Sandbox / Treasure Is Bigger In Wick Checks

The main Treasure Is Bigger in Fiction page has issues with Zero Context Examples, particularly in the Video Games section, which don't mention what kind of treasures they are or how big. This wick check is to determine just how widespread the problem is and how much cleanup action is necessary.

50 out of 94 wicks will be checked.

Wicks checked: 50/50

Correct Use (23/50, 46%)

1. Anime.Sonic X: Averted. The largest gem in the world, as seen when Rouge steals it, is only the size of a particularly large fist. Gem noted to be about as large as the real largest gem in the world.
2. ComicBook.Elf Quest
   • When the elves first travel through the troll's cave system, it's got buckets of glittering fist-sized gems just lying around. And apparently the gold veins in that area are rich enough to use it as pavement. This could be a case of Early-Installment Weirdness, though — troll caves in later stories are never shown so ridiculously wealthy. Enormous size used to show off the trolls' apparent wealth.
   • This is subverted in the novelization of the first story arc. Skywise discovers that the stairs are gold-plated rather than made of solid gold. Shows that the trolls aren't quite that ridiculously rich.
3. Creator.F Scott Fitzgerald: The eponymous diamond in "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz" is as big as a mountain. Its owners live on it both metaphorically and literally. The diamond's enormous size is the entire premise of the story.
4. Film.Death On The Nile 2022: The pearl necklace from the book is replaced with a diamond necklace containing a gemstone pendant the size of a golf ball. Size of the gem helps emphasise the necklace's importance.
5. Film.Miss Fisher And The Crypt Of Tears: Two separate wicks, both correct and contextualised:
   • Mineral MacGuffin: 'The Eye of God'—the treasure everyone is searching for—is a massive emerald about the size of a loaf of bread. States the size of the emerald to help emphasise its importance.
   • Treasure Is Bigger in Fiction: The MacGuffin is the 'Eye of God': an emerald approximately the size of a loaf of bread. Again, the size of the emerald is clearly stated to emphasise why everyone's after it.
6. Film.Pink Force Commando: Invoked when the commandoes finally retrieves the Sun Diamond, a massive jewel the size of a watermelon, where upon being removed from its casing will unleashing a powerful, glaring light which illuminates the night... it's a dud, there's a lightbulb inside the diamond connected to a power cord. Excessive size used to make the diamond seem valuable.
7. Film.Snatch: The diamond has a diameter of about 4-5 centimetres (1.6 inches) and weighs 86 carats. Notably, everyone in the film who knows anything about jewelry makes a huge deal about its size. Size is exactly specified and highly noteworthy in-universe.
8. HenryStickminSeries.Tropes S To Z
   • The eponymous diamond from Diamond is colossal; just as big as Henry himself. In the Undetected route, he can exploit this by dropping the diamond on the head of an unsuspecting guard. Being as big as a person has in-universe consequences as well as showing its value.
   • In Airship, one of the scenarios involves Henry finding and stealing a ruby of identical proportions to the diamond. Being human-sized shows how valuable it is.
   • The Thief/Ghost route of Mission has Henry complete the set by stealing an emerald that's just as large as the other two gems. Throwing it like the diamond at the Right-Hand Man doesn't work at all due to both being on the same level. Like the diamond, its size shows it's priceless while also having in-universe ramifications.
9. Literature.The Blonde Hurricane: Specifically, a diamond the size of a walnut, which used to adorn the crown of the old czars. Large by real-life gem standards and used to show the czars' opulence.
10. Literature.Gate: * Zillion-Dollar Bill: Yao's diamond (which is the size of an adult's head) proves to be nearly impossible for Itami to sell back on Earth. The jeweler Itami commissioned to do so says that not one of his contacts has clients interested in something that huge and inherently expensive, and he broke into a cold sweat the moment Itami tried to suggest cutting it into smaller, easier to sell pieces^note it is presented as a cut diamond, so they can't exactly make other diamonds from around the edges as is commonly done with large uncut diamonds found in real life. Unfortunately, combined with him being docked his pay going AWOL to deal with the fire dragon, this makes it his Broke Episode. Potholed in another example. The ridiculous size of the diamond is plot-relevant, making it so valuable that no one can buy it.
