Conspicuous Consumption

Because high-end laptops alone don't scream "I'm stinkin' rich!" loud enough.

"I'd build a big tall house with rooms by the dozen,
Right in the middle of the town.
A fine tin roof with real wooden floors below.
There would be one long staircase just going up,
And one even longer coming down,
And one more leading nowhere, just for show"

— Fiddler on the Roof, "If I Were a Rich Man"

If you can imagine a luxury, rich people have purchased it.

In a nutshell, conspicuous consumption is any extravagant spending that has no real purpose other than just to show off someone's wealth. Sometimes this leads to a vicious cycle of "keeping up with the Joneses", when two well-off people or families each feel that they need to buy more things to show they're just as wealthy as the other, sometimes with Serial Escalation (even if what is bought is Simple, yet Opulent).

Any way you look at it, these people are just spending money for the hell of it. You aren't buying a luxury car. You're buying a gold-plated one. You don't just have a private jet. You have a private aircraft carrier (and not for your private army either).

Yes, there can be at least somewhat understandable reasons to spend a lot of money. If you see an expenditure for a reason like these, it's not this trope:

• Sometimes it's just a bigger and better version of a thing we need anyway. We need a car, and they buy leather-upholstered luxury cars.
• Sometimes it's expected, or even required, for cultural reasons. Ermine Cape Effect mentions it wouldn't do for royalty to dress like slobs.
• Sometimes what these people do actually requires a large expense. A CEO of a multinational corporation often negotiates multi-million dollar deals with other executives that need to be done in person, so he/she needs a private jet to accomplish that. Similarly, a rock star who is hounded by crazy fans may need a large entourage of bodyguards on every outing.
• Sometimes someone is trying to buy him/herself out of trouble.

This can apply just as often in Real Life as in fiction, but with fiction, some of the spending can even defy reality, thus overlapping with Fiction 500. Also common among the Nouveau Riche (often leading to A Fool and His New Money Are Soon Parted).

It also is often the case that a Mock Millionaire will use Conspicuous Consumption to portray themselves as super-rich; after all, they wouldn't be throwing that kind of money around unless they had a lot more in the bank, right?

A retailer that targets this demographic is Up Marketing.

A Super-Trope to Bling-Bling-BANG!, Everything's Sparkly with Jewelry, Billionaire Wristband, Gem-Encrusted, Pimped-Out Cape, Pimped-Out Dress, Pretty in Mink, Big Fancy House, Luxurious Liquor, Maid Corps, Gold Makes Everything Shiny, Glam Rap, It's Snowing Cocaine, If I Were a Rich Man, Pooled Funds, Formal Full Array of Cutlery, Snooty Haute Cuisine.

Compare Executive Excess, Money Fetish, Upper-Class Twit, Egopolis, Serial Escalation, Bling of War, City of Gold, and Suspicious Spending. This trope also goes very well with Awesome, but Impractical, as the stuff that costs the most frequently has the least practical use;^note Case in point: the 24-carat gold-plated Macbook in the page image would scratch and dent incredibly easily, as gold is a notoriously soft metal and much less durable than aluminium, which most Macbooks are made of, or plastic, which most other laptops and computers are made from. the point isn't to use it (since anyone can afford something useful), but to show off that you can afford it.

Contrast Affluent Ascetic and Bankruptcy Barrel.

Compare and contrast Simple, yet Opulent, where an item is obviously high-quality but not ostentatious or tacky.

Not to be confused with Crazy Consumption or the Victorian Novel Disease.

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Examples

Anime & Manga

• In Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, Dorothy Catalonia seems to have a thing for gold-plated vehicles: a limousine, a space shuttle, and a truck.
• In some of the ancillary material to Mobile Suit Gundam, some Zeon officers have personalised Mobile Suits that include ostentatious gold trimmings. M'Quve, for example, has a customised Gouf with such trimmings that is only mentioned in the Mobile Suit Variation series.
  • Similarly, the MSV series also mentions the personalised Zaku-II of Vice-Admiral Dozle Zabi, which has a deeper green than regular Zakus and also has gold trimmings on it. This might also cross over with Ermine Cape Effect, though, since Dozle is part of the ruling Zabi family in addition to being a Frontline General.
• Double subverted in the My Hero Academia Yonkoma spinoff, My Heroine Academia. The rest of the girls of Class 1-A assume that Momo Yaoyorozu, a girl so rich that she drinks teas that cost 50,000 yen per cup and has 10,000 yen towels (roughly $500 and $100, respectively), has a fancy case for her smartphone made out of gold or jewels, but in reality, it's a simple plastic case; she just buys a new one whenever the case gets scratched. Ochaco Uraraka, whose family is so poor she can't even afford a smartphone, is appropriately shocked.
• Aria from Seitokai Yakuindomo comes from a family that is rich that her mansion has a room made of solid gold.
• In Speed Grapher, there was a Euphoric who literally eats diamonds. If she eats enough, she becomes a walking, talking diamond.
  • In another example, Suitengu smokes cigarettes literally rolled in 10,000-yen bills.
• Zigfried von Schroeder from Yu-Gi-Oh! has a fancy castle, an army of maids, private jets, and swimming pools filled with fresh milk... to hide the fact that his life of luxury is in jeopardy since SchroederCorp is going broke.

Art

• The Arnolfini Portrait:
  • Completed in 1434, many things scattered about the room hint that the depicted couple is wealthy: her Pimped-Out Dress and jewelry, the oranges by the window^note they would have been very expensive and difficult to import at the time, the Oriental rug, and the rich, heavy bed fabrics.
  • Makes sense in a cultural context: The geography of the Low Countries doesn't easily allow for a traditional aristocracy based on ownership of agricultural land. Instead, highly influential merchant families dominated urban centers, and by the time of the Dutch Golden Age 200 years later, this mercantile economy had evolved into an early form of Capitalism. Within these smaller "domains", displays of artwork and other valuable objects became the way for wealthy people to show off their status.
• Venus and Cupid (Gentileschi): The price of lapis lazuli pigments, necessary for both creating an oil paint and a fabric blue this rich, was exorbitant at the time. Then there's the gold embroidery on the velvet (an expensive cloth) pillow and curtain. If you add to it that Cupid has a fan made of exotic peacock feathers, you get to the conclusion that the illustrated room is quite luxurious. Enough to house deities, in fact.

Comic Books

• Alan Ford played for laughs in Do-Re-Mi: a millionaire buys an original Paganini violin and as soon as the transaction is complete he promptly eats it whole, strings included, in front of the horrified store owner. According to what he says, it's his habit.
• Asterix: In Obelix and Co., Obelix becomes rich from selling menhirs to the Roman economist Preposterus. At the suggestion of Preposterus, Obelix gets some "smarter clothes". Said clothes turn out to be hideously garish. Once the rest of the village is caught up in the craze, all the other menhir entrepreneurs start wearing these hideous clothes as well.
  • Preposterus markets the menhirs as status symbols since they have no other use. A narration box warns the reader that this concept might be hard to understand since in modern times, no one would dream of selling something completely useless.
• Deadpool owns a gun that seems to be made of this trope; it's solid gold and the bullets he uses for it are diamonds, he calls it the Compensator.
• Richie Rich had gold-plated, gem-studded everything. Conspicuous consumption is the only joke in his comics: mundane gadgets festooned with precious metals and minerals, landscaping feature like hedges and swimming pools shaped like dollar signs, the immense size of the Rich estate (requiring multiple ZIP codes, needing its own transit system), and so on, ad nauseum. On at least one occasion Richie pointed out to his mother how impractical much of this was, such as in the case of a washcloth so encrusted with jewels that you scratch your face when you try to wash with it.
• Two Carl Barks stories ("Hound of the Whiskervilles" and "The Status Seeker") show the miserly Scrooge clashing with the other wealthy snobs of Duckburg because he doesn't use his wealth this way; to his surprise, it's not how much money you have that impresses people but how you flaunt it, which is not his style at all.
  • This trope is actually a recurring plot in the Italian Disney comics, where John Rockerduck appears more often than Flintheart Glomgold. A common setting is the Duckburg Millionaire's Club, who occasionally expel Scrooge because they consider his thrifty personality to be against club standards.
• Spider-Man
  • One of Mary Jane Watson's own self-acknowledged flaws is a tendency for this. Having been born poor and wanting to be fashionable and successful she tends to splurge when she makes money, traveling first class and buying expensive stuff and going to fancy places. Which continued even after she and Peter married, and it became a problem when the couple faced lean times, such as when Jonathan Caesar ended her fashion career, or during Mark Millar's run on Marvel Knights, where attempts by her to improve her savings led to dodgy investments. Peter did struggle with his since growing up poor made him austere, it also made him feel guilty about not being able to provide all this for MJ on his own, yet at the same time being a little too passive and accommodating to make this a big issue, and too supportive to make her feel guilty about spending on herself from her own hard-earned money.
  • The Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows #19 actually does have her experience some Character Development where she and Peter take a cruise vacation, and MJ drags him to a fancy dinner where they interact with snobby fellow travelers. By the end of the issue, after MJ had earlier told Peter to let it slide, she unloads on them for their ingratitude to Spider-Man and Spinneret (their alter-egos who saved them) and then she and Peter take a cheaper road-trip that is more romantic and peaceful, with MJ starting to adopt some of Peter's taste for austerity.
  • In Spider-Girl Mayday who takes after her father in his tastes and lifestyle attitude in her early years often avoided her mother's love for shopping and her fashion tastes with MJ noting that Mayday never seemed to like her taste in clothing. After a while, Mayday does start to have her taste rub off on her, and in one time-travel issue, Mayday on meeting the young version of her mother aside from noting how beautiful she was at her age, is bemused when the first thing teenage MJ does is insist that they go shopping so she can dress better:
    Mayday: "Now you sound like my mother."
• Wonder Woman Vol 1: When she's first seen the self professed Queen Atomia's servants are piling precious gems in front of her and the drum-like arms of her throne are hollow things filled with diamonds and emeralds.
• Doctor Doom once outraged Tony Stark by off-handedly mentioning that he owned several Rembrandts but had one burned because it displeased him. He's also been shown to enjoy lavish meals prepared by master chefs all by himself (though on at least one occasion when he didn't feel like dessert he instructed his chef Pierre to "bestow it on some deserving peasant family").

