an irreversible death spiral along with many of the other banks that participated in the sub-prime mortgage bubble.
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The Big Short / int_98f5de00	type	Let Me Get This Straight...
The Big Short / int_98f5de00	comment	Let Me Get This Straight...: Happens quite a bit, mostly when Baum, Geller or Shipley are finding out something about the banks' attitudes towards what's going on that they don't believe is possible. It's almost to the point of a Running Gag.
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The Big Short / int_99ddfcec	type	Unwitting Instigator of Doom
The Big Short / int_99ddfcec	comment	Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Lewis Ranieri. The mortgage-backed securities he invented were originally filled with AAA-rated mortgages that were virtually guaranteed to return a profit and remain solvent. Then when the banks ran out of AAA mortgages to put into securities, they started filling them with sub-prime mortgages...note As such, when Ranieri came under fire during the height of the subprime crisis, he defended the idea of mortgage-backed securities as a sound one that had been misused by the banks.
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The Big Short / int_9e9203e1	type	Dramatically Missing the Point
The Big Short / int_9e9203e1	comment	Dramatically Missing the Point: The Downer Ending, specifically Burry's part of it. He offers to explain to the government how he foresaw the crash. They audited him four times instead. In the Q&A between Bruce Miller and Mark Baum, Miller cheerfully says that everything is fine and that he would happily buy shares in Bear Stearns. In the audience, Danny and Porter are monitoring Bear Stearns's share price on Danny's phone. As Miller speaks, and then Baum, Danny starts to get message after message about how the share price is dropping, until it becomes clear that it's going through the floor. At the end of the Q&A, Miller is told that Bear Stearns's share price has plummeted, and is asked if he'd still consider buying shares in it. He insists that he would. At that point, almost everyone in the audience, who had come to hear him be reassuring, looks at him like he's a total idiot, and they all get up and leave as quickly as they can so they can unload their now-worthless shares.
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The Big Short / int_a0797fb3	type	Stunned Silence
The Big Short / int_a0797fb3	comment	Stunned Silence: Baum and his associates are left speechless after Vennett explains how utterly broken the subprime housing market it, and the impending bubble that's about to burst and take the entire US housing market with it. Shipley has one moment when he realises that not only is the SEC unable to track the mortgage bonds due to budget cuts, but also that Evie, who works for the SEC, is deliberately being neglectful at her job so she can secure herself a better position in the banking industry once her tenure is over. After Baum discovers that his own bank is about to suffer losses that leave even his most pessimistic worries in the dust, he just gapes mutely for a few seconds.
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The Big Short / int_a1b141f4	type	My God, What Have I Done?
The Big Short / int_a1b141f4	comment	My God, What Have I Done?: Ben Rickert chews out Shipley and Geller for celebrating their deals when he reminds them what will happen when it all goes tits up as they hope — people will lose everything. The two immediately have this reaction, and start trying to warn their families and the media about the upcoming market collapse.
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The Big Short / int_a39d6056	type	Nice to the Waiter
The Big Short / int_a39d6056	comment	Nice to the Waiter: Zigzagged in the case of Baum, and it depends a lot on his mood; while openly contemptuous of bankers and people he thinks should know better/be better (and willing to be an inconsiderate Jerkass in general), he is perfectly polite and respectful to the stripper he is questioning about her mortgages, considering her an innocent victim. However, he lashes out at a waitress who interrupts him during a tense conversation with his colleagues, though this is more due to simply losing his temper than because he sees her as an inferior. Averted with Vennett who repeatedly berates his PA.
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The Big Short / int_a4c37cbe	type	Mood Whiplash
The Big Short / int_a4c37cbe	comment	Mood Whiplash: Initially, Geller and Shipley walk out from the casinos cheerful after being able to short the AA tranches at a low cost and secure themselves a net profit, then Rickert slams them both with the full consequences of what they are betting will happen as detailed below and shuts them down.
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The Big Short / int_a6971841	type	Dining in the Buff
The Big Short / int_a6971841	comment	Dining in the Buff: Margot Robbie explains the intricacies of subprime mortgages while sipping champagne in a bubble bath.
