Greed

You no take lantern!

"They don't call me Greed for nothing. I want money. I want women, status, and power. I want everything this world's selling and eternity's topping the list!"

— Greed, Fullmetal Alchemist

Greed, or avarice, is the desire for large amounts of money and material possessions. While there is nothing inherently wrong with simply attempting to earn more money to make oneself better off, greed applies when one attempts to garner ever greater amounts of possessions and money simply for the sake of having more than everyone else.

The thing about Greed is that it's never satisfied — as soon as the thing sought after is obtained, the obtainer starts craving more, and more, and more, ad infinitum. It's an addiction.

Greed is the main motivation of the Corrupt Corporate Executive. It is also a Fatal Flaw of the Miser Advisor, and commonly of a Mr. Vice Guy; in the cases of these characters, they usually learn a valuable lesson at some point about what's really important. The Gold Digger is motivated by Greed — as is, often enough, the Black Widow. The Spoiled Brat is also motivated largely by Greed, but not a small bit of Pride is also a factor, which causes them to fly off the handle when they are denied what they want. A character defined by Greed often has a Money Fetish. This trope can be the reason behind characters who are Only in It for the Money.

Greedy villains often try to bribe the hero, a tactic in which they have great confidence. After all, justice and even Revenge aren't shiny, and don't get a very good exchange rate. When The Hero turns down the Briefcase Full of Money, it can be a great shock. Obviously, bribes work great on them.

Villains — and heroes — seemingly afflicted by Greed can be humanized by demonstrating that it is not the money they are after; they need it to buy something of actual value. At the same time, their Greed may threaten to transform their goal into a Tragic Dream. Villains may also want it not for itself but for equally villainous reasons — to effect Revenge, to live the slothful life of the Idle Rich — which changes the motivation without making it less evil. Greedy characters, including villains, will often ally with heroes to defeat more destructive or nihilistic villains whose plans would generally make the world a less pleasant place to live in.

May lead to Death by Materialism. Gold Fever, Loves Only Gold, Greed Makes You Dumb, Hoarding the Profits, and Only Cares About Inheritance are all SubTropes. Often goes hand in hand with gluttony. Compare Lust, which is desire for abstract concepts and feelings as opposed to material possessions. If a greedy character is featured in a musical, expect a Money Song.

For the less sophisticated, there's Giant Food. Compare Love Hungry.

One of the Seven Deadly Sins, traditionally represented by the demon Mammon.

For the classic silent film on the subject, see Greed. For the Chuck Woolery game show, see Greed. For the 2019 film, see here.

noreallife

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• The third Kira in Death Note uses the notebook to kill off executives of rival companies along with criminals in order to make his own company expand and increase his salary.
  • Demegawa, a corrupt TV executive, focuses his attention on how much money he can make. When he starts hosting a terrible show called "Kira's Kingdom" and starts asking for donations, his usefulness drops to zero. Light decides silently that Demegawa's greed would drive away the people's support for Kira. His Psycho Supporter, Mikami, agrees and kills Demegawa and his cronies.
• Kakuzu for Naruto.
  • Also, Shiranami. He even stated that the reason he killed his father, who was protecting the expensive forbidden jutsu, was because he's greedy.
• Nabiki of Ranma ½ — she likes nice things, provided someone else is paying.
  • Genma accidentally knocks his wife off a cliff in his attempts to steal a 20 dollar medal to pawn.
• Fullmetal Alchemist:
  • Greed, as his name would imply, and he provided the page quote. However, the positive qualities related to his sin are also inspected: He is so possessive over his minions that it crosses to being actual loyalty and caring. Even Greed himself eventually addresses the fact that while things like wanting money, food, power, etc. seem worlds apart from wanting to protect people, they're also still both forms of desire. In addition, despite his desire for "Money, food, women, everything!", he's able to keep his desire under enough control that it doesn't ruin him, and he ends up working for the good guys (under the guise that they work for him, of course). However, he is quick to point out the positives as well, things most people don't even think of.
    You might want power, you might want money, or you might want to protect the world. Greed might not be good, but it's not so bad either kid."
  • Greed also dies for good due to entirely selfless reasons — though he'd probably protest it and rationalize it as "getting revenge by proxy/taking care of his possessions".
  • While Ling Yao has nobler beliefs than the previous example, he embodies some of these qualities as well, having goals such as becoming emperor and obtaining immortality(at least as a bargaining chip to improve his chances of succeeding the emperor), but being absolutely against sacrificing his followers or letting them sacrifice themselves for him. This serves as foreshadowing as to why he ends up becoming the second Greed.
• Nami from One Piece started off as treasure-obsessed, and would do nearly anything to get large amounts of money, which includes raiding a Marine's base during the confusion of an attack. This is justified a couple arcs in: She wants to use the money for the REAL Greed-monger, her then-captain, so she could buy him off and he'll leave her hometown alone.
  • The fact that it's a defining characteristic of hers is played with in her in-betweener. Even after Arlong is dealt with, she's still just as greedy, justifying it by saying that she's now free to use her money as she pleases.
  • To do her justice, if any of her friends are in danger, she will pay any price in order to save them. At least she sets her priorities straight.
• The original Noah in Soul Eater, as he is the embodiment of Greed.
• Lina Inverse of Slayers fame has this as a rather significant personality trait, though it crops up most often early on. However, she is always on the lookout to make a bit of cash. It's part of the reason she left home in the first place, having gotten into trouble by selling illusions of her elder sister Luna in the bath.
• A museum owner in Yu-Gi-Oh! has this unfortunate quality. He gets a surprise visit from Shadi who, with his own Millennium Items, punishes him for wanting money more than anything else via a Karmic Death.
• Reborn! (2004): Viper is a baby who cares about nothing but money. He frequently attempts to charge his own team members for favors or just to watch him fight, and he complains if he has to do something for free. His alias, Mammon, even means greed.
• Meiko Shimono from Hell Girl is such a selfish Rich Bitch that she first kills her parents for their money, and later murders her baby son to not have to share said wealth. No pity is had for her when she's sent to Hell.
• Ghost Sweeper Mikami: Reiko Mikami could very well take the crown for this trope. It seems there's nothing she won't do to get a little more money.
• One of the video games in the Gundam franchise is entitled Gihren's Greed in honour of Mobile Suit Gundam's Big Bad, Gihren Zabi. There is a reason for this. A cold, Machiavellian personality, Gihren's entire goal in life seems to be the accumulation of more wealth, power, and possessions for himself.
• In Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie: Rebellion, this is very likely Kyubey's motive for trying to bring back the witch system- it produces the greatest amount of energy from the despair of humans.
• Played with in Fate/stay night and the prequel, Fate/Zero. Gilgamesh, the King of Heroes, is insistent that everything of any worth belongs to him, and is seeking the Holy Grail not because he really wants it, but because he refuses to let anyone touch it without his permission. The thing is, at one point he really did own literally everything in the world, and due to the way magic works in this 'verse (making new things is unspeakably difficult, but making inferior copies isn't that hard), it's quite likely that everything of worth is based on things he used to own, so he's actually got a pretty good case for owning everything. So when he claims everyone else are just low-born thieves who need to be punished, he's not doing it out of greed, but out of a simple (albeit outdated) understanding of property rights. He's actually quite magnanimous with his treasures, and is more than willing to lend any of them indefinitely to vassals who ask for them.
• Reiko the Zombie Shop is a necromancer for hire motivated solely by money, despite a lot of people dying as a result of her work. Later in the series other motives crop up, but Reiko remains liable to demand payment for saving the day.
• Ragyo Kiryuin from Kill la Kill. As the head of the Kiryuin Conglomerate which spans all across the world over, Ragyo is inclined to the social, economic, political and relatively speaking day to day livelihood of the ignorant masses the world over. All through the usage of the Central Life Fiber which is all but interwoven into the attire products sold by her corporation's multi-national and multi-property owning sporting and manufacturing companies; she practically ran the world. Even after having undone her own daughter's rebellion, ending in the dissolution and integration of her entire student body Task Force into the creation of the Koketsu kamui project on top of having the few pockets of resistance all across the world promoted both by Satsuki as well as Nudist Beach's steadily dwindle to nothing as her COVERS absorb them into their armies. Is this enough for her? Hell, NO! She owns the world, owns the war, owns the high ground. For all intents and purposes runs both the landscape as well as battleground of the entire scene and series, and she still wants her other younger daughter whom she initially cast aside as a failure in her demented experiments. She even lampshades it in Episode #19.
  Ragyo: And soon even your little sister will return to me.
• Exaggerated with Fafnir in Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid. He'll go to any lengths to get his hands on any "treasure" that catches his eye, whether it's high level loot in an MMO, or the reward for filling a radio exercise stamp sheet.
• Dr. STONE: This is Ryusui's primary character trait, though it's not always treated as a problem since it gives him the drive to help rebuild society so that he can live in wealth and luxury again. Later on, Ryusui makes it clear that, at least in his case, it's a truly positive trait. He's so greedy that he wants the best not only for himself but for everyone around him. The extent of his greed is so great he can be greedy on behalf of other people.
• That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime: The Unique Skill [Greed] is part of the Sin Series set of Skills and involves the manipulations of "desire". The user can Mind Control others by exerting their desire over them whether over prolonged exposure or a less subtle forceful altercation. They can also amplify the desires of others to influence them, and it can even strengthen the user or others...by burning out their souls. The most powerful technique is inverting the target's innate desire to live into a desire to die, acting as a One-Hit Kill. Its owner is Mariabell Rosso, a Reincarnated Otherworlder born into a powerful noble human family and who is set to inherit the power of the Rosso family, which make her the de facto power behind one of the strongest shadowy organizations in the western human nations and something she is very keen on achieving. The major weakness of the Skill, however, aside from being unable to affect holders of Ultimate Skills is that it won't work on someone whose desires are greater than her own. She finds such an idea ridiculous...until she learns the hard way one of her supposed pawns, Yuuki Kagurazaka, is one such person with even grander designs than her, and makes the reveal right after she made a very grave error that left her vulnerable and kills her while taking [Greed] for himself. The Skill later evolves into the Ultimate Skill [Mammon, King of Greed], which boosts its power to Reality Warper levels and giving it several new traits, such as the ability to absorb the energy of a target or their attacks.
• Flame of Recca: Mori Kouran is a personification of pure greed; his motivation for becoming an Immortality Seeker is so he can keep exploiting everyone forever. For him, everything he has doesn't matter compared to the desire of acquiring even more, and his vast riches, magical artifacts, and supernaturally-empowered stepson are inconsequential if he cannot enjoy using them and more for all eternity.
  Mori: Infinite Greed.