Fan Works

• In A Northern Dragoness, the Great Sept of Baelor is projected to have an obscene cost of two and a half million dragons - twice what the Sept of Remembrance, which was heavily fortified and included barracks for the Faith Militant, cost. Most of the money is budgeted to go towards charity, for which Baelor is famous, but a lot of it is also meant to be spent in high-quality materials, splendid salaries for all workers, and a lot of rituals Baelor insists must be carried out on each stone.
• Tough Love: Charlie reveals to Bella that the Cullens are close to going broke because they keep spending on luxury cars and designer clothes. He did some research and found out their Aston Martin cost $35,000 more than Carlisle's annual salary, and their Lamborghini cost almost $100,000 more than that.
• Pyrrha's parents in Professor Arc: Student of Vacuo used her winnings to buy "a mansion, cars they never drive, and gold jewelry they never wear". Apparently, they're so in debt that she'd have to win six grand tourneys and the Vytal Festival to pay it all off, and even then only if they didn't buy anything else. Pyrrha admits to Ilia that being treated as their cash cow is why she hates her parents.
• Subverted twice in Wilhuff Tarkin, Hero of the Rebellion:
  • During the drought on Tatooine there's a rumor that Jabba imposed a water tax so he could bathe in it. It's however quickly pointed out he'd never do that... Because Jabba would never bathe.
  • Tarkin's office is noted to be large but relatively undecorated, and much less lavish than the one of a commodore Galen Erso had previously met. Erso had actually expected it to be smaller and more spartan, and guessed it was as modest as Tarkin could afford due his rank.

Films — Animation

• In Disney's Pocahontas, Ratcliffe envisions himself wearing a suit of armor made of solid gold, beset with gemstones.
• In the Novelization of Turning Red, according to Mei, Tyler "always had to have the latest video game, the most expensive sneakers.".

Films — Live-Action

• Ocean's Eleven: In Ocean's 13, Al Pacino's character receives a gold-plated and diamond-encrusted cell phone as a gift. He's obviously been desiring one for a while. This is Flaw Exploitation by the protagonists, who have put an app on the phone that allows them to hack his security system, something that no other person would be able to go near with a personal device.
• The Replacements (2000) has the striking players' attempt at gaining sympathy from the public derailed when one payer remarks on how expensive the insurance is on a Ferrari.
• A long sequence in Apocalypto highlights the conspicuous consumption of the Mayan royalty to construct their ostentatious buildings. The damage this causes to the environment and their peasants is shown to be terrible. The nobility is also shown to be covered practically from head to toe in jade jewelry. In the DVD commentary, director Mel Gibson uses the name of the trope frequently to point out his thinly-veiled commentary on modern society.
• The title characters in Fun with Dick and Jane are very much concerned with what the neighbors think — and what the neighbors think is that it's best to show off one's wealth. This intersects brutally with their poverty.
• Laura actually got a scene cut from the original run due to the consumption going against wartime rationing.
• Melancholia features an extravagant wedding at a castle as the world ends. The director actually contacted a wedding planning service and let them go wild.
• Bigger Than Life is a Melodrama Unbuilt Trope that criticizes this mentality in The '50s (the decade with which it is highly associated). A poor-struggling family goes on a shopping spree to feel good about themselves and the result is a day of excitement and exhilaration followed with anxiety and guilt about living beyond their means.
• Casino: Expected since it takes place in Las Vegas, but especially anything to do with Ginger, from her clothes and her furs to her Big Fancy House and her vault full of jewels.
• Brazilian Based on an Advice Book movie Até que a Sorte nos Separe ("Til Luck Do Us Part") has a guy who won the lottery 15 years prior finding out his fortune is basically gone after years of spending in things the bank makes sure to make a montage of: yearly travels both stateside and on the Vomit Comet, buying a yacht that sunk after 30 minutes (without insurance!), celebrating a birthday in a private rock festival, having the wedding anniversary in a French castle... Hilarity Ensues when he has to hide it from his wife who is still fond of spending because she can. (Note that this fate often befalls people who win the lottery in real life. It just usually happens a lot faster.)
• James Bond:
  • Franz Sanchez from Licence to Kill has a Right Hand Iguana with a diamond necklace. His Big Fancy House also qualifies.
  • In Casino Royale, Le Chiffre's fine clothes, yacht, and platinum inhaler are all testaments to his immense wealth.
• In Scarface (1983), Tony Montana spends the second half of the film in a hideous, gaudy mansion with various signs of his ill-gotten wealth. In particular he has a spinning, neon-lit globe in his lobby (boasting "The World Is Yours") and a pet tiger.
• In Trouble in Paradise, the filthy-rich Mariette spends 125,000 francs on a diamond-encrusted handbag. Lily, one of the two con artists out to swindle her, is disgusted. (Of course, Mariette also refuses her corporate board's demand to cut employee salaries.)
• Jewel Robbery: Teri is obsessed with getting the Excelsior diamond; it's worth about $50,000.
• In Maps to the Stars, past-her-prime actress Havana Segrand is quite vocal about how expensive it is to maintain her Hollywood lifestyle: after a shopping spree on Rodeo Drive, she publicly moans "I can't believe I just spent eighteen thousand dollars!"
• Subverted in The Sting. After Hooker pulls off a big con at the start of the film, he takes out a woman with a promise of showering her with luxuries during the evening (Specifically, that he will spend $50 on her). However, he blows the entire take on a single (rigged) roulette spin and she leaves in disgust at the wasted evening. It also immediately identifies Hooker as the one who was responsible for pulling the con and sets the villain after him, and worse, his partner Luther.
• In Mermaid, Aleksandr has decked out his apartment with the finest furnishings including multiple remote-controlled systems. It's a general theme of the movie, with Russia embracing capitalism in all of its facets.
• In Mad Max: Fury Road, the three head warlords, Immortan Joe, The People Eater, and The Bullet Farmer, all make a big show of their wealth and status in the post-apocalyptic wasteland. Whereas most have a simple tricked-out car and primitive explosive weapons, Immortan Joe has two Cadillacs fused together into an impressive monstrosity and about two or three magnums, as well as a mobile soundstage in his fleet. The People Eater has a (mostly) intact three-piece suit and a giant limousine that also acts as a mobile oil rig. The Bullet Farmer has a tricked out all-terrain vehicle and a massive amount of guns and ammunition, so much so that he uses bullets as teeth and to form a judge's wig. All of these are used to impress their followers, ensuring even more fanatical devotion.
  Collin Gibson, production designer: In a world where there's barely one of anything, to show you he had power, he's the man who's got two of everything.
• In In Time, time is literally money, so the rich show off their wealth by just doing everything very slowly.
• Zabriskie Point by Michelangelo Antonioni, deals with the omnipresence of this in America, from the giant billboards, advertising, the display in the malls and the tacky and insipid proposed commercials for the real estate project that Allen's company wants to install. The finale likewise focuses on the destruction of all the household objects in the house, which is played as a kind of liberation.
• Star Wars:
  • Revenge of the Sith: Chancellor Palpatine's office on Coruscant. It's huge and empty and on a city planet like Coruscant, it would have been mind-numbingly expensive to rent or buy that real estate. It is a subtle display of his wealth and power that he can have a huge office and not need to fill it with anything. The Expanded universe took it even further by revealing that after becoming Emperor he moved into the even larger and more empty-yet-decadent Imperial Palace... Which for ultimate bragging rights used to be the Jedi Temple.
  • The Last Jedi: Canto Bight is a haven for rich socialites and gamblers, so that city is dripping with luxuries.
  • Return of the Jedi: Jabba The Hutt runs a criminal empire on Tatooine, where most people are slaves, farmers, peasants, and thieves struggling to make a living in the sandy wastes. Jabba by contrast lives in a cool, air-conditioned palace where he's perpetually entertained by dancers, musicians, scantily-clad slave women, his personal jester, lavish meals that he gobbles down greedily, and a small collection of monsters he regularly feeds people to for his amusement. He's constantly in need of new droids because he keeps having his old ones destroyed (read: tortured to death) for petty reasons, like a toddler breaking his toys. When he plans to execute our heroes, he does so in a massive sand barge that roars over the barren planet blaring loud music and serving exotic drinks. Even Jabba's design as a grotesque, morbidly obese slug who can barely move under his own power is designed to indicate the worst excesses of greed, gluttony, and selfishness.
• Done in Blade Runner 2049 to highlight the wealth of Niander Wallace. In a dystopian future where space is at a premium, clean water is a luxury (even Officer K can only afford a shower for five seconds at a time, at least if he wants it mostly non-toxic), and trees are so rare that a toy wooden horse the size of your hand is worth as much as a real one, the Wallace Corp is not only massive but consists mostly of huge, empty rooms, and Wallace's office consists of a platform paneled and furnished in wood that's surrounded by crystal-clear water. Wallace is blind, so he can't even appreciate the luxuries that he surrounds himself with.
• Parasite (2019) has the Park family eating jjapaguri, or ram-don (a mix of instant noodle brands), but topped with expensive sirloin steak. While it makes for a handy metaphor for class stratification, the fact that they can't stand eating crappy junk food unless something expensive gets involved, along with the fact that mixing steak and instant noodles is probably missing the point of both, also reflects this trope pretty well.
• Justice League / Zack Snyder's Justice League: When meeting Deathstroke on his yacht, Lex Luthor serves himself some Goût de Diamants ("Taste of Diamonds" in French). It is the most expensive Champagne (and alcohol overall) in the world, it costs about $1.2 million for a single bottle - the alcohol itself doesn't contain diamonds of course, the bottle is encrusted with diamonds. Lex can afford it, of course.
• Howard and Linda in Krampus drive a Hummer, own a ton of guns, and live a very lavish "rich redneck" lifestyle reminiscent of the Robertsons from Duck Dynasty. They're also living well beyond their means and facing financial hardship, and they express jealousy of the relative financial stability of their comparatively down-to-Earth (if somewhat Bourgeois Bohemian) relatives, the Engels. The film also opens with a scene of a chaotic Black Friday shopping spree where people are viciously fighting each other for hot consumer items that are on sale.
• Doctor Strange (2016): Early on in the film, we see that Stephen Strange has a selection of very expensive watches at his home. This occurs before the accident that robs him of any precision in his hands, whereupon he immediately starts throwing money at even the slightest possibility that he can get his career back. Christine notes that he's always spent money as fast as he can make it.
• After the Lufthansa robbery in Goodfellas the Caper Crew is told to lay low and not spread their money around, but one can't resist the temptation of a pink Caddilac and a mink coat for his old lady. All four are later found full of bullet holes.

