History Main / TreasureIsBiggerInFiction

* ''[[WesternAnimation/TheAdventuresOfJimmyNeutronBoyGenius'': One episode has Jimmy and friends making use of ''boulder-sized, polished, and cut diamonds'' they found sticking out of a mountain face...

* Although they aren't the conventional looking diamonds, the sankhara stones in ''Film/IndianaJonesAndTheTempleOfDoom'', Indy is on the search for three historical stones, all about 10 inches long.
* ''Film/TheMummyReturns'' has a pyramid topped with an approximately man-sized diamond. At the end, Jonathan grabs it while suspended from a dirigible, though its weight should realistically be enough to dislocate his shoulders were he to try such a thing.
* The diamond in ''Film/{{Snatch}}'' has a diameter of about 4-5 centimetres (1.6 inches) and weighs 86 carats. Notably, everyone in the film who knows anything about jewelry makes a ''huge'' deal about its size.
* The Russian comedy ''Ширли-мырли'' (Shirly-Myrly; meaningless gibberish often said by one of the characters) is centered around a diamond so big, that once sold, it can solve all the economical problems of Russia '''and''' allow a three year vacation for its entire population.
* ''Film/TheDarkKnight'': Alfred mentions "a ruby the size of a tangerine" as one of the precious stones the bandit he fought in UsefulNotes/ThatSouthEastAsianCountry had stolen and thrown away. We never actually see it though, so it's entirely possible he was exaggerating.
* In ''Film/MissFisherAndTheCryptOfTears'', the MacGuffin is the 'Eye of God': an emerald approximately the size of a loaf of bread.
* The McGuffin of ''Film/MoonZeroTwo'' turns out to be a sci-fi twist on this trope: An asteroid composed entirely of sapphire, which the BigBad plans to crash into the Moon to make it easier to harvest. The protagonist's LoveInterest immediately points out that trying to ''do'' anything with it would leave sapphires [[WorthlessYellowRocks "worth as little as coloured glass"]], which would defeat the whole point of the multiple crimes he's committed to get his hands on it, but it turns out the villain's motive is a bit more complicated than simple GoldFever: [[spoiler: Sapphire makes a very good thermal insulator, and dropping its price would reduce the manufacturing costs for spacecraft engines enough to make further interplanetary colonisation feasible... and the villain intends for every single one of those new colonies to belong to him.]]
* Rose in ''Film/{{Titanic|1997}}'' wears the 'Heart of the Ocean', a large blue gemstone.

* In ''[[VideoGame/HenryStickminSeries Stealing the Diamond]]'', the titular diamond Henry plots to steal is as big as him and can be used to knock out a guard by simply [[DeathFromAbove dropping it on his head]]. Additionally, certain routes in ''Infiltrating the Airship'' and ''Completing the Mission'' have him steal a ruby and an emerald respectively, both of which are just as big as the aforementioned diamond.

* {{Averted}} in ''Series/{{Castle}}'' Season 6, Episode 8, "A Murder Is Forever", in which the group finds a diamond about as big as a man's palm, and spend a big chunk of the rest of the episode trying to find out how such an absurdly large diamond could exist without the entire world knowing. [[spoiler: It turns out to be the prototype of a breakthrough technique that can synthesize flawless diamonds of any size, rendering diamond mines superfluous.]]

* The ''Franchise/SuperMarioBros'' series has coins as tall as small Mario. Lots of games also feature special coins, such as those with Yoshi's likeness, which are larger than even large Mario.
* ''VideoGame/LaMulana'' has coins as large as Lemeza himself.
%%* In the NES game called ''Noah's Ark'', there were some large coins.
%%* ''Mighty Bomb Jack''
%%* ''Magic Sword''
* ''VideoGame/DuckTales'': Every treasure (all worth $1 million) at the end of every level is huge, even giant coins.
* ''Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda'', [[JustForFun/TropeOverdosed naturally]]. Rupees are as large as Link's sprite in the original game, as well as several handheld games. Recent games have most rupees represented as slightly smaller, although the large-denomination rupees still closely match Adult!Link for size.

