Line #20 Main/AMacGuffinFullOfMoney


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13	[[quoteright:350:[[Film/ShallowGrave https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/shallow_grave_1.jpg]]]]
14	[[caption-width-right:350:Sometimes, it really is this simple...]]
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16	->''"Fifteen million dollars is not money. It's a motive with a universal adaptor on it."''
17	-->-- '''Joe Sarno''', ''Film/TheWayOfTheGun''
18
19	A SubTrope of the {{MacGuffin}} concept. Rather than make the [=MacGuffin=] be a piece of obscure technology or the ChosenOne brought back to life, it is quite simply a giant pile of cash. Because money has intrinsic and universal value, the viewer can instantly understand why it is that the characters are so determined to retrieve it.
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21	The problem with this trope is that it can't generally be used to power stories that involve things like the villain seeking world domination.[[note]]While a villain with such intentions might well need more funds than he currently has on hand, the amount of money needed to fund a world-conquering army is too vast to plausibly be represented by a single object that can be physically stolen.[[/note]] As such, it tends to show up most often in mundane fiction, although a [=MacGuffin=] full of money can make characters who would otherwise be normal act kind of insane -- compare GoldFever.
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23	See also MockGuffin, BriefcaseFullOfMoney, HatePlague, ZillionDollarBill, PirateBooty, TreasureMap and DragonHoard.
24	----
25	!!Examples:
26
27	[[foldercontrol]]
28
29	[[folder:Anime & Manga]]
30	* The treasure chest in one of the extra chapters of ''Manga/PlusAnima''. But, it ends up getting eaten by an interesting looking fish.
31	* The first arc of ''Anime/HeavyMetalLGaim'' revolves around a cash card containing a few million of the local currency. Characters steal it, try to bribe military officials with it, and even try to deliver it to its rightful owner. [[spoiler: The bank that issued it froze the card when they found out about the shenanigans, but it eventually gets to the arms dealer it was meant for.]]
32	* In ''Manga/{{Kurokochi}}'', Sawatari uses what is called the "M Funds", a huge stockpile of money given to a certain Shigeru Momota by various politicians all around the world.
33	* [[MacGuffinTitle The eponymous treasure of Gold Roger]] in ''Franchise/OnePiece'' is very much a MacGuffin. Of course, while everyone ''assumes'' it's a vast fortune, the exact nature of it is arguably the greatest mystery in the series. It's merely the prestige of having been the only one since Roger to make it to the end of the world that will make whoever finds it the pirate king. In all likelihood, the actual ''treasure'' (as in silver and gold and all) aspect of the One Piece is probably rather not much. Speculations on what it could be range from a single piece of eight (It is ONE piece, after all) to an item that Roger was fond of.
34	** Fortunately, the author confirmed twice it's something of real value, and not "Some kind of Wizard of Oz thing" (as he doesn't like that kind of endings).
35	** [[spoiler:The Wano Arc revealed the treasure originally belonged to Joy Boy, and Roger (who laughed upon seeing it, thus the island was named "Laugh Tale") also learned about the Void Century, the Will of D., and the Ancient Weapons, supporting Whitebeard's statement that upon finding the treasure, "the world will be shaken to the core".]]
36	[[/folder]]
37
38	[[folder:Comic Books]]
39	* ''ComicBook/{{Asterix}}'': In ''Recap/AsterixAndTheCauldron'', the cauldron is only significant because of the money that was in it.
40	* An old ''ComicBook/DisneyDucksComicUniverse'' comic involves Donald knocking loose a concrete egg and discovering that the thing's actually filled with money. After cracking it open with a wrecking ball, he finds out it belongs to Uncle Scrooge, and he kept it around in case of emergency. Yes, it was his [[StealthPun nest egg]].
41	* In ''ComicBook/Hitman1993'' annual #1, the MacGuffin is a coffin full of dollars. The story title: [[MacGuffinTitle "A Coffin Full of Dollars"]].
42	* ''ComicBook/{{XIII}}'': In ''[[Recap/XIIIOperationMontecristo Operation Montecristo]]'', XIII and his friends decide to look for Maximilian's gold only because of its great monetary value (they need money because they are outlaws).
43	[[/folder]]
44
45	[[folder:Film -- Live-Action]]
46	* In ''Film/SevenMenFromNow'', the chest containing $20,000 in cold stolen from the Wells Fargo freight office in Silver Springs is what both the outlaws and Masters and Clete are after. [[spoiler:John Greer has it in his wagon and is carrying it to the outlaws in Flora Vista.]]
47	* In ''Film/TheBigLebowski'' [[spoiler:the briefcase was actually full of phone books from the beginning, and the money had already been embezzled.]]
