History Main / RidiculousFutureInflation

* ''WesternAnimation/SpiderManIntoTheSpiderVerse'' has Ridiculous ''AlternateReality'' Inflation. A burger and some fries cost roughly $30,000.

** The later Roman Empire suffered hyperinflation when, instead of diluting the gold, the government repeatedly simply tried to ''[[YouFailEconomicsForever buy it all]]''.

[[folder: Fan Works]]

[[folder:Films -- Animated]]

* ''GloveAndBoots'' lists this as one of [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75nBenOWul0 10 Reasons Why Time Travel is No Good:]]
--->'''Mario:''' Hello! May I have McRib sandwich, please?
--->'''Cashier:''' Certainly! That will be $64,000!

* ''WesternAnimation/IntoTheSpiderVerse'' has Ridiculous Alternate Reality inflation. A burger and some fries cost roughly 30000.00$.

** Doc Brown gives Marty $50 to buy a Pepsi with in the year 2015. Similarly, Marty is asked by a charity collector to contribute $100 for the town hall clock, presumably out of pocket change. Contrast this with the 1985 version of the scene, in which Marty gave a solicitor a quarter -- a pittance of pocket change even then, and definitely less than a Pepsi would have cost in a restaurant.

* In ''Film/{{Idiocracy}}'', which takes place in the year 2505, everything costs several billion dollars. Of course, the ridiculously bad economy is actually a plot point in the film -- it's entirely possible that hideous inflation is an intentional choice rather than just poor economic mismanagement, so that everybody can be rich and amazed to have "billions of dollars". On the other hand, considering that 500 years of 3% inflation would still result in an increase of around 2.6 million times, it's not as absurd as it initially seems at first glance.

* A 1970s radio commercial for the airline Pan Am advertising a European vacation costing $1,000, quite a bit of money then, and an old man reminiscing how he was glad he took the trip back in the '70s because "today" (some time decades in the future), a thousand bucks was about the cost of a dinner for two at a good restaurant. A child comes running in to interrupt his train of thought with, "Hey grandpa! Can I have ten dollars for an ice cream cone?"

** One of Doraemon's Gadgets of the Week is a machine that allows the user to buy things from different time periods (with that period's respective price), by choosing a date and object and inserting the corresponding amount of cash in the machine. Nobita manages to make a profit by buying things cheaply from the past and selling them in the present at an increased price. [[TooDumbToLive Being Nobita, he forget that buying a candy from the future does the opposite...]]

* Early on in the history of the ComicBook/{{Legion Of Super-Heroes}}, 30th-century teenager Chuck Taine pays fifty cents for a bottle of soda pop. A reader asked about such a high price in the letter column, and the editor explained about Ridiculous Future Inflation. (Chuck didn't even get to enjoy his insanely expensive soft drink, as he [[TheFool accidentally]] swallows a SuperSerum, that turns him into Bouncing Boy.) Of course, in 2018 you're doing well if you can buy a soda for "only" a dollar...

* In Vol. 5 of ''ComicStrip/PugadBaboy'', the protagonists time-travelled from 1992 to the year 2078. Bab claims 10 million pesos after selling his necklace, which dates to 1970. So when he tried to buy shoes, the shoes cost 8 million pesos.
* A couple ''ComicStrip/{{Dilbert}}'' comics played with this in the third-word country of Elbonia. One man goes to a grocery store with a chain of bills attached to each other and tells the cashier that the other end of the money chain is being held by his brother in a different town, who will let go when the sale (of a single potato) is completed.

* Neal Stephenson's ''Literature/SnowCrash'' is set after "megainflation," and characters refer to "one trillion dollars" the same way we would refer to 10. One character's net worth is given as several million dollars, "before megainflation," causing the main character to let out an amazed whistle. In fact, even ''billion-dollar bills'' are now good only for toilet paper, a practice the FBI is seen discouraging because it clogs the plumbing. The result has been the introduction of non-inflated currency such as Kongbucks, which have become the unit of exchange for larger transactions.

