Nouveau Riche/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A person who recently became wealthy and flaunts their newfound status in very rude, tacky fashion.

  • Straight: Newton's family won the lottery, and he runs around rubbing his wealth in everyone's faces, buying lots of needlessly expensive trinkets and claiming "Screw the Rules, I Have Money"
  • Exaggerated: A rich community is invaded by snobbish, smug, spoiled and petty newcomers who recently came into unexpected fortunes. To a man, all of them are rude, crude and disgustingly boorish, believing that the rules no longer apply to them now that they've got more money than they know what to do with.
  • Justified: Newton's family is used to living within a certain budget, so when they get much more, they compensate with garish spending.
  • Inverted: Newton's family is very concerned with keeping up appearances and spends a great deal of their money to that effect. When they win the lottery, they actually become more humble with their spending.
    • Newton's family behave exactly as they did and continue talking in the jargon of shippers or financiers or whatever they did to earn their money. In doing so they become so powerful that the old rich toady to them.
  • Subverted: Newton's family just came into a huge fortune, but they do not flaunt their wealth and have more refined tastes than their neighbours...
  • Double Subverted: ...when their neighbours are watching, that is; when their backs are turned, Newton's family makes a number of tasteless purchases and loudly boasts about their riches to all their old, poorer friends.
  • Averted: Even though Newton's family won the lottery, they do not flaunt their wealth.
  • Parodied: Newton wins $50 on a lottery ticket and smugly boasts about it.
  • Deconstructed: Newton postures as an attempt to hide his insecurity about the major upheavals of the life he once knew, and because his family always taught him that rich folks were always sharp-tongued and snobbish.
    • Newton is painfully aware that his family isn't accepted by the 'old money' community, despite their efforts to fit in and belong. His tacky, attention-grabbing behavior is his way of lashing out at them; in essence, he's saying "Hey, you don't like me anyway, but screw you! I'm not going anywhere!"
  • Reconstructed: ???
  • Zig Zagged: ???
  • Enforced: ???
  • Lampshaded: ???
  • Invoked: ???
  • Exploited: Newton is befriended by the Alpha Bitch, who knows a perfect mark when she sees one.
  • Defied: ???
  • Discussed: ???
  • Conversed: ???
  • Played For Laughs: Newton is a Fish Out of Water Upper Class Twit who throws around rich-sounding words and phrases without comprehending what they mean.
  • Played For Drama: Violet, a sweet and introverted girl from a rich family, finds herself the target of a group of Nouveau Riche bullies who just arrived at her school.

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