History Main / DeathByMaterialism

* In the Turkish series ''Yakamoz S-245'', a sailor decides to help himself to the contents of a bank vault (ironically worthless now), gets into an argument over it with his crewmates, and they all get locked in the vault when the power is restored and the time lock activates, right before they're supposed to evacuate to escape the SolarFlareDisaster.

* "The Golden Girl", a short story by Creator/EllisPeters in the Creator/AlfredHitchcock collection ''Stories Not for the Nervous''. A man and his pregnant wife are passengers on a ship. The ship catches on fire and the passengers must evacuate. After she gets her life jacket on, a ship's officer drops her over the side into the water, where she sinks like a stone. The man jumps in after her. The story ends with a line about how they'll never know if he jumped in to save the girl or to save the 30 pounds of gold being smuggled in her fake maternity bulge.

* Several antagonists met their end this way in the ''Manga/LupinTheThird'' series. For example, one of the episodes in the Red Jacket series had the gang try to rob a mob boss's train car. However, the track is blown out and Lupin is forced to escape (though does save the boss's prized horse) but the boss himself refuses to leave his wealth and Lupin can only pity him as he leaves him to his death. Heck, Fujiko herself was nearly killed a few times when trying to steal something valuable and didn't have the common sense to run when it was obvious she wouldn't get it.

* In the short ''ComicBook/{{Hellboy}}'' story "Sullivan's Reward", an alcoholic named Sullivan inherits a house, and discovers that every time he lures someone (usually a vagrant) into a certain room, that person dies and a couple of gold coins are dropped down the stairs. He expects an even bigger reward for luring Hellboy into the room, and gets it – in the form of a solid mass of coins the size of a small car that crashes down the stairs and squashes him into bloody pulp.

* In the ''Fanfic/EmpathTheLuckiestSmurf'' story "Days Of Future Smurfed", when [[MentalTimeTravel Empath "visits" the future]] in which he sees as his elder self the Smurf Village being destroyed by an earthquake, he tries to rescue Brainy, who is seen in his house trying to rescue as many of his works as possible, telling him to forget about his books. Brainy refuses, saying that his works are his life, considering them of great treasure and that he cannot live without them. Then suddenly the ground underneath him swallows him up, and Brainy is gone forever.

* ''Fanfic/VowOfNudity'': Petrichor kills a sailor to steal his Piscine Stone, a magic ancestral item that lets the owner control sealife. Unfortunately, he assumes the magnificent blue gemstone in the sailor's safe is the Piscine Stone, and completely overlooks the sea glass pebble sitting in plain sight on the purser's desk. Which he only realizes after summoning a Giant Plesiosaur and attempting to control it...

* ''The Golden Antelope'' by {{Creator/Soyuzmultfilm}} is about a greedy Raja pursuing a magical talking antelope who can conjure gold coins by stomping her hooves. Eventually, the Antelope comes to Raja and asks how much gold is enough for him to leave her and her friends alone, to which he replies that there's no such thing as "enough gold". Now [[TranquilFury thoroughly fed with him]], the Antelope offers to give him all the gold she can, with the condition that if he ever says "enough", all his gold will turn into clay potsherds. The Raja is extatic at first but the Antelope keeps making more and more gold coins, and eventually he gets stuck in a massive pile of them and almost completely covered save for his face. Being painfully crushed by the heavy metal, he manages to wheeze out "Enough!" just before drowning in gold completely, stopping the Antelope but transforming all his gold, including what he already had and what he had paid to his servants, into potsherds. Said servants then promptly abandon the now-penniless Raja, leaving him still buried under a pile of clay.

* In ''WesternAnimation/TreasurePlanet'', most of the pirate crew die when the titular planet blows up to keep thieves from taking the treasure. Those who clung to their treasure eventually fell into the crevices below that opened as part of the booby trap. Those that dropped them and ran for their lives probably survived and can be seen tied up in the brig near the end of the film. Long John Silver escapes, though he does [[FriendOrIdolDecision renounce the treasure at the last minute in favor of rescuing Jim]]. In a similar twist to the ''Atlantis'' example above, Silver gives up the few bits of treasure he managed to save to Jim for his mom to rebuild the inn that he and his pirates destroyed earlier in the movie, allowing them to rebuild it bigger and better than before. The fact that the entire crew aside from Jim and a few characters were pirates (and were either arrested or ended up dead) is another plus.

