Hates Rich People

Art by Cardboard Bot.

"I hate these damn rich people."

— Haruhi's catchphrase, Ouran High School Host Club

Rich people. The bane of so many people's existence. There are numerous reasons why wealthy people are despised; they're either obnoxious, idle, or out of touch with reality. Or maybe they are just evil.

This is basically when a character hates well-off folks for having lots of money regardless of whether they are rich or poor themselves. There are also those who firmly believe in the idea that Capitalism Is Bad in general.

This character might take their hatred to extreme levels and endorse eating the rich or stealing from the rich and giving it to the poor Just Like Robin Hood. However, the character might learn An Aesop about how not all wealthy people are the same or are deserving of hatred, and/or might be a Tragic Bigot with a backstory involving capitalists ruining their life.

This is, of course, Truth in Television, as a lot of real-life people, fairly or not, feel distaste towards the wealthy for having significantly more money than everyone else while many people cannot afford food, medicine, and housing, a perceived unwillingness to help with global issues such as global warming or famine, not paying taxes proportionate to their wealth, and engaging in exploitative business practice that negatively affects society, among other reasons. Of course, sometimes it can also be put down to simple jealousy; "They have it, I do not, and therefore I hate them for it."

That said, it's wise to keep real-life examples off this page to avoid bashing real people and attracting edit wars.

Related to and can overlap with Aristocrats Are Evil where the upper-class are portrayed as the bad guys.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Azumanga Daioh: Yukari is overall a very envious figure, but she gets particularly irate whenever she sees someone displaying a higher level of affluence than her. Among other incidents, when Nyamo gets a memory foam pillow, Yukari hits her and calls her "damn bourgeois," and when Chiyo gleefully states that she's had Matsusaka beef (which is both highly-prized and highly-priced) before, Yukari smacks her in the face.
• Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex: Fem is a communist assassin who loathes rich people and capitalism so much that she ironically kills them with a shotgun that fires coins. The manga adaptation of her appearance justifies her motives with a backstory of her father being betrayed by a business partner, who took his entire company and drove her family into bankruptcy, and her mother taking her own life from the destitution of poverty.
• Hayate the Combat Butler: In one episode of the 2007 anime, when the gang takes a cruise and Nagi complains that the Titanic-sized ship is too small, the narrator has something to say about it.
  Narrator: God, I hate rich people. I hate them so much.
• Haruhi from Ouran High School Host Club is a working-class student who often expresses her dislike for wealthy people whenever they are being Innocently Insensitive towards her by pitying her and indirectly flaunting their riches.
  Haruhi: Damn these rich people...
• Isabelle of Paris: The Parisian commoners view the rich as self-absorbed and full of themselves, with little to no national pride. They also despise the Bourgeoisie for running to Versailles and living luxuriously while theu have to face the brunt of the Prussians' aggression. Of course, considering Thiers, they're not entirely wrong to think this...
• Isekai Quartet has Felt who's a thief (but actually a princess) who despises well-off people due to coming from a poor background herself.
• La Seine No Hoshi:
  • Simone hates the arisrocrats ever since they abused her friend Milan and had him thrown in jail for protesting about the poverty ordinary civilians faced. She despises Marie Antoinette in particular, and is shocked to find out they are half-sisters.
  • Milan grew up watching his fellow Parisians starve and suffer from poverty, and grew a desire to wipe France of it's aristocrats so he can start a new society where everyone is equal. Eventually, he lets go of this mindset after finding out that not all nobles are bad and some share his ideals.
• Little Witch Academia (2017): In the episode "New Age Magic", Akko, who is participating in a workers' strike, goes on to attack the wealthy Diana Cavendish and accuses her of being a blind, cold aristocrat who can't relate to other people's problems due to her higher social status.
• Lucky Star: When Miyuki, known to be wealthy, says her family went on an overseas trip, Kagami, usually the sensible one of the group, angrily calls her "Bourgeois". Downplayed in this case, since Kagami and Miyuki are otherwise good friends.
• One Piece: Given the kind of people they are, it's no surprise then that the World Nobles are pretty much reviled by anyone who isn't a World Noble or lesser Noble themselves. It's to the point where, when one family of World Nobles willingly (for the most part) cast off their status and went to live among the common folk, they weren't even settled in for a week before their house was vandalized and eventually invaded, the people dragging them out onto the streets and crucifying them with the intent to burn them alive purely because of their former status. The rest of the time, commoners are forced to simply bow and accept their presence and influence, especially since they have the ability to commit murder in broad daylight and not face punishment for it as well as personally summon a Navy Admiral (those considered on-par with the Four Emperors, the strongest pirates in the world) due to their high status.
• Spy X Family: The Red Circus terrorist leader, Billy Squire is this based on his sneering monologue to the hijacked bus of Eden Academy students, who have powerful and rich families, in Mission 70.
• UQ Holder!: Santa Sasaki doesn't like most people but has a pointed hatred of rich people. It's probably because he was bullied by and later murdered by rich students.
• ViVid Strike!: Fuka has developed intense hatred towards wealthy folks for being the reason behind the change in her Childhood Friend Rinne's personality after getting adopted. The truth behind Rinne's personality change is more complicated, however.
  Fuka: I don't think you rich girls understand how us commoners struggle to live each day.

