Gold Digger

What a coincidence!^note The woman is Elena Belle; the guy is probably just a fan.

"She take my money when I'm in need.
Yeah, she's a triflin' friend indeed.
Oh, she's a gold digger way over town
That digs on me."

— Kanye West ft. Jamie Foxx, "Gold Digger"

This is a character who hooks up with a rich partner (known as a Meal Ticket or Sugar Daddy), specifically to mooch off of said partner's money and status (usually in exchange for sex).

The digger is typically (but not always) female in modern shows, and often much more attractive than her partner — in earlier eras, gold diggers often were men seducing rich heiresses, who then took advantage of the fact that laws of the time often stated that the man of the house controlled the finances, even when it was the wife's money. This may also overlap with All Women Are Prudes, resulting in the idea that the only reason women ever have sex is to gain access to a man's money and/or get men to buy them things, while the only reason men even bother to make money in the first place is so that they can have sex with lots of hot women. If this character does enjoy sex for its own sake, she still doesn't necessarily want it from her husband, as it's not unknown for a Gold Digger to marry a man who can provide for her and then to sate her urges on the side with men to whom she's more genuinely attracted.

They usually get Distracted by the Luxury quite easily. Generally stunningly beautiful, to explain her success. Often a blonde whose hair is dyed. Once able to spend his money, she will be conspicuous about it. Expect lots of evening dresses and jewelry. Many a gold digger would be happy to marry a man who is old or in bad health, just so long as he'd be so kind as to leave at least some of his inheritance to his spouse when he dies. If he doesn't seem likely to die any time soon and the Gold Digger isn't also a Black Widow, she may instead seek to screw him over in a divorce settlement.

This is Older Than Steam and a subtrope of Sleeping Their Way to the Top. Compare Rich Suitor, Poor Suitor. Compare Only Cares About Inheritance, which this trope overlaps with if a person is only married to someone because of the inheritance that they'll receive. Compare Friendship Bribe for a more PG-version of this trope, as those who go for said bribe are usually gold diggers. See also Trophy Wife, although the two don't always overlap. Sometimes overlaps with Coattail-Riding Relative. Often overlaps with Beauty Breeds Laziness. There's also a degree of overlap with The Schlub Pub Seduction Deduction, when an unattractive guy is unable to figure out that the hot woman is only coming on to him for ulterior motives. The cardinal sin of the Gold Digger is Greed, though Lust and Gluttony (of the materialistic variety) also figure in.

For the opposite type of character, who definitely does not want the rich beau's money, see Not with Them for the Money. Contrast Marry for Love. In a Love Interest vs. Lust Interest scenario, this character often acts as the "Lust" Interest in contrast to the "Love Interest", who doesn't care about money. A Fair-Weather Ex is often on of these. In Love with Looks can be considered the looks based equivalent of this trope.

Important Note: A gold digger is almost never a Housewife. While both of them stay home, the gold digger has expensive tastes and refuses to dirty her hands. That's what maids are for. Children and family are almost never part of her priorities, unless she aims to use The Baby Trap to secure a marriage with (or child support from) her Meal Ticket. And if she does have children by him, don't expect her to be a very hands-on mother. That's what nannies are for. The Housewife on the other hand, even though she may live off her husband's paycheck, will concern herself with running the home and raising the kids, money and luxury usually not being in her repertoire other than as byproducts.

For the comic book series, see Gold Digger. For the people who make a living actually digging up gold, see Prospector. Also has nothing with the other kind of gold digging.

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Ballads

• In Child Ballad 62 Fair Annie, Annie's long-term lover — and the father of her many children — goes to marry another woman for her dowry. When the bride arrives, she hears Annie's lament and reveals that Annie is her kidnapped sister; she makes over her own dowry to her, so she can marry him.
• In Child Ballad The Lord of Lorn and the False Steward, the Duke of France offers a rich dowry with his daughter. The false steward posing as the young Lord of Lorn takes it without comment; it is the true lord who declares that he wants to marry the daughter more than the gold.
• In Child Ballad 73 Lord Thomas and Annet, Lord Thomas, on his family's advice, marries for money.
  The nut-browne bride haes gowd and gear,
  Fair Annet she has gat nane;
  And the little beauty Fair Annet haes
  O it wull soon be gane.

Comic Books

• Archie Comics: In the four-part special "Veronica in Germany", said heiress travels to said country to visit her distant relatives, including her cousin Elke, who is engaged to a man named Wolf. Even though they are set to be married, Wolf suddenly becomes too interested in Veronica when she reveals her father's massive wealth and empire, arousing her suspicions when he starts taking her on private outings just the two of them while leaving his "beloved" fiancée at home. In the end, Veronica's suspicions are right, as Wolf breaks up with Elke after they fight over his over-friendliness with her cousin, and immediately jumps to romancing a Greek heiress.
• Asterix: Subverted. Mrs. Geriatrix is much younger than her husband, but he isn't particularly rich. Their marriage is happy, but there is always the status of being married to the oldest man in the village.
• Astro City: Charles Williams' wife Darnice from the "Dark Ages" story arc. She flirts with anyone who has money, spends his earnings on personal luxuries, even encourages him to take bribes as a way to supplement their income, then leaves him when he refuses to be a Dirty Cop.
• Disney Ducks Comic Universe:
  • Subverted with Scrooge's love interest Brigitta McBridge: She sometimes looks like one, but she's actually a formidable businesswoman in her own right and genuinely loves Scrooge.
  • In one storyline where Donald managed to steal Scrooge's wealth using Gladstone's luck, he's flocked by a pair of these as he held massive party in his new mansion with other businessmen and socialites to showcase his newfound wealth. Surprisingly for this trope, they left Donald not when Scrooge managed to retake his money, but when he shows his utter incompetence of managing his new wealth by making half of Duckburg goes on blackout so he will not be bothered by the paper works.
• Spider-Man: One of Doctor Octopus's old schemes was a variation. During his feud with the mobster Hammerhead, he actually proposed to Peter's Aunt May, not because she was wealthy (which she wasn't) but because she had unknowingly inherited an atomic plant that he wanted. Of course, Spider-Man got involved, the scheme culminating in a three-way fight between him, Doc Ock, and Hammerhead, the plant's destruction, and Ock becoming a destitute vagrant for a while.
• In Drowntown, Gina Cassel doesn't care that her courier business doesn't bring her riches, and refuses help from her rich boyfriend, Vincent Drakenberg, on the grounds that she wants to keep her independence. This view is not shared by her partner in the business, Izzy, who tries to seduce Vincent herself. It doesn't work (or perhaps we just haven't seen it yet, since Izzy certainly seems to have prospered in the time since Gina's supposed death).
• Fables features two male examples.
  • One of Jack's get rich quick schemes was to become a hero of the Civil War and then marry into a wealthy Southern family.
  • Prince Charming makes his living mooching off his conquests, and attempts to renew his relationship with Briar Rose when he learns she has a blessing that keeps her wealthy.
• Katmandu: The furry comic had a story where a villainous fortune hunter is about to marry the daughter of a rich man with every intent of sponging off him. Fortunately, a woman he cheated before has a friend who's a tailor and also a magician, who places a magic spell in his wedding suit to make him blab at the altar that he's only marrying the girl for her father's money. While the father is about to beat up the villain, the bride runs away in tears, but cheers up immediately when she runs into a very nice boy.
• A Krazy Kat comic had Ignatz finding out that Krazy stands to inherit a lot of money. He immediately begins to woo Krazy with poetry, candy, and mandolin music. When he finds out that Krazy isn't inheriting the money after all—and simultaneously gets billed for all the candy and poems—he returns to his usual practice of pelting Krazy with bricks, much to the Kat's relief.
• Maus: Money seems like a probable reason for Vladek leaving the poor Lucia Greenberg for the wealthy Anja Zylberberg — although they do eventually truly fall in love.
• ORPHANIMO!!: Ursula is one. She married (and divorced) Vallalkozo at some point prior to the series, and tries to marry Zemeckis only for their money. She even complains to her cat that Zemeckis should be spoiling her.
• Red Sonja meets Laranda-fa, the Empress Dowager, who was a lowly if beautiful commoner before she married the emperor. Soon after the emperor was dead and Laranda-fa was free to spend his money and wield his power.
• Ruby Elizabeth De Longe from an issue of The Sandman (1989) is a particularly ambitious and cynically calculating example of this trope. Not content with merely finding a good Meal Ticket, she's determined to basically marry into Fiction 500. She had resolved to remain a virgin until this happened, and in the past, she dumped a guy who she really liked after doing a routine credit check on him and deciding that he wasn't wealthy enough. In the end, her determination is in vain, as she burns to death in a hotel room, still not rich, and still single.
• Several of the female criminals confronting The Spirit classify as such.
  • The prime example is P'Gell. Her usual modus is to find a shady rich guy, work her wiles, get married to the same, and have the guy either disappear or get busted.
  • Silk Satin, who turns more or less legit when she finds her missing daughter Hilde.