Art

• In The Last Supper, Judas is identified by the small bag he is gripping, either indicating the money he accepted to betray Christ or the Apostles' treasury from which he is stealing. Either way, the bag acts as a reminder why Judas is framed in darkness apart from the other Apostles.

Card Games

• Magic: The Gathering had a card named "Greed" with flavor text that summed up the trope very succinctly.
  'An advisor once asked the Western Paladin how much gold would be enough. "I have no need of fools who can imagine ‘enough,'" he told the advisor's corpse.'
• In Yu-Gi-Oh! greed is a very common theme and almost always relates to drawing cards. There is an entire, fairly large series of cards that are pots and jars all relating to the theme of greed (usually having to do with drawing, discarding, and/or banishing cards). Pot of greed is the most obvious and well-known example
  • Then there's Goblin of Greed; the titular goblin who hordes the aforementioned pots and jars and throughout the course of many cards details how he went from riches to rags and everything in between.
  • There's also a card aptly named "Greed" which details the downfall of such a thing as at the end phase of every turn the player takes damage for every card they drew (which is the constant greed in context of the game).

Comic Books

• Disney Ducks Comic Universe:
  • Scrooge McDuck. He may be a Noble Demon or just a Jerk with a Heart of Gold Depending on the Writer, but no matter how admirable his dedication to hard work and honesty is, Greed is always his defining vice.
  • It runs in the family; his nephew has sinned of this as well.
• Fables: Jack Horner shows how much greed can stab you in the back. After losing a fortune several times in his series, he resigns to never spend the gold he gained from El Dorado, just to ensure he can't lose it. He consequently becomes a dragon as a result of his greed. He spends at least a few years (if not decades) in this state before the last issue, in which everyone dies.
• Final Crisis: In Final Crisis: Superman Beyond, Superman's Evil Twin Ultraman mentions that on his world, ruled by evil, the only god people knew was Mammon, the demon who patronizes greed in the Seven Deadly Sins. However, when Ultraman found out about Mandrakk The Dark Monitor, he was more than happy to follow this greater evil.
• Green Lantern: The page image is "Agent Orange", real name Larfleeze, "leader" of the Orange Lantern Corps. In the emotional spectrum, Orange represents selfishness and greed, and Agent Orange is the greediest creature to ever live. True to form, he's the only true member of the corps; the others are all spirits of the people he killed in his constant search for more.
  • Funnily enough, Larfleeze was once referred to in-story as "Scrooge McDuck with a power ring"
    • Johns has stated one of Larfleeze's inspirations is Daffy Duck.
  • Later on, Lex Luthor is inducted as a deputy Orange Lantern and becomes so utterly consumed by greed that he turns on the other lanterns, wanting all the rings.
    Larfleeze: [to Lex Luthor] Victory is mine! And if you had hair that would be mine, too!
  • Ironically enough, his last act of the Blackest Night arc was tossing Luthor back to the humans, which Sinestro lampshaded was an act of him giving something to someone. Larfleeze reacts in stunned shock.
  • Lex has long had greed as one of his defining vices. The orange ring ends up worsening his greed, leaving him with a yawning gulf inside when he loses it.
  • Larfleeze starts hanging around on Earth after Blackest Night because he believes Earth caters to greedy bastards like him. After watching commercials he's come to the conclusion that everyone else on Earth shares his neverending desire for more.
  • The Orange Lantern is always a singular individual because nobody avaricious enough to activate and control the orange light could ever bear the thought of sharing it. This is why the deputy didn't work out: they'd fight each other over the power, cutting their strength to less than half.
  • As a bit of a Tragic Hero, the top thing Larfleeze wants is the only thing he really wants, his family. In the end, he is reunited with them... and then promptly falls back into stealing and hoarding because old habits die hard.
• Spider-Man:
  • In the original Lee-Ditko run, the real reason why J. Jonah Jameson hates Spider-Man is that Jameson has always been greedy, and he can't understand how Spider-Man can give without any personal gain for himself.
  • Electro pretty much shouts out a bit from the intro paragraphs verbatim in his first appearance as he gloats over his victory, readily admitting that he's greedy, but he doesn't care. Fitting, then, that Electro is pretty typically the most greed-driven villain in most incarnations.
  • This is the Kingpin's defining vice. He takes and takes and takes, but it's never enough. He'll always want more.
• White Sand: Greed is said to be Drije's main motivation behind betraying the Sand Masters - he wants to sell his skills for money, while they disagree.
• Wonder Woman:
  • Vol. 1: Byrna Brilyant's motivation to become a supervillain. Despite being a genius roboticist who has also perfected her chemist father's "blue snow" she hides her abilities in order to hold entire communities hostage for money as the "Blue Snowman", and once she's stolen everything from those who live there she discards them.
    "The daughter of a brilliant scientist who died many years ago while working on a secret invention—Blue Snow! He wanted it to serve humanity but his money-mad daughter had different ideas."
  • Vol. 2: While Thomas Randolph's lust for power is a powerful motivator he also really wants to make money and sees power as a means to that end. This is the reason the White Magician sells the items he then uses to frame his "villains" and the reason he ends up on the mob's payroll.

Fairy Tales

• Cinderella's Wicked Stepmother is often depicted as wanting Cinderella's inheritance for her daughters' dowries.
• In The Grimm Brothers' story of "The Fisherman and His Wife", a poor fisherman catches and releases a magical fish who can grant wishes. His wife urges him to go back and wish for a more comfortable house; unlike her husband who wants to be content with what he has, the wife isn't satisfied with this, and wishes for a castle. She soon wishes to be queen, followed by a greater palace, a desire to be Pope, and she takes things too far when she wishes to be equal to God, which results in the fish reducing their dwelling back to the hut they started out with.
• In "The Juniper Tree", the Wicked Stepmother murders her stepson so that her daughter will inherit everything.
• Hansel and Gretel's Wicked Stepmother begrudges her stepchildren their food and has them abandoned so they will not have to feed them. Although sometimes she has the excuse that there is a famine, in some variants, she just resents spending anything on them.
• The given moral of "Pintosmalto" is that a cheater can't be mad for getting cheated, but another moral about greed can be read as well. After all, had the queen not wanted the beggar girl's riches after she'd already stolen the merchant's daughter's husband, she'd only have missed out on the (suspicious) possessions of the beggar. She'd still had the boy and wouldn't have been robbed.

