Fiction 500: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[File:
{{quote|'''Kerchak:''' Do you have any more of [[
'''Petey:''' [[Up to Eleven|I have a team of accountants whose job it is to count the accountants who keep track of my accountants]].
|''[[Schlock Mercenary]]''}}
Fiction is loaded with [[Wish Fulfillment]], and being rich enough to bend reality is one of them. These are characters whose wealth is almost impossible to quantify. [[More X Than God|More Money Than God]] is the bare minimum.
Now this could happen in [[Real Life]], like royalty who owned literally thousands of [[Pimped-Out Dress|Pimped Out Dresses]], or a man in India who built a private skyscraper for his family, staff, and fleet of cars, or Marcus Licinius Crassus, who had three times as much money as [[Bill Gates]] and personally funded the reconstruction of the Roman army. But in fiction, that's on the ''lower end'' of this scale.
Stuff that generally does ''not'' qualify you to be a member of the Fiction 500: [[Big Fancy House]], [[Cool Chair]], [[Cool Boat]], [[Cool Plane]], [[Cool Car]], [[Battle Butler]], [[Maid Corps]], or even simply having assets in the billions.
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Name is based on the [[wikipedia:Fortune 500|top 500 grossing companies annually compiled by "Fortune" Magazine]].
Now despite the name, there can be any number of characters here. And there is almost no way to objectively rank them, although Forbes tries with their [https://web.archive.org/web/20190603033958/http://www.forbes.com/lists/fictional15/2011/forbes-fictional-15.html "Fictional 15"] list.
Compare [[Conspicuous Consumption]], [[Undisclosed Funds]], [[Organization with Unlimited Funding]], and [[NGO Superpower]].
{{examples}}
▲== Anime & Manga ==
* In ''[[CLAMP School Detectives]]'', the Imonoyama family founded CLAMP Academy, which acts not just as a school, but as a self contained city in the middle of Tokyo. And they don't even charge the students' families tuition.
* From ''[[Death Note]]'', L Lawliet has a hotel built solely to house (and disguise) a heavily secured task force headquarters, pays for everyone on the task force's life insurance, hands them gadget belts, can afford to hire a professional con man and an international thief, and still has enough left over that {{spoiler|his successor}} can just pour a waterfall of one-dollar bills out the top of a building.
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* In ''[[Urusei Yatsura]]'', Shutaro Mendou. [[Fanon]] expands his wealth considerably, though. Mendou has a pretty much private everything.
* In ''[[Yes! Pretty Cure 5]]'', Karen Minazuki has her own island, just happens to have multiple empty houses lying around for people who [[Undead Tax Exemption|appeared out of nowhere]], and once had to clarify that she was only joking about owning a mountain range.
* ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!]]'',
**
* In ''[[C the Money And Soul of Possibility]]'', Mikuni has enough money to single-handedly shoulder Japan's national debt. Note that due to the show's premise, a lot of characters can fall into this trope (the protagonist went from a college student struggling to make ends meet to having a bank account of several hundred million overnight), but Mikuni still stands out.▼
** While Datz (the main antagonist of the Doma Arc) doesn't flaunt his wealth as much as Kaiba (given his need for secrecy) he clearly fits the Trope, being CEO of Paradius, a [[Mega Corp]] that is said to own stock in ''every'' major company in the world. He was, in fact, able to acquire both Kaibacorp ''and'' Industrial Illusions via hostile takeover during the arc. Add to that a likely [[Offscreen Villain Dark Matter]] account held for [[Really 700 Years Old| 10,000 years]] and he's pretty financially well-off.
▲* In ''[[C
* In ''[[Dance in the Vampire Bund]]'', Mina Tepes pays of Japan's entire national debt, which is around 40 TRILLION dollars and does not seem financially hurt in the slighest by it.
* In ''[[Special A]]'', almost every single character aside from the Hanazono family is ridiculously and obscenely wealthy, to the point where Kei Takishima slams down a blank check and tells Yahiro to fill in any amount he wants for the house they are currently standing in - and all he wants is his girlfriend back. In another scene, the Takishima Group Headquarters are portrayed as being several square MILES wide. (This is the fourth positively massive mansion to be shown to be owned by the Takishima's - and we're not even counting the manga, here.
* Hanaukyo Taro of ''[[Hanaukyo Maid Tai]]'' in addition to his mansion and army of maids has enough budget to create a weather altering machine and a computer that can manipulate all the world's markets when it's completed.
* In ''[[Sacred Seven]]'', Ruri. "We didn't want to go to any trouble, so we just bought the school."
* The Minowa family, owners of The Minowa Group [[Mega Corp]] in ''[[Bakuon!!]]''. Mostly they're in the background of the story, but there are times when daughter Hijiri taps into their resources and suddenly you find you have a device on your hands which implements a video game mechanic in the real world (freshly created by their R&D division for her), or you witness a helicopter airlift in an expensive Italian motorcycle identical to the one that she just had break down on her. Hijiri mildly states that the family motto is [[Screw the Rules, I Have Money|"All problems that can be solved with money shall be solved with money."]]
* ''[[One Piece]]''; Most characters in-universe believe this was true of the legendary Gold Roger, who owned and later hid the eponymous treasure. Still, while many pirates do believe that anyone who finds it will be rich beyond his wildest dreams, there are many hints that it was ''not'' the typical [[Pirate Booty]] and was valuable for some other reason.
== [[Comic Books]] ==
* This sort of character often shows up in [[The DCU]]:
** In ''[[Batman]]'', Bruce Wayne can bury the cost of the [[Justice League of America]] Watchtower in his aerospace budget. To put this in perspective, the smaller and far more primitive International Space Station is projected to cost over $100 billion by the time it's finally completed. ''If'' it's ever completed. He is also funding his secret life of fighting crime using assorted [[Where Does He Get All Those Wonderful Toys?|wonderful toys]]. An entire issue of ''Robin'' was devoted to delivering a cost accounting of Batman's arsenal. In ''[[Batman Begins]]'', Bruce and Alfred decide that the best way to disguise their purchase of ears for Batman costumes is to [[Refuge in Audacity|buy 10,000 of them]].
