Anthony: Look what the Pentaverate did to our currency. Right? Normal five-dollar bill. Right?
Reilly: Right?
Anthony: Wrongo! You fold it this way, you fold it that way, you fold it this way, and lookee here what we have. The five. Like the five members of the Pentaverate. It's right there! Think about it. Why would they put a five right there?
Reilly: To indicate the bill has a monetary value of five American dollars?
[Beat]
Anthony: It's like they're taunting us!
Reilly: Right?
Anthony: Wrongo! You fold it this way, you fold it that way, you fold it this way, and lookee here what we have. The five. Like the five members of the Pentaverate. It's right there! Think about it. Why would they put a five right there?
Reilly: To indicate the bill has a monetary value of five American dollars?
[Beat]
Anthony: It's like they're taunting us!
— The Pentaverate, Episode 3
When a dollar bill is used to demonstrate that there is an Ancient Conspiracy woven into the very fabric of society.
The most common "clue" used is the Eye of Providence on the one-dollar bill, a symbol typically associated with The Illuminati, implying that America has been taken over (or was always being controlled) by an insidious Shadow Government that's responsible for everything bad that happens to you. Sometimes the clues aren't as obvious and the dollar has to be folded into various positions until it makes a picture.
While usual examples of the trope happen in a world where the conspiracies are real, the use of money to find clues is still portrayed as ridiculous, the theorists looking for proof in all the wrong places or the "proof" being too vague for anyone without a lot of time on their hands to find credible.
While it doesn't have to be American currency, the American dollar is the most common example.
Sub-Trope of Conspiracy Placement. Not to be confused with Literal Money Metaphor. See also Fold the Page, Fold the Space, where folding paper is used as a Phlebotinum Analogy for Quantum Physics, and Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot, where a crime like the theft or counterfeiting of cash can lead to a conspiracy.
Examples:
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Films — Live-Action
- National Treasure: To figure out when the shadow of Independence Hall will reveal the next clue to find the Templar Treasure, Ben Gates magnifies the painting of Independence Hall on the back of a $100 bill to read the time on the clock tower. The fact that they do find the next clue at the time depicted (adjusted for Daylight Savings Time) lends further proof that the secret treasure might be real.
Live-Action TV
- Parodied in the third episode of The Pentaverate. When Anthony tries to justify his conspiracy-addiction to Reilly, he demonstrates his reasoning by showing her a five-dollar bill. He intricately folds it, only to point to the five on the bill, stating that it represents The Pentaverate. When Reilly points out the real reason for the number five — that it shows that the bill is worth five dollars — the reasoning flies right over his head.
- The X-Files: In the first episode to feature the Lone Gunmen, a trio of conspiracy theorists who help Mulder and Scully in several cases, Byers tears a magnetic strip out of a $20 bill belonging to Scully, claiming the strip is being used by the covert organisation within the American government to track money being carried through metal detectors at airports. Scully replies that it is simply an anti-counterfeiting device.
Web Original
- In the What If? entry "All the Money
", it's implied that all US currency is all under the control of an Eldritch Abomination that resembles the Eye of Providence, this being the reason why the symbol is on the $1 bill.
Western Animation
- Gravity Falls:
- One of Bill Cipher's Early Bird Cameos is on the -12 dollar bill in "Irrational Treasure", where he replaces the Eye of Providence, complete with limbs and hat.
- Bill Cipher was explicitly modeled after the Eye of Providence, and in a deleted musical number he points this out:
Look at this money
Who's that honey?
Look throughout history
How could you miss me?
- One of Bill Cipher's Early Bird Cameos is on the -12 dollar bill
- Inside Job:
- In the montage of images in the opening title sequence, two of the images show the $100 dollar bill, one of them normal, the other portraying Benajmin Franklin as a Satanic goat-man with the number 100 replaced with 666.
- In the first episode, Rand rants incoherent conspiracy theories to a crowd of people in front of the White House, one of which being a dollar bill he had folded to spell "Boobs". Given that he was doing it to get his daughter's attention and he helped run the Shadow Government, it's likely he was mocking the trope. It also doubles as a reference to a popular joke with the American $1 bill, where it can be folded to read "Tits of America."
Rand: What does it mean?
- Used as an in-universe Mad Fold-in gag in The Simpsons, asking the question "What higher power do TV evangelists worship?", and folding to reveal the answer "The All Mighty Dollar".
- In the South Park episode "Sexual Healing", the Head Scientist goes to Barack Obama and explains that money has a direct link to sex addiction. He then shows a zoomed image of a $100 bill to reveal the picture of Independence Hall. Obama then reveals that that the Roswell Aliens carried a virus that was barely contained, but has been set loose by an Alien Wizard in Independence Hall. Of course, the whole thing is itself a conspiracy drummed up by the nation's men so that they don't have to take responsibility for their bad sexual habits.
- Steven Universe: At the end of "Keep Beach City Weird", Ronaldo comes up with a new conspiracy based on the diamond on their Earth's one dollar bill; "polymorphic sentient rocks" have come to "hollow out the earth" as part of the "diamond authority". Like many of Ronaldo's theories, this is, through sheer coincidence, surprisingly accurate.
- In the Time Squad episode "Where the Buffalo Bill Roams", the guys meet Buffalo Bill who is depicted here as being a full-blown conspiracy theorist. He tries to convince Otto that the United States government has been in cahoots with aliens since 1776 and to prove it he shows him a dollar bill with what appears to be a flying saucer on the back. Otto points out to him that the "flying saucer" is actually barbecue sauce.
Real Life
- Following the 2003 debut of a redesign for the $20 USD bill, people discovered that, by folding it a certain way, one can make the rear illustration resemble the World Trade Center on fire. The coincidence became a popular schoolyard parlor trick, and the fact that it was discovered concurrently with the rise of 9/11 conspiracy theories resulted in dollar bill origami becoming a popular shorthand for nutty Conspiracy Theorist characters.
- Some of the old Polish zloty (PLZ) banknotes had "Banknotes emitted by the National Polish Bank are legal tender in Poland" note written on the bottom. With a simple fold, the line could be made to say "...are nothing in Poland"note , which wasn't that far off the mark in the days of Soviet-controlled planned economy.