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The Big Short / int_a70223	type	Karma Houdini
The Big Short / int_a70223	comment	Karma Houdini: Double Subverted. Vennett says that Baum became worried that the bankers whose recklessness crashed the system would escape punishment. Fortunately, Vennett informs us, the government stepped in and prosecuted the bankers, and rewrote the regulations in order to prevent another collapse. Except, that's a lie. Instead, he says, the banks used their influence with Congress to kill common-sense regulations and push blame onto poor people, immigrants, and teachers, and only a single banker was prosecuted out of all the big-shots who were guilty of fraud. Made poignant in a scripted version of the scene where Vennett shows off his bonus check. He got $47 million after making $20 billion for the bank through the swaps he sold. He then mentions his two bosses got $50 million in bonuses after they lost the bank $30 billion. Subverted with the two sleazy mortgage guys from Florida. The end of the film shows them attending a job fair while appearing very defeated.
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The Big Short / int_aa368af0	type	Two Scenes, One Dialogue
The Big Short / int_aa368af0	comment	Two Scenes, One Dialogue: Geller, on a phone conference with Shipley and Rickert — the latter of which is trying to hang up for a colonic appointment — suggests they buy more swaps after figuring out that they're going to make a huge profit off of the housing collapse. Shipley disagrees loudly. Meanwhile, Vennett returns to FrontPoint and expects his payout. Both FrontPoint and Shipley start screaming variations of "No" and obscenities, leading to this blink-and-you'll-miss-it joke:
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The Big Short / int_ab5eea65	type	Dramatic Irony
The Big Short / int_ab5eea65	comment	Dramatic Irony: When the bonds don't fail when Burry predicted they would, he ends up theorizing with his assistant that the reason why this could be is that the system is utterly fraudulent while his assistant points out that he could have also been wrong. As it's later revealed in the film, Burry was wrong. Not on his math though, but rather on underestimating the degree of fraud in Wall Street and the lengths the banks would go to squeeze out as much money as possible even if that meant the final crash would end up being worse. After Baum's speech about the catastrophic level of fraud within Wall Street, Miller counters that he's still optimistic about Bear Sterns because no investment bank has ever failed unless caught in criminal activities. When he's told that Bear's stock has kept falling 38% ever since the two began their presentation, he still insists that he would buy more stock, not realising that Bear Sterns has just done exactly that and is now caught in a death spiral. There's another layer of irony here since Miller's assessment was valid not just for Bear Sterns but also for Lehman Brothers and the other banks that crashed when their greed and deception caught up to them.
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The Big Short / int_abad35b4	type	Soundtrack Dissonance
The Big Short / int_abad35b4	comment	Soundtrack Dissonance: The soundtrack abruptly launches in and out of "Money Maker" by Ludacris while Burry sedately makes some business deals in dull-looking offices. Burry blasting Metallica, Mastodon and Pantera in his office while working.
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The Big Short / int_ad1db87c	type	Oh, Crap!
The Big Short / int_ad1db87c	comment	Baum and the stripper he interviews share an Oh, Crap! moment when he tells her that her monthly mortgage payments are likely to go up at least 200%, and she reveals that she has five houses and a condo, all of which she bought under the impression that she could always refinance, which won't be the case if prices don't go up.
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The Big Short / int_ad786c6b	type	Hookers and Blow
The Big Short / int_ad786c6b	comment	Hookers and Blow: The bankers in the '80s are shown enjoying their new wealth and status by partying with strippers.
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The Big Short / int_affd30b0	type	Stupid Evil
The Big Short / int_affd30b0	comment	Stupid Evil: As Vennett points out and Baum's team and Shipley and Geller later corroborate in the American Securitization Forum, a lot of the people in charge of the market are not only short-sighted and clueless but also willingly fraudulent to the point of self-sabotage. This is later alluded to in Baum's speech when he points out how fraud is not only immoral, but also deeply foolish at its core, yet somehow there are always people trying anyway, learning zero lessons from all of human history.
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The Big Short / int_b0bce7aa	type	Selective Obliviousness
The Big Short / int_b0bce7aa	comment	Selective Obliviousness: Seen repeatedly in most people involved in the housing and financial markets throughout the film. Even when data of a looming apocalypse is laid out in front of them, they refuse to believe it.
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The Big Short / int_b53077b3	type	Take That!
The Big Short / int_b53077b3	comment	Baum himself is honest about how he views the insanely corrupt banking industry the further he goes into this mess. It leads to his caustic Take That! speech about the financial sector's short-sightedness right at the moment when Bear Stearns collapses.
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The Big Short / int_b707726f	type	Hypocritical Humor
The Big Short / int_b707726f	comment	Hypocritical Humor: The filmâ€™s narrator criticises the banks for using convoluted and confusing jargon to distract their customers from fully understanding what theyâ€™re signing up for. The narrator then decides to have Margot Robbie give an honest and comprehensive explanation of how subprime mortgages work, while sheâ€™s sitting naked in a bubble bath.
