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Old money doesn't wave dollars around. And they recycle their soda cans.
Jimmy: Are you English?
Tad: Well, no. I just speak this way because I'm very insecure. You see my father is a self-made man so I pretend to be old money, but in fact I'm really nouveau riche.
Bully

Literally "new rich" (pronounced noo-voh reesh), less literally "new money," this is the negative take on the Self-Made Man — or any character who unexpectedly came into money. The Nouveau Riche are characterized as rude and tasteless and frequently contrasted with the refined manners of aristocratic Old Money characters.

How they made the money depends where they come from and when the particular work is set. If British, expect them to be from either Oop North (with wealth made from industry) or more recently, London/Essex (with new wealth from the financial sector). If American, expect them to be Hollywood California people with bleach-blonde Valley Girl daughters, slovenly white trash who won either the lottery or a big-time settlement, obese Deep South oil barons, cattle tycoons, contractors (especially in small-town settings), (if set in pre-Civil War times) a cotton-pickin', slave-whippin' Fat, Sweaty Southerner in a White Suit, or Silicon Valley nerds from the dot-com or the mobile services boom era compensating poor social skills with tons of money. If black, expect a flashy character from a Glam Rap video or an athlete (usually football, basketball, or boxing). If Japanese, expect them to be The Idiot from Osaka to act as the negative contrast to the Old Money (usually from the Kanto region). Especially unsympathetic depictions may give them ties to organized crime — or otherwise all-round jerkassery and contempt towards the social class they used to belong to.

A typical trait of the Nouveau Riche is the need to flaunt their newfound money through Conspicuous Consumption: Common accessories for this class include fur coats, gaudy jewelry, obnoxiously color-coordinated suits, and gold teeth, as well as a love of equally flashy and gaudy vehicles (usually either European performance cars or blinged-out SUVs). They also tend to love throwing debauched, drug-fueled parties, and spending ludicrous amounts of money at similarly overpriced nightclubs or strip clubs is their idea of a night out on the town.

Often paired with Acquired Situational Narcissism, and can lead to A Fool and His New Money Are Soon Parted. Old Money, in contrast, are usually much more restrained in both taste and spending, as they have no need to flaunt the wealth they've always had and no wish to throw away the family fortune on trivial pursuits.

A common method of playing with the trope — and one more common in modern works where traditional aristocracy and 'Old Money' aren't quite as revered as they used to be — is to have the Nouveau Riche character despite their lack of 'class and breeding' be a lot more likable and down-to-earth than the Blue Blood types, usually because they know exactly how lucky they are now and how unfortunate they were before. Bourgeois Bohemians, with their pairing of progressive views and wealth, may be played this way if not as rivals. In this depiction, expect the 'class and breeding' the Blue Bloods and Old Money types obsess over to be codewords for snobbery, arrogant entitlement and stuffy, fusty over-adherence to pointless tradition. In Slobs Versus Snobs works where it's one against the other, expect them to see the old money types as pompous, arrogant elitists who have no clue what it's like to ever have to work for and/or want for anything, and for the Old Money to see them as crude, boorish, loudmouthed assholes who have far more money than they do dignity, taste, or basic integrity or moral character.

Compare Idle Rich and Yuppie who was an '80s version of this trope albeit with less crassness and tastes in Conspicuous Consumption that tended to be more subtle. Contrast Old Money, Upper-Class Twit (negative portrayals of Old Money people), Impoverished Patrician (although are likely to end up at the sides of a Nobility Marries Money situation), Simple, yet Opulent (what these people are not prone to buy), Lower-Class Lout (what quite a few examples tend to have been prior to obtaining their money, though the "lout" part stays; this is what the phrase "cashed-up trash" usually refers to). A Trumplica will often have traits of this.


Examples:

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    Advertising 
  • The Nouveau Riche is a stock character in advertisements for the Norwegian national lottery, with the tagline "Lotto millionaires are not like other millionaires". These suddenly moneyed people usually used their money in highly eccentric ways, like the old hippie who bought a tank from military surplus and painted it in hippie symbolism and trolled military training exercises, the taxi driver who would now only take customers who shared his taste in music, or the immigrant worker who bought his workplace to get one over his abusive floor supervisor.
  • Commercials for the British national lottery take a similar angle but present such winners less sympathetically, showing them engaging in obnoxious vanity projects with the tagline "Please not them".
  • A television spot for MTV satirizes the idea of Nouveau Riche hip hop: a music video location scout notes that the ideal location for a rap video is a dingy street in a run-down part of town, reflecting the artist's poor childhood and underprivileged roots... but must also be wide enough to accommodate said artist's brand new Mercedes.

    Anime & Manga 
  • Alois Trancy from the Black Butler anime series. He flaunts his money and doesn't really seem to care, as seen by the first episode when he tosses bills and bills of money down to his "uncle". Not to mention he is a massive case of Creepy Child. It's much more complicated than that.
  • Kazuya and his family in Boys over Flowers, though Kazuya himself is a more sympathetic example.
  • A Dog of Flanders (1975): Mr. Cogez was born in a poor family, but he worked hard enough to become a landowner and a businessman and created a fortune in one generation. Both Alois and her mother live comfortably thanks to him, but while they're Spoiled Sweet, he has rigid standards towards people (including his own daughter) and is extremely dismissive to the poor.
  • In Emma: A Victorian Romance, Emma ends up working for the Malders, a new money family. It explores in some detail the upheaval and class conflict created by England's industrial revolution. Flashback chapters show that Richard Jones was considered "New Money" as a young man, especially by established aristocrats. In the present, Viscount Campbell is the only person shown to still think of him that way.
  • In Gankutsuou, Danglars is the epitome of greedy new money with no class — this is well represented by the fact he always wears a golden suit.
  • Implied in regards to Michel Toulonchamp from Honoo no Alpen Rose. The reason why he squeezes the Durants is their good social position..
  • In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: The JOJOLands, Jodio, who is a self-interested individual that would resort to thieving and drug dealing to get money, explains this is his story of becoming 'filthy rich' by ways of his Mechanism that'll make wealth flow straight to him.
  • Lady!!: Implied with Countess Madeleine and her Spoiled Brat children Thomas and Mary. It would certainly explain why she acts like she is the mistress of Marble Mansion, the Big Fancy House belonging to Lynn's father, before even being engaged to him: after all, Madeleine is only a minor noble, but marrying George would allow her to become a full-blooded noblewoman, even if he's an Impoverished Patrician; she works around the latter by offering to pay off his debts if he becomes her husband. They eventually do marry in the manga, but in the anime, he rejects her because of how cruel she is to his daughters Lynn and Sarah.
  • Lucy-May of the Southern Rainbow: This is what Lucy-May's family hopes to achieve by coming to Australia from England, but they instead spend years in poverty, while their Arch-Enemy Mr. Pettywell has no issue with wealth.
  • Haruka Suzushiro's family in My-HiME, apparently. Her best friend Yukino, in her special, reflects on a time when her family was not nearly as wealthy.
  • Julie from chapter 19 of Zekkyou Gakkyuu is described as this by another girl.

