History Main / WhammyBid

* In the Sabaody Archipelago arc of ''OnePiece'', a friend of the crew is captured and auctioned as a slave with a starting bid of 70 million Berries. The crew is confident that they can buy her back because they have 200 million Berries, but before they even get to speak, a [[AristocratsAreEvil Celestial Dragon]] buys her for 500 million, crushing their hopes.

* A slight variation occurs in {{Slayers}} Next when Lina and TheRival are one-upping each other bidding on an item Xellos (who doesn't want to sell) has, where Lina only raises her bid by one every time. When a flustered Xellos responds with the bid of 300! 301! that it's worth 300.000.000, Lina instantly accepts. The Whammy-part of that bid hits the auctioneer in this case.

* A pretty straight-forward example in GalleryFake. Fujita doubles the price on a Monet from $10 Million to $20 Million, despite the fact that he had a budget of $10 million.

* The Reality Tv show StorageWars has this as a tactic employed by the star bidders.

* You can do this in ''TheLegendOfZelda[[TheLegendOfZeldaTheWindWaker : The Wind Waker]]''. And it's the most effective tactic to keep opponents from bidding at all.
* In ''FinalFantasyVI'', there are certain items in the Jidoor auction house that you just can't win, no matter how cool they seem. You know you're looking at these items when a kid in the audience keeps piping up, demanding his dad get the item for him. No matter how much you bid, you'll eventually be beaten out when the kid's dad puts in a last-minute Whammy Bid, to the shock of everyone at the auction. Fortunately, these items are never useful in any conventional RPG sense, so completionists need not worry about the loss.

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* In ''PaintYourWagon'', a drunken Ben Rumson (Lee Marvin) sees a beautiful woman (in what had been a males-only gold mining camp) and promptly stumbles into the auction selling her. As soon as he figures out what's going on, he bellows, "Whatever the last bid was -- '''double it!'''" and passes out. This leaves the auctioneer to quickly convert the complicated previous bid (in cash, powder gold, tools, supplies, and livestock) down into a single amount and hit up Ben's Pardner (ClintEastwood) for the payment.

* In ''NorthByNorthwest'', the main character so violently insists upon his whammy bids that he gets arrested for disorderly conduct. Which [[{{Unishment}} gives him a police escort out of the place]].

* In ''GroundhogDay,'' the winning bid for [[spoiler:Phil in the climactic male auction]] is one of these.

* In the Sabaody arc of ''OnePiece'', a friend of the crew is captured and auctioned as a slave with a starting bid of 70 million Berries. The crew is confident that they can buy her back because they have 200 million Berries, but before they even get to speak, someone buys her for 500 million, crushing their hopes.

An {{Auction}} is happening, people are bidding in sensible increments and then, all of a sudden, someone puts in such a high bid that no one would dare bid against them. This can be an escalation of a bidding war or a total newcomer. The correct name for this kind of tactic is a Jump Bid and it can be very effective, or it can land you paying far more than you needed to. Used primarily for dramatic effect, either to highlight the value of the item (particularly if it was previously considered of low value or it has a secret use) or to dramatically introduce a character to a scene. Nothing says "I am rich and powerful, look this way" like doubling the bid for a teapot when the last bidder had just got to £900,000. Also very common in in BachelorAuction setups. A similar setup can occur in gambling, where a gambler tries to scare off the other gamblers with a huge wager.

Depending on the format of the auction this may or may not be possible in RealLife.
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!!Examples:

[[AC:{{Anime}} & {{Manga}}]]
* In the Sabaody arc of ''OnePiece'', a friend of the crew is captured and auctioned as a slave with a starting bid of 70 million Berries. The crew is confident that they can buy her back because they have 200 million Berries, but before they even get to speak, someone buys her for 500 million, crushing their hopes.
* A slight variation occurs in {{Slayers}} Next when Lina and TheRival are one-upping each other bidding on an item Xellos (who doesn't want to sell) has, where Lina only raises her bid by one every time. When a flustered Xellos responds with the bid of 300! 301! that it's worth 300.000.000, Lina instantly accepts. The Whammy-part of that bid hits the auctioneer in this case.
* Alex does this in ''LastExile'' during the auction of a very important PlotCoupon. As it happens, the BigBad is also bidding on the same item. The result is a series of escalating Whammy Bids that takes the price from 1 Million to 50 ''billion''. [[spoiler: Alex would have bid even more if it weren't for the gun pointed at his head.]]