* ''Film/ArmyOfTheDead'': [[spoiler:''All'' of the mercenaries who joined the mission into Vegas for the money wind up dead. However Scott's daughter Kate, who was the only one among them who went into the city for altruistic reasons (to save Geeta, a friend who had gone missing in the city) is the only one to make it out alive - [[BittersweetEnding with a small fortune to give to Geeta's kids and without Scott]].]]

* Much of the plot of ''Film/ADeadlySecret'' revolves around the main villain, the corrupt governor Magistrate Ling and his army attempting to recover a horde of pearls sealed in a giant Buddha statue, hidden in an underground cavern. After all kinds of plot twists, conspiracies, backstabbing and whatnot, the magistrate and his minions managed to uncover the statue, breaks its surface, and have pearls the size of eggs spilling out of the statue. But alas, it turns out the pearls are coated with a deadly poison, fatal to anyone who touches it.
* ''Film/TheDevilsBackbone'': [[spoiler: Jacinto is wounded by the kids after they manage to outsmart him]], but his real death comes when he's [[spoiler: dragged by [[UndeadChild Santi]] into the pool beneath the orphanage and is unable to get out thanks to the weight of the gold bars in his pockets, the ones he spent years searching for]].

* ''Film/DontLookUp'': [[spoiler:The original plan to deflect the comet which had a fair chance of saving the Earth is cancelled when Peter Isherwell (a thinly-veiled Elon Musk {{Expy}}) discovers that the Everest-sized comet is rich with trillions of dollars worth of rare minerals. Isherwell comes up with a new plan to break the comet up into smaller pieces that can be captured for profit, and it fails abysmally. The comet slams into Earth at full speed and annihilates all life on Earth... [[TheStinger except for]] some billionaires who cobbled together a colony ship, and then they land on an alien world and get ripped apart by predators.]]
* ''Film/DoraAndTheLostCityOfGold'': Subverted. Alejandro's obsession with getting the treasure of Parapata leads him to trigger a trap that drops him down a flaming pit, with Dora pointing out his greed caused this. However, he manages to grab the edge and survive. Instead, he is made a prisoner of the Guardians of Parapata.

** The Master flees Smaug's destruction of Lake-town on a boat loaded with the town's gold. When it seems like he's about to get away, Bard successfully kills Smaug who lands on top of his boat crushing him into the cold waters. In contrast, his book counterpart fled the battle with as much gold as he can carry in to the wilderness with no food. By the time Bilbo gets home, he had starved to death.

* In ''Film/IfLooksCouldKill'', the escaping villain Augustus Steranko LovesOnlyGold and loads his getaway helicopter with so much of it the thing will barely get more than thirty feet off the ground. He dies when Michael Corben shoots the helicopter, causing the gold to fall out. Letting go of the steering stick, Steranko falls out with the gold trying to save it and is killed when the now pilotless helicopter lands on him as a result.

*** A more straight example of the trope is Kaufman, who wastes precious time trying to escape with his huge sacks of money, even though it's after the apocalypse and cash presumably only has value outside of the Last Human City as toilet paper.

*** Warden Gad Hassan, who attempts to take some of the jeweled scarabs from a wall mural, only to discover that they're ''real'' flesh-eating scarabs after one burrows into his boot... up his leg... over his chest... and into his brain...

* ''Film/PitchBlack'': Bounty hunter Johns dies as a result of his own greed. He's been hunting Riddick for years and knows full well how dangerous he is, but strikes a bargain with Riddick in the hopes that he can keep him on a leash until they're off-planet and Johns can collect on his bounty. Riddick arranges for Johns to be eaten by the predators, noting that it's Johns's own fault for not killing Riddick when he had the chance.