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The Big Short / int_b77808f2	type	"Where Are They Now?" Epilogue
The Big Short / int_b77808f2	comment	"Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: The movie ends with text describing the eventual fates of the main characters.
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The Big Short / int_b7bc7d28	type	Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!
The Big Short / int_b7bc7d28	comment	Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Assumed on the part of the audience, so the movie explains most of its concepts via on-screen text and cameos, including Australian actress Margot Robbie sipping champagne in a bubble bath. Justified in-universe:
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The Big Short / int_b7d773ab	type	Smash Cut
The Big Short / int_b7d773ab	comment	Smash Cut: While investigating whether there is a housing bubble, Baum asks a stripper "What do you mean 'all your loans'? You have two loans on one house, right?", she replies: "I have five houses. And a condo". Smash cut to Baum on the phone: "Hey, there's a bubble".
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The Big Short / int_b9af5ef3	type	The Film of the Book
The Big Short / int_b9af5ef3	comment	The Film of the Book: The third of Michael Lewis' books to be adapted to a film, after The Blind Side and 2011's Moneyball.
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The Big Short / int_ba5bd7	type	Ignored Expert
The Big Short / int_ba5bd7	comment	Ignored Expert: The epilogue reveals Burry tried to contact the government several times so he could explain how he foresaw the collapse and how it could've been avoided. Instead, they audited him four times and had the FBI interrogate him.
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The Big Short / int_bc00493f	type	Precision F-Strike
The Big Short / int_bc00493f	comment	Precision F-Strike: In a movie full of swearing, Vinnie drops a beautifully executed one of these, which doubles as Exact Words: Margot Robbie's explanation of mortgage-backed securities and subprime loans ends with one, as she is enjoying champagne in a bubblebath:
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The Big Short / int_bd0d6395	type	No Social Skills
The Big Short / int_bd0d6395	comment	Burry works past his No Social Skills to give some advice to a young employee before he leaves the office.
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The Big Short / int_beb9a361	type	Anti-Hero
The Big Short / int_beb9a361	comment	The protagonists may be Anti-Heroes profiting off of an economic crisis, but what keeps them more sympathetic than the bankers they oppose is the fact that they had no hand in the events that led up to this point. Shipley and Geller actually try to warn the people what's going to happen once Rickert clues them in, to no avail.
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The Big Short / int_c32ff031	type	Xanatos Gambit
The Big Short / int_c32ff031	comment	Xanatos Gambit: Vennett's entire deal. His plan doesn't hinge on the housing bubble actually collapsing, only on someone buying into his conviction that it will. As soon as FrontPoint Partners is in, he has already won, regardless of how the situation turns out.
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The Big Short / int_c435ec5d	type	Aesop Amnesia
The Big Short / int_c435ec5d	comment	Aesop Amnesia: Played for Drama. At the end of the movie, it's revealed that nobody responsible for the crisis went to jail and the big banks have gone right back to selling CDOs.
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The Big Short / int_c5f0119c	type	Insane Troll Logic
The Big Short / int_c5f0119c	comment	Insane Troll Logic: The logic behind Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs) are as follows: a bunch of unsold low rated BBB, BB, and B bonds that didn't sell because investors considered them too risky are packaged into a new investment. Because the bonds have different risk levels, the ratings agencies consider them a diversified investment and grant them a high A level rating. Some are rated AAA, even though the CDO is, at its core, just individual low-rated bonds.
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The Big Short / int_c75df49a	type	Shout-Out
The Big Short / int_c75df49a	comment	Shout-Out: When Baum is just beginning to understand the magnitude of the impending disaster during dinner with Wing Chau, Vennett says he looks like the bad guy from Dune.
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The Big Short / int_c819533b	type	Rage Breaking Point
The Big Short / int_c819533b	comment	Rage Breaking Point: After being told that Morgan Stanley's exposure is 15 billion dollars, Baum puts his foot down on waiting for the shorts to keep raising in value deliberately to make things more painful for the banks even if that comes at the risk of them going under.
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The Big Short / int_cad6fc25	type	Desolation Shot
The Big Short / int_cad6fc25	comment	Desolation Shot: A downplayed example, at the end of the film, once the crash is in full swing, Shipley and Geller get to see the trading floor of the now bankrupt Lehman Brothers, all disorganised and filled with trash.
