History Main / CutLexLuthorACheck

* In [[24]] series 5, within a couple of hours of getting hold of Lynn's access card, Lynn's sister's boyfriend is able to find the terrorists to sell it to them. This guy should have been working for CTU!

* ''Website/{{Centives}} breaks down the costs of [[http://www.centives.net/S/2013/refusing-the-apple/#more-9223 half-a-dozen]] crooks going or staying legit. Impressive for some villains, and decidedly tongue-in-cheek.

** Averted by billionaire David Xanatos. Although some of his [[ThePlan rather clever schemes]] necessitate expending unimaginable sums of money (putting a medieval Scottish castle on top of the tallest building in the world, for example), it's only when he wants something he can't simply buy outright. On a normal day he uses his brilliance to run his corporate empire and make himself another fortune or two, only occasionally resorting to extremes like TimeTravel for self-enrichment.

* AdolfHitler almost single-handedly hauled Germany out of a recession and restored their sense of National Pride. During the World Cup, America was extremely impressed with how advanced Germany had become. Regardless of how the economy was developing unhealthily, Hitler ''still'' probably could have turned Germany into a world power thirty years earlier if he ''hadn't'' invaded Poland. [[AndThatsTerrible What a dick]]!

** In ''SonicColors'', he manages to grab several planets, build amusement parks and rides on them, and tethers them to the Earth with a SpaceElevator without affecting any planet's gravity. He broke so many rules of physics with the stunt alone, and the 3DS version implies it is a really fun park (in the Wii version, Sonic snuck his way in there the day before it opened.) If only Eggman wasn't using this as an excuse to harvest [[PoweredByAForsakenChild life energy from aliens]] to build a MindControl Ray to TakeOverTheWorld!

* In the Marvel comic ''Heroes for Hire'', a mercenary named Paladin breaks into a special armory where the props and weapons of various former gimmick villains are stored, seeking valuable weapons to both arm himself with and to sell. He comes across the "alchemy gun" of the former supervillain Chemistro, and comments amusedly that "This guy invented a gun that could turn lead into gold, and all he could think of was to rob banks with it". Moments later, he had a lightbulb moment, saying "Waitaminute -- this thing turns lead into gold... I'm good with just this!" and attempts to escape with it. Unfortunately, the gun is destroyed in the course of fighting his way out. He presumably was unaware of the fact that any object transmuted by the alchemy gun turns into dust after exposure to heat or after a certain amount of time.\\\

* Frank William Abagnale, Jr., the real-life inspiration behind Creator/LeonardoDiCaprio's character in ''Film/CatchMeIfYouCan'', went on to found and run a financial fraud consultancy company, preventing wannabe criminals from pulling off the same crimes he once did.

* During Prohibition, smugglers tended to modify their cars so they'd be better able to evade the police when pursued. Eventually, the smugglers started racing their cars against each other, and those races were the precursor to {{NASCAR}}.

* Many of the people who make Chinese bootleg videogames seem to be surprisingly talented -- while there're lots of terrible ones, there're also surprisingly well-made things like ''[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAQyH8C2Amg Barver Battle Saga]]'' (only a bootleg because it was made using assets from other games) and, more shockingly, an [[http://youtu.be/mXeCDwIl4Ew?t=27s NES version]] of ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger'' that goes all the way up to the fight with Magus.

* AdolfHitler almost single-handedly hauled Germany out of a recession and restored their sense of National Pride. During the World Cup, America was extremely impressed with how advanced Germany had become. Hitler probably could have turned Germany into a world power if he ''hadn't'' started gassing Jews and invading other countries. [[AndThatsTerrible What a dick]]!
** Germany's economy was developing in an unhealthy way in 1933-39. The needs of the military meant that the civilian sector economy suffered - it sucked up ever-increasing amounts of resources and (skilled) people that could otherwise have gone towards economic development. It only got worse after '39, and '43 was when things really went to shit. It's been argued that had it not been for the outset of WWII (and the acquisition of Polish, Dutch, Belgian and French assets - which only helped defer the problem of Germany's unsustainable level of military spending), Germany would have suffered an economic recession (if not ''collapse'') sometime in the '40s. Even had 'Operation Barbarossa' worked out (the absolute best-case scenario thereof being a ForeverWar against a Soviet Union entrenched in the Ural Mountains), the Greater Third Reich's economy still would've been in serious trouble within just a few more years of incredibly-expensive warfare.
** Also, the economy was being rebuilt at least partially on the slave labor of those in the concentration camps. [[CaptainObvious Who were not being counted in unemployment calculations.]]