48	* The briefcase full of $2 million of stolen Mafia money in ''Film/Bound1996''.
49	* ''Film/{{Charade}}'' revolves around the search for a quarter of a million dollars (in 1963, so more like a few millions today) that the murdered Charles Lampert had before his death. It's assumed he must have either had it with him at the time of his murder or somehow given it to his widow, Regina, but she has no idea where the money is and the only items found in Charles' travel bag are mundane objects like a wallet with just a few franks in it, a comb, a tube of toothpaste, etc. There ''is'' a letter addressed to Reggie, but it's just to say hello (she was on holiday before the murder) and to tell her her dentist's appointment has changed. Both protagonists and antagonists spend the film wracking their brains and tearing apart each others' hotel rooms trying to figure out where the hell the money is, to no avail. [[spoiler:No one has a thought to spare for [[HiddenInPlainSight the stamps on the letter's envelope]].]]
50	* The duffel bag of cash in ''Film/ColdComesTheNight'' is what everyone is after.
51	* In ''Film/LaComunidad'' centers on the ShadyRealEstateAgent protagonist hiding 300 million pesetas that belonged to a deceased man from the greedy inhabitants of the ApartmentComplexOfHorrors who knew of his treasure and waited for his death to get their hands on it.
52	* In ''Film/CrimeDoctor'', the crooks are looking for a valise containing $200,000 that Morgan took when he doublecrossed them.
53	* In ''Film/TheCriminal'', Johnny buries the [[BriefcaseFullOfMoney suitcase full of cash]] he and his gang stole from the racetrack in an empty field. Various {{London Gangster}}s decide that they want that cash and are willing to go to any length to get, including busting Johnny out of prison.
54	* ''Film/DieHard'': The real goal of Gruber and his "terrorist group" — the vault on the 30th floor of Nakatomi Plaza, which contains $640 million in negotiable bearer bonds. In 2017 that would be $1.345 ''billion''.
55	* ''Film/DuelForGold'': This one is a horse carriage filled with chests and chests loaded with gold ingots, which the four main characters are willing to backstab and slaughter each other to claim all the gold for themselves.
56	* ''Film/DumbAndDumber'' centers around the protagonists trying to return a briefcase full of ransom money, which they picked up in the belief it was left behind by mistake. [[spoiler:Once they spend it all on luxuries, it becomes a briefcase full of [=IOUs=] instead - and they can't understand why the bad guys won't accept those, since they're practically the same thing.]]
57	* ''Film/ItsAMadMadMadMadWorld'' has the characters spend much of the early part of the movie gradually progressing from "let's be reasonable" to "screw it, every man for himself" regarding the location of a cache they discover in the opening minutes.
58	* The NaziGold in ''Film/KellysHeroes''.
59	* The duffel bag with £1.3 million in cash in it in ''Film/LockStockAndTwoSmokingBarrels''.
60	* ''Film/{{The Maltese Falcon\|1941}}'' looks like an ordinary statue, but only a few people know that it holds gems under its skin.
61	* ''Film/{{Millions}}'' is about a 7-year-old boy who finds a duffel bag full of money, and what he and his brother do with it.
62	* ''Film/MissionImpossibleRogueNation'': [[spoiler:The ledger that holds 2.4 '''''billion''''' pounds sterling worth of funding for The Syndicate is this for Lane, as it will provide him with the money he needs to keep the Syndicate running for decades. As a neat twist, it turns out that the ledger is digitized and sealed in a liquid-cooled server. At the climax of the movie, Hunt reveals that he's destroyed the only remaining copy of the ledger, and claims that he has memorized all the data, turning ''him'' into a LivingMacGuffin Full of Money.]]
63	* In ''Film/NewTownKillers'', Sean agrees to play [[HuntingTheMostDangerousGame the game of cat-and-mouse]] against Alistair and Jamie for £11,000 in a locker at the train station.
64	* In ''Film/NoCountryForOldMen'', at a few points, characters end up needing to spend some of it after getting themselves in a tight spot.
65	* ''Film/OceansEleven'' uses this, though it differs from most Thief Caper films in that it was very ''[[ItsPersonal specific]]'' money.
66	* The big prize of the Quick Draw championship in ''Film/TheQuickAndTheDead'' (that is held annually, no less) is $123,000. In 2017 dollars, this would equate to about $3 million— a ridiculous amount for a tiny non-mining town, no matter how rampant the corruption there is. Bonus points for storing this fortune in a single, prominent, unlocked chest, positioned on the table in the town's dirty, lowbrow saloon.
67	* ''Film/RatRace'' makes pure use of this trope. The object of the whole film is to be the first to reach and open a briefcase with two million dollars in it.
