Superhuman powers are a great way to fight for truth, justice, and the American Way. For the more inventive, they're also a great way to make some cash. It could give them an extra edge in paying off debts, affording to buy new stuff, and even providing for themselves and their friends. If any sort of superpowered or supernatural ability gets used to earn money, it's this trope.
Transmutation, Matter Replicator, Midas Touch, and Magical Counterfeiting are infamously used to make money.
Becomes Mundane Fantastic when supernatural work is an ordinary part of the economy. See also Blue-Collar Warlock if the powers aren't all that profitable. If someone takes large risks or commits unethical acts to develop the product, they might be saying Just Think of the Potential!
In order to prevent economic instability, this trope might be defied by Magical Society or socially conscious supers. Rule of Cool also applies: a wizard or super who makes a comfortable living from home has less motivation to go out and get into adventures.
See Mundane Utility for less greedy applications of superpowers and gadgets. Or Power Perversion Potential for more lecherous applications.
Sub-Trope of With Great Power Comes Great Perks.
Compare Corporate-Sponsored Superhero and Punch-Clock Hero.
Contrast Reed Richards Is Useless, Cut Lex Luthor a Check, and Heroism Won't Pay the Bills.
See also Subtle Superpowering and its subtrope Paranormal Gambling Advantage.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Delicious in Dungeon: Corpse retrievers are subsidized by the local lord to go into the dungeon and revive dead adventurers with healing magic, from whom they also charge a resurrection fee. However, there is a bit of a corruption problem, as seen when one group of corpse retrievers tries to provoke a conflict between the Kabru and Touden parties so they can charge them for resurrection, and when that fails attack the Kabru party directly while disguised as fishmen.
- The Faraway Paladin: It is common for priests and other clergymen to charge for use of holy magic Healing Hands; others healing in this way for free is discouraged as it can hurt the income of the churches.
- Fullmetal Alchemist: Defied, as it's illegal to transmute things into gold because it would destabilize the economy.
- In Mob Psycho 100, Mob's Psychic Powers are exploited by his master, Reigen Arataka, who runs an exorcism business. When an actual spirit shows up, Reigen will call Mob to deal with it. Mob himself does get paid for his work, though very little. Later, Reigen recruits Serizawa, another legitimate psychic, to his business as well.
- Musuko ga Kawaikute Shikataganai Mazoku no Hahaoya: In the new time of peace, multiple demons have managed to use their abilities to provide for themselves. Merii was able to make herself fabulously wealthy thanks to her Healing Hands letting her charge exorbitant prices to save what would have otherwise been lost causes and Kamp goes on to be the maker of a popular clothing brand with the silk her body produces.
- My Hero Academia:
- Discussed, defied, and implied, when Todoroki asked why Yaoyorozu didn’t make clothes for the gang. She insisted that they buy clothes so as not to damage the economy — though this is somewhat hypocritical, given that her family got their great wealth through their quirks.
- Yu Hojo's previous boss wanted to take advantage of Hojo's Gemstone Assault quirk, but the crystals were useless and Yu was discarded because of it.
Comic Books
- Spider-Man:
- Early Spidey stories from The Amazing Spider-Man (Lee & Ditko) had Peter attempt to use his powers for monetary gain by becoming a performer; however, between the death of Uncle Ben being caused by his own reckless behavior and the need to keep his identity a secret meaning he can't cash checks under the name "Spider-Man", this has largely become a pipe dream in the modern day.
- During Spider-Man's 30th Anniversary, Mysterio tried to dupe Spidey into thinking he had cashed in on his superpowers, that the promoter who had been there for his first fight had helped him get around the inability to cash checks as "Spider-Man" by having him be incorporated note . Inconsistencies in the story and a nagging Spider-Sense woke Spidey to the threat around him, and he realizes Mysterio's involvement. Due to Spidey exposing Mysterio to his own hallucinogenic gas, he had started to be unable to discern reality from his special effects and fantasy, and wanted Spidey to fall into the same situation.
- Superman: In the Elseworlds story Superman: True Brit, Colin tries to solve England's economic problems by using his powers to turn the nation's coal reserves into diamonds. This backfires, as the diamonds lose their value by virtue of being so numerous, while the nation's coal miners all end up out of a job because there's no coal left.
Film — Animated
- In Turning Red, Mei and her friends need money for tickets to see their favourite Boy Band. She realizes that she can profit off of her ability to turn into a giant red panda when some kids at her school accidentally see it and experience Cuteness Overload. She begins charging money for students to take photos with her, eventually branching out to creating red panda merchandise and even being paid $200 to go to a birthday party in red panda form.
