Hit Them in the Pocketbook

Louis Winthorpe III: Do you have any better ideas?
Billy Ray Valentine: Yeah. You know, it occurs to me that the best way you hurt rich people is by turning them into poor people.

— Trading Places

What do you do when the Big Bad is a Corrupt Corporate Executive who doesn't even fit with Even Evil Has Loved Ones? Or a Smug Snake and Rules Lawyer who always keeps their practices just this side of legal? This particular villain doesn't even have anything resembling standards or a Morality Chain to yank to try and keep them from doing what they do. And don't count on the legal system for help. Much of what they do either doesn't count as a crime by the laws written, either because of Artistic License – Law for the writing, or if Shown Their Work, it's a case of Screw the Rules, I Have Money! and/or Screw the Rules, I Make Them! on an evil scale. Even bringing a gun (or a tough pair of mitts) to this fight is too risky, because of the aforementioned "they own the law" point, that they don't care about getting hurt, and the possibility that they have bigger guns, lots of hired protectors, the media's favor (and maybe every possible witness in their pocket) and are waiting for the opportunity to cut loose with them. So how do you defeat an enemy who has no loved ones to either hurt or use to reset their ethics, who has the money and the power and doesn't fear the law?

Well, turns out they have ONE thing they love, fear, and worship: Money. Cold hard cash, be it American greenbacks or some other currency, or precious metals, or even just their net worth on the stock market.

So, to defeat a villain like this, all you have to do is take their wealth. Usually, not by stealing it, for a variety of reasons. First, if the villain is operating within the bounds of the law, it's not wise to have the heroes of a story breaking the law, unless Grey-and-Gray Morality is in play. Also, it's not very pragmatic, because if you hit a bank, the bank is insured against loss, and if you rob their business or home, they're likely insured against loss there, too. No, you have to find a way to take their money, either actual or potential profits, and make them your own legally, by employing their own rules against them.

Now, in some settings, our heroes may resort to theft, but in such instances, the villain must be established to be a thief in their own right. Some settings may establish that such things as insurance either don't exist, or the villain has foregone their policy to cut corners and pocket more money for themselves.

Thus our protagonists walk away wealthy, and our Big Bad is now destitute, often with their reputation in shambles as a result. More noble characters will not keep the money for themselves, but disperse it amongst the Big Bad's victims. In some cases, particularly if the heroes have the Intimidating Revenue Service on their side, Justice by Other Legal Means via having to pay overdue taxes could do the trick.

In financial circles, this is the monetary equivalent of a Groin Attack...or worse. Unsurprisingly, in some stories, this will also lead to the inevitable, rapid escalation to a prim and proper Final Battle.

An aversion of Offscreen Villain Dark Matter. Could overlap with Just Like Robin Hood or Involuntary Charity Donation if they then give the money away to the poor. Sub-Trope of Riches to Rags. A destitute villain could suffer Defeat Means Menial Labor as a further humiliation. Contrast Money Is Not Power, where the evil rich people may remain rich but still learn the lesson that money is not as omnipotent as they thought it was... and very often that is the very last lesson they learn.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Fullmetal Alchemist: Yuki is a corrupt military officer who imposed heavy taxes on the city of Youswell. In order to free the local miners from Yuki's oppression, Ed gave him false gold in exchange for his mine. As this gold transmuted back into stone and the sale was officially a gift, Yuki ended up penniless and cashiered.
• Speed Grapher: This is the true purpose of the Roppongi Club. Suitengu lures in various rich and powerful people, using his own fortune to pretend to be as corrupt and decadent as they are, and requires them to pay the very high membership fees in cash. Meanwhile, he converts the Tennouzo corporation's assets into physical cash, and pools it all together in its main headquarters, which hosts the club in its basement. Once Suitengu has taken enough of their money, he locks the building with the wealthy people still inside, and burns the building down, incinerating himself, the club members, and all the money. As a kicker, other crooked folk trying to capitalize on the chaos instead realize in horror that Suitengu's wiped out ten percent of Japan's economy right before the stock market opens, plunging the world into an international depression. In other words, Suitengu pretty much holds the record by hitting everyone's pocketbook with his Thanatos Gambit.