Comic Strips

• Blondie (1930): Yes, that Blondie. Dagwood Bumstead, though you'd never know it to look at him today, started off as the rich and privileged heir to the Bumstead fortunes. His family cut him out of the will when he married Blondie Boopadoop(!), whom they believed to be a gold digger. To be fair, they might not have been entirely wrong at the time. The strip is called "Blondie", though Dagwood is clearly the more comedic character today, because originally it was about Blondie the flapper girl's crazy antics, with her then-boyfriend Dagwood playing straight man. After they got married and found themselves suddenly middle-class (at best), Blondie underwent a lot of character development.

Fairy Tales

• "Good Day, Fellow! Axe Handle!": The ferryman's wife abandons his disabled husband as soon as he runs out of money.
• Franz Xaver von Schönwerth's "Nine Bags Of Gold": Marie turns an arranged marriage down because she was warned that her father's proposed suitor will squander her money and then he will abandon her. Subverted, since the man is financially well-off but he would still mooch off her.

Fan Works

• Another Time, Another Place, Another Story:
  • Subverted with Liu Qingge. The Shen family first suspects him from preying on their sickly, isolated third son to escape his poverty-stricken background, but he genuinely was unaware of Shen Yuan's wealth and is actually embarrassed by the prospect of asking anything his friend could give him.
  • Played entirely straight with Chen Baozhai. She's dating several men at once in order to maximimize the gifts she mooches off them, and decides to seduce Shen Yuan when she learns how wealthy his family is.
• Ask the Famous 8! has an interesting gender inverted double subversion with Gordon I. He originally married in order to expand his own wealth, but he changed his mind after he began feeling unconditional love for a Chinese woman, Lily Lu. After Lily's death giving birth to his son Gordon II, he reverted back to his old ways. At present, he is married to Lady Carmine Redferne, who hails from an even wealthier family, and has faint connections to The British Royal Family.
• In By Royal Command, Twilight Sparkle gets depressed because she fears that anypony who'd show romantic interest in her would only do so because of her new princess status. When Rainbow Dash suggests that she could just take matters into her own hooves and pick a pony who won't care about such things, Twilight sets her sights on the one pony in Equestria guaranteed not to think highly of her for her new status: her self-appointed rival, Trixie.
• Christian Weston Chandler in Survivor: Kujira-Jima has Cass, who proudly admits in her first line of dialogue that she mooches large sums of money off of her boyfriend instead of finding gainful employment.
• Earth and Sky: Prince Blueblood marries Diamond Tiara strictly so that he can have access to her wealth (having squandered his own). In a possible subversion, she's well aware of this, as she only married him to gain power and prestige.
• This is somewhat deconstructed in Flam Gush with Lady Monara. She's the sister of a wealthy merchant who badgered him into buying a noble title and then married herself off to a noble looking for a second wife (and step-mother for his daughter). Her marriage ends when another relative pulls a coup, and she has to flee back to her brother with her step-daughter in tow. Then she engineers another marriage for her brother, which is what gives the villains of the story the chance to act.
• In the Bleak Midwinter (TheLoud): When Tom gets to know the Prewetts a little, he suspects that they have invested a great deal of their modest resources (being only a branch family) in their daughter's appearance. The results are mixed; she falls for a wealthy and titled Muggle, which certainly wasn't part of their plans.
  Tom respected that investment plan. The payoff was potentially large, for a relatively small initial outlay.
• Averted in the Winx Club part of The Infinite Loops: Diaspro thinks that Bloom is one due to how her romance with Sky started out, and that's what led her to do what she did attempting to save Sky and their homeworld from her. What's worse, from a royal's point of view her reasoning is sound enough that Stella and Aisha flat-out admit they would think the same had they not seen what actually happened...
• The Weasleys in Knowledge is Power are only interested in Harry so they can get their hands on his Gringotts vault, despite being far too proud to take his money in canon.
• Learning To Bloom: All her life Weiss has dealt with guys who just want her because she's rich. When she falls for Neptune, Weiss thinks he's different, but it's implied that he's also into her for her name. He tries to get her to pay for their first lunch together under the excuse that he left his wallet in his dorm (only for him to "realize" he had it on him the entire time upon Weiss deciding to leave early). Neptune also likes bragging about dating Weiss, which makes her feel like a Trophy Wife. This quickly leads Weiss into falling out of her infatuation with him.
• Limefrost Spiral in Manehattan's Lone Guardian is noted as being one of these. She's already doing well financially, but she wants to do even better by marrying someone richer than she is. Unfortunately, her status as a Grade-A ditz renders her terrible at it, as she's yet to even start a first date, though not for a lack of trying.
• The Many Dates of Danny Fenton:
  • Vicky from The Fairly OddParents! goes on the 13th date with Danny, only to ditch him when she finds out he isn't rich.
  • Bonnie Rockwaller from Kim Possible becomes this to Danny in the fifth alternate ending, trying to steal him from Kim after his identity as Danny Phantom is revealed and she wants a rich boyfriend. His love for Kim and Bonnie originally dismissing him as a geek makes his disinterest clear.
• Lila tries to do this with Damian in many Maribat AU fics, only to fail miserably because of this trope and his love for Marinette.
• In many Miraculous Ladybug Post-Chameleon salt fics, Lila is portrayed as this, as she is only interested in being with Adrien because she wants the wealth, fame, and power that comes with being an Agreste. She also accuses Marinette of being this in order to make her look bad.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fandom:
  • Character Fleur Dis Lee is either this or that to many fans and their fanfics. She is a young, model-like mare with a knack for posing who is seen hanging around (and clinging onto) the obviously much older aristocrat Fancy Pants.
  • Some fans also interpreted Rarity as one during the events of The Best Night Ever and actually sympathized with the rather charmless Prince Blueblood. There's even a fan theory that Blueblood is normally a nice guy (or at least not that bad) but acts like an ass around women he thinks are only interested in him for this reason to drive them away.
• The New Retcons:
  • Frank Day and Stan Watson both end up viewing the woman that would become Elly Patterson as this, with some of The Baby Trap thrown in for good measure in Stan's case.
  • Kortney Krelbutz starts out as this, dating and getting engaged to John Patterson (although there's a revenge element in it as well, since Elly didn't stand up for her when she was fired). She realizes she's fallen in love with him when he defends her against Connie.
• Not the intended use (Zantetsuken Reverse): Leon's first wife married him because she was under the impression he was rich due to being a Barron. Unfortunately for her, Leon had already given up his title by that point and was broke, so she left him.
• The Pieces Lie Where They Fell: In the sequel Picking up the Pieces, Night Blade's brother Deep Blade mentions that he's had to deal with a few who wanted to marry into his family (who are nobles and thus rather wealthy and influential), and tried to manipulate him into making a relationship permanent. This is a big part of why he has a personal lawyer, to deal with ponies like that.
• In Stabilization, Paolo's initial motive in asking for Amelia's hand is, indeed, like she suspects both here and in canon, her enormous fortune. What she doesn't know is that he doesn't want the money for himself – he plans to use it for the needs of Genoa.
• In the That's So Raven fic Support, Raven temporarily dated a girl who used her for presents and money. Raven doesn't mind fawning over lovers, but she found her to be annoyingly clingy. After less than a month, Raven separated from her by "forgetting" to tell her that she changed her phone number.
• Unbreakable Red Silken Thread: Heather's mother is this played straight, and people sometimes mistake Heather for this until they find out she's actually the one with more money.
• Subverted in Unexpected Surprise. Gabriel questions Marinette about who her daughter's father is, pointing out that she might be denied a promotion if she doesn't tell. When she still refuses, he drops the matter and promotes her anyway, satisfied that there are no Gold Digger intentions. He knows who the father is by then, but she does not.
• Universe Falls features an example of gold-digging by proxy; when Stan finds out a girl has feelings for Dipper in "Mismatched Making", he laughs it off as a joke. Then he finds out the girl in question is Pacific Northwest, heir to the uber-rich founding family of Gravity Falls, and realizes this is a chance for his family to be connected to wealth.
• With This Ring: Hephaestus and Aphrodite never wanted to be married, but Zeus commanded it. She essentially ignored it and had a series of affairs, predominantly with Ares. However, when Hephaestaean defeats Zeus and Ares, and takes the throne, Aphrodite turns up and suddenly wants to make their marriage work (which would, naturally, make her Queen of Olympus). He turns her down, and issues the divorce that Zeus wouldn't grant.
• With this Ring... (Green Lantern): When detective Jonny Double is hired to investigate Hal Jordan and Carol Ferris' disappearance, his first theory is Hal wanted Carol's money, and her father disapproved of their relationship.
  The case seemed simple enough. Carol Ferris had run off with her lover, this hotdog test pilot. Her for love, him for money. Carl Ferris didn't want the guy's hands in his wallet. Maybe. But maybe it wasn't that simple.
• Your Alicorn Is in Another Castle: From "Convectional Errors", one of the things that 'Prince' Vladimir Blueblood is immune to:
  for it turned out that even those generally willing to put up with near-endless demeaning in order to gain access to some level of wealth had their limits.

