Worthless Yellow Rocks: Difference between revisions

{{quote|'''[[Con Man|Quark]]:''' Someone's extracted all the '''[[Unobtanium|latinum]]!''' There's nothing here but worthless '''gold!'''<br />

'''Odo:''' And it's all yours.<br />

The characters of a story run across something very valuable. But, due to ignorance, stupidity or possibly not being from Earth, they discard it as worthless junk. The audience groans in disbelief as wealth beyond their dreams is left lying on the floor.

A common [[Karmic Twist Ending]] is for Earthly characters to encounter a world or dimension where something like gold is so plentiful that it has little value, or where something common on earth, like aluminium or copper, takes the place of gold or platinum as the ultimate precious metal. (Ironically, aluminium actually was more valuable than gold once; see the [[Real Life]] section below.) Of course, given what science knows about the formation of elements, it is highly unlikely that there are any [[City of Gold|solid-gold planets]] out there, no matter how [[Rule of Cool|amazing]] it would be. On the other hand, there ''is'' a giant space-diamond. Probably a whole lot of them.

Not to be confused with [[Green Rocks]]. <ref>''usually''</ref> See also [[All That Glitters]] and [[Commonplace Rare]]. [[Kids Prefer Boxes]] is the G-rated version. Sometimes the species in question [[Solid Gold Poop|has a reason to not care about the shiny yellow rocks]]... A counterpart is [[Only Electric Sheep Are Cheap]]; both can exist in the same work. When video game money is useless because there's nothing to buy with it, that's [[Money for Nothing]].

Contrast [[Gold Fever]] (where people go nuts over amounts of gold or some other valuable), [[Gold Makes Everything Shiny]], [[Mundane Object Amazement]].

* Taken in all directions in the manga and anime ''[[One Piece]].'' Hidden in the Skypeian island of Upperyard is an entire ''city'' of gold. The natives of Skypeia, where otherwise people live on clouds and there is no natural soil, find the dirt of the originally blue-sea island itself far more valuable than any gold. The arc's [[Big Bad]], [[A God Am I|God Eneru]], ''does'' have a use for the gold. However, it's of no monetary value to him, either. He instead uses its conductive properties to enhance his own [[Shock and Awe|lightning-based powers]]. Finally, our heroes, the Straw Hat Pirates, ''do'' value the gold for its monetary worth, and make plans to steal what Eneru didn't make off with. The Skypeians actually intend to ''let'' the Straw Hats have all the gold they want in gratitude of the [[Big Bad]]'s defeat, but the Straw Hats (believing they were stealing the gold) misinterpret this as their being caught and run away with only what they were carrying, when they could have gotten far more just by waiting. Notably, this is the only time they've ever actually stolen something (as a crew, anyway, Nami's another story) before or after this point.

* In ''[[Princess Mononoke]]'', there's a scene where a merchant throws a hissy-fit when Ashitaka pays for his bag of rice with a small, yellow rock...At least until a passing monk notices and points out that it's a solid gold nugget, and that it's probably worth three times what she gave him.

** The characters, especially Maria and Nagi, have continually shown disdain for the value of money. Such that it's a huge leap in Nagi's show of maturity when she's willing to give it up.

* Episode 4 of ''Space Symphony Maetel'' has [[Captain Harlock]] land on a planet where gold is worthless yellow rocks, but cotton is very valuable. They trade a pile of underwear for the rights to use their dock and some yellow rocks.

* In the [[Anime of the Game]] for ''[[Dantes Inferno]]'', Lucifer promises Dante's father endless gold and 1,000 years free of torment if he will simply kill his own son. Outraged, Dante asks him where he expects to spend it in Hell. His father attacks him anyway.

* In one episode of ''[[Mon Colle Knights]]'', Prince Eccentro, esteemed, rich snob of a [[MacGuffin|"Monster Item"]] hunter, went digging through piles of gold, jewels and treasure, lamenting that he couldn't find anything valuable. He does eventually find something that makes his doggy digging pals quote excited. {{spoiler|It's a cookbook...}}

* Inverted in ''[[Spice and Wolf]]'', which has iron pyrite (also known as ''fool's gold'') suddenly becoming incredibly valuable in one town.