Comic Books

• Batman: In the first chapter of The Long Halloween, Carmine Falcone, The Don of Gotham's most powerful Mafia family, is forced to quite literally stockpile millions of dollars in cash when his attempts to launder it through Gotham City Bank are frustrated by Bruce Wayne. Catwoman learns of the money's location—a warehouse on Gotham's docks—and tips off Batman, who in turn sets fire to the place with Harvey Dent's help. This is the first successful strike against Falcone in years (he's bought nearly every cop and judge in town), although it's a Pyrrhic Victory since it leads to the mobster blowing up Dent's home.
• Spider-Man: The Amazing Spider-Man (1963) #350 has The Black Fox steal two very illustrious gemstones, the Trask Diamond and an emerald known as The Dragon's Egg. Unfortunately, the latter's proper owner wanted it back, as it was a token of his late mother. When Spider-Man successfully retrieved the Dragon's Egg, Doctor Doom threatened to kill the Black Fox for his transgression, but Spidey successfully argued that the Black Fox was an elderly man who hadn't meant to steal from Doom. Doom considers this, and agrees, showing a modicum of mercy. However, he feels that The Black Fox still needs to be taught a lesson. He reveals that he took the Trask Diamond from where the Fox had hidden it.
  The Black Fox: But...That's for my retirement.
  Doctor Doom: Instead, it has bought a valuable lesson. Learn it well. This (the emerald) is a symbol of a bloodline. It has power. While this [crushes the Trask Diamond into fine powder] is the price of perfidy.

Fan Works

• Harry Potter and the Natural 20: When muggle Fiona Smithe learns that Lucius Malfoy is behind the Death Eaters, realizing she is not able to go after him personally, she instead contacts Inland Revenue, who promptly jumps into action.
  Fiona wondered what the interest was on unpaid property taxes dating to before the Magna Carta, and whether it came with a prison sentence or not
• In Mutant Storm, the Ministry tries to make Harry cooperate by seizing his trust bank vault. In return, he invokes an old law allowing him to claim twice the amount seized — from each of the people who signed the order. Fudge and the Malfoys pay it off, the Zabini family goes broke, and Percy is effectively forced into slavery to Harry to Work Off the Debt.
• Of Heists And Hustles: Sly and the gang make sure to hit the Big Bad with this trope every way they can to make sure he can't buy his way out of criminal charges. To that end, they hack into his bank accounts, sabotage his insurance policies, ransack his mansion, and then demolish the property by crashing a subway train into it.
• Origin Story: Alex and Louise get revenge on Norman Osborn by stealing one of his shipments, thinking that they'll only get a small fortune from the heist. The shipment they stole ended up being worth several billion dollars. They end up set for life and Osborn (while he can afford it) is left reeling.
• With This Ring: It will take time to legally break Mr Metcalf free from his predatory contract with Alva Industries (which Mr Alva is cheating him on). However, in the meantime, Lex Luthor suggests taking advantage of the contract to hit Mr Alva in the pocketbook, such as fully exploiting every fringe benefit it includes.
  Lex smiles again. "How do you feel about medieval Arabic literature?"
  Mister Metcalf frowns. "I don't know the first thing about medieval Arabic literature." He shakes his head. "I can't even read Arabic."
  "Perfect. Then I imagine that it will take even a man of your considerable intellect some time to earn a college degree in it. A degree which Mister Alva is contractually obliged to pay for."

