"A huge change in birthday parties lately has been the goody bag: a cheap bag of candy or dinky toys that kids get at the end of a party in exchange for coming over, because your kid is so misanthropic you have to bribe other children to have fun in the same vicinity as them. For the rich, it's moved way beyond handing out some candy. I've been told to get everything from MP3 players to gift cards to watches to just straight cash. That's right, parents are literally paying other kids to hang out with theirs"
The Jerk Jock and/or Alpha Bitch always seems to be surrounded by friends and admirers, despite the fact that they're one of the meanest people alive. How, one might wonder, is this possible? Easy: their family is loaded.
This trope is when a character, usually a rich one, ends up buying/bribing people into being their friends so they can have people to hang out with without going through the effort of being a good person. The character doesn't have to be rich, though; if they're desperate enough for friends or recognition, anyone might pull this trope with anything (free food, free rides in their car, etc). Sometimes the "friends" will be paid by a third party, usually the parents. When that happens, the character may not even know about the bribing and is usually shocked to learn that their "friends" were never truly their friends.
Seeing as how money can't do everything, there will likely come a time when the person paying off their friend group does something so terrible that said friend group decides the money isn't worth it and leave them behind.
As stated above, this trope is often used by the resident Jerk Jock or Alpha Bitch (or both). It invokes the Gold Digger and Fair-Weather Friend tropes. Compare and contrast with Paid-for Family and I'll Be Your Best Friend. See also Screw the Rules, I Have Money! and Buy Them Off. If someone is doing this for more... er, close friends, see Paid Harem.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Bakuman。: Tohru Nanamine is eventually revealed to have done this. He was a friendless youth, but after he read Ashirogi's manga 'The World Is All About Money and Intelligence,' he asked his rich father for some money and then bribed a bunch of classmates to be his friends.
- J.P. from Digimon Frontier. He always has chocolate and other sweets for his friends, but it's eventually revealed that this is an attempt at bribery since no one actually bothers to get to know him beyond his tricks and candy. In one episode, he tries to bribe a school of starter digimon into playing with their ostracized classmate, Tsunomon, whom they feared for gaining the ability to digivolve into Gabumon. They don't hesitate in stating that wouldn't play with him regardless, causing the insulted Tsunomon to run away and Zoe to instantly call J.P. out.
- Maria no Danzai:
- Kowase regularly gives some of the money he makes blackmailing people and selling panty shots online to Okaya in order to stay in his good graces; Okaya later admits this is the only reason he bothers to hang out with Kowase. A notable exception occurs when Kowase accidentally mentions Kiritaka's name in front of Okaya: when Kowase tries to give Okaya some pocket money to mend his mistake, Okaya doesn't even bother to take it and leaves the place without a word, leaving Kowase furious that Kiritaka has embarrassed him from beyond the grave.
- One of Shikimi's Fatal Flaws is that she only believes in bonds based on profit: when a fellow student asked her out, she replied by asking what she would be getting in return for dating him, she has socially isolated people she didn't like by ensuring their peers would gain nothing from standing up for them, and when she goes out with the rest of Okaya's gang she constantly demands that they do stuff for her. As a result, she has no real friends; having this pointed out to her is a very good way to set her off.
- Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun: When Clara is introduced, she's shown to be "friends" with a group of guys who're only around her because she can pull out snacks and other things with her dimensional pocket ability. In fact, she's fully aware that she's being taken advantage of, but she feels that this is the only way she could ever get anyone to spend any time with her, as most found her Cloud Cuckoolander personality annoying and hard to deal with, unless there was a reason. She becomes very happy when Iruma tells her that he doesn't need her to give him things just to have him play with her. It's to the point that her greatest fear is seeing the few friends she made, especially Iruma whom she has feelings for, eventually get tired of her and avoid her unless she gives them stuff, just like her life before she met them.
