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Cut Lex Luthor a Check (view source)

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{{quote|''"I never believed the [[The Silver Age of Comic Books|original]] Luthor. Every story would begin with him breaking out of prison, finding some giant robot in an old lab he hid somewhere, and then he'd be defeated. My view was [[Fridge Logic|if he could afford all those labs and giant robots he wouldn't need to rob banks]].''"|'''[http://www.supermanhomepage.com/comics/interviews/interviews-intro.php?topic=c-interview_wolfman1 Marv Wolfman]'''}}
 
A villain who constantly fails at beating the heroes [[Villain Ball|never realizes]] [[Evil Virtues|their intellect and hard work]] might mean they'd get a lot more done if they did an honest day's work; any attempt at going straight is simply a [[Civilian Villain|ruse to lull heroes into a false sense of security]]. This may be more a factor of [[Status Quo Is God|maintaining the Status Quo]], and it's usually mentioned that the [[Mad Scientist]] is ''[[Science-Related Memetic Disorder|mad]]'' after all. Sometimes [[Lampshaded]] at a villain's death with "If only he'd used his powers for good, instead of for evil." This is a dying trope as comic book characters became more complex, but was extremely common for many villains decades ago. Also, it ties closely into [[Reed Richards Is Useless]] -- even—even if [[The Government]] gets ahold of secondhand ultratech, they just use it for ill-conceived attempts to either conquer other nations or abuse their citizens.
 
Consider, for a moment, the [[Trope Namer]]: [[Lex Luthor]]. His earliest incarnations were generally focused on using his [[Mad Scientist]] inventions for the sort of schemes typical in [[The Golden Age of Comic Books]] and [[The Silver Age of Comic Books]], with the goals of pure monetary gain, "[[Take Over the World|ruling the world]]", or eliminating [[Superman]] as an obstacle ''to'' monetary gain and ruling the world... The question is then raised as to why he just doesn't sell his amazing inventions legally.
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=== Anime & Manga ===
* The Team Rocket trio in the ''[[Pokémon (anime)|Pokémon]]'' anime invents some of the most impressive [[Death Trap|Death Traps]]s one could ever imagine, almost every episode... until they occasionally run out of money. It's mentioned in one episode of the Johto series that they borrow their traps from Team Rocket, and that they were invented by the R&D at their HQ. They're also not above taking and maintaining legit work, until the inevitable screw up, and it's always manual labor anyway. Ironically, their "honest" work is almost always profitable. And they always prove to be much better at whatever work they do for extra cash than they ever are at being bad guys. They'd probably have better lives if they just ''stopped'' chasing Pikachu.<br />They once tried to set up a memorabilia stand for some Pokémon tournament, and did well. Then they sank all of their money into it, just in time for the tournament to end and the market for their stuff to disappear. In fact, Jessie recently started entering Pokémon contests; not only is she pretty good at it, she has won a few, even progressing quite far in the Sinnoh Grand Festival. James also acts like pre-[[Flanderization]] Brock on occasion, showing potential to be a great Pokémon breeder. Meowth, being able to speak both English and Pokémon language, also could be filthy rich if he stopped being a criminal and just became a translator. In the Pikachu short film "Pokémon -- Gotta Dance", Meowth is apparently a genius in that he invents a Pokébaton that can control Pokémon. However, he just uses it to make Pokémon dance, and he ends up allowing it to be destroyed. Meowth is a borderline [[Gadgeteer Genius]]; James mentioned that the cat's the one responsible for most of the [[Humongous Mecha]] that they throw at the twerps!
* Subverted in ''[[Tsukihime]]'' canon; the 14th Dead Apostle Ancestor, Van-Fem, rather than drinking blood and harming humans, he took a preference to human society/life and built a highly-profitable casino boat in Monte Carlo shortly after [[World War I]] which earned him a high social status among humans.
* Inverted in ''[[One Piece]]'', when minor villain Wapol actually starts a new life and builds a massive toy-making empire by using his powers to recycle objects into toys. In fact, the alloy his power creates (dubbed "Wapometal") is apparently a unique and amazing compound, which makes him even richer when a scientist discovers its properties and Wapol begins capitalizing on that. Later in the series, Franky starts building tanks using the revolutionary metal.