Fan Works

• All For Luz: Greed is a Central Theme of the story and how indulging too much into it can ruin your life and those around you.
  • Luz believes that her All For One Quirk is the symbol of Greed after learning about its Power Parasite nature, allowing them to amass unchecked power at a whim. Shigaraki doesn't deny this. As the story goes on, being influenced by not only a Quirk that makes you think and shapes your belief structure to assume that everything belongs to you, including other people's lives, and having a Manipulative Bastard living rent-free in her head, leads to her taking more powers than her body can handle and even some Kick the Dog moments.
  • All For One embodies more than anyone else. He is compulsively greedy, wanting Luz to steal powerful Quirks and plans to pull a Grand Theft Me on the girl as he believes, through her, he can upgrade his Take Over the World scheme into becoming a Multiversal Conqueror.
  • Luz also doubts that she could sue for peace with the other 2 teams because the prize money promised by the Antagonistic Governor would make them cave in and kill one another for his sick amusement. Not that he had any intention on paying up. She's later proven right as they pull an Enemy Mine and wipe out half her team to try and get her after the governor jacks up the price for Luz's head to $1.1 Billion. Kennedy, the ringleader, also had no intention of sharing any of it with any of his comrades.
  The Governor was banking on everyone’s Greed to push this whole thing along. So that kids would cave in and kill one another for his sick amusement.
  • In Sheriff Johnson's backstory, as a kid his parents made hardly any money due to never being able to get a raise, and his brother was too young to work, and so he became quite greedy over the years, hoarding all of the money he could possibly get his hands on, even when doesn't need to.
  • Tyler Wittebane loves his immense fortune as it gives him great political power and control over others.
  • Riley and most of the Wittebane assassins are very money oriented, due to being homeless after being disowned by their parents for having Quirks and being essentially their own provider. Even when it becomes clear that fighting the All For One user is a suicide mission.
• Calvin & Hobbes: The Series has Hobbes fall into this when he swiftly devours a large number of fish, gaining a Balloon Belly and landing him in trouble.
• Deliver Us from Evil Series: Smith murders his brother's step-nephew out of a desire for the estate. Poor guy.
• In Star Trek Logical Thinking, the video about the Argumentum ad Nauseam fallacy involves Harry Mudd claiming that playing off people's greed is the best way to con them.
• With This Ring: Features an SI who uses an Orange ring of Avarice (see Agent Orange in the Comic Books section) as the primary source of his power. He uses philosophy and meditation to keep himself more or less sane, and has to find workarounds to let him use the ring to help others - such as investing a lot of time and effort into his relationships with his teammates, so that he can feel that they are "his" and should therefore be protected and kept in good condition.
  Artemis: If it makes you crazy, is it really a good idea to use it?
  Paul: [shrugs] Good idea, bad idea. It’s the ring I have.

Films — Animated

• In Tangled, Flynn's motivation — he even, with No Honor Among Thieves, escapes with the goods and without his partners. Only with Character Development does he try to make amends. We also get some Hidden Depths about his childhood dream, inspired by stories of very rich men who could, consequently go anywhere and do anything.
• Greed is a major motif in Spirited Away, as it affects characters in both the human world (Chihiro's parents who consume the food at the carnival without permission) and the Spirit World (the workers of the bathhouse who lust for gold). No-Face becomes powerful, yet insane when he feeds off the greed of the workers.
• Tom and Jerry: The Movie: "We've got to have, MONEY."
• Big Jack Horner from Puss in Boots: The Last Wish comes close to being the Anthropomorphic Personification of this. He was a Spoiled Brat who grew into a Corrupt Corporate Executive with all the money and power a person could want, but obsessed over the one thing he couldn't have; magic, like all the fairytale creatures he lived alongside had. Despite hoarding enough magical artifacts and weapons to arm a village, he became a Card-Carrying Villain and Psychopathic Manchild who plotted to become an Evil Sorcerer with "all the magic in the world". It's especially fitting as the nursery rhyme he came from was criticized back in its day for encouraging greed & opportunism in children, and was believed to have been based on a medieval steward named Thomas Horner who allegedly stole a deed to a manor.
• Prince John in Robin Hood (1973) is profoundly greedy, trying to tax every last cent from the country when the villagers sing a song parodying his immaturity, with John doubling and tripling the taxes. Ironically, greed is very nearly Robin Hood's undoing as well: if he'd just left that last bag of gold in Prince John's bed, he'd have made a clean getaway instead of alerting Sir Hiss and Prince John to his presence.
  • The Sheriff of Nottingham even goes so far to take the last farthing from the poorbox at Friar Tuck's chapel.
• An Angel for Christmas: Kovet's reason for hating Christmas is his own greed and desire for money and power.
• In The Rescuers, this ends up being Medusa's primary motivation to get the Devil's Eye, a supposedly one-of-a-kind diamond hidden in a decayed skull from a cave near the bayou shiphouse. She forces Penny to get it despite her being a child, and when the latter eventually retrieves it with the help of Bianca and Bernard, Medusa became so consumed in her greed to keep the diamond that she hides it in Penny's teddy bear and turns on Penny and Snoops for daring to demand an equal share of the diamond. Eventually at the climax, she suffers a Humiliation Conga and her greed finally catches up to her in the end when her two alligator minions, Brutus and Nero, turn on her for her mistreatment of them just to keep the diamond to herself after Penny and the gang successfully escape with it in her own swampmobile.
  • Earlier before the cave scene, Medusa rudely turned down Snoops' offer of selling away the lesser, more numerous diamonds that Penny had already brought up before despite the fact that they could potentially become significantly richer doing so; this all proves that Medusa's greed knows no bounds and causes her to become Stupid Evil, which eventually leads to her downfall.
• A Bug's Life: Pretty much P.T. Flea's prime motivation. He's willing to be burned twice a night for an act that has become a huge hit and Francis is able to distract him simply by pointing behind him and yelling, "Money!". When trying to negotiate with his workers to be released, he merely offers them the promise that he will consider paying them.