Film — Live-Action

• Attempted in Dumb Money using the GameStop Short Squeeze. While many of the billionaire traders lose a fortune, they put Screw the Rules, I Have Connections! into play and start bailing each other out of bankruptcy, then halt all GameStop-related trading on the Robinhood app to prevent further damage to their wealth.
• The First Wives Club is founded to help the women involved get revenge on the husbands who "traded them in" for younger and more attractive partners. Through various types of trickery and blackmail, they manage to force each of their ex-husbands to contribute millions of dollars toward the new Cynthia Swann Griffin Crisis Center for abused women.
  Don't get mad. Get everything.
• In the remake of Fun with Dick and Jane, the Harpers successfully steal the entirety of the savings of Dick's Corrupt Corporate Executive ex-boss (who bankrupted the company Enron-style and ran away with over $400 million) and divide the money through all of the company's employees in a "relief fund" made in the boss's name so he cannot do anything to protest the theft without showing his hand as the man who made those employees destitute. The boss, on national television, is told that his net worth dropped overnight to only two thousand dollars and change.
• John Wick: One of John's tactics to force Viggo Tarasov to hand over his son Iosef, so John can take revenge, is to break into the bank where the mafiya boss keeps his ill-gotten gains and burn them all. We learned earlier in the film that John's "impossible task" is how Viggo got where he is in the first place, so John is sending a message that he can take Viggo's position away just as easily.
• Frank Castle does likewise in The Punisher (2004), breaking into one of Howard Saint's vaults and tossing millions of dollars of his cash out onto the city streets, both to put him in Dutch with his associates the Toro brothers, and to make a point that he'll be taking everything from Saint, just like Saint took everything from him:
  Launderer #1: "You know whose money this is? You know whose building this is?!"
  Castle: "Howard Saint's."
  Launderer #2: "He's gonna fuck your life up!"
  Castle: "He already fucked my life up."
• In the finale of Rat Race, the contestants have spent the entire film being toyed with by Donald Sinclair and his rich friends in a big race for money, and now they're about to lose the cash they were promised after they stumble upon a fundraiser for kids and can't bring themselves to say no to the little children in front of an audience. So they decide to announce to the audience that not only are they donating all their winnings to charity, but that Donald Sinclair and his friends have promised to match the donations dollar for dollar. Cue Sinclair screaming in anguish as the donations start pouring in.
• In The Shawshank Redemption, Andy Dufresne has been roped into Warden Norton's money laundering operation; Norton uses convicts as free labor while pocketing the payments for said labor as Andy cooks the books for him, with any paper trail leading to Randall Stephens, a phantom who exists only in documents. At the end, after Andy's escape, he assumes the identity of Mr. Stephens, goes from bank to bank with the falsified documents, and absconds with over $370,000 of Norton's ill-gotten gains (and leaks evidence of Shawshank's corruption and murder to the press for good measure). Norton doesn't take it well.
• In the last few minutes of Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, Sherlock Holmes reveals to his arch-nemesis James Moriarty that while he was being tortured at Moriarty's weapon and munitions factory in Germany, he stole Moriarty's pocketbook detailing his operations and finances and had it sent to London, where it was deciphered by Mary Morstan (Watson's wife) and the information passed along to Inspector Lestrade, who seized all of Moriarty's fortune, which would be donated to charities which benefit the widows and orphans of war.
• The Sting: Hooker wants revenge on Doyle Lonnegan over the death of his friend and mentor, Luther. As Hooker doesn't know enough about killing people to believe he'd be able to kill Lonnegan, he instead teams up with Henry Gondorff to pull of a big con and swindle enough money from Lonnegan that the gangster is hurt by it.
• Trading Places: When the main characters find out that the Duke brothers, a pair of obscenely rich commodity brokers, are ruining their lives for the brothers' own amusement, they team up to beat the Dukes at their own game. The climax has them deliver a forged crop report to the Dukes and execute a massive short-selling scheme that traps the Dukes in enough debt to bankrupt them.
  Billy Ray Valentine: Oh, see, I made Louis a bet here. See, Louis bet me that we couldn't both get rich and put y'all in the poor house at the same time. He didn't think we could do it. I won.
• Briefly done in Who Am I? (1998). The titular character breaks into the villains' MegaCorp and catches them wiring 100 million dollars to the terrorist organization they're allied with. When the mooks assigned to the wire transfer leave momentarily for a smoke break, Who Am I sneaks in and changes the transfer details so the money goes into charity instead.