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* Eventually subverted by the first Icicle, Joar Mahkent. He went into villainy partly for the thrills, but he used his time in jail to work on his inventions and made a legitimate fortune once he reformed, half of which he left to the Flash.
* Averted with the [[Marvel Comics]] character [[Taskmaster]]. Able to flawlessly imitate anyone's physical abilities after seeing them in action once, he initially made money and his reputation training flunkies for [[Super Villain|supervillains]], teaching them how to take down their superhero opponents. Once it became known he was a mercenary, not merely a dedicated villain, legitimate governments and law enforcement started hiring him to teach their people on how to take down superpowered threats. To the extent that, in his first appearance, he concludes that if he stayed and fought, he could probably defeat the entire Avengers team (and one of their more powerful line-ups at that). However, he sees no profit in it or point to fighting superheroes, and runs away instead.
* Subverted by the villain Purple Man, who has pheromone-based mind-control powers. He lived the high life without doing anything to attract super-hero attention -- onlyattention—only to get caught by [[Doctor Doom]] and used as a component in a world-conquest gizmo.
* Averted with ''[[Wildstorm]]'' Universe villain Kaizen Gammora who sells battle-droids and pleasure robots to finance his country's terrorism.
 
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=== Literature ===
* The Goliath Corporation in the ''[[Thursday Next]]'' novels are an absolutely giant monolith who practically own Great Britain; still they insist on harebrained schemes like trying to enter fiction on a wide-scale basis. On the other hand, we infer that a large part of how they made their money in the ''first'' place was on evil schemes...
* The memoirs of one James Crosbie, a moderately notorious armed robber, describe a fairly impressive list of achievements; he held a responsible position at a Kenyan mining company and for a long while was running his own quite successful metalwork business. And yet despite having earned better money during those times -- totimes—to say nothing of ''not being on the run from the law'' -- he—he claims to have felt a much lesser sense of achievement from this than from robbing banks, despite the much greater failure rate, smaller financial returns and lengthy prison sentences. Of course, a better example of an [[Unreliable Narrator]] is hard to imagine....
 
 
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* ''[[Mazinger Z]]'': [[Mad Scientist|Dr.]] [[Big Bad|Hell]] is wealthy and intelligent enough to build dozens of [[Humongous Mecha|gigantic]] [[Robeast|war machines]], Doomsday weapons, squads of cyborgs, several HQ, [[Cool Airship|aircrafts]], [[Cool Ship|submarines]]... It was kind of [[Justified Trope|justified]] in one of [[Alternate Continuity|the different manga continuities]] when Dr. Hell revealed {{spoiler|shortly after finding the old Mykene's [[Humongous Mecha|mechanical warriors]], [[Psycho Supporter|Count]] [[Co-Dragons|Brocken]] took over several ancient European [[The Mafia|Mafia]] in order to earn cash for Hell.}} However he will not use his talents for legitimate -and less frustration-inducing- gain because he sees himself like [[The Woobie]] and wants making the whole humankind paying for all humilliations and hurt he suffered in the past. He NEEDS enslaving everybody and making them [[Kneel Before Zod|bowing down to him]].
** Which is not necessarily true in [[Shin Mazinger Shougeki! Z-hen]], where most of his reasons to hate the world don't apply. If anything, it would make even more sense for that version of Dr. Hell to go legit.
* ''[[Pumpkin Scissors]]''. This trope is almost the premise of the series -- thisseries—this is a world where rather than building safer tanks or devices to protect people from chemical weapons, they engineer people who can withstand tank-fire and chemical weapons. Lampshaded in the interlude where a lab assistant finds a report about the protective fluid that the Flamethrower Troopers use and mentions that they could be used to help burn victims. Her superior replies to that by telling her to throw it out because he doesn't need it anymore.
* Sunred points this out to his [[Friendly Enemy]] General Vamp in ''[[Tentai Senshi Sunred]]''. Vamp is such a good homemaker that Sunred tells him, "You oughta give up the world domination thing and open a restaurant."
* Lampshaded in ''[[Coyote Ragtime Show]]'' when a swindler manages to sneak his way into a high-paying executive job for a major bank purely so he'll be in a position to test himself against their reputedly 'impenetrable' vault -- hevault—he could easily have lived a comfortable and stable life with a job like that, but the money wasn't the issue.
