Comically Small Bribe: Difference between revisions

 

{{examples}}

* A commercial for the now-defunct Pets.com company had their sock puppet mascot attempt to get into an apartment building by bribing the doorman with $3, quickly upped to $4 when the doorman seems to be seriously considering it.

* A commercial for 10-10-220 had [[3rd Rock from the Sun|French Stewart]] bribing a Maître d' with $1. It doesn't work until after Stewart explains the service.

 

* Invoked and inverted in ''[[Dragon Ball]]'' where Goku ends up paying a pedestrian a huge amount of money for giving him information about the city as well as where Bulma lives at. Justified because he legitimately thought that he was supposed to pay people for the information they gave due to a misunderstanding when he attempted to take a taxi (the driver was requesting that Goku pay him if he wants to use a taxi, but Goku thought he meant he should pay him for him to tell him where Bulma's house was located) as well as having absolutely no concept of how to use money during that time.

* L from ''[[Death Note]]'' shared a secret about something he uses to keep himself safe. He then tried to bribe one of the people he told it too by with a strawberry. There is absolutely no reason to believe the bribed person would share it anyways.

 

* A variation: In ''[[Spider-Man]]'', [[Harmless Villain|The White Rabbit]] once tried to hold New York for ransom for a million dollars. They counter-offered her $1.50.

 

* ''[[Austin Powers]]'': The concept is used in the first movie—Dr Evil, who's been in outer space since [[The Sixties]], asks for a million dollars or he'll destroy the world. All the diplomats to whom he gives his request laugh their arses off, because it's such a small sum. The sequel plays it in reverse. Dr. Evil asks the US government in 1969 for $100 billion and they laugh because, "[[As You Know|This is 1969!]] That amount of money doesn't even exist!" The third movie [[Double Subversion|Double Subverts]] it by having him hold the world ransom for "one million billion shaba-daba-illion... yen", and having the world leaders agree that this is reasonable.

* ''[[Dirty Work]]'':

** It ''was'' a jelly, eh.

 

* ''[[Discworld]]'' series

{{quote|How dare he try to bribe me, thought Moist. In fact, that was his second thought, that of the soon-to-be wearer of a gold-ish chain. His first thought, courtesy of the old Moist, was: how dare he try to bribe me so '''small'''.}}

* In the [[Star Wars Expanded Universe]]:

** ''[[X Wing Series|Wraith Squadron]]'' has Face, [[The Infiltration|in disguise]] as a stereotypical bumpkin on a once-in-a-lifetime trip to a more civilized world, giving a customs officer ''one whole credit'' in exchange for information about where he might go looking for "brides". The whole thing is [[Crowning Moment of Funny|hilarious]].

** The inverted version occurs in ''Labyrinth.'' A refugee from [[Wretched Hive|Jackson's Whole]] hands Miles and Bel Thorne her entire life's savings in cash, hoping it will be enough to engage them as mercenaries to get her off the planet. Bel tells her the price is wrong—then peels one single dollar off the stack, hands her back the rest, and tells her this is more like it. Needless to say, It's Personal for Captain Thorne.

 

* As the preview for ''[[South Beach Tow]]'' shows, at least one car owner tries this on the truck driver, saying "You can buy all the Ho-Hos you want."

* ''[[Dinosaurs]]'' episode "License to Parent":

{{quote|'''Punk kid''': I've got nothing to say to you... but ''Andrew Jackson'' on the other hand...

'''Bob''': Jackson, huh?... ''[opens wallet]'' He's not in, do you have anything you'd like to tell Abe Lincoln and the Washington twins? }}

* In the ''[[iCarly]]'' episode "iWant a World Record", Spencer tried to bribe the representative of the world record book into overlooking the four seconds the webshow was off the air (his sculpture drew so much power that it briefly knocked out the power) with skee ball tickets. Upon realizing that they were tickets and not money, he promptly took them back so he could get a giant harmonica.

* At a time when [[The Beatles]] were being offered millions to reunite, a 1976 ''[[Saturday Night Live]]'' sketch had producer Lorne Michaels making an on-air appeal to the group, offering them a check for $3000 to perform on the show. [[John Lennon]] and [[Paul McCartney]] happened to both be in NYC and watching the show that night, and were amused enough to briefly entertain the idea of [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|heading over to the studio just for the hell of it.]] They then talked themselves out of it, sadly.

* ''[[Pearls Before Swine]]'' had a comic use this as a gag. Rat and Pig tip the Maitre'D a bribe to get a good table at a fancy restaurant. The next panel shows them sitting with their plates on the floor right outside the kitchen doors.