Comic Books

• Poison Ivy is pretty misanthropic in general, but she has a particular hatred for the ultra-rich because of how many of them made their money off of environmentally destructive business practices. Naturally, her main enemy is Batman - THE billionaire superhero.
• Iron Man enemy Ghost is a professional thief and hacker with an extreme loathing for corporations and the rich. As he himself states, he doesn't go after them for the pay, but because he genuinely wants to destroy them. During one of his fights with Iron Man, Tony actually points out he was broke at the time, which was enough to convince Ghost to stop attacking him.

Fan Works

• In The Loud House fanfiction The Girl Who Laughs, Hector finds rich people obnoxious, but makes an exception for the Loud family.
  Hector: You may be rich bobos, but you're good rich bobos.
• Windows of the Soul: There's a lot of friction between Natsuki and Shizuru's father, Shinri. She sees him as self-important and cold, with her making quips about him needing to spend his money to keep the Japanese economy running, while Shinri initially thinks of Natsuki as a useless Social Climber. He revises his opinion of her after she saves Shizuru's life while taking a serious injury in the process. And Natsuki begins to have a grudging respect for him when she realizes that he works hard and holds himself to very rigorous standards.

Films — Animated

• The Princess and the Frog
  • We find out that Dr. Facilier despises the rich, especially those who were born rich and do nothing, like Prince Naveen.
  • His manipulation of Lawrence is also largely successful due to the manservant's pre-existing resentment against Naveen and his family for having wealth and status that he feels he deserves more. So much so that Facilier only had to show him a card depicting him and Naveen swapped in their roles for him to willingly agree to the ritual that got Naveen turned into a frog.