11. Literature.The Moonstone: The Moonstone itself is a big ol' hunk of polished diamond, maybe the size of a fist. However, a bit of realism for the gemstone— big as the stone is, it has a flaw at its heart which reduces its value. If a skilled jeweler cut it into smaller stones, they could reap a real profit. Size is notable, as it could be split into several smaller, more valuable gems.
12. Literature.Wars Of Light And Shadow: The Waystone of the Koriathain is a flawless spherical amethyst the size of a melon. The Skyron Aquamarine isn't much smaller. Being melon-sized emphasises how precious it is.
13. Literature.The Worm Ouroboros: Juss' palace at Galing takes the cake. Not only are the high seats of the Demons carved from single gemstones "of monstrous size", there's more: "(...) the capital of every one of the four-and-twenty pillars was hewn from a single precious stone (...) all hewn from faultless gems, thrice the bulk of a big man's body." Clearly describes just how ludicrously wealthy the Demons are with their oversized gemstones.
14. Morrowind.Tropes S To Z: Gemstones are larger than the game's gold coins. In a few cases, they can be mined directly and come out looking already sized and polished. Could possibly use clarification on how big the coins are by comparison, but larger than a typical coin is pretty big for a gem.
15. Recap.The Good Place S 2 E 05 The Trolley Problem: Michael gives Tahani an enormous fist-sized diamond. Justified, since the gem was conjured by Janet rather than being mined from the earth. The diamond has a clear reason for being oversized.
16. Series.Mission Impossible: Done semi-reasonably in "The Diamond" where the team is sent to steal the world's largest diamond from a dictator. The diamond weighs about eight pounds uncut and is about the size of a shoe. That's three times the size of the RL world's largest diamond, but the stone is explicitly stated to be a one of a kind recent discovery. Diamond's size notable in-universe and compared to real-world large diamonds.
17. ShownTheirWork.Web Original: * The Lay of Paul Twister all over the place:
    • Deconstructs the Connecticut Yankee Plot by pointing out that even an intelligent, well-educated person from the modern age doesn't know enough about how the technology he takes for granted works; he has to basically start from scratch when he finds himself in a low-tech world. Word of God is that it's difficult to give radio to the Romans when you don't know how to build a radio and a radio receiver from first principles, and how many people these days know how to do that?
    • Horses are not "living cars", but mammals with realistic limits to their physical endurance, making it difficult to cover long distances quickly.
    • Paul recognizes a sapphire "about half the size of a hen's egg" as an enormous gemstone. Likewise, a piece of solid gold artwork is not only extremely heavy, but also very soft and requires special care when transporting it so it won't get damaged. Potholed in another example. Specifically discussing the size of gold and gems in fiction.
18. VideoGame.Crystal Caves: The crystals are the size of Mylo. How can he carry tens of them is anyone's guess. Size specified and makes them stand out more in-game.
19. VideoGame.Evil Genius 2: One of the treasures the player can steal is a giant emerald. As big as a person and around twice as wide. Size made clear, and helps emphasise it's a valuable treasure.
20. VideoGame.Spelunky: Those gold bars look to be bigger than the Spelunker, and the Crystal Skull is bigger than his own head! Size clearly shown to make them more noticeable in-game and show their value.
21. VideoGame.Spyro 2 Riptos Rage: * Crystal Landscape: Glimmer is a gem-mine worked upon by anthropomorphic kangaroo rats. The whole place has giant, perfectly-shaped gems jutting from the ground, with freshly harvested gems littering the ground (typical for a Spyro the Dragon game) with gem-based lighting for their Baseball games. Potholed in another example, with the large gems helping emphasise the other trope, though could possibly be more specific.
22. Webcomic.Adventurers: Subverted. The "world's largest cut diamond" turns out to be a cardboard cutout. Used for a gag about treasure sizes in fiction.
23. WesternAnimation.Ali Baba Bunny: The treasure cave has some very large gems. The one Daffy steals near the end is almost as big as him. Treasure as big as the characters to show just how valuable it is.