[[AC:{{Film}}]]
* In ''GroundhogDay,'' the winning bid for [[spoiler:Phil in the climactic male auction]] is one of these.
* ''HudsonHawk''. At the auction of the da Vinci Sforza:
-->'''Auctioneer:''' We'll begin at $20 million...Thank you, sir. 20.5...
-->'''Darwin Mayflower:''' Waldo! 100 million clams!
-->'''Auctioneer:''' $100 million to Mr. Darwin Mayflower.
* ''{{Oklahoma}}!'' (1955): Will Parker (somewhat inadvertently) bids $50 for his girlfriend Ado Annie's picnic basket (which was a ''lot'' of money at the time the story was set). The previous bid was 90 cents. He's then immediately outbid (ItMakesSenseInContext) and doesn't pursue the picnic basket any further.
* Happens in the 1947 Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. film ''Film/SinbadTheSailor'', with the twist that Sinbad has already discouraged '''any''' bidding by depicting the ship being bid on as "cursed".
* In ''NorthByNorthwest'', the main character so violently insists upon his whammy bids that he gets arrested for disorderly conduct. Which [[{{Unishment}} gives him a police escort out of the place]].
* "[[BatmanAndRobin Seven million!]] [[BerserkButton Never leave the cave without it.]]"
* In ''PaintYourWagon'', a drunken Ben Rumson (Lee Marvin) sees a beautiful woman (in what had been a males-only gold mining camp) and promptly stumbles into the auction selling her. As soon as he figures out what's going on, he bellows, "Whatever the last bid was -- '''double it!'''" and passes out. This leaves the auctioneer to quickly convert the complicated previous bid (in cash, powder gold, tools, supplies, and livestock) down into a single amount and hit up Ben's Pardner (ClintEastwood) for the payment.

[[AC:{{Literature}}]]
* In ''TheHalfbloodChronicles'', Shana is being auctioned off by the elves. She's about to be sold for 200 gold pieces when a new bidder in Lord Dyran's livery bids 300. Twisted a bit, in that the ''real'' reason no one counter-bids is that no one is suicidal enough to cross Lord Dyran. [[spoiler:Twisted further, in that the bidder isn't one of Lord Dyran's men.]]
* Inverted in ''SoulKitchen''. After the underdog hero's limit of €200,000 has been easily matched by the evil property developer, a break in his concentration allows the hero to win with a ridiculously low increment of €15.
* ''Into the Void'' by Nigel Findley ([[{{Spelljammer}} The Cloakmaster Cycle]]) there was an item among others at a [[ForgottenRealms Nimbral]] auction that turned out to be mostly useless, but historically valuable artifact of {{Precursors}}. Then the Arcane entered and reminds everyone that the near-monopoly on spelljamming stuff made his kind obscenely rich. He counters current 600 (which is already too much for thing most humanoids cannot even use as a normal sword) with seven ''thousand'' gold pieces. What, someone's ready to buy it for 7,500? T'k'Pek just answers with 10,000.

[[AC:LiveActionTV]]
* Happened on an episode of ''StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'', where Q bid a million bars of gold-pressed latinum (about twice as high as anyone else).
* This happened on ''ArrestedDevelopment'' when Buster came in late and put in an obscenely high bid on [[BachelorAuction a date]] with his mother Lucille. Unfortunately he didn't realize that his mother wasn't up for bid at the time, it was next door neighbor [[PlanetOfSteves Lucille II]]. She thought it was a romantic gesture to show how much he cared for her.
** And in a later bachelorette auction, GOB also pulls a whammy bid... and also uses it on Lucille 2 instead of his mother.
* In ''PowerRangersLostGalaxy'', when the villains are auctioning off the Pink Ranger's quassar saber, [[PowerRangersInSpace Astronema]] [[spoiler: (actually, Karone)]] announces her presence this way. Then she immediately ups her bid to [[AnOfferYouCantRefuse "all of you get to live"]].
* The Reality Tv show StorageWars has this as a tactic employed by the star bidders.
* In ''{{Angel}}'' when Cordelia's [[EyeScream eyes]] are being bid on due to their prophetic powers, to stall she goads two bidders get into a war with each other, until eventually one kills the other. Then a Wolfram and Hart lawyer who'd been on the phone with her bosses presumably gets permission to bid, and wins the auction immediately.

[[AC:VideoGames]]
* You can do this in ''TheLegendOfZelda[[TheLegendOfZeldaTheWindWaker : The Wind Waker]]''. And it's the most effective tactic to keep opponents from bidding at all.
* In ''FinalFantasyVI'', there are certain items in the Jidoor auction house that you just can't win, no matter how cool they seem. You know you're looking at these items when a kid in the audience keeps piping up, demanding his dad get the item for him. No matter how much you bid, you'll eventually be beaten out when the kid's dad puts in a last-minute Whammy Bid, to the shock of everyone at the auction. Fortunately, these items are never useful in any conventional RPG sense, so completionists need not worry about the loss.