* Used and Averted in ''TabletopGame/{{Shadowrun}}''. A standard lunch costs 40-60$ UCAS dollars. However, in the standard currency of the setting, the Nuyen, that's only 10-15¥.
* Inverted by "classic" TabletopGame/{{Monopoly}} which still uses 1932 prices, with prime oceanfront real estate going for a few hundred dollars. Played straight in "Here and Now" editions, though, where all the prices are multiplied by 10,000: while it makes the most expensive property in the game worth a more realistic 4 million dollars, it also makes a one-night stay on that same property with a hotel cost ''20 million dollars!''

* One of the reasons why people switch to Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies is that they are designed to be deflationary (or at least not inflationary).

See also NoPaperFuture. Compare RidiculousExchangeRates. Might foil a CompoundInterestTimeTravelGambit. May be the result of ArtisticLicenseEconomics.

* Might seem to be the case in ''VideoGame/EVEOnline'' as the simplest of commodities cost hundreds of thousands ISK to millions, high-end ships cost hundreds of millions, and capital ships cost billions. However that's most likely a case of [[SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale sci-fi fans not having a sense]] of how expensive space ships, space travel, and Amarrian wheat by the metric ton, would be. [[AvertedTrope And the creators do.]] Taking the aversion deeper, ISK is actually a standardized currency with exchange rates against each empire's domestic currency, although this is irrelevant to the players. As underscored by the fact one quest item is a giant pile of unmarked non-sequential bills. As the quest handler points out, it's a lot to them, but it's not even peanuts to someone who deals in ISK.

** Then in 1983 the amount of copper in a one cent coin cost about 1.25c, so the Treasury Department switched to pennies made with zinc with a thin cladding of copper. Only problem is the price of zinc is also going up. As of 2012, it costs the U.S. mint almost 2 1/2c to make a 1c piece. The profit they make from making other coins is the only reason they don't need more subsidies.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/CourageTheCowardlyDog'' episode "One Thousand Years of Courage", Eustace, Muriel and Courage end up in the year 3000. Muriel remarks that something doesn't seem right:

** It's gotten so bad that someone made a joke about it: Man walks into a brothel, whispers something to one of the women, and gets slapped. He approaches another, and gets a drink thrown on his face. A third spits on him. The owner, a well-experienced woman who thinks she's SeenItAll so whatever he's saying can't possibly shock her walks up to the man and asks him what he's been telling all her girls. His response: "I want to know if I can pay in Venezuelan Bolivars."

* Early on in the history of the ComicBook/{{Legion Of Super-Heroes}}, 30th-century teenager Chuck Taine pays fifty cents for a bottle of soda pop. A reader asked about such a high price in the letter column, and the editor explained about Ridiculous Future Inflation. (Chuck didn't even get to enjoy his insanely expensive soft drink, as he [[TheFool accidentally]] swallows a SuperSerum, that turns him into Bouncing Boy.)

* In 1978, in the original version of ''Literature/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy1'', part of the indication that Ford Prefect really did believe the world was about to end was that he bought six pints, paid with a five-pound note, and told the barman to keep the change. In [[Film/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy the 2005 film]], this became a fifty -- £5 wouldn't even ''pay'' for six pints nowadays, let alone leave you with a notable amount of change.
** In most places nowadays you'd be lucky if £5 will pay for 2 pints let alone 6.

** This was parodied in the fake travel guide ''Molvania: A Land Untouched by Modern Dentistry''. An enigmatic leader of the country faced widespread inflation, the book mentioning that the people had to carry wheelbarrows of money to purchase simple goods. The leader solved this problem by declaring wheelbarrows legal tender.

** The end result of all this was that cheap items that nobody really wants can sell for thousands of gold because the economy has been so badly screwed up, and all the old free gold sources (e.g. receiving 125 gold for each forum post) have been devalued into uselessness.
** By 2015 the inflation was largely over, but they had introduced the ability to buy gold items with Gaia Cash, with one unit of Gaia cash being the equivalent of ''50 million'' gold. By the way the marketplace works, if someone bought an item with Gaia cash, they would only receive the amount in gold which only serves to flood even more gold into the forum economy.
** In 2017, after another change of management and the subsequent end of gold generators, a new currency Platinum was introduced with 1 platinum worth ''10 million gold''. Though Platinum is worth substantially more than pre-inflation gold, the size of the revaluation gives a good idea of the scope of the inflation.

