Money Fetish

It usually isn't this literal.

"Good evening, and welcome to The Money Programme. Tonight on The Money Programme, we're going to look at money. Lots of it. On film, and in the studio. Some of it in nice piles, others in lovely clanky bits of loose change. Some of it neatly counted into fat little hundreds. Delicate fivers stuffed into bulging wallets. Nice crisp clean cheques. Pert pieces of copper coinage thrust deep into trouser pockets! Romantic foreign money rolling against the thigh with rough familiarity! Beautiful wayward curlicued banknotes! Filigreed copper plating cheek by jowl with tumbly hexagonal-milled edges rubbing gently against the terse leather of beautifully balanced bank books! ... I'm sorry, but I love money."

— The Money Programme, Monty Python's Flying Circus

Some people just really love money. Not wealth for the luxuries or the power. They love money itself, to the point they have a Money Fetish.

Okay, not to the point they actually get turned on by it (usually). They just like feeling it, bathing in it, tasting it, listening to it, sleeping on it, diving around in it like a porpoise, and burrowing through it like a gopher. It could be coins, jewelry, paper money, or all three. Either way, these characters treat money itself as a luxury to enjoy. They might break into a Money Song.

Compare Gold Fever and Loves Only Gold.

Often occurs as part of an If I Were a Rich Man fantasy sequence. See also Conspicuous Consumption and Money to Throw Away. Contrast Wicked Wastefulness for characters who are wasteful with their money.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Glenn Radars from Akashic Records of Bastard Magic Instructor views making Sisti his wife as an excuse to not work, and essentially, be married to money. This gets him blown away by her.
• Downplayed for Lady Kiyomi Azumabito in Attack on Titan. When Zeke tells her about Iceburst stone which Hizuru could use to improve their industries and prosper, she literally starts salivating.
• Haqua from Battle Spirits Sword Eyes. Somewhat justifiable since he owns a business, but he gets to the point of tricking Hagakure into buying useless junk and trying to bribe Cornell to get out of prison.
• Halekulani from Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo bathes in money and uses money as his source of power, being able to turn people into coins and diamonds.
• Io Naruko, one of the magical boys from Cute High Earth Defense Club LOVE!, is a man who loves money so much that he's The Scrooge of the group.
  Io: I bet I'll feel love when I get one billion in my Cayman Islands account.
• Nanami Jinnai from El-Hazard: The Magnificent World doesn't want to spend the money she earns from her restaurant in The Alternative World. She just wants to roll around in it!
• Hoteye of Fairy Tail had this. After he has a magic-induced Heel–Face Turn, it turns out that he was originally a Love Freak who was trying to raise money to find his missing brother, but lost sight of his goal.
• Early on in Fushigi Yuugi, this is one of Tamahome's defining character traits. Although it's traced to his Back Story regarding a poor family, it's a running gag that even the smallest coin is like catnip to him.
  • And even after being reincarnated in the real world as Taka Sukunami, he's still obsessed.
• Baron Danglars from Gankutsuou. His last scene in the series was of him wallowing naked in a pile of goldbricks, suckling on one of them. This happens in a spaceship with no pilot or destination, or food or water for that matter. Danglars is subjected to Ironic Hell by the Count of Monte-Cristo by giving him what he cares for the most, and depriving him of basic necessities of life.
• Mikami from Ghost Sweeper Mikami is so in love with money that she actually suffered a Heroic BSoD when she tried working as a civil servant exorcist, who gets paid a fixed amount of money instead of her usual ridiculously astronomical fees, and she actually considered betraying her friends for money at various points in the series.
• In Heat Guy J, Monica is talking about her recent commodity investments with Daisuke (never mind that she's only 10!), and her eyes get all sparkly, and she has Love Bubbles in the background. She also later uses J to help her gamble. Her money fetish is understandable, given that she lives in a trailer, caring for her alcoholic mother.
• Sayaka Kanamori from Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! is a huge money-grubber and considers anything that doesn't involve monetary gain as a waste of time. She's not above nickel-and-diming her friends when doing favors for them, either.
• Kaneo Takarada of Kill la Kill, who heads the Osaka-based Takarada Conglomorate, practically eats money for breakfast and takes pride in Osaka's history as a merchant town. He's known by the fandom as "The Dosh King."
• The swim team of Medaka Box are "money-zombies". Their ultimate fantasy is a swimming pool filled with cash.
• One Piece, in the original manga/anime and movies:
  • Most of the evil pirates struggle to understand how anything besides money could be considered treasure.
  • Nami (pictured above), largely due to a tragic Freudian Excuse. She never had much money for what she wanted while growing up, and after Arlong's pirates invaded and killed her foster mother, she was forced to work to collect money to free her village. After Arlong's defeat and her village's liberation, she is just as determined to collect money, particularly since she can now use any money she collects for herself.
  • Speaking of Arlong, he took over Nami's village and demanded that everyone pay "tribute" with the threat of death for anyone who couldn't pay up. Hyouzou, a mercenary hired by the New Fishman Pirates, comments that he would have worked under Arlong if he wasn't so tight with his wallet.
  • El Drago, the Big Bad of One Piece: The Movie, loves gold, to the point where he rejects other valuables, such as gems and diamonds.
  • Gild Tesoro, the Big Bad from One Piece Film: Gold. If the name didn't give it away, the dude loves gold. His main base is a gold tower and he practically sporting it all over his body at one point. Heck, even his main power is gold-based. Though we later find out his obsession with this is tied to the tragedy of his past and losing Stella. As since a World Noble was the one to buy her, he concluded that the world is ruled by money.
• Nabiki Tendō in Ranma ½ just loves money, so damn much. She's never actually shown in the usual sexual situations, but an anime filler episode does have her envision a great tidal wave of golden coins, which is used to force a telepath out of her head. So much does she adore money that she actually caused the "wedding disaster" at the end of the manga because she believed that the other members of Ranma's Unwanted Harem would A: bring money as a present for the "happy couple", B: she could take that money for herself, and C: they wouldn't cause such destruction in their outrage that it would cost more than was brought in to fix the place. She was wrong on all accounts. And she never brings her own money, since she always manages to swindle someone else into paying the bill, and keeps a jar full of 1-Yen coins.
• Rune Soldier Louie: Merrill is a thief and always hoping to strike it rich on their adventures. In episode 6, she locks herself away with a jar of gold coins, strips naked, and climbs in. And does so again in the 14th episode, after being mistaken for Odessa, by Sir William, who whisked away to his estate. When he tells Merrill that she can have anything she wants, she requests a tub full of gold coins to bathe in.
• Raj from Saike Matashitemo, who will often charge Saike's friends for the tiniest of services and also even unreasonably raise the price at times.
• Chouji Suitengu from Speed Grapher is obsessed with acquiring money and actually rolls his cigarettes with it. This turns out to be a Subverted Trope when it is revealed that Suitengu actually hates money and is only seeking to acquire it in order to burn it all up and destroy Japan's economy.
• Meifon Sakura from Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid quite literally weaponizes her love of money. While other girls have a human partner, Meifon uses cash to stimulate her powers.