** ''[[wikipedia:Ru%C3%A9e sur lchr(27)Oklahoma|Ruée sur l'Oklahoma]]'' has similar problems, with the added complication that the area is a desert and water actually is harder to get than oil at the time. Oil only becomes valuable enough ''after'' the land has been sold back to the Indians.

* Toyed with in ''Crystar Crystal Warrior''. As the name implies, the planet Crystallium is up to its armpits in enormous gems and crystals. They're literally as common as rocks, and about as valuable. Buildings are made out of them. Then in one issue, the cast winds up magically transported to the home of [[Doctor Strange]], on Earth, and they're awestruck at the incalculable wealth on display: wooden furniture everywhere and entire shelves full of paper books.

* Trolls in ''[[Elf Quest]]'' set great store by gold and jewels, possibly since it takes so much effort to mine and refine them. In the trolls' patriarchal society the more mineral wealth a guy has, the better his choice of bride. By contrast, the elves of Sorrow's End consider gold jewelry mere decoration, since it has no practical value.

** Similarly, in a later issue, the Wolfriders experience a tribal crisis when they realize that, without trolls to trade with, the only metal they have access to is gold. One of their own has to learn mining and smithing from scratch so they can have "Bright Metal" (presumably steel), the only metal they have any use for. In the same issue, a group of trolls who've lost the knowledge of metalwork value the wolfrider smith's worked sword more than a whole pile of raw gold and gems.

== Fanfiction ==

* In one chapter of Ellen Brand's ''Personality Conflicts'' series, Ignatz Hills, proprietor of the "Old As The Hills" antique store, sells a glass statue, priced at thirty dollars, to a customer on Christmas Eve. The stranger, who wears a trench coat and fedora (and is actually [[Power Rangers in Space|Ecliptor]], buying a present for Astronoma), pays with a "perfect clear emerald, the size of a fingernail, without flaws". When Hill protests that perfect emeralds are incredibly rare (and far more valuable than the statue he just sold), Ecliptor replies that "Where I come from, they're as common as grains of sand."

== Film ==

* ''[[Stepsister From Planet Weird]]''. The girl and her dad arrive on Earth, and being aliens, she believes diamonds to be useless, but dad claims they're quite valuable on Earth.

* From ''[[The Day the Earth Stood Still]]'', Klaatu goes around with a pocketful of cut diamonds which function as small change on his planet; he tries to buy things with them on Earth, attracting the attention of the authorities.

* ''[[Madagascar]]: Escape 2 Africa'': when the waterhole dries up, the animals start digging for water, but all they can find is worthless gold and jewels. Subverted by the end; while the African animals don't care about the pile of treasure (and even if they did, you can't drink gold), the ''penguins'' certainly do.

** Same with Edgar the Cockroach, who, after opening the container he thought contained the galaxy, just dumped the diamonds all over the floor of the truck.

* The numerous Captain Nemo knockoffs in the 60s and 70s, but curiously not the 1954 Disney film whose coattails they were obviously riding.

* In ''[[WALL-E]]'', the titular robot finds a diamond ring in a box, then throws it away and keeps the box.

** Further spoofed in an Oscar montage where he finds an Oscar statue and a video tape; he tosses the gold statue and watches the tape.

* In the opening sequence to ''Operation Condor'', [[Jackie Chan]] sneaks into a small cave where diamonds line the walls and litter the floor and begins stuffing them in his bags. When found by a couple of the local tribesmen, they just shrug and wave him on, but when he tries to refill his canteen from the nearby stream...

* ''[[Fantastic Mr. Fox]]'', the titular fox and his wife have a conversation next to a mineral deposit that appears to be diamonds (or some other equally shiny gemstones). The foxes ignore this because, well, they're animals.

** Justified in that the money actually ''is'' worthless, since the world now consists mostly of zombies, so there's not much to buy or anyone to buy it from.

* In ''[[The Dark Knight]]'', Alfred uses an example of this to illustrate to Bruce Wayne why The Joker won't back down. Specifically, Alfred tells a story about his time in an [[Badass Grandpa|unspecified army]], when they found a bandit who had been stealing precious stones. Alfred says they never found anyone who traded with the bandit, and later finds that the bandit had been throwing the stones away, leaving it to hands of local children to play with.