Jokes

• When the Soviet Union collapsed and the economy liberalized overnight, lots of nouveau riche also appeared overnight. After decades of stolid imposed Soviet modesty, the nouveau riche were ready to show off, and tons of jokes appeared among Russians poking fun at their utter tastelessness and boorishness. A BBC article about Russian jokes:
  Late 1990s. Two New Russians meet in the street. One says to the other: “Hey, look, I bought a new tie. Paid $200.”
  “You idiot. Just around the corner you can get the same tie for $500.”
• And the one where a new Russian gets sideswiped by a car, losing an arm, and is more worried that he lost his Rolex than his, well, arm.
• Lewis Black had an extensive bit about real-world examples of this around the time of the Enron scandal. It ends with his own idea of how to one-up them by hiring an "executive ball washer", which amazingly isn't sexual.
  "That's my personal BALL WASHER! What did you guys buy? Another car?! Hahahahaha!"

Literature

• American Psycho: The yuppie characters go to fancy restaurants, order impractically extravagant food, and then don't actually eat it.
• A Brother's Price: When Jerin is shown the husband's quarters in the palace, he learns that the princesses' late husband Keifer planned to have the floor ripped out and replaced by the most expensive marble, and have the ceiling gold-plated. Fortunately, he died before he got around to actually doing it - the princesses didn't approve of so much luxury, as they're aware that they're already living in much more comfortable surroundings than their subjects.
  • Nobility tends towards this, with expensive outfits that are only intended to be worn once.
• Caliban's War: Jules-Pierre Mao manages to exaggerate this trope within the confines of a near-future sci-fi universe, directly flipping almost every established economic constraint in the series. To establish a baseline, most characters wouldn't even be able to buy a rust bucket of a ship with their life savings. For Mao, though… apart from his company, which has some kind of presence on almost every inhabited rock in the solar system, he also owns a dedicated racing spacecraft for one of his daughters to use, a small fleet of pleasure yachts, and a private space station dedicated solely to docking those yachts. The one pleasure yacht we see, the Guanshiyin, features gold and wood accents everywhere (Earth has long since been paved over), sweeping curves throughout its architecture (most ships are boxy to maximize storage space), multiple safety redundancies, and an ornate mural on the outer hull in a location that almost no one will ever see.
• Captive Prince: One of the greatest shows of wealth in the Veretian court is to contract a high-class escort "Pet", decked out in the most luxurious clothes and jewels the patron can afford. Their sexual services are almost secondary to their role as a status symbol.
• Citizen: In this series by David Drake and John Lambshead, the protagonist actually thinks that this trope can be a good thing: Encouraging the ultra-rich to spend large amounts of money on expensive and frivolous things is an easy way for wealth to be redistributed back into the lower social classes without the need for figurative or literal class warfare (this assumes that some poor people will be hired at a decent wage to produce/deliver the expensive items the rich man is buying to flaunt his wealth).
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: One of Grandpa Joe's anecdotes of the legend that is Willy Wonka is the story of how an Indian prince commissioned the chocolatier to build an entire palace out of chocolate for him — and he intended to live in it! The prince didn't see the folly of his ways until the hot Indian summer rolled around and the castle melted around him.
  • Note that Wonka himself is an aversion to this trope. Though he says repeatedly he's rich, it says in the book that most of his fortune is used to maintain his business, research new candies, and care for the Oompa-Loompas. In fact, in the above anecdote, Grandpa Joe says Wonka was absolutely shocked at the prince's declaration that he'd live in the chocolate palace.
• Claudius the God: In this sequel to Robert Graves's I, Claudius, Claudius has a strategy meeting with his ministers to decide how to restore the Roman treasury after Caligula has bankrupted it. Claudius also includes his friend Herod Agrippa (the archetypal Scoundrel with a Heart of Gold), who is probably the world's foremost expert on raising loans and staving off debts. Herod explains that conspicuous consumption can actually be a useful debt management tool:
  Whenever I ran short of money in my needy days, I always made a point of spending whatever I had left on personal adornment: rings and cloaks and beautiful new shoes. This sent my credit up and allowed me to borrow again.
  • By the same token, he suggests, a few ostentatious displays of public prosperity can be made relatively cheaply and will go a long way towards restoring faith in the economy; such as by using the marble Caligula imported to build a new temple to himself to instead re-do the facades of the existing temples; or by gold-plating the entrance ways of the Circus Maximus, which will look rich but only cost a few hundred gold pieces.
• Conan the Barbarian: In "A Witch Shall Be Born", Salome goes in for this.
• Dark Future: There's a lot of this, with the cosmetic genetic enhancements offered by GenTech, including up to five implanted sets of teeth to replace your own as they wear out, but Gavin Mantle, winner of the ZBC Blotto Lotto prize of 100 million dollars goes on a spree of spending to live up to this including a gold-plated Rolls Royce shaped like a penis, a huge mansion shaped like a pair of breasts with a swimming pool the bottom of which is covered in gemstones and a small army of personal Sexbots turns the dial up a touch more.
• The Diabolic: The only reason actual human employees are ever used. Robots and servitors can do anything, but hiring humans with free will who demand money and might turn on you is a sign of power and prestige.
• The Divine Comedy: The fourth circle of Hell is shared by hoarders and wasters rolling big rocks to smash into each other while the hoarders criticize the wasters (and vice versa). Larry Niven's take on Inferno implies the big rocks are gigantic diamonds.
• Dr. Greta Helsing: Leonora Van Dorne wears Simple, yet Opulent designer wardrobes, accented with a single piece of authentic Ancient Egyptian jewellery — a different one each time. A qualified Egyptologist, she knows just how precious and irreplaceable each piece is, but does it anyway.
• Duty Calls: Amberley Vail is undercover as a blue-blooded Socialite. One of the ways she reinforced her cover was to rent the penthouse suite of the most exclusive hotel on the planet and demand they replant the suite's roof garden with her favorite flowers.
  Nothing convinces people you've more money than sense quite as effectively as indulging a ludicrously expensive whim.
• The Great Gatsby: Also deconstructs the American Dream and The Roaring '20s into teeny, tiny pieces. Gatsby regularly throws the biggest parties just to show off, in hopes of attracting the attention of his childhood crush. In one notable scene, a guest enters his impressive library and wonders if all the books are fake. He examines them and sees that all of the books are quite real, but none of their pages have been cut. It's an entire library of unread books, just for show.
• The History of Middle-earth: The House of the Heavenly Arch is one of 12 kindreds of the Elven city of Gondolin, and possibly the wealthiest of them; not only do they wear clothes in many bright colors (“heavenly arch” refers to a rainbow), but their helms, weapons, and even their shields are all adorned with gems.
• Light Verse: Mrs Lardner, a wealthy Socialite, often throws parties at her home, displaying jeweled objects from distant corners of the world and the distant past. Her collection includes glasses, daggers, and watches.