Films — Animated

• Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget: Dr. Fry has a fortune and lots of land, but Mrs. Tweedy claims she actually fell in love with his mind... which, along with the other resources, provides the means to enact a lucrative business plan. She's also seen putting the moves on her prospective business partner Reginald Smith, targeting him as a future husband once Fry is no longer useful to her.
• Cinderella:
  • Lady Tremaine is a potential gold digger in that there is a conspiracy theory that she may have murdered Cinderella's father, and may have even done the same to her first husband, and Cinderella's biological mother. This idea is brought forward even further in Cinderella III: A Twist in Time, because Lady Tremaine dismisses Anastasia's dicovery of what love is by saying that love isn't necessary when they can have power, which likely means that she just married first Anastasia and Drizella's father, and later Cinderella's widowed father for their wealth and power and disposed of them once they'd outlived their usefulness. You can't help but wonder what Lady Tremaine might have done if she had succeeded in marrying one of her two biological daughters to the prince, and worse still, what she may have done if she'd managed to dispose of both Cinderella and Anastasia, after her younger daughter had refused to marry the Prince.
• Corpse Bride:
  • The Van Dorts and the Everglots are rather untraditional examples: both families are pushing their children into an Arranged Marriage to get at something the other family has. The Van Dorts want to marry into the aristocratic Everglot family so they can escape the stigma of being Nouveau Riche. The Everglots wish to use the Van Dorts' newfound wealth to restore their diminished fortune.
  • Lord Barkis Bittern is a more typical — and murderous — example, wooing wealthy women so that he can kill them and steal their money.
• The Curse of the Were-Rabbit: Victor Quartermaine. He's already a rich nobleman, but he was wooing Lady Tottington solely for her money.
• Frozen: Hans only wants to marry Anna so that he can later murder her and her sister, take over Arendelle, and turn it into a dictatorship. All because he's 13th in line for his kingdom's throne, and really hates his family (a later tie-in novel, though, gives him a believable Freudian Excuse).
• Gay Purr-ee: The money-obsessed Meowrice advises his henchcats to marry out of love... for money.
• The Queen's Corgi: At first, attractive female cocker spaniel Wanda is interested in Tyson because of his high social status among the other dogs, then switches to supporting Rex as soon as she finds out he's royalty. However, it's implied she genuinely falls in love with him by the end of the film.
• Robotomy: "From Wretchneya with Love": A variant. Shoxana is an attractive woman who meets lonely men on the internet, sweet-talks them into marrying her, and then ghosts the reception in order to steal the wedding presents and run away.
• Shark Tale: Lola the seductive lionfish. In her intro scene, she even calls herself superficial and dismisses Oscar calling him "cute, but a nobody." The Ludacris and Bobby V song "Golddigger" even plays over in the scene. When Oscar becomes the Sharkslayer, Lola is immediately interested in him and begins dating him, much to Angie's jealousy and dismay. When Oscar finishes a Sharkslayer stunt, Lola forcefully kisses him in front of the cameras, causing Angie to leave in jealousy, anger, and sadness. When Angie confesses Oscar her love for him, Oscar rethinks his feelings and dumps Lola -— which, unfortunately, leads to her great fury as she mercilessly slams him against the windows. Lola then arranges Don Lino to kidnap Angie, even gleefully threatening her life if Oscar doesn't comply.
  Lola: You know, Sharkslayer. There's only one thing I like better than money: Revenge!
• Strange Magic: Roland, who's only marring Marianne because she's the princess and he wants the armies that come with it.
• Top Cat and the Beverly Hills Cats: Kitty Glitter, who hears T.C. is rich and promptly agrees to try and woo him (as part of Snerdly's plan to distract him from protecting Benny). At the end of the film, when she learns T.C.'s actually broke, she instantly drops him and drives off, having no interest in a non-wealthy cat.
• Turning Red: Ming believes the character Siu-Jyu in the Jade Palace Diaries to be this.
  Ming: She's just using him to get to the throne.

Jokes

• A man wanted to mow the lawn but it was so hot he entertained the idea of doing it naked. When he asked his wife what the neighbors would think if they saw him naked, she said they'd think she married him for money.
• This little ditty:
  "He was rich and old, and she
  Was twenty-two or twenty-three.
  She gave him fifteen years to live
  The only thing she meant to GIVE."
• There is a joke about a millionaire who asks his friend whether his chances to marry a young girl will improve if he'll tell her he's sixty instead of seventy five. The friend points out ninety three is a safer bet.
• A joke where a woman who broke off her engagement tries writing back to her lover:
  Dear John,
  I have been unable to sleep since I broke off our engagement. Won't you forgive and forget? Your absence is breaking my heart. I was a fool, nobody can take your place. I love you.
  All my love,
  Belinda. xxxxoooxxxx
  P.S. Congratulations on winning this week's lottery.
• Two women are chatting in a bar when one of them sees her ex and waves to him. The man doesn't even respond. She gets huffy and says "Well! I made him a millionaire, and that's the respect he shows me!" "How'd you make him a millionaire?" "He was a billionaire when we started dating."
• A rich playboy son-of-a-tycoon is trying to flirt with a pretty girl, boasting that his father is 100 and in ill health, ready to die anytime soon, and being the only child he's entitled to have all the inheritance money, which totals up to multiple billions.
  The girl replies that she'll consider his offer and let him know in a few weeks. A few weeks later, boom, she's now his stepmother.
• Q: What's six inches long, two inches wide, and drives women wild?
  A: Money.

Manhwa

• Pig Bride: Doe Doe Eun. She's a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing who plays to the male lead's preference for unthreatening women so she can marry up in society. Late in the story, we learn her birth mother actually got her adopted by an upper-class family so that Doe Doe could then marry very well.

Podcasts

• S-Town: Tyler accuses "the cousins" from Florida of being opportunistic, manipulative carpetbaggers who only show up to get John's money from his mother. The cousins, meanwhile, accuse Tyler of being a parasite who has tried to leech off of John's money and good graces. Tyler also literally tries to dig up gold out of John's property after John's suicide.

