History Main / RidiculousFutureInflation

** A non-time travel variation is shown in the episode "Dough Ray Me". Wanting extra allowance money, the boys go to Gyro's place in the hope of getting some cash for chores, but stumble into an invention that uses sound to duplicate objects, which they use to multiply a dollar coin Mrs. Beakly gave them earlier to leave her alone. Unfortunately, the sound of any bell causes the coins to multiply, and soon after Duckburg is buried in dollar coins, driving up costs, and rendering [=McDuck=]'s fortune worthless.

* Combined with FailedFutureForecast in ''Rocketship Voyager'', a ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' fanfic written InTheStyleOf a 1950's sci-fi pulp. Cigarettes cost the outrageous price of a dollar a packet because tobacco is a luxury due to Earth having to [[OverpopulationCrisis use all arable land to feed over seven billion people]] crammed into megacities.

* Combined with FailedFutureForecast in ''Rocketship Voyager'', a ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' fanfic written InTheStyleOf a 1950's sci-fi pulp. Cigarettes costs a dollar a packet because tobacco is a luxury due to Earth having to [[OverpopulationCrisis use all arable land to feed over seven billion people]] crammed into megacities.

* An Creator/IsaacAsimov short story about {{Human Popsicle}}s has a man withdrawing a couple million dollars from his bank account after being revived... and finding out that a new suit cost several million (or was it billion?) more.

** Another time he used time travel to invest his parent's "secret" money stash, collecting a fantastic amount of interest in the far future... except the stack of bills he gets is in the future currency, so Doraemon has to find a collector to exchange it for modern bills. The result is that he only gets a modest increase (but enough for Nobita to get a bump in his allowance).

** A non time travel variation is shown in the episode "Dough Ray Me." Wanting extra allowance money, the boys go to Gyro's place in the hope of getting some cash for chores, but stumble into an invention that uses sound to duplicate objects, whcih they use to multiply a dollar coin Mrs. Beakly gave them earlier to leave her alone. Unfortunately the sound of any bell causes the coins to multiply, and soon after Duckburgh is buried in dollar coins, driving up costs, and rendering [=McDuck=]'s fortune worthless.

* 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. ISK's real-world value eventually became calculable (by way of CCP Games' decision to let you use it in place of real money to pay for your game subscription), and those huge spaceships? Actually calculate out to "only" a few thousand dollars apiece.