    Arts 

    Comic Books 
  • In the Disney Ducks and Mickey Mouse Comic Universes, whenever the Beagle Boys or Peg-Leg Pete become rich (usually through illegal means) they will usually become this. Good examples are Carl Barks' "The Case of the Sticky Money" and Romano Scarpa's "The Lentils of Babylon" in the formers' case. It's always temporary. John D. Rockerduck is a more permanent example. He's Scrooge's Foil in this regard, having no compulsions about actually using the money he owns.
  • Richie Rich has a literal example in Richie's aunt "Noovoo Rich" who married one of Richie's uncles and has never gotten over becoming suddenly wealthy. She's flashy and even a little crass, but has a kind heart and loves giving away money to charities, albeit always very conspicuously.
  • In Runaways, the Wilders were bank robbers and the Steins were struggling scientists before their deal with the Gibborim pushed them into the upper class. This comes up in the "Dead-End Kids" arc when the elitist Yorkes are horrified to discover that their daughter was dating the Steins' son Chase.

    Fan Works 
  • Jackie from Origins, a Mass Effect/Star Wars/Borderlands/Halo Massive Multiplayer Crossover plays with this and Upper-Class Twit. She starts out poor because her mother and father don't bother telling her about the Old Money/Blue Blood she has by birthright. They actually leave her since caring for a child messes up their fun plans. Once she realizes exactly who she is, Jackie becomes an Ungrateful Bitch to the woman who took her off the streets and jets away to her new life as an heiress of a powerful family. She grows out of it, but whips out the old persona when necessary to enlist others in mostly-heroic causes since these people won't listen to the "reformed Jackie."
  • In The Twilight Saga fanfic The Wedding Crashers the Cullens and other vampires are depicted as this, expanding on their book characterization, much to Leah, Sam, and Dean's disdain. Of particular note are the facts that despite Renesmee and Jacob's wedding being outdoors, the decorations are absolutely non-natural looking and instead clash with the location in an attempt to make it look fancier, Leah's dress is criticized for only probably being less than six hundred dollars, Emmett admits he can't work on old cars because his family buys so many fancy new ones there's no room in the garage for him to keep a single project car, and the wedding gift of a lost Rembrandt is left out in the open by the beach in the humidity.
  • crawlersout: Tom's friend Margaret is this, being the daughter of the President of General Motors and an actress. While they aren't as extreme as most examples, their spending is garish enough to get on the bad side of her best friend Ruth's family (who are Old Money). Surprisingly, Tom actually likes Margaret's family more than Ruth's (though not by much), mainly because the idea of the Self-Made Man appeals to him and his past as a half-blood orphan with nothing to his name until Fem!Harry took him in.
  • Equestria Divided: Lower tire House Whitegold units are essentially what you get when you combine a literal Army of Thieves and Whores with a huge military budget. The Whitegold Militia are criminals from the Undercity given the best equipment, training and pay money can buy without curbing their viciousness one bit.

    Films — Animation 
  • Victor's family in Corpse Bride, who have very recently come into a mass fortune after inventing canned fish, and are determined to shove their way into the blue-blooded world. Mostly by marrying into Victoria's Impoverished Patrician family.
  • Hercules is described as such by the Muses in "Zero to Hero", shortly after becoming famous for defeating the Hydra.
    With appearance fees and royalties, our Herc had cash to burn
    Now nouveau riche and famous, he could tell you what's a Grecian urn

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Thornton Melon (Dangerfield again) in Back to School is a salt-of-the-earth, Book Dumb-but-savvy businessman who made his fortune with his line of "Tall and Fat" clothing stores for plus-sized men. He throws his money around very casually while going back to school. The bad guy of the film actually calls Melon's son a "crude, obnoxious, nouveau riche little pleb".
  • Max Shreck, the crooked tycoon in Batman Returns. He actually turns the stereotype on its head by mocking Bruce Wayne for having inherited all his money, while Max had to work hard (and break the law) for all of his. Sharp-eyed viewers will note that Max and his son wear fur-lined overcoats, which were once the preferred fashion of this social group.
  • Jim the broker from Boiler Room has a multi-room McMansion in an exclusive neighborhood, complete with a tanning bed in the dining room and an expensive home theater setup in the living room — and almost no other furniture. The protagonist's narration lampshades this, noting that the brokerage is full of guys like Jim who have no idea how to spend the millions they made.
  • Al Czervik (Rodney Dangerfield) in Caddyshack. Despite being boorish and crude, he's decidedly more likeable than the uptight Judge Elihu Smails.
  • Jack Hartounian in Caddyshack II, a self-made millionaire of Jewish-Armenian descent who still retains his salt-of-the-earth mentality and enjoys a close friendship with his construction workers. he deliberately folds in a poker game against a Hispanic worker with a large family despite his winning hand in order to avoid taking money from him. He makes his money by building low-income housing in wealthy neighborhoods. Naturally, the country club Blue Bloods don't much like this idea and make efforts to shut down his construction project. As in the first film, this leads to a golf match. Meanwhile, his daughter desperately wants to be thought of as a Blue Blood and is frequently embarrassed by her father's antics, while one of the Blue Bloods finds Jack's personality a refreshing change from the stuck-up snobs at the club and starts dating him.
  • In Dumb and Dumber, Harry and Lloyd accidentally break open a ransom-filled briefcase they had been trying to return to Lloyd's crush. They become this trope immediately — gaudy designer clothes, opulent hotel suite, freakishly expensive car, and outrageous tips to the staff — which is Played for Laughs because it falls perfectly in line with the tone of the movie (because they're both complete idiots).
  • The Filipino film Four Sisters and a Wedding: The Bayags are tacky, overbearing, and overly condescending towards the middle-class Salazars, leading the sisters to conclude that they're recently rich.
  • The Spanish movie Hay Que Educar A Papá shows two families: Rich, aristocratic High-Class Glass -wearing Count De Ronda versus hard-working Self-Made Man Severiano Paredes who lacked social graces but made money with his work. Their children want to marry. Paredes's daughter convinces her dad to become a Nouveau Riche on purpose to impress De Ronda.
  • Many James Bond villains, who are contrasted with Cultured Badass Bond.
  • The Jerk: Navin Johnson, along with his girlfriend Marie, complete with looking like idiots in a fancy restaurant, A Fool and His New Money Are Soon Parted and Conspicuous Consumption, though not in that order.
  • In the French movie La Vengeance du serpent à plumes, the main character found a treasure in his deceased mother's home, and later goes to a grand hotel:
    Loulou: Is this the place where you have rooms at 35000F a night?
    Hotel clerk: Yes, but we also have much cheaper—
    Loulou: You didn't look at me right, I'm a nouveau riche.
  • In The Lady Eve, the Pike family is new money. The main character's father is a blue-collar man who made a fortune in brewing.
  • In Layer Cake, the London Gangster Jimmie Price is a rather vulgar, crude jerk and is contrasted with his old friend Eddie, who is the Magnificent Bastard to Jimmie's Smug Snake, and has managed to make himself Wicked Cultured, despite coming from the same background.
  • In Masterminds, Steve and his family quickly fall into this trope after taking their cut from the Loomis Fargo robbery. It ends up being their undoing, as their Conspicuous Consumption quickly draws attention from the authorities.
  • Jim Williams, the central character of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.
    Jim Williams: Yes, I am "nouveau riche," but then, it's the "riche" that counts, now isn't it?
  • A subtle one in Mona Lisa Smile when a student mentions that her family owns a Van Gogh painting.
  • The Music Room: Mahim, whose father was a moneylender, but who has prospered and become rich. Roy the Impoverished Patrician, basically the hereditary noble lord of the area, is irritated by the putt-putt noise of the generator that provides electricity to Mahim's house. Mahim holds Roy in thinly veiled contempt but wishes to imitate him, staging concerts just like Roy does. In one scene Mahim notes that the peasants gawk at Roy's elephant because Roy is Old Money, while they throw rocks at Mahim's nice new car.
  • In Revenge of the Nerds III: The Next Generation Booger falls in love with the daughter of a Nouveau Riche family whose patriarch denies he's Nouveau Riche.
  • This is how Franco Zeffirelli depicted the Capulets (Juliet's family) in his version of Romeo and Juliet. This is emphasized through Color-Coded for Your Convenience: the Capulets and their retainers are dressed in loud, bright colors, while the Montagues (the older and more respected family of Romeo) favor more conservative clothing hues.
  • In Tillie's Punctured Romance, ignorant farmgirl Tillie inherits a large fortune, and the mansion to go with it. She and her villainous Gold Digger husband (played, interestingly, by Charlie Chaplin), make jackasses out of themselves and trash the place. When Tillie's presumed dead uncle turns up alive after all, he tries to have them arrested.
  • As in Real Life, Molly Brown from Titanic, played by Kathy Bates. Subverted in that the only people who seem to dislike her for being Nouveau Riche are the other upper-class women. The men (and of course Rose) all seem to like her just fine. She is also a much more likable character than the other upper-class women.