Radio

• Adventures in Odyssey:
  • It turns out that nearly every member of Wooten Basset's extended family (except his benevolent Christian paternal grandparents) is this, as shown in "Basset Hounds". The episode follows Wooten (and Bernard) as they go to said grandparents' mansion in Alaska, as the grandparents are permanently moving to Africa for mission work and have gathered up the entire family to say good-bye, as well as having made a will. Bernard talks with several of the various family members there, and quickly finds out that the only reason most of them are there is to figure out how much Grandpa Basset is leaving them, even though a large number of them are already pretty wealthy. They even claim to be either Christians and/or active in charities, hoping this will result in Grandpa giving them even more money. When they hear Grandpa's final message to them via video-tape, they even fast-forward all the way to the disbursement. Karma hits them all like a load of bricks when it turns out that Grandpa was fully aware of their money-hungry tendencies despite how filthy-rich they already are and has left them nothing as a result. The only ones who get anything are Wooten ^note who gets a singed dollar bill (which serves as a lesson in how money pales in comparison to the things that are really important) and his grandpa's spinning desk chair and his cousin Wilma ^note who is actually flat broke thanks to the Dot Com Crash that had recently happened at the time as well as her own gold-digging husband running out on her when she lost her money, and was hoping to get extra money by buttering Grandpa up, but has a Heel Realization after a talk with Wooten and tells Grandpa the truth. He takes pity on her and appoints her as the chairwoman of his new charity, with the rest of the money and Grandpa's mansion going to a charity he has started, to everyone else's chagrin.
  • In the early 2016 episode "No Cause for Concern", Wooton's fiance Penny sees whom she thinks is Wooton doing a search for her public records^note Penny was originally introduced in the "Green Ring Conspiracy" Story Arc, during which her art professor, Dr. Jeremiah Trask, was part of a counterfeiting ring in which Penny was also implicated in before testifying against Dr. Trask, only for it to be revealed that it was Wooton's twin brother Wellington that was doing the snooping in order to prove that Penny was a gold digger due to Penny's previous boyfriend having also been wealthy and Penny being in a sizeable amount of debt, only for Wooton to explain that Penny had already told him about those issues.
• Our Miss Brooks: In "Marriage Madness", the butcher's new business partner tries to marry Mrs. Davis for her money. It seems as if he's been often married, starting with the time in school he ran off with his French teacher.
  Miss Brooks: If he had said English teacher, I would have screamed!

Standup Comedy

• Discussed in Whitney Cummings' standup. She says she has very little sympathy for men who complain about gold diggers, since, she points out, the problem can very easily be avoided by dating women who are old and successful enough to have their own gold.
  Maybe stop dating 18-year-olds that need a Kickstarter campaign just to eat dinner. Maybe just date adults, with jobs!

Tabletop Games

• Not a few petty-scale villains of Victorian melodrama, as mentioned in the Forgotten Futures supplement "Victorian Villainy", are some variety of "fortune hunter" who is after the Romantic Lead, who is usually the heiress to some vast fortune that the villain wants to get his greedy hands on.
• Eberron: There was a period where something very much like this was popular amongst elves, who would find a wealthy human in need of a spouse, usually a noble, and marry them, the idea being that since elves live much longer than humans, eventually the elf would inherit. This tapered off when it became widespread knowledge that humans and elves were interfertile, but by then there were already enough half-elves around to sustain themselves as a distinct race.

Theater

• Carmen: Mercédès, during the fortune-telling number, sees herself becoming the wife of a wealthy but senile man — and then, as his widow, inheriting magnificently.
• Craig's Wife: Harriet admits straight up that she married her husband because she wanted a rich household and Mr. Craig had money. Her motives are explained — her father divorced her mother for a second wife, leaving Harriet and her mother and sister with nothing — but she is still a cold and villainous character.
• Large Ham Don Jerome in the opera La Duenna by Roberto Gerhard, though he comes to love his wife and really misses her when she dies.
• In The Grand Duke by Gilbert and Sullivan:
  • Julia agrees to marry Ernest even though she hates him, because he's going to usurp the Grand Duke's throne and she wants to be Grand Duchess. When Ludwig becomes Grand Duke instead she insists on marrying him.
  • Rudolph and Caroline are an unusual example — they're mutual gold-diggers. Each is a rich miser who wants to marry the other in order to become even richer. They are quite frank with each other about this, and while they actually are affectionate to each other, it's clear that this is only because of the money.
• A male version in Hamilton: Angelica Schuyler immediately deduces upon meeting him that Alexander Hamilton is one of these, as he's from a poor no-name family and must marry to gain the status and wealth he needs for his political ambitions. She's attracted to him anyway, but directs him to her sister Eliza, who fell in Love at First Sight with him. He and Eliza genuinely hit it off and have a happy marriage, at least until a certain event involving a pamphlet.
• The 1913 Broadway musical High Jinks has a seductive widow named Adelaide, who sizes up her suitors by their bank accounts.
• In Molière's play The Imaginary Invalid (also translated as The Hypochondriac), Beline, Argan's second wife, is a two-faced woman: she flatters and pampers her husband, but schemes all the time, trying to figure out how to get all his money after his death, and she wants to deprive his two daughters from his first marriage of their share.
• Kiss Me, Kate:
  • Petruchio not only admits outright several times that he only wants Kate's money, but he has an entire song about it.
  • Just to even things out, Lilli Vanessi (not Kate) is planning to marry at least in part for status (in the stage show, her fiancé is a retired General who is intended to be the next Vice-Presidential candidate) or money (in the movie, he's a wealthy Texas cattle baron).
• In A Little Night Music, Mme. Armfeldt, at the end of her life, fondly recalls the profitable dalliances with wealthy aristocrats that allowed her to die a very wealthy woman.
• The Merchant of Venice is full of male versions.
  • Bassanio wants to marry Portia in part because she's wealthy and Portia's father had set up the whole "three caskets" thing to assure that she doesn't get stuck with one. Like everything William Shakespeare, this is up for interpretation. Some productions have Bassanio marrying Portia entirely for her money, some have him marry her because he loves her, with her money an obstacle, and some play around in the space between the two.
  • The text suggests that this is a big part of Lorenzo's interest in marrying Jessica. Depending on the production, it may be more or less obvious.
• Older Than Steam: Petruchio of The Taming of the Shrew says outright that he wants to marry Katherine for her money.
• The Judge in Trial by Jury got his big break in law by courting the "elderly, ugly daughter" of a wealthy attorney to get access to her father's money and connections. Once his career had advanced to the point where he got a judgeship, he dumped her.
• In The Unsinkable Molly Brown, when Molly's father says that she should settle down with a nice Irish-Catholic man, she objects that she only wants to marry "the richest Irish-Catholic next to the Pope." She rejects Johnny's marriage proposals until he has made enough money to satisfy her demands.
• In The Women, Crystal Allen is trying to sleep her way to the top, and replacing Mrs. Haines with herself is not the last step on her social climb.

Theme Parks

• The Haunted Mansion: Constance the ghostly bride married and decapitated about five men for their wealth. In the Attic scene, her smile and the amount of necklaces around her neck on her portrait steadily increases. The last husband was one of the Mansion's owners — the Imagineers specifically modeled his appearance after "George" from the Portrait Room.