  Her house was a showplace, a veritable museum, containing a small but extremely select collection of extraordinarily beautiful jeweled objects. From a dozen different cultures she had obtained relics of almost every conceivable artifact that could be embedded with jewels and made to serve the aristocracy of that culture. She had one of the first jeweled wristwatches manufactured in America, a jeweled dagger from Cambodia, a jeweled pair of spectacles from Italy, and so on almost endlessly.
• Martian Time-Slip: Water is scarce on Mars, so Arnie Kott is proud of his steam bath, which wastefully lets run-off soak into the sand instead of preserving it.
• The Midas Plague: In this Frederik Pohl creation, the US went through a period of severe shortages, which strongly inculcated a strong "thou shalt not waste" ethic in the population, followed by a period of cheap fusion energy, and automatic production, which created huge surpluses. But people couldn't "waste" things, so they had to consume them, which leads to an inversion of consumer culture, where "poor" people have higher consumption quotas that they have to meet.
• Nibelungenlied: Features buhurts (spellings vary), jousting tournaments in which the knights wear fine clothing instead of armor. Even with blunted lances, this clothing will usually be ripped to shreds, thereby demonstrating the knight's talent for conspicuous waste.
• Northanger Abbey: General Tilney gives Catherine a tour of all the improvements he's made to the Abbey, having fitted it out with a number of very expensive Regency mod cons. Contemporary readers would have recognized the expense involved in replacing all the windows with the newly-invented sash windows, the hyacinths were very expensive, and hothouses (with their attending maintenance staff) would be a huge domestic expense in any era.
• Persuasion: This is the root of the Elliots' financial troubles. Sir Walter thinks he has to live up to the style of a baronet, which means buying expensive, flashy things until he runs into such deep debt he's forced to rent out his estate to an admiral. This brings Anne's sea-captain ex-fiance back into her life.
• Pride and Prejudice: Lady Catherine de Bourgh. After visiting both Lady Catherine's estate of Rosing. and Darcy's at Pemberly, Elizabeth draws a contrast—the decorative style at Rosings is grand, but it's also too obviously chosen to show how much money Lady Catherine can spend, not for its actual taste.
• The Rise of Kyoshi: Since the Earth Kingdom is more corrupt than usual in Kyoshi's era, this shows up a lot. Nobles use a lot more land than they need, import foreign animals for their grounds, and even specifically use ugly paints simply because they are known for being expensive. They even manage to do this with the stones of the buildings themselves; in a country where a significant portion of the population can build a structure straight out of the ground, it's considered high-status to ship in rocks quarried from as far away as possible.
• Rogue Squadron: The novels have a subtle one. When an Imperial agent visits a director, the director's room is spacious but otherwise threadbare. But looking closer, they're in a City Planet where space is at a premium. Having that much space and not actually using it is the very definition of conspicuous consumption.
  • Other Star Wars novels (now under the Legends banner) mention that the three largest palaces on Coruscant (the galactic capital) belong to the Emperor, Darth Vader and Prince Xizor in that order. Of them, both the Emperor and Xizor fill their palaces with artwork to show off their wealth and status. Vader, on the other hand, opts for a Simple, yet Opulent approach: his palace is almost bare in comparison, the only sign of his wealth is the fact the spartan chairs and tables are made of a very expensive and durable wood.
• The Satyricon: Written by the Ancient Roman author Petronius, and is full of this. In the chapter describing the banquet of Trimalchio, a heavy silver platter is dropped by one of the household slaves, and the wealthy Trimalchio commands that the platter be left on the floor and swept out with the rest of the garbage. Between courses, the guests have their fingers washed with wine instead of water. The narrators are obviously party-crashers, but no one cares.
• Sewer, Gas & Electric: A corporate executive prepares for his upcoming date by ordering, among other things, a $50,000 ten-pack of condoms.
• The Stars My Destination: Almost everyone can teleport themselves, so the rich show off their wealth by "conspicuous transportation"—traveling the old-fashioned way (which not only shows that they're rich enough to afford it but also important enough to make people wait for them). At one point a character arrives at a party by steam locomotive, on a track laid just for the occasion.
• The Stormlight Archive: Occurs frequently. The currency in this setting is "spheres", small glass beads with chips of gemstone in them. However, one of the reasons gemstones are valued is that they are the only things capable of holding the titular Light for more than a few minutes. Therefore, the rich often use spheres for illumination, as Stormlight illumination is brighter and more steady than firelight. This, of course, doubles as a way of showing off how many spheres they have. Unusual for this trope in that this is actually more cost-efficient than the "poor" alternative - candles and torches are consumed and must be replaced, but a sphere can be recharged for free in the next highstorm.
• Temeraire: The setting's sapient dragons generally wear their wealth in lieu of traditional Dragon Hoards and treat their jewellery as Serious Business. Temeraire's pride and joy is a platinum breastplate worth ten thousand 19^th-Century pounds^* (i.e.: nearly a million pounds in modern-day currency), while Iskierka fights with her captain over her desire to deck him out in Impractically Fancy Outfits that drip with jewels and cloth-of-gold.
• The Twilight Saga: The Cullens all wear designer clothes and drive brand-new cars despite living in a backwoods town. According to the author this is done on purpose, because for some reason making shows of wealth helps them keep a low profile.
• Wayward Children: Jill Wolcott wears expensive, diaphanous pastel gowns for everything, including walking through muddy streets. As the adopted "daughter" of a Vampire Monarch, money is absolutely no object — if she ruins one, it'll be fixed or replaced before she even thinks to look.
• Will Save the Galaxy for Food: It's explicitly noted that this trope is the only reason spaceships still exist in a world where instantaneous teleportation is the most common way to get around; every transporter booth is identical, but spaceships can go all-out on the first-class accommodations.
• Who Moved My Soap: The narrator defends his doing this as a way to inspire faith in his (sham) company.
• Wolf Hall
  • Cardinal Wolsey was known for enjoying a very lavish lifestyle. His loyal protege Thomas Cromwell glosses over the excess by either not thinking much about it, joking about it with Wolsey by pricing him by the yard, or saying that he's a public man and should keep up an appropriate appearance. Few others are so circumspect. Cromwell at one point chides Mary Tudor for making a crack about it, but he does eventually admit to himself that it was a bit much.
  • This becomes a habit of Cromwell's when he becomes truly wealthy— not just because he's Henry's right hand but because he uses his position there to exercise his financial skills to the utmost (and by dissolving some wealthy monasteries, that too). His kitchens are so good that his cook complains city officials are disguising themselves as beggars to get leftovers, he throws big Christmas parties, and he decks out his sisters-in-law, nieces, and any other woman in his house in the best clothing that money can buy. Him being a former wool merchant, he knows exactly how much it's worth and notes the price of every fabric by the yard.