{{quote|'''Rat:''' "Maybe I should try something bigger than a quarter next time."}}

{{quote|'''Croc:''' "Me hope flavor last looooooonggggg time."}}

* One ''[[Star Wars Expanded Universe|Boba Fett]]'' comic has Fett tip a worker on a starship for information, who sarcastically says, "Ten whole credits? My, sir, wouldn't want you to leave yourself short or anything..." Since the value of [[We Will Spend Credits in the Future|credits]] is a bit inconsistent, we can only assume that he was expecting more.

* Dean the pig of ''[[Liberty Meadows]]'' attempts to bribe Frank the veterinarian into giving him liposuction with five dollars; he subsequently ups this to ten dollars.

* One of ''[[Garfield]]'s Fine Dining Faux Pas'' in the 8th Garfield Treasury is bribing the maitre d' with a roll of nickels.

 

* ''[[The Goon Show]]'', in which people will gladly perform insane actions for photographs of money or bags of sweets. (Of course, that last one was Bluebottle, and he's generally portrayed as a young and mildly insane Boy Scout, so...)

 

* A common net result of the skill check rules of ''[[Dungeons & Dragons]]'' when applied to bribery attempts. Players with high enough charisma, diplomacy, or raw luck can offer pitiful bribes and see amazing results. Couple it with a natural 20 and a permissive DM will allow a soldier to commit high treason for a bag of jellybeans. This has gotten only easier in fourth edition, with social interaction taking on a more rules-governed, mechanical aspect.

 

* ''[[Cyrano De Bergerarc]]'': Cyrano invokes this trope at Act II, Scene V, trying to bribe Roxane’s Duenna to [[Leave the Two Lovebirds Alone|leave him alone with Roxane]] (and then bribe her properly).

{{quote|'''Cyrano:''' Are you fond of sweet things?

* In ''[[Oglaf]]'', the Mistress bribes ([[Incompatible Orientation|straight]]) [[Butt Monkey|Ivan]] to give a blowjob to the [[Depraved Homosexual|Xoan]] [[Bishounen|Ambassador]]... for a pinecone. Eventually the Mistress explains that the box holding the pinecone was enchanted to "[[Justified Trope|make you want whatever's in it]]".

 

* [[The Angry Video Game Nerd]] does its own spin on this. When [[Pat the NES Punk]] {{spoiler|discovers a gold ''Nintendo World Championship '90'' cart in a game bundle the Nerd bought}}, the Nerd tries to trade it back for some very common/pack-in games, such as ''Combat'' for [[Atari 2600]] and ''[[Super Mario Bros.]]''/''[[Duck Hunt]]'' for [[Nintendo Entertainment System|the NES]]. [[You Can't Thwart Stage One|It goes along as well as you'd expect.]]

* In ''[[Blogging Twilight]]'', when Dan reaches the part where Alice bribes a guard with a "thousand dollar bill", he is initially confused as to what currency that is exactly, seeing as there is no thousand dollar bill in either US currency or Euros. He ultimately concludes that it must be a thousand Lira which is worth about seventy-five American cents, noting "So this guard is either really stupid and doesn't know much about money, or he's very poor and needs whatever funds he can scrounge up to buy half a potato for dinner." (Presumably the text meant to suggest that Alice still had thousand dollar American bills, [[wikipedia:Large denominations of United States currency#.241.2C000 bill|printed from either 1928 or 1934]])

 

* Aang attempts this on a pirate while haggling in ''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender]]''. Fortunately the pirate thinks it ''is'' quite comical, until Aang tries a higher price which is only one copper piece higher. Pirate's not so amused the second time.

* ''[[The Fairly OddParents]]'' had Cosmo's famous "Philip the Nickel." It was originally used as a bribe by Juandisimo to get Cosmo to hand over his wife, Wanda. [[Hilarity Ensues]].

* ''[[Camp Lazlo]]'': In "The Tusk Wizard", Raj attempts to bribe Nurse Leslie into removing a perfectly healthy tusk by offering him a quarter.

 

* The German satirical magazine ''Titanic'' offered a cuckoo clock, sausages and ham to delegates of the FIFA World championship committee to support the German bid to host the 2006 [[The World Cup|World Cup]]. A $20 value for arguably the biggest sporting event in the world. [[wikipedia:Titanic (magazine)#2006 FIFA World Cup bribery affair|Amazingly, it worked]], as one of the delegates who was supposed to vote for South Africa got very confused and abstained, causing the final vote to be 12-11 in Germany's favor. South Africa did get the World Cup in 2010.

* On November 8, 2009, Chad Ochocinco of the Cincinnati Bengals offered an official $1 during a replay challenge on one of his own catches. Even though he was joking, he got hit with a $20,000 fine.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Bargain Tropes]]

[[Category:Money Tropes]]

[[Category:Comedy Tropes]]