[[folder:Real Life]]
* An old joke tells of a man who suffers a coma and wakes up 50 years later. He calls his stockbroker firm, which tells him that due to a split he now has a billion dollars. Before he can celebrate, the payphone asks him to insert $1 million...with the popularity of cellphones since then, however, [[TechnologyMarchesOn this joke doesn't really work anymore]].[[note]]For the curious and/or math challenged, if we assume that a pay phone call costs a quarter, as it mostly did just before cell phones took over, that means the man only has the equivalent of $250 in his account.[[/note]]
** [[https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/6wu2dj/nurse_sir_youve_been_in_a_coma_its_2025_me_how/ This meme]] brings the joke back to life, but as an inversion.
* In Germany under the Weimar Republic, it did reach a point when a newspaper cost 100 billion marks, and you literally needed wheelbarrows of marks just to buy groceries. In some cases, the wheelbarrow itself was worth more than its contents. Germans of that era would burn wads of banknotes as fuel during the winter, owing to the [[MoneyToBurn money being cheaper to burn]] than the wood/paraffin alternative. Twice during this period, the mark's value was so low that ''100 trillion mark bills'' were printed for regular circulation.
** This was parodied in the fake travel guide ''[[Literature/JetlagTravelGuides 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.
** A popular German urban legend had a man going to the bank with a wheelbarrow full of marks reach the bank and leave it outside for a minute while talking to the tellers. Upon returning outside to wheel the money in, he finds the wheelbarrow gone... and all of the money cleanly dumped on the sidewalk.
** Towards the end of 1923, the inflation became so severe that the price of groceries could go up while you were queuing for them.
* Less well-known than the German hyperinflation, the worst inflation yet happened in Hungary in the wake of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII. Hungary initially responded by making the "milpengő" (1 million pengő) the smallest denomination of bill they printed, and when that was rapidly overtaken by inflation they introduced "b.-pengő" (1 trillion pengő, pronounced "bilpengő"). Each of these had bills printed in denominations ranging from 10,000 to 1 trillion, meaning that during the b.-pengő period there was what amounted to a 1 sextillion pengő bill. When the pengő currency was replaced by the forint on 1st August 1946, the conversion rate was 4 x 10[[superscript:29]] (a 4 followed by ''29'' zeros, or 400 octillion) pengő to a single forint. To give you an idea of just ''how'' ridiculous this number is: if you could buy ''one atom'' of hydrogen for one pengő -- just one atom -- you [[HiroshimaAsAUnitOfMeasure could fill ]] UsefulNotes/TheHindenburg for twenty-five forints. (And, at 2010 exchange rates, that would run you a little over 12¢ US, less than a tenth of a euro.) Following the end of the hyperinflation, the next currency-related problem they had to deal with was a shortage of currency-quality paper.
* Happened in the modern times in Zimbabwe where the exchange rate at late June, 2008 was 20 billion $Z to 1 $US. This was after the currency had already been revalued twice, cutting off 13 zeroes. In 2007 the inflation rate was going up so fast that golfers would prepay for their drinks before starting their round because the price would have gone up significantly by the time they finished the 18th hole, and that waiting a day to buy bread meant you could no longer afford to do so. In fact, it reached the point where [=ATMs=] were unable to dispense money due to the large numbers involved. By the time [[HumiliationConga Zimbabwean government banned]] ''its own'' currency in April 2009, a $100 trillion note had been printed, and a third revaluation was in progress that would have cut off twelve more zeroes. The full effects of the inflation can be seen on [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ZWDvsUSDchart.svg this logarithmic graph]]. In June 2015, Zimbabwe officially abandoned its currency, choosing instead to use the US Dollar, and offered to exchange remaining bank balances at a rate of US$1 to 35 quadrillion Zimbabwe (third) dollars. The highest denomination notes still have value as novelties.
* At one point, exchange rate for one U.S. dollar was about 1,500,000 Turkish liras. Six zeros have been removed from the currency since.
* 1995, Poland revalued its currency by knocking off four of the zeros; there was a period in which both old and new currency was accepted and goods were double-priced accordingly. In fact, the main reason why the National Bank of Poland decided to go for denomination rather than just stabilize the old currency was precisely to avoid this trope as the post-communist Polish officials feared that having people pay thousands of currency units to get a basic daily product would earn the country a Third World reputation among foreign investors.
* In 1997 in Russia. Only three zeros got chopped instead of four, so for about a year there were neat, Soviet-like single-digit sums. Then came crisis of 98, and inflation struck again... It got much better, but inflation is still about 10% per year, so rumors of a new revaluation tend to hover around.
** The Soviet Union used to have coin-operated phones. Then it collapsed, and in the 1990s after hyperinflation the rubles, never mind the kopeks, became totally worthless. The only source of coins to run the coin operated machines was the phone company who could recycle the coins and sell them for whatever the phone call was worth. This also happened on the Moscow and St Petersburg metros, where the barriers were coin-operated. The metro system sold tokens the same size and weight as the coin that had operated them.
** Averted (for a price) in Soviet Union. As the USSR made the population affluence its main propaganda point, [[SlaveToPR in can never afford the wage drops or inflation]] lest it lose the face. However, the economy can grow only so fast, and to make everything worse, in TheSeventies the Soviet economy stagnated. As the prices were fixed, the only outcome of the money supply overrunning the supply of goods was the shortage -- the dreaded ''deficit'', when even the basics required enormous lines, and the population that turned their disaffection with the government into a ridicule.
** Forget UsefulNotes/TheNewRussia, look at the UsefulNotes/RedOctober era. The scrip of the newborn Soviet Republic had to be revalued every year to keep it barely afloat, and despite all revaluations, prices were in the millions range. The kerenki, scrip of the Provisional Government which was used as more or less universal between Soviet and non-Soviet territories, was never revalued and people just stopped counting zeroes and started to accept kerenki as 1x1 meter uncut sheets.
** Just for the reference, that old, hard, gold-based ruble introduced by Count Witte's currency reform in the late XIX century is, after all perturbations and redenominations of the XX century, worth roughly 1000 modern rubles (as of mid-2014), or about 5 late-Soviet [[TheEighties Eighties]] rubles many Russian tropers can still remember; based on the Purchase Power Parity principle — the same "Big Mac Index" method mentioned below.
* Mexico dropped three zeros out of the "peso" for the sake of simplicity in 1993. New coins and bills appeared into circulation and the old ones were taken out.