* The film ''Film/GhostShip'' has this as the framing device. The main characters are a salvage team boarding the titular ship, which is rumored to have a huge sum of money on board. The rumors are true, but it turns out to be a repeated con by a demon in order to drag souls to Hell as the various crews end up trying to sneak off the ship with the money. The reason the ship became a GhostShip to begin with is also because of this; an entire cruise ship full of people was massacred by greedy crew and thieves who kill the entire crew, all of the passengers, and then one another attempting to get the money. The last one is killed themselves by the demon, who was ''also'' responsible for this incident.

* This is exactly what happens to Duhamel in the ''Literature/AubreyMaturin'' books. He converts his entire fortune to gold, straps it to his waist, then drowns. Of course, he was only getting on the ship so he could defect to the Americas and retire from working as a spy, so this one's also {{Retirony}}. This might be a case of TruthInTelevision, as it was customary at the time that officers of seized ships be stripped and searched for valuables, which led to a lot of officers having to carry gold bullion or coins sewed into their jackets. This is how many officers of the "Prince de Conty" drowned when the ship sank off the Bretton coast of France in 1746.

* ''Literature/EternityRoad'' is set AfterTheEnd, but the old money is still shiny and valuable. In one building, where all the signs have faded, there's a huge pile of money in the middle of the floor, waiting for someone to take it. The middle of the floor is as far as the last looters got before a police robot arrived to arrest the "bank robbers." This isn't directly ShopliftAndDie since the robot is armed with a stun gun. Rather, it's shoplift and slowly starve to death as the robot forces you to wait for the long-deceased real police to arrive and haul you off to jail. One protagonist who stayed outside helps the rest by committing another crime: impersonating an officer.

* Ivan Krylov wrote a fable about a man who received a purse (either from a spirit or a [[DealWithTheDevil devil]]) which contained a golden coin, with new ones spawning up as soon as the old one is taken out. The only catch is, not a single coin can be spent - unless you get rid of the purse. Try to guess the rest.

* In both ''Literature/ThievesLikeUs'' and ''Thieves 'Til We Die'', the villains die when they get too greedy in an ancient tomb/temple and set off some mechanism that led to the place collapsing. This is driven home more in the second book, in which the villainess actually asks one of the protagonists to help her carry the "treasure" she gathered out (she had hit her head and thought that a lot of worthless rock and pottery was gold). On the other hand, it's subverted with the protagonists, who also loot the same places but manage to come out alive (in fact, that's pretty much their life's work). Mainly it's because they're CrazyPrepared.
* The classic folktale "Three Who Sought Death" (which may have been the inspiration for the Pardoner's story in ''The Canterbury Tales'', mentioned above) features three young men who are heartbroken to hear that a friend has died and decide to conquer Death. As they travel to a village recently ravaged by a plague, they come across an elderly woman who is trying to escape, and refuse to let her pass until she tells them where they can find Death. She cryptically remarks that Death is under a nearby tree. When they go, they discover a giant bag full of gold coins, and promptly abandon their quest. The older men send the youngest into town to buy food, and decide to murder him when he returns so they only have to split the fortune two ways; the youngest has the same idea and purchases a powerful poison which he uses to lace the things he buys. He's promptly killed upon returning, but the greedy murderers eat the poisoned food and promptly drop dead as well. The old woman then appears and reveals that she was Death all along--and true to her word, the men ''did'' find their deaths under the tree.
* The threat of this is what drives the Creator/LouisLamour short story ''Trap of Gold''. A miner finds an extremely rich vein of gold-bearing quartz in a cave that could collapse at any moment. Every minute he has to decide whether to be satisfied with what he has so far, or risk death and get still more gold. Subverted in that he's motivated by greed, but ''indirectly'' -- he needs the money for his family.

** Another segment was about an ex-con who was tasked with community service wound up working for a moving company, he steals a diamond flower ornament and puts it in his shirt pocket, but when the van moves he falls out and a cabinet falls on top of him, and the ornament pierces his lungs.
** Another segment was about two women who posed as relief workers for Hurricane Katrina but were merely there to steal valuable items. After robbing a church, they go into its flooded basement, turned on the faulty improperly grounded lights, stepped in, and were promptly electrocuted.

** Viserys goes to Khal Drogo demanding he will give him the crown promised to him, and threatning to cut Daenrys unborn child out as part of the deal. Drogo does so by pouring molten gold on his head, giving him his crown.