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The Big Short / int_cd8ca67a	type	DoubleSubverted
The Big Short / int_cd8ca67a	comment	Double Subverted. Vennett says that Baum became worried that the bankers whose recklessness crashed the system would escape punishment. Fortunately, Vennett informs us, the government stepped in and prosecuted the bankers, and rewrote the regulations in order to prevent another collapse. Except, that's a lie. Instead, he says, the banks used their influence with Congress to kill common-sense regulations and push blame onto poor people, immigrants, and teachers, and only a single banker was prosecuted out of all the big-shots who were guilty of fraud.
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The Big Short / int_cdd835ce	type	Dude, Not Funny!
The Big Short / int_cdd835ce	comment	Dude, Not Funny!: This is the implicit reaction that Baum and his team have when they interview the mortgage brokers and they keep showing off how much money they are making by ripping off people. Geller and Shipley also have this reaction when they start to dig up information in the American Securitization Forum and the people they interview are more interested on making immediate money than caring about the rising default rate.
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The Big Short / int_cf92fea8	type	Cassandra Truth
The Big Short / int_cf92fea8	comment	Cassandra Truth: The four main characters - Burry and Baum in particular - are basically trying to warn everybody that the entire financial system is sitting on a subprime mortgage bomb. No one in a position to do anything about it notices or even cares... until it's too late. Some of the people responsible for the oversight - like the SEC and the ratings agencies - actively fight any attempt to burst the subprime bubble, which only makes the oncoming collapse of banks like Lehman Brothers worse.
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The Big Short / int_d129e13e	type	"Eureka!" Moment
The Big Short / int_d129e13e	comment	Not counting Baum's earlier "Eureka!" Moment in Vegas, Baum and his team have a collective one when they discover that Morgan Stanley, which underwrites their investment group, is just as deep into the toxic CDOs as the other banks, and they could potentially lose everything if the bank goes under — they realize in a sense they've been betting against themselves.
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The Big Short / int_d137b509	type	Competence Porn
The Big Short / int_d137b509	comment	Competence Porn: The film is about various people in the finance industry who saw the 2008 financial crisis coming before anyone else did and used this knowledge to become rich while the world entered the worst economic recession in nearly a century. Of course, whether they were right to do this is up for debate.
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The Big Short / int_d39e327f	type	What the Hell, Hero?
The Big Short / int_d39e327f	comment	What the Hell, Hero?: A very effective one from Rickert, who becomes furious when Shipley and Geller start loudly celebrating their shorts, pointing out that if they're right, people are going to die. They are very shaken.
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The Big Short / int_d45c0b86	type	Refuge in Audacity
The Big Short / int_d45c0b86	comment	Refuge in Audacity: Several of the characters in the movie flaunt this attitude, proud of how much money they're making for essentially selling shoddy goods. This trope is deconstructed by the fact that the characters who engage in this attitude are shown as juvenile tools with no sense of responsibility or knowledge of the consequences of their actions and by showing the end results of applying this attitude on a systematic level. It gets far, far less amusing when Baum realises the top echelon isn't any better, being too busy with here-and-now big profit to see the long-term consequences.
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The Big Short / int_d833090a	type	Right Hand Versus Left Hand
The Big Short / int_d833090a	comment	Right Hand Versus Left Hand: Once the collapse started showing up, and learning about which individual bonds were imploding, Baum realizes that some of the shorts they bought looped back around to be paid out by his own financial group. The dread on his face is clear, and he says "All this time I've been wondering who I'm shorting against..."
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The Big Short / int_d959d421	type	Rotating Protagonist
The Big Short / int_d959d421	comment	Rotating Protagonist: The film follows three groups of people: Michael Burry and Scion Capital; Vennett, Baum, and Baum's employees; Shipley, Geller, and Rickert. All three storylines are completely self-contained; none of the three groups ever appear onscreen together. The actions of the characters are spurred on by learning second-hand about the actions of the others, with Burry at the top of the pyramid (ex. Vennett's part in the story starts when he sees a guy talking about the deal he just made with Burry). Shipley and Geller do share a brief crossover with Baum and co.; they walk out of frame at the conference in a shot that continues with Baum and co. walking into frame.
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The Big Short / int_dbab18ef	type	Morally Bankrupt Banker
The Big Short / int_dbab18ef	comment	Morally Bankrupt Banker: Far too many to list. And even the small handful of more level-headed people in the financial sector end up with the consequences created by greed of others.