* Played with in the original ''[[Dawn of the Dead]]''. When Roger and Peter find a bank in the mall, they stare at a cashbox full of mixed bills, then stare and smile at another cashbox full of wrapped $100 bills. Roger says, "You never know..." before they both fill their pockets with cash. {{spoiler|When the biker gang breaks into the mall, they loot the bank as well.}}

* [[Averted Trope|Averted]] ''hard'' in ''[[Battlefield Earth]]'', where gold is even rarer in the universe than it is on Earth.

* Water Elementals in J. Scott Savage's [[Far World]] series place value on an object because of its craftsmanship. An old boot holds equal value to an expensive necklace (or at least, they are judged against each other based on craftsmanship, and not the obvious value), where a lump of gold is just a shiny rock. While this much is understandable, they go on to confound the other characters as well as the reader when they show that they would rather throw a 'valuable' item back into the water than give it to someone without compensation, regardless of whether or not they were ever going to keep the objects.

* The "valuable treasures as common as dirt" variation is [[Older Than Radio]] at least; at one point in [[Voltaire]]'s ''[[Candide]]'', the title character ends up in El Dorado, the mythical "land of gold". Rubies, emeralds and all other precious gems are to him as pebbles and sand.

* In the ''[[Discworld]]'' novels, in the Agatean Empire gold coins are used for small change, and gold is used for leading roofs and making pipes. ''Real'' money is made of paper, much to Rincewind's shock since, even if gold's as common as lead, ''paper'' can't be that valuable. One of the diaries (non-[[Canon]], technically) mentions that in fact they may be backed by ''lead''.

* In [[Diana Wynne Jones]]'s ''[[Hexwood]]'', the offworlders are deliberately keeping Earth ignorant and backward so they can buy Earth flint very cheaply. They use it to make portals and no other mineral will do, and if the people of Earth found out how valuable it was they would raise the price dramatically.

* There is a story of a man finding an island where diamonds and other precious jewels were very common, but the food was very bland. He happened to have some onions with him, which he traded (as well as teaching planting and growing techniques) for a small fortune in diamonds. Hearing of this success, another man found the island, and traded garlic for the most valuable thing the natives had. He returned home, opened the chest, and found it full of onions.

*** It is recorded, and as certain as anything else we know about Muhammad, that onions were his favorite food.

*** In much of the Middle East, water and arable land are both precious commodities. Vegetables might really be worth more than gold in some places.

*** The only reason the "brains" of robots in Asimov's story are "positronic" is because when he wrote the first story featuring such artificial intelligence, positrons had just been discovered several years prior, and he thought [[Rule of Cool|"positronic" sounded cooler]].

*** In [[Foundation]], a Terminus trader is surprised that some planet wants gold as ransom for a captured person - for him it is "old fashioned", although he has no trouble understanding the possible uses of this fact (he can synthesize significant amounts of it). Later, he is trying to convince a nobleman of that world to buy technology. He sells him a device to transform iron into gold as part of a blackmail scheme of the supposedly pious nobleman. The man buys all of the trader's goods at a fair price in order to keep video footage of him drooling over gold from being broadcast to the citizens. He later tells a friend how laughable it was because it's just not cost-effective to transmute metals. The Galactic Empire is shown to use ''iridium'' the way we use silver.

** [[Douglas Adams]] took the idea even further; all forms of currency are ultimately proven to be either pointless or useless.

*** To sidetrack shortly, not every country uses monochromatic currency.

** Tsuranuanni is a thinly disguised Japan, which in [[Real Life]] has little iron or other metals. One of the reasons why European armor was metal and Japanese was not, was that Europe had iron.

* One of the very early books of the [[Star Wars Expanded Universe]], ''[http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Han_Solo_and_the_Lost_Legacy Han Solo and the Lost Legacy]'', involved him and his friends-of-the-book questing after the treasure of a long-perished galactic overlord, only to find that it's a cache of once cutting edge military materiel, immensely valuable at the time, but basically worthless to them, since [[Technology Marches On]].

* In Nick Hornby's ''[[High Fidelity]]'', Rob is contacted by a woman who wants to sell an entire collection of rare and valuable records for a pittance. [[Justified Trope]] in that the woman's husband just left her for his much-younger secretary, and asked his wife to sell the collection to finance his new life with the secretary. She's deliberately trying to short the husband. {{spoiler|Rob can't go through with it in the end.}} See also the [[Real Life]] example below.

** This sequence was done for the movie as well; it didn't make the theatrical version, but is in the deleted scenes on the home releases.