Video Games

• Annie of Atelier Annie: Alchemists of Sera Island dreams of falling into a life of easy luxury by "marrying up" before her family sends her lazy rear end off to work as an alchemist. Once she finds out that the prize for her efforts could include the Prince's hand in marriage she becomes incredibly determined.
• Bitlife: You may choose to have your character be this, only marrying people for their money.
• Dragon Age: Origins: A variant occurs within dwarven society. Dwarves have a very strict caste system that determines each dwarf's profession, with casteless dwarves filling the very bottom rung, and ways up are extremely limited- the only sure way to do it is to be named a Paragon for doing something badass that would put you in the history books (the only current Paragon managed to invent an efficient and smokeless fuel, saving dwarves from smoke-related illnesses and increasing productivity, and a historical Paragon mastered the skills of all castes). Female casteless dwarves commonly opt for an easier-but-risky alternative known as "noble hunting", where they seduce a male dwarf noble and have his child. Caste is determined by the same-gender parent, so if the noble hunter has a boy, then that boy is a noble and will be adopted into his father's house along with his mother. The risk factor is that if the baby is a girl, then the mom gains nothing, she's unlikely to catch another noble, and now she's a Struggling Single Mother. The Dwarf Commoner's sister Rica is a noble hunter, though only because she's forced into it by the crime boss her family works for. She can get her happy ending when she gets with Prince Bhelen, who genuinely loves her and intends to marry her, caste-less or not.
• Dragon Quest IV: Maya has expressed interest in richer men regardless of age, drooling at the prospect of swimming in gold.
• Fire Emblem:
  • Charlotte's profile in Fire Emblem Fates states directly that her dream is to "marry into wealth" and that she makes herself look sweet and cute in order to "get men to spoil her." She turns out to be a more benevolent version and possible deconstruction, as she wants the money to support her very poor but beloved Good Parents, uses her Gold Digger facade to mask her deep issues, and if she does get a Love Confession from a wealthy enough guy she'll wonder if she actually likes the guy enough rather than his cash or his Blue Blood, sometimes even rejecting the prospect boyfriend's proposal at first. Furthermore, while being wealthy is a priority, it's not the only criteria she has. If money is the only thing a man has to offer Charlotte (as opposed to being a decent person), she'd rather walk away.
  • Fire Emblem: Three Houses adds Dorothea as another sympathetic case. A former Street Urchin who only escaped poverty by being recruited by an opera troupe, she knows her looks and voice won't last forever and explicitly joined the Academy to get close to a bunch of nobles and possibly find a wealthy husband before she grows old and ends up poor and alone again. So in a violent contrast to the standard, greed-driven examples, she ends up being one of the nicer and more empathic members of the cast... which results in awkward situations sometimes, like when she snaps at Lorenz for his views on prioritizing social status over everything else, only to apologize when he points out she's doing the exact same thing.
• In Data Age's Journey Escape for the Atari 2600, groupies that resemble hearts with legs must be avoided at all costs, as running into them causes you to lose cash.
• In the Kindergarten 2 mission "Flowers for Diana", the protagonist has to hook Alpha Bitch Cindy up with Token Rich Student Felix Huxley in order to get a flower required to complete the mission. After he does so, Cindy will gush over what a "walking goldmine" her new boyfriend is. Of course, Felix himself is a Rich Bastard who's just as nasty as Cindy herself, if not more so, and who only agreed to the whole thing because he thinks having a partner will make him more appealing to potential investors, so there's little sympathy to be had for him.
• Leisure Suit Larry:
  • Fawn in Leisure Suit Larry 1: In the Land of the Lounge Lizards, who dumps Larry after receiving a lot of gifts from him, including a diamond ring.
  • Leisure Suit Larry 7: Love for Sail!: Larry's main Love Interest in the previous game (who was a rich Granola Girl) suddenly turns into this trope after sleeping with Larry. She chains him to the bed and leaves with his wallet. His primary pursuit in this game (Captain Thygh) also turns out to be this, not to mention the Black Widow in the game who hires Larry to off her husband. Of course, neither Thygh nor Larry have any intention for a long-term relationship, but when Larry wins the contest, she refuses to honor her end of the deal until he shows her how much money he has.
• Max Payne 3 has Fabiana Branco, who's way younger than her husband Rodrigo Branco, head of the Branco construction conglomerate. The two have an unspoken arrangement where he gets to parade her around as a Trophy Wife at the various parties he throws to make connections with Sao Paulo's rich and elite while she gets to live it up on her husband's dime in the various parties and nightclubs around the city. It also makes her a Damsel in Distress when she becomes a kidnapping target because of her being married to Rodrigo, who despite knowing that "she does not love (him) for (his) body" still does care about her well-being when she is shanghaied.
• In NBA Ballers: Phenom, Kimberly, the player's ex-girlfriend, is implied to be one; as she left him to get with Hot Sauce after he gets a basketball contract, and only gives him the time of day when he starts making money and connections with Ludacris and some of the NBA players. Luda wisely warns him to stay away from her after she disses you for Hot Sauce a second time, and sets him up with his assistant instead.
• Many of the mistresses in Overlord, particularly Velvet in the first game and Juno in the second. A big part of either game is acquiring enough wealth so that you can afford to decorate your Tower with things that please the mistress. If you buy them all of their particular decorations, you are rewarded with an Optional Sexual Encounter with the mistress.
• In Private Eye Leppin's ex-wife Charlotte's first words to him were "How rich are you?"
• In Ratchet: Deadlocked Courtney Gears gets pissy over her boyfriend Reactor being a Nice Guy and nearly leaves him, only for her to come back to him after he becomes a rich Gladiator.
• Rave Heart: Lady Marselva Zephyr only married Lord Falric Zephyr to gain wealth and political power, and is willing to betray and kill him to get into Count Vorakia Estuuban's good graces.
• The Sims:
  • In The Sims 2, Dina Caliente is implied to be this. She married Michael Bachelor and has the memory of "Married a Rich Sim", and he died before the game started. When the game starts, she's in love with Mortimer Goth, who is also very rich.
  • In The Sims 3 "Gold Digger" is a Lifetime Aspiration. To achieve it, sims have to marry someone worth a certain amount of money, and then have their spouse die and see their ghost.
• Sly Cooper:
  • The Contessa married an aristocrat for his money and estate, then poisoned him a few weeks after the wedding.
  • Penelope fell for Sly, and later Bentley, for the treasures in the Cooper Vault, but when Dr. M put a halt to that, she decided to use Bentley's skills as a money maker instead, which backfires when he finds out and dumps her.
• Lola Tigerbelly, the main Love Interest of The Spellcasting Series. In fact, Ernie has to give her a literal pile of gold to get her attention in the second game. For bonus points, if you play the love song for her on the moodhorn, she hugs a nearby cash register.
• Tales Series:
  • Rutee Katrea from Tales of Destiny, who does it to get her orphanage out of debt.
  • Anise Tatlin from Tales of the Abyss, who is trying to shovel her family out of debt. This does not even vaguely compensate for the fact that she's 13 years old.
• Jo'on Yorigami from Touhou Project is a pestilence goddess who uses her ability to cause Conspicuous Consumption to get people to spend all their money on her, and initially doesn't even care whether the people she steals from can afford to lose what they spend on her.
• Jokichi Yudasei of Yandere Simulator has aspirations of marrying into a wealthy family, which is why he's attracted to the occasional woman who's...less than ideal (namely, Rich Bitch Ritsuko).

Visual Novels

• Ace Attorney:
  • Alita Tiala is a particularly cruel version, as she's not only marrying Wocky Kitalki for his family's money, she's also doing it in the full knowledge that Wocky still carries a bullet near his heart that will kill him sooner rather than later — knowledge she is not sharing with Wocky or his family. She hires Apollo as her fiancé's defense attorney hoping he'll lose, since that would solve a couple of problems for her.
  • Desiree DeLite certainly seems like one at first, as her spending habits cause her husband to become a Phantom Thief just to keep money in her purse, which puts him in a sticky situation since he's afraid if the money stops coming she'll leave him, but she also despises criminals, so if she ever finds out how he's getting the money she'll definitely leave him. However, it turns out that she genuinely loves him, money or not. She doesn't even particularly mind his thievery, since he announces all of his heists in advance unlike the cowardly criminals she hates.
• In Higurashi: When They Cry, Rina Mamiya and her pimp Teppei Hojou plan to scam Rena's father for a large quantity of money, apparently up to at very least one million yen. It never goes well for her, since Rena is so determined to protect herself and her father that she bloodily kills her more than once.
• In Mystic Messenger, Jumin considers all the women his father (an extremely wealthy business tycoon) has dated to be this. It doesn't help that on Jumin's route, his father's current squeeze tries to manipulate him into marrying his son off to her sister to get them to purchase her failed company. Constantly gushing over Jumin's wealth is also one of the most surefire ways for the player character to lose affection points with him.