{{quote|'''Bruce:''' Well, at least we'll have spares.}}
{{quote|'''Impulse:''' How'd you get a Batmobile shipped to San Francisco?
'''Robin:''' I hid it in the Batarang budget.
'''Impulse:''' The Batarang budget?
'''Robin:''' It's bigger than you'd think. }}
::* Also from that title, Beast Boy's legal guardian (and the guy where the Titans get their funding from) is a businessman named Steve Dayton, someone whose wealth far exceeded even Bruce Wayne's. It simply [[Secretly Wealthy|never came up in conversations.]]
:* [[The Legion of Super Heroes]] gets its funding from a man named R.J. Brande, father of Chameleon Boy and, in later continuities, stepfather to many other members. The head of a company that builds artificial suns, he's pretty much the 30th Century's equivalent of Bruce Wayne.
* They're no stranger to [[Marvel Comics]], either:
** In ''[[Incredible Hercules]]'', the title character is shown being able to purchase entire bars with gold he had in his pocket, and his diverse portfolio required two superheroes a full week to even gather, let alone settle, in wake of his demise. One example alone that would qualify for this list was that he was one of the initial investors to Stark Enterprises, [[Iron Man|whose founder]] is listed below. When the size of the investment was calculated, a ''second line of zeroes'' was required - assuming a standard 1.25 inch margin on each side of the page and a 12-point font, the bare minimum amount of this investment alone would come out to be 10 novemdecillion (10^61) dollars. Though after the fourth novemdecillion dollars, who's really counting?
** From ''[[Iron Man]]'', Anthony (Tony) Edward Stark. Even without any funds, he's a gadgeteer genius who built the Iron Man suit in a cave...[[Memetic Mutation|with a box of scraps.]] That said, having loads of ''spare'' suits, many built in a lab in his own house most definitely counts. As does having a fully automated production facility in his garage that can build him another one in 5 hours. Case in point: [[Spider-Man (Comic Book)|Spider-Man]] thinks they should all get armor. [http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c166/Ennead13x/Western%20Comic/Picture1-1.png Tony's response?] And in ''Mini-Marvels'' Tony ''does'' give everyone power armour just to prove how awesome he is. He also keeps fully working versions of previous armors in a trophy room, has destroyed them to keep them out of enemy hands, and apparently rebuilt them for the unlikely occasions where they'd come in useful in the future.
** In ''[[X-Men (Comic Book)|X-Men]]'' Charles Xavier's inherited fortune made him able to turn the basement of a mansion into an [[Elaborate Underground Base]] with an absurdly advanced holodeck room, as well as affording/building various vehicles, including helicopters and [[Cool Plane|a really advanced jet]]. Plus the Cerebro. Those can't come cheap.
** T'Challa, a.k.a. the [[Black Panther]], was an example until recently. As king of Wakanda, he legally controls the trade and distribution of [[Unobtainium| Vibranium]] (as in, the stuff [[Captain America]]'s shield is made of, plus Adamantium), and according to the comics, Vibranium costs $10,000 ''per gram''. And according to ''Doomwar #1'', the Wakandan vaults have 10,000 tons of it. Do the math: it's all worth ''$9.7 trillion'', more than the GPA of the nonfictional world. Unfortunately, a plot by [[Doctor Doom]] to loot the Vibranium forced T'Challa to use a failsafe that rendered the stockpile inert and potentially worthless, but that doesn't mean it will always be. While not quite as loose with his money as Iron Man or Angel, he's also used his wealth to make a few pretty significant contributions over the years. Case in point: he provided [[The Avengers| the Avengers]] with their first Quinjet, and continued to provide more advanced versions of the craft for a number of years.
* From ''[[Disney Mouse and Duck Comics]]'', ''[[DuckTales (1987)]]'' and elsewhere, Scrooge [[Carl Barks|McDuck]]'s wealth is a [[Running Gag]].
** He is the owner of a windowless concrete block, affectionately called The Money Bin, filled with so much cold, hard cash that the bottom layer probably collapsed into electron-degeneracy sometime in the early 1990s. [[Don Rosa]] makes a point that the money in the bin is what Scrooge earned before he became the world's richest duck. He has dozens of times more, in bank accounts and in investments, but the money in the bin is there because every coin and bill is a mark of victory to its owner; he can actually tell how he earned each one by looking at them, and would never part with one unless the story behind it is not worth remembering.
** In one Don Rosa story it's shown that Scrooge has every federal and state organization, including the U.S. Armed Forces, at his beck and call because his taxes comprise about 90% of their income. When you put together all Carl Barks and Don Rosa stories, Scrooge could probably buy out every other person mentioned on this page. And yet he still figured he didn't have enough wealth to buy even a tenth of a solid gold moon, when engaged in a trade with the wealthiest man from Venus for it. And then he traded it for a handful of dirt.
** Scrooge has been the top person in the Forbes Fiction 15 for 25 years running. Total worth: 5 multiplujillion, 9 impossibidillion, 7 fantasticatrillion dollars and 16 cents. So rich, they make up numbers for it.
{{quote|'''Scrooge''': I can't go on like this! Losing a billion dollars a minute! I'll be broke in 600 years!|(which implies that Scrooge's net worth is around $313 quadrillion - jst under 5000 times the world's GDP)}}
* From ''[[Richie Rich (comics)|Richie Rich]]'', Richard and Regina Rich, [[My Friends and Zoidberg|And their son, Richie.]] Richie apparently receives his allowance in stacks of $100 bills. Their personal maid, Irona, is a [[Do-Anything Robot]] which the Rich family paid scientists to invent. And one of Regina's hobbies is collecting
* While maybe not as over the top as most others here, ''[[Archie Comics]]'''s Hiram and Hermoine, Veronica's parents, still rank high up the social ladder. Evidence would come from A. Veronica's spending sprees, she'll buy out whole boutiques, new cars, vacations, at a whim, and B. the cost to repair/replace the endless mayhem caused by Archie's visits.