* In [[The Sword of Truth]], the Mud People have gold treasuries (and possibly mines) on their territory, but consider it worthless because it's too soft for spears.

* Thomas More's Utopia points out the bad logic of assigning "value" to things just because they're pretty and rare. In Utopia, they have the stuff and use it to trade to the outside world, but within Utopia, it's communally owned and growing attached to it is discouraged. Gold is used for the shackles of slaves and for things like chamber pots, so that it's associated with the shameful and dirty. Precious stones are given to small children to wear and play with, with the understanding that any self-respecting Utopian will quickly grow out of this infantile attachment to the shiny if they want to be taken seriously -- so if any foreigners ever arrive all pimped out in their most ostentatious jewelry in an attempt to impress the locals, they'll look like overgrown babies.

* In ''[[The Diamond Age]]'', the most valuable items are [[Only Electric Sheep Are Cheap|things that are handmade]], due to [[Matter Replicator|ready access to nanotechnology]]. Diamond (and anything else that's made of carbon) is basically worthless.

* In the [[Doctor Who Expanded Universe]] novel ''Night of the Humans'', Amy is in the far-distant future, and when she learns she's got involved in a treasure hunt she says "Like a chest of gold or something?" Her companions are amused; it's like she's never heard of [[Doctor Who/Recap/S12 E5 Revenge of the Cybermen|Voga]].

* In the picture book ''The Littlest Angel'', all the angels in Heaven are asked to bring gifts for the birth of Jesus Christ, the best of which will become the Star of Bethlehem. The titular angel, a small boy, brings a box of his earthly possessions from when he was human: a broken dog collar and some shiny pebbles. [[Crowning Moment of Heartwarming|Because of its sentimental value, the littlest angel's box of trash is chosen over the more elaborate and costly gifts of the other angels.]]

* [[Sergey Lukyanenko]]'s ''[[Seekers of the Sky]]'' duology takes place [[In a World]] where iron is extremely rare, resulting in a [[Steampunk]] level of technology in the 21st century. Gold is mentioned several times but is usually brushed off as only useful for decorations. Once, the main character notices a [[The Empire|State]] ship-of-the-line and realizes its wooden hull is gold-plated. He muses that they could've afforded to iron-plate it, but it would just rust. Apparently, steel was never invented in that world, and no one ever mentions aluminum, despite its potential for use in aircraft.

** See [[Real Life]]: without the Bayer process, aluminum is exceedingly expensive to refine in a pure form.

* Played with in ''[[The Girl Who Owned a City]]''. The local children ''do'' steal money when they raid abandoned supermarkets and buildings for food, but Lisa notes that money isn't any good anymore, since "there's nowhere to spend it".

{{quote| '''1 Kings 10:21''' : All King Solomon’s goblets were gold, and all the household articles in the Palace of the Forest of Lebanon were pure gold. Nothing was made of silver, because silver was considered of little value in Solomon's days.}}

** This is either a case of silver being [[Worthless Yellow Rocks]] (or worthless white rocks, in this case), or a [[Badass Boast]] about the level of Solomon's wealth.

* In ''[[Harry Potter]] And The Goblet Of Fire'', the Ireland Quiddich team mascots are leprechauns that make their entrance throwing gold coins on the audience. However, this trope is [[Inverted Trope|inverted]] when it becomes apparent that the leprechauns had thrown leprechaun gold - which vanishes after a few days. {{spoiler|This puts Ron in an angsty mood since paid Harry back for buying him some binoculars with the gold instead of 'real' money, and is too poor to actually pay him back, and it angers Fred and George when a rather large bet they won was paid in said gold.}}

** Also invoked with portkeys. Almost anything can be made into a portkey, so if someone is making a portkey to leave somewhere outdoors so that someone else can use it later, they often make it out of something seemingly worthless (like an old newspaper or an abandoned shoe or something) so that [[Muggles]] who happen to come along in the mean time won't be tempted to touch it.

* In ''[[Humanx Commonwealth|The End Of The Matter]]'', the incomprehensible alien Abalamahalamatandra sits around idly, playing with its toes and setting stones into circles, while the other characters talk. Naturally, nobody notices that it's using very large gemstones to do so, or that it stumbles in a hole where the priceless archeological treasures two of the speakers had been seeking for months are concealed.