    Literature 
  • 1632 has several examples:
    • Morris Roth brought along his entire jewelry store, including diamonds cut in a way that had not been invented yet in 1632. Between selling his stock for seriously inflated prices to royals who could easily afford it, and cutting new diamonds in that unique way, Roth becomes extremely wealthy. Somewhat averted, because while he has all the trappings of the very wealthy (immense house with many fine paintings, fine clothes, etc), he retains his sensibilities, and uses his wealth to found universities, and to influence events to avoid pogroms and massacres against Jews in Poland that happened in the other history.
    • Tom Stone is a chemist who becomes very wealthy by recalling how to create permanent dyes for clothing in colors that were previously not possible in 1632. He charges all the market will bear for this, in order to fund his development and manufacture of pharmaceutical drugs, pesticides, and insecticides which he sells at precisely his manufacturing costs (ie, no profit at all). His down-time wife Magda is somewhat more practical and uses his wealth to trade in hard goods, making him even wealthier. He has no interest in the trappings of wealth, while she insists that he needs to live in houses and dress himself according to his new financial position. They are fairly good-natured about the conflict between their positions.
  • The Thames' in Aunt Dimity and the Lost Prince. Husband Tony is a Self-Made Man who built up the family's fish firm into a household name. While Bree approvingly describes their home (renamed "Shangri-la") as "the 1870s meets the 1970s", Lori is less taken with the look. Wife Gracie is also depicted as overdone in clothing, shoes, hair, and makeup, but she is far kinder than the blue-blooded Boghwells.
  • The Buccaneers: The five heroines' families' money is too new for them to be accepted by American Old Money, so they're unleashed upon English nobility instead.
  • In A Brother's Price, the Whistlers are accused of being nouveau riche a couple of times. However, their table manners and other behaviour are impeccable, Grandpa Alannon was very strict about that, and he had his wives wrapped around his little finger — after kidnapping him from a castle under siege, where Prince Alannon had just been taking a bath, they had to make amends.
  • The Chalet School series has two notable examples: Joan Baker in Problem for the Chalet School, whose family are able to afford to send her to the school after her father wins the pools, and Diana Skelton in Bride Leads the Chalet School. Both are seen as vulgar and classless by the other girls, though Joan does get better eventually.
  • In The Count of Monte Cristo, the villainous Danglars is described as a stereotypical Nouveau Riche, with an appearance as repellent as his personality. In contrast, the Count is himself Wicked Cultured despite having spent most of his life as a humble sailor and prisoner. It seems that the lowborn will only develop shallow tastes in response to riches if they're bad people to begin with.
  • Frederick Winterbourne's main problem in Daisy Miller is that his aunt and every other American in Europe keeps telling him that the titular heroine, whom he is falling for fast, and her family are this.
  • The Gundermanns in Der Stechlin.
  • Referenced in a couple of Discworld books, mostly to play up the aristocrats as terrible snobs.
    • Seldom Bucket in Maskerade ("You may think I'm just big man in cheese who wouldn't know culture if he found it floating in his tea.") comes close to an actual example.
    • Played with by Mrs. Gaiter in Hogfather whose husband made his fortune in boots and shoes. She's terrified of being seen as Nouveau Riche if she doesn't know the difference between a serviette and a napkin, despite the fact that most of the nobility (at least, the ones Susan knows) don't use either and rely on their dogs to deal with anything that falls to the floor.
    • Harry King is a rough-and-tumble Self-Made Man who rose from the gutters (literally) to wealth, prominence, and an eventual knighthood, making him among the most honest and level-headed of Ankh-Morpork's nobility. Despite the Old Money families' condescension towards him, he's always on the lookout for ways to boost his family's social standing so his beloved wife and daughters can live as well as possible.
  • In David Brin's Existence one of the other aristocratic rocket-racing kids tries to insult Hacker by calling him "new money". Hacker's retort is that his family's wealth goes back generations, to the 20th century. His mother isn't much different than the other aristocrats of the mid-21st century, just a bit less inbred and more inclined towards science.
  • Gentleman Bastard: The Priori of Tal Verrar hold Requin in disdain because he made his fortune on the gambling industry. Admittedly, Requin is functionally The Don, however opulent his casino is, but the Priori are slimy enough in their own right that they don't have much room to talk. By the end of Red Seas under Red Skies, they're forced to accept him as a peer, to his absolute glee.
  • Jay Gatsby of The Great Gatsby is an interesting take on the trope, inasmuch as his tackiness is presented as tragic, or at worst pathetic, more than anything else. Incidentally, F. Scott Fitzgerald considered titling the novel either Trimalchio in West Egg or simply Trimalchio, as a Shout-Out to Petronius and his Satyricon; however, he was persuaded that most readers wouldn't get the reference (and they wouldn't).
  • Deconstructed in Matthew Reilly's Jack West series, when the House of Saud is dismissed by the Royal Houses of Europe as "new money" because they made their fortune by selling oil to the West. However, they are shown to be very similar (but not in a good way).
  • Averted in Les Misérables. Valjean, a parole-breaking convict with nothing to his name but some stolen (and not-so-stolen) silver, invents a new manufacturing process that reinvigorates a small-town factory. This results in him eventually becoming the owner of the factory and then mayor of the town, apparently amassing a huge fortune in the process. However, he never flaunts his wealth, only spending the bare minimum on himself, although he spares no expense in raising Cosette.
  • She may not necessarily be tacky per se, but Lina Broud of the Luxe series uses this trope as the reason for her rise in status (rather than the truth, which is that she's just a maid that used deceit to get what she wanted).
  • The murder victim in Murder on the Orient Express is a wealthy gangster with low-class sensibilities.
  • Although there aren't really any characters who fit the type, Night Watch (Series) contains several references to the New Russian described below, particularly their use of bodyguards and participation in shady business, as well as their ostentatious use of wealth.
  • In Överenskommelser by Simona Ahrnstedt, Seth Hammerstaal is a reconstruction. Many people think that he's an irritating upstart, who spends an insane amount of money on women. The Old Money generally despise him, and it does not help that he can be unnecessarily cocky and proud. But it soon becomes clear to the reader, that there is more depth to him than that, And in the end, he becomes happily married to Beatrice, the story's female protagonist, who is born into an Old Money upper-middle-class family.
  • In the novel Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld, about a middle-class girl at an elite prep school, there's a paragraph where the protagonist explains how she learned the difference between Blue Bloods and the Nouveau Riche: "At the time, it surprised me how openly Martha referred to the Maxwells' money, and later, when I went to Martha's family's house in Vermont the first time, I could see that they, too, clearly were wealthy. But there were different kinds of rich, I eventually realized. There was normal rich, dignified rich, which you didn't talk about, and then there was extreme, comical, unsubtle rich — like having your dorm room professionally decorated, or riding a limousine into Boston to meet your mother — and that was permissible to discuss."