Asian Animation

• Mr. Lightbulb from Happy Heroes is very greedy and will do anything to make a quick buck, from forcing Product Placement into the shows he hosts to outright resorting to Very False Advertising.

Comic Books

• Cricket O'Dell from Archie Comics has a bloodhound's sense of smell for money, and absolutely enjoys being near anyone who can give her some.
• Newman Xeno, Big Bad of Casanova apparently likes to have sex on bloodstained piles of money.
• Disney Ducks Comic Universe: Scrooge McDuck swims in his money bin. He can apparently tell immediately if even a single coin is missing while swimming through it.
  • He claims Glittering Goldie was his Distaff Counterpart in regards to this.
  • On several occasions he's actually seen in a bathtub full of money (as is his Evil Counterpart, Flintheart Glomgold).
• Heavily implied with Larfleeze of the Orange Lantern Corps. His home is a ruined palace filled with rotting treasures. Every time he kills and his ring consumes another being and adds them to his corps, a new power ring is created and it goes to Larfleeze. In one panel in his first appearance, Larfleeze is seen emerging from a pile of orange power rings like Scrooge McDuck.
• Richie Rich's Aunt Noovo is constantly seen as having this, though she mostly does this for show as she is a very charitable person.

Fan Works

• Dylan Kirrin from Arcanum Heroes. Just like the Famous 5 TV series, Dylan is always looking for the opportunity to make a quick buck, even at the most inappropriate times.
• What the overall goal of every Daft Capo member seems to be from Dangan-Pinguino, as they all nonchalantly commit their crimes all for the sake of acquiring even more money (or "dosh," as they call them) and flexing so much more material property whenever they can.
• Nicole Porter from the Ranma ½ fanfic, Boy Scouts ½. Being an Expy of Nabiki Tendo, it shouldn't be a surprise.
• Nami in the One Piece fanfiction, This Bites!. In this version, the Money Fetish is literal. When Cross makes his grand proclamation on how rich their crew will become with his foresight, Nami has an orgasm to Cross's horror.
• Another One Piece fanfiction, Luffy's Renewed Adventure, actually sees Nami literally bathing in gold just like the page image above.