* ''[[The Postman]]'' is set [[After the End]]. The protagonist finds a heavy box in an abandoned house and hopes that it's filled with canned food, ammunition and/or medical supplies and not useless gold hoarded by a short-sighted pre-Apocalypse citizen.

* Diamonds, rubies, sapphire, and emeralds are all popular building materials in the ''[[Robert Reed|Great Ship]]'' universe. Glass has been replaced by diamond panels, and the other precious gems are used essentially like wallpaper.

* Played with in Phyllis Eisenstein's "The Crystal Tower". The hero, Cray Ormoru, finds himself in a place where gemstones are so common as to be worthless. But when he tries to pay for a drink with a silver coin from his homeland, the proprietress is first suspicious, then unsure what to do when offered something so rare and valuable as silver. She decides to use the coin as jewelry.

** Though it's worth noting the currency of frontier planets is platinum, while more advanced and civilized alliance planets uses "credits", consisting of bills.

*** In the Serenity tabletop RPG, it's established that while gold isn't worthless, it's not worth a whole lot either. Platinum is the currency of real business; gold and silver are pocket change.

* The Diffys from ''[[Phil of the Future]]'' bought their house with a bag of diamonds produced as a waste product of the magnetic bottle containment system on their Time RV. They were going to throw them out. Keeping with both sides of this trope, aluminium foil is apparently extremely valuable in the future.

* In ''[[Star Trek]]'', gold-pressed latinum is a universal currency outside [[The Federation]], which is a [[Mary Suetopia|cashless society]] (though unofficially it's the universal currency ''inside'' the Federation). However, the gold itself is worthless -- the [[Unobtainium|latinum]] sandwiched within the gold is the source of its value. Ordinary latinum cannot be [[Matter Replicator|replicated]], and because it's liquid at room temperature, it's mixed with the gold to make convenient (and shiny) units of currency. An episode of ''Deep Space 9'' featured Quark falling victim to a con game where he ended up in possession of a large amount of valueless, hollowed out bars of 24k gold. Of course, being the [[Magnificent Bastard|crafty and greedy sonuvabitch]] that he is, the Ferengi promptly subverts this by remembering that ''other'', more primitive races in the galaxy would consider the gold valuable, and tries to convince the guy who got him caught up in the scheme in the first place to help him barter with said races.

** The detail that [[Cell Phone|combadges]] use actual gold became useful in "Time's Arrow" when Data went to 19th-century Earth; he was able to use it to make a bet in a game of poker and acquire money. [[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard|Which frankly isn't fair, as Data is an emotionless android that can count all the cards and has the ultimate poker face]], but as the gamblers were looking to basically take others' money, it works out....

** In "Elaan of Troyius", the Federation has no idea why the Klingons are so interested in a certain planet inhabited by a low-tech race. When they happen to look at a necklace worn by one of the natives, they discover the "common stones" it is made of happen to be dilithium crystals, which are the source of starship power and highly valuable to space-traveling races.

** In "Catspaw", aliens try to tempt Kirk with a pile of precious jewels. He tells them that he could manufacture a thousand of them on ''Enterprise''.

*** Oddly, in "Arena", [[Sufficiently Advanced Alien|Sufficiently Advanced Aliens]] put Kirk and the captain of an alien ship unarmed on a planet, where they must fight it out. When he comes across a deposit of diamonds, he notes: "a fortune in precious stones, and I'd give it all up for a hand phaser".

** In another episode, Dick decides to buy a diamond ring, but is horrified when he finds out how expensive diamonds are. His exclamation sums it up: "Where I come from we use the big ones as door stoppers!"

* In ''[[The Twilight Zone]]'' TOS episode "The Rip Van Winkle Caper", thieves steal a truckload of gold and put themselves in [[Human Popsicle|suspended animation]] for a hundred years in a desert cave to escape the law. When they awake, they turn on each other and all but one die. The surviving thief tries to cross the desert and dies in front of two motorists, promising gold in exchange for help with his last breath. The couple wonder why he considered gold to be so valuable, as it had been manufactured cheaply for years.

*** Another TOS ''[[Twilight Zone]]'' example: In "Two", the male soldier raids a cash register, realizes that the money is useless because it is [[After the End]], and tosses the coins into the street.

* An episode of ''[[Wonder Woman]]'' dealt with this concept: how do you establish a galactic currency when wildly-varying worlds use gold or steel or ''wood''. The rather [[Squick|squicky]] solution that some unethical individuals come up with is using [[Soul Jar|minds sucked out of their original bodies]].