Literature

• William Gibson's short story "Burning Chrome" has two hackers proceed (with some unexpected help in the form of very powerful software) to "burn" the eponymous Chrome by emptying her bank accounts (mostly to charity, with a little for themselves). As Chrome had made many enemies over the years and made a lot of her money handling money transfers for organized crime, it's implied they've effectively given her a death sentence.
• Artemis Fowl: At the climax of Eternity Code, Artemis hacks into Jon Spiro's Swiss Bank Account and is about to steal the whole lot when he has a sudden burst of conscience and decides to donate it to Amnesty International instead... minus a 10% "finder's fee".
• The Count of Monte Cristo: Dantes' revenge against Danglars consists of ruining him, first by encouraging his wife to play the stock market in way he knows will fail (such as by bribing a telegraph operator to deliberately send false political news), then by arranging for Danglars' daughter to marry a Mock Millionaire (and revealing that status, as well as being an escaped convict, matricide and murderer). When Danglars escapes, he's caught by bandits working for Dantes, who proceed to starve Danglars out of his money by making him pay half a million francs (of the five million he embezzled) for each meal.
• KonoSuba: In Volume 10, Kazuma and Iris go to Prince Levy of Elroad to obtain more defense funding for the Kingdom of Belzerg. After multiple failed attempts and being belittled by the prince, he suggests that Kazuma and Iris relax at their finest state-run casinos. This turns out to be Levy's undoing, however, as Kazuma's strong point happens to be ridiculously high levels of luck. It gets to the point where Levi has to outright beg Kazuma to leave, as he managed to bankrupt the casinos and send Elroad into a financial crisis.
• Vorkosigan Saga: In A Civil Campaign, Count Vormuir creates a Baby Factory using leftover eggs from his subjects' use of Uterine Replicators and his own sperm to create over 100 daughters he hopes to use to lure male subjects to his district. Barrayaran law doesn't make this technically illegal, but Emperor Gregor wants to punish him to dissuade others from repeating the scheme. So, at Ekaterin's suggestion, Gregor invokes an old law and requires Vormuir to provide large dowries for each of the daughters.