Films — Live-Action

• The eponymous villain of Goldfinger, whose ultimate goal is to increase the value of his gold reserves by irradiating all the gold in Fort Knox.
• Greed is the motivating factor in the lives of all three protagonists in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. They want the Civil War gold, and they don't care what they have to do to get it. Angel Eyes, The Bad, is by far the worst about it. He's basically this vice in a coat and a cowboy hat.
• Greed by Erich von Stroheim, a silent movie classic.
• Cardinal Richelieu in The Three Musketeers (1993).
  "All for one... and more for me!"
• Gordon Gecko in Wall Street:
  "The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed - for lack of a better word - is good. Greed is right. Greed works."
• The defining characteristic of most antagonists in the Indiana Jones series.
  • In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Walter Donovan seeks the Holy Grail so he can obtain immortality. In the end, greed blinds him from reason and he gets tricked into drinking from a fake grail, which causes him to age rapidly to death. In a perfect example of greed, Elsa Schneider then attempts to take the true grail outside the temple, despite warnings not to cross the seal. In the ensuing chaos, she drops the grail into a chasm and nearly falls in herself, but Indy catches her. The grail ends up on a small ledge and Elsa, consumed by her greed, reaches for it. Her hand comes up just short, which only fuels her desire to keep trying, despite the fact she’s slipping from Indy’s hold. Overcome by her lust for the cup, she stretches too far and Indy loses his grip on her slippery gloved hand. Indy by contrast is able to let go of the grail and thus escapes with his life, though even he was reluctant to give up such a historic find.
  • In Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, this is the reason Max turns coat on America and sides with the Soviets. The myths of Akator and legends of streets made of gold start making him think he could be richer than Howard Hughes (a comparison he makes to Indy himself). He even tries to convince Indy to side with him; he should have known that Indy was more than willing to oppose anyone who thought like this as far as archaeology was concerned.
• Tin Lum Yin the Big Bad of Cage and Cage 2 the Arena of Death is defined by his greed. he gets a lot of money through his illegal fighting ring and will kill people who don't pay up when their fighters lose. At the end of the first film when Billy kills another contestant in the ring, Yin tries to get him killed by his champion so he doesn't lose money, and when that fails, he sets him up to be killed in a different fight, even betting a million dollars that he loses. Of course, when he loses the bet, he just orders his men to kill Billy, his friends, and the man he lost the bet to just do he doesn't lose his money. In the sequel, despite Billy having crushed his ribs, Yin is more interested in manipulating him into becoming his new champion than he is in getting revenge, even doubling the price of viewing when he learns that Billy will die soon.
• The main characters of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, with Mrs. Marcus threatening to leave the others with nothing; Otto Meyer trying to get an extra share after Lennie Pike tells him where it's located ;and Captain Culpeper, who plans to retire with Chief Aloysius telling him that the city is dead set against pension increases. Sadly, Culpeper was unaware that Chief Aloysius had blackmailed the mayor into tripling his pension, leading to Capt. Culpeper's arrest and forfeiture of his pension when he tries to take the loot for himself and the money falls into the crowd below.
• This is the whole point of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Frank Dobbs starts as a normal guy just trying to get by while constantly being swindled and scammed. Once he starts getting his hands on gold his sanity starts to spiral downhill to the point where he's quite content to torture and then attempt to murder his best friend just so he can make off with everybody's share of the gold as well as his own. This ends up being his undoing, as his eagerness to get away gets him ambushed and murdered by the bandits, which results in the loss of all the gold.
• The main villains' primary motivation in The Lone Ranger.
• The villain in Ghost Ship uses this sin most of all to lead the people on the Graza to their demise. The crew of the Graza salvaged the gold from the Lorelei and took the villain onboard, and he then drove them insane with desire, causing them to murder the passengers first and then turn on each other. He uses the same prospect of gold and riches on the salvage crews he lures there, and even tries to tempt Epps at the end with other material trappings.
• The Brass Teapot is a movie about a magical teapot that gives you money if you hurt yourself and others. The longer it is in your possession the more you fall under the control of your own greed.
• Beni from The Mummy (1999) ends up serving Imhotep due to his greed and cowardice. Imhotep was just going to kill him, but decided he could be useful after hearing him speak Hebrew ("the language of the slaves"). Beni is easily tempted when Imhotep promises rich rewards while offering him a handful of gold jewelry.
• One of the heaviest themes in Fargo is the destructiveness of greed. Jerry Lundegaard needs money (we never find out what for), so he hires two criminals to kidnap his wife to get her wealthy father to pay the ransom, which Jerry will split between himself and the criminals. Despite Jerry's greed being the thing that kicks off the plot, almost everyone succumbs to it in this movie. Even Jerry's wife's father, Wade, tries to haggle over his daughter's ransom.
• Cloud Atlas: Dr Henry Goose has a chronic case of this, slowly killing Adam Ewing off to get at the gold in his chest. He eventually gets hit over the head by the chest, cracking his skull and pooling blood around the gold he so desired. Subtle.
• It is greed that drives Major Sholto to murder Captain Morstan, betray Small, and keep all of the jewels for himself in The Sign of Four: Sherlock Holmes' Greatest Case.
• What causes the wheels to come off the plan in King of Thieves. Even during the heist, the various thieves are shown pocketing high end pieces of loot for themselves. However, things come to a head when Terry, Danny and Ken decide they can force Basil out of his share altogether. Basil does not take this lying down, and things begin to unravel; ending with almost everyone in prison.
• It's easy to tell that Mothra wants you to know that greed can cause everlasting consequences. Nelson's greed caused so much destruction just for kidnapping the Shobijin just so he can be more rich than he already is. In fact, because of his actions, an entire country is on his ass when they spot him to the point where he undergoes a Villainous Breakdown and gets gunned down. All because of greed.
• In War Dogs: Ephraim and David end up receiving a contract from the US Government for $300,000,000 to supply weapons and ammunition for Afghani Rebel Groups to fight the Taliban. The order includes, among other things, 100,000,000 rounds of 7.62 ammo. After hooking up with an Arms Dealer who can get them Cold War surplus ammo for ten cents per round, they hit a snag: the ammo is Chinese, and therefore, unuseable due to the US's Embargo on China. So they come up with a plan, hire Albanian workers to repackage the rounds into Albanian ammo boxes and pass the ammo off as Albanian. Not only will this allow the deal to go through, but the lighter packaging materials will save them roughly $3,000,000 in shipping costs. So what causes the plan to ultimately fail? Ephraim tried to get out of paying the Albanians the measely $100,000 they were asking to repackage the ammo. On a deal worth $300,000,000. Even worse? The Albanian boss made it clear that he knew exactly why they were repackaging the ammo, and Ephraim still tried to screw him over, so he reported them to the US Government.

Literature

• Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol is the greediest, most miserly man in London. After a visit from the Ghost of Christmas-Yet-To-Come, he gets second thoughts.
• Each of the villains in the Keys to the Kingdom series represents a deadly sin, with Grim Tuesday representing greed. He takes it to rather ridiculous levels, in fact. He turns his entire kingdom into an open-pit mine and risks the destruction of the entire universe in order to obtain more stuff. And he already possesses the power to make anything out of Nothing and a building about the size of a small town filled entirely with treasure.
• Miss Minchin in A Little Princess — Miss Amelia's description of her in one of the movie adaptations as "a pitiless, hard-hearted woman who cares for nothing but money!" holds very true in the original book.
• Count Olaf in A Series of Unfortunate Events. Pretty much everything that he does is because of his desire to obtain the Baudelaire fortune.
• Sir Peter, Ella's father, in Ella Enchanted.
• Smaug from The Hobbit - probably the Trope Codifier for the evil dragon sleeping on a bed of treasure. We are told that dragons hoard an incredible amount of riches, but would never, ever spend any of it.
  • As well as the character he is based on - the dragon from Beowulf who has similar ... ummm ... exactly the same hoarding-and-killing tendencies.
• In Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn, while King Haggard explains that the reason he keeps unicorns is that they are the only thing that makes him happy. Where it becomes greed is that his goal is to collect them all — every unicorn in the world.
  "Each time I see the unicorns, MY unicorns, it is like that morning in the woods, and I am truly young, in spite of myself!"
• In Robert E. Howard's The Hour of the Dragon, a man offers to betray Conan the Barbarian for this. True motive, Revenge. He reveals all when he has led them into the trap, because they have so utterly ruined his life he does not care about their killing him.
  "Men say you have gold," mouthed the man, shivering under his rags. "Give some to me! Give me gold and I will show you how to defeat the king!"
• Chichikov's vice in Dead Souls which drives him.
• In Julian May's The Rampart Worlds sci-fi trilogy, this is pretty much the main reason the Hundred Concerns start dealing with the Haluk (although Emily Konigsberg started all the trouble through naivete). It turns out that giving technology to a touchy, paranoid race is not a good idea.
• Sisterhood Series by Fern Michaels: Let's see...the Monarch HMO from Payback. The Barristers from The Jury. Rosemary Hershey in Sweet Revenge. Arden Gillespie and Roland Sullivan in Lethal Justice. Maxwell Zenowicz in Fast Track. Baron Bell in Deadly Deals. Owen Orzell and Jason Parker in Home Free. In at least 7 books out of 20, you have Greed as the motive for their terrible actions!
• In Leo Tolstoy's short story "How Much Land Does a Man Need?", a peasant named Pahom starts out buying a homestead of 40 acres, and then buys a slightly bigger homestead beyond the Volga, but has to rent additional land to grow crops, until he hears of a more lucrative offer in the land of the Bashkirs, where he pays 1,000 rubles to get as much land as his footsteps will cover, as long as he returns to the starting point by sunset. He starts out for several miles before changing direction, digs another side in spite of the noonday sun, goes along the hillside and heads back to the starting point while fighting exhaustion, and as soon as he makes it back to the starting spot by sunset, he faints and dies from exhaustion, with a 6-foot grave plot as his final resting place.
• Greed is a major cause of the conflict in Galaxy of Fear: Spore. The miners who Dug Too Deep and found Spore sealed into an asteroid decided to open it in the belief that it was valuable. Spore itself has endless greed, an endless desire to make sentient beings join its Hive Mind, even spending itself to search after the most minor escapees.
• The Apprentice Rogue: Falita's greed is set up in the first chapter when she plunders a corpse. As a child and even as an adult she would steal things and then forget about them; she simply wanted to take them.
• Five Weeks in a Balloon: Joe falls prey to this vice when he and his companions find rocks with gold deposits deep in Africa. As the rocks are heavy, they take them on board their balloon to act as ballast, but Joe is very reluctant to toss them out so that they can lift off. He gets over it, though.
• A recurring theme in The Chronicles of Narnia:
  • Eustace becomes a dragon due to falling asleep thinking dragonish thoughts on a pile of dragon's gold.
  • Both Jadis and more so, Uncle Andrew, in The Magician's Nephew. Digory's own theft of the Apple was forgiven due to his desire to give it to his mother for its (assumed and later verified) healing powers.
  • Shift the monkey in The Last Battle.
• Lawrence from Spice and Wolf suffers due to his shortsightedness in the face of his own greed getting the better of him; he ended up trying to buy too much armor on credit, only to find out that the value of armor in the city he was going to sell it in crashed. None of his merchant associates want to help him repay the debt as well because he got greedy.
• Waltharius: King Gunther demands of Walther to surrender to him both Hiltgunt and the two chests of gold he brought with him from Hunland, arguing that, as the gold is taken from Attila's treasury, it rightfully belongs to him because of the tribute his father had formerly paid to Attila. Though Walther offers a compromise, which Hagen advises him to accept, Gunther refuses to settle for less and instead orders his champions to fight. His behavior draws much criticism from Hagen, who demonstratively renounces his right to a share of the spoils, and comments the unfolding disaster with a speech on the evils of avarice (v. 857-69).
• The Han Solo Trilogy: This is basically the driving force of Hutt culture, to the point that even valuing close family over profit is looked down upon.
• "Talma Gordon": Captain Gordon committed many terrible deeds out of desire for money.
  Gold was his idol; and many a good man walked the plank, and many a gallant ship was stripped of her treasure, to satisfy his lust for gold.
• Legends & Lattes: In her last adventure, Viv took a stone from a monstrous Scalvert's forehead as a good luck charm to promote her hoped-for coffee shop's prosperity. Her party member Fennus believes the Scalvert's Stone is something far more valuable than treasure and wants it beyond anything else. This despite the fact there's no proof it has any actual powers, and Viv took only the stone, leaving a vast fortune amassed from the Scalvert's victims for Fennus and her other companions to divide. Fennus's greed drives him to burn down Viv's shop and take the stone—but since what it actually does is draw like-minded people to the holder, he is shortly afterward confronted by thieves and killed.
• Shatter the Sky: Emperor Rafael is driven by incessant desire to conquer more land and gain greater power, no matter the cost. It undermines his rule, since taking so many resources and conscription for this has increased opposition to him.

