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Dr. Venture: Okay, I see how it is. And what would you prescribe for... [brings out a ten-dollar bill] Alexander Hamilton?
Dr. Ernesto Guavara: Not much.

Hey, you. Yes you. I'm looking for some... information. What, you can't disclose that? Maybe this shiny new quarter would change your mind...

This is when a character tries to bribe somebody, but the bribe is either pathetically small or involves something of no conceivable value to the recipient. Common reactions include an incredulous stare, dismissive laughter, or even arresting them for attempted bribery. Alternatively, the recipient may enthusiastically accept the bribe, much to the amusement of the audience. (A once-common form of this variant involved Canadians being bribed in American currency, although economics can largely ruin any humor it holds.)

Common variations are:

  • Attempting to use Monopoly money or a minor coupon in place of real cash.
  • Doubling the payment of voluntary or forced labour, and when they refuse on the grounds that double of nothing is still nothing, the briber offers to triple the payment.
  • Bribing people with something they have in a great abundance, like offering a rock monster a rock you just found on the ground. Or something that isn't valuable or isn't even useful to their culture or situation, i.e. anything they'll call Worthless Yellow Rocks.

Sometimes gets inverted; the initial bribe is very large, at least by the standards of the person offering it. The other character refuses it but accepts something comparatively worthless instead, maybe even making the reduced counter-offer themselves. This is more likely to be a dramatic example than the normal way around— typically because the person taking the "bribe" has reasons of their own to do what's asked of them, but wants to make a statement of some sort with the token payment or because they have more need of the specified item than they do of the original offer (such as mobsters dealing in "favors"). A specific example common in the real world is taking a single dollar (or local equivalent) as payment for services rendered; this is done because both sides have to give something in order for a legal contract to exist. Such an absurdly small payment is referred to in legal parlance as a peppercorn after the rent paid yearly by the Freemasons of Bermuda for their meeting hall: a single grain of black pepper.

Can also apply to unusually small payments, tips, or demands. Note also that Ridiculous Future Inflation can make some older works appear to exhibit this trope when the bribe was actually pretty generous for the time. Usually Played for Laughs. Contrast Worthless Yellow Rocks, where the characters treat something as being less valuable than it is, rather than more valuable. Compare Not Rare Over There, where something is valuable to someone, but only because they need it and can't find it, Comically Small Demand, and Sold His Soul for a Donut, where someone sells their soul for something comically insignificant. Compare Lint Value, where someone offers to pay for something with an incredibly small amount of money, usually because it's all they have.


Examples:

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    Advertising 
  • A commercial for the now-defunct Pets.com company had their sock puppet mascot attempt to get into an apartment building by bribing the doorman with $3, quickly upped to $4 when the doorman seems to be seriously considering it.
  • A commercial for 10-10-220 had French Stewart bribing a Maître d' with $1. It doesn't work until after Stewart explains the service.
  • A Cheetos commercial has a hotel resident attempt to bribe an employee to let them use floats in the pool with three Cheetos Mix-Ups. It doesn't work...until he adds the fourth Mix-Up.

    Anime & Manga 
  • After God: The staff tries to prevent Tokinaga from interfering with Waka's combat test. Once he agrees to bring Lancome lotion, they suddenly act as if they can't see him.
  • In Aho Girl, Yoshiko offers the Disciplinary Committee Chairwoman money to feel her boobs For Science!... a whopping 10 yen.note 
  • Death Note
    • When L is explaining that he's actually Eraldo Coil, he turns to Mogi and with absolute seriousness says, "I'll give you this strawberry if you keep it a secret." Mogi puts the strawberry in his pocket.
    • In the bonus chapter included in the "How To Read" book, the Shinigami King has reversed the "no new Death Notes" rule he put into place in reaction to Ryuk's shenanigans. Now, he'll give them out for two apples from Earth. Even beyond the fact that apples aren't exactly expensive or uncommon, shinigami are invisible and able to become intangible at will; it'd be trivially easy for any of them to just steal any number of apples.
  • Played straight in an episode of Dragon Ball where Master Roshi attempts to buy one of the Dragon Balls from a gang of thieves. He offers what he has in his wallet: three cents and a coupon for a beer. Cue Facepalm from Tien, Chiaotzu, and the bandits.
  • At one point in Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai, when Chu still harbors a crush on Maam, he offers to pay Pop two gold piecesnote  to get Pop to separate himself from Maam for good. Pop shows his "appreciation" by smacking Chu upside his head.
    Pop: Where the Hell did you learn this worthless kind of stuff, you damn mouse?!
  • Food Wars!: Erina Nakiri typically demands an exorbitant consultation fee to test anyone's food and provide feedback, and she says this to protagonist Soma Yukihira to force him to leave her house. However, when Soma makes an off-hand remark that someone in the dorm has all of the volumes of a shojo manga she's reading, she agrees to taste his food if he lends her the remaining volumes since she doesn’t know where to get them by herself.
  • In Gintama, Gintoki often tries to get people to do things by promising to give them 300 yen, which is about $2.50 USD.
  • In an early chapter of Kaguya-sama: Love Is War, Fujiwara tries to get Shirogane to give the Tabletop Gaming Club a bigger budget by offering him a soda (as in, a single can of Coke). Shirogane just replies "You really are a politician's daughter."
  • 'Tis Time for "Torture," Princess: Many of the "tortures" inflicted on the Princess involve bribing her with simple pleasures she was denied due to her strict upbringing, such as video games or delicious food.
  • In The Way of the Househusband, after being stopped by police on his way to bring his wife her lunch, Tatsu attempts to bribe them with a coupon.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! R zigzags it. Yako's bounty for defeating Yugi and Kaiba is a sizable $100,000 each. Meanwhile, his initially offered bounty for defeating Jonouchi, a Duelist Kingdom finalist and Battle City semi-finalist, is a paltry $10. Jonouchi isn't happy when Tilla informs him of this.
    Jonouchi: *thinking to himself* I hate you, Yako...

    Comedy 
  • Larry the Cable Guy has a bit where he tipped a Hooters waitress with monopoly money.
    Waitress: That's fake money!
    Larry: Them's fake titties!
  • Mitch Hedberg once joked about stealing the gold "M" from the sign outside an improv venue that stiffed him on his fee, only to find that cash would've been better when he tries to rent a hotel room with it:
    Hotel Clerk: "No, what the fuck would I want a gold 'M' for?"
    Mitch: *turns hand upward* "...Then how about a gold 'W'?"

    Comic Books 
  • Swedish comics writer/artist Jan Berglin once drew a comic about why Sweden never gets to host the Olympics, with a lobbyist trying to bribe an official with a box containing a crystal vase and a painted wooden Dala horse. The official rightly assumes it's a badly thought-out prank.
  • One Boba Fett comic has Fett tip a worker on a starship for information, who sarcastically says, "Ten whole credits? My, sir, wouldn't want you to leave yourself short or anything..." Since the value of credits is a bit inconsistent, we can only assume that he was expecting more.
  • In Fables the Nome King has conquered Oz and the surrounding lands. The rebels decide to offer a reward for the Nome King's capture and/or assassination but they have no money or treasure. Instead decide to use this as a way to humiliate the Nome King and offer two lollipops as the entire reward. They then plaster Wanted posters to that effect all over the kingdom. The Nome King's overreaction to this insult brings on his downfall.
  • Futurama: When the DOOP president comes to Planet Express, asking them to go find a missing Zapp Brannigan, they're reluctant until she offers them a generous bonus of twice their usual fee. This is enough to convince Bender to hold Leela at gunpoint all the way to Zapp's last location (in case she tries killing them or herself to get away). As Kif reveals, this bonus amounts to a whole twenty dollars.
  • Iznogoud: Iznogoud's attempt to convince a meteorologist into helping him.
    Iznogoud: I'll shower you with gold... [shows a coin] that much gold!
  • In Nextwave, a representative of the Beyond Corporation tries to buy unlimited leasing rights to the Faceless Ones from Dread Rorkannu, Lord of the Dim Dimension for one hundred (American) dollars. Dread Rorkannu holds out for $100 and pictures of Suicide Girls.
  • Noob has Gaea get trapped in a hard-to-reach prison cell. She gets so desperate for getting out that she announces that she'll offer two credits to whoever sets her free. In the Fictional Video Game in which the story is set, a Fetch Quest reward is a few hundred credits.
  • Disney Ducks Comic Universe: In the Don Rosa story "The Quest for Sampo", the Finnish guardian of the underworld, Tuoni, visits Scrooge's office to give him back his hat. Never one to waste an opportunity, Scrooge asks if there is some way he can take his wealth with him when he eventually passes away. Tuoni responds that such secrets are not for mortal ken... but he'll say it for 50 markka (about 10 USD). Naturally, this is too much, and Scrooge has Donald kick Tuoni out of his office.
  • The Simpsons: In order to convince Homer to become a wrestler, Mr. Burns tells Smithers to offer to half Homer's pay then multiply it by two, then raise it by three dollars a month. Homer accepts. ("Hello, upper-lower middle class!")
  • Spider-Man: A variation in The Spectacular Spider-Man #256. The White Rabbit once tried to ransom Grizzly and Gibbon to the city for one billion dollars. The mayor made what he considered a fair counter-offered for the pair: $2.50.

    Comic Strips 
  • FoxTrot:
    • Roger has no concept of an appropriate tip, instead tipping the paperboy with a Shiny New Nickel and then wondering why the paper always ends up on the roof or in the rosebushes.
    • He also does stuff like having Peter mow the lawn. When he offers to pay him, he then asks, "Can you break a dollar?" Obviously this wasn't worth it.
      Peter: The lawn is mown. I hope you're happy.
      Roger: Let's see... can you break a dollar?
      Peter: ...now let's talk about how I feel.
      Roger: Oh what the heck, keep the whole thing! You've earned it!
    • It's somewhat of a running gag since he only pays Peter five cents a hole to caddy his golf clubs.
    • Peter himself is similarly oblivious to an appropriate tip. In one strip, Peter does a complex order for a coffee (basically stating one cappuccino without any ingredients), and then paying him $2.00 and telling the clerk to keep the change (the amount was $1.97). Peter admits to Jason that he was being annoying, explaining that this was the reason he tipped him. Cue the three pennies being thrown towards Peter's head offscreen.
  • One of Garfield's Fine Dining Faux Pas in the 8th Garfield Treasury is bribing the maitre d' with a roll of nickels (which, if it's standard size, would be two bucks).
  • Dean the pig of Liberty Meadows attempts to bribe Frank the veterinarian into giving him liposuction with five dollars; he subsequently ups this to ten dollars.
  • Pearls Before Swine:
    • Rat and Pig tip the maitre d' a bribe to get a good table at a fancy restaurant. The next panel shows them sitting with their plates on the floor right outside the kitchen doors.
      Rat: Maybe I should try something bigger than a quarter next time.
    • Or the time when the Crocs offered Zebra french fries and a milkshake for his life.
  • Subverted in one Retail strip: it looks like a customer is trying to bribe Donnie with a penny to let him in after the store closes, but then he just flings it at Donnie's eye, distracting him long enough for the customer to sneak in.
  • The 1965-2007 comic strip Tumbleweeds has a character named Judge Frump, who is so corrupt that he is often seen taking ridiculously small bribes. He once boasted that he cannot be bought, but he's open for "rental fees".