* From ''[[Watchmen (comics)|Watchmen]]'', Adrian Veidt, who became absurdly rich after creating the patent for spark hydrants, which power the electric cars of the Watchmen world. He also owns dozens of other companies, but his ultimate moneywasting venture is that of {{spoiler|creating a massive "alien" creature on a private island which he then teleports into New York City and "saves the world"}} from. Oh, and he owns a palace in Antarctica, too. The funny thing is that he was already rich as a teenager, then gave up the wealth and got rich again. Appropriately, the movie features Veidt on the cover of Forbes magazine and the company themselves included him as part of a "fictional 500" list of richest fictional characters on their website.
* ''Multy the Millionare'' a strip from ''[[The Beano]]'' during the 1950s. It [[Played for Laughs|played this trope for laughs]] and featured a charcters whos only trait seemed to be his incredible wealth. Lord Snooty also occassionally had aspects of this trope with him living in a castle and being a lord and everything but occassionally he would be very poor and even used the [[Wallet Moths]] trope occassionally. Lord Snooty's 2000s revival as Lord Snooty the Third used this trope a lot more than the original Lord Snooty and has never been shown have any kind of un-absurdly-richness.
* The Magnate from ''[[Nintendo Power]]'''s ''[[Star Fox (series)|Star FOX]]'' comics, being the CEO of the [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|Starship Corporation]] in a universe where space ships are the most-used means of travel, also by funding research for a super-advanced fighter out of his own pocket and single-handedly supplying most of the Cornerian fleet. [[War for Fun and Profit|For a price, naturally.]] If he switched sides they'd be ''screwed''.<ref>He won't. The bad guys were dumb enough to [[Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?|try kidnapping his daughter]] once...</ref>
== [[Film]] ==▼
▲== Film ==
* In ''[[Contact (film)|Contact]]'', S.R. Haddon lives on a private jet that reportedly [[Infinite Supplies|never lands]] and funds a SETI expy out of his own pocket on a whim. In the finale it's revealed he bought up undisclosed numbers of other major corporations purely to obtain the plans to build a backup to the interstellar teleporter, which nearly bankrupted a consortium of world governments, and that he's manipulated nearly every terrestrial person or event in the film purely through use of his bank balance. Carl Sagan's novel goes into thorough detail about the ingenious ways he acquired his fortune, starting with a machine that automatically changes the TV channel the second a commercial starts and culminating in essentially a futuristic city-sized brothel based on ancient Babylon crossed with Las Vegas.
* In ''[[Inception]]'', Saito bought an airline (the timeline of the film is implied to be over the course of a few weeks) because he thought it would be the simplest way to keep the crew out of their
* The [[Marvel Cinematic Universe]] version of Tony Stark, in his first movie, is shown to be a defense contractor who supplies the F-22 fighter, the M-1 Abrams tank, and communications satellites to the US military. In addition, he also builds and sells the most popular brand of smart phone and personal electronics. In other words, in the MCU Tony Stark is single-handedly the equivalent of Lockheed-Martin, General Dynamics, TRW, and Apple '''all put together''', and presumably dozens of other companies besides.
== [[Literature]] ==▼
* The House of Lannister from ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]'' are famous for being astonishingly rich thanks largely to controlling a large chunk of the realm's gold mines, tithing the lords of even more, and being ridiculously good at finance. They are the main creditors of the Iron Throne, and their unofficial motto is "a Lannister always pays his debts."▼
▲== Literature ==
▲* The House of Lannister from [[A Song of Ice and Fire]] are famous for being astonishingly rich thanks largely to controlling a large chunk of the realm's gold mines, tithing the lords of even more, and being ridiculously good at finance. They are the main creditors of the Iron Throne, and their unofficial motto is "a Lannister always pays his debts."
* From ''[[The Belgariad]]'', Silk, AKA Prince Kheldar. In ''the Malloreon'', people who are introduced to him will identify him as "the richest man in the world," though he admits that there might still be some governments that are richer than him. Interestingly, while he readily consider the art of making money "The Great Game," he has absolutely no interest in the money itself, readily calling them "nothing more than a way to keep count of the score." On at least one occasion he willingly just left all the cash and valuables he had gathered to that point behind. Oh, yeah, he took a moment to sigh over the loss, then just sorta tossed it over his shoulder and never looked back.
** At one point, Emperor Zakath of Mallorea is informed by his treasury minister that despite Kheldar's recent crime spree in the royal palace it is effectively impossible to punish him for it, because if Kheldar chose to withdraw his Mallorean investments it would completely destroy the economy of the empire. Of particular note is that the Mallorean Empire is the single largest and most prosperous nation in the world, encompassing almost an entire hemisphere of the planet.
* In The [[Nights Dawn|Night's Dawn]] Trilogy by [[Peter F. Hamilton]] we have the members of the B7 security council, the shady cabal running special security operations for the government of planet Earth, Govcentral. Officially. Unofficially, the members are about [[Really Seven Hundred Years Old|400 year-old]] super-capitalist tycoons who [[Body Surf]] every few decades, and secretly control Earth and many other planets. Their financial institutions are said to a "healthy percentage of the human race". Note that in this case, the human race is spread across 800+ planets throughout the Milky Way.▼
** Kheldar also manages at one point to buy out virtually the entire surplus food supply of Mallorea, rendering it impossible for Zakath to deploy his armies unless his government comes to an arrangement with Kheldar's conglomerate for logistical support. He then has to dump this investment in a hurry when Zakath abandons his latest campaign of conquest instead, but still manages to come out moderately ahead on the deal.