Live-Action TV

• Castle (2009): "Ghosts" has Lee Wax, an unscrupulous true crime writer who inadvertently got a woman killed by revealing to her enemies that she was alive and well (even if she was an Asshole Victim). She points out to Castle that nothing she did was illegal. Castle agrees but then makes a move to keep her from profiting by writing about the story; since he is a much more famous author with direct ties to the investigation, he states, "One day, and one day soon, I'm going to write a book about this." This effectively prevents Lee Wax from being able to profit off of her role in the woman's death.
• A couple of episodes of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation end up this way. In both cases, the police are unable to get the wrongdoers on any criminal charges (both cases involve large rewards from insurance companies), so they settle for presenting to their information to the insurance companies, preventing (or in one case, taking back) the large payouts.
• Doctor Who, "The Sun Makers": An extraterrestrial Company has drained the resources of Earth and Mars, under the guise of helping Humanity, and their last bastion is on Pluto. Furthermore, the one in charge, the mysterious Collector, is sucking up all the profits, heavily and increasingly taxing and policing the populace, and working them to death; eventually the Collector plans to shut down his operation, leaving the remains of Humanity to die when the machinery and environmental systems eventually fail. Some have taken to be The Quisling, to either save their own necks, or find the power and money irresistible. When the Doctor gets involved, he starts a revolution with those who have already begun an underground rebellion. The trope is invoked twice; first, the Collector, of course, isn't happy about this revolution, so he puts out a bounty on the Doctor. His boot-kissing underling, Hade, agrees to the plan, until the Collector announces that the reward money will be taken from Hade's bank account. He, in turn, is not happy about this, and attempts to get the bounty for himself to protect his pocketbook. Second, as soon as the Doctor reaches the Collector's sanctum, along with his companion, Leela, he surreptitiously programs an algorithm into the Collector's computer that falsely predicts eventual and total bankruptcy, causing the Collector to have a Villainous Breakdown and turn into his true form; a sapient kelp-like fungus.
• Diagnosis: Murder episode "The Last Laugh" sees killer Bonnie Valin manipulate Mark into verifying her false alibi when she is put on trial for murdering her husband, prestigious plastic surgeon Elliott. As she is protected from punishment for this crime by Double Jepordy, Mark is unable to pursue justice for this case... in criminal court. What he can and does do is prove her conspiracy to the insurance company, blocking her from receiving a large life insurance policy, as well as convincing Elliott's son to contest the will. This ultimately leads Bonnie and her willing accomplice to try and kill Mark himself, with Bonnie subsequently killing the accomplice, which is what Mark and Steve are able to arrest her for.
• In the Family Law (2021) episode "Between a Rock and a Hard Place", Daniel Svensson, an altruistic lawyer who usually does pro bono cases helping working-class couples navigate their divorces as amicably as possible, gets stuck with Sabrina Bass, a White-Dwarf Starlet who is open about her intention to extract a fortune from her philanthropist ex-husband to punish him for divorcing her.
• In the opening scene of Feud: Capote vs. the Swans, Truman Capote is summoned to the penthouse of his dear friend Babe Paley to console her after she learned that her husband not only cheated on her with Happy Rockefeller but he also unwittingly allowed Happy to menstruate all over their bedroom, making it difficult for Babe to continue hiding her husband's infidelities from their children. She's ready to divorce him but Truman advises her against it, telling her that she'll just end up yet another divorcee exiled to Long Island. He instead suggests that she use the affair to guilt-trip her husband into buying her whatever she wants, as losing thousands of dollars would probably be much more painful to her husband.
• Leverage: Many of the villains faced in the show are well above the law, so the team either has to trick them into committing crimes, or, alternatively, bankrupt them.
  • "The Two Horse Job" has Alan Foss, a broker who was trying to create an investment line using race horses, was not seeing the performance he wanted, so he had the stables torched for the insurance money, leaving only one horse alive and the stable owner blamed for the fire, and thus blackballed in the industry. Nate tricks Foss into thinking another horse is a lost heir to Secretariat, and "sells" him the horse, which he then insures for a large sum. However, they then swap in his old horse, so when Sterling scans the microchip that identifies the horse, it shows he insured his old horse for a substantially higher sum, constituting insurance fraud, and allowing Sterling to smugly deny the insurance claim for the fire, causing his investors to seize his remaining assets to cover the loss.
  • "The Thin Blue Line Job" has the team bankrupt a corrupt hockey owner, stealing his receipts for the night of a match because he'd let the insurance lapse and if they hit it at a certain point, the insurance for the armored car company would have kicked in. After leaving him with nothing, they force him to sign the rights to the team over to his players, so he won't even be able to profit from selling that.
  • "The Real Fake Car Job". The mark of the week (played by Matthew Lillard) is a fraudulent securities investor who gave state's evidence about a mob family and has a large sum of money he stole from his victims which he's hiding. The team gets him to pull his money out of hiding while pretending to offer him a rare and valuable car (and acting like Hardison was an eccentric artist who had already dismantled some of the man's previous collection for "art"). The mark is also being hunted by the mob. Nate manages to steal the money, which the man can't file a theft claim on, and void his plea deal with the government. He also has a frank sit-down with the mob boss, asking him to let the man rot in prison instead of killing him. The mob boss notes that his organization originally began as a way to protect the people from corrupt government, and agrees to Nate's terms. Of course, he may have also heard about what Nate did to Mickey Mosconi in "The Wedding Job" which may have also informed his decision.
• The Nanny: Discussed in "An Offer She Can't Refuse." When Fran's guy of the week Tony turns out to be an Italian mobster, she wants to break up with him but fears that he'll retaliate. After a while, though, she remembers that she has another kind of threat to level against him:
  Fran: Tony's not the only one with muscle in his family. I got relatives, too. I can have him taken care of!
  Niles: You mean killed?
  Fran: No—audited!
• Person of Interest: When Finch finds out an irrelevant number that he lost before he teamed up with Reese was killed by her Corrupt Corporate Executive boss to prevent her from becoming a whistle-blower. The boss's son-in-law who was the victim's immediate supervisor did the dirty work so there was no way to tie the murder to the boss. Finch arranged to meet the boss under the guise of an investor. Who buys eight percent of his company's stock and then dumps it.
  Finch: I know exactly who I'm dealing with. You're the kind of man who doesn't care about anything except money. So that's what I'm going to take away from you.
• Poirot: In the series' adaptation of Appointment with Death, Jefferson Cope gets revenge on his abusive foster mother, Lady Boynton, by compromising her company's stocks and depriving her of access to newspapers so that she wouldn't learn about it until it's too late. Lady Boynton is murdered, however, before the ramifications of Cope's plot become apparent.
• Stargirl (2020):Beth and Chuck (her goggles) are in a hacking battle with the Gambler, and the Gambler proves to be a better hacker than Beth’s AI buddy. So instead of hacking him, they hack into something he loves–his money.
• Part of the whole series-spanning arc of The Wire is the Major Crimes Unit, especially Lester Freamon, deciding to investigate where the major drug dealers put their money, and the consequences of pulling the string on the network of corrupt real estate deals and political donations, which at the end of season 1 results in McNulty and Daniels being Reassigned to Antarctica.
  Freamon: You follow drugs, you get drug addicts and drug dealers. But you start to follow the money, and you don't know where the fuck it's gonna take you.