    Fan Works 
  • Alucard Naruto: While it succeeds, the bribe Kakashi offers the vampiric Naruto to become a ninja is a copy of Icha-Icha. It works because Naruto wants to know the ending and realizes that if he returns to his cell and waits until the walls crumble, the book would be worn away to dust. Therefore, Naruto has to become a ninja to stay out of his cell so he can keep reading.
  • In Big Human on Campus, Richard tries to entice Ranma into becoming his bitc... aide (which would be very dangerous considering the guy is an Evil Sorcerer who will kill his students for the most minor offenses) by offering resources, power, and babes in slutty armor, all of which Ranma nonchalantly declines. Ranma only accepts the position after Richard offers an automatic "A" on all homework assignments.
  • Blood Meridian with extra sprinkles: Judge Holden says that if The Man gives in to the side of war and hatred, he can have an Oreo cookie. The Man rejects it because he is a diabetic.
  • The Death God Alliance: Nico's offer to Anubis so the god lets him talk with Percy alone? A Happy Meal. Later upgraded to two Happy Meals. Fails hilariously because Anubis never heard about McDonald's.
  • Death Note: The Abridged Series (kpts4tv): Near offers to share his satellite feed if Light agrees to pay him in LEGOs.
  • Equestria Girls: A Fairly Odd Friendship: Timmy giving two WHOLE...cookies to Shallowgrave to get him to look the other way. He happily takes the deal.
  • Fashion Upgrade (Miraculous Ladybug): Lila tries to get Alicia to look the other way from her planned sabotage by offering her all the money she's got on hand: twenty euros. Alicia just laughs at her.
  • Harry Potter and the Natural 20: Milo tries bribing a Muggle police officer with 500 pounds of salt because he doesn't have any pounds and the Player's Handbook states that transactions can use "trade goods" when money isn't available.

  • The Hyde Factor: Kim's evil alter-ego Faye has the foresight to bribe DNAmy (the only person to know the Hyde serum's formula, and thus the only one who could potentially cure Kim's transformations into Faye) to not help Kim... with a rare Cuddlebuddy. With vials of Faye's blood hidden in it.
  • The Keys Stand Alone: The Soft World: A variation. Hoping that the mine-robbers have the amulet the four are desperate to get, Paul offers them 50,000 Swords for what has been described as a god-level artifact. This in a world where a nice dining room set costs 14,000 Swords!
    • To be fair, this was nearly all the money that the four had at that point, and they really didn't expect to buy it for so little, or that the mine-robbers even had it. (They didn't.) Paul was mostly hoping he could lure the mine-robbers into attacking him, so the four could defeat them and take their stuff and sort through it to see if they had the amulet. Combat ensued, naturally.
  • Lies, Damn Lies, And Statistics: The bribe that Celestia offers to Chartreuse for a better deal? Cookies. Chartreuse is rather offended.
  • A Man of Honor: Adam offers 10,000 lien to Jaune for any worth while information he can offer on Team RWBY. Jaune, who is A) Already a made man for the Torchwick crime family and making much more then ten thousand lien per week and B) does not like nor trust Adam, can only inwardly scoff at Adam offering such a paltry amount.
  • A Man of Iron: The Wise Masters of Yunkai attempt to bribe Daenerys into leaving them alone with a few chests of gold bars. But by this point Dany has completely sacked Astapor and seized everything valuable not nailed down, and therefore laughs off their offer.
  • Mythos Effect: Zig-zagged. When the humans receive the first offer of ten billion credits as part of the peace settlement after the Battle of Shanxi (in which humanity won decisively), they think it's a bit on the low end but fairly reasonable. Then they flip to page two; the offered settlement is contingent on the destruction of all arcanotechnology and complete change to Element Zero-based technologies (which amounts to at the very least full decommission of the entire Human military machine, and quite likely a complete implosion of Earth's economy). This quite unsurprisingly insults Nazzadi and Human alike, and Ambassador Sparatus' Cultural Posturing all but ensures war will explode.
  • Naruto: The Abridged Comedy Fandub Spoof Series Show: A Running Gag is many unconnected characters attempting to bribe people (often successfully) with "some paperclips and a Subway coupon". This doubles as a reference to the original series, where Tayuya talks Sasuke into joining Orochimaru with some paper clips and a Subway coupon.

  • Queen of Shadows: Shendu's "gift" to Jade at the Shadowkhan's "victorious conquest of Kyushu" banquet consists of three gold coins. The Grand Eunuch tries to play it off as a great gesture since dragons usually guard their treasure so jealously, but Jade and Hiruzen clearly see the insult and disrespect in so little being offered. The Eunuch dismissively referring to the Shadowkhan as if they're vassals of Shendu instead of an independent power doesn't help.
  • RainbowDoubleDash's Lunaverse: At one point in Carrot Top Season, the Flim Flam brothers bribe Applebloom with a pinecone. Justified by the facts that 1: One of the brothers had cast a Want It Need It spell on the pinecone and 2: the brothers were very much winging it by this stage of the fic, as several of their schemes had already backfired.

  • At the end of Rocketship Voyager, Captain Janeway is incredulous to find that certain members of her crew bought the secret of Faster-Than-Light Travel in exchange for some entertainment videos from the ship's library. She's told that they didn't actually buy the technology; they just used the vids to bribe the people manning the security monitors so they could steal it.
  • The Sage's Disciple: Aozaki Touko was fully prepared to offer her firstborn or second child to Crow when she found out he learned Primeval Runes from Cu Chulainn. What Crow wanted? To work as her bodyguard. Compared to what Touko offered, Crow offered the puppet magus peanuts in exchange... Until you think about what exactly he gets out of the deal. After the Grail War, the only thing that had changed from before it was that Crow had some magecraft under his belt and some more money. By working as Touko's bodyguard, he effectively gained a base of operations to work out of (as temporary as it is), basic necessities (food, shelter, income), the protection provided by Touko's reputation, and access to a magus that would be willing to teach him the basics he had completely bypassed to learn his Rune Magic. To a traditional magus, it is indeed peanuts. But to someone focused on surviving? Crow got everything he wanted out of the bargain.
  • Second Wind: Luffy's offer to make Mr. 2 betray Crocodile? "I'll be your friend." And it works.
  • Sonic and Sash: Tides of Chaos: Carol offered a jewelry store owner a few crystal shards in exchange for a Chaos Emerald, and she actually succeeds.

  • The Stars Revolt: A case where it almost works occurs when the human Andrew Shepherd almost makes Nightmare Moon abandon her plots in exchange for belly rubs and head scratches, only to be interrupted by the Mane Six coming to save the day. The sequel heavily implies such things are literally orgasmic for ponies.
  • the superhero game: Jason convinces Klarion to turn everyone back to normal by offering him a bag of Alfred's chocolate chip cookies. To be fair, they were really good cookies.
  • Sweetie Belle: Blackjack Dealer. Yay!: Upon learning Sweetie Belle got a job at a casino, Rarity storms into the owner's office and tears him a new one, until he offers that family of employees get half off on the buffet on Fridays, causing her to pull a 180.
    Rarity: I don’t know what it is you think you’re doing, but Sweetie Belle is my sister! You are going to abandon whatever sick, twisted plan you have for her or I will shove my hoof so far up your plot that you will need a royal decree from Celestia herself to remove it! I will burn this place to ashes and then I will burn those ashes! I WILL BUCK YOU UP!
    Royal Flush: Umm employee families get half off our buffet on Fridays?
    Rarity: Oh, well that sounds lovely. Never mind then. Have fun Sweetie.
  • Thank You: Initially, Aizawa put Midoriya's and Yaoyorozu's rooms in the dormitory as distant as possible. Mina persuades him to put them on the same floor by offering him a new sleeping bag.
  • Total Drama Comeback Series: During the fanservice cruise challenge, Izzy tried to convince Noah to make out with Cody by giving him... one dollar. She laters raises her bribe to the astronomically high amount of... five dollars.
  • Toward A Bright Future: After Y/N and Eri are kidnapped by Overhaul's faction, an assisting Toga offers to give Y/N her gadgets back to give them a chance to escape, if she gets to keep the cat-shaped backpack they were in.
  • Ultra Fast Pony uses this for a one-two punch.
    • First, in "The Penny and Clyde Show", it gets inverted:
      Discord: Applejack, I want you to betray Twilight.
      Applejack: How dare you! I would never betray my friends for no reason.
      Discord: I'll give you a neverending apple!
      Applejack: Ha, the joke's on you! I'da betrayed Twilight for just a regular apple!
      Discord: Oh, whatever.
    • Then in the next episode, Twilight has to up the ante to get AJ back on her side.
      Twilight: Applejack! I need you to break your deal with Discord. And as payment, I will give you a regular apple!
      Applejack: What, you think I'd go back on a deal just for one regular apple? What kind of pony do you think I am?
      Twilight: Two regular apples!
      Applejack: Yeah! Let's go kill Discord!