  • Pride and Prejudice plays with this trope.
    • The Gardiners made their money in trade but are genteel, educated "people of fashion."
    • The Bingleys also made their fortune in trade, but — for reasons Austen never gets into — the youngest generation moves in the upper circles of the landed gentry, and Bingley's two sisters are snobs who look down on people like the Gardiners.
    • Played with by Lady Catherine de Burgh, who is a member of the landed gentry and of old money, and fancies herself a classy Blue Blood — and yet is rude, ill-mannered, snobby, and, compared to her (untitled) nephew, completely lacking in class as much as any stereotypically Nouveau Riche character. The point clearly being made is that a fancy title and the length of time someone's family has had their money has no bearing on a person's character.
    • The one example that might play it straight are Mrs. Elton (and Mr. Elton, who becomes rich by the marriage) in Emma. She is overfamiliar and self-important and constantly brags of how wealthy her sister's family is, which drives Emma — and everyone else in Highbury society — nuts. A pointed hint about her father being a "Bristol merchant, for so he must be called" indicates that her wealth is dirty money (Bristol was an infamous slave port at the time). Given that the rest of her work tends to favor the Self-Made Man, it's safe to assume that Mrs. Elton would be obnoxious no matter how old the money was.
  • The antique Roman author Titus Petronius in his satirical novel Satyricon (c. 60 AD) has Trimalchio, a freed slave that has come to untold riches, and who is an exemplary "Nouveau Riche". Petronius has him throw an exorbitant party, and the meticulous description of it is almost entirely dedicated to this trope (for comical effect). The "Feast of Trimalchio" is quite a famous piece of literature, and the trope therefore Older Than Feudalism.
  • In The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School, when Frecks is telling Amy the hat of each of the schoolhouses, she says that one is home to the most snobbish girls in the school, but they're actually all the daughters of tradesmen.
  • A Song of Ice and Fire:
    • Petyr Baelish is the great-grandson of a foreign mercenary who received a lordship for his service. The land is the smallest lordship in the Seven Kingdoms, a smaller hold than those of many landed knights. However, he has managed to amass quite a fortune and work his way up the social ladder in spite of most nobles looking down on him as an up-jumped schemer.
    • Ser Davos Seaworth was a poor smuggler who was knighted by Stannis Baratheon for smuggling in food during a siege and was given lands to build a keep. While Davos is looked down on by most of his new peers as the common-born "Onion Knight," Stannis keeps him close for his wise and honest counsel.
    • Janos Slynt, a butcher's son who rose to command the City Watch of King's Landing, becomes Lord of Harrenhal for services rendered to the crown. He's incredibly pompous and vain about his rise in social standing, but most everyone around him finds him repugnant. He's also blatantly corrupt, it's heavily implied most of his Officers were paying him part of their salary and his lordship is rendered for helping a usurpation.
    • Bronn the grungy sellsword gets knighted for services to the crown and works his way into marrying a very undesirable member of a relatively minor but wealthy noble family, vastly elevating his wealth and standing (he is also implied to have arranged an accident for his mother-in-law so he'd be able to take control of the castle quicker).
    • This trope comes up frequently even among wealthy and powerful noble families who rose to prominence several centuries ago. For example, the Freys are still seen as an up-jumped toll collectors in spite of commanding quite a lot of wealth and influence due to the strategic position of their twin castles. It doesn't help that the current Lord Walder Frey is notoriously unpleasant and disloyal and a lot of his very large family behave in a similar way. The Red Wedding elevates them in status, with his second son being made Lord of Riverrun and marriages being arranged for various descendants of his, but it hugely diminishes his already low standing as now the majority of people in Westeros despise the Freys for the treachery.
      • The Tyrells have also been around for quite a while, but they were a stewards family before Aegon landed and some of the older nobility like the Florents and Cersei won't let them forget it.
    • The vastly wealthy and ostentatious Magister Illyrio is revealed to be a Self-Made Man when Tyrion visits him and spots a statue carved of him when he was a young, penniless bravo.
  • In the Sweet Valley High books, Lila Fowler's family was looked down on by Bruce Patman's family because they were considered this.
  • Take a Thief: Skif pulls off an impressive heist at a "new money" merchant's home. Not only has the merchant been flaunting his wealth, but some of his choices make it easier for Skif to rob him. (The brand-new mansion the merchant insisted on building had several security flaws, he cheaped out on his safe lock, and his Trophy Wife described the hidden safe's location on a public street.)
  • Alec D'Urberville in Tess of the D'Urbervilles fits this trope almost perfectly. By contrast, the eponymous Tess is (very distantly) an Impoverished Patrician.
  • The Cullens in The Twilight Saga live in a huge, fashionably furnished modern mansion, each of the family members has their own ludicrously expensive car, they all wear flashy, high-price clothing and jewelry in the mostly ordinary Forks, Washington, and Alice at one point simply gives a guard a long out-of-print and very rare $1,000 bill as a bribe. This is especially noticeable because they seemed to have been written this way unintentionally. The narrative of the series treats them as a classy, Old Money family, and gives the impression that this is just what the author thinks wealth means.
  • This forms the difference between Lestat and Louis in Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles books. Lestat comes from an Impoverished Patrician family in France who slept with their dogs and actually hunted for food. He gained his wealth from his vampire maker after the latter committed suicide. Meanwhile, Louis is a slave-owning plantation owner from Louisiana, whose family started putting on airs of what they thought aristocracy was supposed to be about. In fact, Louis had trouble, at first, believing that Lestat was a Blue Blood. At the same time, throughout the series, Lestat is the one who spends frivolously and doesn't even really know how much money he has. In fact, his nickname among the vampires is the "Brat Prince".
  • In Vanity Fair, the three main families — the Sedleys, the Dobbins, and the Osbournes — all made their money in trade. The Dobbins kind of fall into the "lack of class" version, being very recently wealthy, but the novel has its contempt overwhelmingly for the Osbournes, who reached high society slightly before the others, and have become snobbish note  jerkasses.
  • The Way We Live Now has Melmotte, an Ambiguously Jewish Corrupt Corporate Executive and an equally crooked American business partner, and the novel has a lot to do with the idea that those people would form alliances with the impoverished aristocracy and would be at an extreme advantage over them.
  • The titular heroine of Why Raeliana Ended Up at the Duke's Mansion is from a nouveau riche family, in contrast to her (fake) fiancé, who is the king's brother.
  • Toad in The Wind in the Willows is supposed to be this. He is conceited, spendthrift, silly, and vulgar, unlike Badger who represents the old landed gentry.

