Screw the Money, I Have Rules/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: Good people can't be bought.

  • Straight: The hero is offered riches or power by the villain. The hero refuses.
  • Exaggerated: Bob refuses to help Alice in spite of her generous offer because of some trivial rule of Bob's that would be broken.
  • Justified: The hero is Lawful Good, a Knight Templar or holds a personal grudge.
  • Inverted: The hero is asked to do something that will financially hurt him deeply, simply because it's the right thing to do. He refuses.
  • Subverted: The hero gets offered riches and power... and he accepts.
  • Double Subverted: The hero accepts the villain's offer of money so he can get close enough to the villain to finally destroy not only the villain but his whole evil organisation, and donates the money to charity.
  • Parodied: The hero resists all attempts at bribery... and finally falls for a trivial offer by the villain.
  • Deconstructed: The Anti-Hero refuses to take weregild from the man who accidentally killed his brother, instead taking his vengeance in a fit of passion. His community exiles him for being too bloodthirsty.
  • Reconstructed: The hero accepts the money... and uses it to hire a team of thugs to beat the villan senseless.
  • Zig Zagged: To everybody's surprise, the hero accepts the villains offer. In a moment of privacy for the hero, we find out that he's actually trying to bring down the villain's empire from within. But his brush with power makes him lust for more so he actually becomes the mask. Finally, his friends and/or loved ones manage to redeem him through The Power of Friendship or The Power of Love.
  • Averted: When the villain and hero are alone, the hero kills the villain before he even has the chance to speak.
  • Enforced: It must be made clear that the Lovable Rogue is actually a good guy, so give him a chance to betray the heroes for money and refuse it.
  • Lampshaded: When discussing the hero, a villain mentions that he's "one of those principled bastard who can't be bought."
  • Invoked: The hero taunts the villain to offer him riches and power so he can refuse it.
  • Defied: The villain mentions that he already has enough mooks and dragons, and isn't in the market for other hired help.
  • Discussed: A villain boasts that everybody has his price even though they might claim that their rules are more important to them.
  • Conversed: "Looks like this would be the moment where the villain offers the hero money to leave him alone."
  • Played For Laughs: The villain keeps upping his offer, to the point where he starts emptying his pockets to see if there might be something the hero wants.
  • Played For Drama: Bob first falls for the offer of money, then has a My God, What Have I Done? moment and risks his life (or loses it) to do what he should have done in the first place.
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