Undisclosed Funds - Television Tropes & Idioms

For some reason, perhaps to avoid the show becoming dated by inflation, perhaps because people's definition of "a lot of money" varies, large sums of money tend not to be specified on TV. They are written down on pieces of paper, whispered in people's ears, etc.

Also see Zillion Dollar Bill.

Examples:

In NewsRadio, Mr James shows Dave the amount he was offered for the radio station, written on a piece of paper, and we don't see it. Dave thinks it's not excessively generous until Mr James points out he has to unfold the paper.
In Friends, Chandler cuts short of telling Monica how much money he has in his bank account, writing it down instead.
In Seinfeld, Jerry buys a suede jacket with an unnamed but astronomical price which he refuses to tell to George. It's at least implied that the jacket costs something north of a thousand dollars.
- Another example would be in The Cadillac episode, where Jerry earns enough money to buy a Cadillac, from a single gig.
On Nip/Tuck, Sean sells his share of the practice for "a lot of money."
In Mad About You, Jamie makes a huge bet on a horse race; we only see Paul's reaction when she shows him the betting slips. The horse wins at very long odds, which presumably means the Buchmans won a small fortune, but this fact isn't even brought up.
Film example: The stake at the beginning of the 1997 film The Spanish Prisoner is not shown to the audience, but is presumably an impressive sum.
Another film example: in The Game, the bill for the titular game is left unrevealed, yet it is apparently enough to leave two millionaire brothers quite surprised.
Subverted in the Austin Powers movies: 1960s Big Bad Dr. Evil is initially laughed down when he asks the leaders of the governments of the (modern) world for a paltry one meeellion dollars as ransom for the world. He later asks the government leaders in the past for one hundred billion dollars; they respond that such an amount doesn't even exist.
Cartoon shorts in World War II and The Fifties often threw around figures in the low millions when the subject of obscene wealth was mentioned. (Often in a On One Condition story.) This lead to the very datedness effect that many of these other examples strive to avoid.
Subversion: On The Drew Carey Show, Millionaire Mrs. Lauder offers Drew 00 for his house in a land-grab. He is reeled, then responds that his house is clearly worth more. Mrs. Lauder says that she knew, but her accountants had scientifically calculated that exact amount as the minimum sum that poor people think is "a lot".
The whole inflation deal is parodied in a Muppets Tonight sketch, in which a character inherits a "fortune" of "eighty-five dollars." (Miss Piggy: "What!? I've got more than that on me!")
A similar device is used in one episode of The Sarah Silverman Program, in which the titular character is asked by a nurse how many times she has had unprotected sex. Rather than say it out loud, Sarah writes it down on a piece of paper. The nurse seems more confused by the fact that there are two numbers on the piece of paper ("One's for the front") and that they are both identical ("I'm kind of OCD about that") than surprised at the size of the figure, but given the content of the rest of the scene, it can be assumed that the number is very high.
In the 1954 film White Christmas, Bob Wallace (Bing Crosby), gets the estimate on how much the Christmas show is going to cost over the phone. His reaction: "Wow!", which leads to the following exchange with Phil Davis (Danny Kaye):
Phil: How much is "wow"?
Bob: Right up there between, uh, "ouch" and "boing".
Phill: Wow!
Played with in The Curse of Monkey Island: During an attempt to purchase a Plot Coupon, the character who owns it states that "it would cost you an awful lot of money," and then asks if Guybrush has that much money. If the player has already completed an insurance fraud quest (which yields "a lot of money" as the reward), Guybrush will offer "a lot of money," only to be turned down: The diamond cannot be sold for anything less than "an awful lot of money."
- Fortunately, you do have the option to play the men at poker for the Plot Coupon, and the buy-in is "not a lot of money", which, given that he very distinctly has "a lot of money," Guybrush can amply afford.
Used at the end of the movie Small Soldiers. The father of the family nearly killed by dangerous action figures yells at a representative of the company that made them, saying something like "Not even you have enough money to make up for this." She then, silently, prints out a check. He reads it, and then says something like "OK... I guess you do..." The audience never sees just how much the check was for.
An episode of Naruto where, upon finding Jiraiya's checkbook, the titular character opens it and exclaims "Woah! That's a lot of zeros!" Apparently, writing erotic novels can pay pretty well...
In Blank Slate, the Dana Carvey character is given a check as a bribe not to testify against a local crime boss. We don't see the amount, just Carvey's reaction and his question "is that a comma?"
Both played straight and averted, on separate occasions, in the webcomic Scandal Sheet!. Played straight when Max shows Foster his first paycheque for working at The Comet - Foster's eyes grow large and he says "That's a lot of zeros." However, it's averted later when Foster receives a large amount of money from his former co-worker at the porn studio, who found his script for Thigh-tanic and produced it, with enormous success. The amount is specified to be ten thousand dollars.
In Friday Night Lights' first season, the Street family's lawsuit's settlement is for a number written down on a piece of paper, after a whole scene of debating between two opposing, also never-spoken-aloud amounts.
In the Disney cartoon series "Young Hercules," Croesus, the King of Atlantis, writes out checks to buy off several people to stop the "rumor" that Atlantis is doomed to sink beneath the waves—- including the Fates and Hades, god of the underworld. This at first offends Hades, till he sees the amount on the check... "You think you can buy off HADES, GOD OF THE UNDERWORLD, with a wuh-wuh-whoa that is a LOT of brimstone...." (The in-joke being that Croesus was IRL the wealthiest king in Greek history....hence the phrase "Rich as Croesus")
In Mostly Harmless Ford Prefect "names a figure" as a tip for the bar singer (strongly implied to be Elvis Presley). The figure causes the barman to faint, but Arthur Dent doesn't react because he doesn't know how much it's worth. Ford says it would buy you "roughly... Switzerland."

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