* The Government of Ghana lopped four zeroes off the end of the cedi when it hit 10,000 to a dollar back in 2007.
* A huge problem in the South during the UsefulNotes/AmericanCivilWar, due to the Confederate government simply printing more money to pay for the war. As one politician put it: "You take your money to market in the market basket and bring home what you buy in your pocketbook." An additional problem was that the CSA's currency was redemption-based, with the theory that six months after ratification of a peace treaty between the Confederacy and the Union, one could turn it in for 'hard' currency. Thus, when the South was defeated, and it was established that the peace treaty would never happen, the money became 'As worthless as a Confederate bill'.
** Interestingly Confederate Dollars ''today'' command quite high collectors prices - sometimes higher than their face value measured in either Dollars 1:1 or gold. Some have even gone on to ''counterfeit'' a currency that was not worth anything at the time it was legal tender of a country ''that does not exist any more''. Ironically enough, actual Civil War era counterfeit Confederate dollars are even ''more'' collectable than the real thing, and unlike antique counterfeit US dollars are actually legal to own. (Since the US dollar is one of the few currencies to never be re-denominated, technically all US dollars from 1785 onward are still legal tender and thus still illegal to own a copy of.)
* During the late eighties in Peru the inflation was ridiculously high, to the point that in 1990 the annual inflation rate had well surpassed 10000% (yes... that is a one followed by 4 zeroes). As a consequence you did have to buy meager stuff like a bottle of coke with millions of intis. When the Inti was changed for the Nuevo Sol the exchange rate was 1 million Intis to the Sol.
* In Brazil, inflation slowly grew through the 70s and 80s, reaching 200%/year around 1985 and something like 1700%/year in 1989. Inflation was fixed in 1994 with yet another currency (the Real) which is still working today.
* In Venezuela it reached the point where one American dollar was Bs.5,000. They tried to fix it with a revaluation, but the "Strong" Bolivars ended up inflating just as badly.
** 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 2 million [=BsF=] (2 billion of the old Bolivares) in the black market as of 11 June 2018, 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 (mid-2018) annual inflation rate of over 25,000%, 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 much has become a second Zimbabwe, down to prices doubling every few days.
** One 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."
** It's gotten to the point that [[https://www.theblaze.com/news/2017/07/31/world-of-warcraft-video-game-currency-now-worth-more-than-venezuelan-money in 2017]], ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'' gold was more valuable than the Bolivar.
* During and after the American Revolution, paper money issued by the Continental Congress was proverbially worth nothing, mostly because the government had no effective powers and no assets to back it. (This is discussed in ''Podcast/{{Revolutions}}''.)
* Ancient societies had this problem even though they used coins that had intrinsic values. The problem was that many rulers would need a lot of coins fast so they would just slightly decrease the percentage of the good stuff in the coins so they could issue a lot of coins cheaply.
** The later Roman Empire suffered hyperinflation when, instead of diluting the gold, the government repeatedly simply tried to ''[[ArtisticLicenseEconomics buy it all]]''.
** King Henry VIII of England was known as "Old Coppernose" because the silver would wear off the high-relief parts of his coins, revealing the underlying copper.
** For a time the last US coins minted with silver content (quarters and dimes from the early 60s) were worth more as precious metals than as collectibles. Enough coins were melted down that the balance swung the other way, and the coins are rare enough to collect again.
*** Incidentally, this is why you can occasionally find pennies from the 1950s in your pocket change, but dimes and quarters stop abruptly at 1965 (the first year with the cupro-nickel sandwiches). It's also why you don't see half dollars in circulation ever; since they still contained some silver until 1971, during TheSixties people were constantly hoarding them, so that by the time they were switched to cupronickel as well, cash registers had removed their slots for the half dollars, and as far as society was concerned, they did not exist.
** 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.[[note]]It's often been suggested that the U.S. should follow Canada's example and phase out the penny. Seemingly the only reason this doesn't happen is the immense popularity of UsefulNotes/AbrahamLincoln, whose portrait is on every U.S. penny. And simply moving Lincoln to another circulating coin because the 5, 10, and 25 cent pieces are already occupied by other popular past presidents and each coin has a decades-long cultural association with the president portrayed on it.[[/note]]
*** The same financial logic was why Canada pulled its penny out of circulation on February 4, 2013, with the last penny stamped in May, 2012 (the penny remains legal tender, it's being removed as it gets deposited in banks and other financial institutions).
*** This is also a reason why 1 yen coin is minted in aluminum since 1955: during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII the Japanese economy suffered huge inflation, and in 1946 the yen was pegged to the US dollar at the rate of ¥360 per $1. At first the yen coins were minted in brass, similar to the modern 5 yen coin, but the rise in copper prices meant that the coin was worth more than its face value as a bullion, resulting in significant losses for the Bank of Japan. This led to the change of its material to the much cheaper aluminum, and it remains the same ever since, even if it appreciated more than 4 times, so now the rate is ~¥120 per $1 as of 17.5.2015 according to google.
*** Russian 5 ruble coin used to be minted from cupronickel-clad copper until the steadily rising metal prices forced the mint to switch to stainless steel. Other coins followed suit, so now all modern Russian coins are minted from steel, though some have brass electroplating, like largely worthless kopeck coins and 10 r. piece that replaced the previously issued paper note.
