Cash Lure

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A type of prank involving a tied dollar bill, or some valuable object, left on the ground and then pulled away when someone attempts to pick it up. May be used as a lure.

Examples of Cash Lure include:

Anime and Manga

  • Appears in the censored version of Dragon Ball to replace Bulma using a lure of panties.

Comic Books

  • Done by the Prankster in an old Superman comic. Seeing the obvious string, no one picks up the dollar assuming it is a prank. However, the string actually triggers an explosive to blow a hole in the wall of a bank.

Film

  • The old "duck on a dollar" trick from The Little Rascals.
  • In Go West, Harpo uses this on Groucho. Groucho is trying to fleece Harpo & Chico out of all their money but H&C reverse it by giving Groucho a 10 and getting 9 change, over and over again.
  • Yellowbeard: Commander Clement wants to get some information out of Harvey "Blind" Pew but doesn't want to pay for it. Each time he drops a coin into Pew's cup, Clement yanks it back out again with a string.

Live Action TV

Music

  • Appears on the cover of Nirvana's Nevermind.

Newspaper Comics

  • According to a Peanuts strip from 1985, this is Spike's favorite April Fools' Day joke, with a purse on a string. Because he's in the desert, however, no victims come by.

Spike: I'll wait for ten more hours, but then that's it.

Video Games

Western Animation

  • Mr Burns does it in an episode of The Simpsons to bait children: dangling a large denomination bill on a string out of the window of his limousine and then driving away as Bart tries to pick it up.
  • On Family Guy, when it's revealed that Lois' mother is Jewish, Carter, her husband, attempts to bait her this way (due to the Greedy Jew stereotype). She doesn't fall for it.
  • The "Couch Fishing" episode of Beavis and Butthead.
  • In the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Frankendoodle", SpongeBob does this to Squidward.

Real Life

  • When Alex Rodriguez left the Mariners to play for the Rangers (and eventually the Yankees), he got a cold reception when he came back to play against his former team. One of the disgruntled Seattle fans put a dollar bill on a fishing line and cast it out onto the field when A-Rod showed up to bat. The fan was ejected from Safeco, but not before the rest of the Seattle crowd cheered his protest.