Misuse (5/50, 10%)

1. Film.The Book Of Masters: Ivan, a poor village lad with no family, somehow finds loads and loads of precious and semi-precious gems for his stone-cutting exercises. And nobody thinks it odd. More about the excessive number of gems than their size.
2. Series.The Tale Of The Ring: * Treasure Is Bigger in Fiction: Here, the One Ring very much doesn’t change size to fit the wearer, leading to Frodo basically carrying around an oversized bracelet. Not about coins or gems; it's just about Frodo getting a ring sized for larger creatures than hobbits.
3. VideoGame.Bubble Bobble: There are large treasure chests in Final Bubble Bobble (the SMS port of the original game), Rainbow Islands, Bubble Symphony, and Bubble Memories. Regardless of how big the chest is, if there aren't unrealistically-large coins or jewels inside, it's not an example.
4. VideoGame.Rainbow Islands: A large treasure chest awaits at the end of every level. The chest itself may be big, but unless there are unrealistically-large coins and gems inside, it's not an example.
5. VideoGame.Wario World: Wario has somehow amassed enough treasure to have an entire castle built out of gold and riches. Seems less about the size and more about the abundance. Maybe falls under Cheap Gold Coins instead?

ZCE (21/50, 42%)

1. AdventureTime.Tropes S To Z: Lampshaded in "Guardians of Sunshine".
   Jake: These coins are thick!
   • Partial-context example; could use more clarification on just how big the coins are.
2. Characters.Crush Crush: * Treasure Is Bigger in Fiction: Look at the diamonds she's wearing. Relies on the character's image to give context rather than including it in the example itself.
3. ComicStrip.Rasmus Klump: * Treasure Is Bigger in Fiction ZCE.
4. Film.Congo: The diamond mines of the Lost City of Zinj are theorized by Munroe to have been exhausted early on, hence why the city became "lost". When found, not only are there still diamonds (and gigantic ones) found on the tunnels, they are literally lying around on the floor for people to pick... if they can survive the gorillas, that is. Partial-context example; states that diamonds are large and readily available, but fails to specify just how big they are.
5. Film.The Pink Panther 1963: That is one goddamn huge diamond. Doesn't make it clear how big "goddamn huge" actually is.
6. Franchise.Super Mario Bros: With impractically large coins. Doesn't explain how large "impractically large" actually is.
7. Recap.Dinotrux S 03 E 02 Drillasaurs: The Dinotrux dig deep to find an absolutely massive diamond. Doesn't explain just how big the diamond is.
8. SugarWiki.Eversion: Look at those gems floating in the air. Doesn't actually show the gems to "look at".
9. VideoGame.The Binding Of Isaac: The pennies, nickels, and dimes used as currency are pretty large as pickups on the ground. Doesn't make the actual size clear.
10. VideoGame.A Boy And His Blob: Large blue gems. Doesn't explain how large "large" is or in what context the gems appear.
11. VideoGame.Catacomb Snatch: %%* Treasure Is Bigger in Fiction Commented-out ZCE.
12. VideoGame.Deadly Towers: However, due to protagonist's Hyperspace Arsenal, lots of ludder coins can be carried around despite them being very large. Doesn't specify how large "very large" is; just notes that it's easy to carry large numbers of them.
13. VideoGame.DLC Quest: Coins in this game are large. Doesn't explain how big "large" actually is.
14. VideoGame.Jazz Jackrabbit:
    • Diamondus has many giant gems under the ground, but also smaller ones. Doesn't explain how big "giant" or "small" are.
    • In the second game, the player can shoot giant red gems to get multiple normal-sized ones. They must be collected quickly, though, because they vanish after a while. Again, doesn't elaborate on the relative sizes of "giant" and "normal-sized" gems.
15. VideoGame.Mario Super Sluggers: The gems in the Gem Catch minigame. And they're shot out of a cannon. Don't drop them! Doesn't explain how big the gems actually are.
16. VideoGame.Noahs Ark: Large gems can be found after defeating a sub-boss, boss or when completing a bonus stage. Very large gemstones can be found when defeating the bosses after having collected all non-hidden icons in the stage or when completing the bonus stage. Coins found in treasure chests are also unusually large. Just states that the gold and gems are big without making it clear how big.
17. VideoGame.Repton: * Treasure Is Bigger in Fiction ZCE.
18. VideoGame.Stalin VS Martians: Sometimes gigantic spinning coins are dropped by enemies. Fails to explain just how big "gigantic" is.
19. WesternAnimation.Batman The Brave And The Bold: * Treasure Is Bigger in Fiction ZCE.
20. WesternAnimation.Duck Tales 1987: Complete with the search of huge gemstones. Doesn't state just how huge or the context in which they come up.
21. WesternAnimation.Wakfu: * Treasure Is Bigger in Fiction ZCE.

Other (1/50, 2%)

1. Sandbox.Ferot Dreadnaught: * Treasure Is Bigger in Fiction Part of a list of "tropes available" for trope pantheons.