* Pennies in ''VideoGame/TheBindingOfIsaac'' are half as large as the PlayerCharacter. Penny trinkets go beyond that, being Isaac's height and as thick as one of his eyes.
* ''VideoGame/DensetsuNoStafy3'' has absolutely massive blue jewels in the Undersea Ruins, which VideoGame/{{Wario}} nabs for himself whenever you encounter them. They later turn out to be the key to unlocking a door further on in the ruins.

* The picture above is from the ''WesternAnimation/PinkPanther'' short ''Pink Ice''.

* In the ''{{WesternAnimation/Futurama}}'' episode "Where the Buggalo Roam", the native Martians' ancestors traded the entire western hemisphere of Mars to Amy Wong's ancestor for what the current Martians believe is a single worthless bead. In the climax of the episode, when Kif is about to be crushed to death by the "bead" for accidentally insulting the Martians, Fry and Leela remark that the "worthless bead" is actually a gigantic diamond the size of a car. The Native Martians then realize that they thought that their ancestors were swindled because they had no concept of ownership, which is not the case with the contemporary Native Martians after Amy suggests they just trade the land back:

* One episode of ''[[WesternAnimation/TheAdventuresOfJimmyNeutronBoyGenius Jimmy Neutron]]'' has Jimmy and friends making use of ''boulder-sized, polished, and cut diamonds'' they found sticking out of a mountain face...

* Since Wario is obsessed with money, nearly every game in the ''VideoGame/WarioLand'' and ''VideoGame/WarioWare'' series has very large pieces of treasure.

** In the "Diamond Dig" microgame in ''VideoGame/WarioWare Inc.: Mega Microgame$'' for GBA, Wario drops into a recess in the ground to land behind a diamond as big as his head.

* [[EnforcedTrope Enforced]] in ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'', though bordering on AcceptableBreaksFromReality. In the earliest editions, every single coin, whether copper, silver, gold or whatever, weighed 1/10th of a pound, supposedly to allow for Smaug-sized treasure hordes. With more realistically-sized coins, such a horde would easily break the game if the players were allowed to keep it as treasure. And even in later editions, coins weigh 1/50th of a pound.[[note]]For reference, more historically plausible coins would weigh somewhere around 1/200th of a pound[[/note]]

* ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfKyrandia'' has the Kyragem, a powerful magical artifact. It is roughly as wide as a regular kitchen table and set into the ground. May not count since not only is it a powerful magical artifact, it's the powerful magical artifact that's the source of all the magic in the kingdom.

* Diamonds in ''VideoGame/StardewValley'' are nearly the size of your head. They sell for enough money to buy two and a half cups of coffee, or five bags of corn seed.

* ''VideoGame/HenryStickminSeries'' features three gemstone {{MacGuffin}}s just smaller than the characters bodies; namely the Tunisian Diamond, Romanian Ruby, and Norwegian Emerald.

* {{Averted}} in ''Series/WhiteCollar'' season 6, where one of the [[MacGuffin MacGuffins]] is a diamond the size of a child's fist, which looks ridiculously puny compared to a standard prop diamond. It's one of the greatest treasures in the world.

* In ''Radio/TheHitchHikersGuideToTheGalaxy'', Arthur, Trillian, Ford and Zaphod are detained in Margathea's planetary catalogue. In full artificial reality, they experience the dizzying range of worlds Magrathea can custom-build for the rich and tasteless. One is made of pure gold with beaches of diamond sand studded with huge diamonds. Zaphod tries to stuff his pockets until he is reminded there is no point, it's all artificial reality.

* In ''Videogame/WorldOfWarcraft'', everything tends to have exaggerated proportions for stylistic reasons, so all gemstones follow this trope, but the most extreme example is [[http://www.wowpedia.org/Oshu%27gun Oshu'gun,]] a ''mountain''-sized diamond that was originally a sort of magical dimension-traveling spaceship.