** In Hurley's defense, back home he was trying to get rid of the {{spoiler|millions he already had because he believed it was cursed}}.

** And Sun's financial situation didn't turn out too shabby, either.

** It worked out pretty well for Miles, assuming he doesn't die, because he found out about the diamonds, dug up the graves, and took them.

* The History Channel TV Show ''Modern Marvels'' had an episode on recycling where the plant manager of a metals recovery firm was displaying to the audience a box containing gray chunks and dust which looked like, well, worthless dirt and rocks, and admitted that's what most people thought it was. You'd be surprised to discover that the box contained ''two and one-half million U.S. dollars'' worth of recycled platinum.

* Played with in the reimagined ''[[Battlestar Galactica Reimagined|Battlestar Galactica]]''. Tom Zarek makes a speech about how money has become useless because of the [[Endofthe World As We Know It]] and attacks people still clinging to such things, including Roslin. Later in the same episode, Starbuck and Apollo arrest a would-be assassin who has a wallet full of banknotes. During interrogation, they rip them one by one while referring to Zarek's earlier speech (the guy claimed he had a lot of money so he needed a gun, but the guy was pro-Zarek and was believed to be in his service, which is why they tore into him like that). Money doesn't completely lose its value in the fleet as the show goes on, but barter is important.

* Gold is as common as dirt on the planet Voga in ''[[Doctor Who]]''. Unfortunately, this makes the Vogans a target for both greedy human prospectors and Cybermen who hope to eliminate a source of weapons against them (gold dust is to Cybermen as silver is to werewolves).

** In "Planet of the Dead", the Doctor has one of the people he's stranded with retrieve a giant yellow crystal suspended in some mundane looking clamps. He then discards the crystal, because the anti-gravity clamps are what he needed.

* Late in ''[[Popful Mail]]'', air-headed elf boy Slick is astonished when Mail mentions to him that she needs to find a set of magical orbs to prevent the Overlord from reviving. They're actually powerful artifacts, but Slick thinks of treasure in terms of gold coins and precious jewels, and thus had this to say to her:

{{quote| "''ORBS?'' What good are dumb old ''orbs''? If I saw one, I'd probably just pass by."}}

*** It wasn't JUST the water that made caps valuable. It was also the fact that bottle caps were incapable of being replicated, thus no forgery, and their mineral composition gave them a modicum of worth. Same case with bottle caps in the Capital Wasteland.

{{quote| Everyone in the game still prefers to deal with caps instead of other currency - only casino cashiers are willing to pay you in NCR dollars or Legion coins.<br />

That said, every currency can be traded for caps or vice versa at their respective exchange rate from anyone willing to barter with you, regardless of your barter skill.<br />

** Silver, on the other hand, can be forged deliberately into weapons-- but again, is only really good for warhammers, floor spikes, and other weapons that base damage on weight rather than an edge.

** For non-hammer weapons and armor, [[Boring Yet Practical|steel and bronze]] are the best... {{spoiler|unless you can get [[Unobtanium|adamantine]], but then you risk opening up a whole other can of worms...}}

* At one point in [[The Longest Journey]], protagonist April Ryan can attempt to buy something in an Arcadian marketplace using her gold ring, only to be informed by the merchant that gold is worthless there - the precious metal of choice in Arcadia is iron.

== Web Comics ==

** [http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff1500/fc01404.htm Later on] Florence meets a group of robot student tailors that use gold cloth, silver thread, and lots of gems. Organic cloth is rather expensive after all.

** [http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff1300/fv01252.htm This one] explains the trope perfectly (as well as the basis of economic trade in every time period or world ever).

** [[Justified Trope|It makes sense]], though. See real-world examples below.

* Mentioned in ''[[8-Bit Theater (Webcomic)|Eight Bit Theater]]''. Even with the threat of Chaos ending the world, Thief is still determined to hoard as much cash as possible. Red Mage and Black Mage point out that when Chaos does rampage, money wouldn't be worth the act of picking it up, as day to day survival will be the only thing anyone cares about. A farmer would be rich because he could make his own food. Thief is naturally horrified.

