Money To Burn - Television Tropes & Idioms

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"Ahh, there's nothing better than a cigarette... unless it's a cigarette lit with a $100 bill!"

— Krusty the Klown, The Simpsons

A Corrupt Corporate Executive, or another kind of (usually) unpleasant character, sets alight a high-denomination dollar bill, and uses it to light his cigar or his cigarette.

This is used to show that he doesn't care for what is being burnt: he either has too much money, has an insurance policy on the object, doesn't like it, or doesn't respect what it stands for.

Note that destruction of money without due authority is illegal in most countries.

The Other Wiki has an article about this.

Not to be confused with Conspicuous Consumption, which is what this phrase refers to in real life.

Examples:

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Anime

In Speed Grapher, Suitengu smokes cigarettes wrapped in 10,000 Yen bills.
- Even worse, he crushes them underfoot after no more than four drags, then lights another in less than a minute. If that's not enough, at one point he nonchalantly sets fire to a whole briefcase worth of the bills.
One episode of [C] - The Money and Soul of Possibility, had Kimimaro burning a huge amount of his Midas money as a point that he chose the future and not money.

Film

A Better Tomorrow: Chow Yun-Fat's Mark Gor does this with a counterfeit bill in one of the opening shots of John Woo's classic action film.
In the 1985A scene of Back to the Future Part II, The Pleasure Paradise logo has an image of Biff Tannen smoking a dollar bill.
In The Dark Knight, The Joker lights up a pile of hundreds of millions of dollars owned by a consortium of mob bosses*
"I'm only burning my half
."]], with the Corrupt Corporate Executive who laundered it all sitting on top.
Joker: It's not about money. It's about sending a message. Everything burns.
- Oh, and it gets even better: What does he use to ignite the flames after having his minions douse it with gasoline? Why, he snatches one of the mob boss's cigars and throws it onto the pile.
Brazilian movie O Homem Que Copiava (The Man Who Copied) opens with the protagonist burning money - though it probably is In Medias Res, as the story has him using a photocopier to make money, and later regretting it.
The protagonist of When Worlds Collide (1951) does this, to the shock of other people in the restaurant. Of course, he's just found out that the world's going to end.
In Thank You For Smoking, when the original Marlboro Man threatens to sue the tobacco industry, Nick Nailer comes by with a Briefcase Full of Money. However, he doesn't accept the bribe. Nick then suggests that he go to the press, tell them that the industry offered you all this money, then dump it out of the briefcase and set it on fire. The Marlboro man then sheepishly suggests that he just burn half of the money - but Nick then tells him that it's an all-or-nothing deal. He then accepts the bribe, like Nick knew he would.
Used justifiably in Cliffhanger when Gabe burns some of the stolen money to keep himself and Jessie warm.

Literature

In Agatha Christie's short story "The Soul of the Croupier", the Countess does this to the high denomination bill that the croupier arranged for her to win, because she will not accept his charity. He is her long-estranged husband.
American Psycho: One of Pat Bateman's friends teases a homeless guy with a dollar bill and then lights his cigar with it. Pat thinks he's a jerk (but it's not worth killing him over— he likes the homeless even less).
In Spider Robinson's Callahan's Legacy, a character who inherited a frickload of money decides to "combat inflation". He and his friends fold the bills into paper airplanes and send them flying into the fireplace.
At the beginning of Terry Pratchett's pre-Discworld book Strata, protagonist Kin Arad is uninterested in Jago Jalo's claims of an uncharted world where thought becomes matter, until he takes out a couple hundred thousand years worth of the life-extension tickets that function as the setting's currency and casually tosses them all into a trash disintegrator.
In Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Idiot, Natasya Filipponva heard that Gavrila Ardalionovich would “crawl to Vassilievsky Island for three roubles”. She tests Gavrila by throwing a packet of ten thousand roubles into a fire, and telling him that if he reaches in with his bare hands, he can keep whatever he grabs.
Lazarus Long does this to a big bill in Time Enough for Love after his bank gets nationalized. He's trying to teach the mayor that money is a fiction and he shouldn't get too attached to the notes themselves. Lazarus then comments that that's what he usually does when the safe starts to get too full. Then he writes down the serial number so he can keep track of the currency in the system.

