Basic Trope: A wealthy character pretends to be poor or middle-class.
- Straight: Bob is seemingly an average guy, but later on he reveals he's a millionaire.
- Exaggerated: Bob is an unshaven hobo who dresses in the rattiest clothes possible. He later reveals he owns his own private island.
- Downplayed:
- Bob, who is seemingly poor, turns out to be middle-class.
- Bob, who is seemingly upper-middle-class, turns out to be a millionaire.
- Justified:
- Bob doesn't want his family to be targeted for kidnapping.
- Bob doesn't want people hitting him up for money.
- Bob cheats on his taxes.
- He's aware there could be a social class issue with his coworkers.
- Bob is investigating the complaints he received from the lower classes regarding his employees.
- Inverted: Bob flaunts wealth he doesn't have.
- Subverted: When the time comes to reveal the team's Mysterious Benefactor, it seems like it's going to be Bob ... but it turns out to be someone else.
- Double Subverted: That someone else got their money from Bob.
- Parodied: Fiction 500 member Bob's attempt at fitting in with 'common' folk is so pathetic, everyone else sees through him immediately.
- Zig-Zagged:
- (Played Straight + Averted) Bob lets Alice, Carol, Charlie, and their respective families know he's rich but pretends to be not rich with everyone else.
- (Continued from Double Subverted) Bob was repaying his own debt to the benefactor.
- Averted:
- Bob appears to be middle-class because he is middle-class.
- Bob is rich and doesn't pretend he isn't rich.
- Enforced: "Let's reveal that this dude is secretly rich! It'll create a new source of potential conflict..."
- Lampshaded: Bob or his Secret-Keeper(s) asks the other how long he can keep pretending not to be rich.
- Invoked: Bob's wealthy friend is the victim of an extortion attempt, so Bob decides to lay low.
- Exploited: Bob secretly uses his massive wealth to buy things for people, later revealing his finances to them for the purpose of blackmail.
- Defied: "Bob, we're not stupid. We saw that photo of you at the yacht regatta."
- Discussed: Bob thinks to himself, "If I Were a Rich Man, I'd pretend not to be to keep fitting in with my less fortunate friends."
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed:
- To make the charade convincing, Bob has to buy cheap but fragile goods in lieu of their expensive but long-lasting equivalents. He ends up spending more money over a longer period than if he'd just embraced his ability to buy better — and risks becoming truly poor.
- Bob loses his friends because they aren't impressed that he deceived them about his finances.
- Reconstructed:
- He's a member of the Fiction 500, so he has a long way to go before he feels the pinch.
- He uses his fragile possessions very carefully so that they last longer.
- He explains why he didn't tell them about his wealth and apologizes, and they accept both.
- Played for Laughs: Cringe Comedy as Bob tries to dodge questions about his ability to buy things.
- Played for Drama: Bob lives in an impoverished, Dying Town and wants to give to charity to relieve the associated problems, but he's forbidden to reveal that he's wealthy.
- Implied: Bob is supposedly poor but has a surprising number of expensive things, and he won't tell anybody how he acquired them.
Back to Secretly Wealthy.