    Live-Action TV 
  • In the Gilded Age-set The Buccaneers (2023), the St. Georges and the Elmsworths are from Saratoga and recently made their money in trade, so they're considered too gauche to be invited to the old-money New York parties.
  • The Brady Bunch: The Season 2 episode "The Treasure of Sierra Avenue," but applied to children and young teenagers. After all, only $1,100 is found (in a vacant lot), and if they keep the money, each of them would have about $190 (split six ways), but to even a 15-year-old (Greg's age in the fall of 1970), that's a lot of money (again, remember this is 1970)note  and leads all the kids to wildly imagining how they'd spend the loot (although Mike says the money will go into the bank and turned into education bonds). By episode's end, the rightful owner shows up and the kids get to keep only a tiny fraction as a reward ($20, which split six ways is only $3.66, more than enough money for his kids in Mike's eyes).
  • The Dukes of Hazzard: The fourth-season episode "The $10 Million Sheriff" has Rosco temporarily becoming nouveau riche after an inaccurate will bequeathing him $10 million from his distant Uncle Hosiah. Rosco only got $10, which leads to huge, life-threatening problems from a bloodthirsty, no-nonsense bounty hunter who wants $100,000 for finally bringing the Duke boys to justice. In between Rosco thinking he's rich and learning he's not, he spends his money wildly, on (as series narrator Waylon Jennings might have put it) rhinestone suits and new expensive cars ... he's wanted that the same way for years and needed a change.
  • Game of Thrones:
    • Davos was a commoner and a smuggler before being knighted and granted land by Stannis for smuggling food into Storm's Landing during a siege. He's completely at odds with the culture of the nobles but is valued by Stannis for his honest and wise counsel.
    • Janos Slynt is raised from captain of the city watch of King's Landing to Lord of Harrenhal. He's incredibly arrogant about his new position.
    • Petyr Baelish's family patriarch was a mercenary who was granted a tiny lordship but has steadily amassed wealth and risen his way up the social ranks in spite of other nobles seeing him as an upjumped commer.
  • House of the Dragon: As Lord Lyonel represents, House Strong only look like this in comparison to everyone else on the Small Council. The Hand Otto Hightower and Lord Beesbury are from old Reach families, Lord Corlys Velaryon is rich and Old Valyrian (and a naval power), Ser Tyland is a Lannister (the Great House of the Westerlands), while Mellos is Grand Maester. Their possession of Harrenhal (considering its history) implies everything their family owns is owed to Targaryen rule.
  • In Gilmore Girls, the Gilmores have been a well-respected and wealthy family for over a hundred years — but they're still considered Nouveau Riche trash by the Huntzbergers, who have been rich for centuries. Even by the gold-digging, former bar waitress matriarch who (it was implied by an angry Emily while chewing her out) only managed to marry into the family because she got pregnant.
  • The Beverly Hillbillies: This is the central premise. The Clampetts are poor hillbillies who lucked into a fortune and are now Fish out of Water in Beverly Hills. Inverted in that the Clampetts remain as nice and down-to-earth as they ever were, and don't rub their wealth in other people's faces, whereas Mr. Drysdale and the other wealthy elites play up the trope to the hilt.
  • In the third Blackadder series, it looks like the Prince Regent will have to get married for the sake of his finances, and since none of the traditional aristocratic options are available and/or suitable, he ends up pursuing the daughter of a Nouveau Riche industrialist. It transpires that the industrialist isn't actually as rich as his daughter's prolific spending suggests, and is himself in need of the Prince Regent's supposed wealth.
    Blackadder: These people are the future. This man probably owns half of Lancashire. His family's got more mills than, than you've got brain cells.
    Prince George: How many mills?
    Blackadder: Seven, sir.
  • The Harry Enfield character Mr. Considerably-Richer-Than-You. Loadsamoney is the same sort of character on the way up.
  • A Royal Pains episode features a couple who's this trope. They are from Nebraska and have won the lottery. The wife wants to buy all things she associates with upper-class life and forces her husband to eat fancy foods. The husband, meanwhile, just wants to use the leisure time the money affords him to relax and enjoy the simple pleasures he always had. He ends up becoming Hank's Patient of the Week because he has gout due to all the expensive food his wife made him eat.
  • A few show up in Midsomer Murders. Like everything else.
  • Richard DeVere in To the Manor Born, in stark contrast to Impoverished Patrician Audrey fforbes-Hamilton. Where Audrey has the social status and roots at Grantleigh Manor, she has no money to keep or maintain the manor. Richard does, and he is decidedly new money — a self-made grocery tycoon originally from Czechoslovakia who boasts that he will be able to turn Grantleigh into a modern, profitable farm... without really knowing anything about farming.
  • The entire premise of Kath & Kim.
  • The Chilean Soap Opera Marron Glacé:
    • Clo Villagra, the mother of the two romantic female leads, became this due to a very successful catering business that she built with the money coming from her dead husband's inheritance. What Clo and her family didn't know, though, was that said riches came from dirty businesses. Which brings the male lead Octavio into their lives, as he's an Impoverished Patrician whose family was the main victim of said tricks and lost their own wealth due to them.
    • Clo's sister and business partner Leonor also was this, but she was portrayed as so uncultured that Chilean slang coined the derisive nickname "cuicante" (mesh of the words "cuico" and "picante", which can mean "snobbish" and "vulgar" in Chile) specifically to refer to nouveau riche.
  • Also the Sa-Sa (Salinas Sánchez) family from the more recent Chilean soap Brujas, who won the lotto and turned into this. They were mostly Played for Laughs, though, so they became the Ensemble Darkhorses of the series and even got their own Spin-Off.
  • Castle has a Victim of the Week who became this after winning the lottery, though he mostly just spent money on anything that caught his eye and was a decent guy otherwise. Castle actually sympathizes with the guy since he was still in college when his first book became a bestseller and he also spent his new fortune on all kinds of stuff without a second thought.
  • In Boardwalk Empire, black Prohibition gangster Chalky White was born to an uneducated poor family, but made millions through his criminal enterprises. He wears fine suits, drives an ostentatious car, and has married a light-skinned, classically educated wife. Their children are raised from birth to be wealthy. He's called out for being uppity by both black and white characters and suffers from culture clash within his own family.
  • Downton Abbey:
    • Played with in the case of Matthew and Isobel Crawley, who come into money and status very suddenly when Matthew is pronounced as the heir of the Earl of Grantham and moves to Downton Abbey; the show basically shows why this trope exists with how many weird new customs the two must adjust to in order to fit in with the noble Crawley family. Matthew, however, is not an especially good example, as he was a distinctly upper-middle-class solicitor before becoming heir, and although he had trouble with the finer details of aristocratic custom, he still had a vague sense of the outlines of propriety and made it clear he was at least trying to do the right thing.
    • Played perfectly straight with Richard Carlisle, who frequently betrays his bourgeois origins with his lack of propriety and manners and contempt for the household staff.
    • Completely averted with Matthew's first fiancée Lavinia Swire. Though her father is a Self-Made Man, she herself is one of the sweetest, politest characters on the show, and thus fits in perfectly at Downton.
    • In the backstory, Lady Grantham is a prime example. Her Jewish father built a fortune for himself in dry goods in Cincinnati. As a result, his daughter Cora was not seen as "first rank" in society in Cincy, let alone New York, hence her mother's decision to cross the Atlantic to find a suitable husband in England.
  • From Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes comes The Gilded Age. Agnes van Rhijn and her friends in 1882 New York simply hate those new money families — like J.P. Morgan, the Vanderbilts, and the Rockefellers. note  She is especially disapproving of the Russells and their newly built Beaux-Arts mansion across the street.
  • Charlie Crews from Life won millions in a wrongful conviction lawsuit and spends it on whimsical purchases like fancy cars, orchards, and an enormous house that he keeps empty because space was a luxury in prison. Unlike most other examples, his spending is addressed and Ted mentions that he's been taking care of Charlie's settlement, and that the investment returns are enough that Charlie's purchases don't make much of a dent in the total amount.
  • On Smallville, Lionel Luthor goes out of his way to hide the fact that he's a member of the Nouveau Riche, claiming descent from Scottish nobility and even buying and importing a castle to the US. In reality, he's from Metropolis' Suicide Slums and made his money by killing his parents and investing the insurance money.
  • The final season of Roseanne had the Conner family winning $100 million from a lottery ticket and becoming this. Of course, the final episode reveals this as all just a product of Roseanne's wishful imagination.
  • The early-'70s sitcom Arnie was about a blue-collar worker getting randomly promoted to an executive position and dealing with the subsequent Fish out of Water issues. Herschel Bernardi's title character was even surnamed Nuvo. "Arnie Nuvo" could also be a deliberate take on art nouveau, making it a double pun.
  • Posh Nosh: Minty Marchmont, having married rich, a fact even her husband doesn't let her live down.
  • Silicon Valley: People who make millions in the eponymous tech business hub are almost always shown to have terrible taste and indulge heavily in Conspicuous Consumption.
    • Douchebag billionaire bro Russ Hanneman drives neon-colored sports cars while blasting early 2000s nu metal and wearing designer jeans covered in studs. He also bought a virtual nanny device that delivers discipline to his child over a loudspeaker so that he doesn't have to be an authority figure. When he loses some of his money due to a bad investment and ends up being worth $900 million, he acts like he's gone broke.
    • When Big Head gets a $20 million settlement from Hooli, he blows through it rapidly. He explains to his financial manager that he spent in on things like moving his pool several feet closer to the house before deciding to move it back to its original spot again.
    • Truth in Television: It's a part of Silicon Valley culture to blow huge amounts of money on lavish parties to rub your success in the faces of your rivals.
  • The mobile-app developers in Loaded whose game becomes an unexpected hit and a cash cow. Most of them promptly begin spending their new income on absurd amounts of conspicuous consumption; one of them buys a gold ingot, just because he can.
    "You are the least subtle rich person since the Monopoly man."
  • British show Saturday Live features the breakout character Loadsamoney, a working-class plasterer who does nothing but flaunt and boast about the money he's making in the British construction boom of The '80s. It was a satire of the Thatcher era.
  • Matador (1978) has the lawyer, Viggo Skjold Hansen, who started investing the money he made from his career into various business ventures, most of which paid off and gained him quite the fortune, allowing him to buy entrance to the higher echelons of society. Throughout the series, Skjold Hansen stands out amongst his high-class peers as he dresses in somewhat tacky suits and is notably casual and relaxed in his manners, to the point where he sometimes comes across as outright boorish and uneducated.
  • The Deuce: Pimps are portrayed this way. They get a lot of money from pimping but blow it all on ostentatious clothing and cars to show off. C.C. is a notable example. Another pimp who buys stylish and refined clothing criticizes him for wearing such gaudy and gauche fashion. Later, C.C. goes to a very fine restaurant and has no idea how to conduct himself. He's confused when the waiter pours a sample of wine rather than immediately fill his glass. He accidentally orders twice as much steak as he intended and refuses to correct himself, then demands his steaks "burnt black."
  • The Sopranos: Most of the mobsters fit this to a T as they make a lot of money through their criminal dealings, but have very poor taste. The best example is Tony owning a yacht that he christened The Stugots, which is a bastardization of the Italian phrase "sto cazzo" that translates to "this dick" in English.
  • On Succession, the entire Roy family is pretty brutish, with a very dim view of culture. The most egregious example is Tom Wambsgans, who married his way in and thinks that Conspicuous Consumption is the best way to look rich, when in reality such behavior only underscores the fact that he's "new money".
  • The White Lotus: Inverted in season 2. The Spillers made their money very recently, but are uncomfortable with it due to their social awareness and aren't flashy. In contrast, the long-wealthy Sullivans live large and enjoy fancy vacations.
  • Why Women Kill:
    • Simone, who grew up as the daughter of a Chinese-American laundry owner and became a Trophy Wife and Serial Spouse.
    • Taylor also falls under this trope, as having a middle-class childhood and becoming a successful and wealthy lawyer.