Web Animation

• AoHaru Manga Library: Types of these characters (usually the female ones) appear a lot as antagonists due to the abundance of stories of Keiichi getting dumped because he's too humble or not having a luxurious lifestyle. When Keiichi is being a Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass, they try to get back to his good graces once he reveals his actual wealth and power, but after seeing their true colors, Keiichi usually rejects them. This gets used so much that the series occasionally plays around with this trope:
  • In this episode, Momoka is a downplayed, sympathetic take of the trope: She genuinely supports Keiichi in his attempt to run the inn (most of the characters in this stage just let Keiichi do all the work for them), but their efforts do not bear fruit and the inn is in the red. This causes her to panic and break up while apologizing. She returns later when Keiichi is able to restore his inn, and after being rejected again, she amicably departs from Keiichi and Yui, admitting her mistake in breaking up in the first place. Notably, throughout the whole video, she is not portrayed as being smugly condescending like the rest of the examples.
  • In this episode, the 'Gold Digger' character Yui, who's usually cast as a heroine in the series. Thus, she instead subverts the trope: She is revealed to have played the villainous Gold Digger archetype because she wants to save her family's factory from debts, and the only way to do it is to marry her and Keiichi's Evil Former Friend while dressing him up as a 'rich elite'. She doesn't want Keiichi to get tangled in her family's debts, so she has to reject him even if she feels bad about it.
• Etra chan saw it!:
  • Yuzuriha tries to get Kuroki's non-existent fortune by marrying him while he's still in a coma.
  • In this story Yuzuriha starts off as one, being born in a dirt-poor family. This is a subversion, however, as she focuses on working hard on her studies in addition to her beauty. While Yuzuriha sets her sights on Tokusa for being rich, she realizes over time that she genuinely likes him.
  • Yuzuriha, who rejected and belittled Tokusa in middle school for being short, tries to get his attention during a middle school reunion after finding out that he became rich. Tokusa quickly rejects her and tells her that he is going to marry Tsutsuji and regrets having a crush on her back then.
  • Hiiragi is a male example. He leeches off of Karin by giving everything that she gave to him to his favorite hostess. He later breaks up with Karin when she refuses to lend him $20,000.
  • Yuzuriha only accepts Hiiragi's marriage proposal because he works in a company with a good salary. After they get married, Yuzuriha forces Hiiragi to change himself for the better. In the end, he manages to meet her expectations and they both are now Happily Married.
• ETU - Animated Stories: Very common on this channel.
  • Irvin's wife Lexi spends his money shopping and partying. After she humiliated him, he decides to make her tattooist write "Gold Digger" on her back.
  • Laurie's boyfriend decides to marry her bridesmaid, Amy, after he found out that she is rich. She rejects him.
• Gossip City:
  • Mikako only married Mouri for his money and had affairs with Masato.
  • Kaori cheated on Sho Hatakeyama with and even married Masa after seeing the latter's expensive-looking wristwatch. When Masa gloated about it, Mr. Hatakeyama revealed that Kaori is actually in massive debt and even borrowed money from the Yakuza. Masa himself reveals he only dated her because he thought she was rich. To top it off, he is told that his company went bankrupt after Mr. Hatakeyama's students investigate and reveal all of his and Kaori's shady dealings.
  • Kana sought to steal Asuka Ugumori's husband Yujiro because he allegedly was rich, despite being married herself. However, when she showed up to the Ugumori household with Yujiro to declare they're going to marry… only for Asuka to reveal that he is just a regular employee and she's the CEO, at least in public appearance since her sons Leon and Mamoru are the ones who run the company. Much to Kana's further dismay, Yujiro recorded everything she said as she refused to leave him alone and sent it to her husband, who divorced her.
• Helluva Boss: In ”Exes And Oohs”, Moxxie and Millie’s shared ex-boyfriend Chaz claims to be a millionaire to convince Moxxie’s father Crimson to arrange a marriage with Moxxie so he can get into ”the family.” However, Blitzo discovers that Chaz is actually so broke that he lives in his car and that he made the whole story up as part of a hair-brained scheme to gain access to Moxxie’s family’s wealth… Except that the homophobic Crimson, who also hates his guts, only agreed to it in order to get his hands on Chaz’s fortune in turn (Which also makes Crimson an example of this trope), which naturally meant that he’d expected Chaz to cough up the money once the wedding was over. This ends up leading to Chaz’s death; When Blitzo and Millie rescue Moxxie from forcefully getting married off and Blitzo reveals the deception to Crimson, the mob boss is furious that Chaz played him for a fool and kills him off-screen.
• I'm Anton!: Terada caught a woman during a fishing crane game. Unfortunately she turned out to be a gold digger and was always making demands to Terada. He broke up with her soon after.
• Kanon's RomCom Mangas: Haruka dumps Naoya after he gets fired from his old company. She coincidentally meets him again after a while when he gets accepted into a new company, leading her to beg him to start over their relationship again.
• Manga Soprano:
  • My sister contacted me and reported that she and my fiancée went to the pool together., Hideko slept with her sister Ram's then-husband thinking he was rich, but dumped him when she realized he was an office worker. Upon learning of Ram's engagement with Kairi, Hideko stalked her and mistook a man who hit on Ram for Kairi, flirting with him the moment she noticed the golden watch around his wrist. However, the man in question was a delinquent playboy who took advantage of Hideko's gloating on the phone to steal her stuff.
  • In My sister took my partner, but the man is actually too dangerous with a bad character..., when Aki fought her sister Haru over the latter's possessions until she set her sights on a portrait. She attempts to steal him from her while thinking he was rich and she could pay her debts, only to find out that the man she stole was an impoverished womanizer named Koda. Furthermore, Haru tells her that the fancy house she lives in was bought with her own money, as she is a qualified accountant.
  • On the eve of the wedding, my fiancée was snatched away by a bratty junior colleague...: When Ram brings up Kinoshita-kun to Shiho after the former was transferred to a subsidiary, the latter woman tells her that she was going out with him because of his title and broke up with him because he was a cheapskate.
  • Bride holds her wedding outdoors in the winter→The groom and all present were outraged...: Maria blurts out she planned her garden wedding without telling Narita and only wanted to marry him for his money. Understandably, a pissed-off Narita cancelled the wedding despite Maria's begging. Afterward, Maria had to quit her company and work three part-time jobs to pay him the alimony and the wedding expenses.
• The Music Freaks: Zoey is a classic example of this, as she both used Drew for money while they were dating and cheated on him with a Sugar Daddy.
• Otakebi: Bob's brothers' girlfriends only date them only for their money, they dump them immediately after finding out their boyfriends have less money than they expected from $150,000 of the inheritance money left by their father.
• Reina's room: Lisa dumped her boyfriend Kumamoto for his friend Kouichi, who is an elite college student and richer than him. This drives Kumamoto to study harder and becomes more successful, Lisa begs Kumamoto to take her back and lies about Kouichi being abusive, only for both men to record her begging and expose her on the wedding day.
• RomCom Manga Chan: Some episodes have Kent's previous girlfriend/wife/fiancee dump him for being poor or otherwise "useless".
  • Sara dumps Kent once he shows her his house, to which she calls him poor despite his being the manager of a construction company.
  • Sara Mitsubishi tells a bedridden Kent at the hospital that she wanted to marry him because of his status as a CEO, but she dumps him for becoming disabled after suffering a stroke.
  • Reina Mitsubishi dumps Kent for giving her a cheap wedding ring and throws it on the floor.
  • Chihiro dumped Kent for focusing in his career as a mangaka and left the house with a delinquent-looking man.
• RWBY:
  • Weiss Schnee, who comes from rich family, apparently had many suitors who only cared about her purse. This leads her to (mistakenly) believe that Jaune is this as well when he asks her out.
  • Weiss's father, Jacques, only married her mother to get his hands on the Schnee Dust Company. He doesn't care at all about his family and, just to twist the knife further, flat-out told his wife about it on Weiss's birthday.
• SparkTales:
  • "Bragging Mom Friend's Affair: Shocking Reality Check!" Ophelia mistook Wade for Lisa's husband and "stole" him in response. Even after Lisa revealed the truth to her, she still stuck to her decision since he's rich and worked at DAME Corp until Lisa revealed he's a Money Dumb freeter and a playboy, on top of stealing from people's bags and pretending to have found them. Moreover, all of Wade's behaviors coupled with his flirting with Lisa, drove Noah, her real husband and CEO, to fire him in response. After finding out, Ophelia drops him like a hot potato.
  • "Ex-GF Marries a Manager: Her Shock at My Secret!": Noah's ex-girlfriend, Sayu, dumped him for being a bottom-level worker. Years later, she marries a top company manager named Haruma and invites Noah to her wedding to rub it in. However, Noah attends with his new fiancée, Lisa, who reveals he's the next CEO of KST Corporation. Moreover, while the groom was president of AOI Corporation, it was one of KST's major clients. After learning the truth, Sayu tries to get back with Noah, but Lisa reveals he's married to her. When the groom shows up, Noah exposes Sayu's gold-digging, backed up by Mia, a director at his company.
  • "Revenge on Fiancée Thief: The Sweet Payback!": Noah's girlfriend, Daphne, reveals herself as one as she has cheated on him with his former best friend, Timothy, who has had a history of stealing any potential girlfriend from Noah. However, after the cheaters gloated about their affair, Noah prepared a plan to summon Timothy's father, Daphne's mother, and their mutual friend Lisa, who is a lawyer, to make them both pay debt.
  • "Cheating Sister-In-Law's Command Backfires: Unexpected Visitor's Revenge!" - Lauren is revealed to be this after Lisa and Noah summoned the former's husband, Bryce, in response to her leaving her son Carter with them to go have an affair behind his back. Moreover, she hardly did any house chores while living off of Bryce's money.
  • "Luxury Apartment Role Reversal with Ex Who Dumped Me!": Noah's ex-girlfriend from back in college, Tanisha, dumped him for dreaming of becoming an investor. When she brought her entrepreneur husband Raul to rub it in, Noah reveals he became a rich investor and owns the luxury apartment Raul lives in. Just as Tanisha tries to get back with Noah, Lisa stumbles upon the scene and asks her to not get close to him. When Tanisha responds by demanding Lisa divorce Noah so the former could remarry him, Raul reveals that Lisa is a CEO.
  • "Ex-GF Nurses Revenge: Ditched for Success!" - Noah ended up hospitalized after suffering a bike accident and found out his assigned nurse was Althea, his ex-girlfriend. When the nurse learns that Noah became a CEO, she proposes to him until Lisa enters his room, revealing he's already married. However, Althea doubled down and asked Noah to divorce Lisa and remarry her instead, even when made aware that Lisa was the director's daughter. When the Director himself shows up, he reveals that Althea never took her job seriously.
  • "Ex-Wife Mocks Us at Fancy Sushi Place, Husband's EPIC Response Shuts Her Down!": Liam divorced his ex-wife, Ellie, for squandering his money on luxury-brand stuff and verbally abusing him when held accountable. Later on, after finding out Liam became a president's secretary and his sister Saki exposes Ellie's marriage fraud to the latter's new husband, Joseph, she tries to get back with Liam and steals his black credit card for herself only for the man to call the cops on her.
• Story Time Animated: Maya dumped Nate when he lost all his money and got with his rival Brody.
• Tanabata Manga:
  • Yomeko stole Tanao's savings to buy expensive stuff, it is also revealed that the money Yomeko stole from Tanao was also given to her lover, causing Tanao to divorce her and sue the lover for damages.
  • Ryuji Kuraki is a male example, he only gets together with Lili to get her family's money and dump her after several months of their marriage. His plans are foiled when Mimi turns out to be recording the conversation of him and his lover, this leads to the arrest of the lovebirds for attempting a marriage fraud.
• Tompkins' mother from Teen Girl Squad is depicted as a robotic prospector.
• In Ultra Fast Pony, Rarity is this, though inconsistently. She seems to want a legitimate relationship with Prince Blueblood, and she stops pursuing him as soon as she realizes their personalities are incompatible. On the other hand, she's interested in Fancy Pants solely for his money, and she's not the least bit ashamed.
  Rarity: I am such a big fan of your money.