Live-Action TV

• Our Miss Brooks: In "Madison Country Club", Miss Brooks brags about how much she spends on travel, food, champagne, and clothes to society matron Mrs. Grabar. Miss Brooks thinks that Mr. Conklin is poking fun of the faculty; in reality Conklin was soliciting a donation from the wealthy philanthropist.
• Silicon Valley
  • Hooli is a big perpetrator of this. After Jared defects to Pied Piper, Gavin offers Big Head a promotion, pretty much in retaliation for this (and Richard turning down a $10 million buyout in favor of Peter Gregory's offer of a $200,000 5 percent investment) and given an annual salary of $600,000 a year. One character refers to him as the VP of spite.
  • Discussed by Monica who tells Richard that the standard MO for billionaires is to throw a bunch of money some times millions into no other purpose other than humiliating their rivals.
  • Bachmann rents out Alcatraz to throw a lavish party, just so he could invite all the people who said he'd never amount to anything. But the kicker is that not only did he get the money for it by scamming Big Head, Big Head had actually already squandered his fortune, leaving them both heavily in debt.
• On Lost, several characters, especially evil tycoon Charles Widmore, make a show of drinking the fictional MacCutcheon whiskey, a bottle of which costs several thousand dollars.
• On Chappelle's Show, one MTV Cribs parody sketch had an insanely rich celebrity (Dave Chapelle himself) who ate dinosaur eggs and sprinkled diamonds on his food because it made his "doody twinkle".
• In The Office Michael Scott manages to do this in the absence of actual wealth. When Oscar examined his finances to explain his debts he ended up dividing his spending into three categories, of which the third was the largest: Things that he needed, things that he didn't need, and things that no one, anywhere, ever needed.
• Mystery Science Theater 3000 noted this in the short film Design for Dreaming, made in 1956 to advertise GM's Motorama expo. As the heroine and her man drive away in their fabulous Firebird II, Mike Nelson quips, "Conspicuous consumption makes our love stronger!"
• On Parks and Recreation Tom and Jean Ralphio start their own entertainment company after Jean Ralphio gets a lot of money. They primarily spend the money on extravagant furniture and hire pro basketball players and beautiful women to just hang around the office (since nobody in the company is doing any actual work). They even give everyone who visits them a free iPad. Naturally, the business fails.
  • The entire town of Eagleton does this. They fill their pools and water their lawns only with imported bottled water and literally pave their streets with gold. Naturally, their town ends up going bankrupt and requires Pawnee to bail them out. This doesn't stop them from resenting the entire town of Pawnee.
• On Downton Abbey Martha Levinson does a major one of these: if it's not the furs, then it's the pearls and jewelry; if it's none of the above, then it's the seriously posh car that is very fancy for the time, with white wheels (even Robert is impressed) and her "generous" income that proves it. This woman is stinking rich!
• My Super Sweet Sixteen was all about this.
• Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Jacqueline, the wealthy housewife, spends this way. In one of her first appearances, she offers Kimmy a bottle of exotic water. When it's declined, she throws the unopened bottle away as if it's been used.
• Chanel Oberlin of Scream Queens (2015) has no problems flaunting her wealth. Her insanely enormous wardrobe is replaced regularly. She recounts a story about a party her dad held for her, which seems to be a monument to how rich they are: he bought her a foreclosed Mc Mansion for the party and filled the pool with a caviar slurry, before setting the house on fire. The fire department was, in fact, strippers who put the fire out with champagne.
• Game of Thrones
  • The Lannisters are the wealthiest noble family in the Seven Kingdoms and not afraid to let everyone know it. They put gold and jewels on everything and boast about being able to buy anything and their ability to pay debts. It's ultimately revealed to be a subversion: their gold mines have run out and the War of Five Kings wiped out both their savings and the only thing they had left of any value; an obscene debt owed them by the Iron Throne and House Baratheon. Now that they've taken the throne and eliminated House Baratheon, they're flat broke and have nothing left save two slummy port towns and the family heirs. They continue to spend lavishly with loaned money to make themselves appear prosperous and powerful, knowing the instant someone tries to call in their debts this will become common knowledge and the entire family is screwed.
  • The merchant-prince Xaro Xoan Daxos has a sumptuous mansion filled with gold artwork. It's ultimately a subversion, as Xaro's vault is empty. His lavish lifestyle is a con to make him appear wealthy. Although it could be considered a double subversion; as Danny points out the gold and gems decorating his estate represent a massive fortune by themselves. It's played with in his rival the Spice King; while he makes a show of sleeping in and having many servants, his estate is far plainer (more like a typical Westerossi Noble) and most of his wealth is explicitly tied up in his trading fleet.
  • Olenna discusses the importance of a spectacular presentation at the royal wedding with Tyrion in Season 2 and with Margaery in "Two Swords".
• On Raising Hope Virginia's cousin Delilah gets married, and Virginia recalls how when they were teenagers early in The '90s, they talked about the kind of weddings they wanted. Delilah wanted a dress with an extremely long train, which was to be held up by Michael Jackson. She got exactly that when she finally did marry, and Burt "stole" Delilah's wedding to give Virginia the nice wedding she wanted but (due to...unforeseen circumstances that forced her and Burt to have a simple courthouse wedding) never got. (They repeated their vows quietly in the back while Delilah and her new husband made theirs, danced discreetly to their first dance, and did the cake-cutting from the other side of the cake.) It seems Delilah cared more about being a bride than about being a wife.
• Blake's 7. An episode taking place in President Servalan's palace was filmed in a stately home of England and this trope was used as a handwave — rather than the usual Domed City, Servalan has had a reconstruction of a "pre-Atomic" Big Fancy House built on the ruins of the old. A member of her administration comments bitterly, "We could have built two cities for what it cost to build that absurdity."
• Schitt's Creek: Although they are now broke, the Roses still have their expensive wardrobes and memories, which include stories of lavish parties, jewelry, multiple houses, yachts, globe-trotting and a private jet. The very fact that Johnny bought the town as a long-forgotten gag gift illustrates their former spending habits.
• Brooklyn Nine-Nine: Jake was like this in the first season, with an old car that required a lot of expensive maintenance, multiple massage chairs, and a DJ turntable. Despite having a reasonable job and a rather cheap rent-controlled apartment, he was deep in debt—the banker laughed when he asked for a loan.
• In The Expanse, a summit between the UN and MCR takes place on Earth in a large, mostly empty hall with big windows that let in plenty of sunlight. There are also large flower arrangements and a buffet featuring plenty of fresh fruit on clear display. This is all done so that the UN can thumb its nose at the MCR delegation, showing the Martians that, in spite of their superiority complex over Earth, none of them will ever get to see such luxuries on Mars in their lifetimes.
• Succession:
  • In season 1, Tom tries to teach Greg "how to be rich," and it amounts to spending ridiculous amounts of money for weird food and paying to stand by yourself in the VIP section of clubs. Greg finds it all very unpleasant. In season 3, Greg's peer-pressured into buying a $40,000 watch even though he clearly doesn't want it, reasoning that he just uses his phone to check the time. Later, he clumsily tries to impress a girl by pretending to check the time on his expensive watch.
  • In season 3, Kendall throws a 40th birthday party that is supposed to be the blowout of the season. He rents out a huge space, decorates it lavishly, and invites every celebrity he can contact, all simply to show off.
• Thanks: After Cotton makes money by selling tobacco to all the people of Plymouth, he replaces his regular pilgrim clothes with a gaudy red and gold outfit that clearly costs a lot more than the drab clothes everyone else wears.
• In The Gilded Age, the Russells are not old blood, so they have to use their fantastic wealth to make an impact on New York society. Their new Beaux-Arts mansion is built of bright limestone walls, elaborate gilding and marble in every room, and furniture from every court in Europe or an exact replica thereof. Even their footmen are dressed in elaborate blue and gold livery that stands out everywhere they go.

