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Greed (trope)

"They don't call me Greed for nothing. I want money. I want women, status, and power. I want everything this world's selling and eternity's topping the list!"

Greed, or avarice, is the desire for large amounts of money and material possessions. While there is nothing inherently wrong with simply attempting to earn more money to make oneself better off, greed applies when one attempts to garner ever greater amounts of possessions and money simply for the sake of having more than everyone else.

The thing about Greed is that it's never satisfied — as soon as the thing sought after is obtained, the obtainer starts craving more, and more, and more, ad infinitum. It's an addiction.

Greed is the main motivation of the Corrupt Corporate Executive. It is also a Fatal Flaw of the Miser Advisor, and commonly of a Mr. Vice Guy; in the cases of these characters, they usually learn a valuable lesson at some point about what's really important. The Gold Digger is motivated by Greed — as is, often enough, the Black Widow. The Spoiled Brat is also motivated largely by Greed, but not a small bit of Pride is also a factor, which causes them to fly off the handle when they are denied what they want. A character defined by Greed often has a Money Fetish. This trope can be the reason behind characters who are Only in It for the Money.

Greedy villains often try to bribe the hero, a tactic in which they have great confidence. After all, justice and even Revenge aren't shiny, and don't get a very good exchange rate. When The Hero turns down the Briefcase Full of Money, it can be a great shock. Obviously, bribes work great on them.

Villains — and heroes — seemingly afflicted by Greed can be humanized by demonstrating that it is not the money they are after; they need it to buy something of actual value. At the same time, their Greed may threaten to transform their goal into a Tragic Dream. Villains may also want it not for itself but for equally villainous reasons — to effect Revenge, to live the slothful life of the Idle Rich — which changes the motivation without making it less evil. Greedy characters, including villains, will often ally with heroes to defeat more destructive or nihilistic villains whose plans would generally make the world a less pleasant place to live in.

May lead to Death by Materialism. Gold Fever, Loves Only Gold, Greed Makes You Dumb, Hoarding the Profits, and Only Cares About Inheritance are all SubTropes. Often goes hand in hand with gluttony. Compare Lust, which is desire for abstract concepts and feelings as opposed to material possessions. If a greedy character is featured in a musical, expect a Money Song.

For the less sophisticated, there's Giant Food. Compare Love Hungry.

One of the Seven Deadly Sins, traditionally represented by the demon Mammon.

For the classic silent film on the subject, see Greed. For the Chuck Woolery game show, see Greed. For the 2019 film, see here.

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Examples:

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    Art 
  • In The Last Supper, Judas is identified by the small bag he is gripping, either indicating the money he accepted to betray Christ or the Apostles' treasury from which he is stealing. Either way, the bag acts as a reminder why Judas is framed in darkness apart from the other Apostles.

    Card Games 
  • Magic: The Gathering had a card named "Greed" with flavor text that summed up the trope very succinctly.
    'An advisor once asked the Western Paladin how much gold would be enough. "I have no need of fools who can imagine ‘enough,'" he told the advisor's corpse.'
  • In Yu-Gi-Oh! greed is a very common theme and almost always relates to drawing cards. There is an entire, fairly large series of cards that are pots and jars all relating to the theme of greed (usually having to do with drawing, discarding, and/or banishing cards). Pot of greed is the most obvious and well-known example
    • Then there's Goblin of Greed; the titular goblin who hordes the aforementioned pots and jars and throughout the course of many cards details how he went from riches to rags and everything in between.
    • There's also a card aptly named "Greed" which details the downfall of such a thing as at the end phase of every turn the player takes damage for every card they drew (which is the constant greed in context of the game).