Fan Works
- Riding a Sunset: Like in the deleted scenes from the movie, Charlie's former best friends abandoned her after her father died, buying their way into Tina Lark's friend group via free hot dogs. After they lose their jobs due to the stand they work at closing down, Tina cruelly casts them out.
Film — Live-Action
- Avataro Sentai Donbrothers Vs Zenkaiger: Despite the new lease on life Jiro seemed to have gained following his Split-Personality Merge at the end-stretch of the show, he's become a worse person by the time of the movie. Taro interviews each member of the team and learns that Jiro is an iffy leader whose Control Freak tendencies and inability to handle criticism got Sonoi exiled from the group and tore the rest of the team apart. Furthermore, everyone's new cushy jobs and life advancements came directly from him (more accurately the money he inherited from a former Hitotsu-Ki host off-screen), perks he's all too happy to try blackmailing them with when they all decide they want Taro to lead again. They're actually fine with losing these things if it means a sense of normalcy again.
- In the live-action Beauty and the Beast (2017), LeFeu can be seen in the background of the song "Gaston" paying the bar's other patrons to sing along, hinting that Gaston isn't as well-liked as he thinks.
- Bumblebee: In the movie's deleted scenes, it's shown that Charlie used to be friends with the other girls who worked at the hotdog-on-a-stick stand. However, when she distanced herself from them due to grieving her father, they bought their way into Tina Lark's friend group by giving her free hot dogs whenever she wanted. This backfires on them later when they try to tell Charlie that they're popular now... only for Tina to say she was using them and start teasing them along with her other friends.
- Richie Rich: The group of kids Richie unsuccessfully tried to befriend earlier show up at his mansion for a play date. At the end of the day, however, it is revealed Richie's butler Cadburry bribed them without Richie's knowledge to come play with Richie. Subverted when the kids decline the money because at this point they've had the day of their lives and came to realize Richie is a Spoiled Sweet whom they genuinely like as a friend rather than the Spoiled Brat they initially believed him to be. They even call out the one member of their group who reminded Cadburry about the bribe.
- Thoroughbreds: Lily reaches out to Amanda at least in part to help her with SAT revision but insists she just wants to get to know Amanda after years. Amanda isn't fooled; she's been reading her mother's emails and knows that Lily isn't just charging, but negotiated a higher price with her mother. Amanda says she isn't annoyed that Lily is charging, she just doesn't want Lily to lie about it, and that she could've negotiated a higher price.
Live-Action TV
- The Brittas Empire: In "Reviewing the Situation", Helen is learning about the importance of giving and receiving at one of her counseling courses, so she takes it to mean that gifting various stuff from an auction to the members of staff will earn their friendship. Whilst it seems to initially work, Brittas doesn't appreciate her gift, causing her to state her annoyance that evening and wonder whether the others were being polite. Brittas gently reminds her that "you can't buy friendship", even bringing up a previous incident when he tried to make friends with others by giving them sweets but failed.
- Son of a Critch: A variation. Fox, who comes from a long line of school bullies, steals snacks off of Mark and Richie (her "nerd tax") as a pretense to hang around them without her brothers thinking that she's getting soft. For their part, Mark and Richie always make sure that there is an extra bag of chips for her to steal.
- The Suite Life of Zack & Cody: When London is forced to go to public high school for the first time, she tries this so she can be the popular girl. However, she quickly realizes that the girls she's "befriended" won't be pushed around just because she paid them, and refuse to let her have their lockers so she can have more space. As one of the girls points out, London never even bothered to learn their names.
- You Can't Do That on Television: In the Friendship episode, Moose finds out that her friends of the rest of the cast had been bribed to be friends with her by her mom, and had to give them money for them to be friends with her for the rest of the show. By the end of the episode, they stopped being friends with her because they realized they were paid less than her Mom gave them prorated. At the stinger, the checks finally arrived to them and they once again showed friendship to Moose.