* A non-fatal example occurs in ''Series/GilligansIsland.'' The ''Minnow'' group finds a hidden cache of gold on the island and start seeing dollar signs, but realize that it will be too heavy to transport back on the raft they're building to escape. Greed gets the better of almost everyone, though, and each person secretly sneaks a single gold bar in their belongings as they climb on the raft...which promptly sinks, leaving them trapped again. Notably, Gilligan gets to hold the SmartBall in this episode, as he is the [[OnlySaneMan only person]] who doesn't succumb to temptation and try to take the gold with him; as such, this was one of the only instances where he ''didn't'' [[JustEatGilligan ruin the castaways' chance at escaping]], which he promptly [[LampshadeHanging lampshades.]]

* ''Series/{{The Twilight Zone|1959}}''. A group of thieves steal some gold bars and escape to the future. They then proceed to kill each other when they can't decide how to split up the gold, only for the audience to learn later that at the time they were in it was no more than WorthlessYellowRocks. This episode probably came from the story of the three thieves who set out to kill death and wound up murdering each other over a bag of gold coins (which, of course, belonged to Death).

* Stormwitch song "Cave of Steenfoll" tells a story of a man who is lured into and drowns in a lake of gold, which is actually a trap devised by Satan.

* ''Theatre/TheDevil'' has it's modernized John Faust, a Wall Street banker, become this while under the influence of the titular X-Black.

* In the third DLC of ''VideoGame/{{Borderlands}}'', the last mission takes place in an armory teeming with weapons chests; however, the armory is set to explode in exactly two minutes. In short, the player has a limited amount of time to search the massive armory. Although the player is given the option to escape, the other alternative is to continue searching for weapons knowing full well that time is running out. Interestingly, Athena watches in the distance as the base explodes; this implies she planned to kill the mercenary with the one thing they could not defeat: their own greed. This is, of course, assuming the player fails to escape in time. Sadly, GameplayAndStorySegregation rears its ugly head here; the New-U respawn stations are actually a non-canon gameplay-only mechanic meant for the players, but they can be used in full-effect here to loot as many chests as possible, ignore the self-destruct countdown entirely, [[DeathIsASlapOnTheWrist and respawn at the base with all their loot after dying with a tiny monetary loss in a game where money is second to rare loot]]. And all four vault hunters canonically survived to the next game.

* ''VideoGame/DwarfFortress'' dwarves are quite prone to this, whether it's looting socks off fallen comrades on a battlefield that's still raging (ArtificialStupidity causing them to prioritize geteting better gear over noticing danger), or [[DugTooDeep digging too much]] of [[{{Unobtanium}} that shiny cyan stuff]] (that's all on players). The infamous LetsPlay ''Blog/{{Boatmurdered}}'' has dwarves rushing under the Elephants' feet to loot their trampled comrades.

** The treasure of the Sierra Madre includes several gold bars that each value at a little over 10,000 caps and weigh 35 pounds. However, at the end of the module, the player's ExplosiveLeash will activate, giving them limited time to make it out, with the intent that the player can at best grab a few of the bars before becoming over-encumbered. It's all part of the DLC's theme of "[[ArcWords letting go]]", though it's possible for a very crafty player to make it out with all the treasure.

** Can be used as a weapon. In various levels, you can pick up big suitcases filled with dollar-bills, and throw them at the Mooks -- who will immediately abort their attempts to kill you to instead go jumping around, trying to pick the floating currency out of the air. Leaving them all nicely gathered in a single spot with their defenses down. Cue the [[ChainsawGood chainsaw]].
** Other levels use alternate objects with a similar effect, though only some of them fall under this. Throwing a big-ass bloody steak at a bunch of zombies, or a plateful of hot pork buns at some Kung-Fu Mooks probably still counts... throwing a pirate-hat at a group of Ninjas so they'll ignore you to cut the hat to pieces instead, maybe not too much.

