Riches to Rags in Animated and Live-Action Movies.
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Films — Animation
- Cars: Doc Hudson used to be one of the most famous racing cars in the world, but following a life-threatening crash, he was replaced by a rookie and faded to obscurity. Nowadays, he's but a humble mayor/doctor/judge to the equally obscure town of Radiator Springs.
- Disney Animated Canon:
- Bolt: Bolt and Penny. After Bolt returns home and comes to the rescue when Penny gets trapped in a fire on set of the Show Within a Show they star in, they quit the show and move to the country to live a more simple life.
- The Emperor's New Groove: Emperor Kuzco, by virtue of a Forced Transformation which leaves his subjects unable to recognize him, goes from the ruler of an empire to a llama nobody spares a second glance to.
- Shark Tale: Oscar at the end. After gaining riches due to a misunderstanding, he admits the truth in the climax and forsakes all his wealth.
Films — Live-Action
- Ana: Rafa is financially destitute at the beginning, having fallen from success as a car salesman into debt.
- Arthur (1981): The Idle Rich hero deliberately risks this trope by falling in love with a working-class woman even though his inheritance hinges on an Arranged Marriage. They get a Surprisingly Happy Ending, but the sequel Arthur 2: On the Rocks sees the trope take hold at last due to the meddling of the vengeful father of the jilted fiance. While his sweetheart is able to get by, Arthur himself cannot because the vengeful father sabotages all of his attempts to find work. Luckily, he manages to earn a happy ending.
- Até que a Sorte nos Separe ("Til Luck Do Us Part") has a guy who won the lottery 15 years prior finding out his fortune is basically gone after years of Conspicuous Consumption. To make it worse, he has to hide it from his wife with a penchant for spending... and who finds out that is pregnant.
- Avengers: Endgame has the Asgardian survivors. From living in a magical paradise with golden palaces to making a living fishing and dwelling in a town of crude shacks in Northern Europe, it's a major step down for Thor and others. Though for the likes of Valkyrie and Sakaaran exiles like Korg and Miek, it's a trade-up from living in a garbage planet. Not surprisingly, those three seem to be the most settled and sorted of New Asgard denizens.
- Blue Jasmine: Flashbacks show the protagonist living a life of luxury—Upper East Side penthouse/brownstone, lavish summers in the Hamptons, black tie charity events, etc. Her life now? Sleeping on the couch in her sister's apartment which is above a grocery store and working as a receptionist in a dentist's office, all because her financier husband turned out to be a fraud.
- Cinderella Man opens by showing Jim Braddock with his life in good order: He's got a steady and glamorous job as a boxer, a nice house in the suburbs, and a beautiful family. Then The Great Depression hits, and when we see Braddock next he and his family are living in a dingy slum, he and his wife are faced with the possibility of sending their children away in order to pay rent, and the only work he can get is occasionally unloading shipments at the docks (since a broken hand forced him to give up on boxing).
- The Dark Knight Rises. Wayne Enterprises is no longer profitable after Bruce canned a high-risk project and Bruce himself goes bankrupt when the villains gamble away all of his assets on the stock market. Due to the chaos of Gotham's isolation and Bruce's apparent death, the lost money is never recovered.
- Doctor Strange (2016) starts off this way. Rich and successful neurosurgeon Stephen Strange suffers from extensive nerve damage in his hands when his car crashes off a cliff, causing them to shake uncontrollably. He loses his job, blows all of his money on experimental treatments that don't work, leaving him with nothing after only a few months. When he gets cornered by a group of muggers, the only thing he can offer them is his watch.
- Dumb Money: The Wall Street Bets characters attempt this on the wealthy investors who planned out GameStop's demise to profit off of it. Ultimately averted when they discover these billionaires are bailing each other out, making it impossible for any of them to truly lose their wealth until it happens to all of them, which they are ultimately unsuccessful at. They do, however, take away the billionaire status of three people: the co-creators of the Robinhood app and the hedge fund manager of Citadel, the last of whom actually does go bankrupt.
- Firehouse Dog: The main character, a dog named Rexxx, begins the movie as a rich Hollywood star, and ends the movie as Dewey, the pet of a suburban family.
- The Hobbit: Thorin was once a prince of a very wealthy and powerful dwarven kingdom but after Smaug invaded Erebor, he and his people were driven out and he was forced to work menial, dead-end jobs to survive.
- The Jerk goes the full circle from Rags to Riches back to rags. Navin Johnson invents a grip handle for glasses that becomes all the rage, amassing him a fortune. A fortune he loses when his company is sued after it's discovered the handle causes people to go permanently cross-eyed. Luckily for him, he sent money home to his father to support his family. His father invested the money and it becomes a Rags-to-Riches-to-Rags story.
- Life Stinks is a comedy about a billionaire who, as a bet, agrees to live as a hobo in a particular slum for a month. Then his lawyers and business rival destroy all record of the bet and steal his company out from under him.
- Maid to Order (1987) explores this with spoiled, Beverly Hills-raised Jessie Montgomery, stripped of her wealth and identity by Stella, her Fairy Godmother, and forced to work as a maid in a rich household to learn the value of hard work.
- McLintock!: The Warrens' backstory. When Dev Warren's father died, he left his wife Louise penniless and his son had to drop out of Perdue.
- Spider-Man: No Way Home: Norman Osborn is pulled from a universe where he's a billionaire into one where Oscorp doesn't even exist and stumbles his way into F.E.A.S.T. seeking refuge. Add in his mental issues from the Goblin persona corroding his sanity and the second-hand jacket and hoodie he's given to cover his lurid battle armor, and he comes across more like any other homeless person May helps daily. It's hard not to feel immensely sorry for him.
- Trading Places does this twice:
- First to Louis Winthorpe (Dan Aykroyd); as a result of a bet between Randolph and his brother, Mortimer, wagering he could put Louis in the poor house, reducing him from an upstanding, respectable businessman to a dreg of society while, at the same time, taking Billy Ray Valentine (Eddie Murphy) off the streets and making him a reputable businessman, in a month's time. The real kicker: the bet was for one dollar, made on a whim, for no other reason than to satisfy their own curiosity.
- The second time happens when Valentine and Louis inevitably find out about the wager after Valentine overhears the Dukes discussing it in the men's room and decide to get even by returning the favor. For one dollar.
- The White Sister starts off with the aristocratic heroine losing her fortune after her father dies and her jealous half-sister burns the will.