Films — Animation

• Aladdin:
  • Iago is unabashedly the greediest member of the series and always eager for cash.
  • Abu is just about as greedy as Iago is (hence why he fell for the Schmuck Bait ruby in the Cave of Wonders that nearly got him killed), which is why they're surprisingly close, even if they act like they hate each other. In the cartoon series, he and Iago often egg each other on in the pursuit of treasure from their adventuring.
• Prince John in Disney's Robin Hood (1973). He even sleeps with his arms wrapped around bags of gold.
• Aunt Figg and Lickboot in Tom and Jerry: The Movie. They even have a whole musical number about how much they love money.
  Lickboot: We've got to have... moneyyyyy!

Films — Live-Action

• Parodied in Austin Powers in Goldmember: "I love gooooold. The look of it, the taste of it, the smell of it, the texture. I love gold so much that I even lost my genitalia in an unfortunate smelting accident."
• Disneyfied version: in Blank Check just after buying a house, Preston dumps his backpack of money onto his bed, and rolls around in it while fully clothed.
• In the film Danger: Diabolik, after Diabolik has a successful robbery, he has fun with his girl on a bed covered in money.
• A deleted scene in the first Darkman had Strack sitting on his bed in a towel, picking up a box full of gold coins, placing the coins on the bed, taking his towel off, and then jumping on the bed and writhing in ectasy on the coins, naked. As Bruce Campbell said, this scene was intended to show that the character was really messed up in the head, and meant the audience would no longer trust him. However, when test audiences claimed the scene made them uncomfortable, the studio insisted it be cut, ignoring that was the entire point.
• Delusions of Grandeur: Don Salluste (Louis de Funès), Marquess of Montalegre, Baron Del Pisco, Minister of Finances and Police under Charles II of Spain and tax collector. He is obsessed with riches, and can never have enough, embezzling as much of the taxes as he can. He wakes up in the morning to the sound of gold coins cascading in a bowl, courtesy of his valet. And if only one coin happens to be missing from the bowl, Don Salluste can guess it immediately by sound.
• Goldfinger: "This is GOLD, Mr. Bond. All my life I've been in love with its colour, its brilliance, its divine heaviness..." Seconded by Shirley Bassey.
  • Die Another Day ends with Bond and Jinx having sex surrounded by diamonds.
• Trina in the silent film Greed literally rolls around in her lottery winnings.
• Emperor Nero in History of the World Part I: "Treasure bath? TREASURE BATH!"
• Diana Murphy, played by Demi Moore, in Indecent Proposal.
• Teri from Jewel Robbery is aroused by putting jewelry on her skin.
• In Money for Nothing: The Joey Coyle Story, Joey's girlfriend Monica, having realized that Joey is the one who found and made off with the $1.2 million from the armored car, asks him to show her what that much money looks like. The film then cuts to the two of them making love atop a pile of money.
• Ocean's Eleven: Saul sees the casino vault full of tens of millions in cash: "That's the sexiest thing I've ever seen."
• Rogue Trader takes this trope and turns it up to eleven by having the bed is covered in bearer bonds. These instruments have now been phased out, but at the time the movie was set, bearer bonds were paper certificates that were typically worth something like one hundred thousand dollars. And Nick Leeson's bed was covered with them.
• Perico, Bumbling Sidekick to El Santo in Santo en El Tesoro de Drácula, doesn't seem to be wealthy or greedy, but his outlandish twenty-years-before-its-time dollar sign bling◊ is otherwise pretty inexplicable.
• Slumdog Millionaire is about two brothers who are driven by different obsessions: Jamal with love, and Salim with money. In the end, Jamal reunites with his true love and ends up rich in the bargain, and Salim dies, shot down, in a bathtub full of his ill-gotten money.
• The film version of The Spirit has Sand Saref, who wants all of the money in the world for herself (and has wanted it since her origin story!), even to the point of going after the Golden Fleece.
• The Wolf of Wall Street has Jordan Belfort and his wife Naomi having sex on a bed of money. One-shot is framed to hide Naomi so that it looks like Jordan is sleeping with the money itself, seen here◊.

Myths & Religion

• An old tradition about European dragons is that they hoard treasure, and yet have no apparent use for it. Could it be they enjoy the tactile sensation of lounging on a pile of coinage?