* In ''[[Charlie and the Chocolate Factory]]'' Willy Wonka owns the world's largest chocolate factory (so big it has an entire subterranean river system made from liquid chocolate) and develops things like teleportation just to boost his advertising revenues. At one time had a huge human workforce that he spontaneously sacked in its entirety due to industrial espionage issues (severance pay, anyone?); he then imported ''an entire unknown nation of people IN SECRET'' just to staff his factory, and had ''enough cash stockpiled to allow him to do this while the factory was closed and he was receiving no income''. Better yet, he pays the Oompa-Loompa wages not in money but in leftover cocoa beans, so every penny spent on a Wonka bar goes straight to him!▼
▲* In
* In ''[[The Count of Monte Cristo]]'', a scene in the novel shows Edmond Dantes listing his assets, totaling an estimated value of 120 million francs, an impossibly huge figure by 1838 standards (As comparison, Napoleon Bonaparte's personal wealth in 1814 was estimated at somewhere in the region of 80 million francs). He is able to effectively "resurrect" a ship confirmed as lost at sea in a matter of weeks, is implied to control one of the most powerful banks in Europe, owns a fleet of ships, and single-handedly toys with the French financial market specifically to screw a single person.<br /><br />In ''[[Gankutsuou]]'', his wealth is measured in trillions of francs. It's suggested he might be able to buy and sell less important planets!▼
▲* In ''[[Charlie and the Chocolate Factory]]'' Willy Wonka owns the world's largest chocolate factory (so big it has an entire subterranean river system made from liquid chocolate) and develops things like teleportation just to boost his advertising revenues. At one time had a huge human workforce that he spontaneously sacked in its entirety due to industrial espionage issues (severance pay, anyone?); he then imported ''an entire unknown nation of people IN SECRET'' just to staff his factory, and had ''enough cash stockpiled to allow him to do this while the factory was closed and he was receiving no income''. Better yet, he pays the Oompa-Loompa wages not in money but in leftover cocoa beans, so every penny spent on a Wonka bar goes straight to him! Indeed, in the last chapter of the second book where Charlie's family are worried that they have no money to buy clothes, he ''really'' laughs, telling them not to worry about money because "I have ''plenty'' of ''that''!"
▲* In ''[[The Count of Monte Cristo]]'', a scene in the novel shows Edmond Dantes listing his assets, totaling an estimated value of 120 million francs, an impossibly huge figure by 1838 standards (As comparison, Napoleon Bonaparte's personal wealth in 1814 was estimated at somewhere in the region of 80 million francs). He is able to effectively "resurrect" a ship confirmed as lost at sea in a matter of weeks, is implied to control one of the most powerful banks in Europe, owns a fleet of ships, and single-handedly toys with the French financial market specifically to screw a single person.
**In ''[[Gankutsuou]]'', his wealth is measured in trillions of francs. It's suggested he might be able to buy and sell less important planets!
* From ''Count Zero'' by [[William Gibson]], Josef Virek: "You will be given access to certain lines of credit, although, should you need to purchase, let us say, substantial amounts of real estate-" "Real estate?" "Or a corporation, or spacecraft. In that event, you will require my indirect authorization. Which you will almost certainly be given."
* In ''[[Dune]]'', Shaddam Corrino IV is the CEO of CHOAM (Combine Honnete Ober Advanced Mercantiles), which has an exclusive monopoly on Spice, a drug found on the planet Arrakis. The main selling point of spice is that it prolongs the life of its user, cures all diseases, makes you [[Psychic Powers|clairvoyant]], and gets you addicted with one dose. This is in addition to being [[The Emperor]] of a ''whole galaxy'' (which is a requirement to become CEO of CHOAM).
* In the German novel ''Eine Billion Dollar'' by Andreas Eschbach, John Salvatore Fontanelli unexpectedly inherits the titular fortune (a trillion dollars in American terms) from a distant ancestor by way of compound interest. Though he tries various things (the East Asian financial crisis of 1997 is ascribed to his failed bid to join the International Monetary Fund), his most impressive feat is to {{spoiler|organize worldwide elections}}.
* From ''[[Ender's Game]]'', Andrew Wiggin has three thousand years of interest to draw
**His sister Valentine, who accompanied him on basically all of those journeys, is also a big shot. She didn't have a pension or AI help, and her fortune isn't made as big a deal of, but three millenia of interest is still bound to be sizable.
{{quote|"Tell you what, you give me the interest on this for a week and I can buy this planet."}}
* In ''[[Everworld]]'', Nidhoggr fills a large volcano with treasure, the least valuable of which is pure gold. The King of Fairy Land is similarly rich, with diamond-tiled roofs. The heroes sell technology to the fairies for a large bag of diamonds, which they lose after {{spoiler|using the diamonds as a weapon against Hetwan fliers}}.
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* In the ''[[In Death]]'' series, any time Eve begins to investigate a company or a property, there is approximately a fifty-fifty chance that Roarke owns it. And if he doesn't, he can buy it. Several of the books contain references to his development of an entire planet as a luxury resort, which eventually provides the setting for one of the series' short stories.
* In Roger Zelazny's ''Isle of the Dead'', Francis Sandow owns at least one planet, and doesn't know how rich he is. He lost count a long time ago and was never that interested. There's just nothing buyable beyond his means.
* In ''[[Neuromancer]]'', John and Marie-France Tessier-Ashpool retired from the public eye to legal death in a cryo-storage system at the Villa
* In ''[[Phule's Company]]'', Willard Phule is not only the sole heir to the owner of one of the largest corporations in the galaxy, Phule-Proof Munitions, but he has also amassed a sizeable fortune of his own. He solves nearly every conflict he and his unit encounter throughout the entire series by fast-talking his way out, practically burying the problem in money, or (most commonly) both.
* In Daniel Keys Moran's ''Tales Of The Continuing Time'' series, Francis Xavier Chandler, who is the wealthiest person in the Solar System, owns an orbital house which is larger than some of the Belt City-States. It is a huge slowly rotating cylinder with three levels of increasing gravity, roughly 800 rooms and a free fall swimming pool and zero G racquetball court in the center. The gym is usually attached directly to the house, but when someone wants to exercise, the gym and a counterweight are extended 800 meters away from the house, and a motor then spins both of them until earth normal gravity is achieved. The process takes roughly an hour.
* In [[H. G. Wells]]' ''When the Sleeper Wakes'', Graham ([[Only One Name|no first name given]]), through an unintentional [[Compound Interest Time Travel Gambit]], awakens in 2200 to a world groaning under the tyrannical misrule of his own trustees.
* In ''[[The Hobbit]]'', Smaug's - stolen - horde was impressive, Bilbo saying he'd need "thousands of years" to haul it away even if Smaug were harmless. Although, Thorin remarked that dragons keep gold and jewels simply out of greed and "never enjoy a brass ring" of it.
* ''Great Space Battles'': The ''[[wikipedia:Terran Trade Authority|Terran Trade Authority]]'' 'verse, from Stewart Cowley's short story collection:
** All the members of the Nimrodian Club, an organization devoted to bringing back the practice of dueling to ease the boredom of being told how rich you are.
