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Lottery Ticket: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
The [[Rule of Drama]] ensures that nobody will get a legitimate winning lottery ticket and just cash it unless "character wins the lottery" is the core premise of the work (in which case, see [[Rags to Riches]]). Traditionally [[Status Quo Is God]] kicks in and ensures they either lose or [[A Fool and His New Money Are Soon Parted|something comes up]] to make sure they remain in their original financial state.
For example, one character is mistakenly convinced they've won the lottery (or some other big prize, like tickets to a big concert or sporting event) and make an ass of themselves before learning it was a practical joke.
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** Another featured Curly winning a drawing, and the three moving into a ritzy hotel. A [[Gold Digger]] or three try to bilk him for all he has. Thne he sees the winnings. After, of course, the natural result of having the Three Stooges in a ritzy hotel room.
* In ''[[Bruce Almighty]]'' Bruce [[What an Idiot!|answers "Yes" to all the prayers]] in an attempt to get them to shut up and leave him alone. This includes everyone praying to win the lottery. Result? 400,000 lottery winners, each getting about $17. Oops.
* The movie "The Lottery Ticket" is built on this trope.
* [[Preston Sturges]]' ''Christmas in July'' involves a guy whose coworkers prank him by sending a telegram congratulating him for "winning" $25,000 in a commercial slogan writing contest he's entered...which fools not only him but also the owner of the coffee company sponsoring the contest, who's unaware that the judging committee is still deliberating. {{spoiler|In a twist, however, the movie ends with him winning the contest for real.}}
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* The title story of the short story collection ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=oNJF3jMhcg8C&client=firefox-a Yuck!]'', by Joe Schrantz, features a woman swallowing a multi-million-dollar winning lottery ticket after a fight with her husband over what to do with the money; the ticket is later recovered from her feces, but is swallowed again by somebody else, which can't be very healthy.
* [[Requiem for a Dream]] uses a very dark variant. The protagonist's mother receives a prank call telling her that she's been chosen to be on a TV gameshow. She starts taking and becomes addicted to diet pills to get into shape, which turn out to be uppers. In combination with her isolation, she goes completely off the rails and ends up a shadow of her former self; enough to reduce her old friends to tears.
* One of the ''[[Sweet Valley High]]'' books has Winston winning the lottery when he mixes up his jacket with a man he met at the convenience store. Jessica and Lila start lavishing Winston with attention. Elizabeth realizes that the jacket does not belong to Winston and convinces him to give the jacket and the ticket back to the old man. Funny how she didn't point out that Winston is 16 and is ineligible to win the lottery, much less buy a ticket.
* The premise of the book "One In A Million". The main character {{spoiler|wins the lottery, but before she gets a chance to tell her husband, he announces that he is leaving her for another woman.}}
* In the ''[[A to Z Mysteries|Calendar Mysteries]]'' book ''January Joker'', Nate says he sent postcards to Dink, Josh, and Ruth Rose saying they had won a million dollars in a contest. The three kids seek revenge by creating a [[Scooby-Doo Hoax]].
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* ''[[Are You Being Served?|Are You Being Served]]'', the episode "Goodbye Mr Grainger". Old Mr Grainger resigns after a bad depression, but the depression lifts when he discovers that he won a First Drawing tin the British Lottery. He buys the entire staff farewell gifts, and they discover that he didn't win anything. So they just club the money together that the gifts cost, tell him he just won that much, and manage to intercept his resignation before the Boss reads it.
* The Connor family in ''[[Roseanne]]'' actually ''did'' win the lottery during the final season (at least, until we find out that it, and much that came before it, was [[All Just a Dream]]). Commonly considered to be the show's [[Jump the Shark]] moment.
* ''[[Hey
* In an episode of ''[[Kenan and Kel]]'', Kel wins the the Illinois Lottery and $64 million. The ticket is legit, and all arguing is avoided when Kel generously agrees to split the money down the middle with his best friend Kenan. Just before Kenan and Kel head out to cash the ticket, a customer enters the grocery store where Kenan works and insists to be served. In their haste to fill the woman's grocery bags, the duo accidentally places the lottery ticket in the woman's grocery bag, and [[Hilarity Ensues]] as they try to get it back from her house. [[Status Quo Is God|They fail]].
** An alternate take on this was featured in an episode of ''Sabrina The Teenage Witch'': Sabrina is allowed access to a crystal ball that can answer any question. Her first question was, [[Misapplied Phlebotinum|oddly enough]], "What if Kenan and Kel won the lottery?". We then see a short segment of the two losing the ticket and coming to the conclusion that is was inside a sandwich that Kel just took a bite out of.
** They also had another episode in which they made Chris think he won the lottery as an [[April Fools]] joke.
* Inverted in ''[[Lost]]'': Hurley, having won a very large pot in the lottery, quits his McJob after his boss mistreats him, and his friend and co-worker Johnny - not aware of the lottery win - quits as well in a gesture of solidarity. Hurley's inability to come clean to Johnny about his newly-acquired riches has more to do with the ruin of their friendship than the riches themselves.