    Music 
  • Bruce Springsteen's Badlands:
    Poor man wanna be rich
    Rich man wanna be king
    King ain't satisfied till he rules everything
  • This is what PSY is satirizing in "Gangnam Style" — wannabes and posers who claim to be from Seoul's Gangnam district by imitating (in a tacky way) the materialism displayed in such Conspicuous Consumption.
  • "Loadsamoney" by Harry Enfield is about one of these, a casually dressed, boorish Cockney idiot who spends the whole song bragging about how rich he is.
    Oi you! Shut yer mouth and look at mah wad!
  • Jim Croce's "Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown", who likes to wear fancy clothes and drive fancy cars and "wave his diamond rings under everybody's nose".

    Pro Wrestling 
  • Perhaps the most famous example in wrestling was John "Bradshaw" Layfield, former Texas hick turned millionaire thanks to his (legit) job outside of wrestling as a stock-market consultant. Interestingly, he held the WWE Championship at the same time that the World Heavyweight Championship was held by the Cultured Badass Triple H.
  • It is not known whether "Million-Dollar Man" Ted DiBiase fits this trope exactly, but he certainly acted like it. (His son has taken a more low-key road.)
    • The kayfabe explanation for his purported wealth was due to a massive insurance settlement after his father "Iron" Mike DiBiase was a Casualty in the Ring, so this trope definitely applies.
  • Ted DiBiase Jr. accused Montel Vontavious Porter of trying to appear high class but really being new money.
  • The Fabulous Moolah, greatest Women's Champion of all time. (She was born to a family of sharecroppers in South Carolina, and eventually became successful enough to have a mansion for herself built not far from her family's home, as well as having the street the mansion was on named for herself.)
  • Cameron Grimes managed to get rich by investing in GameStop and Dogecoin, getting so much money that he doesn't know what to do with it and just throwing wads of cash away. He even got in a feud with Ted DiBiase over their wealth.

