Screw the Rules, I Have Money/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: Rich people can buy their way out of trouble by paying people off.

  • Straight: Alice is pulled over by a cop. She gets out of a ticket by dropping a few hundreds his way.
  • Exaggerated: Alice gets out of the ticket by dropping a Briefcase Full of Money at the cop's feet
  • Justified: Alice is in a third-world country with a corrupt police force.
  • Inverted: Screw the Money, I Have Rules
  • Subverted: The cop doesn't take Alice's bribe, and she goes on trial.
  • Double Subverted: ... where she pays off the judge.
  • Parodied: Alice can pay people off with Comically Small Bribes
    • Alternatively, Alice pays more in bribe money than it would have cost for her to just pay the ticket.
  • Deconstructed: Alice's constant bribery to get out of trouble is whittling down her bank account
  • Reconstructed: Alice's constant bribery to get out of trouble is whittling down her bank account but the result of her actions earn her more than enough money to conquer this problem.
  • Zig Zagged: Alice tries to pay off the cop, who refuses her money. She goes to trial, bribes the judge, and it looks like she's going to get off. However, she and the judge are both caught in the bribe, and so she's tried again, fails to bribe the new judge, and goes to jail. She then bribes the jailer into "accidentally" leaving the keys in the lock of her cell.
  • Averted: Alice doesn't have enough money, or else, she wouldn't try it anyway.
  • Enforced: "We can't let the Rich Bitch get in trouble! She's an antagonist. Let's have her pay the guy off."
  • Lampshaded: Cop: "Let me guess, you want to give me a little something to make this go away?"
  • Invoked: Cop: "Give me a little something, and I could make this go away."
  • Defied: Cop: "Nice try, ma'am, but attempting bribery is also a crime."
    • Alice: "Do I look like an ATM? I'll see you in traffic court!"
  • Discussed: "C'mon Alice, just pay the guy off, you have the money."
  • Conversed: "I hate watching those rich bozos just bribe their way out of anything that goes wrong!"

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