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The Big Short / int_dc057cf3	type	Adaptation Name Change
The Big Short / int_dc057cf3	comment	Adaptation Name Change: Many of the names of the real-life figures involved were changed in the movie, including Baum, Vennett, Shipley, Geller and Rickert. Of the central characters, Michael Burry and Baum's employees all kept their real names. Their real names are in the original book, and their roles and behavioral traits weren't changed for the movie, so it's very easy to associate the person with the character.
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The Big Short / int_dc579c91	type	Contrived Coincidence
The Big Short / int_dc579c91	comment	One of the fourth wall moments is used to mention how unbelievable but actually true it was that Baum was lecturing about the failures of the subprime mortgage market against a Bear Stearns investor as a run on Bear Stearns' stock occurred. This contrasts the earlier Contrived Coincidence of Geller and Shipley finding a copy of Vennett's pitch in the lobby of the J.P. Morgan Chase building, where the movie admits that it was made up for dramatic effect, and quickly details the complicated, but mundane, actual events.
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The Big Short / int_dca70c44	type	Reasonable Authority Figure
The Big Short / int_dca70c44	comment	Reasonable Authority Figure: Mark Baum is one, as he's willing to listen to Vennett's pitch that has been rejected by just about every other fund in the city, but also do some investigating of his own just to make sure he's correct.
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The Big Short / int_dcdde3b	type	Inherent in the System
The Big Short / int_dcdde3b	comment	Inherent in the System: The main characters realize that with the way the regulation and banking system is set up, it was a matter of when, not if, a crash would happen. Things such as sales commissions and ratings agencies being private entities only lead to the people working in the industry doing their jobs as they pertain to their self-interest.
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The Big Short / int_dd082289	type	A Million Is a Statistic
The Big Short / int_dd082289	comment	A Million Is a Statistic: Defied. This trope is verbatim the reason why Rickert hates banking as it reduces people to mere numbers in a ledger regardless of the damage it causes to others. Eventually both Geller and Shipley share this view and go from being excited over their prospective earnings to horrified of the crash that is about to come.
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The Big Short / int_dda99fa8	type	Despair Event Horizon
The Big Short / int_dda99fa8	comment	Despair Event Horizon: Baum is already a cynic who dislikes Wall Street in general, and he's grieving for his brother, but it's only in Vegas when he sees how corrupt and how dangerous the banks are that he truly lapses into a Heroic BSoD.
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The Big Short / int_dfa40c1b	type	Didn't See That Coming
The Big Short / int_dfa40c1b	comment	Didn't See That Coming: Burry, Baum's team and Shipley and Geller all end up in the backfoot when the value of the sub-prime mortgage bonds and the CDOs don't fall in value immediately when the mortgage default rate start to hit criticality as they predicted but instead rise in prices. This is also the point when they start to realise just how deep in fraud is the entire system, far beyond their original expectations.
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The Big Short / int_e313b4e7	type	Manchild
The Big Short / int_e313b4e7	comment	Manchild: A lot of the supposed financial experts act in a very childish way. Examples include the Florida mortgage brokers who act like high-school Jerk Jocks, playfully punching each other while in a room with experienced and serious hedge-fund managers, the various bankers at the shooting range in Vegas, who engage in over-the-top frat-boy cheers and chestbumps while supposedly entertaining clients, and the woman at Standard & Poor's, whose petulant Just Following Orders justification prompts Baum to incredulously ask her if she's four. Lampshaded at the end when Geller and Shipley walk inside a (deserted) Wall Street office, and comment that they were expecting to find adults.
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The Big Short / int_e313bcdc	type	Ignore the Fanservice
The Big Short / int_e313bcdc	comment	Ignore the Fanservice: Baum questions a stripper about her mortgage situation while she's giving him a private (topless) dance, and maintains eye contact throughout. He does eventually ask her to stop moving, showing he was not simply oblivious.
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The Big Short / int_e63228a7	type	InfoDump
The Big Short / int_e63228a7	comment	Info Dump: Done in a unique way: rather than fill the audience in on complex financial things through traditional in-universe exposition, the film introduces celebrities to explain it, generally via less-complicated metaphors. We get Margot Robbie explaining mortgage bonds in a bubblebath, Anthony Bourdain using unsold fish to illustrate how banks handle unsold bonds, and Richard Thaler and Selena Gomez at a blackjack table illustrating how synthetic CDOs work.