    Tabletop Games 
  • It's subtle, but the Exalted Sourcebook Masters of Jade has shades of this in terms of the most successful Guild merchants; a lot of emphasis is put on members of various ranks who came from humble beginnings and scraped their way up the ladder with inventiveness and ambition. Tends away from A Fool and His New Money Are Soon Parted; the Guild is generally designed around the idea that nobody without the financial savvy to retain their wealth will get very far with it. Serves as a contrast and parallel to the line's earlier introduction of the Scarlet Dynasty.
  • Warhammer has Greasus Goldtooth, Overtyrant of the Ogre Kingdoms. His obscene riches come entirely from plunder, raiding and extortionate taxes and protection rackets on the merchant caravans that come through his domain, and being an Ogre his idea of how rich people behave is somewhat... simplistic. He is massively obese from over-eating and has his flabby bulk carried around by diminutive gnoblar bearers (because he's too rich to walk), who scatter gold coins in his path wherever he goes. He wears baggy silk trousers, a huge fur-lined cape, vast heaps of gold jewellery and jewelled rings by the bucketful, topped off by a basin-sized crown. He even fights with a solid gold jewel-encrusted sceptre wound round with gold chains. In the other hand, he generally carries a massive bird leg to chew on. As you might expect, most of his teeth are now gold replacements.
  • In 3rd edition and up Dungeons & Dragons, a typical mid-to-high level adventurer will likely be sporting enough magic items and other gear to fund a small army, and when it's all rings, amulets, weapons, and armor, most find it harder to not flaunt it around.

    Theatre 
  • Invoked by name in I'm Getting Murdered in the Morning by Lee Mueller.
  • In Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (The Would-Be Noble), Molière acidly criticizes this trope through Monsieur Jourdain, the pretentious and snobbish bourgeois main character. As the play opens, the music and dancing instructors Jourdain has hired in an (ultimately doomed) attempt to become more cultured admit they are happy to take his money despite their frustrations at the fact that he is too dim-witted to understand or appreciate their work. Molière takes the chance to throw potshots at aristocrats as well, though, in the form of cash-strapped count Dorante, who flatters Jourdain's delusions of one day joining the nobility while borrowing ever-larger sums of money from him.
  • The Hubbards in The Little Foxes remind William Marshall that they are not aristocrats but traders as they close a deal with him that will make them definitely rich.
  • Faninal in Der Rosenkavalier, who is willing to strain his failing health to arrange the marriage of his daughter Sophie to a real aristocrat. Too bad the one who's chosen is Baron Ochs...
  • Played for Laughs in Finian's Rainbow, where the residents of Rainbow Valley (to quote the script) "can now afford to stop wanting things they can buy and to start buying things they don't want."
  • Yermolai Alekseevich Lopakhin from Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard can be easily "acted" as such if the performing troupe isn't too sympathetic to him.
  • In The Unsinkable Molly Brown, Johnny Brown strikes it rich in Leadville and marries the title character, who is determined to prove herself the social equal of Old Money society despite not having been brought up with refined manners, to say nothing of having Never Learned to Read.