* The Ur-example is probably the classic episode of ''[[I Love Lucy]]'' where they win a lottery prize, but Lucy leaves the ticket in the clothes that go to the laundry. After they pay off the traffic tickets and everything else, they have nothing to show for their efforts.. except what happened to Lucy while chasing the clothing on a conveyor belt...
** It wasn't a lottery ticket but rather a $1 bill with a serial number selected for a special cash prize.
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* One of [[Ed]]'s cases involved coworkers who played a practical joke on a co-worker by using a year old lottery TV drawing tape to make him think he had the winning ticket. Unfortunatly before they could tell him it was a joke he told the boss off and quit his job.
* ''[[Meet The Browns]]'' The Colonel borrows a dollar from Brown (who borrowed it from Cora) and purchases a lottery ticket. It's a $100,000 winner. Brown and Cora want half of the money and soon, they are fighting with The Colonel and his fiancee Edna. [[Hilarity Ensues]]. At the end, The Colonel and Edna decide to give Brown and Cora half of the money. {{spoiler|The Colonel's winnings were a mere $500. Edna explains that he had to split the jackpot with 199 other people who also had the winning numbers. Brown and Cora's half came to $250. They didn't take the money.}}
* ''[[The Wayans Bros]]'': Marlon wins a trip to the Caribbean. At first, the family is excited because they want to escape the brutal winter that New York is having. Marlon then finds out that the trip is only for two people. This causes the family to shower him with gifts and (obviously) fake love and attention in the hopes of going with him, while they undermine each other. In the end, Marlon gets tired of the attention and decides that being with his family in the cold is more important and gives the trip to Dee because she didn't treat him differently. Of course, the rest of the family now tries to gain Dee's favor, which she relishes.
* On ''[[Martin]]'', he and Gina win the lottery and buy all sorts of extravagant things before collecting any of the money. But while they did legitimately win, ''so did about 300 other people'' in the largest tie in Michigan Lottery history. Martin and Gina only got a couple thousand out of the whole thing, which wasn't even enough to pay off the things they bought on credit, leaving them a grand in debt.
** The revival of ''[[WKRP in Cincinnati]]'' did a similar episode; Les even announced the multiple winners story on his newscast, but who ever listens to Les?
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* In one episode of "El Chavo", Professor Girafales believed to have won the lottery but Chavo explained that the tickets he bought were good for the day after tomorrow's drawing.
* In an episode of ''[[Friends]]'', the characters buy a large number of tickets for a big lottery - and nearly come to blows over what they'd do ''if'' they won. In the end, it turns out that not only did none of them win, but despite Rachel's belief that "Somebody has to win," there actually was no big winner. {{spoiler|But there was a $10000 win on a ticket they'd lost outside earlier in the episode.}}
* An early episode of [[The Steve Harvey Show]] has Bullethead winning a pair of Chicago Bulls tickets. Sophia, Sara, and Romeo pay a lot of attention to him and treat him nice in the hopes of going to the game with him. In the end, Bullethead chooses to take Steve to the game because Steve didn't treat him differently.
* An episode of [[Due South]] had Ray Vecchio and his sister Frannie arguing over a winning lottery ticket, with each claiming it was his or her money that actually bought the ticket (they had each put in $5). In the end no one got the money because the ticket was ruined by [[It Makes Sense in Context|chickens pecking at it]].
* An episode of [[Tv Colosso]] featured Capachão winning the lottery. Several people tried to win his favor until mathematician [[No Celebrities Were Harmed|Ossaldo de Souza]] announced that each one of the ''several'' winners would get only $1.50.
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== Western Animation ==
* ''[[Aqua Teen Hunger Force]]'', "Super Bowl": Both Carl and Shake are suddenly very nice to Meatwad when he wins two tickets to the Super Bowl in the hopes he'll give the other ticket to one of them. Naturally, neither succeed as Meatwad decides to take Boxy Brown instead. And it turns out Meatwad didn't even go to the game; he got confused and went to a farm instead.
* ''[[Rocko's Modern Life]]'', "With Friends Like These": Rocko accidentally wins two tickets to a big wrestling match, and Heffer and Filburt drive him up the wall trying to curry his favor so he'll take one of them. When the day of the match arrives, the two have handcuffed themselves to Rocko and literally dragged him to the stadium, where the wallaby finally snaps, tears the tickets into tiny pieces, and tosses them into the air declaring "Tickets for everyone!". In a bitter irony, Rocko doesn't even ''like'' wrestling and probably would have given up ''both'' tickets if they'd just asked nicely.
* Done several times on ''[[Stroker and Hoop]]''. Here, though, the money Stroker wins is real each time, he just loses it at the end of the episode due to bad luck. He even remarks in one episode, "I have a disturbing trend of not getting paid for doing my job."
* Becky wins big in a lottery in the ''[[Tale Spin]]'' episode "Your Baloo's in the Mail", but Baloo puts it in jeopardy when he botches cashing it in, as he spends most of the money for the postage on hot dogs and the only service he could afford would arrive long after the deadline.
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[[Category:Money Tropes]]
[[Category:Plots]]
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