Literature

• The Belgariad: Downplayed with Ce'Nedra, a princess of the Tolnedran Proud Merchant Race. The topic rarely comes up, but when Garion has a considerable fortune in coinage at hand, she relaxes by polishing and sorting the entire thing. He jokes that they should let her at the royal treasury.
• Lotus Cloud from Bridge of Birds, although she's a lot pickier than the standard money fetishist. Giving her pearls and jade will cause her to tremble with greed and profess her undying love to you, but giving her anything else like gold or diamonds will only bore her. It's later revealed that her insatiable love of pearls and jade isn't actually rooted in greed, but rooted in how they subconsciously remind her of her true identity — a goddess named Jade Pearl.
• Subverted in Dark Lord of Derkholm. The dragons of the setting all regularly lie on heaps of treasure because dragons require dermal absorption of gold to maintain good health. The dragons end up joining La Résistance because the Big Bad is stealing their treasure and causing their population to sicken.
• Discworld's Dwarfs don't love gold. They just say that to get it into bed. Make of that what you will.
• Ella's father, Sir Peter, in Ella Enchanted. The man does not care about anything except money and making more money, even ignoring his daughter's clear abuse by his new wife and stepdaughters because he's too busy making deals. He even misses his daughter's wedding to the prince at the end because he went on a business trip.
• Smaug from The Hobbit. He rolled around in his treasure hoard for so long that he had precious metals and jewels embedded in his skin, making him Nigh-Invulnerable. Except for one small spot on his chest.
• In the classic Quebec novel Un Homme et son Péché^note A Man and his Sin and its numerous adaptations, titular borderline Villain Protagonist Séraphin Poudrier is incredibly miserly, and shows more interest in the bags of grain where he hides his money in the form of gold coins than in his young wife Donalda (one scene where he's ...handling them is loaded with as much subtext as could be gotten away with in 30s Quebec); in the original work this culminates in Donalda dying of a curable illness due to Séraphin refusing to pay a doctor to treat her, and at the end of the book, as his house caught fire, he goes insane at the sight and runs into his burning house to save his gold, leading to his death. He's become so iconic that Quebec vernacular uses the name Séraphin in much the same way Anglo-Saxons use the name Scrooge.
• The Philosophical Strangler: After the protagonists get a big payout for services rendered, narrator Ignace spends a few blissful days counting, re-counting, sorting and artistically stacking the coins.
• Kushiel's Legacy has this literally in Bryony House, the House of the Court of Night Blooming Flowers that's centered around serving people who find money and wealth arousing. The House has a casino atmosphere, patrons can wager for favors, and everyone is trained in gambling and money management, with a popular saying being to never bet against its Dowayne. A lot of Bryony adepts go on to work in the Royal Treasury after making their marques, because they're just that good with money.
• In John Updike's Rabbit Is Rich, the title character and his wife have sex on a pile of Krugerrands. Rabbit even jokingly sticks one into her vagina like a slot machine. Yes, it's gross and played for laughs.
• This is the title character's major flaw in the classic book Silas Marner.
• Dwarfs in Warhammer aren't quite as bad, but even Gotrek will forestall his epic quest to get himself killed to go on a treasure hunt. Especially if he can do both by going after treasure someplace dangerous.