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The Big Short / int_e9e35e8f	type	Exact Words
The Big Short / int_e9e35e8f	comment	In a movie full of swearing, Vinnie drops a beautifully executed one of these, which doubles as Exact Words:
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The Big Short / int_eb8ec7c8	type	Jerkass
The Big Short / int_eb8ec7c8	comment	Jerkass: Mark Baum, who has No Social Skills, drops F-bombs on anyone who crosses his path, and has very little patience for society's rules of common courtesy. Jared Vennett is a total Slimeball and not only makes no attempt to hide it, but actively embraces what a douche he is.
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The Big Short / int_ee2a3bfc	type	Prefers Going Barefoot
The Big Short / int_ee2a3bfc	comment	Prefers Going Barefoot: Michael Burry is seen plenty of times walking around the Scion office barefoot. His doubters use this to mock him, among his other weird traits. "So Mike Burry, who gets his hair cut at Supercuts, and doesnâ€™t wear shoes, knows more than Alan Greenspan." Well, go figure, he sort of did...
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The Big Short / int_fb4e0f18	type	Asian and Nerdy
The Big Short / int_fb4e0f18	comment	Asian and Nerdy: Vennett invokes this trope in a very crass fashion with his numbers guy.
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The Big Short / int_fe3bf3a4	type	Four-Man Band
The Big Short / int_fe3bf3a4	comment	Four-Man Band: Baum and his team fit this. Although instead of a pervert trope, Vinnie fits a more traditional The Lancer role with Porter as The Smart Guy and Danny as the Butt-Monkey.
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The Big Short / int_ff7f34c5	type	Pet the Dog
The Big Short / int_ff7f34c5	comment	Pet the Dog: Burry works past his No Social Skills to give some advice to a young employee before he leaves the office. Vennett is upfront about the fact he only cares about making money for himself, but when Baum tells him he wants to buy more swaps from him after meeting with the Merryl-Lynch CDO manager, Vennett warns him that doing so could result in Baum's fund going bankrupt from having to pay the collateral calls until the bonds collapse. How much of it is genuine care and how much Enlightened Self-Interest (since his own profit would be far smaller if Baum goes under) is up for debate. Vennett gives Baum one last heads-up about Benny Kleeger (a stand-in for Howie Hubler), who trades in bond at Morgan Stanley, taking heavy losses and suggests him to sell his shorts now before Morgan goes under and he has nothing left to short. Despite having a frosty relationship with Cathy across the film, Baum genuinely congratulates her on her baby.
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The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

The Big Short	hasFeature	AM/FM Characterization / int_e3316f33
The Big Short	hasFeature	Autism in Media / int_e3316f33
The Big Short	hasFeature	Awful Truth / int_e3316f33
The Big Short	hasFeature	Competence Porn / int_e3316f33
The Big Short	hasFeature	Completely Different Title / int_e3316f33
The Big Short	hasFeature	Creepy Souvenir / int_e3316f33
The Big Short	hasFeature	Dining in the Buff / int_e3316f33
The Big Short	hasFeature	Enraged by Idiocy / int_e3316f33
The Big Short	hasFeature	Executive Excess / int_e3316f33
The Big Short	hasFeature	Films of 2015â€“2019 / int_e3316f33
The Big Short	hasFeature	Fish Eyes / int_e3316f33
The Big Short	hasFeature	From My Own Personal Garden / int_e3316f33
The Big Short	hasFeature	Glass Eye / int_e3316f33
The Big Short	hasFeature	Hanlon's Razor / int_e3316f33
The Big Short	hasFeature	Inherent in the System / int_e3316f33
The Big Short	hasFeature	Lawful Evil / int_e3316f33
The Big Short	hasFeature	Layman's Terms / int_e3316f33
The Big Short	hasFeature	Lecture as Exposition / int_e3316f33
The Big Short	hasFeature	Lemony Narrator / int_e3316f33
The Big Short	hasFeature	Morally Bankrupt Banker / int_e3316f33
The Big Short	hasFeature	"Not Making This Up" Disclaimer / int_e3316f33
The Big Short	hasFeature	Only the Leads Get a Happy Ending / int_e3316f33
The Big Short	hasFeature	Rotating Protagonist / int_e3316f33
The Big Short	hasFeature	Sexposition / int_e3316f33
The Big Short	hasFeature	The Cassandra / int_e3316f33
The Big Short	hasFeature	The Cuckoolander Was Right / int_e3316f33
The Big Short	hasFeature	The Foreign Subtitle / int_e3316f33
The Big Short	hasFeature	They Call Me MISTER Tibbs! / int_e3316f33
The Big Short	hasFeature	Turn of the Millennium / int_e3316f33

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