Live Action TV

• One of the primary vices of the mercenary Jayne Cobb of Firefly, though he's usually smart enough not to let this drive him to do stupid things. Unless the money's too good...
• Game of Thrones: The only thing Locke wants from Brienne more than a bit of fun is a ransom from her father. Zig-zagged when he refuses Jaime's attempt to bribe him for all the gold in Casterly Rock but also refuses Brienne's ransom because it's not enough. The initial misunderstanding is probably down to Jaime, and the audience, being more used to the usual forms of greed that shiny, shiny gems or gold usually produce. But Locke repeatedly shows himself more greedy for power over others: getting a highborn to cough sapphires up to him? That's worth something. Finding out he won't get a power kick that way? Cue change of plans back to simple, immediate fun.
• The villains of Kamen Rider OOO, the Greeed (sic), are literally made out of desire. The hero Eiji has no desires due to Survivor Guilt, which allows him to use their powers easily. Interestingly, it slowly becomes apparent that having no desires is a bad thing, with the Big Good believing that desire is necessary for life and encouraging his workers to be ambitious as long as they are not prideful.
• Parker on Leverage. From the episode "The Nigerian Job": "My money is not in my account. That makes me cry inside... in my special angry place." From "The Homecoming Job": "I don't like stuff.. I like MONEY."
  • Pick a villain from the show. They're all greedy bastards, with Victor Dubenich (who can't seem to even plan revenge without trying to profit from it) being the worst.
• Monarch: Legacy of Monsters: In her backstory, May Olowe-Hewitt, real name Corah Mateo, was enticed by money to join AET before she learned of their true colors. In the present, she's quite ashamed of it.
• Subverted in the Penn & Teller: Bullshit! episode "World Peace," where they argue that greed is the key to world peace, since war is usually bad for profits.
  • The Ferengi (see below) would disagree vehemently. While "Peace is good for business" is one of the most important Rules of Acquisition, the very next rule is "War is good for business", and they would know.
• In Star Trek, this is the hat of the Ferengi, who have built an entire society out of greed and avarice. While they even have a codified system of rules governing this behavior, going around said rules if it's for a profitable goal isn't considered a bad thing. Thus, things like theft or piracy are only considered bad if you get caught.
  • On the bright side, the Ferengi don't practice racism, slavery, or genocide because they consider it bad for business (fewer customers->lower demand->LESS PROFITS)
  • It's almost a case of Blue-and-Orange Morality for them, as any action which is not profit-seeking is seen as disgraceful (whether it was acting out of Charity or Revenge, if there's no profit to be made, it's just WRONG).
  • Illustrated by Liquidator Brunt (Ferengi Commerce Authority) when he accuses Quark of being a "phil-AN-thro-pist!" in much the same tone a human might accuse someone of eating their own children.
• Stingy from LazyTown, in spades.
  "This mailbox is mine, and this triagonal sign..."
• Pipo De Clown: Dikke Deur's main motive. He wants to make wealth off Pipo without paying him, and also desires to be the ruler of Klukkluk's tribe so he can be showered in cakes and sweets all day.
• In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, Marguerite loves her treasure.
• Greed, with a dose of pride, is the cause of many of the problems that befall Walter in Breaking Bad.
  • First, he isn't satisfied with how fast Jesse is slinging his super-pure meth, leading the duo to deal with Tuco Salamanca. This results in Jesse getting beaten up, and later both of them getting kidnapped.
  • Later, when Jesse sets up his own smaller-scale distribution network with his three buddies slinging the blue meth, they have a nice, steady stream going, each taking $3,000 a day. Then Walter insists they expand into new territories, leading to Combo getting shot by rival dealers. This sends Jesse into depression and heroin use, which drives a wedge between the two. Even after they reunite, the killing later ends up turning Jesse violently against Gus' organization and Walter is forced to side with him against powerful, violent men.
  • And much later, in the final season, a rival distributor offers Walter, Jesse, and Mike $5 million each for a shipment of methylamine they lifted. This is more money than Walter could ever spend, and an order of magnitude more than he originally intended to make, but he turns down the offer so that he can keep cooking meth in order to make even more money.
• Tidelands (Netflix): Violca apparently wants to overthrow Adrielle for not giving her underlings more profit. Adrielle says money isn't the only thing, which Violca clearly dislikes. She has a point though as Adrielle keeps most of the money they earn.
• Charles, Elizabeth, and Samantha from Birds on the Wing are fueled by greed in their cons and schemes, which also leads them to try and betray one another to get as much money as they can.
• The greed factor is a key reason the game shows have been under critical fire for so long. George Carlin lampshades it in his "Let's Make a Deal" cut:
  Host: That's it, you've won it! A (brand new) Ferrari!
  Contestant: (groan) Oh, we have a small car already!

Music

• Evillious Chronicles: Gallerian (played by Kaito), a judge, accepts bribes from customers to make them "innocent". The reason he needs this money is to help his "daughter" Michelle (played by Miku) and to collect the Seven Deadly Sins in order to restore her condition. Later, he is bribed by a general for mass murder and lets him walk free. This eventually causes a civil war and he is killed in a fire. He is then faced with "the Master of the Hellish Yard" who tells him he can be saved if he gives up his money. He refuses to give his fortune to anyone and is sent to Hell, where he hopes to make the place a utopia for himself and his "daughter" after he collects the sins. In other words, his greed was an Invoked Trope.
• Some of the killers Macabre cover are motivated by greed, like H.H. Holmes, Burke and Hare, and Jack Gilbert Graham.
• The topic of George Michael's "Praying For Time".
  The rich declare themselves poor,
  And most of us are not sure if we have too much,
  But we'll take our chances,
  'Cause God's stopped keeping score.

Myths & Religion

• King Midas from Greek Mythology. When he offers hospitality to a Satyr of the Greek god Dionysus, Dionysus rewards him by granting him any wish he pleases. King Midas wishes for the power to turn everything into gold, and King Dionysus grants it. At first, Midas is happy and overjoyed, turning everything in sight into gold. However, he soon finds out he can't eat nor drink, for anything he tries to swallow also turns to gold. Eventually, he turns his daughter into gold by accident, leading him to beg for Dionysus to take back his wish and reverse everything, to which Dionysus obliges.
• In Luke 11:16:21, a rich man has a bountiful harvest and plans to tear down his barns for bigger ones, planning to live a life of luxury, only for God to demand his soul that night, and he dies without having planned for who will inherit his wealth due to his unforeseen death.

Opera

• Der Ring des Nibelungen: Fafnir's greed was so great that he transformed himself into a dragon to protect his hoard.