    Films — Animation 
  • Played for Laughs in Batman and Harley Quinn when Harley's ... er, digestive problems become too much for the Dynamic Duo to bear, Batman pulls over at a gas station so Harley can relieve herself. Nightwing offers Batman $10 to floor it without her, apparently forgetting that Batman is a billionaire.
  • In Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, during an early food shower, the mayor pulls Flint aside, asks him if he can "do lunch," and tucks a strip of bacon into his labcoat pocket. The same bacon that is currently falling from the sky.
  • In Leroy & Stitch, Lilo tries to get 625 (who she later names "Reuben") to let her use his interstellar communicator by offering him a sandwich. 625 makes, gives away, and eats sandwiches all the time... but he accepts the bribe because no one has ever made sandwiches for him, so he's actually touched by the offer.
  • In Monsters, Inc., Mike tries bribing Fungus to let him go when he's about to get used a test subject for the Scream Extractor, making this overlap with Death by Materialism (although it's possible no bribe would have saved him, given that Randall was the one calling the shots for Fungus):
    Mike: You like cars? Because I got a really nice car. You let me go, I'll give you... a ride... in the car.
  • Rio 2: After Big Boss is defeated, he offers the snake who's about to eat him a lollipop.
  • Tom and Jerry's Giant Adventure: The giant is furious when the fairy-tale characters offer their pumpkin harvest as protection money, as he only eats people, and he (correctly) suspects that there's still some treasure that they're holding out on him.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • In Avengers: Endgame, Rocket manages to convince a depressed/fat/alcoholic Thor to join the plan by promising him beer.
  • Captain Phillips: The pirates see Phillips' offer of $30,000.00 (all the cash in the ship's safe) as this. In real life, Phillips didn't even offer the cash until much later because he knew they'd laugh at such a measly sum.
  • The Crazies (2010): The principal tries to give David free snacks at the high school baseball games to get out of paying his parking tickets.
  • Dirty Work:
    Mitch: Hey, homeless guys! I'll tell ya what. I'll give you a dollar each if you'll go into this building here and run around yellin' and screamin'.
    Homeless Guy #1: Uh, that's very nice, but I think what you probably need are, like, some psycho, out-of-control homeless guys?
    Homeless Guy #2: Yeah, we're more the broken, spiritless, I've-lost-the-will-to-live type homeless guys.
    Mitch: How about for two dollars?
    [Homeless Guys run into the building screaming]
  • A very literal example appears in DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story. The bribe is $100,000, which isn't a small amount of money, but it takes up a comically small amount of space inside the briefcase it's presented in.
  • In Easy A, Olive is usually paid for pretending to have sex with people in gift cards from various stores. The lowest price she ever accepts is soon-to-expire vouchers for the foreign language arthouse cinema.
  • In For Your Eyes Only, when James Bond is about to execute a faceless, unnamed villain who is heavily implied to be Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the anonymous crook tries to bargain with his life by offering to buy 007 "a delicatessen! In stainless steel!" For a multitude of obvious reasons, Bond rejects the offer and drops the guy down a smokestack. If indeed that was Blofeld, his paltry attempt at a bribe implies that either he'd fallen on hard times since the last time we saw him, it's a patently ridiculous and inappropriate moment for applying double-talk or he's such a cheapskate he can't help but lowball the vengeful assassin about to kill him.
  • In Game Night, Ryan and Sarah try to bribe an employee of the interactive murder mystery game they're trying to solve to find out what the final clue is. When the employee turns out to be reluctant, Ryan — who is not overly bright — begins slapping down bills... but it turns out he only has $17 in total, so tries to compensate for the paltry sum of cash by dramatically sliding them across the table towards her. This unsurprisingly doesn't go down so well, and it gets to the point when he's inching a dollar bill across the table at an agonizingly slow pace that Sarah finally explodes and points out that it's the pathetic amount of money that's the problem, not the speed at which it is being passed over. Sarah is subsequently forced to contribute a $100 bill, and Ryan is a little put-out when the employee takes his $17 as well.
  • The movie doesn't call attention to it, but the bribe Happy Gilmore offers so the nursing home would take extra-special care of his beloved grandma is a single wrinkled Washington. Could be why the evil orderly wouldn't accept it.
  • At the end of Knives Out, Richard attempts to bribe the police to stop them from arresting his son Ransom for murder with the money in his wallet, which looks to be a few hundred dollars at the most. Unsurprisingly, they don't take it.
  • A rare dramatic example kicks off the plot of The Last Boy Scout: the Big Bad attempts to bribe the state's Governor so the villains' attempt to monopolize gambling will be legal, but the Governor rejects the bribe because it wasn't high enough. The Big Bad decides on a cheaper solution: assassinate the Governor during the Super Bowl.
  • Last Holiday: Georgia Byrd's Pointy-Haired Boss tries to stop her from leaving because she was wrongly diagnosed as terminally ill and has decided to live her last days fully... the fact that when she decided to announce it to him, he pissed her off by announcing that he never told her she was one of the best employees of the store in an attempt to keep her from asking for a promotion or demanding a raise didn't help any by offering her a raise... of $1.50 per hour (and he started at only thirty cents. That was his "final offer" by the time she was right at the store's door).
  • In Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising, when Dean Gladstone refuses to do anything about Kappa Nu, Kelly slides a handful of change across the desk to her and says "Here's a little something to change your mind." The Dean pockets the change, but when Kelly asks if they have a deal, Dean Gladstone says no.
  • A Night at the Roxbury: After the doorman (Michael Clarke Duncan) of the titular club checks his list and tells the Butabi brothers that they aren't on it, they drop a few small bills and even pocket change on the doorman's clipboard. He turns over the clipboard to dump the money on the ground.
  • The Old Man in Ollie Hopnoodle's Haven of Bliss (a semi-obscure TV movie starring the Parker family from A Christmas Story) has to bribe a wealthy dowager with $5 to get their lost dog back, who she'd found and adopted. It's a decent chunk of change to him but certainly not to her, yet the lady happily accepts the trade anyway:
    Ralphie: "Aha, a big fat 5-spot! One thing about the rich: They never miss a chance to add to the pile."
  • Inverted in Once Upon a Time in Mexico: Sands initially offers Belini a bribe of $50,000, but Belini only agrees to $10,000. As he explains his reasoning, $50,000 is a lot of money for what Sands was asking for, and he is just as likely to kill him as actually hand over the money. Belini decides that $10,000 is a "reasonable" amount, something that both men could live with, and not worth any betrayal over. Sands does muse that $10,000 might still be too much, but is pushed to kill Belini for completely unrelated reasons during their final meeting.
  • Randle McMurphy gets busted by the night orderly Turkle in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest as he's trying to sneak the prostitutes into the asylum for the Christmas party. Turkle at first turns down Randle's $20 bribe to unlock the window, but after some bargaining they eventually agree to throw in a bottle of wine & one of the girls as well.
  • In One, Two, Three MacNamara gets the East German border guards at the Brandenburg Gate to wave his car through and not ask inconvenient questions by giving them ... a six-pack of Coca-Cola.
  • The original version of The Producers plays with this; on opening night for his deliberately bad musical, Max spots the most influential theater critic in town and offers him a bribe — $20 — in exchange for a good review. The critic storms off in a huff, offended by both the offer and the miserly amount...but that's exactly what Max wants, as part of his gambit to help Springtime for Hitler fail by way of a Bribe Backfire. But what was intended as the final nail in the coffin, has no effect...
  • Rosemary's Baby: What does Guy get for letting Satan rape and impregnate his wife? A part in a play. However, it is pointed out that while the part is small, it's an important one, the kind critics and cognoscenti notice, and the troupe is a highly respected one. While it may not be much on its own, success here could easily be a stepping-stone to a very successful career.
  • Scream 3 has an example of higher value than most on this page:
    Bianca: I don't work for the cops, sweetie. I work for the studio.
    Gale: Really, well, would you work for [places a $50 bill on her desk] the president?
    Bianca: The president [pushes it back] of the studio.
    Jennifer: Fifty dollars? Who are you, a reporter for Woodsboro High? [she removes a ring and places it on Bianca's desk] It's worth two grand! Now are you gonna help Gale Weathers or not?
  • At the end of Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), one of the US generals who first hired Robotnik shows up to thank Tom for keeping quiet about the whole business with Robotnik and hands him an envelope that clearly contains hush money. The buildup implies that the contents are quite significant, only for it to turn out to be a $50 Olive Garden gift card.
  • In Strange Brew, a doughnut is used as a bribe. It was a jelly, eh.
  • In Superbad after a driver hits Seth he offers him seven dollars as a bribe to shush him, Seth insults him and asks a not-too-happy rhetorical question, "What are you, a six-year-old?" given that the driver is a full-grown man who should already be working a job to pay for his car.
  • Swingers: As part of his deliberately cheesy pick-up routine, Trent promises the cocktil waitress a shiny 50 cent piece if she brings their drinks quickly.
  • Jackie Chan in The Tuxedo attempts to slip himself and Jennifer Love Hewitt into a club with seven dollars.
    Bouncer: Name?
    Jimmy: Um... Lincoln, Washington... and Washington.
    (afterward)
    Del: You're a billionaire and you try to grease the guy with seven bucks?
  • In The Wing or the Thigh, Charles Duchemin tries to buy information from the spy that was captured trying to steal next year's Duchemin Guide with... 200 francs. It's so ridiculously stingy, the spy bursts out laughing (he's being paid millions for the yet-unpublished guide).

    Literature 
  • In The Bible, Jacob cheats his older brother Esau from his inheritance when Esau returns from a hunt famished. Jacob offers a trade of Esau's birthright for a bowl of stewnote . And Esau agrees.
  • Subverted in The Candidates (based on a true country). Duke Hatchet tries to bribe Kimmy Faimwhorre with $200 to keep her quiet about her affair with a presidential candidate. She's insulted and outraged - and declares that she'd never settle for less than $500! note 
  • In the seventh Captain Underpants book, the kids write a comic that opens with a lament about how out of touch old people are. Among other reasons, one of their complaints is that they have no idea how much things cost, illustrated by a grandpa giving his kid a nickel saying "why don't you buy a video game with it?" This is inverted when the villains of the comic create "Robo-grannies", who give their kids $100 to buy a candy bar.
  • In Death of Antagonis, the xeno temples are bribed to work by pouring blood into them, but the amounts necessary are amazingly small - a planet-sized bell starts working after getting fifty slaves' worth.
  • Discworld series
    • In Terry Pratchett's Making Money, Cosmo Lavish offers Moist von Lipwig ten thousand dollars in exchange for Mr. Fusspot, getting a rather indignant reaction. (Moist will get twice that per year just for not selling him, and that's without considering the associated contract with the Guild of Assassins.) Lampshaded later on during the scenes in which Cosmo talks with other Lavish relatives - he deliberately offered this in an effort to get Moist to underestimate him.
      How dare he try to bribe me, thought Moist. In fact, that was his second thought, that of the soon-to-be wearer of a gold-ish chain. His first thought, courtesy of the old Moist, was: how dare he try to bribe me so small.
    • In Unseen Academicals Glenda is able to get her way into the palace and see the ruler of the city by bribing the guards with pie. This is a subversion, however, because A) Glenda is a Supreme Chef whose pies are fantastic and B) Lord Vetinari specifically instructed the guards to accept (and report) any and all bribes, no matter how small. (They're also ordered to destroy the food, obviously. In this case, Vetinati laments that it was possibly some kind of crime and that no member of Glenda's family would ever try to poison someone out of respect for the food.)
  • In the novelization of Fierce Creatures, the Corrupt Corporate Executive (an Expy of Rupert Murdoch) laughingly repeats a quote he attributes to Napoleon: "The surprising thing is not that every man has his price, but how low it is."
  • Two of the John Putnam Thatcher novels (Murder to Go and Green Grow the Dollars) contain in-universe examples and police officers who can't figure out why the bribe recipient was willing to accept so small a payoff for their action. In both, the bribe givers were trying to hit a balance between "not enough to get the job done" and "so much they'll know something's up", helped by a certain amount of lying — the payoffs were reasonable for what the bribe recipients thought was going on.
  • In the Nero Wolfe book Too Many Clients, a teenager blackmails a rich and famous actress she saw having an affair for just $5.00 a month and theater tickets.
  • Spy School: Warren was only paid $250 for betraying everyone else to Spyder, although Ben suspects that personal pettiness also played a role in that betrayal.
  • In the Star Wars Expanded Universe:
    • Wraith Squadron has Face, in disguise as a stereotypical bumpkin on a once-in-a-lifetime trip to a more civilized world, giving a customs officer one whole credit in exchange for information about where he might go looking for "brides". The whole thing is hilarious.
    • The bribe is "insultingly" small rather than comical, but in the Hand of Thrawn duology, two Imperial saboteurs go to Bothawui pretending to be small-time merchants trying to make a quick credit. They reinforce this impression with a small bribe to get their stock through customs quickly.
    • A variation in Vortex when Lando calls in a senator's gambling debt for a favor. To everyone's astonishment, the senator only owes a paltry twenty-five credits. Not twenty-five-thousand, just twenty-five. When called out the senator begrudgingly admits that while he doesn't play high-stakes given his position, to a true sabacc player a debt's a debt.
  • In Supervillainous!: Confessions of a Costumed Evil-doer, The Salesman successfully breaks into a secure compound by trading the September 1998 issue of Vibe magazine in exchange for all their guns. To be fair that's his entire power.
  • Vorkosigan Saga:
    • In the short story "The Mountains of Mourning", a woman tries to bribe a Vorkosigan armsman to let her in to see Count Vorkosigan with all the money she has on her — $1.20. Miles, seeing enough of the incident to know that that woman is trying to get in so that she can petition the count to send a criminal investigator to her village over a matter of justice (something that as a subject of the Vorkosigan District, she had the legal right to do), lets her in without any money changing hands.
    • The inverted version occurs in Labyrinth. A refugee from Jackson's Whole hands Miles and Bel Thorne her entire life's savings in cash, hoping it will be enough to engage them as mercenaries to get her off the planet. Bel tells her the price is wrong— then peels one single dollar off the stack, hands her back the rest, and tells her this is more like it. Needless to say, It's Personal for Captain Thorne.
  • Rivers of London: After having his inhibitions magically removed during a riot, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Folsom goes on a rant about the "good old days" of London policing and says that they were so corrupt in those days that they could be bought incredibly cheaply.
    "We weren’t even that expensive! We’d let some scrote go for two pints of lager and a packet of crisps!"

