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.

Not to be confused with [[Funny Money]].

 

{{examples}}

 

 

== Comic Books ==

** In another story, Scrooge's fortune becomes so astronomically large that all the money in the country is located in his money bin. The government confiscates all of it, and hands him a zillion dollar check, which he quickly discovers is completely worthless due to no one being able to make change. Since Scrooge owns roughly every store in the country, the money shortly comes trucking back, and Scrooge ends up using the check to repair a draft.

*** [[What an Idiot!|And never thought of just depositing it in a bank account]].

 

== Film ==

** Lampshaded when they find one of the first [[Linked-List Clue Methodology|clues]], a pipe: Riley asks, "Is it a billion-dollar pipe?"

* In ''[[The Mighty Quinn]]'', a local beach bum comes across a suitcase filled with 10,000 bills, part of a bigger murder mystery the police chief Quinn is investigating.

* 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}}.

== Literature ==

* In ''The [[Lord of the Rings]],'' Frodo's mithril coat is said to be more valuable than "the whole Shire and everything in it." Probably because the only mine in the world where mithril can be found has a bit of a balrog problem, is also infested with goblins, and has a giant octopus monster outside the gates.

* 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.

* In Terry Pratchett's proto-[[Discworld]] book ''Strata'', money is defined as ''time'' - each bill is worth extra years of life. The biggest bill is the Methuselah (named after the longest-lived Biblical personality) which few people have ever seen. The book also features a bottomless purse, which continually spits out bills which are not technically counterfeit, but which have serial numbers that haven't been used yet.

* ''The Pearl'', by John Steinbeck. The eponymous gem is worth more than its finders can imagine spending in a lifetime.

* [[Edgar Allan Poe]], of all people, wrote a short story about the discovery of a process that could change lead into gold. Unusually, the story is explicitly about the economic disaster such a process would cause.

* 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.

 

== Live Action TV ==

* 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''!

** {{spoiler|The "Sorry I only have this hundred" free ride ends when someone at his table happens to have five twenties to trade him and the bartender gladly accepts one of them as payment faster than Brent can invent an excuse for not breaking his hundred. "It was good while it lasted."}}

* 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.

** To acquire a high score in the game, the player must, among other things, track down a couple hidden treasures with no purpose other than monetary value. Since Graham ends up with the Chest of Gold at the end of the game anyway, one can wonder what the point of those treasures were.

*** Museum pieces.

** At least they return the favor during a [[Hopeless Boss Fight]]. [[That One Boss|IF you didn't get killed during the fight...]]

* In the game ''[[Evil Genius]]'', one of the loot items you can steal is a million dollar bill (The game is set in the '60s). Since its too big to actually spend, it sits in your base, cheering up your minions.

** This makes more sense than the in-game explanation that the bill isn't actually real money, but some odd PR stunt by the US President. Maybe the designers thought [[Viewers are Morons|the players wouldn't understand]].

*** The joke here is that the thieves won't accept a "lot" of money for the diamond, saying "We can't give it to you for anything less than an ''awful'' lot of money."

* In ''[[Maniac Mansion]] 2: Day of the Tentacle,'' you manage to make the Edisons fabulously wealthy by obtaining [[Recursive Canon|the back royalties Lucasarts owes them]] for the first ''[[Maniac Mansion]]'' game. Naturally, the money must immediately be spent to buy a giant diamond to repair your time machine.

* ''[[Sam and Max]]:'' Season One introduces the character of Bosco, a [[Conspiracy Theorist|paranoid convenience store owner/inventor]] who charges ludicrous amounts of money for his simple inventions (such as a tear gas gun that's just a salad chopper strapped to an airgun that you're meant to shoot onions out of). The trope is avoided at first, though Bosco does accept things like food stamps and arcade tokens in lieu of cash, until eventually you sell the deed to America to Canada for a trillion dollars... delivered in the form of a handful of ''billion''-dollar bills. Obviously, no matter how much money you have, the only in-game use for it is to buy Bosco's inventions. To make things even better, Bosco reveals that he only asks for so much money because he never actually expects them to be able to pay for it, and is just trying to see [[Refuge in Audacity|how much he can get away with]]. To list the types of payment accepted by Bosco:

** $100,000,000,000,000 (one hundred trillion) in Canadian trillion dollar notes (they've even got Celine Dion on them!)

*** Subverted in ''Reality 2.0''. Sam and Max are prepared to hear the ridiculous price for a wooden sword, and are surprised when Virtual Bosco is willing to sell it for the reasonable price of five gold coins.

* In ''[[Metal Gear|Metal Gear Solid 3]]'' the [[MacGuffin|Philosopher's Legacy]] is a microfilm containing bank information for $100 billion US, more than the real-world US budget at the time. {{spoiler|The Legacy is recovered and distributed between three world powers; most of it eventually falls into the hands of the Patriots}}.

* In one of the stages in ''[[Penny Arcade Adventures]] [[On the Rainslick Precipice of Darkness]]'' the main enemy is the incredibly wealthy. As such, the smallest denomination of money they drop is a twenty thousand dollar bill. They also rob an ATM of quite a large sum of money, which, given that Tycho ''interrupts the machine'' as it is giving an exact figure of the account they are attempting to rob, is more or less a drop in the bucket.

* The "zillion-chip piece" (poker chips are the universal currency) in ''[[Twilight Heroes]]'' only drops on April Fool's Day and sells for . . . 1 chip.

* 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.

 

* ''[[The Simpsons]]'' had "The Trouble with Trillions", where Homer finds out that Montgomery Burns had a trillion-dollar bill in his possession that he stole and was originally printed to pay for damages from WWII in Europe. It's not quite a ''zillion'' dollars, but that's enough. At least ([[Out-of-Character Moment|as Lisa said]]) for some dune buggies.

** 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.

* An episode of the original 1960's Spider-Man had the Vulture ransoming the city for two million dollars in the form of two one million dollar bills.