Film — Live-Action
- Bedknobs and Broomsticks: When Professor Brown discovers that the magic spells he's been selling are real, and that protagonist Eglantine Price can actually perform them, his immediate reaction (once he gets over his initial shock) is to invoke this by suggesting that they go into business together as a magic act, combining his showmanship and silver tongue with Eglantine's abilities to rake in a fortune. Defied by Eglantine herself, who has absolutely no interest in using her powers for personal gain, only agrees to consider the idea just to secure Brown's cooperation, and never brings it up again.
Literature
- Expecting Someone Taller: The Tarnhelm can teleport its wearer, turn them invisible, and create gold in the form of jewelry and solid gold artifacts. After a first attempt at selling them goes wrong (the jeweler thinks they were stolen so recently they haven't been reported yet), Malcolm instead teleports into bank vaults, creates what he hopes is enough gold to offset the money he takes, and teleports out. It works quite well, and since he doesn't hear about it in the news he decides to try again.
All the gold had gone, and there were plenty more banknotes, neatly packaged up for ease of transportation. In the national bank of Australia there was even a piece of card with "Thanks; Please Call Again" written on it, propped up on a shelf.
- The Heroes of Olympus: Played for Drama, Played for Horror and Deconstructed at the same time. Hazel Levesque was given the power to control "all the riches under the Earth" by her father Pluto at her mother, Marie Levesque's request. As a result, if she stays for too long in one place or experiences strong emotions, riches, like diamonds and gold, are summoned by her presence. However, because of the sheer power of the ability, it had to be counterbalanced by something - in her case, it was a curse that would bring misfortune to anyone other than hers if they tried to handle the riches. This curse made her mother greedy and bitter, prompting her to become a phony Voodoo Queen and sell what her daughter summoned as amulets, not caring about what would happen to anyone who bought these items.
- Inheritance Cycle: Nasuada funds the Varden by making the Du Vrangr Gata make lace.
- Jumper: Davy starts by using his teleportation powers to rob a bank vault, though he has the excuse of being a newly homeless teenager with no legal identity. He later gets a legitimate, very lucrative job doing jumps for the NSA. This works against him when a criminal conspiracy sets its sights on him: he has no financial reason to join them, so they resort to An Offer You Can't Refuse.
- The Wheel of Time: When a rebel faction of the Aes Sedai Magical Society rediscovers how to make the legendary indestructible substance cuendillar, they start producing decorative objects to sell to wealthy collectors. As a rule, though, the Aes Sedai are far too wealthy and powerful to bother with such things.
- Worm: Parahumans classified under the "Tinker" category are capable of creating advanced technology; however, it inevitably fails without maintenance from the Tinker who created it, meaning that attempting to profit from it is impractical in the long run. This hasn't stopped some, like the Toybox black market, from trying.
Live-Action TV
- Avataro Sentai Donbrothers: Episode 21 reveals that there were numerous Donbrothers before the current batch and all of them lost their powers by trying to exploit their powers for gain. Shinichi's predecessor Shirai is surprised, bordering offended, that the ascetic Shinichi isn't using the powers for perks. He's so shocked that he willingly becomes the Monster of the Week just to process the idea.
- Haven: Troubled people are, generally speaking, so Blessed with Suck by their powers that there is no profit potential. However, in between seasons 3 and 4, when Nathan is being hunted by Haven's vigilante paramilitary group, and thus needs to stay below the radar, he earns cash by letting bikers punch him in the face. Since Nathan's Trouble is that he can't feel anything, his lack of reaction amazes the bikers, and when Duke finds him, he has a line of people waiting.
- Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman: The episode "A Bolt from the Blue" had Superman save William Wallace Webster Waldecker from committing suicide, but in the process, they get hit by lightning. This somehow causes Waldecker to gain a copy of Superman's powers. Waldecker decides to use his new lease on life to become the superhero Resplendent Man, but he actually charges for his services, much to Superman's chagrin. However due to Waldecker being caught in a scheme by Dr. Gretchen Kelly, a doctor working for Lex Luthor, Waldecker loses his powers, and thus his ability to profit from them.
Manhwa
- Auto Hunting With My Clones: The main character is the only person with the power to make sapient clones with a physical body and his immediate thought after he tries using them to work out is taking advantage of them to work multiple monster-hunting-related part-time jobs at once which he makes extensive use of throughout the series.
