Basic Trope: A treasure that has been sought after throughout the whole story turns out to be worthless.
- Straight: Alice finds a briefcase full of money that has been hidden by her mother, only to toss it away when it turns out to have been full of fake money that is not even good enough to use for scamming.
- Exaggerated: Alice has been hunting down The Maltese Whatchamacallit throughout her entire life, killing hundreds of people and stealing millions in order to fund her search. It turns out that it was only a dime-a-million painting with a quote from a has-been poet about how friendship is the only treasure worth keeping.
- Downplayed: Alice finds an envelope full of money that has been hidden by her mother. It is antique money, but not in high demand, so she only gets about a thousand dollars or so from exchanging it—not really "worthless", but also not that worthy.
- Justified:
- Science Marches On, and what seemed highly valuable then may not be valuable now because of details like collectivity value, demand or even whether or not it's been deemed offensive. It's probably more valuable as a heirloom and souvenir.
- Alice's mom was being a troll.
- Inverted: After some life-long adventures where she learned that It's the Journey That Counts, Alice finds a briefcase with the Maltese Whatchamacallit. Originally a collectable probably worth twenty bucks at the most with some fine haggling (and thus much more valuable as a family heirloom), she takes it to an appraiser and finds out that its price can go as high as fifty million dollars. Alice, who needs the money for a fine retirement, accepts to sell it.
- Subverted:
- Alice finds the Maltese Whatchamacallit. It is a painting worth a couple of thousand dollars and was obviously meant to be a reminder of a man's love for his wife. Alice thinks that it's a nice reminder that the painter was human after all and decides to call her husband once she can, not knowing that the paper holds the coordinates to the Lost Treasure of the Incas.
- Alice finds the briefcase, but it's full of fake money...however, the money is actually the currency to a long lost civilization, of which Alice's mother was a part of.
- The briefcase Alice finds is full of fake money...but the briefcase itself is actually worth a fortune.
- The "treasure" Alice finds has little to no value in and of itself, but its cultural and historic significance mean that governments, museums, and universities are all willing pay her top dollar for its discovery.
- The 'treasure' has no value these days, but back then it was worth so much that they stored it in golden chests
- Double Subverted:
- When she leaves, the Maltese Whatchamacallit is picked by Professor Evulz and smashed to pieces because his Berserk Button is his old paintings of his ex-wife. The painting gets a massive hole, rendering the coordinates unreadable. Now it's literally not worth the canvas it was painted on.
- Unfortunately, the chest was buried in an uranium pit, making the gold tainted, as attested (or not) by its Sickly Green Glow.
- Parodied:
- After thirty minutes of insane shenanigans, Alice finds a briefcase with a scroll inside that says that friendship is the ultimate treasure. She ends up doing a Breaking the Fourth Wall take and say that it's something she could have learned without all of the world-traveling and life-threatening hassle.
- Alice travels around the globe to find some true companions who will always be there for her when she's down. Yet wherever she goes, trouble awaits her - a shooter suddenly enters the cafe she's in, a giant earthquake threatens to destroy the whole town, a valuable museum is robbed of its most prized painting... Fortunately, whenever she's caught up in a situation, she always manages to save the day. She is rewarded handsomely for these acts of charity, and becomes a world-renowned hero as well, but this only makes her feel even more estranged. That is, until one day, when she meets a Corrupt Corporate Executive who encourages her to call off her tedious search and monotonous heroic deeds, and take pride in her unparalleled wealth. She does so and becomes quite happy, having realized the real friends were the treasure she made along the way.
- Zig Zagged: The value of the Maltese Whatchamacallit rises and drops as Time Marches On. Once, it was just a collectible item worth ten cents that was stored in a safety deposit box for kicks, but after ten years its value increases because of its rarity, and after five more years the nostalgia factor disappears which means that only the crazier richer people want it (and will even think of buying it), and then twenty years later the nostalgia comes back and this makes the market produce replicas of the Watchamacallit that reduce the asking price (although the fact that it's an original Whatchamacallit means that it's still more expensive overall)...
- Averted: The treasure found at the end of the story is full of riches.
- Enforced: The executives wish to make a "Raiders of the Lost Parody" episode but refuse to make the protagonists rich because Status Quo Is God, so the writers propose that the treasure they find will be rotten Confederate money or Donald Trump's paintings from a failed "Bob Ross" period or one of Erwin Rommel's Sickeningly Sweethearts letters to his wife or something equally worthless and/or goofy.
- Lampshaded: "Bet you five bucks right now that this is just for Tutankamen's stuffed pet cat," said Alice while she was looking over the instructions on how to safely cross the pyramid's trap-filled corridor.
- Invoked: Alice sees the Maltese Whatchamacallit as important to find because It's the Journey That Counts—she needs to reassure herself that her friendship with Dan is more important than all the riches in the world.
- Implied: Unknown to Alice or Evulz, the Maltese Whatchamacallit lands in the hands of Bob during the second act. Right before we go back to their antics, Bob looks over the Whatchamacallit with a Jeweler's Eye Loupe... and even if it's a Freeze-Frame Bonus, we also see his face becoming incredibly disgusted just a split second before the cut. When Alice and Evulz find it on the third act, it's right where Bob got it.
- Exploited: Alice doesn't knows whether or not the Maltese Whatchamacallit is actually worth a damn, but she knows that Professor Evulz is willing to hunt her down anywhere in the world (even into a trap, if needs be) because he's that driven to get it. If it's not worth anything, then Evulz' humiliation will be worth seeing, and if it is worth something... well, that should cover some bills.
- Defied:
- Alice gets the map for a treasure and immediately does research—if she cannot see any monetary worth from venturing to find it, then she immediately declines to go for it.
- Alice refuses to go seek treasure. She can't afford to gamble with the little money she has on hunting something that may have crumbled to dust ages ago.
- Alice refuses to be let down by the apparent worthlessness of the treasure and manages to either sell whichever gadget she found (guessing that the fact that it was owned by someone like Attila the Hun or that it was a lesson Tutankamen thought was worth keeping in a plaque may give it some monetary value) or manages to spin the story into something worth selling, even if it may make her a laughingstock.
- Discussed: "I understand that there's eccentric millionaires and all, but seriously, why waste so much money in the creation of a world-hopping scavenger hunt that is only meant to teach someone The Power of Friendship?" "Some guys just get off on seeing people's disappointment."
- Conversed: "The pain in the neck with writers that want to keep their characters poor is that they make them spend hundreds of thousands of dollars that they will never be able to pay back to look for some damn lesson in loving what you already have that a dollar-store self-help book would provide just as easily."
- Deconstructed: People misunderstand the message of the Maltese Whatchamacallit ("Go and Sin No More") in the most absolute worst way ("The plaque's rigged to a Doomsday Device! I told you this was a Mad Scientist!" or "Another clue! Give me a map of every church in a hundred-mile radius!") and perform more calamity refusing to believe that there is a "worthless" treasure.
- Played For Drama: Alice has sacrificed many things in her hunt for the treasure...money, friends, family, goodwill, her morals, her self respect, even a limb or two. The fact it was All for Nothing is the last straw before a total breakdown.
- Played For Horror:
- Alice only has enough time to discover that the treasure she ventured to get is a piece of worthless trash before she dies a brutal death at the hands of a monster or being flattened by a death trap.
- The treasure is "worthless" in that it's not going to buy Alice salvation from Pamela the Slasher, and guess who just appeared behind Alice right after she found it?
Click This Link to go back to the worthless version.
