History Main / TheScrooge

Not to be confused with TheGrinch, even though [[Literature/AChristmasCarol the namer for this trope]] also hated Christmas. That said, the name is often used as a distinction between someone who simply hates Christmas vs. one who actively ruins the holiday for others.

* ''Manga/TheLegendOfZeldaAkiraHimekawa'': In the adaptation of the ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaPhantomHourglass Phantom Hourglass]]'', Linebeck is reluctant to buy a cannon, even to keep his ship safe from monsters.

* In the [[Manga/TheLegendOfZeldaAkiraHimekawa manga adaptation]] of ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaPhantomHourglass'', Linebeck is reluctant to buy a cannon, even to keep his ship safe from monsters.

* Bob's MeanBoss Gilbert Huph in ''WesternAnimation/TheIncredibles1'', a CorruptCorporateExecutive and ObstructiveBureaucrat who's made it his mission in life to protect the company's bottom line by denying as many insurance claims as he can, regardless of how legitimate they are as per their customers' contracts. A FreezeFrameBonus shows that not even his employees were spared from his profit-minded cruelty, as he planned to make them pay for their own office supplies, parking, and ''electricity usage''. Bob did his community a favor by [[PunchedAcrossTheRoom putting the guy in traction]].

* Another joke: A Scotsman is given a new wallet with a velcro closure. He opens it up, hears the ripping sound, and exclaims, "Aye, that's a proper wallet. It screams when you open it!"

* Ebenezer Scrooge from ''Literature/AChristmasCarol'' is the TropeNamer. In addition to being a tight-fisted miser, he's a cold-hearted, selfish man, who despises anything that engenders happiness. One telling of the story literally has him take the coins off the deceased Marley's eyes. It takes three ghosts to do it (four if you count Marley), but [[CharacterDevelopment he gets better]]. An UnbuiltTrope: he's [[HonestCorporateExecutive honest]] despite his ruthlessness, and [[JerkassWoobie it's taken a lot of suffering to make him what he is]].

* ''WesternAnimation/GravityFalls'': [[Characters/GravityFallsGrunkleStan Grunkle Stan]] is shown to be like this. Although he is greedy because [[spoiler:he wants to bring his brother back from AnotherDimension and needs money to survive in the meantime.]]

* In many of the ''Website/GoAnimate'' videos using the ''WesternAnimation/ScoobyDoo'' characters, Fred Jones is made out to be this as he absolutely hates spending money for anything and tries to handle various repairs on his own. Sometimes he ends up acting like a hypocrite as he'll tell someone "no" on doing something, but turn around and do it himself, but in his defense, virtually everything done is done because the rest of the gang would happily break him financially -- Daphne would happily buy any and everything she can find while Shaggy and Scooby would happily eat restaurants out of business if they got a hold of the money.

[[ValuesDissonance In previous eras]], it was common to portray [[AllJewsAreCheapskates pretty much all]] [[GreedyJew Jewish characters]] like this. The [[UsefulNotes/{{Scotland}} Scottish]] were traditionally subject to [[ThriftyScot this stereotype]] as well. And in Germany, it's the Swabian people.

* Another joke: A Scotsman is given a new wallet with a velcro closure. He opens it up, hears the ripping sound, and exclaims, "Aye, that's a proper wallet. It screams when you open it!"

* ''WesternAnimation/GravityFalls'': Grunkle Stan is shown to be like this. Although he is greedy because [[spoiler:he wants to bring his brother back from AnotherDimension and needs money to survive in the meantime.]]

* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'': Charles Montgomery Burns is the very definition of this trope.

** Also Marge, DependingOnTheWriter. Oftentimes the fact Homer is an uninsurable WalkingDisasterArea and money-wasting jerk is brought up (and even then the rest of the family make a point to mention that she's taking it ''way'' too far), but on many episodes the reason she tries to save is out of pure jerkassery of her own, risking things like multi-thousand-dollar car repairs or life and limb for the sake of saving so much as a dime.
* ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'': Eugene Krabs is a miser with a heart of... well, not gold, but certainly bronze... possibly tin. Or some other metal common enough to make pawning it off not quite worth the effort.