* The villains in ''[[Karakuridouji Ultimo]]'' have some truly unusual day jobs, including music composer, elementary school teacher, and [[Memetic Mutation|pro golfer]]. It never seems to occur to them that they'd be better off using their incredibly powerful robot servants to pay the bills instead. The exception is K, who only joined the villains so he could quit his job and bum around all day. The manga constantly reminds us that he is unemployed.
* In ''[[Dragonball Z]]'', Dr. Gero was capable of building machines that have infinite fuel. Given the world's demand for fuel, he could easily become the richest man in the world with this technology. Too bad he was only interested in getting revenge against Goku.
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* In the first issue of ''[[The Hood]]'', a friend of the [[Villain Protagonist]] spots Electro in a bar and speculates on why Electro doesn't just take a job with the electric company and earn millions that way. He points out that his friend would never last an hour at a straight job.
* ''[[The Flash]]'': The general inability/unwillingness of the [[Rogues Gallery|classic Flash supervillains]] to think bigger has been noted quite a few times in that title.
** Doctor Alchemy somehow got his hands on the Philosopher's Stone -- givingStone—giving him the power to create infinite amounts of riches, transmute any substance to anything else, psychokinesis, and makes him immortal. He uses it, of all things, to commit petty crimes which repeatedly get him sent to jail. This is lampshaded extensively and hilariously in the opening narration of ''Manhunter'' #7.
** Mirror Master is arguably the greatest inventor in the history of the world. He has created such devices as a matter duplicator, teleportation, and interdimensional portals. The first Mirror Master used these things to rob banks, the third uses them for mercenary work. If they just sold them they could become obscenely rich and not have to get the crap beaten out of them by a pajama-clad speedster. The third Mirror Master actually ruminated on this once, that he and most of the people he ran with could become filthy rich beyond anything they could earn in petty crimes if they sold even half their individual tech, and that people had outright pointed this out to him before. He, however, concluded he LIKED running around being a [[Super Villain]] far too much to really consider going legit.
** In another story, a police detective who is forced to team up with Captain Cold calls him out for his criminal tendencies, pointing out how a man who invented a device that could manipulate matter on a molecular level (his "Cold Gun") would have had no problem getting rich legitimately. The Captain responds by pointing out the detective's preference for expensive suits despite their impracticality in his line of work. "We all have our vices."
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** An issue of ''[[Ultimate Spider-Man]]'' lampshaded and subverted this trope with Ultimate Shocker. Unlike the main universe version, the ultimate version is a real loser seen as a joke by everyone and constantly mocked by Spider-Man. However, after learning that Shocker had created his blasters himself, Spider-Man asked him why he didn't made a fortune with selling the technology. The subversion: Shocker reveals that he ''had'' worked for a big company creating inventions, and while said company made even more money, he was fired without seeing a single cent. Which also added a tragic aspect to the formerly laughable character, because he also explains how he studied at MIT until his eyes bled.
** [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] and played straight, one right after the other in ''Spider-Man''. When the Man Who Would Be Hobgoblin first examines the Green Goblin's cache of equipment, he remarks on how incredible the technology is. Specifically, that the personal bat glider must surely represent a breakthrough in the field of aeronautics, and how this proves [[Norman Osborn]]'s insanity, since he could have made far more money by patenting the design than he could ever have hoped to by using it for crime. In his very next breath, however, the man states that keeping such a thing to yourself would be one part of proving yourself better than those around you, and thus using it for personal gain makes total sense.
** The Vulture is another one of those subversions who started out making money honestly. It was only after he had been ripped off by his business partner that Adrian Toomes decided to use his new flying harness as a professional criminal. In one of the more recent Web of Spider-man comics he actually goes further into this when asked by a fellow prisoner (who was the leader of a gang black-mailing him to build a vulture suit to fly out) why Toomes didn't just sell the his technology (his partner is gone and can easily build the his equipment with little resources -- heresources—he was making it in prison for at least the second time). {{spoiler|He tells him that since his partner who betrayed Toomes looked down on him as weak he uses the equipment to do what ever he wanted so that no one ever would think he was weak again.}}
** Averted with Dr. Octopus in most of his incarnations: He was a scientist who invented and used his arms for legitimate research purposes. It took a lab accident fusing the arms to his body and driving him insane to turn him into a supervillain. Further subverted with the ''[[Ultimate Marvel]]'' version of Dr. Octopus. He was caught in an explosion as per usual, but S.H.I.E.L.D. scientist Henry Pym let his condition deteriorate to the point where his arms couldn't be removed. [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero]]. Ock went on a [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge]] against the man he blamed for the explosion until he was captured. He later escaped from prison twice, both times attempting to continue his revenge spree against first S.H.I.E.L.D. and then his ex-wife, who was trying to profit off of his story. Upon subsequent arrest and running out of people to get revenge on, Ock made a deal with the FBI to use his knowledge of Spider-Man's DNA to produce Spider-Man clones for the agency. In the end it's played straight in a fight with Spider-Man, as Ock realizes that he ''likes'' being a supervillain, even if it's stupid and doesn't work out for him.