Films — Live-Action

• Assault on Wall Street: Jim Baxford is an ex-Army veteran blue-collar worker for a security company who becomes a victim of the 2008 financial crash, losing both his life savings and saddling him a $60,000 debt with his investment company. While he initially tries to hide this from his (seriously ill) wife, she commits suicide when she finds out. Jim becomes a Vigilante Man targeting everyone he holds responsible for the crash, from investment bankers, hedge fund managers, and ADAs who gave the aforementioned a "slap on the wrist" fine, culminating in an attack on a bank where he shoots every stockbroker he sees.
• The Batman (2022):
  • Edward Nashton, alias The Riddler, despises the wealthy elite for helping to screw orphans like himself out of the help they need to survive. Part of this stems from Thomas Wayne setting up a public fund to help out the unfortunate of Gotham, only for Carmine Falcone and other corrupt officials to swipe the money for themselves. Even more ironically, he hates Bruce Wayne and tries to have him killed (seeing him as a Hypocrite who's an orphan who lives comfortably while regular orphans like him suffer) but he thinks Batman is his ally.
  • Selina Kyle is not too fond of the wealthy either, having worked in a nightclub where she witnessed them abuse their wealth and power for whatever they wanted. She even says she's not fond of Bruce Wayne...in front of Batman!
• The Dark Knight Rises: Selina Kyle initially holds a lot of resentment towards Gotham's elite for hoarding their wealth and doing little to help impoverished people; consequently she feels no guilt about targeting the wealthy for her burglaries and supports Bane's plan to take over Gotham and (ostensibly) return control of the city to the common people. However, she does start to warm up to Bruce Wayne due to his willingness to help her and she's remorseful when she betrays Batman only to learn he is Bruce, as he's using his fortune to try and make things better. After Gotham descends into anarchy, Selina is also upset when she sees the home of a wealthy family has been ransacked, realizing Bane's methods are just making things worse. She eventually teams up with Batman to stop Bane.
• Dutch: "Hate" is probably a strong word considering Dutch's laid-back attitude, but early on he makes it very clear that he's not impressed by the rich snobs at a fancy party. He's very proud of being a blue-collar construction worker and Self-Made Man who owns his own company. That he's pretty well off himself and still treated as a second-class citizen is why he happily reciprocates the disdain shown to him by high society.
  Dutch Dooley: My income is a damn sight more than your father gives your mother to live on. But my money doesn't matter in your neighborhood, because I work for it. Working for your money doesn't matter in your neck of the woods, it's whose crotch the doctor yanked you out of.
• Judge Alvin Valkenheiser from Nothing but Trouble harbors a furious hatred of bankers and anyone else involved in the financial industry. His family was the victims of a Morally Bankrupt Banker who got them to allow their land to be strip-mined for coal and turned into a desolate wasteland in exchange for stock that later turned out to be worthless. Since Valkenheiser is a powerful Hanging Judge in his own right, just being a "banker" is enough reason for him to levy a death sentence.
• Return to Nuke 'Em High Volume One: Chrissy immediately hates Lauren because of her wealthy background and tries to make her life in school miserable. Later on, she goes from a bully to a romantic love interest after slowly learning that Lauren isn't the rich snob she thinks she is.
• Rose from Titanic (1997) apparently comes from an old-money background but has clear contempt for high society, which is evident by how she forms a quick attachment to Starving Artist Jack and prefers spending time with the poor folks in steerage.

Literature

• In Evernight, Raquel despises most of the wealthy students at Evernight Academy for their snobbery and cruelty; Raquel is a scholarship student from a poor background and sticks out like a sore thumb at the fancy school, frequently getting bullied for not 'belonging' there. When Alpha Bitch Courtney mocks the fact she wears the same outfit almost every day, Raquel snaps that not everyone can afford to buy every variation of the uniform. She also grumbles about the "rich bitches" not getting their parents to pay for a cellphone tower to be placed near the school. The only rich student she seems to like is Vic, who is an unpretentious Uncle Pennybags.
• The Hunger Games:
  • Zig-Zagged with Katniss. While she starts out disliking the rich of the Capitol from afar, while she and most of District 12 struggle in poverty, her close contact with Effie Trinket and her styling team during the 74th Hunger Games makes her realize many of the Capitol citizens are well-meaning but clueless to the horrors outside their city — the people in power are the larger issue, not just the wealthy.
  • Played straight with Gale, whose hatred for the Capitol was always more extreme than Katniss's, and who never got to know any Capitol citizens personally. In Mockingjay, he was willing to bomb innocent Capitol citizens in order to advance the rebel cause, and may have designed the bomb that killed Katniss's sister Prim due to this.
• Osamake: After Shirokusa's father meets up with Tetsuhiko and informs him that he looked into his (Tetsuhiko's) background and knows that he's using Sueharu for his revenge against his own father, Tetsuhiko responds that this is why he hates wealthy people.
• Sweet Valley High's Elizabeth Wakefield has this attitude. It doesn't help that most of the rich people she does know—Lila Fowler, Bruce Patman, etc.—are indeed rude snobs, though she fails to modify this attitude for the few who aren't. Her twin sister Jessica finally gets fed up with her attitude and calls her a reverse snob, truthfully pointing out that being rich doesn't automatically make someone a bad person.
• Discworld: Sir Samuel Vimes, Duke of Ankh, absolutely despises rich people (with the single exception of his wife), most notably the Ankh-Morpork nobility and vampires. He acknowledges that becoming one of the richest people in the city makes this complicated, but it doesn't make him a hypocrite because he never liked himself much either.
• The Supervillainy Saga has Gary Karkofsky AKA Merciless: The Supervillain without MercyTM use class rhetoric with a lot of his justifications. Becomes a Hypocrisy Nod when he successfully steals a massive fortune and tries to figure out what to do with it.