* J. Jonah Jameson in the Film/SpiderManTrilogy directed by Creator/SamRaimi - he is an enormous miser, even as the editor-in-chief of the ''Daily Bugle'', seeking to cut on costs in any way imaginable, from paychecks to organizing his own son's wedding.

* In many of the ''Website/GoAnimate'' videos using the ''WesternAnimation/ScoobyDoo'' characters, Fred Jones is made out to be this as he absolutely hates spending money for anything and tries to handle various repairs on his own. Sometimes he ends up acting like a hypocrite as he'll tell someone "no" on doing something, but turn around and do it himself, but in his defense, virtually everything done is done because the rest of the gang would happily break him financially - Daphne would happily buy any and everything she can find while Shaggy and Scooby would happily eat restaurants out of business if they got a hold of the money.

** In the [[Westernanimation/DuckTales2017 reboot]], Scrooge's Board of Directors are a group of buzzards hired because they're even more penny-pinching than Scrooge himself. Their collective EstablishingCharacterMoment is complaining about Scrooge's "waste" of a few thousand dollars (which, comparatively speaking, is pocket change) on a cushion for his NumberOneDime. [[spoiler: Then it's revealed they are F.O.W.L. High Command, which puts a darker spin on their greed; they don't want Scrooge spending money because it's less money for them to use in their schemes to steal even more money]].

The Scrooge is a clear [[EmbodimentOfVice embodiment of greed]]. Sometimes overlaps with GrumpyOldMan and is a sub-trope of AffluentAscetic. See also MrViceGuy, a trope that heroic-leaning Scrooges also qualify as, and MiserAdvisor. One of these will also partake in CuttingCorners to save money. May also suffer from LovesOnlyGold. Expect him to have contempt for ConspicuousConsumption, which he thinks is a stupid use of money and a great way to eventually run out of it.

* In ''Wolf's Brother'' by Creator/MeganLindholm, the wedding gifts from the richer members of the tribe were far less generous than the poorer members.

* Widow Mac'Miche from ''A Good Little Devil'' by Sophie Rostopchine, Countess of Ségur. Although very wealthy, she is obsessed with not spending money and even keeps her nephew's inheritance from him, leaving him undernourished and in rags. Even when she is sick and delirious later in the story, she grows suspicious when Charles offers her a glass of water with sugar mixed in, asking him where he got the sugar because she doesn't want to pay for it.