Music

• Billy Joel's Movin' Out (Anthony's Song) is a criticism of blue-collar and lower-middle-class New Yorkers who are prepared to literally work themselves to death, in order to be seen to keep up with the Joneses. A notable example in the song is a cripple who can't drive buying himself a Cadillac.
• "Golden Tears," a No. 1 country hit from 1979 by the trio Dave and Sugar, about a poor girl who marries a rich man and now has everything she ever wanted ("From a Chevy to a Lincoln/From paper shades to curtain/From neon lights to crystal chandeliers") ... except love.
• Barenaked Ladies lampshades this trope with "If I had a Million Dollars", stating what they would buy their love if they were rich, including really expensive ketchup, a monkey, and the bones of the Elephant Man.
• "Two-Story House" by George Jones and Tammy Wynette, their No. 2 duet country hit from 1980. The song had an ironic twist to it, because they were singing about their own failed marriage, and lamented that they had everything else — from the finest china and furniture, gold fixtures and marble countertops and so forth — except love and respect for one another.
• Nickelback's "Rock Star" is one long ode to just what the singer's going to buy when he's successful.
• "Gangnam Style", by Psy, is about out-of-control conspicuous consumption and overpriced coffee in Seoul's trendiest district.
• Glam Rap is the hip-hop subgenre responsible for the average person's stereotypical image of some obscenely-wealthy "gangsta" showing off his gold-plated rims, diamond-encrusted swag, and beautiful women that service him daily and nightly within his opulent mansion. The fact that this is one of the only subgenres of hip-hop with mainstream popularity is a bit of a sore spot for fans of other, more underground subgenres who have to contend with people claiming that all rap is Lil Wayne or Soulja Boy.
• Lorde's "Royals" is about how pop music glamorizes conspicuous consumption, but in the end, who needs it?
  But every song's like gold teeth, Grey Goose, trippin' in the bathroom.
  Bloodstains, ball gowns, trashin' the hotel room,
  We don't care, we're driving Cadillacs in our dreams.
  But everybody's like Cristal, Maybach, diamonds on your timepiece.
  Jet planes, islands, tigers on a gold leash
  We don't care, we aren't caught up in your love affair.
• "Minnie the Moocher", made famous by Cab Calloway (with a little help from Betty Boop), especially the second half;
  She had a dream about the king of Sweden;
  He gave her things, that she was needin'.
  He gave her a home built of gold and steel,
  A diamond car, with the platinum wheels.
• "Weird Al" Yankovic's "This Is the Life" is about how mind-blowingly rich the singer is, all the ridiculous things he does with his vast amounts of money (including filling his bathtub with Perrier, paying someone to chew his food for him, and buying boxes of individually monogrammed Kleenex), and how much he loves it.
  You're dead for a really long time
  You just can't prevent it
  So if money can't buy happiness
  I guess I'll have to rent it!
  • "Don't Download This Song" has a refrain near the end that constitutes this.
  Don't take away money, from artists just like me. How else can I afford another solid-gold Humvee? And diamond-studded swimming pools - these things don't grow on trees!
• Pretty much everything bought by the narrator in Mitch Benn's "Too Much Money", but in particular the car that "does thirty gallons a mile" just to make the point he can afford to keep paying for it.
• Future Perfect's appropriately named "Excess":
  You wanna be liked because you just don't know why
  It's a flash of the cash and a glint in the eye
  I better be next while the rest of you die
  Doesn't she look great in that dress
  Gotta say yes to excess
• "Life's Been Good To Me So Far" by Joe Walsh details numerous examples of conspicuous consumption associated with a stereotypical 1970s "rock star" lifestyle. Some of them are made even more egregious by the fact that he doesn't or can't even use the goods or services in question.
  I have a mansion, forget the price
  Ain't never been there, they tell me it's nice.
  I live in hotels, tear out the walls
  I have accountants pay for it all.
  
  My Maserati does one eighty-five
  I lost my license, now I don't drive.
  I have a limo, ride in the back,
  I lock the doors in case I'm attacked.
• Crowded House's "Chocolate Cake" poked fun at American excess in general:
  Can I have another piece of chocolate cake?
  Tammy Baker must be losing her faith, yeah
  Can I buy another cheap Picasso fake?
  Andy Warhol must be laughing in his grave
• "Luckenbach, Texas (Back to the Basics of Love)" by Waylon Jennings, is about Waylon suggesting to his wife that they abandoned the "successful life they're living" and go "back to the basic of love". In on part of the song he talk about trying to living a fancy lifestyle and always feeling the need to be "keeping up with the jones" may not be such a good thing for their relationship:
  So baby, let's sell your diamond ring
  Buy some boots and faded jeans and go away
  This coat and tie is choking me
  In your high society, you cry all day
  We've been so busy keepin' up with the Jones
  Four car garage and we're still building on
  Maybe it's time we got back to the basics of love

Mythology & Religion

• In the ancient Hindu epic the Ramayana, several entire chapters are devoted to explaining the over-the-top splendor of Ravana's palace, of which everything constructed is constructed of rare metals and stones, and everything natural (i.e. gardens) is of only the finest, purest quality.
• In the Bible, this practice was often railed against by the prophets, especially when fabulous wealth existed side-by-side with crushing poverty.
• A recurring theme in The Book of Mormon is that society faces total collapse when it reaches a point where people become divided into classes or social strata defined by the quality of the clothes they wear or the education they have access to. The wicked are often identified by their flaunting of wealth and/or power over the poor rather than helping them to acquire it. ^note This theme has one major advantage for recruitment/whipping worshippers into a frenzy: The historically literate will notice that the above can accurately describe all of human history. But you'd be surprised how many people don't know this, so they tend to assume that now is more unequal than any other time in history, and that therefore the end times are near.

Newspaper Comics

• The former trope namer, Keeping Up with the Joneses, was an early-20th-century strip about a family's obsession with social climbing, which naturally included frequent use of conspicuous consumption. The title characters, their neighbors, were never seen. Also a case of Grass Is Greener.

Professional Wrestling

• No one in the entire industry embodies this more than Ric Flair. The big, gorgeous, feathery robes he wore out to the ring? A new one for practically every big headlining event. Same with customized gear and boots. And that's just the start. His boasts about riding around in limousines, chartered planes, driving highest-end cars, and having every stitch of clothing on his body be custom made and/or made by big-name tailors and costing thousands or tens-of-thousands are Not Hyperbole. When he says he's spent more money on spilled liquor than an average fan makes in a year, he's not kidding.
• Right up there as well was Ted DiBiase in his Million Dollar Man persona, when it was actually enforced. During his heel heyday in the 80's and early 90's when Kayfabe was still enforced, the WWF gave him an expense account so he could travel by private jet, stay in five star hotels, and hire limos so that he would seem to be as rich as the company portrayed him.

Radio

• Spoofed in one sketch of John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme when a man becomes a millionaire, much to a friend's complaint, because he's now coating everything he owns in a thick layer of chocolate (a play on "millionaire's shortbread"). While he admits this is impractical and disgusting, he has no plans to stop, vowing that if he wins the lottery again, he'll waste his money in even more ludicrous ways.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons: A cloud giant's standing in the Ordning depends on two things: how wealthy it is, and how much it flaunts that wealth. The most powerful cloud giants display their wealth in ostentatious ways like decorating their homes with ridiculously expensive works of art^note Volo's Guide to Monsters mentions such things as rare perfumes stored in crystal bottles with silver caps, and tapestries made entirely out of pearls and giving lavish gifts to their peers.
• Exalted:
  • This is common in Yu-Shan and the Underworld; since the former has prayer form into a substance that can be formed into practically anything, and the latter has items used in burial rites carry over as idealised (and sometimes magical) versions of themselves (such as a wooden cart painted gold becoming a magnificent golden carriage), excessive and blatant luxury is the norm.
  • Glowstones are shining rocks often used as Fantastic Light Sources. Most glow red or orange; yellow or white ones are uncommon and ones of other colors are extremely rare. This, combined with the fact that they can only be mined in very remote areas of the South, leads wealthy people throughout Creation to light their homes with colorful glowstones as a display of their wealth and connections.
• The One Ring: Adventuring Player Characters raise their Standing score by spending huge amounts of Treasure in their homelands "as a demonstration of their worth, affluence and loyalty to their culture".
• Pathfinder: Characters take social penalties against nobles if they're not wearing appropriately fancy clothes, which need to be accessorized with even more expensive jewelry so as not to "look like an out-of-place commoner".
• Warhammer 40,000: Orks use their own teeth as money, and as the Bad Moons have teeth that grow in quicker than all other Orks' they're generally the wealthiest Orks around and very proud of it. Bad Moon warlords thus make immense and conspicuous shows with their wealth. Their vehicles are covered in gold plate and gaudy paint and topped with colorful totems and glinting statues of Gork and Mork, and when on foot they strut around to show off their kustom weapons, jewelry and gem-studded piercings and retinues of grots carrying around the boss' extra weapons and immense chests filled with teef. This does often lead to bigger, harder orks within any of the clans to bash the teeth out of their faces and mug them of the rest, but that's just ork society working as intended.
• Warhammer Fantasy:
  • Imperial Gold wizards usually wear ostentatious robes heavily laden with golden embroidery and jewelry to display their skill and mastery of their art.
  • Affluential Marienburgers make a great effort to show off their wealth and income through expensive clothes and accoutrements, and even Marienburger armed forces make a point of wearing the most sumptuous and showy uniforms and armor they can afford to show off to foes and allies alike.
  • Bretonnians who are granted a special exemption from one of the country's reams of sumptuary laws tend to flaunt their privilege. Some lords even grant "rewards" that they expect the recipient to enjoy to embarrassing excess, like permitting a commoner to wear red clothes in the hope that he'll drape himself head to toe in crimson.
  • The Skaven Clan Grutnik is very rich due to its extensive warpstone mining, and high-ranking members of the clan often sport their wealth by wearing the precious material as lacquered armor, jewelry, talismans, or even prosthetic eyes and teeth.
  • Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: Some Careers require entrants to have expensive, high-quality clothing, jewellery, and other trappings of wealth to flaunt their means.

