Tasty Gold: Difference between revisions

When a character is given suspicious payment, they will often bite into it to check if it's genuine.

 

 

This tradition has mostly vanished in real life, due to most people not actually dealing with gold, but it is still seen occasionally in fiction. It's also quite common to see characters using this method to check ''other things'' to see if they're genuine. This method does work with pearls, wherein the goal is to feel the rough mother of pearl against the enamel of your teeth, as opposed to the smoother feel of fake pearls. If this is done with silver coins, though, it's a clear sign that somebody [[Did Not Do the Research]]; silver is quite hard, so the only sure way to check if there's some other metal beneath the surface is to drill a hole in it. Back when it was still profitable to counterfeit nickels or other low-value coins, the counterfeits were sometimes made out of wood and painted;<ref>Hence the old adage, "Don't take any wooden nickels!"</ref> this could be easily distinguished by biting one.

{{examples}}

== Anime and Manga ==

* A common method of testing coins in the ''[[Berserk]]'' universe. Guts does this with a coin of his pay after killing Bazuso.

* Buu does this to a coin in ''[[Dragon Ball]]'', but it's not to see if it's gold, but to see if it's candy.

 

== Film ==

* ''[[Hellboy II]]: The Golden Army'' has a goblin blacksmith who bites on a piece of metal. It's not gold, but he bites it anyway.

* In ''[[Bloodsport]]'', one of the Kumite staff in charge of wiping blood off the fighting platform notices a gold tooth lying there after one of the fights. He quickly grabs it, bites it and, after being satisfied that it's gold, pockets it with a big smile.

 

== Literature ==

* Used in ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]'' quite regularly. In one book, a young girl does this because she's seen other people do it, but confesses that she doesn't know how gold is 'supposed to taste'.

** And in another, a character is given a gold coin in a shady back alley as payment for a theft, bites into it, and promptly collapses onto the cobblestones, as the coin was apparently poisoned.

* The protagonist of children's novel ''The Chocolate Touch'' has seen people do this, so he bites his best friend's new coin. Unfortunately, [[Blessed with Suck|anything he touches with his mouth turns to chocolate]], so his friend now has a worthless chocolate coin.

* In ''Assassins of [[Gor]]'' Tarl offers a blind chessplayer a doubleweight gold coin if he won the game. The chessplayer felt, bit, and tasted the gold to make sure it was real.

 

* Subverted in ''[[Firefly]]''—Mal is trying to offload some stolen goods (which look like a stack of gold bricks). The buyer bites into it and chews - it's revealed that the bricks were actually [[Food Pills|highly condensed food]] in some sort of foil wrapping, invaluable on a newly [[terraform]]ed frontier world.

* An episode of ''[[CSI: Miami]]'' featured a child kidnapper who asked for a ransom of jewelry. When the father of the kidnapped child arrives with the ransom the kidnapper bites an emerald to test if it's real. Turns out it's not, and the kidnapper promptly adds murderer to his résumé.

{{quote|'''Henchman''': I thought he was squirrelly, but don't they usually go for acorns?

'''Gemologist''': It's a test! Real pearls have tiny surface crystals that grate at the teeth. This one is as smooth as a baby's...[[Last-Second Word Swap|knee]]. }}

 

== Tabletop Games ==

* Parodied in ''[[Exalted]]'', where the primary currency in heaven is ambrosia, a golden substance that tastes like the most wonderful food ever, wrapped in a thin golden foil. Yes, Heaven pays people in chocolate coins. New employees are often warned not to eat their operational budget.

** It's also functional currency. In Heaven, one of those coins can be turned into anything from a feast finer than any mortal has ever seen, to the finest clothing imaginable, or weapons of the finest craftmanship...or pretty much anything, really.

 

* In some productions of ''[[Cats]]'', Skimbleshanks mimes biting a coin received from another cat during his big number.

* A common [[Stage Magic|micro-magic illusion]] based on this trope involves the magician biting a coin and taking a chunk out of it. The magician usually leaves behind tooth marks as well. The illusion can involve a spectator's coin, which is returned unharmed.

 

== Video Games ==

* In ''[[Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney]]: Trials and Tribulations'', one of the characters bites Phoenix's attorney badge to see if it is real or not. She then admits that she has no idea whether a real badge would have a bite mark or not.

* In the [[Infocom]] game ''Sorcerer'', you acquire a collection of Zorkmids. If you choose to BITE ZORKMID, the game replies "Yep, it's real."

* A parody of this trope in [https://web.archive.org/web/20080715171553/http://www.secretlivesofmobs.com/index.php?strip_id=29 this] Secret Lives of Mobs strip.

* In [[No Rest for The Wicked (webcomic)|No Rest for The Wicked]], Perrault bites a ring while checking out a roomful of gold and silver to [http://www.forthewicked.net/archive/02-28.html confirm it's enchanted].

 

== Western Animation ==

* [[Trope Namer|The name comes from]] a [[Lampshade Hanging]] in ''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender]]'' "[[Avatar: The Last Airbender/Recap/Book 1/18 The Water Bending Master|The Waterbending Master]]", where, after receiving payment for a job, a pirate bites into one of the gold coins and announces "That's some tasty gold!"

* [[Underdog (animation)|Underdog]]'s [[Secret Identity]], ShoeShine Boy, often bit his coins.

* ''[[Wakfu]]'' had Ruel feed chocolate coin to a consuming genie that got stronger the more it ate things, particularly tasty gold. {{spoiler|The genie didn't bite before swallowing, and turned into a puny chocolate genie.}}

* The Protagonists of ''[[Ben 10: Alien Force|Ben 10 Alien Force]]'' once encountered a race of aliens that eat popcorn and poop out gold, Kevin performs this test on one of the droppings.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Currency Tropes]]

[[Category:Money Tropes]]

[[Category:The Gilded Index]]