Cut Lex Luthor a Check: Difference between revisions

* In ''[[Lord of War]]'', Yuri Orlov eventually abandons his business as an arms dealer and adopts, in his words, "more legal methods of exploiting Third World countries", but notes that it isn't as thrilling as his old line of work, and there is comparatively more competition. He inevitably returns to arms dealing, with the change that it is {{spoiler|government sponsored}}.

* The [[Corrupt Corporate Executive]] in ''[[Tron]]'' made his name, position and fortune by stealing another programmer's game programs... ''with the help of his fully sentient A.I.'' It's explained that the executive's A.I. started out as little more than a chess program that could learn, but you'd expect that a learning program would still be a tad more complex than a video game.

* ''[[Spider-Man (film)|Spider-Man]]'' films:

** Dr. Octopus is researching a new power source. In order to control it, he invents a system of mechanical arms that interface with his brain, have [[AI Is a Crapshoot|artificial intelligence]], are [[Nigh Invulnerable|indestructible]], have the strength to throw cars, and never seem to need new batteries. Just about every aspect of the things would seem to merit a Nobel Prize, but Octavius and the rest of the world initially only treat them as a simple tool. However, if the research in nuclear fusion had paid off, it would have been a significantly more important discovery. Also, he doesn't just patent the things because the time he revealed them to the world was shortly before the accident, and the loss of the control chip caused him to go insane. If anything, a successful test run would have let him have two major technological achievements under his belt.

* Mr. Freeze's appearance in ''[[Batman and Robin (film)|Batman and Robin]]'' has him stealing giant diamonds and using them to both fuel his suit and build a giant freeze ray he plans to use to hold Gotham hostage in exchange for funds to further the research he needs to save his wife. Why he doesn't just ''sell the giant diamonds'' is never explained. If not that, could have just patented the smaller ray immediately, waited for the Nobel, and wondered how many new laws in physics will be named after him. The applications are endless and he's just disproved everything known about thermodynamics. He would never again want for funds no matter what he's researching. At the end of the film {{spoiler|Batman basically talks him into doing just that. Oh, and giving him the cure to the early stage of the horrible disease his wife had. The stage, coincidentally, Alfred happens to have. Freeze trades the cure for a cell with Poison Ivy, since he learned she tried to kill his wife.}}

* Played both ways in ''[[Iron Man (film)|Iron Man 2]]'' with Ivan Vanko. Vanko's capable of replicating the Arc Reactor with his father/{{spoiler|Tony's father}}'s incomplete diagrams. While not as potent as Tony Stark's variant, it still catches the eye of Tony and he is left to wonder why Vanko is using it to terrorize him instead of selling it to the highest bidder, be they legitimate or otherwise. {{spoiler|The real reason is that Vanko's father ''did'' try to sell it for massive profit but Howard Stark would have none of it, exiling him from the US instead. Ivan is out for Tony's blood as his family stole the opportunity to have that check cut for them. In other words, the ship already sailed long ago for Ivan as far as making money, he's just interested in making Tony suffer by this point.}}

=== Literature ===