Theatre
- Heathers: In the musical version of the film Heathers, Veronica was incorporated into the Heathers clique after Chandler realized that Veronica's gift for writing forged teacher's notes could be useful. Veronica quickly realizes how bad of an idea this was, as the Heathers force her to write a note that humiliates her former best friend and turn on her the second she stops being useful.
Web Animation
- Llamas with Hats: Briefly attempted by Carl when he offers Paul 1 million dollars to forgive him. Paul points out he doesn't actually have that money.
Western Animation
- The Casagrandes: In "Copy Can't", Carl bribes Sergio into thinking of him as his favorite Casagrande by offering him crackers.
- Craig of the Creek: King Xavier manages to control his side of the creek by enticing the kids for their loyalty by having ample access to various candies thanks to his upper-class privileges. He's never had any friends who liked him for who he is, so being bequeathed the title of "King" makes him an Entitled Bastard who throws his money around. Part of his character arc is realizing that he can't just buy friends without putting in actual effort to make them.
- Daria: In "Too Cute," a man-hating teacher forces Kevin to wear disfiguring makeup in public as a class assignment, causing him to get ignored and ridiculed (and at least once shot at). When he asks Daria what to do, she sarcastically repeats some flimsy advice given to her by a plastic surgeon: "Money can make anyone beautiful." Kevin interprets that literally, and we see him giving a line of people money and basking in their sudden kindness.
- Dexter's Laboratory: 3 of Dexter's classmates are in a "club" with each having their own Major Glory action figure. The group, who aren't too fond of Dexter to begin with, say that he can't join unless he has a real Major Glory action figure (he showed them a cut-out version). When Dexter makes his own with its additional features and shows it to them, they manipulate him into making them each one as well, "if he was truly their friend".
- Gravity Falls: Pacifica Northwest (before her Character Development the following season) used this trope to get followers and popularity, along with whatever else she wanted. She stops doing this towards the middle of the second season when she learns that her family has been buying the town's favor and that their supposed "great legacy" is a bunch of lies to cover up just how corrupt and awful they really are.
- The Simpsons:
- In the episode "Pay Pal", Marge Simpson becomes upset at discovering that Lisa Simpson, because she is a Soapbox Sadie, has annoyed all of the other kids in Springfield into leaving her alone. Lisa does not care about being a loner and being seen as a freak, but Marge does, and so she bribes a girl to be Lisa's friend. Bart blows the ruse open by suspecting why any kid would like the things Lisa does.
- In "My Life as a Vlog," the Simpsons gain fame as popular YouTubers until their disgruntled former cameraman Milhouse airs out a bunch of his unedited footage. Among other revelations, we find out that Bart's three costars on his prank channel were a handful of the many children of local hick Cletus Spuckler, who were being paid not only to appear as his friends in the videos but to hang out with him off-camera, as they didn't care for him much.
- The Spectacular Spider-Man: After he makes the football team and starts getting the attention of his school's in-crowd, Harry starts using his family's money to make the popular kids like him more, such as getting a limo for the school dance and promising to take everyone out to an expensive restaurant after. Sally Avril, after the dance, all but admits out loud that she was mainly tolerating Harry because he was treating them.
- Star vs. the Forces of Evil: "Storm the Castle" has Ludo attempt to buy back Buff Frog's friendship by offering him tadpoles to raise as a father. Buff Frog thanks Ludo for giving him the gift of fatherhood, only for Ludo to cruelly admit that it was only a bribe to get Buff Frog's help in taking back his castle from Toffee. When Ludo tries to partner up with Buff Frog to backstab and steal Star's wand, Buff Frog rightly brushes him off.
- Tiny Toon Adventures: Montana Max uses the "Rent-A-Friend" service in two shorts, "Sleight of Hare" and "Rent-A-Friend". In the latter case, he abused several of them to the point where the service couldn't find anyone who wanted to spend time with him (except Buster, who in typical rabbit-style took the opportunity to pay back Monty for all it's worth).