Music

• U2: "Silver and Gold" abjures the listener to "hit where it hurts: silver and gold." Bono says while performing the song on the Rattle and Hum live album that it was written to support calls for economic sanctions against South Africa to force an end to apartheid.

Theatre

• The Merchant of Venice: When Antonio is forced to default on a massive loan from his enemy Shylock, the agreed-upon penalty is a pound of flesh, which Shylock demands rather than be bought off by Antonio's friends. Instead, Portia impersonates a lawyer, uses Loophole Abuse to get Antonio off the hook and charge Shylock with attempted murder, and forces Shylock to give up his estate on pain of death — and to convert to Christianity, effectively forcing him out of work as a moneylender.

Video Games

• In Hi-Fi RUSH, Zanzo is Vandelay's Head of R&D, sending waves and waves of robots and outlandish inventions at Chai in place of a boss fight. But his pursuit of unrestrained creativity means that said inventions are ridiculously expensive. Chai and Peppermint defeat Zanzo by goading him into using his priciest works so Chai can trash them, putting huge dents in Zanzo's budget. Chai manages to completely defund Zanzo by the end of this, turning Zanzo into a Cutscene Boss who's easily disposed of.
• Octopath Traveler II:
  • Stenvar is a Corrupt Guard Captain who helped frame Osvald the Scholar for murder in exchange for coin. After Osvald escapes from prison and beats Stenvar in a fight, he decides that his life isn't worth taking and contents himself with using his fire magic to burn all Stenvar's ill-gotten money to ash.
  • Giff is an enforcer for a corrupt landowner who gets rich out of bleeding the economy of Oresrush dry, turning it from a thriving prospector town into a Ghost Town. Partitio leads the citizens of Oresrush in a mob attack on Giff's manor, learns that the land owner's contract was tampered with illegally, seizes Giff's wealth, and reinvests it back into the town. Giff ends up a common laborer forced to work for Oresrush's newly revitalized businesses.
• Referenced by Nintendo Power in their coverage for the first Super Smash Bros. game: Mario's Up+B special described as an attack "which hits your opponents where it hurts: their pocketbook," referencing the purely aesthetic coins knocked from the opponent during the attack animation.
• Warframe: This specific strategy is used time and again against the Corpus, but especially against Nef Anyo, in part because he never shows up in person to deal with the normal way. Be it hacking his walking ATM robots for a Ponzi scheme so that his bank gets drained, beating him at rigged gambling or helping his wage slaves threaten to destroy an irreplaceable piece of Orokin technology he has even if they happen to live on it, the Tenno consistently work to put Anyo in the red. This is even acknowledged to be a strategy of drawing out the Corpus in general — targets on the Orb Vallis don't care about losing men to you. It's losing the tribute those men were carrying that makes them come after you.
• This is how you defeat Glukkons in Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee, by possessing them and forcing them to donate all of their money to Lulu's Fund.

Webcomics

• The Order of the Stick: Hilgya Firehelm gets Revenge on her family for marrying her off at crossbow-point by manipulating her gambling addict brother into betting the family fortune on a rigged race. They're left destitute while she wins a fortune — a fitting victory for a worshiper of a Trickster God.
  "Yeah, it turned out much better than my first idea of setting their clan hall on fire in the middle of the night would have."