** Ming Dynasty China suffered from severe inflation because of the large influx of silver from Mexico, via European outposts in Southeast Asia. While a large quantity of valuable goods, including tea, silk, and ceramics were shipped to Europe, very little European or New World goods entered China, other than silver. The oversupply of silver made everything expensive and may have contributed to the socioeconomic turmoil that would undermine the Chinese empire in 16th century.
* Even gold, the proverbial rock in the tempest of economic turbulence, is not immune to inflation. In 1342, Mansa Musa of the Mali Empire was passing through Cairo [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musa_I_of_Mali#Islam_and_pilgrimage_to_Mecca on his pilgrimage to Mecca]]. Either he did not quite notice the prices on the other side of the Sahara [[ConspicuousConsumption or he wanted to make a reputation for himself]] (or both), He ended up spending so much gold in the bazaar of Cairo that the gold market in the Mediterranean region collapsed for a decade, and only recovered that quickly because Mansa Musa intentionally borrowed at an inflated rate on his way back through. Like every other commodity, gold's value is whatever people are willing to pay for it, making it subject to the same laws of supply and demand as anything else that can be bought and sold. Thus, even the long traditional association between gold and wealth in nearly all cultures doesn't prevent huge sudden increase in supply from reducing its value.
** Or in 2013, where the price of gold dropped 21.5% since its high in 2012.
* In 1986, an Italian politician proposed to replace the old currency (lira) with the "lira pesante" (heavy lira), with a value of 1000 lire for each lira pesante, in order to bring Italian prices in line with the other European nations. Some [[http://www.cartamonetaitaliana.it/banconote/v/ITALIA/BOZZETTI/ printing tests]] were made, but technical and political problems proved the currency replacement to be impossible, so the project was abandoned. Italy eventually switched from the lira to the euro in 1999, with a conversion value of 1936.27 lire for each euro.
** People would joke about being a "lire millionaire," which, just before the Euro valuation, meant you had around $800 U.S.
* Japan has never revalued their currency, and as a result the smaller denominations, sen (1/100 of yen) and rin (1/1000 of yen) have been removed from circulation.
** During the early days of yen (19th century) you could find a 1 yen banknote, while today 1 yen is the least worth ''coin'', very similar in (lack of) value to a US penny.
*** Nowadays the yen appreciates at such a speed that we might see the Ridiculous Future ''Deflation''.
*** One of the interesting aspects of the yen is that you won't find it among [[http://www.profitconfidential.com/u-s-dollar/the-10-most-expensive-currency/ the top ten valued currencies]]. However, if you treat the yen like any other subdivision (say, the US cent), it's equal to the ''[[UsefulNotes/{{Switzerland}} Swiss franc]]'' -- '''sixth.''' It's sort of mindscrew to think about buying a can of soda in "100 cents".
*** Another consequence is that a common unit for the large amounts of money in modern Japan is "man", which is Japanese for 10,000 and, so it's naturally worth 10,000 yen (~$99 in mid-2014). So your rent is twenty man ($2,000), your wage is about fifty man ($5,000), and your shiny ''expensive'' new car has set you back for 1000 man ($100,000).
* UsefulNotes/{{Ecuador}}'s ''sucre'' currency went through severe hyperinflation beginning in 1983, with prices eventually changing almost as fast as merchants could change their signs. The country eventually switched over to the US dollar in 2000, at a rate of 25,000 sucre to 1 dollar.
* While the caveat of the future tropes cannot have any real observations cause it is in the future, what is the present was yesterday's tomorrow. With that in mind, it's always funny to watch movies set in a modern period complain about modern prices which today would be welcomed if not outright ridiculously cheap. For example, in ''Film/EscapeToWitchMountain'', at one point Mr. O'Day is filling his Winniebago with gas and complains about the outrageous price for $10 to completely fill such a vehicle. During the height of the fuel crisis in America, it is pretty high, but it becomes hilarious to people who viewed the movie in 2015 (40 years after its release) where filling a small car (with a minimum 10 gallon tank) is twice as expensive.
* Make your own with ''[[http://www.westegg.com/inflation/ The Inflation Calculator]]'' and [[http://www.macrotrends.net/1333/historical-gold-prices-100-year-chart Historical Gold Prices]].
## What cost $1 in 1915 would cost $24.61 in 2017, and if you were to buy exactly the same products in 2017 and 1915, they would cost you $1 and $0.04 respectively. ''A 96% decrease in value.''
## In comparison, in January 1915 an ounce of gold was $470.40, and as of February 2018, is $1,328.70. An 182% ''increase'' in value. 2% in the last month alone.
** There's also https://www.measuringworth.com, but it's more difficult to navigate...
** In 1951, as Johnny Cash song lyrics would have it, a Coke and a burger cost 30 cents. Of course, people made a lot less money then, too...
*** Which is itself why economists use things like the "Big Mac Index" and comparisons for how long it takes a worker to save up for certain products on an average day's wages. It's not the number of zeroes in your currency that's really important, it's how much you can actually buy with your hard-earned money at the end of the day.
*** Similarly, in Russia one economist has created the Borscht index, which is calculated by how much it costs his wife to make a large pot of borscht according to a family recipe. There are apparently noticeable shifts in the index every time she makes borscht (Which is roughly once every two months).
* Some economists argue that fear of this trope is a very bad thing in the long run. While Deflation is universally accepted to be a very bad thing (people holding on to their money because it buys more tomorrow than it did yesterday means the economy grinds to a halt), there is no clear consensus as to what the upper limit of "good" inflation is. Too low and it becomes the same as deflation, because some goods have a natural deflatory tendency (e.g. consumer electronics that get better for lower prices every year) as well as other reasons. Too high and you have all the problems mentioned above. Germany in particular is said to have a national obsession with inflation for very good historic reasons. Today the Central Bank of the Eurozone sits in Frankfurt and is supposed to uphold an inflation of less than 2% p.a. - That is lower than the inflation of almost every modern society with a fiat currency ever. Whether or not this is a bug or a feature depends on the economic theory you subscribe to.
* 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). Bitcoin has fallen in value by some 80% since its peak and is still dropping, which didn't help things.
* The 2010s had inflation in UsefulNotes/{{Venezuela}} that was reportedly the worst ever recorded. By the end of 2018 it had reached ''1.35 million%''.
[[/folder]]

