Fiction 500: Difference between revisions

 

{{examples}}

* 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.

* ''[[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.

 

* 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]].

* 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>

 

* 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 hair—and it is implied that the Fischers' empire is far greater than his.

 

* 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.

* ''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.

 

* 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.

* 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.

 

* [[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, maintenance or insurance.

** 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.

 

* 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.

 

* In ''[[Dungeons & 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.

** 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.

** 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 planetary destruction, a [[Reality Warper]] device, an army of unstoppable giant plasma-breathing robot dragons, or, in other words, you are basically one of the world's leading military superpowers. With Legendary Panoply you have... pretty much whatever magical items 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]]. Legendary Wealth is already covered above.

 

* 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 40,000|Golden Throne]] a run for its money.

** After discovering that the world would end in fifteen years with the [[Mad Mathematician|Power of Math]], he set about to personally fund the transformation of the greater Las Vegas Area (which by this point in time he owned, save for a single business owned by his half-brother, the reason for this being that he bought all of the Las Vegas area and screwed with the local economy ''solely to screw over said brother'') into an impenetrable missile-proof fortress, complete with anti-missile lasers fitted into the rooftops of casinos, orbiting satellites designed to fry incoming ICBMs, and an entire army of [[Crush! Kill! Destroy!|extremely well]] [[More Dakka|armed robots]] armed with absurd amounts of weaponry and self-repair systems.

* '''[[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-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.

* 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.

 

* 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]]s online tend to exaggerate the wealth of real figures to absurd levels. [http://www.fstdt.com/QuoteComment.aspx?QID=83998 This] one in particular claims that the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds both are worth 500 trillion dollars. Combined, that's about eighty times the GDP of planet Earth.

 

* 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.

* 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!]])

* 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.