** Happens twice in [[VideoGame/Uncharted4AThiefsEnd the fourth game]]. In the climax, all parties manage to reach Henry Avery's ship and the hold where the treasure laid. However, they likewise found the remains of Avery and his former second in command, Thomas Tew, who had killed each other trying to claim the treasure. By this point, Nate has had enough of the treasure hunt and wants to leave the island with his brother while they still have their lives. But Sam's too stubborn to give up the quest and ends up pinned by debris thanks to a bobby trap on the ship. When both the brothers and their main antagonist, Rafe, are locked in the hold by Rafe's dragon, Nadine, who likewise has had enough and bails. Nate is willing to forfeit the treasure to Rafe long as they save Sam. But Rafe, utterly obsessed with claiming the find as his own, refuses and forces Nate into a sword fight. Just as he has Nate at his mercy, Nate cuts a rope that has a net of treasure handing over Rafe, dropping it on him, and crushing him. Even Nate's final words reflect this.

** Subverted in "Ducking the Devil" where, as Daffy is counting his reward money for recapturing the Tasmanian Devil, one of the dollar bills falls into its cage. He rushes in, the audience hears the sounds of someone being beaten up... then Daffy emerges from the cage, largely unscathed, with a badly injured Devil behind him, and Daffy proclaims "Like I said, I'm a coward, but I'm a ''greedy'' little coward!"
* Non-lethal example, probably, in the ''WesternAnimation/SamuraiJack'' episode "The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful". OutlawCouple Zeke and Josephine Clench actually ''succeed'' in catching Jack; however, Josephine gets a little too greedy and, hoping to gain the huge bounty all for herself, shoves Zeke off the train - not knowing that Jack saw this coming. A carefully placed kick and roll lets him entangle his bindings around Zeke's ankle in a way that snags ''her'' ankle as he falls, letting Jack break free and drag her down with him all in one swoop. (When last seen, the two were bound and dangling upside-down from a tree with Zeke reminding her of the 150-foot restraining order he has against her; quite likely, this sort of thing happened before.)

* Warlords Curius and Apuleius from the ancient UsefulNotes/LusitanianWars were infamous for their greed, and it ended up being their bane in a battle against Roman general Servilianus in the Anas river. They might have been ordered by Viriathus to keep an eye on the Romans and punish them by the accustomed guerrilla methods, but the two generals opted to concoct a plan to assault them and steal their goods. Leading large skirmishing parties, they ambushed Servilianus's army in the river and overpowered it enough for Curius's squad to run away with all of the Roman gold and a ludicrously large cadre of prisoners. However, unfortunately for them, this maneuver allowed Servilianus to recover his footing and hunt down Curius, recovering all of the war spoils and prisoners and crashing the bandits's army.

* ''Very'' often the outcome in an Ancient or Medieval battle. A previously victorious army begins to loot the enemy baggage and is attacked by a fresh enemy force and gets defeated. At the Battle of Kadesh, for example, a division of Hittites was slaughtered by their Egyptian enemies, because they were too distracted looting a campground.

* Peter of Dusburg, a Teuton chronicler, recounts a case when two knights were captured and tied up by a group of Old Prussians who wanted to behead them. So when they wanted to chop their heads off, one of the knights pointed out the blood will stain their clothes, making them worthless. They agreed and untied his hands. The knight snatched out one of the guys' swords and managed to fight the way out along with his comrade.

* In one episode of ''Series/{{The Twilight Zone|1959}}'', a group of thieves steal some gold bars and escape to the future. They then proceed to kill each other when they can't decide how to split up the gold, only for the audience to learn later that at the time they were in it was no more than WorthlessYellowRocks. This episode probably came from the story of the three thieves who set out to kill death and wound up murdering each other over a bag of gold coins (which, of course, belonged to Death).

Compare DeathByMocking, GoldFever, SuitWithVestedInterests, and VillainByDefault.

* ''VideoGame/DwarfFortress'' dwarves are quite prone to this, whether it's looting socks off fallen comrades on a battlefield that's still raging (ArtificialStupidity causing them to prioritize geteting better gear over noticing danger), or [[DugTooDeep digging too much]] of [[{{Unobtanium}} that shiny cyan stuff]] (that's all on players). The infamous LetsPlay ''LetsPlay/{{Boatmurdered}}'' has dwarves rushing under the Elephants' feet to loot their trampled comrades.

'''Jack Benny:''' ''I'm thinking it over!''