** Robin Maxwell, of Maxwell Textiles. It appears from the illustration that to accomodate rush hour traffic from the parking garage at one of his factories, he had an eight - lane highway built.
** Harcourt Apseley, Chairman of Consolidated Aerospace. "Three out of every major craft in production came off his slips."
* In ''[[The Hobbit]]'', Smaug sleeps atop a pile of coins and jewelry, which ''Forbes'' [http://blogs.forbes.com/michaelnoer/2011/04/06/how-much-is-smaug-tolkei-dragon-worth/ had some fun evaluating]. (be sure to read the comments, one of which raises the value of the pile substantially, and even adds Smaug's armor collection - the resulting sum is so absurd [[Even Nerds Have Standards|the article's author replies with "I don't find that credible"]]) On the qualitative side, keep in mind that when Smaug died, ''all of the surrounding countries went to war, just over the argument of who got to loot his hoard''.
* Cornelius Gould Stuyvesant of ''[[The Grimnoir Chronicles
* ''[[Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea]]'': Captain Nemo brags to [[The Professor]] Aronnax that he is so rich, he could pay France's entire national debt. Later Aronnax discover this is the truth in Vigo Bay: [[Cool Ship|The superior tech of the Nautilus]] lets Nemo reclaim all the treasures lost to man in
* The central characters of "The Totally Rich" by [[John Brunner]] would put anybody on the Fortune 500 in the shade. They wouldn't appear on any such list themselves; part of what it means to be ''totally'' rich is that, in a world of paparazzi and celebrity profiles, they can afford true
* In [[Anne Rice]]'s ''[[The Vampire Chronicles]]'', several vampires are mentioned to be unimaginably wealthy with no indication where that wealth came from. Both Lestat and Armand started poor (even though Lestat was a nobleman). Lestat gained a small fortune from his maker, who committed suicide shortly after turning Lestat. By modern days, Lestat has no idea how much money he has. He has accountants for that. All he does is tell them when he needs money, and they wire it. It's implied they invest the rest. Given that he's a vampire, he doesn't actually need that much, especially after gaining the ability to fly. In ''Tale of the Body Thief'', a man asks for $20 million for one day of swapping bodies with him. While for Lestat this is pocket change, he's still reluctant to just give the money to a potential charlatan.
** Armand owns an island. And not a small one.
** Lestat's latest protege, Quinn Blackwood, comes from an insanely wealthy Louisiana patrician family. His great-great-grandfather Manfred owned a large plantation and won the services of an exclusive law/investment firm in a poker game, letting him invest the family wealth for the kind of returns Wall Street executives have wet dreams over. Most of the Blackwood family is fairly low-key; for instance, Quinn's grandfather "Pops" attends cock fights and enjoys doing landscaping, while the plantation house itself serves as a bed-and-breakfast. [[Cool Old Lady|Aunt Queen]], on the other hand, has spent most of her life jet-setting across the globe, visiting wondrous sites and staying in five-star hotels. When Quinn comes into his inheritance, his first thoughts are of Pops and how
* ''Sisterhood'' series by [[Fern Michaels]]: Myra Rutledge is the owner of a Fortune 500 candy company (almost like a reference to this trope!), and is at least a billionaire. Her friend Countess Anne "Annie" de Silva owns more money than [[Bill Gates]], as Myra likes to point out.
* The Baudelaire Fortune in ''[[A Series of Unfortunate Events]]'' (acquiring which is [[Big Bad|Count Olaf's]] overall goal) might qualify, at least for the setting. If ''[[The Puzzling Puzzle]]'' is considered canon to the series, the fortune consists of 130 shoeboxes full of golf ball-sized diamonds (whether this is literally the case - which likely means the Baudelaires liquidated their holdings - or a comparison is not stated), which given the real-world value of diamonds at the time, would be just under $18 billion.
▲== Live Action TV ==
* In ''[[The Addams Family]]'', the titular clan of [[Perky Goth|loveable weirdos]]. In particular, the patriarch, Gomez, puts more value on ''[[Uncle Pennybags|losing money]]'' than making it, often paying for things with wads of cash he apparently left lying around the house earlier for that purpose.
* From ''[[Doctor Who]]'', Henry van Statten, who owns the internet. Has enough money from slowly releasing elements of his hoarded alien technology that he can decide the next US presidential election on a whim.
* In ''[[Star Trek]]'', insane amounts of wealth don't mean as much in a society that can replicate most of their daily goods, but a few beings manage to stand out.
** The Ferengi have had thousands of years to hone and refine their capitalistic arts to perfection, so it stands to reason that at least a few very successful Ferengi can fit onto this list. In fact, Grand Nagus Zek goes so far as to publish a series of Revised Rules of Acquisition in order to change his entire species' [[Planet of Hats|hat]] from [[Honest John's Dealership]] to something more respectable. He realizes that many prospective customers are leery of doing business with Ferengi because of their cutthroat business practices, and by regaining their trust they can expand their customer base. [[Money, Dear Boy|All for increased profits]].
** In ''[[Star Trek:
* In ''[[The Suite Life of Zack and Cody]]'', London Tipton. [[Does This Remind You of Anything?|Heiress to a hotel fortune]]. Subverts the ditzy "I can see my house from here!" by actually being able to see her house. From space.
* In ''[[Game of Thrones]]'' and [[A Song of Ice and Fire|its source material]], the Lannisters are by far the richest family in the Seven Kingdoms - it's mentioned in one episode that King Robert owes them 3 million in gold, and they ''still'' have enough left to fork over 80,000 for a tournament with no problem. "As rich as a Lannister" seems to be a well-known phrase, enough so that Tyrion Lannister is able to use it to bribe his way out of a dungeon. Taken [[Up to Eleven]] with the merchant price Xaro Xhoan Daxos, who according to [[Word of God]] (or at least word of his actor) is even wealthier than Tywin, and he could very well be the wealthiest person in the universe of the series. Xaro [[Rags to Riches|started with nothing]], but is now wealthy enough that he could personally fund a successful invasion of the Seven Kingdoms and it wouldn't even be a huge investment.
* ''[[The Big Bang Theory]]'' -- Sheldon describes Raj's parents as "Richie Rich rich...Somewhere between Bruce Wayne and Scrooge [[McDuck]]."