Western Animation

• Carmen Sandiego: This is a favorite tactic of Team Carmen, as each theft they thwart hits VILE directly in their funding. Also Player's White Hat hacking skills allow them to travel and acquire whatever they need at VILE's expense, while routing most of the money they take from VILE to various charities. In "The Egyptian Decryption Caper" Carmen forces Cleo to abandon a veritable treasure by having Chase Devereaux contact the Chief, alerting her to the treasure trove, which would lead to exposure for Cleo and their cleaners if they stick around.
• Fillmore!: "The Nineteenth Hole is a Shallow Grave" features a non-monetary example. The X Safety Patrol are ordered to end their investigation of a mini-golf match-fixing operation when they inadvertently traumatize Principal Folsom's nephew. However, Ingrid realizes that they can still stop the culprit by having Fillmore, who's been playing in the latest tournament undercover, continue playing and win so that the culprit will lose all of his bets and his massive comic book collection. The plan works and the perp not only loses his entire collection but is also arrested when one of his victims finally musters the courage to testify.
• Iron Man: The Animated Series: At the end of the "Armor Wars" two-parter, Iron Man is unable to prove that rival industrialist Justin Hammer stole his armor designs and sabotaged several Stark Industries operations. So he resorts to feeding a virus into Hammer Industries' network that wipes out everything in their systems. As he walks away, IM smugly states that if Hammer works hard enough, he might just be able to avoid bankruptcy.
• King of the Hill: In the episode "The Substitute Spanish Prisoner," Hank convinces Peggy that she was played for a fool, after she shelled out several hundred dollars to Dr. Vayzosa to earn a worthless degree. To get their money back, she gets together with other victims of Vayzosa to scam him in a fake horse-race betting ring at a No-Tell Motel. However, Vayzosa recognizes what they're trying to do, and cuts his losses before he loses everything he stole. Hank tries to confront Vayzosa, but the latter stashes his ill-gotten gains in his room's closet safe, and Vayzosa throws the knowledge of Peggy's plan back in his face. Even if he goes to the police, he can't tell them that they were trying to scam Vayzosa out of his stolen money, with a fake illegal betting ring. After Hank leaves, Vayzosa sees the safe gone, and when he confronts the hotel manager about what happened, the manager tells him that the hotel doesn't provide safes for guests. When Vayzosa returns to his room, he finds on the hotel bed the self-help-degree book he himself scammed the other victims with, and realizes that Peggy managed to scam him back, and leaving him penniless.
• Superman: The Animated Series: In the pilot episode, Lex Luthor arranged to have his high-tech battlesuit "stolen" by Kaznia, with the additional windfall, as Clark Kent points out, of having the government ask him to build a bigger and better one later. After Superman destroys the suit, he cannot prove Luthor's crooked involvement, despite knowing about it, a fact Luthor points out to him. However, Luthor will not be receiving his backdoor payment from Kaznia, since, as they argue, they never received the goods in question. In addition, Superman promises that he'll be watching Luthor very closely from that point (a promise he keeps).
• The Venture Bros.: In "Handsome Ransom", the Monarch agrees to return Hank and Dean if Dr. Venture pays a ransom of $10 million for them. When Dr. Mrs. The Monarch asks what he's doing, he responds with this trope.
  The Monarch: You wanna know how to really hurt Venture?
  Dr. Mrs. The Monarch: Not really, but as a wife, I try to be supportive, so-
  The Monarch: You strike him in the pocketbook!

Real Life

• Millionaire John Barrier once closed his bank account worth millions because the teller wouldn't validate his parking receipt. Sure, he was in grubby clothes but he makes the good point that it doesn't matter, he was a banking customer who engaged in business at the bank, so his parking should be free.
• Having been ostracised by every farmer, shopowner, and worker in the Lough Mask area, Charles Boycott lost £6000 of his own money there.
• This is the reason Finland calculates the amount of some fines according to the perpetrator's income, to ensure being caught violating law will hurt everyone equally no matter how rich you are. For instance, in 2023 a millionaire was slapped with a €121,000 fine ($129,400) for speeding.^note A speeding fine amount is also calculated according to how much the driver is over the speed limit

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