* ''[[Batman]]''
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** Subverted with the villain 8-Ball, who actually started out working for a defense firm as an engineer, before he was fired when his employers thought he was selling company secrets to pay his large gambling debts, leading him to create his weapons and costumed identity.
** Subverted with Spectra, who first got a job in a laboratory so she could rob the place, only to obtain superhuman powers after Sleepwalker interferes in the robbery. At first, she seems poised to become a criminal, but when she reappears it turns out she's gotten a legitimate job using her light-generating powers.
** One of his first villains was Crimewave, who wanted to, among other things, kidnap models and hold the valuable clothes they were wearing hostage... using his remote-controlled, armored van with a tentacles-and-guns self-defense system. This is justified, as the bad guy cares more about fame--hefame—he even has his own cameraman--thancameraman—than actually making a profit or toppling Kingpin.
* [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] by the original ''[[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Mirage]]'' comics by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird when Baxter Stockman, already very wealthy from his legitimate technology company, begins using his Mouser robots for crime. When April asks him why he'd do it when he's already rich, Stockman, who is already mentally unhinged to begin with, simply claims that ''[[Mad Scientist|it's fun]]''!
* Doctor Lovecraft in the ''[[Justice League of America]]'' initially did legitimate work for his company, but when they pursued financial wrongdoing, they allowed him to pursue more dangerous experiments to create mutates to steal for the company. As these mutates later devolved out of sentience, this explains why he could not have gone public with his results.
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* The Trapster follows this trope to a T. He invented a type of super adhesive and decided to use it to rob banks instead of just patenting it, for some reason that they never explained. He even got a pardon after his first criminal outing, by helping the Avengers defeat Baron Zemo and yet still went back to crime after that. In a rather excellent print short story, the Trapster completely subverts this trope. He changes his name and begins selling his products on behalf of a Seen on TV company. His inventions are successful, he starts dating, and he even gets to ham it up on television. Unfortunately his old colleague the Wizard sees him enjoying himself and threatens him into going back to his Trapster identity and threatening a live studio audience, {{spoiler|but his girlfriend talks him down in a touching ''on camera'' scene just before U.S. Agent clocks him in the jaw. As the story ends, Trapster is a sympathetic reformed criminal who keeps the girl and his job and gets legal representation to help clear up his parole problems.}} Of course none of this is canon.
* A very early issue of the ''[[Fantastic Four (Comic Book)|Fantastic Four]]'' has an inverted invocation of this trope: the villain in this case is a stage magician who used his skills as a hypnotist and illusionist to fool the Fantastic Four into thinking he has powers far greater than theirs. Then he uses these powers to fight them off as he went around stealing jewelry. Reed Richards ultimately deduced that his powers were phony and pointed out that if those powers were real the magician could easily have conjured up all the jewels and treasure he wanted without having to stoop to such petty thievery in the first place.
* Averted with The Atom's foe the Bug-Eyed Bandit, who became a criminal because no-one ''would'' buy his technology -- notechnology—no-one would fund his research without a working model of it, but he couldn't build a working model of it without funding. Eventually, he got so ticked off that he just stole the money he needed, built his tech at last and used it to become a career criminal.
* Linkara called the one-shot ''[[Daredevil]]'' villain "The Surgeon General" on her whole organ-stealing shtick, which inherently relies on being a ''skilled surgeon''. On the other hand, selling black-market organs would probably be more profitable than the average medical practice... the savings on malpractice insurance alone would be immense.