* ''Videogame/DeepRockGalactic:'' Of course, the gems in question are all fictional, but the ones that come as single chunks of raw gemstone come in the form of ''enormous'' chunks as tall as the dwarves that mine them and half as thick. And so does the occasional nugget of pure gold, of about the same size. And the gold veins look quite large and pure, letting you carve out several kilograms each (or a literal ton or two if you defeat a [[PinataEnemy Crassus Detonator]]). Perhaps justified, in that Hoxxes IV is explicitly identified as the richest planet in the galaxy in terms of riches to be found; that's why you're there, after all. You're just the first to try because it's also a DeathWorld of high caliber.

* ''VideoGame/HenryStickminSeries'' features three gemstone [[MacGuffin MacGuffins]] just smaller than the characters bodies; namely the Tunisian Diamond, Romanian Ruby, and Norwegian Emerald.

* Although they aren't the conventional looking diamonds, the sankhara stones in ''Film/IndianaJonesandtheTempleofDoom'', Indy is on the search for three historical stones, all about 10 inches long.

* The titular green jewel in ''Film/TheJewelOfTheNile'' that Joan and Jack find on their cross-country treasure hunt.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Minecraft}}'', you can make tools out of diamond.

* ''VideoGame/DangerousDave'', what big gems do your games have.

** You should see the [[VideoGame/DuckTales NES game]], where every treasure (all worth $1 million) at the end of every level is huge, even giant coins.

* The biggest diamonds in the universe are located in the white dwarf stars with carbon cores. Technically they're enormous single diamonds, but good luck mining them...
** Also, it's unlikely that they actually look like jewels, despite having diamond composition - most of the diamonds used in diamond-edged blades, among other things, look rather like gray dust to a bare eye.
** Additionally, there's the planet PSR J1719-1438 b, which is probably a diamond the size of Jupiter.

* The largest rough gem-quality diamond ever discovered, the Cullinan, was about four inches long and weighed over a pound (3106.75 carats before cutting). After cutting, the largest stone of the Cullinan, the ''Great Star of Africa'' was 530.4 carats. The ''Koh-i-Noor,'' literally "Mountain of Light," was once the largest known, but as it was first cut thousands of years ago in India, nobody is sure how big it originally was, and the British Crown had it recut down to only 105.6 carats. Both reside in the UK Crown Jewels today. The largest cut diamond today is the Golden Jubilee, at 545 carats, though the Golden Jubilee was smaller than the Cullinan in the rough, its shape was better for cutting into a single large stone.

* In the NES game called ''Noah's Ark'', there were some large coins.
* ''Mighty Bomb Jack''
* ''Magic Sword''
* ''VideoGame/DuckTales'' games often have some large rings to collect.

** Link also holds ''everything'' up, and it's ''exactly'' the size of Link's sprite.

* The world's largest [[http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKN0328796820070503 gold coin]] is the size of a large pizza. And the weight of a large man. Its face value is ''[[ZillionDollarBill one million dollars]]''.

** Carbon-rich planets in general would likely contain thick layers of underground diamond due to the heating and compression of their carbon crusts. If tectonic pressures subsequently lifted these layers above the surface, such planets could potentially have mountains of diamond. However, as noted these would not necessarily look [[AllNaturalGemPolish shiny.]]

Next time you get a chance, pop into your local jewelry store and take a look at the gems. Notice anything about them? They're all ''tiny'', on the order of the size of a pinhead. If you pried every stone in the place loose from its setting and piled them up, the entire heap would probably fit in a soup pot. (And then you would be arrested, but that's beside the point.)

* ''VideoGame/BoulderDash'' and ''VideoGame/{{Repton}}''

* ''Literature/ArtemisFowl'' has Artemis extort one ton of gold from the fairies. However, its weight is irrelevent as it's brought in on a hover trolley.

* ''VideoGame/JakAndDaxterThePrecursorLegacy'' takes this UpToEleven with a gemstone the size of a good-sized house. The miners digging it out are [[DidntThinkThisThrough not actually sure how they're going to transport it even once they have]], but figure they have a good decade or so of digging to contemplate the problem, so why bother?

Next time you get a chance, pop into your local jewelry store and take a look at the gems. Notice anything about them? They're all ''tiny'', on the order of the size of a pinhead. If you pried every stone in the place loose from its setting and piled them up, the entire heap would probably fit in a soup pot. [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome (And then you would be arrested, but that's beside the point.)]]