Tabletop Games

• Burning Wheel: Greed is a gameplay mechanic, where every dwarf feels it in their hearts and can tap into for when they desire something, or when they're creating magnificent objects of their own.
• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • In the mythos, Greed is often seen as the biggest handicap that dwarves have as a race. They even have a god who embodies the concept called Abbathor, and while their other gods don't like him, they accept him as their own, as he sides with them against traditional enemies of the dwarves, like orcs. This gives dwarves a bad reputation at times, because their gods grudgingly accept the embodiment of Greed as one of their own.
  • This is also what Mammon represents, one of the Lords of the Nine. He is the richest and most stingy archdevil in the Nine Hells. The 5e supplement Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes specifies that deals with him can be made over gold rather than souls, but you'd need more wealth than a dozen kingdoms' worth to make a deal that doesn't involve selling your soul.
  • Greed is said to be the defining trait of Tiamat, the Lawful Evil god of chromatic dragons. Since chromatic dragons are naturally greedy creatures, Tiamat is the worst of them all. The acclimation of wealth is said to be her goal above all else, and she will abandon any sort of plan if it means getting even more of it. Her Dragon Hoard is said to be the treasures of a hundred worlds of the multiverse, despite the fact that she has nothing to use all that treasure for. Tiamat wants more just because it's more; that's the beginning and end of it. And just as an exclamation point, Tiamat's lair is known as "the Cave of Greed".invoked
• In Nomine: Mammon is the Demon Prince of Greed, although lately he's lost a lot of his power and influence, particularly to Haagenti, the Demon Prince of Gluttony — and since modern consumerism is more focused on obsessive and wasteful consumption of things than on hoarding of wealth, it's technically a function of Gluttony instead of Greed.. The game describes the difference between the two as that, while Gluttony wants to consume, Greed just wants to have. Mammon's demons aren't allowed to give away anything... even the time of day.
• Legend of the Five Rings: "Greed" is a purchasable disadvantage for characters. Samurai are expected not to care about material things, but they're also in a position to acquire large amounts of such things. The Mantis Clan has this as their hat, and as such, they earn an extra Character Point if they take the "Greed" disadvantage.

Theatre

• The male lead of Romeo and Juliet makes the point when he's at the apothecary and is paying the poor shopkeeper that money makes more people die than poison, and is just as bad, if not even worse, to the soul than poison is to the body.
  There is thy gold, worse poison to men's souls,
  Doing more murder in this loathsome world,
  Than these poor compounds that thou mayst not sell.
  I sell thee poison. Thou hast sold me none.

Video Games

• In the third chapter of Disgaea, the main characters target someone specifically because they are rich and it's the prinny's pay day.
  • In Disgaea Dimension 2, Flonne mentions that she "can't imagine Etna doing anything that wouldn't make her money."
  Etna: That's so mean...
  Beat
  Etna: But it's true.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Wario◊, in both the Wario Land and WarioWare series. His motivations for most of the game stories are to get as much money and treasure as he possibly can, doesn't really pay his 'staff' in WarioWare, ignores the captured damsel in Wario Land: Shake It! for the infinite cash purse and manages to subvert the Honest Axe trope.
  • Wario's Arch-Nemesis, Captain Syrup, is also known for her greed, in Wario Land: Shake It, she even ninjas the said purse behind Wario's back, being that it was the sole reason she lured Wario there in the first place.
  • Waluigi, although he prefers to sneak behind people's backs to obtain his prize. He even tried to steal a treasure chest from Wario.
  • Bowser's no slouch in the greed department either, who conquers entire kingdoms and sometimes the entire universe due to his own lust for power.
• The major villains of Persona 5 correspond to the Seven Deadly Sins. The fifth major boss of the game is fast food company CEO Kunikazu Okumura, and he embodies Greed, far more in the ambitious sense, but as a CEO who shows no care for his employees and prioritizes the bottom line, he does show a yearning for money as well. Far from satisfied with being an extremely wealthy business owner, he wishes to enter the political world, despite showing absolutely no talent or skill for that field. While the Phantom Thieves initially pursue him due to him being on the top of an online poll demanding changes of heart, what really sets them off is how he puts his daughter Haru up for an Arranged Marriage with the son of a member of the Diet in order to expand into politics, and not only does he view Haru as little more than a bargaining chip/a walking womb, but said son is all too eager to practice the Marital Rape License trope on her. Tying all of this together is that his Shadow's demonic form is that of Mammon, the demon who classically represents the sin of greed.
• Overlord has Goldo Golderson, the Dwarf Fallen Hero who is the epitome of this trope. His greed drove him to invade the Elven forests to enslave the population to put in his mines.
• The Big Bad of Jagged Alliance 2, Queen Deidrana, usurped the throne of the backwater country Arulko and was milking its natural resources dry, practically starving its population, before your team intervened.
• Arl Rendon Howe of Dragon Age: Origins is driven by an unhealthy mix of Greed, Ambition, and Envy. His last words say it all:
  Howe: Maker spit on you! I... deserved... more.
• Greed is basically the reason Star Fox's Pigma Dengar is so repugnant. He sold out the people who were supposed to be his friends to Andross just for the money, and a reward is basically his only motivation for doing anything. His greed made him so untrustworthy that his new team, Star Wolf, eventually kicked him out.
• Sector Carina in Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey. A massive shopping mall, warped by a demonic viewpoint on Humanity's excesses and obscene desire for more possessions. Fittingly, the resident Tyrant, Horkos, is a demon obsessed with devouring everything - food, energy, inanimate objects, people, his own servants... And the worse thing is, when finally confronted, he calls out Humanity on being even more greedy and materialistic than he.
• This is a recurring motif in the Uncharted series, especially among the villains. They won't stop trying to get whatever priceless MacGuffin they're searching for, even if that means traipsing through war zones or death. This is also what did in the pirate colony, Libertalia, from A Thief's End. The pirates were pulling a long con to rob the settlers of all their money and then turned on each other in a brutal Gambit Pileup, meaning no one got the money. Notably Nadine from that game is the only villain to survive because she specifically walks away from the job when she realizes it's gone off the rails even though that means she won't get her cut of the treasure.
• Laethys, the Dragon of Earth, in Rift.
• The Goblin race as a whole in World of Warcraftare well known for their greed, though no single goblin fit the archetype more than Trade Prince Gallywix as he masterfully demonstrated in the quote below.
  "I never cover up the things I'm proud of. If the world was gonna split in half tomorrow, I’d buy the Dark Portal, slap a toll booth on it, and charge refugees the last of their pocket change, the rings off their fingers, a bite of their sandwiches, and a contractual obligation to build me a rocket palace in the skies of Nagrand. It's the goblin way! Supply and demand! Deal with it!"
• Like the other six of the Seven Deadly Sins, Greed is a boss you sometimes fight in The Binding of Isaac. He only appears in Shops and Secret Rooms, implying that if you're greedy enough to look for a free power-up from the Secret Room or a bought power-up from the Shop, you may just be punished for your greed by fighting Greed.
• A central component of Morganite ideology in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. Morgan even wrote a book "The Ethics of Greed" promoting it.
  "Resources exist to be consumed. And consumed they will be, if not by this generation then by some future. By what right does this forgotten future seek to deny us our birthright? None I say! Let us take what is ours, chew and eat our fill."
• The central premise of the Fallout: New Vegas expansion pack Dead Money is greed and what it costs those who can't overcome it. All of the main characters in it are consumed by one form of greed or another. Emphasized by the primary reward for beating the expansion pack: A shit-ton of extremely valuable gold...which weighs far more than you can easily carry. It is possible to get out with all of it, but extremely difficult, and if you don't get out in time it's game over.
  • The greed that most of the other characters exhibit isn't for wealth. Elijah and Christine are both greedy for revenge (Elijah wants revenge against the NCR and Christine wants revenge against Elijah), Dog is greedy with his endless hunger and God, his alternate personality, is greedy for control. Dean is just greedy in the general sense.
• Borderlands treats greed differently than most games, highlighting it as a necessary emotion to survive in a harsh world like Pandora. Telltale and Gearbox's collaboration, Tales from the Borderlands is even designed with it as a positive force.
• In Dead Rising 2, Tyrone "TK" King was paid handsomely to trigger a zombie outbreak in Fortune City. He decided to take advantage of the disaster to loot the casinos and banks.
• In Dead Rising 3, Albert Contiello is a psychopath meant to embody greed. He kidnaps people and harvests their organs for the black market. When Nick Ramos faces him, Albert claims profit is the only thing that matters.
• The Grand Theft Auto franchise always has someone who wants more and are willing to do anything to get what they want. Sometimes, it catches up to them. Other times, they get away with it.
• Used on the players in PAYDAY 2. Sure, you could reach the escape zone with the bare minimum needed to complete the heist, but why not go back and grab the extra loot for even more money? There's always someone who will try to grab extra loot when it is not worth it and either they go down and are taken into custody or the whole team is taken down trying to help out, causing a Total Party Wipe and everyone getting nothing for their troubles.
• Eco Fighters: Kernal Goyolk will do anything to line his pockets with no regards to how much death he will inflict on the populace of any planet.
• Exoptable Money is all about making lots and lots of money, and to what extent people are willing to go to make huge bucks. Up to and including releasing a virus to kill off the majority of the planet and make money by selling non-working antidotes.
• The Enchanted Cave: in the first game, the merchant is both himself greedy and using other people's greed to get richer. In the second game, the Big Bad invokes this by filling the cave with treasure in order to gather souls to summon a demon.
• In the X-Universe, greed is a defining feature of the Lizard Folk Teladi, who are united under the Teladi Corporation lead by Chairman Ceo. Teladi are absolutely obsessed with profit, to the point where they all but openly sell ships to the local Space Pirates. It's rare for them to not mention profit or credits in a conversation; "Good profit!" is their equivalent to goodbye. That said, Teladi hailing from their homeworld - cut off from the Portal Network for a few hundred years - lack this trait.
• The main theme of Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness.
• Queen Brahne in Final Fantasy IX is a person lusting for power. She extracts the summon magic from her own daughter, Garnet, in order to use them in her quest for conquering the other kingdoms. Even after getting what she wants, she still wants even more power. She's also quite the hefty woman, which only exemplifies her greedy nature. Garnet states that her mother wasn't always this way and only started to give in to her greed after the king passed away and Kuja showing up to manipulate her.
• Trillion: God of Destruction has Mammon, the adopted cousin of Great Overlord Zeabolos and holder of the Crest of Greed. Right before the game's events, she skipped out on watching the Gate of Hell so she could go treasure hunting, which ironically saved her life when Trillion struck. Reflecting this is her starting off with a rank in Item and Money drop skills. Her backstory involves her having been a former slum-dweller before being adopted into the Overlord's family, and as you progress through her events, you learn that she's actually been quite Charitable, fencing her treasures and putting the money towards helping the slums' inhabitants. Her 100% ending has her moving everyone out of the slums and into a brand new high-rise building, greatly increasing living conditions. Zeabolos even mentions that she could create a world where there is no difference between the rich and poor.
• In SUPERHOT: MIND CONTROL DELETE, there's Avar1ce. A victim of the System's Assimilation Plot, their desire for more secrets, more power, and more bloodshed provides them with the willpower to avoid being subsumed by the System. In the end, the System gives up and lets them have what they want, figuring they'll have to get bored eventually.
• The whole idea of Tower of Greed, as shown in the title. You'll want to collect as many gems as possible and earn in-game cash from it, but go too far and you will die.
• Pilgrim (RPG Maker): Master Alice is the wealthiest resident of the Other World, and got this by stealing and selling souls. Her entire motive- besides having sadistic fun- is to accumulate as much wealth as possible.
• Rengoku: In the second game Sphinx is excited to steal Gram's Elixir Skin for himself. It reflects his Past-Life Memories where he wanted to kill his teammates to have their AI Suits.

