Gem Encrusted - Television Tropes & Idioms

For the rich and nerdy.

This is a Sub Trope of Everything's Sparkly with Jewelry, where the Conspicuous Consumption aspect is turned Up to Eleven, by basically slapping jewels on just about anything someone can get away with.

Now some things are commonly studded with jewels, that it's almost expected, like crowns, tiaras, and scepters. This trope can apply to those as well, but these days some people will stick jewels on loads of things. Just look up "bling" on an image search.

A Pimped Out Dress is likely to have jewels sewn into the fabric. Enough jewels turns it into Costume Porn. Some instances of Crystal Skull are depicted as skulls with gems on them instead of being solid crystal.

This can include real gems or even plastic gems, which are often seen in girls' toys.

Note this doesn't count when it's jewelry on something already considered jewelry (like a gem on a ring or necklace), when it's for a rare practical reason (diamond head drills), or something is outright made out of a gem or jewel. This has to be jewels on something that could work just as fine without the jewels.

Compare Built With LEGO, Gold Makes Everything Shiny, Power Crystal, Symbol Motif Clothing.

Not to be confused with the game Bejeweled.

Examples:

Anime and Manga

This dress◊ that Marie Antoinette wore in Rose of Versailles, which has ermine trim on the dress and cape, where the ermine is studded with jewelry. It's a huge reason it was chosen as the picture for Pimped Out Dress.
Quite a few things in The Five Star Stories, a manga absolutely infamous for its overly fancy Humongous Mecha that look like they either belong to classical nobility or particularly unsubtle gangsters.
Meowzie's Poké Ball in Pokémon.

Art

Damien Hirst's sculpture "For The Love Of God" is a skull encrusted with more than 8000 diamonds.

Film

Played with in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The Holy Grail is the one NOT Gem Encrusted. Thus, "the cup of a carpenter."

Literature

Gahan of Gathol wore a jewel-encrusted harness in the beginning of Edgar Rice Burroughs's Chessmen of Mars.
The eponymous Macguffin of The Maltese Falcon is a gem-covered statue of a falcon that was later covered with black enamel to hide its value.
In Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian story "The Tower Of The Elephant" — the title tower. Conan (who is young at this point) is rather dazzled by it; only the Old Master thief Taurus gets him to go on, for the Mineral MacGuffin.
Smaug the Golden, the famous dragon from The Hobbit has his belly covered with precious jewels from lying immobile for years on a mound of treasure, neatly making him (mostly) immune to the standard dragon weak spot.
Katniss's dress for the interview is described as this, with flame designs.
E. T. A. Hoffmann was very, very fond of this trope in The Nutcracker.

Live-Action Television

Manages to be an important plot point in an episode of Merlin in which Merlin is suffering from a range of visions that prophesy that Morgana will try to kill the king. One of them is of her unsheathing a Gem Encrusted dagger, and it's through Merlin's indirect intervention that Arthur swaps a very plain dagger (that he was originally going to give Morgana for her birthday) with the gem-covered murder weapon from Merlin's vision.

Music

Weird Al plays this for laughs in "Don't Download This Song" with mention of a diamond-studded swimming pool.
Ubiquitous in Lady Gaga's videos - in "Bad Romance" she wears gem encrusted stiletto heels with one of her costumes.
The cover of Aryia's "The Gun Song EP" has a bedazzled gun on it.
Paul Simon wants you to know that she's got diamonds on the soles of her shoes.
Britney Spears has an outfit in her Femme Fatale tour for I Wanna Go her short jeans are extremely gemmy and shiny. She also wears many shiny body suits.

Professional Wrestling

The WWE Championship got a redesign right after WrestleMania 20 to fit this due to the title being won by John Cena. Take a look.◊ The title has over 3000 diamonds and a spinner (that hasn't actually spun since 2007) and is looking tackier and tackier every year. The redesign is probably as big a cause of X-Pac Heat than Cena himself.
The original blingtastic wrestling title has to be the Million Dollar Championship◊. Gold plated and covered with cubic zirconia, with three real diamonds on the inside, it cost a legitimate $125,000.

Video Games

The MacGuffin in 50 Cent: Blood On The Sand is a diamond encrusted skull.
In the Army of Two series, weapons can be gold plated and diamond encrusted, including grenades. A diamond encrusted frag grenade would actually be good, if a bit expensive.
In Dwarf Fortress, you can decorate almost anything with gems/metal/bone/whatever to make it more valuable. Extra points for decorating arrows/crossbow bolts.

Western Animation

The Merch for the Disney Princesses often have this on their dresses, and even their fur capes.
In Goldie Gold and Action Jack, Goldie had a diamond encrusted nail clipper.
When The Simpsons went to Africa they met a No Celebrities Were Harmed version of Jane Goodall, who was using the chimps she was ostensibly studying to mine diamonds for her. She had diamonds Hidden in Plain Sight everywhere, even on the bottoms of her shoes (a Shout Out to the song "Diamonds on the Soles of her Shoes")
In Twelve Ounce Mouse, Rectangular Businessman goes shopping for a harmonica dipped in gold and encrusted with jewels, then dipped in gold again and encrusted with another layer of jewels.
In an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants, Squilliam Fancyson shows off his "jewel-encrusted toilet paper holder."
Mordecai and Rigby from Regular Show had to order tickets for a rock concert decorated with diamonds.
Rarity The Fashionista pony from My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic loves to include gems in her fashion designs and even has a bunch of gems as her Cutie Mark. She can easily find enough gems for her outfits since her special unicorn magic detects gems with ease.

Real Life

Cell Phone accessories often come this way.
- In Japan, "decoden" ("decorated cellphone") mostly means adding a thick layer of Swarowski crystals and/or random crud like fake roses or tiny plastic desserts to your cellphone.
- Nokia's sister company, Vertu, makes cellphones of this sort.
There is apparently now a Real Life trend of "Vajazzling"- which is supposedly "bedazzling" one's vagina. But that's a bit of a misnomer, due to the practicalities of doing that to the labia. The gems are actually glued on to the region of skin over the pubic bone.
Many Crown Jewels are gem-encrusted. The effect would be much the same if they'd been spray-painted with glitter.
- The bejeweled ermine dress in Rose of Versailles is heavily based on this dress worn by Marie Leszczynska, wife of Lois XV◊. There are several other paintings of royal ladies with dresses trimmed with furs studded with jewels. Although some could have been embellishments by the painters.
Once commonly done with weapons including ones actually meant to be taken into battle. This sort of thing was the mark of the Proud Warrior Race tradition that had aristocrats who wanted custom weapons. Modern armies are more interested in killing people efficiently and you can do that better by issueing more cheap weapons to more people then with the expense of a decorated one. For similar reasons, Greeks and Romans played down that sort of thing.
- It's even its own trope.