Live-Action TV

• 1000 Ways to Die featured a beautiful woman who obviously married her very old husband for his millions of dollars. She had apparently amassed a great deal of coins and cash and rather enjoyed laying on it and playing with it. Unfortunately, while she was doing so one day, there was an Earthquake that caused massive bags of money to fall down on top of her and crush her to death.
• In The Bill episode Big Eagle Day, two known criminals are discovered with a pile of money and two women. During the investigation, one of the women admits that they did indeed to the bed of banknotes thing. Ultimately it is revealed that they got the money as compensation for being wrongfully arrested and were trying a con to get Sun Hill to also wrongfully arrest them. When signing to retrieve it and suggesting suing Sun Hill also, it turns out that a lot of the money has walked out the door hidden in the clothes of the two women.
• Buffyverse:
  • In Angel, Cordelia does get turned on once when a billionaire starts talking finance; also, she can apparently smell it.
    Angel: Hide some in the office and watch her. It's uncanny.
  • In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Anya seems to have a thing for cash herself. Anya, whilst playing The Game of Life, asked if she could sell her children for more money.
• When Danger: Diabolik was featured on the final episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, Mike and the bots joked that the first take of the scene involved gold bars, which injured both actors. Crow also criticized the size of the haul. His reasoning: "If he had stolen just a little less, I could see her ass right now!"
• Harry Enfield and Chums: Harry Enfield created a character based entirely around this, a cockney named Loadsamoney who carries around a large wad of cash and constantly brags about how much money he has, but only likes handling cash above anything else.
• Jake and the Fatman: In "Rhapsody in Blue", a husband and wife pair of murderers/blackmailers are shown lying in post-coital bliss atop the $250,000 in small bills they had extorted from their victim; evidently just having had sex on top of it.
• In The L Word, Helena and her lover Catherine win a ton of money playing poker and have sex while gloating over it.
• On Las Vegas, after Danny sells his car, one suggestion of what he should do with the money was to cash the check out in singles and roll nude in the pile of cash. Danny claims that he has already tried that with the check itself, much to the consternation of the person holding it.
• Parker of Leverage, to the point of unnerving her crewmates. When confronted with a shipping crate full of bills, she can't even speak. Of course she didn't speak! She was too busy hugging the pallet full of 100-dollar bills. She still has a money fetish despite the fact that the team's business has made her filthy rich. Given she's a very socially odd thief, it might even be that she has a highly specific Other People's Money Fetish.
• Lampshaded in the Malcolm in the Middle episode "Malcolm Babysits" where Malcolm, having money for the first time in his life, rubs it on his face and then asks to camera "Is this as creepy as I think it is?"
• In Monty Python's Flying Circus, the host of "The Money Programme" gets a bit carried away (see here), and provides the page quote.
• Parks and Recreation has Jessie Wicks, the Gold Digger wife of Nick Newport Sr. When she sells Newport land at a high price in season 7, she keeps repeating how much money she got for it because it turns her on.
• The Star Trek franchise of course has the Ferengi. For them, money isn't just a fetish, it's a religion. The "Rules of Acquisition" are treated essentially as holy scripture, and young Ferengi children are taught to memorize all 285 of them. They believe that when a Ferengi dies, if their life was profitable, then they're allowed into the Divine Treasury to meet the Celestial Auctioneers and place bids on new lives. But if their life was not profitable, then they're cast down into the Vault of Eternal Destitution.
• Supernatural gives us this:
  Sam: How do you sleep at night?
  Bela: On silk sheets, rolling naked in money.

Manhwa

• Cavalier of the Abyss: Back when he was a normal human, Jae-Hoon had to save to the point his friends considered it his defining trait.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons borrows from Western mythologies. Dragons of all alignments absolutely love to sleep on a pile of gold coins and other valuables (carapace and all, it's not painful for them). Even the best and nicest of dragons aren't immune to avarice. Rumor has it that they also frolic in hoards like hogs do in mud when no one is watching.

Theatre

• Black Friday: Frank Pricely is all but stated to have one, being deeply fixated on selling a lot of toys this Black Friday. While part of it is justified by the fact that he owns a brick-and-mortar toy store (which are very difficult to keep open in the modern era), he also enters the show literally singing an ode to capitalism, and his big song, "Our Doors Are Open," involves a lot of suggestive lyrics and pelvic thrusting.
  When our doors are open,
  your republic is on the market.
  Your net worth is in my back pocket,
  and it weighs my pants down.
  As our doors first open,
  I'm your annual entrepreneur!
  Yes, our doors are open...
• Harpagon from Molière's The Miser.
• Ben Jonson's Volpone opens with the title character apostrophizing a pile of money:
  ''O thou son of Sol,
  But brighter than thy father, let me kiss,
  With adoration, thee, and every relick
  Of sacred treasure, in this blessed room...

However, he goes on to suggest that he gets off on schemes and manipulations even more than on the money itself:

I glory
More in the cunning purchase of my wealth
Than in the glad possession.