* Averted in one ''[[Tom Strong]]'' storyline; an alternate-timeline version of Tom manages to stop his [[Arch Enemy]] in the normal timeline from ever turning to crime by pointing out how much more money he could make by selling his inventions legitimately.
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=== Video Games ===
* [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] in ''[[City of Heroes]]''. Sometimes [[NPC|NPCs]]s will say "If the Sky Raiders really only wanted money they would just sell their jetpack designs. There is something more." [[Mega Corp|Crey Corporation]] plays this straight. They make a lot of products that could be much more valuable as actual products rather than tools of mass destruction. They also make countless products just for consumer and military purchase.
* Averted in the original ''[[Mega Man Battle Network]]'' game by Higsby, a teacher employed by the WWW to brainwash the students of ACDC and steal their rare chips for himself. He later opens up a chip shop. In the subsequent games of the series, {{spoiler|Dr.Regal and even Wily}} do this too.
* Zig Zagged in ''[[BioShock (series)]]'', as {{spoiler|Frank Fontaine's}} ultimate goal is to become the richest and most adored man alive {{spoiler|after killing off anyone who could get in his way}} by bringing Rapture's technology such as ADAM to the surface.
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* [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] in ''[[Interviewing Leather]]'':
{{quote|'''Leather:''' If [[Captain Ersatz|Leonardo Lucas]] was just after world domination, he wouldn't build giant robots and death rays. He'd get an assload of patents, make three billion dollars, and [[Strawman Political|join the fucking Republican party]].}}
* Averted in the ''[[Whateley Universe]]''. Plenty of the [[Mad Scientist|Mad Scientists]]s do, in fact, patent their inventions, and figure out uses for them. Furthermore, Ayla Goodkind is making sure to look for these people and CUT them checks. And this is [[Lampshade Hanging|mercilessly lampshaded]] by Ayla Goodkind herself, when she complains that [[Super-Hero School|Whateley Academy]] needs better contract law help for these inventors, and courses to teach the inventors how not to get robbed by the [[Corrupt Corporate Executive]] so they have to turn to crime later in life.
* This is Edwin Windsor's job in ''[[How to Succeed In Evil]]'' -- talk—talk to would-be supervillains and try to get them to use their abilities and talents in an efficient and profitable manner, rather than for grandiose and overly complex schemes they seem so fond of. To his endless frustration, they rarely listen to him.
* ''[[Cracked.com|Cracked]]'' has [http://www.cracked.com/article_18618_6-people-who-turned-life-crime-into-legitimate-careers.html 6 People Who Turned a Life of Crime into Legitimate Careers], based on [[Real Life]] examples.
* [[Inverted Trope]] in ''[[The Spoony Experiment]]'' with the villain [[Mad Scientist|Dr. Insano]] saying that the protagonist of ''[[The Dungeonmaster]]'' should just patent his inventions and make loads.
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* Averted on ''[[Johnny Test]]''. Brainfreezer wishes he was less evil so he could just use his ice based technology for a legit business. After Johnny helps him, [[Heel Face Turn|he does just that.]]
* One episode of ''[[Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers (animation)|Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers]]'' is motivated by this. [[Mad Scientist]] Prof. Nimnul has built a lightning generator whose power supply is the static electricity you get from rubbing several hundred fuzzy cats. In his [[Motive Rant]], he claims to have tried selling it to a power company, but the design was so silly that they wouldn't take him seriously. His response is to blast them with the lightning.
* The ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]'' episode "[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic/Recap/S2/E15 The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000|The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000]]" gives us the Flim Flam brothers, who have a machine that can produce apple cider at a rate faster than the Apple Family can. Had the two brothers not tried to drive the Apples out of business, not been such a pair of [[Jerkass|Jerkasses]]es to the Apples, or heck, even tried to cut a fair deal with them instead of giving them an obviously bad one, they'd have ended up being filthy rich off the shared profits. Instead, they're hit with [[Laser-Guided Karma]] after they become so focused on beating the Apple Family that they [[Pyrrhic Villainy|turn off the quality control on their machine, this winning the contest but making cider so awful that no one will buy it]].
* In an episode of ''[[The Critic]]'', an actress tried to get Jay to like her in order to get a positive review from him. However, when he gives his honest opinion (that she's terrible), she turns nasty. However, buttering Jay up required her to constantly stay in character and be convincing. If she put that much of her acting talent into her movies, she'd have a shelf filled with [[Academy Award|Oscars]].