    Live-Action TV 
  • The $1.98 Beauty Show was a comedy Game Show mocking beauty pageants, in which the grand prize was Exactly What It Says on the Tin: $1.98. In change. And a "bouquet" of carrots.
  • 30 Rock has Jack Donaghy offer Josh a comically small contract negotiation offer of $1 for a year of comedy work. Josh is so intimidated by Jack's negotiation skills that he almost takes it.
  • An episode of The Amanda Show had a security guard refusing to let somebody in when offered diamonds or cash... but he let them in for a slice of pizza.
  • Angel:
    • Cordelia tries it to prevent Angel from using his "patented burst of violence" to get past a security guard.
      Cordelia: I think I might have an approach that is a little more subtle. [to guard] Hey! Do you like bribes?
      Guard: Do I ever!
      Cordelia: Well, we really wanna go backstage.
      Guard: Yeah, okay, but this isn't so much a bribe as it is a tip. And since I'm not parking your car, there's really no way that—
      Angel: [knocks him out] Okay. That's how we do it.
    • Gunn sold his soul for what was implied to be a girl. Then it was revealed he actually sold it for a truck.
      Fred: This truck?!?! You didn't think your soul was worth air conditioning?
  • Batwoman (2019). Batwoman mentions getting information from some guy, and when presses by Luke Fox (thinking she might have beaten the information out of him) says that she actually posed for a selfie. Fox admits that's something that Batman would never have thought of.
  • Better Call Saul: While trying to talk his opposing lawyer down to a lighter sentence for his client, Saul ends his counter-offer with a baggie of Fritos he just bought from a vending machine. The lawyer accepts.
  • The Big Bang Theory has this exchange:
    Sheldon: I stopped by to bring you this gift.
    Penny: Gummy bears? Thank you.!
    Sheldon: Now that you're in my debt could you -
    • He then offers her "Cooper Coupons" which are basically an excuse to be his obnoxious, Insufferable Genius self, failing to see why Penny doesn't view them as better than gold (they include a free grammar check or an afternoon at the museum where he points out all of their mistakes).
    • In the first season, Howard Wolowitz tries to bribe a hospital emergency room receptionist to pretend to treat him for an allergic reaction (to stall for time to set up a surprise party for his friend Leonard). He offers to introduce her to "the man who freed your people" (Abraham Lincoln on a five-dollar bill).
    Receptionist: Unless my people were freed by Benjamin Franklin and his five twin brothers, you are wasting my time. note 
    • Played with while trying to get into a packed restaurant on Valentine's Day, Penny encourages Leonard to try bribing the host. Leonard incompetently presents the bribe as though someone dropped a $20, which the host treated as an actual lost bill. He asked the crowd if anyone dropped a $20 and a random guy claims it.
  • Blackadder:
    • In "Dish and Dishonesty" Baldrick is applying for Parliament and gives his "minimum bribe level" as one turnip, before worrying that he may be pricing himself out of the market.
    • Blackadder's mad cousin MacAdder is persuaded to help in a plan to save the Prince Regent and kill the Duke of Wellington for enough cash to buy the Outer Hebrides. Namely, fourteen shillings and sixpence.
    • In "Back & Forth", Blackadder from 1999 time-travels to Elizabethan England, and to save himself from being executed, tries to offer Queen Elizabeth a supermarket loyalty card. Even if Tesco had existed back then, the ability to "earn bonus points meaning that once a month, you could buy a tin of baked beans at half-price" would do little to convince a peasant, let alone the Queen of England (and especially this particular Queen).
  • On Blue Water High, Anna once suggested Simmo keep Deb occupied by offering her vouchers to a PG-rated movie.
  • Boy Meets World:
    Clerk: I'm sorry, we don't give that kind of information.
    Eric: Really? Well... [produces $1 bill] Perhaps my friend Mr. Washington will help you change your mind.
  • On Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Anya once tried to bribe a demon with promises that she would have sex with him, and the demon responded that he didn't find a human-looking creature like Anya to be sexually attractive (thus averting the Mars Needs Women trope that has certainly been played straight elsewhere in the Buffyverse). Of course, Anya was insulted that her sexual bribery turned out to be this. (There's a Double Entendre in there somewhere, but not quite as easily as if it were a male getting turned down.)
  • How this can be used in real life was addressed in Burn Notice. They explain that actual cash in such a small bribe is only part of the whole plan. If you want to get access to something in a location isn't too high security, (such as an upscale parking garage) you behave like an obnoxious tool and offer a small but not insignificant amount to the security guard, (say, between twenty to fifty dollars) pretending that you believe it's a standard fee to get inside. Even the most honest guard may decide they don't feel bad for slightly taking advantage of someone who is making themselves as unlikable as possible, and since you "believe" it's a regular fee and thus won't report the guard, the guard should decide they have nothing to lose by taking the cash, (in other words, they won't be reported for taking bribes or acting inappropriately) and let you in just to get some kind of profit for having to deal with your jerkassery.
  • Cheers:
    • Oftentimes, the only way to get Norm to do something for anyone is to offer him beer. Adding to the joke, Norm almost never pays for his beers anyway.
    • Carla immediately rats on Sam and Woody's plan to trick Rebecca into kissing them, after having called them her best friends, in exchange for a week of paid vacation. That's without haggling. In fairness, Carla is also evil, so humiliating Sam and Woody might also be a motive.
  • Corner Gas:
    • In the episode "Hurry Hard", Brent and Wanda and Oscar and Emma each want Lacey to be their fourth for an upcoming curling bonspiel. Oscar and Emma rush to ask Lacey "Lacey, will you join our curling team?" Wanda then tells Brent to up the ante and he says "Lacey, will you be on our team please." And Wanda sarcastically says "Good ante-ing."
    • In an earlier episode, the Dog River hockey team catches wind that Brent might be joining another team, so they compile a "signing bonus" consisting of coupons, a free sub card (two tokens short), and a roll of police "Do not cross" tape.
  • In the sixth season finale of Desperate Housewives, Gaby tries to bribe a hospital nurse to let her in before visiting hours with all the cash she has on her—$12. Then she realizes, "Oh wait, I'm going to need ten for parking" and just offers the remaining $2.
  • Dinosaurs episode "License to Parent":
    Earl Sinclair: Surely we can talk about this. After all, this is kind of a coincidence.
    Officer Bettleheim: A coincidence? How?
    Earl Sinclair: Well, that ticket has my name on it, and I do believe this crisp one-dollar bill has your name on it. Wouldn't you call that a coincidence?
    Officer Bettleheim: No, I would call that a cheap attempt at bribery.
    Earl Sinclair: What if it was a five? Oh, smoo.
    Earl Sinclair: What. Oh come on, you're not giving me another ticket.
    Officer Bettleheim: Section 9, paragraph 4, setting a bad moral example for a child.
  • Several times in Everybody Hates Chris, Julius would do this, at one point offering a bribe of a single penny.
  • In the Flight of the Conchords episode "Prime Minister," Murray offers Bret and Jemaine a job standing in for a pair of Simon & Garfunkel impersonators. They refuse.
    Murray: Okay, well, I have to put that fifty dollars back, then.
    Jemaine: Fifty dollars?
    Murray: Fifty dollars each.
    (Cut to Bret and Jemaine in a small venue clumsily performing "Scarborough Fair.")
  • The man interviewing Frasier and Lilith for Frederick's place at a prestigious school: "I'll have you know that in 50 years, I have never accepted a bribe!" He takes the cheque. "This is an insult!" He reads the cheque. "In every possible way." He hands cheque back and leaves, slamming the door.
  • Full House: Kimmy tries to bribe her way into Stanford, thinking a "crisp $20 bill" will make them overlook her underperformance in school. It doesn't work and she is rejected anyways with $40 and a note saying "Let's pretend this never happened".
  • In the iCarly episode "iWant a World Record", Spencer tried to bribe the representative of the world record book into overlooking the four seconds the webshow was off the air (his sculpture drew so much power that it briefly knocked out the power) with skee ball tickets. Upon realizing that they were tickets and not money, he promptly took them back so he could get a giant harmonica.
  • Iron Fist (2017): Jeri Hogarth once secretly cussed at an unbearable superior of hers back while she was still an intern at Rand Enterprises...while a young Danny was in earshot. She gave him five dollars to stay mum about it. Keep in mind, he was the son of her billionaire boss Wendell Rand.
  • Kim's Convenience: Not wanting her son Jung to get the promotion at the Car Rental he works at, Mrs. Kim not-so-subtly passes a small envelope containing money to the boss Shannon in an attempt to bribe her. All that Shannon can be seen taking out of the envelope is two coins. Jung ends up getting that promotion, so the bribe clearly doesn't work.
  • In 1996 the town of Wahoo Nebraska started a campaign to become The Late Show with David Letterman's "Home office." Letterman decided to have a bribe-off: whichever city gave him the most stuff (Wahoo or then-current Home Office Tahlequah, Oklahoma) would get it. After some very pathetic bribes from Tahlequah Letterman declared Wahoo the winner.
  • The Loop is a comedy about a man who worked at an airport. In one episode he need to x-ray a bunch of dogs.
    Sam: Hi. Can we use the luggage scanner to x-ray all these dogs?
    Security Guard: Sir, I am an airport security guard. It is my sacred duty to guard this entrance against anything it may face.
    Sam: I'll give you seven bucks.
    Security Guard: I'm looking away now.
  • In the Malcolm in the Middle episode where Lois is trying to get Reese back after he ran away and joined the Army, two soldiers bring Lois back home from the recruiting office and tell Hal she assaulted them when they wouldn't reveal where Reese was deployed. Hal tries to smooth things out with the soldiers by offering them two dollars so they would forget the whole thing. One of the soldiers then mentions that if Lois is spotted near the recruiting office again, that he has been given clearance to "engage."
  • M*A*S*H:
    • In the two-part episode "Goodbye, Radar," Radar tries to bribe his way onto an earlier flight from Kimpo to get back to the 4077th:note 
      Radar: Hey, Mac?
      Olson: The name's Olson.
      Radar: I'm sorry... Hey, Olson? How would you like to make a little green stuff, huh?
      Olson: How much?
      Radar: I got four bucks that ain't doin' nothing. Get me that seat and they're all yours.
      Olson: Scram.
      Radar: Two now, two when you deliver.
      Olson: Get lost!
      Radar: Boy, some guys just can't be bought.
    • In the episode "Last Laugh", when MP's come to arrest BJ (it doesn't work):
      Hawkeye: Let's get down to some serious bribery. How about $14 in unmarked bills?
  • The Mighty Boosh: Bob Fossil, trying to bribe Bollo to let him into a party, offers him such worthless incentives as "the key to a bike I had in the '70's".
  • Monk:
    • In "Mr. Monk Goes to the Theater", Monk tries to bribe a doorman for information on Jenna Ryan's whereabouts with three dollars; when he refuses, Monk ups it to four. Finally, Sharona makes him talk with $40. After, Monk asks for his four back; when the doorman refuses, Monk informs Sharona that "we have a four-dollar credit on any future bribes."
    • In "Mr. Monk and the Bully", Monk and Natalie walk into a bar while trying to retrace Marilyn Brody's footsteps:
      Natalie Teeger: Hi. Excuse me.
      Adrian Monk: Hi. Um, we're looking for this woman. [shows a photo of Marilyn to the bartender]
      Bartender: You a cop?
      Adrian Monk: No, no. Just an old friend.
      Bartender: Haven't seen her.
      Adrian Monk: Okay.
      [Monk pulls out a $1 bill and puts it on the counter]
      Adrian Monk: Maybe General Washington can refresh your memory? [Natalie buries her face in her hands, embarrassed]
      Bartender: Is that a dollar? [Monk winks at him. The bartender continues glaring at him]
      Adrian Monk: OK, I get it. Who knows? Maybe there are... [puts a quarter down] ...two General Washingtons. [the bartender walks away] Where are you going? [to Natalie] Where's he going? [Monk sighs and puts his money away} You've got to admire the guy. He's incorruptible.
    • Subverted in the Season 6 episode "Mr. Monk Goes to the Bank". Randy tries to bribe a silver tin statue performer for information relating to a bank robbery he undoubtedly witnessed. It fails, but the reason it didn't work has absolutely nothing to do with the amount of money Randy puts in his collection tray: it's because his job requires him to stand absolutely frozen still until his beeper goes off to signal his stretch break (and he does a damn good job at it, because he doesn't so much as move a muscle even when Randy tries yelling loudly in his face).
  • An episode of The New Statesman had the idiotic Piers Fletcher-Dervish, who upon deciding to become corrupt, demands a bribe of...£1.50!. As Alan commented, "You're a hard man, Piers Fletcher-Dervish... solid bone from the neck up."
  • The Odd Couple (1970):
    • In an episode, Oscar and Felix are trying to get bumped up the waiting list for a space in a mid-town parking garage. Felix tries to "schmooze" the owner (played in a delightful guest shot by John Byner) by coyly displaying some currency:
      Felix: Will... um... this get us anything?
      Owner: [glances at bill] Yeah — two fives.
    • Once, trying to gain admittance into a Paul Williams concert to bring his wayward daughter back home, hapless Felix offered a quarter to the security guard outside. He scoffed, "What is this? Your allowance?"
  • The Office:
    • Michael tries to give a terminated employee a pack of coupons in an attempt to make everything cool between them. Especially given that Michael is only firing him so that he doesn't appear indecisive, this doesn't go over well.
    • When Dwight was left in charge after Michael's departure in the Season 3 finale, he announced that employees would receive "Schrute Bucks" when they did something good. He said that 1,000 Schrute Bucks would earn the recipient five extra minutes of lunchtime and that one Schrute Buck was worth 1/100 of a cent in actual money.
  • Perry Mason: "The Absent Artist" features an Eccentric Artist who, prior to the episode, blackmailed a tax cheat who earned $140,000 a year. All he asked for was one $28 payment and one $50 one (although his victim later gave him $500 without being asked).
  • Person of Interest:
    • Nathan Ingram sold the Machine to the US government for $1. Not knowing about this, a government official tries to force Nathan to make changes to the Machinenote  by threatening to withhold Nathan's payment. Nathan and Finch have a good chuckle at that.
    • Another inversion occurs when a kid wants to hire Reese to help get revenge on the murderers of the kid's brother. The kid offers Reese all the meager cash he has on him but Reese gives back all except a quarter. Reese was going to help the kid for free but realized that the kid was about to do something very stupid on his own. By agreeing to be the kid's 'employee', Reese could get the kid to stand down and let a professional handle matters.
  • In Red Dwarf's eighth season, the crew reluctantly try to bribe a recently-revived-pre-Series-1 Rimmer to join their crew by describing the post of his counterpart from previous seasons, including command of over five buttons. While the others bicker over the fact that he'd never take the offer, Rimmer asks questions about it with intense interest:
    Rimmer: Tell me more about these buttons, are some of them illuminated?
  • Saturday Night Live: In a famous 1976 sketch, Lorne Michaels appears as himself to announce that if the The Beatles reunite and perform on his show, he'll give them a check for $3,000. This was the going rate for any band to perform on the show at the time, while the Beatles could have demanded millions for a reunion performance. According to legend, George Harrison and Paul McCartney were tempted to take him up on the offer. They each appeared as solo performers in later years and jokingly attempted to collect.
  • As the preview for South Beach Tow shows, at least one car owner tries this on the truck driver, saying "You can buy all the Ho-Hos you want."
  • Spin City: Paul attempts to bribe the office efficiency expert to keep silent about his hoarding of office supplies with a 'Buy One, Get One Free' frozen yoghurt coupon.
  • An early episode of That '70s Show has this:
    Punk kid: I've got nothing to say to you... but Andrew Jackson on the other hand...
    Bob: Jackson, huh?... [opens wallet] He's not in, do you have anything you'd like to tell Abe Lincoln and the Washington twins?
  • Three's Company: When Cindy goes missing, Mr. Furley goes to the Regal Beagle to find her. He pays a blonde girl three dollars to tell him anything she knows. Hilarity Ensues when the girl turns out to be an undercover cop and arrests Furley for cheap solicitation.
  • Occasionally on Top Gear, when Jeremy Clarkson will offer ludicrously small sums of money if a certain celebrity will appear on the show or someone will lend them a particularly rare and valuable car.
  • Wednesday offers Tyler $20 dollars if he'll leave his shift an hour early to drive her. Which on top of being only a little more than he'd likely make working the hour, might not even cover the cost of gas for the ride he's offering her, let alone compensate for the risk of losing his job. She ups it to $40, which still qualifies, and he tells her he can't be bought.
  • The West Wing:
    • This is requested: The President's foreign aid bill is one vote down, and a senator offers to vote for it if the White House will fund a study in intercessory prayer out of the federal budget. Since this would be blatantly unconstitutional, he knows they cannot possibly accept, so he demands the princely sum of $115,000. Sure enough, everyone who hears of the deal repeats, "$115 thousand? You mean 115 million, right?"
    • Also played with in the second season episode "Somebody's Going to Emergency, Somebody's Going to Jail"; C.J. and Josh meet with the Cartographers for Social Equality, who want the President to support legislation to make it mandatory for schools to teach the Peters Projection Map. Josh's response; "Give me $200 and it's done." C.J. vetoes that.
  • The Wrong Mans has a case of this when Phil and Sam are refused information on the car crash victim. It naturally doesn't work.
    Phil: How about now? That's £2.20, right there.
  • Young Sheldon: Georgie gives Billy a dollar to mow the lawn for him. He was originally gonna pay Billy two dollars, but Billy was dumb enough to do it for less. When George finds out about it and lectures him for not doing his chores, Georgie offers his father ten dollars to leave him alone. This one doesn't work.