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* The memoirs of one James Crosbie, a moderately notorious armed robber, describe a fairly impressive list of achievements; he held a responsible position at a Kenyan mining company and for a long while was running his own quite successful metalwork business. And yet despite having earned better money during those times -- to say nothing of ''not being on the run from the law'' -- he claims to have felt a much lesser sense of achievement from this than from robbing banks, despite the much greater failure rate, smaller financial returns and lengthy prison sentences. A better example of an UnreliableNarrator is hard to imagine....

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* As noted above, the TropeNamer [[Franchise/{{Superman}} Lex Luthor]] played this straight originally, and then subverted it when his character was given a ReTool. Some stories for both versions of Luthor suggest that the only reason he doesn't cut himself a check is because he ''hates'' Superman enough to devote everything into eliminating him.

* Averted with ''{{Wildstorm}}'' Universe villain Kaizen Gammora who sells battle-droids and pleasure robots to finance his country's terrorism.

** ''Film/{{Spider-Man Trilogy}}'': NormanOsborn becomes the Green Goblin when he tests an experimental formula on himself. He gains superpowers, but goes mad. It does allow him to operate the experimental armor and aircraft he was trying to sell to the military, which needed a working version of the formula to operate safely. So he uses it to destroy his competitor's project. And then kill his board of directors, when they try to kick him out of the company.

* ''{{WesternAnimation/Gargoyles}}''

* ''SupermanTheAnimatedSeries'' started out with a very interesting subversion. Lex Luthor was going to use a giant mech, something which was ''stated'' to cost millions of dollars to make, to make money illegally. However, Lex wasn't going to use it to rob the banks or other such schemes, he was secretly selling it to terrorists (who were paying him a ''billion'' dollars) knowing that the US government would later hire Luthor to design a better mech to fight the one the terrorists "stole". [[SpannerIntheWorks Superman ruined that scheme]].
* In an episode of SpongebobSquarepants, Plankton actually sold all of his evil inventions in order to get enough money to pay everyone in town to sign a petition to bulldoze the Krusty Krab. He even managed to buy Mr. Krab's signature... four times! The only person who didn't sign the petition was Spongebob, but he still had the majority on his side "and in a democracy, that's all you need'', so the Krusty Krab got bulldozed [[spoiler:one foot away so it would comply with the new law that says all fast food restaurants were at least 100 feet away from each other.]]

* Averted with AstroCity's Mock Turtle, who put his skills to creating PoweredArmor for a company, only for them to forbid him from piloting it, so he snapped and stole it.

* In the Comicbook/TeenTitans 1967 holiday Christmas special the 'bad guys' have a ray gun which makes broken down junk good as new. The use it to import junk from overseas cheaply, repair it fast and inexpensively and sell it at the price the items would normally sell at as new without having to pay any duty.
** To make things more unbelievable, everyone acts like this is something illegal when it's no different from someone buying a broken item, fixing it up and selling it on for more money. No point of what they are doing is illegal.

* Doctor Lovecraft in the ''{{Justice League|OfAmerica}}'' initially did legitimate work for his company, but when they pursued financial wrongdoing, they allowed him to pursue more dangerous experiments to create mutates to steal for the company. As these mutates later devolved out of sentience, this explains why he could not have gone public with his results.

** Another minor league supervillain, the Water Wizard, originally got the power to [[MakingASplash control water]] after a freak accident, but simply couldn't figure out what to do with it. It was only after a friend of his suggested he use his powers for crime that he became a supervillain, although he turned out to be an [[IncrediblyLamePun utter washout]] as a supervillain. He improved somewhat after changing his codename to Aqueduct, but not by much.

* ''Film/{{Spider-Man Trilogy}}'':
** Dr. Octopus is researching a new power source. In order to control it, he invents a system of mechanical arms that interface with his brain, have [[AIIsACrapshoot artificial intelligence]], are [[NighInvulnerability indestructible]], have the strength to throw cars, and never seem to need new batteries. Every aspect of the things would seem to merit a Nobel Prize, but Octavius and the rest of the world initially only treat them as a simple tool.
*** Considering that the new power source is ''controlled nuclear fusion'', the arms do sort of pale in comparison.

