Fiction 500: Difference between revisions

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** {{spoiler|Negi's mother}} could probably put Ayaka's money to shame without even trying.

* Yai's family, of ''[[Mega Man NT Warrior]]'', regularly shows off their wealth in the form of private jets, a submarine, helicopters... And their mansion transforms into a [[Humongous Mecha]]. Naturally, she uses these things to help the rest of the gang get to places faster. Her [[Mega Man Star Force|Star Force]] counterpart, Luna, only has her wealth touched upon once, but her family's estate, her army of servants, and making countless orders to try and see Mega Man again practically puts her into this trope as well.

* In ''[[Monster (manga)|Monster]]'',

** Hans Georg Schubert, also known as the Vampire of Bayern for his seclusion and mysterious nightly outings, is described as a juggernaut whose fortune keeps growing and growing without measure; rumors have it that he singlehandedly manipulates the entirety of the German stock market. His donation of his collection of rare and antique books to the University of Munich attracts local and international business alike.

** Johan, who started an enormous black market banking operation that made him incredibly rich...at the age of 15. Of course he doesn't care about the money. [[Complete Monster|He did it to see how people would destroy each other because of money and to make it easier for him to murder a lot of people.]]

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** 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. <ref>Although, with Magneto's help, all labor costs would pretty much become zero, meaning he's only really paying for parts.</ref>

* From ''[[Disney Mouse and Duck Comics]]'', ''[[DuckTales]]'' 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.

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* 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>.

* 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>.

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** 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''.

* [[The Grimnoir Chronicles|Cornelius Gould Stuyvesant]] is explicitly referred to as the "richest man in the world," and is the owner of [[Zeppelins from Another World|United Blimp & Freight]].

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* 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.

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== Myth & Religion ==

* [[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, repairments or insurances.

** 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.

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** 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 ''[[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 40000]]''; people gifted with Warrants of Trade that allow them to go wherever and do whatever - so long as it doesn't hurt the Imperium - making absurd amounts of profit in the process. At the low end, a Trader is a merchant with a personal mile-long [[Cool Starship|space battle-cathedral]]. At the high end, they operate entire fleets of starships and run a trade dynasty spanning dozens if not hundreds of worlds. It's not

* [[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.

** 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 economy.

** 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 mass destruction, a [[Reality Warper]] device, an army of unstoppable giant plasma-breathing robot dragons, or, in other words, you are basically a military superpower. With Legendary Panoply you have... pretty much whatever you want. An example listed is a giant magitek utopian city as your personal property, where everyone has the benefit of having a Panoply rating of 3 and where every prayer is magnified by the town's geomancy and directed to you. Or entire stables of [[Memetic Mutation|heroin-pissing dinosaurs]]. And, with Legendary Wealth, you have enough money that you can [[Divide by Zero|break the Order Conferring Trade Pattern]] if you spend it carelessly... in other words, literally break time and space and destabilize the fabric of reality WITH YOUR MONEY.

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** 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|Black Helicopters]] after the company downfall.

* 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 zeppelins--or their approximate worth in [[Trademark Favorite Food|pudding.]]

* 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.}}

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* In ''[[Street Fighter Alpha]]'', Karin Kanzuki. Her parents run the Kanzuki Zaibatsu, and they have a [[Kill Sat]].

* In ''[[Super Mario Bros.]]'':

** Bowser Koopa is insanely wealthy, having owned at least twenty castles, [[Super Princess Peach|an equally ginormous villa]] and [[Mario Kart|even a city]]. However, he isn't satisfied unless he can rule the cosmos.

** In ''[[Wario Land]]'', Wario has a huge castle with apparent walls of gold, treasure and more gold lying around, a huge throne, and in Shake It, ends up with a gold filled, gold walled garage with it's own chandelier. He got a planet in the first game for getting all the treasure. Heck, the Mario Spinoffs alone show him with a personal gold mine, multiple stadiums, a colosseum, multiple whole cities and a lot of other stuff. Oh, and the ''[[Wario Ware]]'' games apparently sell thousands, if not millions in copies in the game stories. [[Greed|And he still wants more.]]

* 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.

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== Webcomics ==

* From ''[[8-Bit Theater ~~(Webcomic)~~|Eight Bit Theater]]'', Thief ([[Only One Name|no last name given]]) qualifies. He's:

* 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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* 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...

** Though per [[Word of God]] none of them is quite as rich as Xanatos, fellow ''[[Gargoyles]]'' cast members [[Reasonable Authority Figure|Renard]], [[Big Bad|Demona]], [[Anti-Villain|Macbeth]] and [[Evil Twin|Thailog]] are definitely up there too.

*** According to Thailog, his wealth combined with Demona's and Macbeth's would put him on equal footing with Xanatos. He comes up with a [[Plan]] to make this happen in one episode.

* In ''[[Goldie Gold and Action Jack]]'', Goldie Gold has a flying car, has loads of tech on her person and in her mansion, and [[Pretty in Mink|thinks a fur coat]] [[Impossibly Cool Clothes|is proper adventuring wear]].

* From ''[[Kim Possible]]'':