Honest John's Dealership: Difference between revisions
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|''[[Guards! Guards!]]''}}
You're in a sticky situation; you need to get something and there doesn't seem to be a legal way of getting it. (It could be banned, rationed, from overseas or possibly just made in extremely limited quantities). If you're unlucky, you'll have to visit [[Trope Namer|'''Honest John's Dealership'''.]]
These are the guys who'll attempt to sell you anything, mostly items that [[Fell Off the Back of a Truck]]. The prices are usually dodgy too, either too good to be true or obnoxiously overpriced. (The former usually catches more people out than the latter). All in all, [[Greed|their main goal is money]].
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Expect him to wear an obnoxious outfit ([[Unmoving Pattern|plaid]] suit jackets seem to be popular), record [[Insane Proprietor]] advertisements, and say "[[But Wait! There's More!]]" every other sentence. If this character is rendered as a [[Funny Animal]], chances are quite high that he'll be a weasel or a fox.
Compare and Contrast [[Friend in the Black Market]], who also sells items at a premium but at least guarantees he's giving you the good stuff.▼
See also [[Snake Oil Salesman]], [[Shady Real Estate Agent]], [[Why Do You Keep Changing Jobs?]], [[Crooked Contractor]].▼
Completely straight examples tend not to last long in [[Real Life]], but we've probably all met one at least once. They're called "gray market salesmen," in business/econ terms.
▲Compare and
▲See also [[Snake Oil Salesman]], [[Shady Real Estate Agent]], [[Why Do You Keep Changing Jobs?]], [[Crooked Contractor]].
{{examples}}
== Anime and Manga ==
* The '''N'''ight'''M'''are '''E'''nterprises/Holy Nightmare salesman in ''[[Kirby: Right Back at Ya!]]''. Dedede gave him nearly 100 episodes worth of payback when they finally meet personally.
** In the 4kids dub he's portrayed like a car salesman, while the original version is based on a polite and humble Japanese salesman—but the roles are just about the same.
* Nabiki Tendō from ''[[Ranma ½]]''. In one episode she became Ranma's "financée", rented him out to her classmates, tried to get Ranma to break up with her and pay a "consolation fee", and ''then'' tried to sell him back to Akane for anywhere from (what's equivalent to) $19 to $50. As she said in another episode:
{{quote|'''Akane:''' Whose side are you on?
'''Nabiki:''' I'm on the side with money. }}
* In ''[[Vandread]]'', Rabat (or as [[Word of God]] said, a contraction of [[Names to Run Away From Really Fast|Rat Bastard]]) is a Honest John. Only later do we learn his true purposes, but until then, he sells everything from weaponry to cosmetics to ship drive boosters.
* In the manga and anime series ''[[Area 88]]'', the base quartermaster McCoy is a prime example of this, stocking everything from toilet paper to nuclear weapons. He is not above tricks like placing a photographer's bag in the sun to force him to buy new film or selling faulty Sidewinder missiles at $20 each.
* Lina Inverse of ''[[The Slayers]]'' qualifies. In the very first episode, she actually haggles over how much she can get paid to save the town she's in from an attacking dragon, stating to her companion that "Necessity drives a hard bargain". A couple of episodes later, she sets prices for several items in her possession at 100 times the street price, and accuses the would-be buyer of having no balls for balking when he explicitly stated that he'd pay ''any'' price she named. Even her normally easy-going traveling companion was floored by that one.
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