Theatre

• Cyrano de Bergerac
  • Cyrano combines this with A Fool and His New Money Are Soon Parted: At Act I Scene IV, Cyrano confides to Le Bret that the bag of crowns he used to pay the entrance fees of the Burgundy Theater was his parental bounty and so, he has no money for the rest of the month. Even when Le Bret scolds Cyrano for his folly, Cyrano calls this "a graceful act". This conduct explains better than anything why Cyrano is condemned to a Perpetual Poverty life.
    Le Bret (with the action of throwing a bag): How! The bag of crowns?...
    Cyrano: Paternal bounty, in a day, thou'rt sped!
    Le Bret: How live the next month?...
    Cyrano: I have nothing left.
    Le Bret: Folly!
    Cyrano: But what a graceful action! Think!
  • In Act II Scene I, we see Ragueneau’s Bakery, where Ragueneau is giving his pastries free to his friends, the starving poets... who in return give Ragueneau their poems and hear his own poetry (and they flatter him). Ragueneau buys a lyre made of pastry from one of his own apprentices, and when he shows it to his wife, Lise, she lampshades that is a silly consumption. Also, when a multitude of invaders comes to his bakery in Act II scene VII and break everything, he doesn’t ask them to pay the damages. This attitude explains why he is ruined in Act III.
    Another Apprentice (also coming up with a tray covered by a napkin): Master, I bethought me erewhile of your tastes, and made this, which will please you, I hope.
    (He uncovers the tray, and shows a large lyre made of pastry.)
    Ragueneau (enchanted): A lyre!
    The Apprentice: 'Tis of brioche pastry.
    Ragueneau (touched): With conserved fruits.
    The Apprentice: The strings, see, are of sugar.
    Ragueneau (Giving him a coin): Go, drink my health!
    (Seeing Lise enter): Hush! My wife. Bustle, pass on, and hide that money!
    (To Lise, showing her the lyre, with a conscious look): Is it not beautiful?
    Lise: 'Tis passing silly!
• In Hadestown, Hades praises the capitalistic innovations of Hadestown, including automobiles, foundries, and cathode screens, in an effort to impress Persephone with his riches and status.

Video Games

• An oil tycoon in Elite Beat Agents is prone to this.
• In Team Fortress 2, several of the purchasable items in the game (for example, Something Special for Someone Special) do nothing except show off that its owner has money to blow on a video game.
• Grand Theft Auto IV parodies it with the in-game TV show "I'm Rich", including obvious parodies of people like Paris Hilton and others.
  • The Ballad of Gay Tony introduces Yusuf Amir, who spends his money on Bling-Bling-BANG!, Hookers and Blow, and ridiculous vanity projects like building the tallest skyscraper in Liberty City. Since he apparently has the money to buy anything, the only use he has for the player character is to steal "the things they won't sell him", like military hardware.
• Grand Theft Auto V's multiplayer mode is centered around this trope. The game offers a vast array of exorbitant purchases for your character to show off his/her wealth. Of note is the gold-plated Luxor Deluxe private jet, which costs $10,000,000.
• In EarthBound, Pokey Minch and his father have offices in the Monotoli building made entirely of gold.
• In the third act of Path of Exile the player visits the ruined city of the fallen empire. The empire was known for having indulged in a lot of Conspicuous Consumption shortly before its fall. It's nowhere more evident than in the Solaris Temple where everything is made from polished white stone, red fabrics, and covered in gold. The nature bound Ranger character even comments on how creepily unnatural it all looks.
• A lot of Simulation Games allow the player to purchase pointlessly expensive things because they can.
  • Tropico allows the player to build a play gold statue of yourself along with other such needless expenses while your people starve and live in ramshackle houses.
• In the original Mercenaries; Mattias Nilsson expresses a desire to spend his share of the bounty on General Song's head on a custom gold-plated Lamborghini with diamond-encrusted hubcaps.
• In Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town, you can acquire golden lumber. Place it on your farm, however, and everyone in town will get angry at you for showing off. In Harvest Moon DS, you can use it to make buildings... and it's the best material for doing so.
• A Running Gag among the creators of Kingdom of Loathing is that the players' donations go towards "solid gold Ferraris".
• Most stuff in Minecraft generally has some use in the game, but golden tools and diamond hoes are just plain conspicuous consumption. Tools and armour made of gold may have more enchantments stick to them, but their base attributes (damage dealt, blocks that can be mined, number of uses before depletion, etc.) are simply too low to compensate for such a rare material. Hoes, meanwhile, all perform the exact same function, with the only difference being the amount of farmland they can create before breaking, so even an iron hoe is a waste when you can simply create a hoe out of a plentiful and easily renewable material that is cobblestone. Not to mention diamond is not renewable to begin with.
• In Star Wars: The Old Republic during the Smuggler Storyline, you run into a Republic spy on Balmorra who got busted for buying customized speeders beyond his salary.
• The Rich Boy and Lady Trainer classes in Pokémon often use expensive Full Restores to heal their low-leveled Pokémon when cheaper items like Potions would have done just as well.
• Being set in 1988, Yakuza 0 is all about showing off the riches of 80s Japan in the tackiest ways possible. Yakuza wear garish suits, Tokyo and Osaka are full of glimmering neon lights, and billionaires are made and gone in the constant fight for real estate. Kazuma Kiryu can even learn to toss entire handfuls of Cash Confetti as a means to avoid fights after being taught by Mr. Moneybags, a man who literally lives in his private jets (yes, plural) and travels the world.
• City-Building Series: In Caesar III and Pharaoh, the Idle Rich in the highest-quality housing demand access to multiple varieties of fine wines and luxury goods (respectively), requiring an imported supply on top of whatever your city might create.
• Shovel Knight has the Ornate Plate, the most expensive set of armor in the game at a whopping $8000, which does absolutely nothing other than make you look rich and flashy (unlike every other armor that provides some sort of ability). Even it's description describes it as "Flashy! Acrobatic! Useless!" It also has the effect of letting you do flips, making you stick the landing from the catapult, leaving a trail of sparkles behind you, and getting a compliment from King Knight:
  ...Although I must say, your armor is resplendent. I can see you've picked up on my style!
• Junya Kaneshiro's Establishing Character Moment in Persona 5 is handing 3 million yen to a mistress after the party barges into his hideout, ostensibly as a means of "stress relief" (he then blackmails the party into paying him that 3 million as compensation for causing him that stress). Turns out he's a formerly-poor Yakuza don who's obsessed with gaudy displays of wealth as a means of making himself look tough and powerful. It becomes a gameplay mechanic in his boss battle, where the player can throw out valuable items and attack Kaneshiro while he's busy fawning over them.
• Tooth and Tail: The consumption of meat is implied to be this In-Universe. Several characters refer to grains and vegetables as 'the food of beasts', implying they can eat them. They simply refuse to because it's seen as uncivilized, instead preferring to starve — or even go to war so they can feast upon the bodies of the fallen.
• The Neokitsch style in Cyberpunk 2077 is all about this. It's the style of politicians, celebrities and trust fund kids, and frequently utilises materials like wood, ivory and natural fur, a true rarity in the ecologically devastated world where a bottle of water costs about twenty (Euro)dollars. Also, plenty of gold, silver and platinum.
• Jo'on Yorigami from Touhou Project is a pestilence goddess whose power is explicitly to cause others to do this, usually for her own gain. She's even guilty of it herself, dressing in very modern and fashionable clothing, making very impulsive and extravagant purchases, and carelessly throwing away valuables in her attacks.
• Dishonored 2 invokes this trope with Aramis Stilton, a self-made man who started out as a dirt-poor commoner and made his fortune mining silver. He became an incredibly rich and notable man, but the nobility still scorned and looked down on him, so Stilton did everything he could to try to impress and fit in with them, like filling his mansion with books he never read and instruments nobody played. It didn't work.
• Played for Laughs in Final Fantasy XIV. A couple of instances, the Warrior of Light will try to purchase something to aid their friends in a storyline but is rebuffed because you've done enough. One character even notes that your gear costs about as much as to purchase a house and furnish it (which number in the millions). In one Hildibrand mission, you can brag that you purchased subligar (re: underwear) that costs more than a kimono that's being sold.