Live Action TV

In the shortlived sitcom Paris, one character does this, saying, "What's fifty francs to a man like me?". When told it's a one-hundred note, he promptly stamps it out, complaining that no one had told him.
Jonathan did this during his supervillain period on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It heralded his eventual death of course, since everyone on the show who smokes ends up dead.
All the disrespect, none of the flame: at the end of The Three Stooges 'Sing a Song of Six Pants', they're rummaging through a wad of $100 bills. Shemp comes across a $50, crumples it, and tosses it aside saying 'How'd that get in there?' The others wave it aside. Then they come to their senses.
In Father Ted:
Fr. Buzz: 400 dollars?? You know what I do with $400? I wipe my ass with it.
Father Ted: Good God. And can that still be used as legal tender?
Season two of The Wire: Ziggy Sobotka celebrates his having earned some money under the table by lighting his cigarette with a burning $100 bill.
When Harry Enfield's Loadsamoney character appeared on Comic Relief, he sold someone a red nose for £5 (at the time the retail price was 50p), then blew his nose with the fiver and threw it away. He immediately got hit by a car.
One of the "bonus rounds" in the UK version of Distraction awards the contestant £5000 for winning the game - then for every question he gets wrong in this round, he must throw £1000 of it onto a wildly burning fire, where it must stay until the end of the round. A similar game is played with the money in toasters.

Music Videos

The music video "Beautiful Dirty Rich" by Lady Gaga has her doing this with some rolled up bills as them being the cigar. Also just burns a 100 as well.
A situational variant in her "Telephone" video—she walks out into the prison yard with sunglasses blinged-out with lit cigarettes. Now, what is commonly used as money in prison?
In the video for "This is the Life", a filthy rich Weird Al lights a cigar with a 100 dollar bill.
The video for Superdrag's "Sucked Out" ends with the lead singer lighting a cigarette with a $1 bill. Given the tone of the song to which the image is attached, this was likely meant to be symbolic.

Western Animation

In The Simpsons, Krusty lights a cigar with a $100 bill. Okay. Then he lights another with a pearl necklace, and later another one with a copy of ActionComics #1.
- Alternatively parodied when Homer lights up a $5 bill to smoke a cigar to demonstrate his potential investment earnings. Then he realizes he's burning money, and quickly extinguishes it. Lenny asks him where he got money to burn, or rather singe.
Granny had one short in Looney Tunes where she was a rich widow who would literally burn stacks of cash to heat her house, kept in a scuttle that was actually marked "Money to Burn".
In the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Chocolate With Nuts", Squidward's Fancy Living Magazine features a High-Class Glass Fish burning a dollar, because he can!
Title of a 1980s episode of G.I. Joe, in which Cobra burns United States of America money.
Parodied by Futurama's Le Grand Cigar. Its wrapper was a piece of the original U.S. Constitution. It was hand-rolled by Queen Elizabeth during her "wild years" and was buried with George Burns until grave robbing space mushrooms stole it. Bender then decided to steal it rather than pay its $10,000 cost.
Archer has Cheryl, the ditzy secretary, turn out to be the heiress of a family that made its fortune on the railroads. Once she comes into her inheritance, though, she won't pay back Cyril the $3000 he lent her because "that money doesn't exist anymore" - because she set it on fire to watch it burn.
Spongebob and Patrick try to prank Mr. Krabs by burning a dollar but he throws a bucket of water on it and the pranksters are revealed.

Real Life

The K Foundation Burn a Million Quid, an event where musical duo The K Foundation cashed out a million Pounds of the money they had earned in royalties over the course of their career and burnt them in an abandoned boathouse with a couple of friends, with no explanation whatsoever.
- Earlier, the K Foundation had set up a cash prize to award to "the worst artist of the year". Their shortlist was identical to that of the Turner Prize, which was going on at the same time. Amanda Whitehead won both the Turner Prize and the K Foundation's award. She refused the latter "prize", at which point the K Foundation threatened to set fire to the cash. Whitehead prevented the burning by accepting the prize at the last minute, stating that she would donate the money to charity.
A justified example: Germany's economy was destroyed after World War I, resulting in hyperinflation to the point that Marks were more useful for papering bare walls than using as currency. It got so bad that the bills were worth less than what they could buy in firewood.
- This is also true in places like Somalia, where the money is so worthless people need a wheelbarrow-load of it just to buy apples or bread. Most people just use the money for animal bedding or toilet paper.
  - Hyperinflation in general tends to cause this, as the paper money is LITERALLY worth less than virtually any other substitute.
One of the most famous stories told of Cleopatra is that she once drank a pearl earring dissolved in vinegar, purely to win a bet with Mark Antony over which of them was more wastefully opulent.
- Although it's very probably not true: Vinegar isn't strong enough to dissolve pearls. A stronger acid would be, but you can't drink that. Also, its primary source is one of a series of speeches by Cicero, the purpose of which was to turn opinions against Antony.
- This is parodied in Astérix, where pearls dissolved in vinegar are Cleo's favourite drink.
  - Sometimes to her food-taster's disgust. "Ugh, I do hate too much pearl in my vinegar!"
Serge Gainsbourg famously burnt a 500 franc bill on TV at the height of his fame.
Back in the 1970s, poker player "Mad Genius" Mike Caro would get inside his opponents' heads by burning a $100 bill before playing a single hand, just to make everybody there think that money meant absolutely nothing to him.