[[folder:Real Life]]
* Hetty Green, thought to have been the richest woman in the world at the time of her death in 1916, and the first woman to make a substantial impact on Wall Street, is considered to be one of the biggest misers in history. Despite being worth over $200 million (that's $4.4 billion in 2016 dollars), she refused to heat her home because she hated to "waste money on frivolities", owned only one dress at a time (and only replaced it when it wore out beyond the ability to sew back together), and lived in pain most of her life because she refused to spend $150 on a hernia operation. She lived almost exclusively on cold oatmeal, being too thrifty to heat it. When her son Ned broke his leg as a child, Mrs. Green tried to have him admitted to a free clinic for the poor. Mythic accounts have her storming away after being recognized; her biographer Charles Slack says that she paid her bill and took her son to other doctors. His leg did not heal properly and, after years of treatment, it had to be amputated.
* Billionaire industrialist Andrew Carnegie is rightly viewed as a philanthropist, having set up many charitable institutions in his lifetime. In his personal life, though, Carnegie was the very epitome of this trope. His clothing, food, and furnishings were always the least expensive he could find, he had a habit of giving single dimes as tips to railroad porters and waiters, and followed a policy of never giving gifts.
* It has often been commented upon by people who work for the various charitable institutions that the less affluent tend to give more (based on a percentage of income) than the wealthy.
** Door-to-door charity collectors call some wealthy neighborhoods "Steep-And-Cheaps" because the rich love to live in hilly areas. Donations tend to be very sparse in such neighborhoods.
** The same goes for streets full of big money law firms.
* Harold Ballard, the majority owner of the [[UsefulNotes/NationalHockeyLeague Toronto Maple Leafs]] from 1971 to his death in 1990, was a notorious cheapskate.
** He used the team's Stanley Cup banners to catch paint drippings
** To make room for more seats, he removed a large portrait of [[UsefulNotes/ElizabethII Queen Elizabeth II]], saying "She doesn't pay me, I pay her. Besides, what the hell position can a queen play?"
** Many of his players (including all-time greats Dave Keon and Paul Henderson) defected to the competing World Hockey Association because he wouldn't match contracts.
** To make room for luxury suites at Maple Leaf Gardens, he had the legendary broadcaster Foster Hewitt's media gondola incinerated.
** Ballard booked [[Music/TheBeatles the Beatles]] on each of their three North American tours from 1964–1966. On the second tour, in 1965, Ballard sold tickets for two shows, even though the agreement had been for only one. On the hot summer day of one of the concerts, Ballard ordered the building's heat turned up, shut off the water fountains, and also delayed both of the concerts for over an hour. The only available refreshments were large soft drinks from the concession stands, for which he tripled the price.
** When the roof at Maple Leaf Gardens fell into disrepair, Ballard simply covered it with plastic rather than fix it.
** By the mid-1980s, the Leafs were horrible, as Ballard only employed three full-time scouts and ran a bare-bones operation. Players were drafted by Canadianness and rushed to the NHL to sink or swim. Ballard didn't care - every game was still a sellout, so why should he ice a better team?
* Marge Schott, who owned the Cincinnati Reds from 1984-1999, had a notorious list of miserly decisions:
** After Eric Davis helped the Cincinnati Reds win the 1990 World Series, she made him pay for his own travel expenses on a return trip from Oakland to Cincinnati. She was also criticized for not spending more money to acquire additional talent that would have made the Reds into playoff contenders.
** In 1995, she told her staff that she couldn't afford Christmas bonuses and gave out "candy"... which turned out to be bubble gum samples from a baseball card company, with expired tickets to the 1991 Grammy Awards which had already occurred 4 years earlier.
** After umpire John [=McSherry=] died of a heart attack on Opening Day of the 1996 MLB season, she took a bouquet of flowers she received, wrote a sympathy note, and sent the second-hand bouquet to [=McSherry's=] funeral, which didn't please the umpires one bit.[[note]]While not specifically related to greed, Schott also didn't help her case when she complained that she had felt "cheated" after [=McSherry=]'s heart attack led to the game getting called off.[[/note]]
** Generally, her racist attitudes and derogatory comments towards blacks, Jews, homosexuals, and other minority groups haven't improved her public reputation at all.
* In 2000, Daniel Snyder, owner of the NFL's Washington Commanders (formerly the Washington Redskins and later the Washington Football Team), charged fans $10 to attend the team's training camp and another $10 for parking spaces. In addition, he has also overpaid to acquire aging veteran players with fading talent.
* Oil baron H.L. Hunt was at one time the wealthiest man in [[UsefulNotes/DFWMetroplex Dallas]], but he drove a twenty-year-old Ford and bought lunch every day at a nickel taco stand.
* John D. Rockefeller, founder of Standard Oil, once gave a groundskeeper a $5 Christmas bonus, only to dock it from the next paycheck when the groundskeeper took a Christmas holiday to spend time with his family.
* John Roebling is the engineer who designed the Brooklyn Bridge. Once, while he was away on business, his wife wrote him to tell him that she had given birth to a daughter, and he wrote her back to chide her for wasting perfectly good ink on such trivial nonsense. When his foot was mangled in an industrial accident and his toes had to be amputated, he went through the surgery without anesthesia because he thought it would cost too much. Roebling refused to let the doctors bandage his foot (bandages being too expensive) and instead kept it submerged in a bucket of water, which lead to him [[HoistByHisOwnPetard contracting tetanus and dying a week later.]] After he died, the reading of his will revealed that he had calculated how much money he had spent raising each of his children and he had docked their inheritance accordingly.
* IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad was well known for driving a 20+-year-old car, stealing ketchup, salt and pepper packets, and plastic cutlery from fast food restaurants for use in his home, reusing tea bags, buying all his clothes at thrift stores, and driving a succession of cheap used cars that he wouldn't bother repairing when they broke down (replacing them being less expensive than repairing them). In order to get to the grand opening of Ikea's Russian facilities, Kamprad took a series of buses rather than simply fly because it was cheaper. Kamprad was worth 57.8 billion at the time of his death.