Webcomics

• Both Ricci and his manager in Fite! sport solid gold jewelry once Ricci gets the belt.
• In Commedia 2X00, Mr. Pants' family has been earning royalties on their patent on pants for centuries. His sidekick/attendant is a solid gold robot named Goodz. Several early updates are spent in his treasure room, which includes things like a Polybius arcade machine, the Chaos Emeralds, and an electric guitar autographed by Mozart.
• Mentioned by name in Snow By Night. One rich family puts on a contest involving shooting at expensive glassware containing expensive wine.
• In Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff, Hella Jeff takes a moment to give a "fuckin squirrelt" all his "momey" for no apparent reason other than that he can.
• In Housepets! the Milton ferrets inherited more money than they could possibly spend, not for want of trying.
  Keene: Lana, come on; I'd be the first to tell you if we were letting unbridled hedonism go to our heads. Look, let's discuss this later over a full body massage. The chocolate fondue jacuzzi sound okay?
• Schlock Mercenary: Plutocrats, Earth politicians who buy their seats, are ridiculously rich. The mercenaries have trouble getting used to just the basics of their lifestyles, such as their limos.
  Chelle: This limo costs more than any of us make in a year.
  Mac: Oh, that's not so bad. I figured owning something like this would be light-years out of reach.
  Chelle: Not owning it. Renting it. For this trip.
• Kill Six Billion Demons: The Demiurge Mottom and her Decadent Court symbolize the sin of Gluttony and lean heavily on this. At one point, she has a lavish banquet for hundreds laid out for a one-on-one audience with Allison, and none of the food gets eaten.
  Allison: ...Are you just going to throw this all away? Why?
  Mottom: Wrong question, dear. "Why" is a question of the weak. The proper question is "Why not?"

Web Original

• Cracked has a list of real-life ways to show off wealth.
  • An episode of Cracked's Does Not Compute deals with the Numi, a real-life $6500 toilet that comes with a tablet PC to pick various settings like seat temperature, bidet control, and a selection of music. Yes, music, which was composed specifically for the Numi.
  • Another article stated that if you were rich enough to own and operate a minigun, you might as well cover your fleet of cars in explosive tannerite and use the minigun to blow them up because obviously you were stupidly rich.
• During the Lucky Blocks Walls battle against the rest of the Yogscast, Hat Films were so inundated with gold that they wound up using it to build armor and paths between their sky bases (it's just Worthless Yellow Rocks, after all).
• The "What International Students Eat" meme, based on the stereotype that students studying abroad must naturally be quite affluent, takes this concept literally with luxury takeout boxes filled with jewelry and designer-brand breakfast cereals.
• In Magik Online the King of the Midnight Market Mammon uses his wealth to buy some weird things, like his collection of thirty-seven suns and tries to buy a planet he doesn't like so he can blow it up.

Western Animation

• An Alvin and the Chipmunks episode had Simon develop a device that could look into possible futures. One was where the chipmunks and chipettes were incredibly wealthy. They bought their kids guitars made of diamonds, with ruby picks, and there were apparently emerald strings.
• Camp Candy: When Chester wins the lottery, he buys an amphibious yacht.
• Some of Goldie Gold's has a few of these that aren't even gadgets, like a diamond-studded nail clipper.
• Similarly, Richie Rich lived this trope. Fuel for thought comes when you contrast his typical attire of a sweater with the letter R on it (or a black jacket and shorts when he was younger) to his hyper-luxurious lifestyle. It's almost as if he's Zen'd past needing to display personal bling. One Robot Chicken skit plays with this and mixes Richie with a black rapper stereotype.
  • He was past displaying bling on his person, but not otherwise. One bit was a jeweler leaving after repairing one of the phones. His normally-wealthed female friend was puzzled until she saw the phone, which had gemstones instead of numbers on the keypad. Richie had to give her the dialing sequence in gemstones.
• In The Simpsons:
  • In "Dog of Death", Homer imagines that if he won the lottery, he would become the world's largest man and be covered entirely in gold.
  • The original creator of Itchy and Scratchy used the money from his settlement to buy a solid gold house.
  • One of the many things Mr. Burns paid Homer to do for his own amusement was to buy a copy of The Amazing Spider-Man #1 from Comic Book Guy... then eat it in front of him, as he breaks down in tears.
  • After Homer seemingly ends his run as a paparazzi photographer, Rainer Wolfcastle is happy they can resume their "Lives of sybaritic excess." A waiter then offers him a stem cell fajita, which he eats. Earlier in the episode, Krusty can be seen mixing a pile of dollar bills into a drink, then complaining to the bartender when it tastes bad.
  • Krusty tends towards this. One episode featured him noting that there was nothing better than a cigar lit with a hundred-dollar bill, and he'd follow up in the episode by using a copy of Action Comics #1 and a pearl necklace. This has bankrupted him a couple times.
• Mandy's mother in Totally Spies! bought a clothing chain just to get the last of a pair of exclusive shoes.
• In the Futurama movie Bender's Big Score, Earth is taken over by alien scammers who buy a fleet of solid gold, Gem-Encrusted death stars to defend it.
• When Peter Griffin of Family Guy got a 150,000 welfare check every week, the first thing he did was rent the Statue of David.
  • Happens again when the Griffins win 150 million on the lottery and immediately begin spending it on ridiculous crap. At one point Peter shows up wearing a solid gold suit, and says he had to "fight three rappers over it down at the Nonsense Store".
• In an episode of The Looney Tunes Show, Daffy Duck finally gets the wealth he so ardently desires and spends it on, among other things, a fancy-dress outfit (complete with powdered wig) and a hand-painted mural for the ceiling. He can't even go grocery shopping without embarking on a search for the most expensive brand of soup.
• Parodied in South Park, when the boys are shown the evils of downloading music illegally by seeing what it does to the artists: namely, forcing them to do this to a slightly lesser extent (for example, having to fly in a private jet that's one model out of date, or not being able to give their kid a private island for his birthday).
• SpongeBob SquarePants: Squilliam Fancyson owns a private yacht, a private lake, a private heliport, a private island, and a Zeppelin casino. His house shows even more of this.
• Clone High: Principal Scudworth devotes a considerable chunk of the advertising kickbacks he got toward having Mr. Butlertron gold-plated and lowered. The rest of the money disappears in a similar fashion.
• Lampshaded in the Batman: The Animated Series episode "The Clock King":
  Batman: What kind of saboteur uses a $6000 Metronex to trigger a time bomb?
  Alfred: A saboteur with too much money?
• DuckTales (1987) eventually adapted the aforementioned Carl Barks comic into the episode "The Status Seekers," where his treatment by his wealthy peers leads Scrooge (who never spends a cent if he can help it, let alone thousands of dollars on useless status symbols) to think he ought to "start acting rich." Unlike Barks' story, which ends as another successful treasure hunt, with Scrooge keeping the valuable artifact he finds, the episode ends with him deciding to screw it and give up trying to fit In with the In Crowd this way.
• In Littlest Pet Shop (2012) this is a characteristic of the Biskit family, though it's much more pronounced in the twins, Whittany and Brittany. For instance, they order pizza from a restaurant in space for no reason other than it's extremely expensive to do so.
• Parodied in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic with Rarity who wears needlessly extravagant outfits draped with precious gemstones and jewels. However, she's a seamstress who makes all the clothing herself. Furthermore, gems are actually fairly common in Equestria (in fact, one of Rarity's unique spells is a gem-finding one as shown with her Cutie Mark) and serve as a food source for dragons (though a few instances have subtly implied some gems are rarer than others and there's even several fictional gems such as a heart-shaped Fire Ruby Spike would've gifted himself on his birthday, giving it to Rarity instead).
• Beetlejuice: The Ghost With The Most gets a credit card and goes on a major spending spree just to outdo the affluent Bones family (episode "Keeping Up With the Boneses"). Of course, when the first bill comes in, Beetlejuice has no money to pay for it. He winds up surrendering everything back but only because his beloved pal Lydia was being kept as collateral. He gets a job as a department store Santa to pay for the interest, but he sees first hand at how karma can be a bitch — the Boneses are in the same boat, having overspent on credit.
• Metalocalypse: The episode "Renovationklok" has the band spending literal billions of money on things impractically and impossibly expensive for their house and guitars.

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