** A non time travel variation is shown in the episode "Dough Ray Me." Wanting extra allowance money, the boys go to Gyro's place in the hope of getting some cash for chores, but stumble into an invention that uses sound to duplicate objects, whcih they use to multiply a dollar coin Mrs. Beakly gave them earlier to leave her alone. Unfortunately the sound of any bell causes the coins to multiply, and soon after Duckburgh is buried in dollar coins, driving up costs, and rendering McDuck's fortune worthless.

** One episode has a parody of the (then) modern Russian economy with an instance of Ridiculous ''Present'' Inflation, with a Russian dignitary at the Olympics committee:
--->'''Russian:''' Come to Russia, where 1 dollar worth 5 roubles. ''[gets paged on his beeper, and reads out the message, sounding increasingly panicked]'' 12 roubles. ''50 roubles''. '''''1000 ROUBLES!?''''' ''I must go''. ''[frantically leaves the conference hall]''

* ''Literature/SnowCrash'' establishes this as a joke when the teenage Y.T. asks the police if they'll take a bribe to let her go. They say sure, for ''a trillion dollars.'' The deadpan snarker Y.T. counter-offers with $500 billion, and they accept... so she pays it. They weren't being sarcastic. That's how bad "megainflation" has become. Old denomination of bills in the hundreds and thousands are now literally being used as toilet paper. Some corporations have fought inflation by introducing new, non-inflated currency such as Kongbucks, which have become the unit of exchange for larger transactions.

