Zillion-Dollar Bill: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

A [[MacGuffin]] of great monetary value (though normally [[Undisclosed Funds|never specifically stated]]), so great that it could make anyone or any community rich and prosperous, and will never go hungry again. Naturally, it's almost always destroyed, lost, or otherwise gotten rid of at the end of the plot.

 

Compare [[Fiction 500]]. In the future, such a bill would be worth nothing thanks to [[Ridiculous Future Inflation]]. An example of [[You Fail Economics Forever]] on the few occasions it can actually be used in the story, as it would immediately destroy any economy it was introduced to in a realistic setting- if anyone would actually take it, which smarter writers will often use as a plot point.

{{examples}}

== Anime and Manga ==

* The same for a method to artificially create diamonds in an episode of ''[[Lupin III]]'' so that the ones they already have stolen are worthless, that is except Fujiko who betrays the group (for the twentieth-odd time) to get it for herself.

* In ''[[Trigun]]'' the astronomical bounty on Vash the Stampede's head makes him a walking Zillion-Dollar Bill. As a result, even well-intentioned people try to kill him.

 

== Comic Books ==

** In several other stories Scrooge comes upon some kind of incredibly valuable object (such as a giant jeweled Mayan calendar). As usual, the treasure is virtually always lost forever, even though [[Status Quo Is God|the status quo]] wouldn't have been changed in the slightest if Scrooge had kept it for his museum.

* In a ''[[Richie Rich (comics)|Richie Rich]]'' story, the kid tries a different kind of monetary security as he arranges for a literal million dollar bank note. Sure enough, some crooks steal it, but find they can't break it since no one takes the item seriously and they chase away the crooks continually. Eventually, they give up in despair, mail the bank note back to Richie with a note saying "If there is a reward for this, please send it in nickels, dimes and quarters."

 

== Film ==

* The wrecked plane full of cash in ''[[Fim/A Simple Plan|A Simple Plan]]''. Of course, in this case it brings those who find it nothing but misery and {{spoiler|ends up being burnt so the police cannot trace any of the serial numbers back}}.

* The million-year capsule in ''[[In Time]]''.

 

== Literature ==

* The low-budget version appears in Upton Sinclair's ''The Jungle''. In 1920s Chicago, an unemployed stockyard worker is given a hundred-dollar bill by a rich drunk. (This is about as much money as the hero could make in a year.) But he has no other money with him, and he'll freeze to death if he tries to walk home. In desperation, he goes into a bar to stay warm until the banks open in the morning. They won't let him stay without buying something, so he uses the bill to buy a 5-cent beer. The bartender gives him 95 cents in change, and everyone else enjoys a big laugh when he tries to convince them that he's been cheated.

** There's a similar short film where the currency is your own life. You work for more life and spend bits of your life to buy things, the basic currency being hours or minutes. The Heroine eventually marries and gets rich and rewards her friends with a necklace, each bead of which is several months or years, but they fight over it and it breaks. It had people playing poker machines and gambling for more life. That's right, people were [[Stealth Pun|wasting their lives gambling.]]

* The eponymous dragon in Peter F. Hamilton's ''[[Fallen Dragon]]''. In a subversion, the small community benefiting from its advanced technology attempts {{spoiler|to hijack a starship to return it to its own kind. In a brilliant sucker punch, the dragon is as valuable to its own kind as a single sperm is to us.}}

* At the beginning of ''[[The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress]]'' by R.A. Heinlein, [[Master Computer|Mike]] gave a janitor a paycheck for $10,000,000,000,000,185.15 as a joke. It was determined to be a "computer error" and the check was declared invalid.

 

* Averted in a ''[[The Mary Tyler Moore Show]]'' episode: throughout the episode, Ted Baxter avoids repaying five dollars to Murray Slaughter by offering to repay Murray IF he can make change for a hundred dollar bill. At episode's end, Murray announces he can make change for the hundred dollar bill—pulling out a heavy bank bag -- ''in pennies''!

* Done more subtly and realistically on ''[[Corner Gas]]''. Brent Leroy receives a hundred dollar bill he suspects may be counterfeit (and doesn't know how to check) from a customer, and for the rest of the episode tries to pay for things, knowing that no one will go to the trouble of changing a hundred dollar (possibly fake) bill for a two-dollar cup of coffee.

* In a futuristic episode of ''[[Doctor Who]]'', the Doctor gives his companion what looks like a small white slate that can be used as a credit card of sorts in the time they are in. It turns out it has "unlimited credit" on it.

 

 

== Radio ==

* Parodied in ''[[The Goon Show]]'' episode "The Million Pound Penny", in which Neddy Seagoon owns a penny that has been left a million pounds in a relative's will. Not surprisingly this ends in disaster.

 

== Tabletop Games ==

** Gems of ludicrous value are most useful when incorporated into magical items.

* The Star of Africa from [[wikipedia:Afrikan tähti|the Finnish board game by the same name]]. You can find plenty of jewels in the game and cash them in for money that helps in getting ahead, but the Star of Africa is the only diamond, and effectively priceless; it can't be sold as such, but taking it back to one of the starting cities wins the game.

 

== Video Games ==

* Averted in the [[Sega Genesis]] ''[[Tiny Toon Adventures]]'' game. Buster sets off to find a giant pirate treasure. He gets it and he gets to spend it, building an amusement park for himself and his friends.

 

 

** In the episode ''Mr. Plow'', Homer gets rival plowman Barney Gumble to spend the day dragging his plow up a mountain with the promise of a ten thousand dollar bill. When asked which president is on it, he claims, "''All of them. They're having a party. Jimmy Carter has passed out on the couch.''". [[The Ditz|Barney]] is so impressed that he leaves immediately, abandoning his hot tub with Linda Ronstadt.

* Referred to in an episode of ''[[Jonny Quest]]'': [[Yellow Peril]] Zinn has found a way to create gold; the heroes have to destroy the method not only to keep him from using his ill-gotten gains to fund his evil network, but also to prevent the collapse of the global economy should the secret become open knowledge.

** A similar idea was part of an episode of the original ''[[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1987|Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles]]'' cartoon, where the turtles dread the thought of an alien turtle race moving to Earth: they are a benevolent race, but they also have the technology to create gold effortlessly (in fact, they use it mostly as a building material).

 

== Real Life ==

* Due to hyperinflation in Zimbabwe, the regime eventually printed bills as high as $Z 100 trillion, seen [https://web.archive.org/web/20140604055845/http://www.coins-and-banknotes.com/images//Products/Large/207328-100%20Trillion.jpg here].

* During the hyperinflation in Germany during the Weimar Republic, this was the norm for currency, especially around 1922-25. Currency denomination in the billions was not uncommon at the time. There is one story, possibly apocryphal, of a man who wheeled trillions of marks in a wheelbarrow to deposit; as he stopped in, the wheelbarrow was stolen, but the stacks of by-then-worthless cash were left on the street. Almost any collectors' stamp store will have scads of 20-''billion''-mark postage stamps from the time, most of them uncancelled (as they were made obsolete by the mounting inflation shortly after they were issued and most people never bothered using them).

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Currency Tropes]]

[[Category:Money Tropes]]

[[Category:Older Than Radio]]