Visual Novels

• Umineko: When They Cry: Greed is represented by a girl/demon named Mammon, one of the Seven Stakes of Purgatory and Ange's "closest friend". She's the one who is serious about "taking Sakutaro home", and constantly wants more of pretty much everything, whether it's knowledge, affection, or material things.

Web Comics

• In The Best Gamepiece Photocomic, the convenience store manager (introduced here) writes up his employees if they talk about anything not sale-related, requires customers to pay in order to be able to complain, and imposes a toll to leave the building.
• DICE: The Cube That Changes Everything: The main theme of the series is greed. As explained by X, Dicers get quests corresponding to their Desire, and get even more rewards if they do more than they need to. Most Dicers never want to stop and will do anything for Dice just to have more of them, often to their downfall. In contrast, Dicers who are satisfied get almost no quests, but retaining the status quo may be turned into a Desire.
• In Freefall, one of Sam's major motivations is to get rich, ideally to him by way of the path of least resistance. Sam is a saint, however, compared to Mr. Kornada, who is so intent on acquiring every credit he can get his grubby hands on that he's willing to sacrifice the lives of the entire colony. Sam and Kornada act as one anothers' Foils for a big chunk of the comic.
• In El Goonish Shive, Sirleck became an aberration in the first place to accrue ever-increasing amounts of wealth and power, and his main motivation for helping Magus is to possess his body and finally gain the immense magical powers of a wizard, with his body being free of any history being a bonus. It ultimately does him in, since Magus saw it coming and manages to out-maneuver him.
• In Homestuck, Meenah Peixes desires wealth (in addition to power). She really desires it, and will take every opportunity to profit from it. When she's given an entire flash walkabout to herself, she spends much of it picking up items belonging to other characters, with the stated intention of pawning them at the first opportunity. And when one of her friends sets up a booth selling information, it was Meenah getting paid, because said friend really wanted to talk and knew money was the way to get Meenah to sit through it, if not actually listen.
• Vince, the Anthropomorphic Personification of Greed in Jack, "earned" his position in Hell because he was an insane cult leader in life who always wanted more worshipers — he got greedy for power.
• Kill Six Billion Demons:
  • The Demiurge Mammon represents the sin of greed amongst the seven remaining Demiurges. Driven by ambition to obtain power and wealth, he murdered his own family in order to have no distractions on his path to godhood. He presently controls much of the economy of Throne, as well as mints its dominant coinage, through the Infinite Bank that he rules as a Corporate Dragon. When Allison finally comes face-to-face with him she finds that Mammon has been reduced to a senile, blind husk of his former self, reduced by The Fog of Ages to meaninglessly count the infinite wealth inside his vault while having entirely forgotten why he accrued it all in the first place. In one of his more lucid moments he asks Allison to kill him.
  • During The Caper of the third book (aimed at the aforementioned Mammon), the group's tunnel-digger is a green devil called Charon, who finds Mammon's greed inspirational and aspires to the same heights of avarice and self-interest. He sees robbing Mammon to be a way to prove himself to be equally ruthless and self-interested. Despite being a bit of a coward, Charon ironically turns out to be one of the more trustworthy of the Caper Crew and never gets the chance to backstab anyone.
• Lovable Rogue Haley in The Order of the Stick has the driving goal to win an obscene amount of gold. When Characterization Marches On, it's revealed that her father is being held ransom for said obscene amount of gold; although she still really, really loves money, she's also willing to part with it for a good cause.
• Stand Still, Stay Silent: Torbjörn organized the very first expedition into areas fallen to The End of the World as We Know It in 90 years because Old World books are extremely valuable and he figures he can make a lot of money by officially sending a few people there to do research, ask them to pick up any books that look in good enough shape while they are there, and bring them back so they can be sold on the black market.
• Tales of Greed is an anthology that typically features a societal underdog who gains a reality-altering token to improve their life but takes it too far and suffers disastrous consequences. For example, "1 Minute" is about a boy who is bullied at school, gets a watch that induces one-minute time loops, and turns into a psychopath who sees the world as a game.
• Sunwoo Narea from Tower of God climbs the tower for the riches it has to offer and sees moneymaking opportunities at possible corner.
• Unsounded: The dangers of giving in to greed show up and are pointed out time and again. In Cresce greed is illegal, technically, as regular money is outlawed and people are to use labour points to purchase things, yet their nobility is still far more wealthy than the supposedly fairly treated laborers.
  • Quigley's fatal flaw is his susceptibility to greed. Even though he, Uaid and Matty are on the run from the Aldish and Crescian governments and he's disgusted by Starfish he's talked into smuggling Starfish and his cargo into Cresce despite having promised his son they'd go to Sharteshane and keep away from both superpowers that want his construct, and his head.
  • Human greed is what destroyed the Inak homelands. When they were unearthed they had many first materials, so people killed them and destroyed their villages for it. Then forced the survivors to convert to their religion and be second class citizens treated like slaves.
  • Though Rahm is showing his own hypocrisy at the time he points out to Quigley that greed has consequences when the silver Quigley helped transport gets a bunch of people killed.
    Greed has consequences, boy, and the victims it leaves in our wake are not resurrected by belated altruism.
• In Weak Hero this is Teddie's fatal flaw that contributes to his humiliating defeat at Gray's hands. He obsesses over brand names and superficial possessions, so he loses it when Gray messes with his expensive backpack and is easily taken down in the ensuing fight.
• The Embodiment of Greed in Widdershins is an Affably Evil spirit who loves Leonine Contracts but is single-minded enough to bargain for pocket change as long as it's the person's last penny.