* Even gold, the proverbial rock in the tempest of economic turbulence, is not immune to inflation. In 1342, Mansa Musa of the Mali Empire was passing through Cairo on his pilgrimage to Mecca. Either he did not quite notice the prices on the other side of the Sahara or he wanted to make a reputation for himself (or both), He ended up spending so much gold in the bazaar of Cairo that the gold market in the Mediterranean region collapsed for a decade. Like every other commodity, gold's value is whatever people are willing to pay for it, making it subject to the same laws of supply and demand as anything else that can be bought and sold. Thus, even the long traditional association between gold and wealth in nearly all cultures doesn't prevent huge sudden increase in supply from reducing its value.

* ''Literature/SnowCrash'' establishes this as a joke when the teenage Y.T. asks if the police will let her go if she pays them. They say sure, for ''a trillion dollars.'' The deadpan snarker Y.T. counter-offers with $500 billion, and they accept... so she pays it. They weren't being sarcastic. That's how bad "megainflation" has become. Old denomination of bills in the hundreds and thousands are now literally being used as toilet paper. Some corporations have fought inflation by introducing new, non-inflated currency such as Kongbucks, which have become the unit of exchange for larger transactions.

* Neal Stephenson's ''Literature/SnowCrash'' establishes this as a joke, when the teenage Y.T. asks if the police will let her go, and they say sure, for a ''trillion dollars.'' The deadpan snarker Y.T. counter-offers with a figure in the billions, and they accept... so she pays it. They weren't being sarcastic, that's how bad "megainflation" has become. Old denomination of bills in the hundreds and thousands are now literally being used as toilet paper. Some corporations have fought inflation by introducing new, non-inflated currency such as Kongbucks, which have become the unit of exchange for larger transactions.

* Portrayed realistically in ''Alongside Night'' where the US dollar has lost practically all of its value from excessive printing by the Federal Reserve. Eventually the entire government either collapses or ends up privatised because of the advice of a bunch of revolutionaries described in the book as "worse than terrorists and the mafia combined".
** Doesn't sound all that realistic, since the Federal Reserve manages money supply via Capital Requirements and Reserve Requirements on banks. The amount of printed currency in circulation is a relatively small percentage of the amount of '''money'''. So printing more currency is not how inflation happens.

** Or just this past year, where the price of gold has dropped 21.5% since its high in 2012.

* A huge problem in the South during the UsefulNotes/AmericanCivilWar, due to the Confederate government simply printing more money to pay for the war. As one politician put it: "You bring your money to market in a basket, and bring home what you buy in your pocketbook." An additional problem was that the CSA's currency was redemption-based, with the theory that six months after ratification of a peace treaty between the Confederacy and the Union, one could turn it in for 'hard' currency. Thus, when the South was defeated, and it was established that the peace treaty would never happen, the money became 'As worthless as a Confederate bill'.

* In ''Film/TheRunningMan'', a cost of a single can of pop from a pop machine is $6. Which you had to pay for in quarters, because [[TechnologyMarchesOn they didn't have automatic dollar-bill reading machines]]. [[FridgeLogic Or dollar coins, apparently.]]

** And again, in ''Film/AustinPowersInGoldmember'', Dr. Evil requests "One billion, gajillion, fafillion... shabadylu...mil...shabady......uh, yen." The U.N. representatives calculate it in their heads and determine that it is a reasonable claim.

* The ''VideoGame/TexMurphy'' game, ''Under a Killing Moon'' takes place in 2042. One of the in-game items is a single postage stamp. It costs 10 dollars.