* And ''Website/GaiaOnline'' has passed postwar Germany's inflation to be comparable to Zimbabwe's. The problem, as shown on the "BribingYourWayToVictory" page, is the use of "Gaia Cash" and it's exchange rate to gold with one unit of Gaia cash being (at least at one time) the equivalent of ''50 million'' gold. By the way the marketplace works, if someone bought an item with Gaia cash, they would only recive the amount in gold which only serves to flood even more gold into the forum economy. When ''Gaia'' released Flynn's Booty, Flynn's Chest, and other Gaia Cash items that give you millions and/or billions of gold instantly, the economy sank [[FromBadToWorse even further]]. Now cheap items that nobody really wants can sell for thousands of gold because the economy has been so badly screwed up. At one point the "pay-to-win" idea and broken economy were bad enough to [[http://books.google.com/books?id=nYyJAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA219 be mentioned as an example in a textbook]]. For example, on page 219 the author states that the publishers responded to new players complaints that they couldn't afford anything by [[WhatAnIdiot giving them more gold]], flooding the market and raising prices to the point that the new players couldn't afford anything.

** To elaborate, the problems with inflation began when the government established a currency exchange control system in 2003 to contain the outward flow of foreign currency (particularly American dollars), and to mask the steady increase in prices, they tried applying the "drop three zeros" strategy to the Venezuelan Bolivar with the creation of the Bolivar Fuerte (Strong Bolivar) in 2007. However, they didn't take any measures to solve the underlying problems with the economy, so the currency exchange control is still there, the government continues acquiring debt after debt with China, with no visible intention of paying them off, and they continue forcing the central bank to print inorganic money. All in all, this resulted in the American Dollar now having a value of over 84.000 [=BsF=] (84.000.000 of the old Bolivares) in the black market, with the official exchange rate of an America dollar to 6,30 Bolivars being severely limited and hard to acquire for anyone, and an excessive amount of Bolivars in circulation that have next to no value, with the extra problem that cash has become scarce and banking networks have collapsed due to overuse. And that's without mentioning the current annual inflation rate of 4115%, the shadow of default looming constantly over it or the fact that due to the government's treaties with other countries and bad handling of the economy, there's a widespread scarcity of food, medicine, personal care products, industrial raw materials and even toilet paper. So it pretty has become a second Zimbabwe, down to prices doubling pretty much daily.

* The ''WesternAnimation/DuckTales'' episode "[[Recap/DuckTalesS1E19DuckToTheFuture Duck to the Future]]" had Scrooge get teleported to a [[BadFuture bad, but shiny-looking future]] where Magica stole his Number One Dime and took over his fortune, and his nephews grew up to be super-rich {{Corrupt Corporate Executive}}s after going into business with her. In this world, things cost about 100 times what they do in Scrooge's time, though some of it can be attributed to Magica and the [=McDuck=] triplets' price-gouging.

** In ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas''; inflation is an InvokedTrope in the Mojave Desert, where the Hoover Dam is the basis of a three-way territorial dispute; the locals use the standard water-backed bottle caps, Caesar's Legion uses gold(100 caps) and silver(20 caps) coins, and the NCR uses paper dollars(2/5ths of a cap, so no one even ''uses'' anything less than five dollar bills).

See also NoPaperFuture. Compare RidiculousExchangeRates and CompoundInterestTimeTravelGambit. May be the result of ArtisticLicenseEconomics.

* The ''WesternAnimation/Futurama'' episode "A Fishful of Dollars" kicks off with Fry accessing an old bank account for the 93 cents he had in there as of the year 2000. Over 1000 years of accruing interest turns that into over $4.3 billion, making him one of the wealthiest people in the world. Unlike many examples of this trope, inflation does not appear to impact the purchases he makes, because they never seem to affect his wealth particularly much, even the more expensive stuff, except for a can of anchovies, which is insanely overpriced due to being hunted to extinction by Zoidberg's race. He ultimately loses it all when his anchovy purchase puts him in Mom's crosshairs.