68	* The chest of silver which the bandits dropped in the village, and demands for the local smith to open (else they return and massacre it's inhabitants) in ''Film/TheSavageFive''.
69	* The suitcase full of cash in ''Film/ShallowGrave''. The film is about a group of friends trying to cover up an accidental death in their apartment so they can keep said money.
70	* ''Film/ASimplePlan'' is about a group of characters who find a wrecked plane full of cash (which turns out to be [[spoiler:the ransom from a kidnapping]]).
71	* The plot of ''Film/{{Transit}}'' is driven by the bag containing $4 million the crooks hide in the Sidwells' SUV and then go to great lengths to recover.
72	* The MacGuffin in ''Film/WildHorsePhantom'' is $50,000 Daggett and his gang stole from a bank and his in the mine.
73	[[/folder]]
74
75	[[folder:Literature]]
76	* ''Literature/BigendBooks'': [[spoiler:The mysterious container]] in ''Spook Country'' turns out to be one of those. In a variation of the trope, the protagonists are not out to steal it, but rather [[spoiler:make it unusable for anyone who ends up getting it]].
77	* The Scapular which supposedly reveals the secret hiding place of the Treasure of ''Literature/TheBlackCoats''.
78	* Subverted (kinda) in the ''Literature/MistbornTheOriginalTrilogy''. The atium cache is initially desired for its monetary value, but when they finally find it near the end of the last book, [[spoiler:money of any sort is kind of worthless...]] In the end, it's still valuable, but because [[spoiler: it's actually the "body" (read: power) of a god in metallic form, and [[BigBad Ruin]] (the god it was essentially scooped out of) wants to re-ingest it to get himself back to full strength]]. And because it's a powerful allomantic metal with great military value.
79	* In ''Literature/NoCountryForOldMen'', Moss has a suitcase containing $2 million. Chigurh is hunting Moss to get the money. Bell is hunting Chigurh and simultaneously hunting Moss in hopes of getting him to safety. [[spoiler:Chigurh never catches up with Moss, and Bell never catches up with either Moss or Chigurh. Bell and Chigurh ''almost'' cross paths, but they never actually meet one another.]]
80	* ''Literature/TheStormlightArchive'':
81	** A minor example in ''Literature/TheWayOfKings2010''. Each battle of the Shattered Plains (though not the war as a whole) is driven by the appearance of chasmfiend pupae, each of which contain an enormous gemstone. A "gemheart" represents a staggering amount of money, enough to fund an army for months, and also provides the gems that are used to magic up food for said armies. This has turned what was supposed to be a war for vengeance into just another contest between the nobles, which is [[NotWhatISignedUpFor extremely annoying for their soldiers, who are dying in droves on a daily basis]].
82	** In Kaladin's backstory, when the citylord died he left a large amount of money to Kaladin's family in order to pay for Kaladin's education as a surgeon. The new citylord wants the money and keeps trying to find ways to get it, such as making the other villagers think that they'll be rewarded if they steal them for him, or suggesting that Kaladin's parents shouldn't be paid for work. [[spoiler:This gets worse when it turns out Kaladin's father really did steal the money. He forged the old citylord's will, but insists that if the man had been lucid in his last moments, he would have done so on his own]].
83	* In ''Literature/TheTwelveChairs'', the MacGuffin is a chair stuffed with diamond jewelry. To make things worse, there are the [[GottaCatchThemAll other eleven]], which look the same.
84	[[/folder]]
85
86	[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
87	* ''Series/AltaMar'': A MacGuffin full of NaziGold ingots drives the plot for much of the first two seasons.
88	* ''Series/{{Arrow}}'': Church's stash in "[[Recap/ArrowS5E14TheSinEater The Sin Eater]]". Girls want it because it's 100 million dollars, everyone else wants to get it before they do.
89	* ''Series/{{Leverage}}'': "[[Recap/LeverageS01E02TheHomecomingJob The Homecoming Job]]" ends up being a shipping container full of stolen cash from Iraq. In this case, the money isn't really what's important -- the two bad guys, a congressman, and CEO for some PrivateMilitaryContractors have plenty -- it's the fact that it's cash, which makes it a giant, untraceable slush fund.
90	* ''Series/MacGyver1985'': In "Three for the Road", the MacGuffin is a satchel full of CounterfeitCash that the crooks are attempting to retrieve. Any kind of valuable contraband could have served the same purpose.
91	* ''Series/NightCourt'': In one episode, Bob and June Wheeler (two perpetually unlucky yokels) are brought in for causing about $85 worth of property damage. June says they won't have any trouble paying it off because of an inheritance from Bob's grandmother. She then opens a coffee can she's carrying to show it stuffed with cash -- the $250,000 that Granny left to them. Dan practically has to pick his jaw up off the floor upon seeing it.