    Music 
  • In Adam Ezra Group's "The Devil Came up to Boston", an Affectionate Parody of the Charlie Daniels classic "The Devil Went Down to Georgia", the Devil wagers the fiddler's soul for a lottery scratchcard and a pack of cigarettes, instead of the golden violin in the original. The Devil lost in both songs.
  • In Hans Rotmo's "Førarkortet" ("The Driving Licence"), the narrator drives drunk, crashes into a police car and tries to pay the policeman the equivalent of $6 to leave him alone. The unimpressed policeman confiscates his licence and has him locked up.

    Podcasts 
  • One episode of the My Brother, My Brother and Me TV show, Griffin is attempting to get an old job back from Justin's father-in-law, Tommy. During the interview, Griffin slips Tommy $6. It doesn't go well. Later in the episode, he tries to give the audio crew $20 so that he can be de-miced first so that he can go pee. It also doesn't work well, on account of the fact that Travis and Justin were already de-miced first.

    Radio 
  • In the Cabin Pressure episode "Fitton", Carolyn's rotten ex-husband Gordon offers to buy her aeroplane for £100. Since he relays the offer through his Cloud Cuckoolander son Arthur, he has to include an explanation that Arthur isn't giving her the wrong amount by mistake. After this offer is rejected, Gordon makes another offer of £1 for the entire company, excluding all the debts. Carolyn seriously considers this offer until one of Douglas's schemes gets the company back into the black.
  • The Goon Show, in which people will gladly perform insane actions for photographs of moneynote  or bags of sweets. (Of course, that last one was Bluebottle, and he's generally portrayed as a young and mildly insane Boy Scout, so...)
  • In The Men from the Ministry, when discussing how the Postman refused to give them back the letter they accidentally send to the wrong person, One credits the Postman's honesty, as he threw Two's five pence bribe to the gutter.

    Tabletop Games 
  • A common net result of the skill check rules of Dungeons & Dragons when applied to bribery attempts. Players with high enough charisma, diplomacy, or raw luck can offer pitiful bribes and see amazing results. Couple it with a natural 20 and a permissive DM will allow a soldier to commit high treason for a bag of jellybeans. This only got easier in fourth and fifth edition, with social interaction taking on a more rules-governed, mechanical aspect.
  • Invoked in Paranoia in regards to bribing the ever-present IntSec Green Goons. Despite being four security clearances (And income brackets) above the Troubleshooters, it is stated that any bribe of meaningful significance (To the players) will be accepted. This is explained as most Green Goons were rapidly promoted from Infrared clearance due to their size, brutality, and lack of intellect, so even small amounts still seem significant despite their much higher earnings.

    Theatre 
  • In Anne of the Thousand Days, Norfolk remarks on the lack of clamor in the streets for Anne's wedding and coronation. Cromwell says that one thousand apprentices were paid one groat each, which was obviously not enough:
    Norfolk: A groat? Man, that won't buy a whole drink of good liquor! They should have had a silver penny apiece and they'd have shaken the foundations! They'd have rung the bells! They'd have jumped out of windows! Anyway, they'd have thrown their caps in the air! The rabble I saw must have had the mange. Their head-gear was stuck tight on their skulls and when they yelled it was more like a growl.
    Cromwell: For a half-crown each, or a whole one, they wouldn't cheer Queen Anne — not as they'd like to be cheering Queen Katharine.
  • Cyrano de Bergerac: Cyrano invokes this trope at Act II, Scene V, trying to bribe Roxane's Duenna to leave him alone with Roxane (he then bribes her properly).
    Cyrano: Are you fond of sweet things?
    The Duenna: Ay, I could eat myself sick on them!
    Cyrano: [catching up some of the paper bags from the counter] Good. See you these two sonnets of Monsieur Beuserade...
    The Duenna: Hey?
    Cyrano: ...Which I fill for you with cream cakes!
    The Duenna: [changing her expression] Ha.
  • Nerds: A Musical Software Satire features Bill Gates and Paul Allen buying DOS from Tim Patterson for the price of three Playboy magazines, two meat sticks, and an action figure. Patterson takes it, figuring that has to be worth more than his other offer — 50% of the stock of the then-nascent Starbucks.