Video Games

• In Azure Dreams, Fur loves money, to the point that she asks you for money when you meet her at the swimming pool just because you have the privilege of looking at her body. She will actually take 100g if you let her.
• The Merchant Sheep from Catherine is absolutely obsessed with money, which is why he's willing to accept the Enigma Coins you find lying around as currency in exchange for items. He hopes to use the amassed dream fortune to buy his freedom from the nightmare. It instead leads to his doom — the bag gets too heavy and he falls off the tower.
• Robert from Child of Light. He is a businessman after all.
• The Goblins from Clash of Clans love loot. They aim for it when they are available.
• In Cytus II, this is JOE's Fatal Flaw as it leads him to give certain gangs more leeway in their operations for the sake of making some extra cash. It allows the Baro Brotherhood to act on their dangerous ambitions, disrupting the very balance Saxon sought to preserve.
• Zack from Dead or Alive. The only thing other than fame that motivates him to participate in the Dead or Alive Tournaments.
• The Rudinn species from Deltarune. The species' sole love is riches, to the point where a duo of them living in the Card Castle traded away their beds to the Hathys upstairs in exchange for piles of money.
• Fran from Demon Gaze. Running a profitable business is one thing, but she's an absolute skinflint on maintenance and if you want any more than the Dragon Princess Inn's most basic services, you're looking at a sky-high bill. Dragons tend to be touchy about their treasure hoard, after all.
• Greed, the Demon Lord who rules the Treasure Realm in Diablo. According to the lead writer, Brian Kindregan, "Greed is obsessed with all things valuable" to the point that she "takes a bath in all her gold every three hours." Scrooge McDuck himself would be proud!
• Hoggmeiser in Disgaea, to the point that once King Krichevskoy passed away, he stole a bunch of the castle's valuables and used them to make a gaudy golden castle for himself, and to add to this most of his sentences end with a $ sign. By Disgaea Dimension 2 this evolved into his new passive, where he gets a stat boost depending on how much money the player has. Disgaea 5 saw this become the new passive of the Nether Noble class, which the player can create and even utilize on other party members thanks to Sub-classing.
  • Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny has Misedor, king of a Human World who places his full faith in the power of money. Not only does he also possess a passive much like Hoggmeiser's, he believes that any problem could be solved by throwing enough money at it.
• Warbucks, a removed character from Don't Starve, gains sanity by keeping Oincs (Hamlet's currency) in his inventory.
• The villain Baron Au'Mydas Bayconn from DragonFable really likes gold.
• In Fairy Fencer F, Lola repeatedly states that she loves money multiple times. She loves even the smell of money, as well as hearing coins clink. And it shows with her progressively expensive wares and her attempts at getting people to buy them.
• Fate/EXTRA CCC: Rin Tousaka, naturally. The game takes pains to point out that it's the money itself that she likes, not the luxuries she could buy with it, and explicitly calls it a fetish of hers.
• Fire Emblem series mascot Anna, while usually being a merchant selling rare and expensive items, is usually not this due to keeping her Secret Shop secret for the sake of it. However the playable Anna in Awakening is said to have "the fattest nest egg" of anyone in the army. Even when she confesses her love to the Avatar, she just says that maybe one day she might love him more than money.
  • Heroes Anna at first seemed to be missing this trait like the older versions of Anna, however, this Awakening aspect did appear later on in some of the seasonal event plots. Her money fetish actually helps her resist Plumeria's nectar in Book 4, Chapter 8, when the others (including his sister) succumb and try to seduce Alfonse.
• F-Zero GX characterizes Billy like this during his interviews.
• In Master Detective Archives: Rain Code, Halara Nightmare's obsession with money is essentially their defining trait. No matter how major or minor the request given, Halara will always ask for a sum of money to prove the worth of their client.
• The ninja of N is so obsessed with gold that the joy of collecting it actually increases their lifespan. In terms of gameplay, each gold piece adds two seconds to the game's time limit when collected.
• Million Gunman from No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle, a pastiche of Bond villains who's fought in a bank, fights with guns that shoot coins, and during his boss fight never shuts up about how much he loves money.
• In Octopath Traveler, most of the protagonists have emotional goals like avenging their dead father or completing a religious ritual. Tressa just really wants money, so one day she gets up, tells her parents she's leaving home and walks halfway across the world to set up shop.
• Komachi Oba of Sakura Wars (2019) frequently loves money since she works as a gift shop vendor for the Imperial Revue.
• In SINoALICE, Aladdin is absolutely obsessed with money, believing that everything in the world can be obtained with enough money and desires to gain more wealth. When confronted with a problem in the story, his first instinct is to throw money at it and he considers it to be the most valuable thing in the world.
• The Golden Queen in Skylanders has a massive obsession with owning gold, and wants it more than anything. She even taught herself to gain the Midas Touch simply to make herself even richer. When asked by Kaos if she would prefer to either rule Skylands as its supreme overlord or have all of its gold, she flatly said that she'd have the gold, dismissing the possibility of anything else being more important. Kaos was utterly floored by her petty motivations, and decided to try to sabotage her plans afterwards.
• Sly Cooper: Penelope loves money more than anything. In fact, this is implied that the only reason why she joined the Cooper Gang is to steal the wealth of the Cooper Vault, worth about billions. Dr. M quashed that, so she instead turned to Bentley's skills to make a fortune in weapon designs. But her greed, paranoia, and jealousy consume her, turning Penelope into a cold-blooded villain and ruining her shot at wealth when Bentley dumps her for trying to murder his friends.
• Spyro the Dragon: Moneybags is a slimeball bear who's obsessed with gems, and spends his entire time following Spyro and charging him to open doors, learn new skills, or free imprisoned folk (who attack him right away). He never gets to keep them, either; in Avalar, Elora forces Moneybags to hand back the gems to Spyro as a reward for defeating Ripto; in the Forgotten Realms, Moneybags is attacked by Spyro when he intends to sell a dragon egg back in Avalar, causing him to lose all the gems as well as the egg. Moneybags does eventually have a Heel–Face Turn and become a professional shopkeeper, though his greed remains.
• Sunset Riders: Simon Greedwell, the first boss, whose last words are "Bury me with my money."
• Wario defines this in both the Wario Land and WarioWare series.
• World of Warcraft has the goblins, which have been described as "the Ferengi of Azeroth." It's commonly said that they will sell their own mother if the price is right.
• Majesty: Rogues are obsessed with gold. When initiating combat, they declare "you won't get my gold!" under the apparent assumption that it's what their enemy is after, and their death quote is an admonishment to leave their gold alone. They are so driven by their desire for cash that you can induce them to destroy their own guild if you stick a high enough reward flag on it.