* The 1950s TV show ''[[The Millionaire]]'' dealt with a faceless philanthropist sending out $1 million checks to ordinary people to see how the money would change their lives, for better or worse. Showing how powerful TV was at the time, viewers wrote into CBS (the network of the show) asking for a handout.
== [[Oral Tradition]], [[Folklore]], Myths and Legends ==
* [[Santa Claus]] can afford to make toys for all the children in the world, which he is capable of maintaining without any apparent means of income. Not to mention a system capable of delivering said presents in one night, the elven city that houses his staff, etc.
** Keep in mind he lives in hiding and his helpers are magical creatures who can fix and mantain easily all that machinery, so he doesn't pay taxes,
** We can go the other route, and assume that he does in fact have a legitimate source of income and pays taxes, wages, pensions, etc, and the he's just rich enough to keep it all under wraps. The source? Advertising, of course! Think of how many products, films, novels, and commercials bear Santa's image; any person of company will need to pay the standard copyright fee. Christmas is a world-wide phenomenon, and if Claus has the copyright on any other holiday related stuff, it could push his total even higher.
== [[Professional Wrestling]] ==
* Ted DiBiase, [[Professional Wrestling]]'s original "Million Dollar Man". So rich, he would flaunt his wealth by cramming $100 bills down the throats of his fallen opponents until they choked on
==
* In ''[[Dungeons
▲* Ted DiBiase, [[Professional Wrestling]]'s original "Million Dollar Man". So rich, he would flaunt his wealth by cramming $100 bills down the throats of his fallen opponents until they choked on them -- at which point, his manservant, Virgil, would take the money back. He lived by the motto, "Everybody's got a price!" and he proved it by, at various points, essentially buying Andre The Giant, Nikolai Volkoff, and Tatanka. The only man he couldn't buy? Hulk Hogan, who turned down his overtures to buy the WWF Championship for obscene amounts of money. Eventually, he just made his own championship belt, the Million Dollar Belt, a creation of solid gold and diamonds that cost over one million dollars, and which served purely as a monument to his incredible wealth.
** Admittedly, we're talking about the ''ruler of Hell'' here. Given that his subordinates collect obscene amounts of tribute from virtually every sentient race in the multiverse and have been doing so for uncounted eons, by Asmodeus' standards what he spent on his clothes is somewhere between the change he lost behind the seat cushions and a rounding error on his bank statement.
** The 3rd Party accessory ''Tome of Beasts'' from Kobold Press takes this further with the Archdevil Mammon, an exemplar of [[Greed]] who is literally made of money. His realm is called the Halls of Avarice, with palaces made of solid gold where the screams of the damned are carried by silver winds over lapis wildflowers. Even his favored servants, the Gilded Devils, are made of gold, and Mammon himself has offensive eldritch powers with a money-theme, like the ability to scald enemies with spouts of liquid gold or even [[Taken for Granite|turn enemies to golden statues.]] .
▲* In ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]'', one of Asmodeus' outfits costs about as much as a large country spends on food in a year. It just goes up from there.
* From ''[[Shadowrun]]'':
** After years of audits and asset assessments after his death, the nearest estimate is that the dragon Dunkelzahn was worth well over 100 trillion nuyen, not including his collections of cultural artifacts, magical items, and so forth whose true value cannot be easily quantified. Just [https://web.archive.org/web/20110119014130/http://ancientfiles.dumpshock.com/Dunk_Will.htm read his will]. As an example, he left behind 20 million for the redevelopment of Jiffy Pop. And in the single largest endowment, he left Art Dankwalther $34,586,224,739.58 as repayment, accounting for inflation and interest, for a meal Art's ancestor once bought for him.
** Art Dankwalther, who turned out to be an obsessive lunatic and financial genius, then went on to use that money in a stock scheme that destroyed one of the world's ten largest megacorporations and forced another one to have an IPO and go publicly financed in order to survive his takeover attempt, the fallout of which helped shape the economic history of the planet for the next fifteen years, so Dunkelzahn appeared to have a much more significant [[Plan]] in play here than simply paying off an old debt in a massively frivolous way.
* In ''[[Planescape]]'', the Merkhants are a sect who believe the best way to uncover the secrets of the multiverse is to have enough material wealth to buy them. One has to be incredibly rich to join them, and it is stated in the ''Planescape MC2'' that a Merkhant's wealth, if together in one place, might exceed that of a Prime world.
* In ''[[Warhammer Fantasy Battle]]'', Greasus Goldtooth, Overtyrant of the [[Our Ogres Are Hungrier|Ogres]]. One of his special rules is 'Too Rich To Walk', and he is allowed to bribe anyone. No exceptions.
* This is what the Rogue Traders are in ''[[Warhammer
* ''[[Exalted]]'', like other Storyteller System games, has an abstract system for measuring wealth: a "Resources" rating, from 0 (broke) to 5 (fabulously wealthy). Let's go in detail: Resources 5 is described as "owning at least one excellent ship, an army of attentive servants eagerly awaiting every your whim, and either having a private army or being able to rent one at need". The chapter detailing the monetary system puts Resources 5 as an income of "60+ talents a year", a talent being describes as 64 pounds of silver. Characters with Resources 5 can afford nearly every mundane expense out of their pocket with little trouble.
** To help give an idea of the scale, the game rules specify that covering the payroll, logistics, and maintenance costs of an entire legion (5000 men, or what the modern-day Army would call a "division") of troops is a Resources '''4''' expense.
** Enter Salary. Salary is what Sidereal Exalted have. Since they mostly live and work in Yu-Shan (a sort of bureaucratic Heaven where the gods running the world are), normal money is meaningless. Instead, they get paid in Quintessence, magical prayer energy which can be transformed into anything else (and is also delicious, to the point that young Sidereals are warned not to eat their allowances). Salary is Resources + 1 on Creation (the "normal" world), so having Salary 5 means you effectively have Resources 6 (an "impossible" rating) in Creation, making you effectively [[More X Than God|richer than most gods]]. The flavor text explains that you "can ruin economies at will" and suggests that it's virtually impossible to ammass such a fortune without being involved in suspicious, shady deals of some sort, and also encourages you to "decide what divine criminal or Celestial powerbroker you owe and how many Severity 3 to 5 offenses you are committing".