    Video Games 
  • Baldur's Gate II: In the Throne of Bhaal expansion, you will at one point have to go fetch an item but can instead just give a trio of first level characters the option of getting it instead (parodying the way you did pointless fetch quests in the first game). You can choose to either play this trope straight and offer them a few gold pieces (in a completely over-the-top manner) or avert this trope by offering them a more impressive reward that's still nothing but pocket change for you.
  • In The Binding of Isaac, you can sell your soul to the devil for one quarter. It's not as bad as it sounds: items are priced in pennies and your money is capped at one dollar, so a quarter is rather valuable.
  • Borderlands 2
    • Bandit leader Flanksteak offers Roland to Hyperion (or, rather, a Hyperion Loader) for 20 bucks after Hyperion had already captured Roland.
    • Mister Torgue sold his eponymous weapons manufacturing company, Torgue, to his board of directors for 12 bucks and a hi-five.
  • The first guard of McNeil Manor in Breath of Fire III will let you past for 50 zenny. That's about the price of five healing herbs. McNeil is a really cheap employer.
  • Caesar II lets the player send cash gifts to Caesar in exchange for goodwill and favours. His reactions to sums that are obviously well below what you can afford to offer your august Emperor get a bit dry:
    "Thanks for the kind gift. I shall be sure to use it to purchase a grape at the next festival."
  • Also happens amusingly often in the Civilization series.
    • After annihilating another country's military and leveling some cities, they say, "Please make peace with us! Here's 25 gold!" If their empire is that poorly run, perhaps they deserve to get invaded. Justified when the AI civ offering the bribe is the one that just got its cities ransacked: it's likely all they can afford, and if they're facing annihilation, it doesn't hurt to try. The player might even take the offer if they were planning on taking a breather before making the final push.
    • Galactic Civilizations II's eerily cunning AI realizes when you try this on your rival leaders. Proposing that someone enter an exclusive alliance with you, declare war on everyone else, and give you all their techs and planets in exchange for 1 credit will be treated as a grave insult, and depending on the leader may very well lead to war.
    • On the other hand, while the AI is aces at managing its economy to the fullest, it rarely builds up overly large savings to negotiate with. Furthermore, what wads of cash it has it tends to blow them away in rush-bought (or worse, leased) spaceships as soon as a war begins. Which means that should the war go pear-shaped for them, they are often reduced to begging for peace in exchange for all they have: 5 shiny credits.
    • Technically funds are measured in bc, "billion credits", but 1 bc is still chump change compared to the cost of running an interstellar empire.
  • In Dawn of War: Retribution, inquisitor Adrastia attempts to bribe Blood Knight Space Pirate Kaptain Bluddflagg into fighting an entire Space Marine chapter, using the (by the setting's standard) ludicrously silly offer of a fight with an imperial regiment (which he could find anywhere) as payment for fighting the Space Marines. Bluddflagg actually accepts, if the Inquisitor gives him her hat as well (which, in a double subversion, the inquisitor is unwilling to compromise on. Geez, lady, it's only a hat). In a bit of Fridge Logic, this actually makes sense. Once the Space Marines have been dealt with, the remaining Orks would have to be mopped up to avoid further contention in the area. But giving up her hat would mean the inquisitor made an actual payment to a Xeno, which in The Imperium is an offence punishable by death.
  • The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim:
    • It's quite easy to get away with killing Thalmor provided you can pay a measly forty Septims fine (for littering no less). This is an in-universe insult to the Thalmor more than anything; murdering other people comes at a much higher price.
    • If you get caught committing a petty crime in a city where the Thieves' Guild's influence is high, you can pay half the fine for guards to go away. Meaning it's possible to get away with picking a lock by paying two gold or get away with being seen picking a lock (and failing) with nothing but your winning smile.
  • The AI in Europa Universalis is usually quite good at detecting when it's losing and proposing a suitable peace deal, based on the Casus Belli used and the claims/cores you have on its provinces. On occasion, however, this system can glitch out and lead to the computer offering to get out of a Reconquest of half its current territory for war reparations and a handful of ducats, even though you've crushed all its armies and are currently busy sieging down its capital.
  • In Evil Genius 2 Maximillian tries to buy a country early in his campaign. The mission only costs $20,000. He tries to buy a country for less than the cost of some of your lair's lab equipment.
  • In FTL: Faster Than Light, if you've dealt a lot of damage to an enemy ship, they may offer you a bribe to leave them alone. If they're offering a lot of missiles or fuel or a nice weapon, you'll probably take them up on it. But if they offer one missile, one fuel, and only a handful of scrap, you really have to wonder how much value they place on their lives.
  • Played for Drama in Grand Theft Auto IV. It turns out Darko Brevic sold out and led his squad, including Niko and 16 other young men from his village, to certain death for the princely sum of 1000 USD, which he then promptly used to feed his heroin addiction. Niko sounds like he's about to cry once he hears for how little money they were killed.
  • One of the Strangers & Freaks sidequests in Grand Theft Auto V has Michael collecting the wreckage of a submarine for the "grieving" widow of the man who was killed in the sub after she promises to make it worth his while. Upon gathering all 30 pieces (which requires you to go all the way around the island) she offers you a measly $10 and a signed photo of her late husband. Michael has the option of expressing his opinion of the suitability of this reward at muzzle velocity.
  • The plot of Helltaker involves the title character journeying into Hell with goal of assembling a harem of demon girls, up to and including Lucifer. How do you convince THE top demon in Hell to join your harem? By offering her chocolate pancakes.
  • In Higurashi: When They Cry's Minagoroshi chapter Hanyu/Oyashiro-sama is highly against letting Takano into the shrine storage when Rika offers to take her. As a joke, Rika says she will charge 100 yen for each picture taken or 10000 yen up front for as many as they want. Hanyu is instantly satisfied at the thought of using this money to buy nothing but sweets.
  • In Knights of the Old Republic you have the opportunity to attempt to persuade the chieftain of the Sand People to stop his attacks on Anchorhead for 100 credits (barely enough to buy a medpac). The chieftain is understandably noncompliant, and your translator notes that they have no use for your money since they can't actually spend it. The actual goods he will take in exchange turn out to only cost 400, though; half that if you're good at negotiating. The Sand People mostly just need somebody to pick them up since the store is in a settlement they're at war with.
  • In The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, overlapping Comically Small Demand, there are two little girls on Windfall Island who won't tell you anything they know unless you pay them 2 rupees (you can find this by cutting flowers for 15 seconds). And even then, they try to be dodgy about it.
  • Magical Starsign: A member of the Space Police offers your party a bribe to not speak up at one point, which turns out to be... 2 bira, when even the cheapest items available cost 10.
    Mokka: 2 bira? Wow, we better not spend that all in one place.
  • Medieval II: Total War:
    • Happens annoyingly often, when the rival powers start threatening you with destruction unless you cough up some cash. "Yes, mein freund, I'm afraid the price for peace with the Holy Roman Empire is...one hundred and thirteen Florins!" And yes, if you refuse there is a good chance they'll invade.
    • Of course they're just as likely to invade you a couple of turns after receiving your bribe, backstabbers. However, an easy way to keep the Vatican on your side is to set up a "donation" to the state every turn - even one single florin will be appreciated, amusingly.
  • In NetHack some of the demon lords can be bribed to leave you alone. It's a one-time offer. There's no opportunity to get gold from a container. So the bribe just has to be a sufficiently large fraction of the gold you have in open inventory. Carrying $10 in the open when necessary makes the bribe very cheap indeed.
  • [PROTOTYPE 2]: When Heller learns his latest targets are developing a sterility plague targeting the lower class, he decides to fly the helicopter they're in at maximum height and bail out. The three scientists plead for their lives by trying to bribe an augmented bio-warrior with $100-1,000. It's not known if the 'filthy rich' sums they were getting from their employers for committing mass genocide really were in those low brackets, or if they can't bring themselves to pay an even larger bribe to a black man.
  • Sam & Max: Freelance Police:
    Sam: Maybe a few... Washingtons will help change your mind?
    Max: Or maybe a few... Lincolns?
  • Spacebase Startopia: The polite pirates offer around 1300 energy to let them come on board, which is enough to buy two plant pots.
  • In Yakuza 4, one of Tanimura's substories has him confronting a pair of ineffectual carjackers. Upon learning that he's a cop, the two try to bribe him with half the cash from a wallet they nicked earlier... only to remember that they'd used most of the cash to buy lunch, leaving only 420 yen (about 3 dollars). 210 yen is, of course, far too small to work as a bribe, so they offer him the whole 420 yen instead. Tanimura refuses and hauls them both down to the station.

    Visual Novels 
  • Ace Attorney:
    • Miles Edgeworth bribes a certain witness into behaving by offering her a stick of gum. And then requests that Phoenix gets the bill.
    • This crops up several times in the Turnabout Samurai case. Phoenix is only able to convince a witness to the crime to tell what he saw in exchange for a very rare Steel Samurai card. The witness was a second grader who was more than a little obsessed with the show, but still. (Hilariously, before the exchange, the kid lectures Phoenix on the importance of equal value exchange of goods and services). Phoenix is only able to provide that rare card by trading another rare card to another collector.

    Web Animation 
  • In the premiere of Broken Quest, the hero attempts to bribe a bartender (who doesn't even have the information he's looking for) with a single piece of candy.
  • In the pilot episode of Hazbin Hotel, Alastor summons a demon named Husk and volunteers him to work at the hotel's front desk. To get Husk to play along, Alastor offers him a bottle of cheap booze (even labeled as such). Husk angrily asks if Alastor thinks a wink and some cheap booze will win him over... before admitting he can.
  • Helluva Boss: Cash Buckzo sells his son to demon prince Paimon for five dollars and a slim-fit condom.
  • Homestar Runner:
    • In the Strong Bad Email "english paper", Strong Bad suggests that Kyle "throw in a little cash" to make sure he gets a good grade on his "Englilsh paper". An Easter egg shows a copy of the paper Strong Bad wrote for Kyle with a handful of small bills and coins taped to it that comes out to about $2.53.
    • Played with in the SBEmail "lackey", where Strong Bad bribes The Cheat into stealing things for him by paying him in pencil shavings. Fortunately for The Cheat, he's able to trick Bubs into accepting pencil shavings as legal tender.
    • In "trading cards", Strong Bad gets rid of Homestar by offering him a sticky note with a doodle of Strong Bad bench-pressing dinosaurs in exchange for a "get-out-of-my-face".
  • RWBY: Played for laughs. Nora is so determined that she and Ren end up on the same team together, she contemplates bribing the headmaster to ensure it happens. However, she quickly realizes that there's nothing a first-year student could possibly offer a man who owns an entire school.

    Webcomics 
  • Fletcher in Antics attempts to bribe his friend with a piece of chewed-up gum.
  • In Coach Random, Nightlatch the Frog Pimp introduces cops to his friend Washington—who is the man featured on the $1 bill.
  • Ctrl+Alt+Del: Ethan continues to demonstrate his Cloudcuckoolander credentials.
  • In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic comic "Fallensitter", Cadence agrees to foalsit Twilight for the price of 8 bits a night and two oatsicles from the freezer.
  • Full Frontal Nerdity:
    • One strip had the guys trying to order pizza after they'd previously been forced to tip the driver with a Magic: The Gathering card due to being out of cash. The pizza place was... not terribly enthusiastic about delivering to them again.
    • After Lewis's Cursed Die That Only Rolls 1s curses the world's numbers, Nelson wins the lottery by betting on a powerball of only ones. However, because a lot of other people had the same idea, he only won $1,111. This is still a sufficient amount that the guys can bribe Wizards of the Coast to change the rules of D&D so that a natural one is an automatic success, breaking the curse. Nelson claims that the amount is the equivalent of a year's pay for an RPG writer.
  • Max in Housepets! makes it all the more comical: "Mr. Washington" is a quarter.
  • Latchkey Kingdom: Don't bother insulting Rex the palace guard by trying to bribe him with a bone. The latest issue of Playdog works better.
  • Used in Moe, with this exchange.
    Moe: Well, maybe my friend Benjamin Franklin can convince you to take on the case.
    Lawyer: This is a print-out of a portrait of Benjamin Franklin.
    Moe: Glossy paper!
  • In Oglaf, the Mistress bribes (straight) Ivan to give a blowjob to the Xoan Ambassador... for a pinecone. Ivan is rather enthusiastic at first, but as he walks away with the pinecone he realizes he has no idea why he accepted the offer, upon which the Mistress explains that the box holding the pinecone was enchanted to "make you want whatever's in it".
  • Rule #14 for the Precocious kids: "Bribes are accepted. Insufficient bribes, however, bring harsher punishment."
  • When Torg reaches into his wallet in Sluggy Freelance, he says "Maybe 'Mr Franklin' can change your mind", and then sticks his hand up into a puppet inside the wallet while yelling in a Mexican accent: "My name is Juan Frankleen, I shoot you in the head!" Actually works, once, but only because the guy in question was a "puppet-phobia".
  • A non-illegal variant appeared in Something*Positive. Davan's boss went shopping for superhero licenses he could turn into a musical, and got the idea for Batman: The Musical. He tried to purchase the licensing rights for ten thousand dollarsnote . Needless to say, it doesn't work out very well.
  • One of the main characters in Paul Southworth's Ugly Hill tries to bribe a patent office clerk with a quarter and some pocket lint to ignore that the invention he wants to patent, a pillow that stays cool on both sides, already exists.