* Supermodel Creator/TyraBanks admits that she's a bit of a miser, and says that it comes from living in poverty before she was discovered and started modeling. Despite having a personal fortune of upwards of $100 million, she says that she has a hard time spending money beyond what her agents and handlers want her to spend to maintain her image (mostly on her clothes, cosmetics, and living arrangements while she's traveling), and has been known to strip hotel rooms of every complimentary item she can just so she doesn't have to spend money for those items on her own.
* According to several friends and even his daughter Stella, Music/PaulMcCartney is the worst sort of cheapskate despite having a net worth of over $1.2 billion. Apparently, he once threw a birthday party for his late wife, Linda, and charged the guests for drinks. Also, he told his children that he would only pay for their college education if they went to the cheapest schools they could find.
* Jean Paul Getty, despite being an oil tycoon worth $1.3 billion (in 1966, now equivalent to $8.7 billion), was famous for installing payphones in his mansion to discourage the staff (and his family) from using the line. He was also known for an incident where he berated his wife for treating their son's terminal brain tumor--as he considered that a waste of cash. Later, when Italian kidnappers took his grandson hostage, he managed to top himself by literally haggling the ransom down from $17 million to $3 million, standing firm even when the kidnappers [[FingerInTheMail cut off and mailed one of his grandson's ears]] to him. And then he still only paid $2.2 million because that was the maximum tax-deductible amount (and required his son to re-pay him for the expenses, with interest). The grandson was safely returned: when faced with such a cold-hearted bastard, the kidnappers wisely decided to quit while still ahead.
* André Masséna grew up in poverty, and while he adopted a rather lavish lifestyle befitting a Marshal and Duke of the French First Empire, he could prove extremely reluctant to spend his immense wealth. Marcellin Marbot, who was his aide de camp for some time, had a famous story to illustrate this: before the battle of Wagram, Masséna fell from his horse and was so badly injured that he could no longer ride and decided to survey the fighting from an open carriage instead. His coachman did not even flinch as he drove the dazzling carriage into the battlefield, and after the battle, Masséna's aides began suggesting that he give the man a pension. Masséna pretended to misunderstand, announcing that he would give the man a (small) one-time reward; when the aides insisted, he shouted that he would rather see them all dead and have a bullet in his arm than give anyone a pension. Eventually, though, he had to change his mind after Napoleon intervened. [[note]]However, the actual extent of his avarice is still up for debate, given that Marbot is known for [[UnreliableNarrator fiddling with the truth]], and he had a personal grudge against Masséna...[[/note]]
* Ike Perlmutter, CEO of Marvel Entertainment is infamous for stinginess; he refuses to buy office supplies or even replace worn-out furniture. During one press event promoting ''Film/TheAvengers2012'', Marvel ran out of food because Perlmutter was that cheap. While he still had a say in the movies, he pushed Terrence Howard out of the franchise simply because Perlmutter didn't want to pay him his contractually-obligated $8 million salary. His stinginess eventually backfired on him when the Marvel movies became extremely popular and the actors and production team got fed up with their paltry paychecks -- Perlmutter tried to fire Creator/RobertDowneyJr (aka Iron Man) over a pay dispute, meaning he almost didn't appear in Civil War. Disney who owns Marvel did not approve, so a corporate restructuring happened so that Creator/KevinFeige, CEO of Marvel Studios, answered directly to Disney instead of Perlmutter.
* John Elwes, an 18th-century MP, may have been an inspiration for old Ebenezer himself. Like some of the above, he allegedly lived so frugally that he could've been mistaken for a common beggar on the street, and in his later years was paranoid to the point of absurdity that he would be robbed. Regardless, he was not considered especially selfish or unkind, and was apparently, if anything, unduly generous to friends; he lost considerable sums in unpaid loans and debts, in addition to some failed investments.
* Actor Creator/FredMacMurray was legendary in 1940s Hollywood for being a tightwad. Despite being worth millions of dollars at the time, he always brown-bagged his lunch rather than spending money at the commissary, used the bus because ultimately it was cheaper than owning a car, and would regularly mooch off of everyone he possibly could. Creator/ClarkGable specifically told a story about going on a hunting trip with [=MacMurray=] and others. All the hunters but [=MacMurray=] packed food for the trip; [=MacMurray=] instead ate the food scraps left behind by the others.
* Creator/BennyHill was one of the richest men in showbusiness, yet he continued with the frugal habits that he picked up from his parents, notably his father, such as buying cheap food at supermarkets, walking for miles rather than paying for a taxi unless someone picked up the tab for a limousine, and constantly patching and mending the same clothes even when the balance on his account at the Halifax Building Society reached seven figures. Foreign travel was the only luxury that he permitted himself, and even then, he would stay in modest accommodations rather than five-star hotels. He also never owned a car, although he could drive. According to one of his obituaries, he once refused to repair the leaky roof in his mother's home because it was "too expensive".
* According to Creator/RogerMoore, Creator/TonyCurtis was "very careful" with his money, to the extent that you'd think that his pockets had been sewn shut.
** At one Christmas dinner, he served the tiniest roast chicken that was meant to serve not only them and their wives, ''but his entire household staff''.
** At the end of filming ''Series/ThePersuaders'', he was offered to keep his costumes. He took them and then held a sale for the crew to buy them back.
** As a parting gift to producer Johnny Goodman, he got the cheapest bottle of sherry from his local supermarket. He even signed it - "Dear Johnny - Best Wishes. Love Tony".
* One particularly skinflint cheapskate was [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Dancer Daniel Dancer]], a man so in love with money and so loathe to spend it that in spite of having thousands of pounds of currency on hand in his house, he wore the rags of shirts (buying precisely one new shirt a year and wearing it until it fell apart) and would regularly eat boiled bread dumplings every meal of the day (cold, as he would not bother reheating them). [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFS9rRTXue8 More lurid details available here]] from WebVideo/SamONellaAcademy.
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* VideoGame/{{Wario}} of ''[[Franchise/SuperMarioBros Super Mario]]'' is this trope in spades. For starters, he refuses to pay any of his employees in the ''VideoGame/WarioWare'' series, and most of his adventures in the ''VideoGame/WarioLand'' games are all motivated by greed and profit. He also refuses to let anyone touch his treasure. In fact, one could say that he'd make the TropeNamer himself look charitable by comparison.