{{quote| '''Thief:''' Wealth that belongs to those who can ''make'' it? Great Elf in the sky... We must stop this horrible future no matter the cost! So long as cost ''remains'' on the backs of the poor.}}

** {{color|#e00707|TG: alright well its not like i even have a problem parting with this useless bullshit money}}

** This may not be entirely true-- both Aradia and Terezi state, and John later confirms that the Boonbucks are used to purchase 'fraymotifs' which are likely styles of combat. The trolls have apparently all bought the best ones they could, and Dave apparently bought a few offscreen. {{spoiler|It's just that Dave used his time-travel abilities to manipulate the game economy}}.

** Jane has an item that converts whatever she wants into grist, at the price of a few boonbucks. However, since she has no idea what grist is supposed to be used for, she considers the item completely useless. Similarly, she already has a fortune in boondollars and a fetch modus which lists the alchemy components of items, but she has no idea that they'll have something of a use in the near future.

== Western Animation ==

* ''[[Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog]]'' (the funny cartoon) did this once when Sonic dressed up as a bumpkin and tricked Robotnik and his goons into trading all their stolen loot for a bag of "worthless yellow rocks". Turns out later that they ''were'' worthless: just chili beans painted gold. ''Stale'' chili beans, at that.

* ''[[Futurama]]'': The Wong family long ago bought land off the native Martians (who didn't have a concept of ownership) for a single bead. Generations later, the Martians, thinking they'd been scammed, exact revenge on the Wongs, but it turns out that the bead was actually a gigantic, inconceivably expensive diamond. Of course, the modern Martians actually ''do'' have a concept of ownership...

** Yet, in a different episode, Bender is stealing a $10,000 cigar. He uses an enormous (easily the size of a basketball) diamond to cut the glass surrounding it, and then promptly throws it away. This raises the question of whether diamonds are valuable or not in ''[[Futurama]]''...

* On ''[[Rugrats]]'', the babies trekked through a sandbox to find nickels, discarding a diamond ring, a million-dollar bill and other treasures as they went. Of course, they ''are'' babies.

* One episode of ''Seabert the Seal'' had a con-artist exploiting a group of jungle-dwelling natives by providing agricultural services in return for sacks of "colored glass". Needless to say, the glass was diamonds which the natives had no use for.

** In one episode, Homer goes dumpster-diving in hopes of finding free peanuts, and is disappointed when he only finds a twenty-dollar bill. [[Organ Autonomy|His brain]] has to remind him "Money can be exchanged for goods and services".

** In another episode, Martin's mother almost sells the original handwritten script of ''Star Wars'' ([[Alternate Ending]]: Chewbacca is Luke's father!) to the Comic Book Guy for 5$.

**** Fridge logic strikes when you realise that the whisky in that bottle, being bought by her grandmother and kept for decades, would have likely been extremely valuable.

** In "The Burns and the Bees", Prof. Frink uses a perfume to attract bees. Moments after using it, a incredibly sexy woman walks up to him begging him to marry her and she will support him for life. Frink only states that she isn't a bee, deems the perfume useless and throws it away.

** In another episode. where Mr. Krabs is trying to get a penny from Spongebob. It's revealed he was only picking up piece of chewed up gum for his collection. Spongebob tosses it when he realizes it wasn't a piece of chewed gum after all. Just a $500 bill.

** Cheetara did keep some of it because it was pretty though. The rest got dumped.

* In a few ''[[Looney Tunes]]'' shorts, [[Bugs Bunny/Characters|Bugs Bunny]] or some other character will be in trouble because he has a bunch of "funny yellow rocks" on his person and villains like Yosemite Sam or Blacque Jacque Shellacque find out.

{{quote| '''Julien''': Paper Trash....Metal Trash....}}

* On ''[[Jimmy Two-Shoes]]'', Beezy bribes Heloise with a box filled with gold. She happily accepts it...so she can have [[Kids Prefer Boxes|the box it comes in]].

** Which kind of raises some questions since he's shown spazing over various pieces of jewelry and having lived long enough on the planet to know what platinum is.

** Although it does make sense that one wouldn't assign much monetary value to a thing dragons like to eat...

*** Actually, it ''would'' make sense that they would assign value to food. Salt used to be used as a standard of currency, which is where we get the expression "Not worth its weight in salt." Plus, as a food item, it could command value, similar to how Applejack sells her apples for bits. Overabundence of supply and limited demand for gemstones is most likely the reason why gems aren't used as currency.