Live-Action TV

• A variation of this trope is used in Boy Meets World. The Matthews family agrees to go to Shawn Hunter's trailer park for Thanksgiving since they don't have the money to afford a nice celebration. Once there, despite trying to be civil, they get caught in a class war with the other residents. The denizens take offense at innocuous mistakes like Alan thinking the Unter residence was Shawn's place and the H was knocked off in a recent goat attack and view the Matthews as Upper-Class Twits. What makes this unusual is how the Matthews' are not rich, just middle class, and the narrative of the episode acknowledges this, but it still causes tensions.
• Downplayed in The Devil Judge. When Ga-on, who comes from a middle-class background, is taken to a Social Responsibility Foundation event, he meets all kinds of wealthy people there. At a dinner table, some of them were gathered at Ga-on watches with disgust and shock as the most powerful people in the nation bask in their own corruption, entirely absorbed in self-interest while laughing like insane people in a dramatic scene.
• ER: Dr. Anna DelAmico had this attitude, prompting her would-be love interest Carter to hide the fact that he was incredibly wealthy. She found out anyway and basically confirmed his fears by immediately deciding that he'd deceived her in order to ridicule her about her poverty, rather than consider that it was her nasty attitude that made him keep his mouth shut.
• Hinted at in The Librarians 2014. In "The Librarians and the Infernal Contract", Stone has to infiltrate a party by posing as a valet. Jenkins points out that they're currently among the Upper Crust of the community, to which Stone replies that the Upper Crust is merely a bunch of crumbs held together by dough.
• Leverage: "The Rich and Powerful take what they want. We steal it back for you. Sometimes Bad Guys make the best Good Guys. We provide...Leverage."
  • Nathan Ford has developed an intense hatred of wealthy industrialists and CEOs, the sort of people he holds accountable for the death of his son. In Season 4, the Big Bads of the season try to entice him by offering him targets to go after, playing on this very hatred. And when their plans are unfurled and they both find themselves at gunpoint, one of them points out that the other is a wealthy CEO who can go on to hurt a lot of people. There are a couple of episodes where Nate is forced to admit that they've run into an Honest Corporate Executive, but he still sees them ultimately as pawns to use in his schemes, even if not outright enemies.
• Molly Novak is on the receiving end of this in Loot. She's a billionaire who goes through a tough divorce and focuses on a charity she (discovers) she owns that is trying to make LA more affordable. During a meeting with the city council to pass a new zoning development and the public is allowed to ask questions, they all just use it as an excuse to verbally assault Molly, calling her disgusting and accusing her of Condescending Compassion at best and being a Rich Bitch at worst. It's really out of resentment for her being a billionaire while they can barely afford their living spaces. It escalates to some of them attacking her with pies and insinuating that her husband (who is also rich) was justified to cheat on her.
• Monarch: Legacy of Monsters: Unattached hacker May Olowe-Hewitt, who starts out the series living in an apartment in Tokyo, has shades of this, as she generally doesn't think much of snobbery based on her disparaging remark about Kentaro's art show when she first meets him. It's later implied that this is partly rooted in her having previously been manipulated by a Corrupt Corporate Executive who she went on dinner dates with into unwittingly fueling said executive's inhumane experiments on living animals' brains, which ultimately forced May to go on the run and cut off contact with her family after she crashed the database in retribution.
• Baldwin Jones from NYPD Blue really resents rich suspects who use their money and connections to escape justice. It's even one of his berserk buttons.
• In Spaced, a story is told of a man who set his dog to attack rich people, somehow training it to smell wealth. This does not end well for him as he wins the lottery, causing the dog to turn on him.
• Dr. Lu Delgado of Strong Medicine hated wealthy people, believing many of them to be snobs and that they buy their way to better health/medical care over working-class and poor patients. This is somewhat justified as she grew up poor, was a single mother, put herself through medical school, and started up a walk-in clinic in hoping the latter classes of people get help and despised whenever big pharma and the like tried to cut her off financially.
• The Suite Life of Zack & Cody: Downplayed with Maddie Fitzpatrick as she is close friends with London Tipton, but she still generally sees rich people as inherently selfish and constantly calls London out for being spoiled rotten.