Webcomics

• Cheating Men Must Die:
  • Cao Xueyi repeatedly seduces wealthy men for money and gifts. Her modus operandi is to play with a suitable man, squeeze all the money out of him, then throw him away and find the next prey. Cao Xueyi regrets losing her relationship with her first boyfriend, because even though he started out poor, he would eventually go on to become super wealthy.
  • Ling Xingzi claims to resent the rich and has a strong sense of pride, yet she clings to the CEO male lead of her novel, prompting a "Not So Different" Remark from Su Lüxia, who is playing the role of her rival. Meanwhile, the author of the novel herself plans to use Media Transmigration and Grand Theft Me on Ling Xingzi so that she can cling to her rich boyfriend's leg.
• Cyanide and Happiness takes it rather literally. The girlfriend is an actual gold digger who tells her boyfriend to get a job and not mooch off her findings.
• In El Goonish Shive, initially Diane is shamelessly one. Her plan is to marry a kind, compassionate, rich guy who will obey her every whim.
  Rhoda: What if you just fall in love with someone someday and they fall in love with you?
  Diane: That's adorable.

  She eventually starts developing out of it, but is shocked to the point of wanting to drink at that realization.

• Emperor And The Female Knight: Frau Sneke proposes marriage to Pauliana because he knows she is barren and unable to bear children. He desires to off her so that he and his son from a maid can inherit the title and its benefits.
• Forever After: Robin and she's completely unapologetic about it. Her main goal in life is to nap herself a rich guy, then live the high life on his fortune. Seeing as she grew up in a poor neighborhood, it's kind of understandable.
• I Love Yoo: Discussed in the first chapter. After recieving a bad grade, Rika suggests Shin-Ae just become a House Wife, with Maya adding that she might be able to find a rich guy. Shin-Ae points out that it sounds like they're suggesting she become a gold digger, which brings up the question of what the difference is between a House Wife and a gold digger. Rika and Maya take the stance that there is a difference, while Shin-Ae argues that an Unequal Pairing is an outdated concept. Becomes Hilarious in Hindsight as Shin-Ae gets into a Love Triangle with two rich dudes. (Probably).
• In The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!, Princess Voluptua, heir to the throne of a vast space empire, has lamented that she's endured 270 years of power-hungry fools vying for her hand. This is one of the main reasons she's attracted to Bob, because he harbors no such ambitions.
• JL8 plays the G-rated version, being that they're all in Elementary School:
  Diana: Wait, why are you giving Bruce flirty faces?
  Karen Starr: Um, because I LIKE him. DUH.
  Diana: Because you like him, or you like the fact that he owns horses?
  [Beat]
  Karen: Yes.
• In Jupiter-Men, Binny tries to act all chummy with Nathan to try to get on his good side and become his guardian so she can take over his finances. But it's blatantly clear to him that her "nice" behavior is all an act and she admits it to his face that she simply won't leave while there's money on the table. Since he can't get rid of her, he instead bribes her by letting her live in his penthouse rent-free and getting a $6,000 monthly allowance from his personal funds in exchange for not touching his finances, not inviting anyone over, and staying out of his hair.
• Issa of Least I Could Do freely admitted she was looking to marry rich, which she was so focused on she made no other life goals, to the point where she was 27, still living with her parents, working at a gas station, and had no skills to help her get a better paying job. She had to beg and plead for Rayne to get her a job at IDS. Now she has a new boyfriend.
  • Played with in that while she does end up marrying the wealthy Archie she does genuinely love him more than his money.
• Lore Olympus: Minthe seems more interested in the expensive gifts Hades gives her than she is in the man himself, but as Persephone enters his life, Minthe realizes she has more attachment to Hades than she previously thought.
• Monsieur Charlatan: Adeline, was Isidore's fiancé until he lost everything, she then decided to dump him. She then married a rich Count instead. Her new husband wants her dead.
• Muted: Since the Severins put an emphasis on getting married for wealth (and the matriarch's children are trained to wish for Meal Tickets during their rituals), any Severin woman who does so would qualify as this. So far we've seen three subversions: Camille summoned Dendro instead of the traditional bird demon and hasn't made her wish, Abrielle used her wish to help Kalen transition so they could start a family, and Athalie wished for Abrielle's murder.
• Perfect Marriage Revenge: Sehyeok’s parents were promised money for their business after he married Iju, and his sister was promised a designer wardrobe. When they found out the wedding was called off, they try to badger him to get back together with Iju, and when that fails, they confront her and demand that she either reconcile with Sehyeok or at least pay back the down payment they put down.
• See You in My 19th Life:
  • Ji-eum was reborn into a poor family. She doesn't want people to think she is interested in marrying Seo-ha for being rich, though, which is why she doesn't talk about her family. Ji-seok Lee immediately thinks she is this the moment he hears she is pining for Seo-ha.
  • For similar reasons, Do-yun Ha doesn't want to date Cho-won. They like each other, but their difference in status is too much for him and he doesn't want to come off as someone who was only after her position as heir of a big company.
• Shotgun Shuffle: Cinnamon, most likely. The only thing really mentioned about her boyfriend before he dumped her is that he was rich. Given Cinnamon's personality, it is quite likely she dated him for his money.
• In Winter Moon, Risa is a priest in an MMORPG who prefers to charm males into giving her free stuff rather than earn her gear and experience points. This hits a snag when she encounters an extremely powerful homosexual mage who's more interested in frying her for her impertinence and using her as his "slave healer."