Web Original

• Napster Bad accuses Metallica and the entire music industry of greed in a highly satirical way, with the musicians complaining about how they are getting slightly smaller oodles of money due to online file sharing.

Western Animation

• Transformers:
  • Swindle is defined by his greed. In Transformers: Generation 1, he sells off parts of his fellow Combaticons to a shady arms dealer to make himself a profit. In Transformers: Animated, Megatron comments that he'd sell his own motherboard if the price was enough, and Swindle just laughs and moves on to his sales pitch.
  • Doubledealer, a two-faced scoundrel with no loyalties to anything other than who can give him the most power and Energon. Doesn't have a single qualm betraying anyone as long as it's worth more money, more fuel, more something. In one continuity, this results in his messy end when someone finally figures that there is no line Doubledealer won't cross in his greed and throws (well, blasts) him off a mountain. He's not even a Decepticon (though his toys typically listed him as such): he's too greedy (and consequently lacking in loyalty) for the group known for Chronic Backstabbing Disorder to put up with him for long.
• Mr. Krabs from Spongebob Squarepants is very greedy. He always gets angry when something happens to his money. In fact, in Jellyfish Hunter, he got Spongebob to capture most of the jellyfish for their jelly. It turned out Mr. Krabs was processing and killing them in horrendous conditions in his factory and Spongebob was appalled when he found out.
  • Mr. Krabs put a toe over the Moral Event Horizon when he sold his most loyal employee, SpongeBob, to the Flying Dutchman for the grand total of... everything in the Dutchman's pockets, which was sixty-two cents. Even Squidward, who hates SpongeBob, called him out on it. Cue My God, What Have I Done?...and then the Flying Dutchman dumps SpongeBob back onto Mr. Krabs, partly because Status Quo Is God, but mostly because he's too damn annoying to keep in Davy Jones' locker.
• Kaz from Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi is always looking for ways for the girls to make more money. Once he tried to charge them rent for their own tour bus.
• Codename: Kids Next Door:
  • "A good candy taken in greed always turns sour." Greed is a recurring theme in conjunction with candy hunting. Number 5's old partner-now-rival Heinrich uncovered a tomb of candy but ignored the warning "Share not, and only taste asparagus," which sure enough happened when he refuses to share the candy. When a candy pirate named Black John didn't share the licorice he cut down on an island but hoarded "it all for himself," he and his crew were cursed by being pretty much turned into licorice. The Noodle Incident at Guatemala also turned out to be Heinrich performing a ritual to get perfect caramel that cursed him at the same time; the only way to break the curse is to share the caramel.
  • Of course, those were all small potatoes compared to Chester. A Mad Scientist who concocted some of the most vile schemes on the show (like feeding live children to sharks and creating a Lotus-Eater Machine) his only motivation for all of them was to make money.
• In the animated video to Disturbed's version of Land of Confusion, the giant fat man is either an Anthropomorphic Personification of greed or big industry. When The Guy kills him, he explodes, revealing that inside he was full of money and nothing else at all.
• Looney Tunes:
  • Daffy Duck desires material wealth as much as he desires the cheering and worshipping of others. Whenever he sees something shiny he goes completely, hysterically ballistic and doesn't pay any attention to whether the other person in the same vicinity has noticed it or cares about it, for him it is taken for granted that they 'll want to claim his gold.
    It's MINE, you understand!? Mine, all mine! Get back in there! Down! Down! Down! Go! Go! Go! Mine! Mine! Mine!
• Kahn from King of the Hill
• C. Montgomery Burns of the The Simpsons. The vast majority of his villainous plans is usually related to his greed.
  "I'd trade it all for a little more."
  "One dollar for eternal happiness? I'd be happier with the dollar."
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars, "Liberty on Ryloth": Tambor's insistence on not leaving before he's stolen as many of the Twi'leks' treasures as he can gets him caught.
• Ren Höek from The Ren & Stimpy Show.
  "IT'S MY MONEY! I WROTE THAT POEM!"
• In The Powerpuff Girls (1998):
  • Princess Morbucks is a Lonely Rich Kid from a family so wealthy, her allowance alone amounts to Impossibly Cool Wealth. However, after the girls reject her application for membership, she decides to become a villain out of envy that she can't be a Powerpuff Girl.
  • One-off villain Dick Hardly is even worse than Princess Morbucks in terms of greed and every other villain in terms of pure malicious crimes. His sole appearance is him manipulating the girls into giving him Chemical-X just to make deliberately shoddy knock-offs of the girls just out of pure sociopathic greed, with his greed and overall villainy getting progressively worse as the episode continues, to the point of becoming a literal monster after swallowing a bottle of Chemical-X when he refused to give it back to the girls. Thankfully, his botched creations all ended up killing him at the end, being one of the very few characters to die in the series.
• Lucius on Jimmy Two-Shoes. While it's not his main sin (that would be Pride), it is definitely present, as noted by his demand for more gifts at his birthday and his willingness to marry Beezy off in exchange for a large dowry.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Dragons have greed as a racial weakness. The more they acquire, the larger they get, and the more they want. Spike ends up trapped in this loop in "The Secret of My Excess".
  • Oddly enough, despite being the bearer of the Element of Generosity, Rarity has a bit of avarice herself.
    • She is the Element of Generosity for a reason. She will freely give her time and services to her friends, but has realistic struggles due to being a bit of a Ms. Vice Gal. She expects to get, well, something, anything for her time.
  • Lord Tirek's defining character trait is his greed. He feels like he's entitled to all the magic in Equestria and that it should have been his for the thousand-plus years he was imprisoned. His greed is so immense that he was willing to refuse his own brother's attempt to make him perform a Heel–Face Turn to continue his pursuit of it and his argument to Discord to make him do a Face–Heel Turn was incredibly self centered and basically amounted to saying 'you should be able to do whatever you want without having to worry about anyone else'. And, despite being incredibly bitter at Scorpan for betraying him, is more than willing to stab Discord himself in the back so he can have his power too. In the end, all Tirek cares about is hording all the power in the world for himself.
  • Griffins, too, are immensely greedy, to the point of being explicitly compared to dragons. It is this racial vice, along with Pride, that caused the downfall of the kingdom of Griffonstone after the theft of the symbol of their unity, the Idol of Boreas. Present-day Griffonstone is a miserable dump whose inhabitants are obsessed with money and who refuse to cooperate with anybody, over anything, unless they're getting paid for it.
    • One griffin in particular seems especially obsessed with getting paid, even to the point where she leaves Rainbow Dash to her probable death because she had no more money to give.
• Eddy from Ed, Edd n Eddy is very greedy when it comes to money and jawbreakers. Rolf & Jimmy even exploit this in "Here's Mud In Your Ed" by tricking Eddy into giving away all his personal possessions for an exchange for a fraudulent money tree seed.
• Grunkle Stan in Gravity Falls. His life's dream is to possess money, and he'll do anything from cutting corners at the Mystery Shack, having the twins counterfeit money, or straight up robbery in order to get more cash. This is revealed to be because his scumbag of a father threw him out of the house when he was younger and told him not to come back until he had remade the possible millions they had lost riding the coattails of Stan's brother's academic scholarship (Stan had accidentally broken Ford's invention, causing him to be rejected from his dream school).
• Eustace Bagge from Courage the Cowardly Dog loves three things: his chair, his TV, and money! In one episode, he's even willing to risk his (and the other two's) fate to be dragged into a box by demon hands just to gain access to the money inside.
• Mr. Cat from Kaeloo is almost always trying to scam his friends out of their money or other things, or forcefully take them. It's most noticeable in the episode "Let's Play Gangster Poker", where he actually threatens to shoot them to death if they don't give him money which he tricked them into thinking they owed him (in other words, which they didn't even owe him). In addition, Episode 128 shows that he has no problem with traumatizing Quack Quack so he can scam Stumpy out of the meager sum of four cents.
• Punky Brewster: In the episode "Punky the Heiress", Punky discovers she has an aunt and an uncle who unbeknownst her are servants to the estate of tycoon Chester Henderson. Henderson is missing and his granddaughter Debra is going on a trip, so the aunt and uncle get Punky to dress up like Debra under the pretense that she is being reunited with her mother. She discovers that her greedy aunt and uncle are using her to embezzle Debra's inheritance.
• Ready Jet Go!: In "Treasure Map", it's implied that Mitchell wants to keep the treasure chest he found all to himself, even though it doesn't have anything valuable in it. When he hears someone coming, he immediately covers the chest and says "Who goes there?"

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"My sense of greed is greater than my sense of self-preservation!"