* The Misfits in ''[[Jem]]'' are a genuinely successful and popular music group in their own right, just not ''quite'' as successful as Jem and the Holograms. Their efforts to one-up and sabotage Jem generally only succeed in making themselves look bad; if they weren't so fixated on outdoing Jem and the Holograms and focused on their own performances, they'd have nothing to complain about. This is shown with particular clarity in the three-part "Starbright" episode; they manage to buy their way into and eventually take over the movie production that Jem had won the contract for in a previous episode, and their constant efforts to harass and sabotage Jem and the Holograms eventually drive the latter off the film - along with basically everyone else competent associated with the production, all of whom join Jem in shooting the original script. The Misfits' film is an unwatchable mess that went severely over its already multi-million-dollar budget only to crash and burn at the box office, no doubt resulting in their popularity taking a hit; they could have profited in both money and popularity if they'd simply spent the time touring instead, especially since Jem couldn't schedule any performances during the shooting of the movie.
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* In the MSNBC documentary ''The Marrying Kind'', con artist George Washington Upton embezzled money from his wives and established companies selling non-existent services. Upon his arrest, one of his former wives said that he was smart enough to have made just as much money through legal means but chose to do fraud instead.
* The "Friday Night Bank Robber", Carl Gugasian, could have had a bright future with his mathematical ability, but he was arrested and imprisoned for a crime committed when he was 15. After getting out of jail, he believed that no-one would ever give him legitimate work, so he became a very successful (until he got caught) bank robber.
* [[wikipedia:Eddie Antar|Eddie Antar]], [[wikipedia:Kenneth Lay|Kenneth Lay]], and [[wikipedia:Bernie Madoff|Bernie Madoff]] are all examples of [[Corrupt Corporate Executive|Corrupt Corporate Executives]]s who were clearly talented enough to hit the big time if they'd stuck to legitimate business practices, but who ended up [[Hoist by His Own Petard|destroying their own empires]] through fraud.
* On the plus side, many criminals have been able to use the notoriety they gain from their dishonest dealings to find legitimate careers. In addition to ex-hackers going on to work for computer companies and embezzlers who go on to become fraud consultants mentioned above, there were two former burglars who became security consultants teaching people how to keep their houses from being broken into (and later had [[wikipedia:It Takes a Thief (2005 TV series)|their own popular Discovery Channel series doing the same]]), a counterfeiter who used his skills to get a high-level job at a computer company and even a marijuana smuggler who later advertised his services as a business consultant and entrepreneur based on the skills he'd gained building his dope-smuggling ring. Some art forgers who became so notorious for their crimes that people became interested in their own original work, enabling them to make a living as legitimate artists.
* Canadian Brian O'Dea built a multimillion-dollar marijuana smuggling ring in the 1980s and 1990s before he was arrested and imprisoned. After he served his sentence and got out of jail, he decided to get a legitimate job. He took out a series of ads in the ''National Post'', one of Canada's major national newspapers, advertising his services as a business manager. As proof of his skills, he cited his success in building up his dope empire. [[And It Worked]], since O'Dea received almost 600 job offers in response to his ad.
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* When [[wikipedia:Meyer Lansky|Meyer Lansky]] was arrested in the early 1970s, an FBI agent was quoted as saying "He could have been the CEO of General Motors if he had wanted."
* Look at the extent to which many students go towards cheating. With all that hard work, you wonder if it wouldn't be easier for them to do their work legitimately. Furthermore, students often rely on extra credit assignments to make up for regular assignments on which they gave little effort into. However, the extra credit often turns out to be more difficult than the regular assignments, thus defeating the purpose of slacking off in the first place.
* Many of the people who make Chinese bootleg videogames seem to be surprisingly talented -- whiletalented—while there're lots of terrible ones, there're also surprisingly well-made things like ''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAQyH8C2Amg Barver Battle Saga]'' (only a bootleg because it was made using assets from other games) and, more shockingly, an [http://youtu.be/mXeCDwIl4Ew?t=27s NES version] of ''[[Chrono Trigger]]'' that goes all the way up to the fight with Magus.
* A man who broke into Marriott International's computer network and tried to blackmail the company into giving him a job in their IT department. {{spoiler|They didn't.}}
 
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