Richie Rich (comics)

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
For some reason, sibling series Proletariat Pete didn't do so hot. Even in Soviet Russia!

Richie Rich, often billed as "The Poor Little Rich Boy" and frequently styled as "Ri¢hie Ri¢h", debuted in 1953 as a backup character in the Little Dot comic book. He soon became Harvey Comics' flagship character, appearing in as many as 32 Harvey titles monthly and often crossing over with Casper the Friendly Ghost (refuting later speculation on The Simpsons that Casper was actually Richie's ghost). His stories usually centered around his attempts to be an ordinary boy having fun with friends despite being screamingly rich and not always knowing how to act when outside of his social stratum.

Adaptations of the comic naturally ensued: two Animated Series (a 1980 production by Hanna-Barbera and a 1996 syndicated show), a 1994 feature film which was followed by the Direct to Video Sequel Richie Rich's Christmas Wish (1998), and a live-action sitcom which has been running on Netflix since 2015.

More information here.


Tropes used in Richie Rich (comics) include:
  • Agent Scully: Richie tends to dismiss his numerous encounters with Casper as his own overactive imagination.
  • Alliterative Name: Richie Rich, Gloria Glad. Freckles Friendly. Possibly Jackie Jokers.
  • Arbitrarily-Large Bank Account: Both the Rich family and Rich Enterprises have an endless supply of money.
  • Battle Butler: Cadbury. He knew enough fighting skill at times to help Richie in the comics (The Other Wiki notes, "When need demands, however, he becomes a tough, gun-toting man of action").
    • Cultured Badass: He also had a lot of other skills which came in handy. The Harvey equivalent of Alfred Pennyworth. One of Richie's uncles, the athletic Olympus Van Sporting, thinks glumly, "With that butler around, who needs me?" To give one example, one of Cadbury's skills involved mountain climbing...without gear, in his butler uniform.
  • Betty and Veronica: Subverted. Gloria's the sweet, kind, middle-class Betty. Mayda Munny's the vain, selfish, foul-tempered, wealthy Veronica. But Richie only has eyes for Gloria. Awww.
  • Canine Companion: Dollar, Richie's "dollarmatian", an odd dog with "$" signs on his pelt. Tends to be a Lovable Coward.
  • Crazy Prepared: Richie seems to have a gadget or gizmo up his sleeve to deal with any contingency, more prevalent in the cartoon adaptation. (Most of them invented by Dr. Keenbean.) In one cartoon, when he and Reggie are held hostage by two thugs who searched and disarmed him, he improvises and uses Reggie's practical joke equipment to subdue them.
  • Ditzy Genius: Professor Keenbean alternates between this and Absent-Minded Professor.
  • FemBot: Irona, Richie's robot maid.
  • Fiction 500: The Rich family.
  • Fiery Redhead: Gloria Glad
  • Gem-Encrusted: Richie's mother, in the comic book. She doesn't load herself down with too many jewels, but she collects them -- fully cut, faceted and polished emeralds, diamonds, rubies, aquamarines the size of baseballs -- and displays them on her dresser like Fabergé eggs.
  • Gentleman Adventurer: Richie, often accompanied by his father, Richard; his butler, Cadbury, or both. Also, Cadbury's former employer Sir Ruddy Blighter, in flashback stories.
  • Gold Makes Everything Shiny
  • Grade School CEO: Richie, perhaps.
  • Hair of Gold: Richie
  • Happily Married: Mr. and Mrs. Rich
  • Honest Corporate Executive: Mr. Rich.
  • The Jeeves: Cadbury, Richie's butler.
  • Intergenerational Friendship: Richie with Cadbury and Keenbean.
  • Lucky Charms Title: "Ri¢hie Ri¢h"
  • Money Fetish: His Aunt Noovo just loves to swim in her wealth, though she mostly does this for show as she is a very charitable person.
  • Nice to the Waiter: Richie's relationship with Cadbury.
  • Not with Them for the Money: Gloria Glad is notorious for always turning down the luxurious gifts Richie offers her. In fact, she has blown her temper more than once at Richie's more outrageous stunts with his wealth to attempt to impress and he seems unable to remember how much they annoy her. In one story, when she suddenly starts accepting his gift greedily, it's sets off alarm bells with Richie who investigates and learns he is dealing with an impostor who has kidnapped the real Gloria in order to con him out of money.
    • In one story, Mayda Munny secretly gives her rival Gloria Glad gifts that supposedly came from Richie Rich, starting off with an expensive doll, to which she says it's a perfect gift -- not really knowing that all those gifts Gloria received were going to be used for charity.
  • Official Couple: Richie and Gloria.
  • One of the Boys
  • Or Was It a Dream? Any Crossover with Casper the Friendly Ghost ends this way from Richie's point of view.
  • Panty Shot: This is Harvey Comics, it tends to happen to Gloria a lot.
  • Porky Pig Pronunciation: Richie has trouble pronouncing "ventriloquist".
  • Punny Name: Mayda Munny.
  • Repetitive Name
  • Revival: The Movie sorts of counts, but the new Richie Rich comic definitely counts, and Needs More Love.
  • Road Sign Reversal
  • Robot Maid: Irona
  • Screw the Money, I Have Rules: The Rich family are the wealthiest people on the planet, yet they also seem to have the greatest moral compass when it comes to being overall decent.
  • Speech-Impaired Animal: Dollar.
  • Spoiled Brat: Richie's cousin Reggie.
  • Spoiled Sweet: Richie is incredibly kind and generous.
  • Supreme Chef: Chef Pierre, the Rich family's cook, also a French Chef.
  • Techno Wizard: Professor Keenbean
  • Tomboy
  • Uncle Pennybags: Richie and his parents.
  • Undying Loyalty: Try to bribe Cadbury and you're entering Bullying a Dragon territory. Emphasized in one story where a foreign government did it to test him because they wanted to offer him a position as Prime Minister; he turned down the offer because he felt the test only showed he was needed in his current job.
  • Uptown Girl: Richie and Gloria invert the genders; he has more money than the mint, Gloria is just a middle-class kid.
  • The White Prince: Richie