Tabletop Games
- In Ars Magica, Magical Society keeps to the edges of mundane society and prefers to trade in supernatural resources, but some magi still look for material wealth:
- The Item Crafters of House Verditius sell a strictly regulated quota of enchanted objects to mundane buyers for astronomical prices, fueling both their personal projects and the House's recurring hubris problem.
- Magic that directly creates wealth is accessible enough to require regulations on how much precious metal (or equivalent) each mage can produce per year.
- The Oculus Septentrionalis Covenant invests most of its supernatural resources into Utility Magic for its expansive mercantile interests. Members live quietly — and very comfortably — in the city of Lubeck, with the mundane townspeople none the wiser.
- Chronicles of Darkness:
- Changeling: The Lost: The Pearl Satraps are an Entitlement founded on the principle that happiness — and everything else — can be bought and sold. They can turn all their powers, Contracts, and Pledges to that goal, and, as an offshoot of the Spring Court, can learn how to sense and manipulate other people's desires.
- Geist: The Sin-Eaters: Among Sin-Eaters, the Bonepicker archetype believes in using their connection to the Underworld to enrich themselves in the land of the living, whether by asking ghosts about the wealth they used to own, charging for exorcisms, creating hauntings so they can charge for the exorcism, and so on.
- Dungeons & Dragons:
- There are multiple spells that can be used to earn a steady income, and most editions have a listing for spellcasting under "services" that players can pay for. Though most aren't as lucrative as dungeon delving.
- One meme has a wizard's player who convinced the DM to let him cast Fabricate, which can turn raw materials into saleable products, as an infinitely castable ritual to get rich. Only for the DM to state that he's now a target for every thief and burglar in the kingdom, leading the wizard to build a dungeon.
- Warhammer Fantasy: Magisters of the Imperial Colleges of Magic sometimes take jobs as Court Mages, protectors, advisors, Fortune Tellers, and the like — their services can be fantastically expensive, but so are Spell Books and Wizard Workshops.
Video Games
- Dishonored: Daud, having been marked by the Outsider and being given an array of supernatural abilities, employs said abilities to work as an assassin-for-hire.
- Genshin Impact: Xinyan uses her Pyro Vision to create pyrotechnics for her rock concerts, and Yoimiya uses her Pyro Vision to aid her in making fireworks as part of her job.
- Persona 5: It's not fully explained how, but the money and items that the Phantom Thieves acquire in the metaverse— including the treasures possessed by the Palace Rulers— persist when they return to reality, albeit sometimes in an altered form. Some of these items are Shop Fodder that can be sold at actual stores, but three in particular— Kamoshida's gold medal, Kaneshiro's golden briefcase and Okumura's mint-condition toy spaceship kit are valuable enough that the Phantom Thieves are able to use them in order to buy themselves some expensive outings.
- Pokémon: Pay Day is the Signature Move of the Meowth line and all of its regional variants. Along with the move Happy Hour and the G-Max Move G-Max Gold Rush, these all boost the amount of money that is gained from winning a battle.
- Runescape: Runescape 3, at the very least, fully expects players to make frequent use of the spell "High-Level Alchemy" to transmute items into gold, particularly metal salvage that was added to replace armor and weapon drops after the Mining & Smithing skills were reworked.
Webcomics
- The Gamer: Han Jihan asks his best friend Shin Sun-Il whether he could make money using his newfound supernatural powers. His friend replies that Gaia does allow people to do it, for as long as they aren't so blatant about it as to threaten the Masquerade. As long as that one restriction is complied with, any money-making endeavour using special abilities is perfectly fine. Satisfied, Han Jihan uses his gamer powers to grind money in ways not available to the rest of the Abyss community.
- Grrl Power features an unnamed one-shot geokinetic character who managed to extract enough gold from earth's mantle
to fill an Olympic swimming pool. For fear of disrupting the economy, he keeps most of it in a cavern of his own creation 10 miles underground, only selling a bar or two when he wants more money.
Western Animation
- The Fairly OddParents!: Zig-zagged.
- Defied by Da Rules: it's against fairy law to wish for money.
- Played straight in one episode where, Timmy adds Cosmo's sweat to his lemonade to make a profit so he can buy tickets for Crash Nebula on Ice for his friends.
- Legend of Korra: Mako finds a side gig getting paid to generate electricity with his Shock and Awe powers. This is also the primary reason he competes in the superpowered "Pro-Bending" sports matches.
- In X-Men: The Animated Series, Colossus is introduced while making some money demolishing an old building.