92	* The [=VH1=] reality series ''Series/{{Ton of Cash}}'' relied on this trope in its first episode. Fourteen contestants gathered on a beach in Malibu and were presented with $1 million worth of StageMoney -- 167 bricks weighing 12 pounds each, locked inside a steel cage. They had to open the cage and physically carry as much as they could to each day's goal line.
93	* ''Series/ViennaBlood'': The [[spoiler:bag of uncut diamonds]] in "The God of Shadows". By the end of the story, it has provoked five homicides by three different people, and Max and Oskar come to the conclusion that it didn't need a mystical curse to explain events, just sheer human greed.
94	[[/folder]]
95
96	[[folder:Tabletop Games]]
97	* ''TabletopGame/{{Fiasco}}'' has quite a few playsets where a possible Object is a container of some description stuffed with cash or other valuable material, such as diamonds or gold dust. It goes so far as to quote Joe Sarno of ''Film/TheWayOfTheGun'' in a page describing what Objects add to the game:
98	-->''Fifteen million dollars is not money. It's a motive with a universal adapter on it.''
99	[[/folder]]
100
101	[[folder:Theater]]
102	* Harpagon's cash-box with a ten thousand crowns in ''Theatre/TheMiser''.
103	* In the play of ''Series/StillGame'', Victor has a hoover filled with £7000 in £20 notes.
104	[[/folder]]
105
106	[[folder:Video Games]]
107	* In ''VideoGame/BadMojo'', Eddie Battito has a stash of dollars and coins tucked inside his matress, and some of it falls out when he collapses into it and falls asleep after drinking a spiked can of beer. It's implied Eddie has this considering the run-down state of the bar he owns upstairs, which is condemned and on the verge of being demolished.
108	* In Chapter 3 of ''VisualNovel/DanganronpaTriggerHappyHavoc'', [[KillerGameMaster Monokuma]] offers ten billion yen (ten million dollars in the English dub) to the first student to murder a classmate and escape [[ClosedCircle the school]] as a murder motive.
109	* ''VideoGame/Fallout2'' features a treasure that's stuck down in a well -- a load of cash! After buttering up the ghoul that buried it for its location and hiring a treasure hunter to help find it, the Chosen One gets their hands on [[spoiler:10,000 bottlecaps--which was an incredibly valuable treasure about 80 years ago while bottlecaps were legal tender, but became worthless when enough technology was restored to make new caps, forcing the NCR to re-open a number of [[GoldSilverCopperStandard gold mines]]. Hope the Chosen One held on to them, as the Brotherhood of Steel blew those mines up just a few years later, forcing people back to bottle caps again.]]
110	* The Philosopher's Legacy in ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid3SnakeEater'' is a microfilm with details of bank accounts containing a ''colossal'' amount of money (described as "one hundred billion dollars" or "[...] enough to fight the war five times over". And keep in mind this game takes place in 1964.) Enough, in fact, that despite the usual trapping of this trope, [[spoiler:the group that gets their hands on it does take over the world]].
111	* ''VideoGame/PAYDAY3'': The primary goal of ''Rock The Cradle'' is to sneak into the Neon Cradle nightclub and steal a cryptocurrency wallet loaded with the club's profits. The wallet is wiped if the alarm goes off, rendering it worthless and cutting the heist's profit significantly.
112	* The Diamond in ''VisualNovel/PhoenixWrightAceAttorneyTrialsAndTribulations''. It's worth 2 million dolars and serves as motivation for Mellisa Foster's start of darkness. That's all that is important about it.
113	* In ''VideoGame/Yakuza1'', 10 billion yen disappears from the Tojo Clan's vault, sending Tokyo teetering on the brink of open gang warfare as everyone hunts down the missing money.
114	[[/folder]]
115
116	[[folder:Western Animation]]
117	* ''WesternAnimation/{{Fillmore}}'': The briefcase full of smoits (tokens found on dairy bars and packets of chips and used to buy basically anything a kid could want once enough of them are saved up) serves this function "The Currency of Doubt". It transpires that the briefcase itself was originally perfunctory to the culprit's aims ([[spoiler:to get her own dance students out of the way so she could win a competition]]), but she winds up trying to keep it anyway because having that many tokens on hand couldn't hurt.
118	* ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'': Krabs' old mattress, which has all of his money inside in "[[Recap/SpongeBobSquarePantsS4E2TheLostMattressKrabsVsPlankton The Lost Mattress]]".
119	[[/folder]]

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