Video Games

• Clam Man: Ted, a nightclub bouncer in the first game, rants to Clam Man about how he hates rich people who live in luxurious homes while all the other people are stuck living in the dark, run-down part of the city.
• In Disco Elysium this is one of the ways that the Detective's communism can manifest itself, blaming everything on the bourgeoise (including an old man's ham sandwich) and lashing out against anyone with more pocket change than him.
• Dragalia Lost: Volk has a murderous hatred for anybody with wealth and power and seeks to slaughter everybody in that category. His beast form's dragon story reveals this hatred to stem from the pettiness of a wealthy person showing him kindness which he interpreted as the man looking down on him.
• Mega Man Battle Network 5 Team Colonel And Team Protoman has Dingo, who admits that he hates rich people after defeating one in a Net Battle.
• When matched up with known wealthy fighters in Tekken 8, Marshall Law infamously yells "I hate rich people!" at them before the fight begins.
• Trails of Cold Steel: Machias Regnitz is shown to have an extreme distaste for the Erebonian noble class. However, even though he knows that two of his other classmates are nobles as well, one of whom he only has a brief one-sided altercation with despite knowing they were Adopted into Royalty, he takes all of his resentment out on his classmate Jusis Alberea the most. Ironically his family is pretty well-off itself, as his father is a Governor of Heimdallr and Jusis points out his rarefied air for a commoner.

Web Videos

• Critical Role: Campaign Two: Cree disparagingly mutters "fucking rich kids" when she sees Caleb's lavish Pocket Dimension. She refuses to talk about her own history; ironically, she's unaware that Caleb was a destitute Homeless Hero until quite recently, and the furnishings are all temporary conjurations.
• It's a Running Gag in Buzz Feed Unsolved that Shane really hates rich people, and will cheer on any crimes that target them specifically. If the target is a corporation instead of a specific person, even better. Ryan even says he has "a Robin Hood complex."