Web Original

• Dina Marino: Trixie accuses her ex Carla of being this in responde to catching her having sex with a man.
• A Dose of Buckley: Discussed in "Advice No One Asked For #43", featuring a letter from a woman who complains that her new husband (who is over 20 years older than her, and has a total of five adult children from two previous marriages) refuses to make her an equal partner in the family finances despite having no income of her own. Buckley points out that: a. With two failed marriages behind him, the man's refusal to give her unrestricted access to his money is most likely him learning from experience, and b. If it's money she's after, she should have married someone with no kids to share her future inheritance with.
• Dragonball Z Abridged paints Maron as this. While in the original show, she's a ditzy airhead who genuinely likes Krillin (even if they don't end up together), here, she is portrayed as only being with "Juan Sanchez" to get ahold of his newly-inherited life insurance payoff from his death on Namek. Her Establishing Character Moment is to appear, exclaim that she broke a nail and then ask for a thousand dollars, to which "Juan" eagerly gives here two. It's later revealed she's an investigator who was trying to make sure Krillin's story was genuine, but she still kept all the money Krillin gave to her, forcing him to crash at Kame house for the rest of the Cell Saga.
• The Trope Image above is actually a well known fake viral image that appeared on Reddit and an instigator of Poe's Law. The woman in the photo is Swedish actress, singer, and model Natacha Peyre. The guy next to her remains unidentified. (He's probably just a fan that she agreed to pose with for a photo op at one of her shows.) Hoaxes like this appear on Reddit a lot.
• In this video, a girl rejects a guy's proposal to her...and then overhears that his friend died and left him all his money. And said friend was Jeff Bezos. Cut to the wedding.
• Viral Texts:
  • Ali tends to steal other people's boyfriends for their wealth but she dumps them when they turn out to be not rich or their income decreases. She eventually stole Helen's boyfriend from her due to his wealth and married him. However, Ali's in-laws turn out to be cruel towards her for giving birth to a girl while they wanted a boy from her to succeed the family's business, Helen attempts to convince her to divorce her husband but she refuses to do it because he's rich.
  • Phil cheated on his wife Nadine, with an younger girl named Amelia. Amelia admitted to Nadine that she dated Phil for his apparent wealth and the prospect of living a rich lifestyle, but Nadine revealed to Amelia that Phil has no assets and that it's all in her name. Amelia dumped Phil and blocked him after that.

Western Animation

• All Hail King Julien has Clover's sister Crimson. When Crimson and King Julien become engaged, Clover accuses her of simply being a Gold Digger, citing an extremely long chain of men she's used and abandoned as evidence. As the wedding breaks up for entirely unrelated reasons, it's left vague if Crimson really loved Julien or just his power.
• Batman: The Animated Series:
  • Poison Ivy plays around with the trope, using her powers to create beautiful plant-women to marry Gotham's wealthiest citizens and later kill them for their money.
  • In "Joker's Millions", a psychiatrist indignantly denies that he was bribed to give the Joker a clean bill of mental health. He is then seen getting into a flashy new car with an attractive woman about half his age.
  • Baby Doll winds up falling for Killer Croc because she sees much of herself in him — but his only interest with her is how much money they can make for crimes she plans and he executes.
• The Boondocks: Cristal (you know? like the champagne). Kanye West's song is played over a montage of her shopping with Granddad, just to make sure we got it.
• Daria:
  • Brittany's step-mom, Ashley-Amber, is mostly a Trophy Wife, though a tie-in book mentions that she's "secretly learning the joint-property laws."
  • The Fashion Club doesn't exactly hide the fact that a boy's money ties into their willingness to date him.
    Skylar:^note (whom Quinn is specifically dating because his family owns a boat) [reading Quinn's planner] "Long term plans: September, break up with Skylar; October, go out with Taylor?!"
    Quinn: His parents have a ski house!
• In addition to being a coward, bully, cad, and thief, Dan Backslide, the arch-enemy of The Dover Boys, is also this, especially towards the Dover Boys’ beau Doris Standpipe:
  Dear rich Doris Standpipe, OH, HOW I LOVE HER!- father’s money.
• Scrooge McDuck almost marries one of these in the Season 1 finale of DuckTales (1987), "Til Nephews Do Us Part". He realizes the truth right before saying "I do"... and right before his old flame Goldie shows up, at his nephews' invite. However, it seems she didn't learn, and starts trying to hit on Flintheart Glomgold. She clearly does not think Second Place Is for Losers.
• The Valentine's Day special of Edgar & Ellen has Edgar fall in love with a pretty goth girl named Ursula. Ursula pretends to love him, but in reality, she wants to steal his inventions so that she can sell them and become rich.
• Futurama:
  • When Bender undergoes a robot sex-change operation, Calculon becomes smitten with "Coilette" (AKA: female Bender). Bender intends to marry Calculon, then immediately divorce him for half his stuff. Unfortunately, he develops genuine feelings (or at least a desire to not screw him over) for him.
  • Bender also assumes that this is why Fry starts dating Amy:
    Bender: Congratulations, Fry, you snagged the perfect girlfriend! Amy's rich, she's probably got other characteristics...
• In Gargoyles, Demona and her new lover, Thailog, take advantage of her new human form to try and do this to Macbeth; since they can't kill him, they would just lock him in his own dungeon forever and take his cash. Of course, in this case the money would have been used to fund much worse offenses.
• Jez on Jimmy Two-Shoes, apparently. She seems largely uninterested in being romantic with Lucius, but has no qualms about using his stuff. Sure enough, the moment the Broke Episode happens, she dumps him.
• Kim Possible: Bonnie going after Ron Stoppable's 99 million dollars. She promptly leaves after they get stolen because she told Ron to keep it in his pocket.
• Looney Tunes:
  • In His Bitter Half, Daffy Duck marries a rich widow... and finds himself having to put up with her bratty kid and live his life according to her whims. After much physical and mental abuse, the gold digger decides he's had enough and leaves her.
  • Honey's Money features Yosemite Sam, who enters Wicked Stepfather territory by trying to off the kid (who in this case isn't so much bratty as dangerously large and naive like Baby Huey). As he leaves, he asks himself if all of that was worth five million dollars. Five million dollars? He runs back to the mansion.
  • Sam tries to marry another rich widow (played by Granny) in Hare Trimmer, but Bugs Bunny sees through the act and poses as a rival suitor (and later Granny herself) to save her.
  • In the classic cartoon The Dover Boys, this is part of what motivates coward, bully, cad and thief Dan Backslide's pursuit of Dora Standpipe. He is as subtle about this as he is about everything else.
    Dan: Dear rich Dora Standpipe! HOW I LOVE HER... father's money.
• Moral Orel: Doughy develops a crush on his teacher, Miss Sculptham, and starts buying her presents with the money his parents give him to leave them alone. She takes advantage of this even though she clearly has no interest in her student. When he runs out of money, Doughy becomes this to Creepler in order to keep buying gifts for Miss Sculptham, until he realizes that she's just taking advantage of him.
• The Simpsons:
  • Marge's sister Selma (Bouvier-Terwilliger-Hutz-McClure-Stu-Simpson) at one point tells Marge that she from now on will only be marrying for love... "and maybe once more for money."
  • Selma got the surname "Terwilliger" from Sideshow Bob, who tried to kill her for money and would have gotten away with that if not for that meddling Bart Simpson.
• Lady Jasmine turns out to be this in The Smurfs (1981) episode "The Prince And The Hopper", when Smurfette finds out that Prince Theodore's bride-to-be is only interested in marrying him for the money.
• In the South Park episode Tweek Vs Craig, the girls in the third grade (and Kenny) take Home Ec, which teaches them how to become gold diggers. Lessons includes looking at a man's shoes to determine how much money he has, the perfect numbers of credit cards a man should have (two) and to dump any man who wants to become a doctor or a lawyer but is still getting his degree.
• In Spider-Man: The Animated Series, Jason Phillip Macendale, better known as the Hobgoblin, tries to marry Felicia Hardy to get access to her wealth. When she finds out his alter-ego, he threatens to kill her unless she goes through with it.
• Kelly on Stōked, when she begins dating Lo's brother (and Emma's crush) Ty Ridgemount simply because he is the son of hotel owner Mr. Ridgemount.
• A beautiful white cat in the Tom and Jerry short "Blue Cat Blues" comes off as this, as she falls head over heels for Butch over Tom due to the fact that the latter's gifts are more expensive than the former's.
• Total Drama:
  • The Action ending where Duncan wins has Courtney rushing over to celebrate winning "together", with Duncan himself lampshading how obvious the ploy is. In Beth's ending, she's disappointed about him losing but still agrees to go out to dinner with him.
  • After his elimination in Total Drama Presents: The Ridonculous Race, Noah notes that being married to a lawyer (Emma) means he won't have to bother looking for a job. Owen is amused by this, and jokingly threatens to tell Emma.

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