* Bob's MeanBoss Gilbert Huph in ''WesternAnimation/TheIncredibles'', a CorruptCorporateExecutive and ObstructiveBureaucrat who's made it his mission in life to protect the company's bottom line by denying as many insurance claims as he can, regardless of how legitimate they are as per their customers' contracts. A FreezeFrameBonus shows that not even his employees were spared from his profit-minded cruelty, as he planned to make them pay for their own office supplies, parking, and ''electricity usage''. Bob did his community a favor by [[PunchedAcrossTheRoom putting the guy in traction]].

* ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'': Eugene Krabs is a miser with a heart of... well, not gold, but certainly bronze... possibly tin. Or some other metal common enough to make pawning it off not quite worth the effort. Two early examples of this are the episodes "Squid on Strike" and "Born Again Krabs". In the former, Squidward goes on strike when Mr. Krabs starts charging him and [=SpongeBob=] for things such as ''existing''. In the latter, a near-death experience leads Mr. Krabs to try and change his greedy ways, but the fact that he's losing money freaks him out so badly that he ''forces a man watching TV to unwatch it''. In the episode "[=SpongeBob=], You're Fired", he decides [=SpongeBob=] is redundant and lets him go...to save ''five cents'' on his budget. And when [[LethalChef Krabs' attempt at stepping into SpongeBob's shoes is a complete disaster]] and [[LaserGuidedKarma nearly forces him to close the restaurant]], he re-hires [=SpongeBob=]... but [[IgnoredEpiphany installs a coin-operated lock on the bathroom]] so he, Squidward and all customers now need to pay five cents every time they need to go.