* A comment is offered in ''VanityFair'' about one character who is a stingy and sly aristocrat. The author notes that if he had been born in obscurity, he could have become a wealthy AmoralAttorney, but as a baronet, he does things like being so stingy his crops fail and engaging in constant law suits which while profitable when he wins are more frequently a financial drain.

* Subverted when, at the end of the ''[[TheRiftWarCycle Serpentwar Saga]]''. Dashel Jameson, Sheriff of Krondor, renounces his noble titles and becomes the Upright Man, leader of the Krondorian Thieves Guild, succeeding his late great-uncle, Lyle Rigger. His new second-in-command asks him why he's doing this, since as the son of a Duke and the younger brother of an Earl, there's no way he could make as much money as a thief as he could legitimately. He did it as a point of honor: he had promised a thief he had fallen in love with who had died protecting the city from Keshian raiders that he would look out for the thieves.

* One telling of ''Literature/HanselAndGretel'' outright states that the witch built her gingerbread house just to lure in children to eat. Apparently, it never occurred to her that being able to produce enough sweets to build a house from them ''in the middle of a famine'' could be a mighty profitable skill.
** Then again, kids are ''food'' for witches. Sure, they could make money by selling the candy, but if they eat kids, the money wouldn't do them much good -- they wouldn't be able to buy any at a store for dinner, after all, and who would sell them a spare kid to eat?

* Neal Caffrey of ''WhiteCollar'', similar to the real-life examples below, is said to be one of the best forgers in the world. His attempt at a sculpture, which was done relatively quickly, was not only declared authentic, but as the seminal example of the artist whose work he was copying (beating the pants off the attempts of the original artist's assistant/protege). If he had gone straight form the beginning, perhaps he'd be a world-class artist by now. But perhaps not; he's shown to have both a thieving bent and problems developing his own style. (He blames his DisappearedDad and family instability but that's just a cop-out.
* An unusual example would be [[GreenArrow Oliver Queen]] on ''{{Series/Smallville}}''. Being a billionaire, he develops tons of ridiculously advanced technology...[[HypocriticalHumor to rob the rich to give to the poor.]] He seems to have given up on that after a while and [[HeroWithBadPublicity concentrated on blowing up Lex Luthor's evil facilities]].

* During one ''[[GlobalGuardiansPBEMUniverse Global Guardians]]'' story, the heroic Achilles confronts the Emperor, leader of the criminal conspiracy known as Tarot, about this. He points out that Tarot has nearly unlimited financial resources and equipment and its own army, so why risk all of that trying to control the world's economy? The Emperor responds, "How do you think we got all those resources...", acknowledging that its expensive, trying to run a worldwide criminal empire.

* DarkwingDuck's enemy Quackerjack is smart enough to ''build a time machine'' but he uses it for really dumb reasons, like trying to prevent the yo-yo from being invented. (Of course, in his defense, he [[AxeCrazy completely insane]].

* Canadian Brian O'Dea built a multimillion-dollar marijuana smuggling ring in the 1980s and 1990s before he was arrested and imprisoned. After he served his sentence and got out of jail, he decided to get a legitimate job. He took out a series of ads in the ''National Post'', one of Canada's major national newspapers, advertising his services as a business manager. As proof of his skills, he cited his success in building up his dope empire. AndItWorked, since O'Dea received almost 600 job offers in response to his ad.

* George Marquardt, the "[[http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/1993/06/20/drug-wizard-of-wichita.html Drug Wizard of Wichita]]", pulled off some amazing things - not only did he manufacture massive amounts of Fentanyl, a drug similar to Heroin but a hundred times more potent, but during his carreer as a drug chemist developed an even stronger analogue called 3-methylfentanyl. He also manufactured AIDS medication for the uninsured just for the fun of it and supplied the key components for a nerve gas to some survivalists. A former colleague of his once said: "He should go on to college, but he seems to be convinced that he's too smart." At twenty, he was tried for and pleaded guilty to impersonating an officcial of the Atomic Energy Commission; his release is scheduled for 2014, and he has so far expressed no desire to stop doing what he always did.

** Also, the economy was being rebuilt at least partially on the slave labor of those in the concentration camps. Who were not being counted in unemployment calculations.

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** Also, the economy was being rebuilt at least partially on the slave labor of those in the concentration camps. Who were not being counted in unemployment calculations.[[/folder]]