Web Comics

• Cabbage from Cucumber Quest. The acquirement of more and more wealth seems to be his sole motivation for existing. Gigi even (reluctantly) sketched a fan of Cabbage sleeping with a body pillow, itself printed with a drawing of himself hugging a 100-dollar bill.
• In Exiern, Tiffany once claims to have got an orgasm just from seeing a vault full of gold promised to her, and later is seen rolling in it with a gleeful smile, tossing coins around.
• The Order of the Stick: Haley Starshine obsessively shines every gold piece she owns, and once swims through a Dragon Hoard — and losing her share of the treasure pile inflicts such mental trauma that she speaks in cryptograms for a time.^note While losing the treasure triggers the aphasia, the actual root cause is a particularly bad case of Cannot Spit It Out. She has jokingly (or not?) explained that she's a half-dragon. She has also considered a more physical version of this trope.
• Kharisma, from Something*Positive, partly through being a Rich Bitch who lost the "rich" part. She even sleeps with the awful Avogadro once she sees him as his fortune and not his physically horrifying (everything sagging, falling off, or harbouring illnesses) body.

Web Original

• This post by The Comics Curmudgeon argues that due to the value of spices in The Dung Ages the included Hägar the Horrible strip where Hagar and Helga spice up their love life with black pepper, ginger, and cloves is a Cultural Translation of this trope.
• One piece of Gaia Online art has the moneygrubbing Nicolae posing naked in a wooden tub full of money. It can be found on his character profile and as a buyable background for your Aquarium (Cash only).
• In the French webfiction Les Aventures de Morgoth, the titular mage has an Elf girlfriend who likes filling her bed with gold before sleep. It's actually foreshadowing that she's a polymorphed dragon.
• SCP Foundation: SCP-261 (a sentient Japanese vending machine):
  • It was once photographed by SCP-978 (a camera that shows the desires of those photographed in its pictures). It showed SCP-261 halfway buried in yen coins.
  • SCP-261 also becomes extremely hostile when people attempt to use counterfeit money or the coin-on-a-string trick or don't insert money, one time dispensing a live grenade in retaliation.

Web Videos

• The executive played by Chris Hardwick in this video can be heard saying "I fucked a pile of money" near the beginning of the clip.
• This guy
• The Warp Zone: In The X-Men Try Joining the MCU, Disney executive Dick Richards is shown counting the vast amounts of money from Endgame's box office. He later tells the X-Men that while he could easily have a robot count it, he prefers to do it himself because it's his kink. When he has more of Endgame's revenue fall of him, he lets out a cathartic sigh and even takes a deep breath through his nose to smell the bills of money that fall on him. In Batman Reacts to the Snyder Cut, while working at Warner Bros in this video, he says to Batman that his nipples get hard just from the thought of charging $15 per month for a subscription to HBOMax.