[[AC:WesternAnimation]]
* ''FamilyGuy'' has this happen in the episode where Peter is brainwashed into being cultured.
* During an auction for anchovies in ''{{Futurama}}'', Fry tries to one-up Mom with a bid of "one jillion dollars!", to the surprise of everyone. Except the auctioneer. "Sir, [[EleventyZillion that's not a number]]." Fry gives a replacement bid of one billion dollars, which still wins the auction.
* In ''BatmanTheAnimatedSeries'', an artifact of power once belonging to Morgan Le Fay is mixed in with an antiquities auction. Jason Blood, the human host of the demon {{Etrigan}}, and Klarion the Witch-Boy ([[InsistentTerminology dum, dum, dum]]) have a brief bidding war ending in the low six figures when Blood is forced to concede defeat. Bruce Wayne, who knows Blood, wins it for him with a sudden "One... million."
** Subverted in "Harlequinade:" A really big bomb is up for auction. The gangsters bid increasingly absurd amounts for it. And then they hear the Joker's voice: "How about nothing? That's right...I'm talking zero, zip, zilch, nada."

[[AC: RealLife]]
* A few of these were made in YoshikiHayashi's auction of a piano for the March 11, 2011 Japanese quake and tsunami relief effort. They took the price well into the millions of US dollars (''billions'' of yen) before the auction was taken down. [[DownerEnding The bidders were all]] {{Troll}}s, [[DownerEnding and the piano actually sold, when the auction resumed, for under $150,000.]].

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* Alex does this in ''LastExile'' during the auction of a very important PlotCoupon. As it happens, the BigBad is also bidding on the same item. The result is a series of escalating WhammyBids that takes the price from 1 Million to 50 ''billion''. [[spoiler: Alex would have bid even more if it weren't for the gun pointed at his head.]]

* A slight variation occurs in SlayersNext when Lina and TheRival are one-upping each other bidding on an item Xellos (who doesn't want to sell) has, where Lina only raises her bid by one every time. When a flustered Xellos responds with the bid of 300! 301! that it's worth 300.000.000, Lina instantly accepts. The Whammy-part of that bid hits the auctioneer in this case.

* Happens in the 1947 Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. film ''[[SinbadTheSailor1947 Sinbad the Sailor]]'', with the twist that Sinbad has already discouraged '''any''' bidding by depicting the ship being bid on as "cursed".

* A few of these were made in YoshikiHayashi's auction of a piano for the March 11, 2011 Japanese quake and tsunami relief effort. They took the price well into the millions of US dollars (''billions'' of yen) before the auction was taken down. [[DownerEnding The bidders were all]] {{Trolls}}, [[DownerEnding and the piano actually sold, when the auction resumed, for under $150,000.]].

* ''{{Oklahoma}}!'' (1955): Will Parker bids $50 for his girlfriend Ado Annie's picnic basket (which was a ''lot'' of money at the time the story was set). The previous bid was 90 cents.

* I ''think'' this happened on ''ArrestedDevelopment'' when Buster came in late and put in an obscenely high bid on [[BachelorAuction a date]] with his mother Lucille. Unfortunately he didn't realize that his mother wasn't up for bid at the time, it was next door neighbor [[PlanetOfSteves Lucille II]]. She thought it was a romantic gesture to show how much he cared for her.

* During an auction for anchovies in ''{{Futurama}}'', Fry tries to one-up Mom with a bid of "one jillion dollars!", to the surprise of everyone. Except the auctioneer. "Sir, [[EleventyZillion that's not a number]]."

* In ''BatmanTheAnimatedSeries'', an artifact of power once belonging to Morgan Le Fay is mixed in with an antiquities auction. Jason Blood, the human host of the demon Etrigan, and Morgan's CreepyChild son have a brief bidding war ending in the low six figures. Bruce Wayne, who knows Blood, wins it for him with a sudden "One... million."

* In ''PowerRangersLostGalaxy'', when the villains are auctioning off the Pink Ranger's quassar saber, [[PowerRangersInSpace Astronema]] [[spoiler: (actually, Karone)]] announces her presence this way. Then she immediately ups her bid to "all of you get to live".

** Immidiatly subverted when his wife comes in and out-bids him by a single dollar