** Enter Wealth, Arsenal and Panoply. These three backgrounds appear in Dreams of the First Age, set in a time before the Realm of the First Age collapsed. Playing as one of the demigods which basically saved and are now running the world, you have access to them.
** Wealth describes your economic power, and is equivalent to Resources +2. With Wealth 5, you effectively have Resources 7, and are so rich you can't even keep your money all in one place (all in one bank, for example) or you'd break the local economy.
*** You can have Legendary Wealth. Legendary Wealth lets you make an infinite amount of Wealth 5 purchases. Wealth 5 is comparable to the entire GDP of a modern industrialized nation. The text specifically lampshades that once you have Wealth 6 the only purchases you need to track are magical items so powerful or restricted that they cannot be purchased with money but instead take other background advantages to get, because you literally can afford ''any'' amount of normal goods or services. Up to and including most of the planetary economy if necessary. Said planetary economy could also be casually broken into tiny pieces by you if you chose to maliciously dump your assets. In fact, since the Deliberative's financial system (the Order-Conferring Trade Pattern) was designed partly as a giant ongoing thaumaturgical ritual involving numerology and symbolism to help hold back incursions from the Wyld you can literally ''break the fabric of space and time'' with your money, if you have enough of it.
** Arsenal is the amount of military hardware you are allowed to own. At Arsenal 5, you have an army of [[Humongous Mecha]] plus your own personal intelligent super robot, a fleet led by your enormous [[Cool Airship]], a [[Our Dragons Are Different|Thousand Forged Dragon]], and basically all the firepower you'll ever need.
** Panoply, conversely, is the amount of non-military [[Magitek]] you have. Panoply 5 gives you a [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|Traveling Pagoda]], among other things. The "other things" are described as more or less "Everything".
** And finally, there are Legendary Backgrounds. Having a Legendary Backgrounds is like having the 6th point in those already-powerful backgrounds (that only go up to 5). It's explained that a legendary background carries immense consequences, since at that point everyone is worried about you wielding such power. Basically, with Legendary Arsenal you own a one-of-a-kind weapon of
== [[Video Games]] ==
* In ''[[Fallout: New Vegas]]'', Robert House. Before the [[Apocalypse Wow|Great War]], he was the Owner and CEO of one of the largest corporations on the entire planet, bought out dozens if not ''hundreds'' of other large corporations, and personally funded research into a life support system that would give the [[Warhammer
** After discovering that the world would end in fifteen years
** After the war, he spent, on average, ''around a million caps a year'' on mercenaries and salvage teams ''for more than two hundred years'' in an effort to recover a platinum poker chip that contained the updated software that would turn his army of killer robots into ''even more [[Buffy-Speak|killy]]'' killer robots. Robert House is on this list by virtue of being the only one with enough money to be able to survive a ''nuclear holocaust'' and thrive afterwards in a world where [[Everything Is Trying to Kill You]].
* In ''[[Fate/stay night]]'', Gilgamesh originally was the king of the world and possessor of all of its wealth. He has so much stuff that even he doesn't know what most of it is. His primary weapon, the Noble Phantasm called the Gate of Babylon, is a doorway to a pocket dimension that contains thousands upon thousands of priceless and powerful weapons, all of which belong to him. Consider this in comparison to other servants who might have two or three Noble Phantasms at most. At the same time, he has a particular character attribute called The Golden Rule, which measures a character's ability to attract wealth to himself. His is Rank A, which means that no matter what the situation and no matter when or where he might be, he is always guaranteed to have enough money to buy whatever he needs or wants and that more will simply fall into his lap.
* In ''[[Final Fantasy VII]]'', President Shinra, being the owner of [[Mega Corp|Shinra Electric Power Company]] effectively controlled the whole world by economic means. Except for one quasi-autonomous state, which was conquered by Shinra's own private army. Constructed a whole cyperpunkian city and had the only space program. Heir Rufus funded the next world-spanning organization and maintained infrastructure to fly [[Black Helicopter
* In ''[[Guilty Party]]'', Dorian Dickens, head of the world's most effective and famous detective family. Exact wealth unknown, but it's enough to purchase a couple hundred
* From the ''[[Mass Effect]]'' series, the [[Mass Effect 2|Illusive Man]]. Cerberus' resources, while not unlimited, are still substantial enough to fund a two-year project to [[We Can Rebuild Him|rebuild someone who is for all intents and purposes dead]], and can replicate - with improvements - the [[Cool Starship|most advanced starship in the galaxy]], with unique, groundbreaking [[Stealth in Space|stealth technology]]. Now, if even that doesn't sound like much, consider how valuable [[Unobtainium|element zero]] is, then consider how much eezo was sunk into the drive cores of both the ''Normandy'' SR-1 and the ''Normandy'' SR-2. Note that late-game, we actually ''do'' find out where Cerberus gets its money from: {{spoiler|Cerberus operates several dozen legitimate Fiction 500 corporations, and receives substantial funding from "private investors" - ultra-wealthy pro-humanity individuals, especially within the Alliance's military-industrial complex.}} They were also able to build the ''Normandy'' SR-2 because {{spoiler|the very companies that Cerberus established to fund themselves were among those who built the original ''Normandy'' SR-1, so Cerberus had access to the blueprints and equipment to build the replacement.}}
* Andrew Ryan, ''[[Bioshock]]''. Guy built an entire underwater city, wih an amusement park, he's clearly got more dough than Howard Hues did.
* From ''[[Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater]]'', Colonel Volgin, to the point where the US are willing to sacrifice the greatest soldier the world has ever known to get their hands on his money, and he can personally bankroll his own assembly line of doomsday machines. With $100 Billion in 1964 money, which if adjusted for today's economy would be almost $1 trillion dollars, it's easy to see why.
* In ''[[Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri]]'', Nwabudike Morgan, richest man on any planet, who is wealthy enough to help fund a significant part of the cost of a spaceship large enough to take a decent fraction of humanity to another star system, after alliances of major countries (like the EU and Russia) have been forced to cut down their share after finding it too costly. Better yet, one victory condition requires you to be rich enough to buy the planet outright, so any player can easily join the Fiction 500.