Western Animation

• Mort from All Hail King Julien has one of these when Julien invents money, but this seems to be attributed solely to the fact that the money has Julien's image printed on it.
• Be Cool, Scooby-Doo!: In "Sorcerer Snacks Scare", Beverly is seen bathing in money. Daphne comments that it cannot be called a "money bath" when one uses fifty-dollar bills.
• In The Beatles cartoon "We Can Work It Out," Hollywood soothsayer Mr. Lucky Wizard doesn't read palms or the bumps on heads. He reads money.
• Gorgonzola from Chowder. After he starts earning a fortune as Chowder's manager in "Toots", he is seen rubbing money all over his face while cackling gleefully.
• Eustace Bagge from Courage the Cowardly Dog is often convinced to help Courage's Rogues Gallery for money; he ever bathes in cash.
• Scrooge McDuck from DuckTales (1987) literally swims in money on a regular basis, and his most treasured possession is his #1 Dime.
• Eddy from Ed, Edd n Eddy. There were plenty of times that his scams would have been highly successful if he wasn't so obsessed with getting every possible cent out of the neighborhood kids. This obsession frequently ended his plans, and those of the other Eds, to the point that Eddy became The Millstone of the trio. The series finale movie actually features this as a plot point, going to explain Eddy's extremely self-destructive behavior.
• Peter Griffin wins the lottery on Family Guy and has a vault built containing a large number of gold coins. When he tries to dive into it, a la Scrooge McDuck, he lands bloodily and twisted, screaming "Aaaaagghh! It's not a liquid! It's a great many pieces of solid matter that form a hard floor-like surface! Aaaaaaagh!"
• Futurama, "Into The Wild Green Yonder", Professor Farnsworth dances naked in a swirling vat of cash.
• Money was the motivation for everything Cousin Mel did in Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.
• Grunkle Stan from Gravity Falls. Apparently, his life's dream is simply "to possess money". In "Boss Mabel" he imagines that a family going to the Mystery Shack are sentient wallets, one of whom gets car-sick and pukes out coins. It's part of his Freudian Excuse; Stan was disowned by his father after messing up an invention of his brother, Ford, that could have gotten the latter into a prestigious college. The last thing his father said to him was to not come back until he remade the millions they would have skimmed off Ford's success.
• Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law has this with Phil Ken Sebben, the president of Sebben & Sebben. During the episode "Employee Orientation", it opens on him sitting in a personal jet, the back half of which is filled to the ceiling with money he is counting:
  Phil: Oh hello! I didn't see you there, I was counting money. Sometimes I stay up thirteen-fourteen hours a day and I still can't keep up! Ever get a papercut from a $7,000 bill? Doesn't tickle.
• Kaz Harada from Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi can definitely count as one of these. He's obsessed with money to the point that he's always coming up with new ways he can make Ami and Yumi more profitable.
• In an episode of King of the Hill, Khan made a lot of money—all in quarters—via ownership of a DIY carwash, and he and Minh dumped it on their bed and rolled around in it.
• Looney Tunes:
  • Daffy Duck definitely fits this trope. In The Looney Tunes Show after becoming rich in "Peel of Fortune", Daffy is shown rolling around in a pile of cash on his bed.
  • Sylvester the Cat rolls around in a pile of money after inheriting a fortune in the Looney Tunes short Heir Conditioning.
• Skwisgaar from Metalocalypse seems to literally have this trait:
  "So fucking expensive that it makes me horny."
• The Simpsons:
  • It appears in one episode as Homer Simpson's fantasy — the one where Homer loses the family's money investing in motion capture technology.
    • In another episode, upon hearing of a scheme to become "moderately wealthy", Homer imagines himself rolling around on a small pile of money, shouting, "I'm sort of rich! I can rent anything I want!"
  • From "A Star is Burns":
    Jay Sherman: [contemptuous] How do you sleep at night?
    Rainier Wolfcastle: On top of a pile of money with many beautiful ladies.
• In South Park, Eric Cartman has this reaction after winning a bet with Kyle, having the cash converted into ever-smaller denominations so he can enjoy its increased mass (loudly, in front of Kyle). This includes wallowing in a kiddie-pool full of quarters. However, it was revealed that he was more interested in annoying Kyle. As soon as Kyle stopped getting annoyed Cartman stormed off leaving the money behind.
• Mr. Krabs from SpongeBob SquarePants is stingy, mainly due to this trope. Heck, in the prehistoric episode, his cry was a constant "Money, money, money,..." The crab has regular money baths and showers, he cries in pain if a dollar is put in a blender, he sticks his claw in a sink and loses his arm to retrieve a dime, and he has, at least once, had a romantic dinner with a pile of bills. And he dreams about catching a giant Moby Dick-esque dollar bill. Not to mention this bit. Hell, SpongeBob, of all people, points this out in the episode "Plankton's Good Eye":
  Mr. Krabs: The green stuff, you know, money!
  SpongeBob: Oh, you mean your obsession?
  Mr. Krabs: Obsession is such a strong word.
  [Mr. Krabs opens his safe, tucks a stack of bills in a little bed and pours it a tiny glass of milk that he sets on a little nightstand]
• Ruel, and his entire race of Enutrof from Wakfu. Though his race's name backwards is Fortune.

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