Basic Trope: A character's desire for material goods leads to their demise.
- Straight: Alice and Bob are escaping from a fierce dragon. As they're about to escape the cave, Alice drops some of the dragon's hoarded treasure that she stole, tries to pick it up, and gets eaten by the dragon.
- Exaggerated:
- While trying to steal the gold from the Big Bad's mining complex, a vat of the precious metal is poured upon her, turning her into a grotesque golden statue in an instant.
- A simple glance at the piles of gold is what gives the dragon enough time to catch up with Alice and burn her.
- Downplayed: Alice tries to grab the gold she dropped and the dragon mauls her badly.
- Justified: Losing your focus in a dangerous situation can be a fatal mistake.
- Inverted:
- Alice is killed by the dragon for offering him some of her gold. It wasn't even because she stalled; Offering the gold just offended the dragon.
- Alice grabs an amulet which happens to be a magical artifact that protects her from fire. She is protected from the dragons flames, Bob is incinerated.
- Subverted:
- Bob tells Alice to leave it.
- It looks like Alice will get killed, but she escapes the lair along with Bob.
- Double Subverted:
- Then remembers that the thing she dropped was the very MacGuffin they needed, and runs back for it, getting burned by the dragon's flames in the process.
- The dragon emerges from the lair and begins threaten the local village, whose inhabitants kill Alice to appease the dragon.
- Parodied: The gold is clearly rigged to a deadly booby trap, but Alice grabs it without even considering the danger.
- Zig Zagged: Alice escapes with the gold, but the villagers consider killing her to appease the dragon. Then Bob convinces them to band together to kill the dragon. The villagers succeed, but then turn on each other to get larger shares of the hoard.
- Averted: Alice and Bob never enter the dragon's cave in the first place.
- Enforced:
- Lampshaded: "Alice, just leave it! We're running from a dragon here!"
- Invoked: Bob suggests to Alice that they should grab some coins, while carrying none himself.
- Exploited: The dragon is used to guard the treasure, not hoarding it for himself.
- Defied:
- The dragon decides that two puny humans taking what amounts to a piddly amount of gold from his hoard just aren't worth his time.
- Alice leaves the treasure behind, and never looks back.
- Discussed: "Don't grab that gold. You know what happens to people who get too greedy."
- Conversed: "Alice grabbed those gold coins. You know happens next."
- Implied: A giant diamond is surrounded by several charred skeletons.
- Deconstructed: After watching Alice die, Bob decides to quit treasure hunting and live the rest of his days in a small house. He lives off of his remaining finds while searching for a more stable job.
- Reconstructed: Bob later works at a bank and gets shot to death by several armed guards after trying to steal the gold in the vault.
- Played For Laughs: Alice asks a Jackass Genie to become rich. She is crushed by trillions of pennies.
- Played For Drama: Alice's family now both remains poor and is motherless after Alice was eaten.
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