    Web Original 
  • In Blogging Twilight, when Dan reaches the part where Alice bribes a guard with a "thousand dollar bill", he is initially confused as to what currency that is exactly, seeing as there is no thousand dollar bill in either US currency or Euros. He ultimately concludes that it must be a thousand Lira which is worth about seventy-five American cents, noting "So this guard is either really stupid and doesn't know much about money, or he's very poor and needs whatever funds he can scrounge up to buy half a potato for dinner." (Presumably the text meant to suggest that Alice still had thousand dollar American bills, printed from either 1928 or 1934)
  • One part of the infamous "Kevin" story on Reddit involves Kevin trying to bribe his teacher into giving him better grades... with $11.
  • Sporcle's SIA Puzzle Hunt has you solve a series of puzzles/quizzes to find items to bribe supervillains with for information about a mystery supervillain's planned terrorist threat. As these bribe items are all part of a larger Metapuzzle, most of them are not exactly the kind of valuable/rare items you'd expect supervillains to be swayed only by, which leads to humorous scenarios like successfully bribing Doctor Doom with a garden hose.
  • FilmCow creator Jason Steele will ocassionally tell ghost stories over the end credits of his update videos. One is about the Bone Stealer, a monster that buys people's bones for 150 dollars. His latest victim is uninterested in the money.
  • Double subverted in this story from Not Always Right: The customer thinks they've sucessfully bribed the cashier with $5 to honour a sales price that ended the previous day. The cashier has rung it up at the actual price, which is $5 more than the sales price.
  • In this story from Not Always Working, the employees at a CD/DVD store are given a "dumb government thing" to sign for a one-time $50 bonus. The only one who reads it instead of signing it right away finds out that the company lost a class-action lawsuit and owes its employees over $800 each in back-pay, which the form forfeits in exchange for the aforementioned bonus.

    Web Videos 

    Western Animation 
  • In The Amazing World of Gumball, Gumball tries to bribe the nurse into giving him a sick note with a quarter.
    Gumball: And there's plenty more where that came from. How does a thousand cents sound to you?
    Darwin: Ten dollars?
    Gumball: [beat] How does a hundred cents sound to you?
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender:
    • Aang attempts this on a pirate while haggling in "The Waterbending Scroll". Fortunately the pirate thinks it is quite comical until Aang tries a higher price which is only one copper piece higher. Pirate's not so amused the second time.
    • Iroh spends a good chunk of season 2 working at a tea shop in Ba Sing Se. When a wealthy patron shows up in "Lake Laogai" and offers to help Iroh open his own tea shop, the manager tries to covince him to stay by offering him...the position of senior assistant manager. He ups it to senior executive assistant manager when the sponsor throws in an apartment in the prestigious Upper Ring and complete control over the new shop.
  • Beavis and Butt-Head tried this when they photocopied a dollar bill in order to buy nachos. When the Quick Stop guy doesn't fall for it, Butt-Head offers him another obviously copied dollar, and then photocopied coins, until the guy throws them out.
    Butt-Head: Maybe this will change your mind?
  • In an episode of Brickleberry, the park rangers lose their park to Bobby Possumcods who converts Brickleberry into a trailer park, so Woody and Ethel try to bribe Bobby to give them back the park with $3.47 on a McDonald's gift card. Bobby is (obviously) not impressed by that offer, and promptly throws both of them into a pig pen buried in pig feces.
  • Camp Lazlo: In "The Tusk Wizard", Raj attempts to bribe Nurse Leslie into removing a perfectly healthy tusk by offering him a quarter.
  • Danger Mouse: In "The Great Bone Idol," a troop of nomad guards are paid a fortune by Greenback to keep DM and Penfold off his trail in the search for the Idol. Penfold offers them a pound and thirty-seven plus an autographed picture of DM to let them pass. The guards have never heard of him.
  • In Dan Vs. "Art", Dan attempts to get records of failed art school applicants:
    Secretary: I'm not giving you our private records.
    Dan: Well, maybe this [puts a sandwich on her desk] will change your mind.
    Secretary: Are you trying to bribe me... with a sandwich?!
    Dan: Come on, aren't you a starving artist? It's a really good sandwich.
    [secretary just glares at him]
    Dan: Playing hardball, huh? [tosses a bag of chips on the desk] They're ruffled.
  • Dave the Barbarian: In "Ned Frischman, Man of Tomorrow", Frischman takes over Udrogoth and enslaves its population by getting them hooked on Game Guys and offering batteries as a reward for servitude. When he's about to entomb Faffy, Lula and Twinkle the Marvel Horse in the pyramid as punishment for rebelling, Dave is perfectly willing to let them die in exchange for the precious batteries...and then Lula offers to tell him how to get to level seven, which is enough inducement for him to turn on Frischman.
  • An episode of DuckTales (1987) contains an inversion: Scrooge and a rival are both trying to obtain a rare mask from a native tribe, and both are offering larger and larger bribes to try to get the chief to give them the mask. Scrooge's nephews, however, figure out that what's valued in this tribe is not money, but "a large belly," so they offer the chief a jar of high-fat, high-calorie peanut butter. The chief gives the mask to Scrooge on the spot.
  • A subversion occurs in an episode of DuckTales (2017), when Scrooge gives two characters the challenge of beating his new, supposedly unbeatable security system he had installed to defend the Money Bin. He sweetens the pot by saying if they can make it through the whole thing alive and sane, he'll pay for lunch. While this would normally qualify for this trope, this reward is coming from ultimate penny-pincher Scrooge McDuck, and Louie recognizes that it's actually a significant wager.
    Louie: (worried) He really does not expect us to make it.
  • In an episode of Earthworm Jim, Jim and his gang successfully enter the Hall of the Gods by giving the gatekeeper a $1 bribe.
  • The Fairly OddParents!:
    • As part of a plan to get rid of Poof, Foop tried to have the Fairy Council declare Timmy Turner the worst godchild ever. (All wishes of godchildren declared as such are undone and Poof only came into existence because Timmy wished Cosmo and Wanda had a baby.) After the Fairy Council declared Timmy the worst godchild ever, Jorgen reminded Foop that, as Poof's Anti-Fairy counterpart, he only came into existence because Poof did. "If he goes, you go!" Foop then offered a dollar bill and asked if anyone could break it.
    • In "Fairly Old Parent", Wanda and Timmy are arrested by the bingo police for suggesting to Mrs. Crocker that she cheat at bingo (Makes Just as Much Sense in Context). Wanda then offers them a quarter to just forget about the whole thing. She and Timmy wind up in bingo jail.
  • Family Guy:
    • When Peter has declared his house to be a sovereign nation, he ends up at war with the United States. Peter's first peace offer is that he gets to keep his sovereignty and gets his neighbor Joe's pool, which is denied, and then just keeping his sovereignty, which is denied again. So he demands... a pen sitting on the desk in front of him:
      Mayor West: This pen, this worthless plastic pen I have millions of back in my office?
      Peter: Yes.
      Mayor: No.
    • When Peter was visiting Brown University, he offers the Dean's secretary a $5 bribe to get Meg admitted.
    • Peter also learns that the Cuban Black Market does not accept bits of string in lieu of payment. Store policy.
    • Peter tried to bribe a judge with a magazine subscription. The judge turns it down because he already has a subscription to that magazine.
    • Chris runs off to live with a tribe in the jungle. When the family arrives to get him back Peter learns that his $37 makes him the richest man in the village and he begins giving out tiny bribes for everything, including the natives acting out Seinfeld episodes. Also Joe Pesci will say things that sound funny for a nickel. After he laughs Peter throws a coin at the village warriors — "Here's a dime. Kill Pesci."
    • When Brian get's weed legalized, Carter enlists Peter's help in reversing it due to hemp products costing him lumber sales. Peter doesn't want to go against Brain but Carter wins him over with a light up butterfly yoyo (not even to keep, but just for today and once more in the summer).
  • Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends:
    • Bloo frequently tries to buy others off with pocket change to no effect. Often he'll throw in an extra penny to try and sweeten the deal.
    • In another episode, Coco has laid a bunch of trading cards featuring the friends at Foster's. After finding out his own card is extremely common and everyone uses it for things like coasters and leveling tables, he offers to trade one of his cards... autographed by him! Wilt points out that autographing the card makes it worth even less.
  • Futurama has an episode where Dr. Zoidberg is trying to get the head of a Yeti from Mom, the richest person in the universe.
    Mom: It will cost you.
    Zoidberg: But I am penniless! All that I have is this coupon for a free tanning!
    Mom: [genuinely concerned] Is that really all you have? [Zoidberg nods] ...Then I'll take it!
  • In Garfield and Friends, Jon, Garfield, and Odie are attending a fancy restaurant where they are informed it will be an incredibly long wait for a table. Garfield hints to Jon that he should bribe the maitre d' to hurry things along, which he does... with a dime. The maitre d' (completely ironically of course) praises Jon's generosity and talks about how this one dime will change his life (e.g. he can now send his child to college), and all loud enough so the whole restaurant hears. Thoroughly embarrassed, Jon raises the value of the bribe considerably, which ultimately does get the maitre d' to find a table for them.
  • Murdoc Niccals of Gorillaz was, as a child, forced to participate in embarrassing talent shows for money by his father. "The prize? £2.50 and the chance to humiliate yourself further in the biannual county finals." To add insult to injury, he apparently never won.
  • The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: In "Duck!", Irwin tried bailing Grim who's been arrested for indecent exposure out of jail for $4.28. The warden gets very offended and demands Irwin either pony up $3500 or scram.
  • Highroller of Hero: 108 managed to turn all the animal species against the humans, with a simple offering of candy.
  • In Hey Arnold!, Arnold's grandmother attempts to bribe someone with, "Maybe a picture of Lincoln will change your mind..." — and shows the guy a small framed portrait of Abraham Lincoln. Arnold steps in and bribes him successfully with an actual $5 bill.
  • Kim Possible:
    • One episode had Ron try and bribe a judge of a dog show with $5 to sign Rufus in as a Peruvian hairless. It actually works, much to Kim's surprise.
    • Another episode had Kim successfully bribe a black market dealer with a chocolate bar. Though in this case, it's implied that the chocolate was a serious Weaksauce Weakness of the dealer, which Kim knew about from prior experience with him.
  • In The Oblongs, when it is suggested offhandedly that Bob consider filing a lawsuit after being injured by a Globocide park ride, Globocide's lawyers immediately offer him a "really big check." It is in fact a novelty check worth only $20, which Pickles points out. They simply say, "But look how big it is!"
  • The Patrick Star Show: In "Which Witch is Which?", as a last-ditch effort to prevent Squidina from sending her back to Klopnod, Agnes promises to send her a check for five dollars on her birthday.
  • In Pinky and the Brain, some male scientists are successfully bribed with women's nightgowns.
  • The Powerpuff Girls (1998): Princess Morbucks bribes the Mayor of Townsville to give her his job. He turns down $1 trillion, then $5 trillion, but accepts a roomful of Turkish Delight candy.
  • Recess had this a few times, since the main characters were children and were bribing their fellow students. Aside from one occurrence where Gus didn't bring a permission slip to a carnival and TJ tried to bribe the teacher into letting him come anyway with a quarter.
  • In the Regular Show "Brilliant Century Duck Crisis Special", two Corrupt Corporate Executives try to convince Mordecai & Rigby to sign away their likenesses for licensed toys, and try to sweeten the pot with $100 (which Mordecai refers to as "a month's pay").
  • Played with in The Ren & Stimpy Show when Ren and Stimpy were working as bell boys. Stimpy was bribed by a photographer to take a picture of a VIP for five dollars. When Stimpy doesn't take the bribe, the photographer raises the price to one million dollars, but Stimpy still won't fold. Later, he makes the same offer of five dollars to Ren. When Ren hesitates, the photographer begins to offer the million dollars before Ren enthusiastically cuts him off and takes the five dollars.
  • In one episode of Rugrats (1991), the medieval fair owner offers the guy in the Reptar suit $10.00 to tackle Stu's out-of-control robotic dragon. He enthusiastically accepts - and actually wins!.
  • In The Secret Saturdays, when locked in a South American prison, Van Rook tries convincing the guard to let him go with an American dollar. When the guy doesn’t budge, Van Rook reluctantly offers him two dollars. It still doesn’t work, and Van Rook is ultimately sprung by the Big Bad to pull a job.
  • The Simpsons:
    • Bart Simpson once tried to bribe the officer with a hairdryer or some other house appliance. The cop showed him his badge: "cash bribes only".
    • Inverted in another episode, where Mr. Burns attempted to bribe the head of a media outlet to let him run the place with a huge bag of money, but he refuses, offers him another bag of money, he still refuses, to which a hot woman pops out of the second bag and while starting to actually consider the offer, was still not giving in and managed to successfully bribe him when the hot woman in question offers him a hot-fudge sundae.
    • In another episode, Chief Wiggum actually accepts two dry cleaning coupons as a bribe for an unspecified offense.
    • In another episode, Bart and Lisa try to bribe the Blue-Haired Lawyer with 35 cents.
    • A foreign currency variant when the family is in Canada, Homer gives the CN Tower guard one US dollar when it's five minutes to closing. "American currency! What time you would like your breakfast, sir?"
    • Happened again when Homer gives one U.S. dollar to Tony Blair to leave them alone; he takes the dollar but doesn't leave anyway.
    • In a Bait-and-Switch scenario, Homer and Bart had chloroform with them when they broke into a hotel. When they met a guard, Homer offered him the chloroform as a bribe, which the guard accepted.
    • In another one, Homer was trying to find Lisa and decided he needed to look from a high spot. He then bought several balloons, which he used to bribe a crane driver into helping him. It also worked... because the crane driver had balloons, but not as pretty.
    • (Yet again) Homer attempts this with the Springfield Mafia. When they offer him to pay his debt by letting them film a porno movie in his house. Not wanting to upset Marge, he instead offers to mow Fat Tony's lawn every week for two weeks. And then adds "I can't do it next week". He promptly gets a hammer to the fingers and changes his mind.
  • South Park:
    • Played with the Briefcase Full of Money in the episode "Gnomes": a global coffee company executive attempts to buy Tweek's coffee shop with an empty briefcase. After Mr. Tweek rejects the suitcase, then the executive offers him millions of dollars.
    • In "Bebe's Boobs Destroy Society", Bebe bribes a plastic surgeon to give her a breast reduction for $212 (in nickels) and a gold bracelet, even though any surgery regarding breasts costs at least a few thousand dollars. In contrast, Wendy gets breast implants right away just for offering $3000 in cash.
    • Cartman does this at least twice. First in "Scott Tenorman Must Die" he offers Stan and Kyle $2 each to help him with his revenge plot on Scott Tenorman. They're receptive at first, but then leave after Cartman explains his ridiculous plan to them. Turns out, he anticipated they'd refuse his offer, and it was part of his real plan. The second time was in "Breast Cancer Show Ever", where Cartman offers Wendy $27 to call off their scheduled fight and she also refuses.
    • It's Inverted in "Die Hippie Die," when Cartman is the only person in town with enough skill to take out the hippies who are invading South Park. All of the adults beg him for help, saying that they'll give him anything he wants in exchange. His price? A new Tonka toy remote-control dump truck, the promise that Kyle will never have a truck of his own, and Kyle being Forced to Watch him play with the truck without getting a turn. The adults agree, and sure enough, the final shot of the episode is Cartman happily driving the Tonka trunk around in the school parking lot while an angry Kyle watches.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants:
    • The Flying Dutchman offered some pocket change ("62 cents!") to Mr. Krabs if he sold SpongeBob's soul to him. Mr. Krabs sold SpongeBob's soul for the pocket change. Even Squidward, who absolutely hates SpongeBob, called him out on it. A Beat goes by... and cue Mr. Krabs' Oh, Crap!/My God, What Have I Done? face.
    • In The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, SpongeBob attempts to bribe Dennis with "Goober Dollers". He's unimpressed.
    • Mr. Krabs once switched places with Plankton, saying he could do a better job at stealing the formula than him, for one dollar.
  • In an episode of The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries, an Italian crook threatens to drain every canal in Venice dry unless he gets 3 thousand lire. Which is something like 6 American dollars. This is even funnier now that Italy has switched to Euros and lire can't even be used.
  • Time Warp Trio had some fun with this one. A man from the '30s offers The Girls $1, which is actually a lot of money back then. However, he unknowingly offers it to a trio of time travelers from 2105 with Ridiculous Future Inflation in play, so they view it this way. There was also The Boys offering Blackbeard a quarter, which he views as a large bribe, before discovering it's effectively useless to him as no tavern will take it. In a straighter example, the number of times Joe offered to do (what is almost always recognized as, and if not, quickly discovered to be) a cheap parlor trick in exchange for passage through somewhere in a series that only has 24 episodes is mind-boggling.
  • Total Drama:
    • Heather assembles an ad hoc coalition to eliminate the innocent Justin to protect her guilty self after she alienates the other contestants. She recruits Owen by giving him a piece of cake. In a game where $100,000 is at stake.
    • Gwen later recruits Owen to help her eliminate Heather herself by promising to split the $100,000 with him if she (Gwen) wins. If Gwen doesn't win, she promises him a box of donuts. That's the offer that gets his attention.
    • In "Masters of Disasters", Chris offers to let Owen eat semi-decent food with the winning team instead of his own if he foregoes suing the show for the grievous bodily harm he suffered during the day's challenge, which among others prevents him from consuming solid food for a while. But this is Owen, so he readily accepts the terms.
  • In Total Drama Presents: The Ridonculous Race, Dwayne Sr. tries to bribe the new host Don out of receiving a penalty by offering him coupons. The first coupon was for 25¢ off Eggie Muffins, the second was expired.
  • Dr. Venture tries this in The Venture Bros., attempting to bribe a Mexican Back-Alley Doctor with a $10 bill to get prescription medicines. See the page quote for the doctor's reply and Organ Theft for the counteroffer.
  • In The Weekenders, Carver attempts to bribe a man with "his friend Mr. Washington." When the man points out how stupid attempting to bribe with a dollar is, Carver replies that he was actually offering him a quarter.