Western Animation

• Arcane: Everyone in Zaun despises the inhabitants of the advanced and shining city of Piltover above, understandable, considering it is run by a Council of greedy merchants and aristocrats who see Zaunites as dirt and send brutal Enforcers down to bully them whenever they do something that harms the Council's bottom line rather than anything that would improve things. While Silco works to separate Zaun from Piltover, and Jinx performs acts of terrorism, even the heroic Zaunites like Vi distrust Pilties. Though in Vi's case, she does meet one who she grows to like.
• Archer: Zara loudly and vehemently hates rich people and goes out of her way to be antagonistic toward them. She eventually tells Lana that this stems from having attended a high-class boarding school on a scholarship as a child and being mocked for it by all of her rich classmates.
• Central Park: Bitsy Brandenham, despite being rich and greedy herself, has contempt for other rich people. Part of this is due to being The Unfavorite of her father, who gave most of his wealth to her brother, leaving her to salvage the family hotel from nothing. It's also in part because other wealthy people attempt to mooch off of her, even at her own birthday party, which she finds pathetic. It's later revealed that as a young woman, she secretly became the notorious jewelry thief The Shadow and robbed rich hotel guests for a brief period.
• In the world of Danny Phantom, "rich" is synonymous with "popular". Sam Manson hates the popular/rich kids but is revealed to be from a fantastically wealthy family, making her something of a Boomerang Bigot.
• In the Dexter's Laboratory episode "Accent You Hate", we see a trio of bullies wearing t-shirts stating what they hate. The first one sees a kid in fancy clothes walk by counting bills in his hand. He says "I hate rich kids." before going to beat him up.
• DuckTales:
  • In the DuckTales (1987) episode "Duckman Of Aquatraz" after Scrooge is framed for stealing an art piece, he is thrown in jail with a burly convict who vocally hates rich ducks. He makes his reasons quite clear.
    Mad Dog: Wanna know why I hate rich ducks? Because they're rich, and I'm NOT!
  • In the DuckTales (2017) episode "The First Adventure!", an Emo Teen Donald Duck starts out having this attitude towards Uncle Scrooge (even using Eat the Rich in his song lyrics), though he warms up to said Uncle by the end.
• Gravity Falls:
  • While multiple characters hate Pacifica Northwest throughout the series (pre-Character Development), Dipper in particular seems to have beef with the Northwests because of their obscene wealth. In "The Golf War", he justifies Mabel cheating against Pacifica because Pacifica's riches mean "She's cheating at life", while in "Northwest Mansion Mystery", he implies he would have been okay with a vengeful spirit taking his rage out on a party of ultra-rich people if his sister hadn't also been in there. This is shown to be justified in part since their wealth was based on lies and cruel deeds, but Dipper warms up to Pacifica by the end of the latter episode when she is shown to have a Freudian Excuse for her behavior and becomes The Atoner.
  • In "Northwest Mansion Mystery", the vengeful spirit in question specifically swore that "wealthy blood" would stain the ground if the Northwest Mansion was still closed to the common townspeople 150 years in the future. This doesn't stop him from petrifying Dipper, Mabel, and her friends, however, so clearly there's no way to actually tell.
• Herb Powell, Homer's estranged half-brother in The Simpsons, is a Deconstruction as he himself is the rich and successful owner of Power Motors but is a Self-Made Man who made his way to the top. His company consists of pretentious wealthy know-it-alls whom he wears his contempt for on his sleeve. His downfall in fact comes from deciding to have his next car designed by Homer, a common man he believes is more in touch with his consumers, intentionally ignoring any concerns by his staff that this might fail. The project bombs, Powell Motors goes bankrupt, and Herb's second appearance revolves around him trying to work his way back to success again.
  Herb: Why did I ever hire you Harvard dead-heads?
  Executive: Because you went there.
  Herb: Yeah, but Mommy and Daddy didn't pay my way. I had to work my way through, washing your dishes and scrubbing toilets!
  Executive: Oh yeah, I remember you.
• Pretty much the entire adult population of South Park in the episode "Here Comes the Neighborhood". An influx of rich people suddenly move into town much to residents' chagrin, which prompts them to begin discriminating against the wealthy in a variety of ways. These include forcing them to sit in the front of the bus where the first-class seats are, prohibiting them service in the working-class bars, calling them slurs like "richer" and "cash chucker," and burning big lower-case Ts on their lawns (for "Time to leave"). The fact that all of these behaviors resemble racist practices against black people in the past and all the rich people are coincidentally black never enters anyone's heads… except Mr. Garrison, that is (who makes it clear when he delivers the final line of the episode, an N-word cut short by the end credits).

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