* In ''[[Street Fighter Alpha]]'', Karin Kanzuki. Her parents run the Kanzuki Zaibatsu, and they have a [[Kill Sat]].
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* Wilhelm of ''[[Xenosaga]]'' owns Vector, a corporation so large that their headquarters is a space station the size of Lebanon and with smaller branches on numerous planets. It's described as the largest and most wealthy corporation in existence. Later, it's revealed he also owns {{spoiler|Hyam's Heavy Industries}}, the second-wealthiest corporation in existence.
* The Rosenqueen family of the [[Shared Universe]] of many [[Nippon Icchi]] games, from the ''[[Puppet Princess]]'' series to ''[[Disgaea]]'', where they have shops across several worlds and planes.
* '''[[Tomb Raider|Lara Croft]]'''. This woman lives in a mansion the size of a small town which has hordes of valuables in vaults in the basement. Lara also frequently converts it into a [[Deadly Training Area]] when she wants to work out. It has long been established that the biggest reason she raids tombs is because she's ''bored''.
* From ''[[8-
▲* From ''[[8-Bit Theater|Eight Bit Theater]]'', Thief ([[Only One Name|no last name given]]) qualifies. He's:
** Prince of the richest, most decadent nation on the face of the planet.
** in charge of the entire economy of a town (well, ex-town; It was flattened by Australia).
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* Hannelore's parents in ''[[Questionable Content]]'' are both obscenely wealthy, but for different reasons; her mother is a rich businesswoman who buys an entire restaurant on a whim, and her father is a robotics tycoon who owns and lives in a high-tech space station.
== [[Web Original]] ==
▲== Web Original ==
* In the ''[[Legion of Nothing]]'' webnovels, Giles Hardwick, one of Michigan's richest men, bankrolled the original Grand Lake Heroes League.
* In ''[[Whateley Universe]]'', Ayla Goodkind comes from the richest family on the planet. The Goodkinds are estimated to be worth 750 billion dollars, according to ''Forbes''. Ayla has actually seen the inside of a regular grocery store once. She was appalled.
* [[Conspiracy Theorist
== [[Western Animation]] ==
* In ''[[Beverly Hills Teens]]'', Bianca Dupree. Okay, most of her friends could fit here, but Bianca mentioned her father owned Texas.
* In ''[[Danny Phantom]]'', Vlad Masters. As prominent as [[Bill Gates]], except shown to be much, much richer. The man is a billionaire with a huge castle in Wisconsin along with a huge home by the Rockies. Owns several of his own companies (i.e. Dalv), as well as many others he literally took over (like Mastersoft, formerly [[Microsoft]]). Owns state of the art ghost hunting technology and can easily pay to have everything rebuilt time and time again with no financial worry. Can pay for a professional ghost hunting team with superior technology once and easily set a million-dollar bounty on a single ghost. The only things he can't buy are Maddie's love, Danny's respect, and the Greenbay Packers.
** He does imply (and it's taken as [[Word of Dante]]), that he used his ghost abilities to commit invisible burglaries and later [[Grand Theft Me|control people]] and get them to give him their money.
* In ''[[The Fairly
* In ''[[Futurama]]'':
** Philip J Fry gains such wealth (for only one episode before losing everything), buying out entire auctions on a whim didn't seem to make a dent, nor did shooting skeet with the Mona Lisa. That's in addition to the time he and Bender got $1 every time one of their Poplers was sold: 198 billion were sold around the world.
** Mom, of Mom's Friendly Robot Company, stole the entire wealth of Fry, above, and owned the security camera system that helped her do it. Possibly has a monopoly on robot production.
** The Wong family owns the Western hemisphere of
* In ''[[Gargoyles]]'':
** David Xanatos moved a castle to the top of a skyscraper. Apart from the cost of moving the castle, it's strongly implied that the entire building was created just to provide a platform for the castle to rest on. Granted, such a thing could be done, in principle, in real life, but still...
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** Ron Stoppable (briefly). He invented the Naco, the top-selling menu item at Bueno Nacho, and in one episode received a check for 999 million dollars in royalties for his invention. Kim described him as "Just south of billionaire." He blew a great deal of the money on clothes, bling, and a private jet for himself and Kim, before Shego stole the balance, ending his brief tenure on the Fiction 500 list. A number of [[Fanfic|fan fics]] suggest that he's still getting Naco royalties, which his parents had enough foresight to invest in a trust fund for him, so he may still belong on this list.
* From ''[[Powerpuff Girls]]'', Princess Morbucks' father. Princess finances a personal suit of [[Powered Armor]] with her allowance.
* Most of the families in ''[[Totally Spies!]]!''. All three protagonists are shown to be rich, while their rival, as shown that her mother ''bought an entire high-end shoe company chain to get a pair'', is hinted to be ''even richer.'' Very much living proof of [[Reality Is Unrealistic]], given that it is set in Beverly Hills.
* The ''[[Metalocalypse]]'' band Dethklok as a whole is considered the seventh largest economy on Earth. ([[Shown Their Work|They've just passed Belgium!]])
* In ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]'', Charles Montgomery Burns, especially with his device to blot out the sun over Springfield and his (albeit limited) ownership of the world's only trillion dollar bill.
* Charlene Doofenshmirtz of ''[[Phineas and Ferb]]'' finances her ex-husband's projects every week. One day she helped Doof pay the mortgage of his whole office building which is has at least
* Lucius Heinous VII on ''[[Jimmy Two-Shoes]]''. One episode shows he spends more on
* Eustace Strytch from ''[[Jimmy Neutron]]'' often battles Jimmy's brain with his wad of cash. He easily manipulates people with his money, is able to buy space ships and fly to Mars and gets anything he points at, constantly dragging along his butler.
* In a quick joke, Eddy from ''[[Class of 3000]]'' is drawn with five fingers to show how rich he is in relation to all the other character, who just have the average cartoon four.
* An Al Brodax ''[[Popeye]]'' cartoon does a spoof of the 1950s TV show ''The Millionaire'' with Popeye the philanthropist doling out $1 million personal checks to Olive, Swee' Pea, Wimpy
{{reflist}}
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