    Video Games 
  • Anarchy Reigns: Edgar Oinkie amassed a fortune from black market dealings. He's described as the worst type of "new money" — rude, loud, uncouth, short-tempered, violent, and gluttonous.
  • Bully: Tad Spencer, one of the Preps, is new money. He is ashamed of this fact and tries to mask it by speaking with a stuck-up British Accent.
  • Crusader Kings: The game has Merchant Republics like Venice, Pisa, Genoa and Amalfi. Anyone from these houses is regarded as lowborn because they make their power through wealth, not through war or through blue blood.
    • So even if you marry the daughter of an emperor-level Merchant Republic leader, you will lose prestige for "marrying a lowborn". But often, that doesn't matter because you can be allied to the Merchant republic
    • Often, a player playing as a feudal kingdom will encounter marriage requests from merchant republics, often willing to pay an exorbitant bride price. This can be relatively low for a minor noble or one with bad traits (e.g. insanity, ugliness) to tens of thousands of gold units for a princess.
    • For players playing as a merchant republic, it is often imperative to grant feudal titles to their house so that they are no longer seen as mere lowborns, and therefore no longer required to pay thousands of gold for a wife.
  • Ensemble Stars!: Tori's father is the founder of a very successful toy company that has made them very rich, and Tori is both a Royal Brat and Lonely Rich Kid as a result. However, noble-born Tsukasa Suou looks down on the Himemiyas for only being new money and lacking the supposed social graces that he himself was brought up with. (And of course, Tsukasa's family might be noble but they are starting to run very low on cash.) The two are each other's Sitcom Arch-Nemesis and constantly bicker over which of them is actually 'superior'.
  • Grand Theft Auto V: Michael was a bank robber who managed to get his family into Witness Protection where they live off of his ill-earned gains in the setting's equivalent of Beverly Hills. Being GTA characters, they are all caricatures of shallow, self-absorbed rich people despite their origins as Mid-Western white trash.
  • The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker: There is a poor man on Windfall Island who begs and moans for you to rescue his kidnapped daughter Maggie. When she is rescued, she brings back a load of Skull Necklaces (which look like junk but are secretly worth a lot of money), which he uses to become rich overnight. This turns him into an extremely arrogant rich man. He plays a direct Foil to an Impoverished Patrician on the same island.
  • Like a Dragon: Nouveau Riche are Pinata Enemies in the Yakuza series. You can easily recognize them by their distinct golden suits, and they drop several times the amount of money normal enemies carry despite being significantly easier to fight against.
  • Mitsumete Knight: The Zakroid family became aristocrats of this type thanks to a boom in the diamond and rock phosphate markets. Linda, the heiress of the family, doesn't like at all being called "Nouveau Riche" though, because she worked hard to become an aristocrat and wants to prove to all she's worthy of this rank. However, to get her Ending, she'll have to witness the family's business go to bankruptcy, so she can see the people who really care for her (i.e. the protagonist).
  • Persona:
    • Persona 4: Ai Ebihara's family. They were extremely poor, but Mr. Ebihara's businesses suddenly flourished as he hit the right spot, and now they're loaded. Ai herself, a Formerly Fat girl who was bullied due to her poverty and excessive weight, uses said riches to reinvent herself into a beautiful Alpha Bitch in order to be admired and loved.
    • Persona 5:
      • Junya Kaneshiro is a Yakuza boss who exemplifies all the negative tropes of this on top of his criminal activities and serves as the Target who exemplifies the sin of Gluttony in how his money-grubbing ways are all for him to indulge in excesses.
      • Kunikazu Okumura, who exemplifies the sin of Greed. He was the son of the owner of a chain of cafes who was often in debt due to loaning money without collateral, which was why he couldn't buy Kunikazu the model he wanted. Kunikazu then takes charge of Okumura Foods and makes it a corporate giant by starting and expanding the Big Bang Burger franchise through highly unethical treatment of his employees and forcing his competitors to have mental shutdowns. Okumura's ultimate goal is to become a politician by marrying his daughter off to the son of a Diet member.
  • RuneScape: Queen Ellemaria of Misthalin is rude to anyone she perceives as being lower-class than herself. In the "Garden of Tranquility" quest, she sends you to the Wise Old Man for a lesson in etiquette, and he tells you that Ellemaria was a barmaid who married into royalty and really shouldn't be talking. (King Roald, her husband, is typically shirty to you for the opposite reason — you've interrupted him at work.)
  • Shenmue III: This is a nickname that Ryo gives to two married snobs who are staying at the same hotel in Niaowu. They are constantly complaining and think lowly of him, until karma comes for one of them.
  • SINoALICE: This is literally the concept name of Aladdin. He started out as a poor boy before he found the magic lamp that made him rich and even married a princess whom he loved. When she fell sick with a disease that was very expensive to treat, he went out of his way to get the lamp back from the sorcerer who stole it, only for her to have passed away when he got back. His regret led him to his obsession with money, believing it to be the solution to everything.
  • Sly 2: Band of Thieves: Rajan is a former street rat who made it big by becoming a drug-runner, and eventually a major drug distributor. By the time of the games, he's trying to buy his way into respectability. The first of the two chapters concerning him takes place at his "newly purchased ancestral home". He ironically becomes rich fair and square: the Where Are They Now ending reveals that after serving his prison sentence he pulled a Heel–Face Turn and started a highly successful carpet franchise.

    Visual Novels 
  • Kissed by the Baddest Bidder: The man who initially tried to buy the protagonist in the prologue shows up again in Baba's route. He's described as the kind of person who likes to flaunt his money in the most ostentatious way possible, and his supposed peers are laughing behind his back. During a spot of burglary, Baba and the protagonist make note of his gaudy possessions and share a laugh at his (lack of) taste.
  • Choices: Stories You Play:
    • Queen B: Bea came into her money from a dead aunt which allows her to enroll into Belvoire. Zoey is nouveau riche as well, which helps her bond with Bea.
    • The Unexpected Heiress: The protagonist's father is a wealthy business magnate, but the upper class will look down on them because they lack titles.
    • Veil of Secrets: The Sterlings look down on the Emersons because they consider their kind of wealthy to be tacky.

    Web Comics 
  • Madame Outlaw: Estelle's parents came to America after fleeing French revolutions in the early 19th century and relied on the generosity of the Montesquieus to build their fortune. Estelle mentions that they never felt on par with Virginia old money, and it's why her mother is so insistent that she not antagonize the Montesquieus and present herself as a proper lady.

    Western Animation 
  • Arthur: Ed Crosswire and family got rich this way.
  • The Count Duckula episode "Rent A Butler" has the Count lease his staff to a well-off couple literally called Mr and Mrs Nouveau-Riche. They (or their names) get referenced briefly in a few more episodes too.
  • Courage the Cowardly Dog: Di Lung owns quite possibly the coolest car in the entire series, lives in a giant mansion that features Roman pillars and even its very own water fountain, has had both the Good Empress and the Evil Empress of China as his aunts, once put himself into his very own television show just to show off how rich he is, and constantly mocks other people for not being as rich and intelligent as he is.
  • One Daria tie-in book summarizes Andrew Landon (Jodie's dad) as "nouveau riche and proud of it." His attitude can be seen in some contrast to the Old Money Sloane family, who are kind of cheapskates. (Just look at Tom's car.)
  • DuckTales (1987):
    • One episode centers on Scrooge getting new, very obnoxious neighbors who just won the lottery. Their daughter and Bubba become Star-Crossed Lovers.
    • A one-off character in another episode is a homeless man who found a priceless painting. He buys his way into party after party, eating all the hors d'oeuvres he can get his hands on.
  • Futurama:
    • In Three Hundred Big Boys, every American receives a three-hundred dollar tax rebate, including the constantly poor Zoidberg. He spends the whole episode doing "rich person" things — ordering the most expensive thing on the menu, shopping for jewelry, and playing golf. As it turns out, he enjoys none of these things, and learns to appreciate the squalor in which he usually lives.
    • In the earlier episode A Fishful of Dollars Fry finds out that thanks to accrued interest, his bank account now holds $4.3 billion. He spent most of it on 20th-century artifacts, including the MacGuffin of the plot, the last can of anchovies in existence. After Mom and her minions steal his money, most of it is repossessed and he chooses to eat the anchovies.
  • Hazbin Hotel:
  • In Neo Yokio, the Kaan family rose up through the ranks because of their magic skills, and the traditionally rich folks of Neo Yokio have never let them forget it. In their case, the term used is "Neo Riche".
  • Rugrats: When Chuckie's father wins a sweepstake, he enrolled Chuckie into a pre-school for rich kids. The other kids didn't want to become friends with him because he was "new money". It doesn't last.
  • The Simpsons:
    • Charles Montgomery Burns (who himself embodies this trope but is in denial about it) criticizes a young Australian millionaire he sees on television for not knowing how a rich person is supposed to act: "Where's the dignity? Where's the contempt for the common man?"
    • One episode features Rainier Wolfcastle's daughter. She attends a Prep School where old money kids pick on her because she's new money.
    • Chester Lampwick, the bum who originally created Itchy & Scratchy, becomes this after winning an 800 million dollar lawsuit against the Meyers family for stealing his idea. The very first things he buys with his newfound wealth are a solid gold mansion and a rocket car.
  • Star vs. the Forces of Evil: The Pidgeon Kingdom is described as being relatively recent compared to the others, but already very wealthy.

Alternative Title(s): New Money, New Rich

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