    Real Life 
  • The German satirical magazine Titanic offered a cuckoo clock, sausages, and ham to delegates of the FIFA World championship committee to support the German bid to host the 2006 World Cup. A $20 value for arguably the biggest sporting event in the world. Amazingly it worked, as one of the delegates who was supposed to vote for South Africa felt this ridiculous fax was the straw that broke the camel's back, and after all the pressure from both sides, abstained from voting, causing the final vote to be 12-11 in Germany's favor. South Africa did get the World Cup in 2010.
  • On November 8, 2009, Chad Ochocinco of the Cincinnati Bengals offered an official $1 during a replay challenge on one of his own catches. Even though he was joking, he got hit with a $20,000 fine.
  • This Not Always Right entry has a customer, convinced that the cashier knows when the store will get more Wiis but is trying to keep it secret, try to bribe him with $20 for the info. As the cashier points out, even assuming he did have secret knowledge of the store's shipments, $20 is not worth the punishment he'd get for giving out such a secret.
  • Roger Ebert's contests on his blog, such as his limerick contest and photo caption contest have always given tiny rewards of "a shiny new dime". In the case of the caption contest, it became satirical Serious Business when the winning entry was accused of plagiarism, and the prize given to another, only to find that it wasn't and for the original winner to receive his dime after all.
  • Stephen Merchant's harrowing encounter with a nightclub bouncer certainly counts. It's one thing to flaunt your cash in front of some girls, quite another when that attempt consists of offering 7 quid on a 5 quid entry fee.
  • After Terminator Salvation, Joss Whedon offered to buy the Terminator franchise for $10,000. This was apparently not taken seriously, as the rights were up for sale, and ended up not being sold.
  • A contestant on Family Fortunes, whose family had not covered themselves in glory (among other things, one of its members, a certain Bob Johnson, was responsible for the "Turkey" incident), once offered to buy the rights to that episode so it would never be shown — for £100. The producer had to explain to them that this fell somewhat short of covering the show's £38,000 costs.
  • The anti-corruption organization 5th Pillar prints zero rupee notes which are intended to shame officials who ask for bribes.
  • Bribery often takes the form of items of wealth and taste rather than money because money seems less "classy". One mole in Russia was paid by the CIA with a custom sporting rifle, although in his case he intended to defect for ideological reasons and simply asked for the bribe on the "why not?" argument.
  • When a painting was stolen from the Museum of Bad Art, a reward of $6.50 was offered for its safe return. The stakes were later raised to $36.73, but eventually it was returned with no ransom paid.
  • North Korean border guards are reliably known to both Chinese and North Korean contraband smugglers to accept cans of Coke as an acceptable bribe to look the other way when going in or out of North Korea. Utterly priceless to the North Koreans, still a dollar or less per can to the Chinese.
  • Taylor Swift was groped by a radio host by the name of David Mueller at a fan event after a concert in 2013 while they were taking a picture. She told his employer what happened and he was fired. He sued her for $3 million in damages for losing his job and for defamation in 2015. She countersued him for a token $1 for sexual assault. She won the case and dollar.
  • The Knights Hospitalier were given the islands of Tripoli, Malta, and Gozo by the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in 1530. The yearly rent on all three (pretty sizeable) islands was a bird — a single Maltese falcon — and the Knights duly paid up until 1798. This is where the famous detective story's title comes from.
  • There exists a superstition that giving a knife as a gift is bad luck (symbolizing the severance of a relationship). Therefore, it is customary for those who believe this to "buy" the knife instead, with whatever small change they happen to have in their pocket at the time.
  • In his memoirs, DCI Clive Driscoll, a detective with the London Metropolitan Police, recounted a time he went to Sri Lanka to foster relations with the local police. Miffed that he wouldn't offer them cash bribes, police officials decided to take advantage of his offer of a nice meal and ordered multiple servings of expensive items and many rounds of drinks. Driscoll was nervous about what the total would be and wondering how he'd justify it to his bosses in London, but found, to his relief and surprise, that the final total was only £83.50.
  • In the debacle following the release of Fallout 76, Bethesda attempted to buy off the fans who were displeased with the contents of the 300 USD Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition note  by offering them 500 Atoms, which is in-game currency and worth just short of 5 USD. To add insult to injury, 500 Atoms is not enough to buy the in-game canvas bag.

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Your Government Thanks You

Well, at least the general honestly thinks it was a good reward.

How well does it match the trope?

4.85 (20 votes)

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Main / ComicallySmallBribe

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