    Comic Books 
  • Disney Ducks Comic Universe:
  • Fables: Jack Horner shows how much greed can stab you in the back. After losing a fortune several times in his series, he resigns to never spend the gold he gained from El Dorado, just to ensure he can't lose it. He consequently becomes a dragon as a result of his greed. He spends at least a few years (if not decades) in this state before the last issue, in which everyone dies.
  • Final Crisis: In Final Crisis: Superman Beyond, Superman's Evil Twin Ultraman mentions that on his world, ruled by evil, the only god people knew was Mammon, the demon who patronizes greed in the Seven Deadly Sins. However, when Ultraman found out about Mandrakk The Dark Monitor, he was more than happy to follow this greater evil.
  • Green Lantern: The page image is "Agent Orange", real name Larfleeze, "leader" of the Orange Lantern Corps. In the emotional spectrum, Orange represents selfishness and greed, and Agent Orange is the greediest creature to ever live. True to form, he's the only true member of the corps; the others are all spirits of the people he killed in his constant search for more.
    • Funnily enough, Larfleeze was once referred to in-story as "Scrooge McDuck with a power ring"
      • Johns has stated one of Larfleeze's inspirations is Daffy Duck.
    • Later on, Lex Luthor is inducted as a deputy Orange Lantern and becomes so utterly consumed by greed that he turns on the other lanterns, wanting all the rings.
      Larfleeze: [to Lex Luthor] Victory is mine! And if you had hair that would be mine, too!
    • Ironically enough, his last act of the Blackest Night arc was tossing Luthor back to the humans, which Sinestro lampshaded was an act of him giving something to someone. Larfleeze reacts in stunned shock.
    • Lex has long had greed as one of his defining vices. The orange ring ends up worsening his greed, leaving him with a yawning gulf inside when he loses it.
    • Larfleeze starts hanging around on Earth after Blackest Night because he believes Earth caters to greedy bastards like him. After watching commercials he's come to the conclusion that everyone else on Earth shares his neverending desire for more.
    • The Orange Lantern is always a singular individual because nobody avaricious enough to activate and control the orange light could ever bear the thought of sharing it. This is why the deputy didn't work out: they'd fight each other over the power, cutting their strength to less than half.
    • As a bit of a Tragic Hero, the top thing Larfleeze wants is the only thing he really wants, his family. In the end, he is reunited with them... and then promptly falls back into stealing and hoarding because old habits die hard.
  • Spider-Man:
    • In the original Lee-Ditko run, the real reason why J. Jonah Jameson hates Spider-Man is that Jameson has always been greedy, and he can't understand how Spider-Man can give without any personal gain for himself.
    • Electro pretty much shouts out a bit from the intro paragraphs verbatim in his first appearance as he gloats over his victory, readily admitting that he's greedy, but he doesn't care. Fitting, then, that Electro is pretty typically the most greed-driven villain in most incarnations.
    • This is the Kingpin's defining vice. He takes and takes and takes, but it's never enough. He'll always want more.
  • White Sand: Greed is said to be Drije's main motivation behind betraying the Sand Masters - he wants to sell his skills for money, while they disagree.
  • Wonder Woman:
    • Vol. 1: Byrna Brilyant's motivation to become a supervillain. Despite being a genius roboticist who has also perfected her chemist father's "blue snow" she hides her abilities in order to hold entire communities hostage for money as the "Blue Snowman", and once she's stolen everything from those who live there she discards them.
      "The daughter of a brilliant scientist who died many years ago while working on a secret invention—Blue Snow! He wanted it to serve humanity but his money-mad daughter had different ideas."
    • Vol. 2: While Thomas Randolph's lust for power is a powerful motivator he also really wants to make money and sees power as a means to that end. This is the reason the White Magician sells the items he then uses to frame his "villains" and the reason he ends up on the mob's payroll.

    Fairy Tales 
  • Cinderella's Wicked Stepmother is often depicted as wanting Cinderella's inheritance for her daughters' dowries.
  • In The Grimm Brothers' story of "The Fisherman and His Wife", a poor fisherman catches and releases a magical fish who can grant wishes. His wife urges him to go back and wish for a more comfortable house; unlike her husband who wants to be content with what he has, the wife isn't satisfied with this, and wishes for a castle. She soon wishes to be queen, followed by a greater palace, a desire to be Pope, and she takes things too far when she wishes to be equal to God, which results in the fish reducing their dwelling back to the hut they started out with.
  • In "The Juniper Tree", the Wicked Stepmother murders her stepson so that her daughter will inherit everything.
  • Hansel and Gretel's Wicked Stepmother begrudges her stepchildren their food and has them abandoned so they will not have to feed them. Although sometimes she has the excuse that there is a famine, in some variants, she just resents spending anything on them.
  • The given moral of "Pintosmalto" is that a cheater can't be mad for getting cheated, but another moral about greed can be read as well. After all, had the queen not wanted the beggar girl's riches after she'd already stolen the merchant's daughter's husband, she'd only have missed out on the (suspicious) possessions of the beggar. She'd still had the boy and wouldn't have been robbed.

    Fan Works 
  • Abraxas (MonsterVerse): The corporation Bio-Major sell a practically untested fertility treatment to the public, which they acquired in a backdoor deal with an eco-terrorist who had basically made the stuff from an alien omnicidal Draconic Abomination's DNA and from human experimentation, just to turn a short-term profit for themselves. This backfires spectacularly when the contaminated fertility treatment causes the subjects to give birth to the Zmeyevich.
  • All For Luz (My Hero Academia & The Owl House): Greed is a Central Theme of the story and how indulging too much into it can ruin your life and those around you.
    • Luz Noceda believes that her All For One Quirk is the symbol of Greed after learning about its Power Parasite nature, allowing them to amass unchecked power at a whim. Shigaraki doesn't deny this. As the story goes on, being influenced by not only a Quirk that makes you think and shapes your belief structure to assume that everything belongs to you, including other people's lives, and having a Manipulative Bastard living rent-free in her head, leads to her taking more powers than her body can handle and even some Kick the Dog moments.
    • All For One embodies more than anyone else. He is compulsively greedy, wanting Luz to steal powerful Quirks and plans to pull a Grand Theft Me on the girl as he believes, through her, he can upgrade his Take Over the World scheme into becoming a Multiversal Conqueror.
    • Luz also doubts that she could sue for peace with the other 2 teams because the prize money promised by the Antagonistic Governor would make them cave in and kill one another for his sick amusement. Not that he had any intention on paying up. She's later proven right as they pull an Enemy Mine and wipe out half her team to try and get her after the governor jacks up the price for Luz's head to $1.1 Billion. Kennedy, the ringleader, also had no intention of sharing any of it with any of his comrades.
    The Governor was banking on everyone’s Greed to push this whole thing along. So that kids would cave in and kill one another for his sick amusement.
    • In Sheriff Johnson's backstory, as a kid his parents made hardly any money due to never being able to get a raise, and his brother was too young to work, and so he became quite greedy over the years, hoarding all of the money he could possibly get his hands on, even when doesn't need to.
    • Tyler Wittebane loves his immense fortune as it gives him great political power and control over others.
    • Riley and most of the Wittebane assassins are very money oriented, due to being homeless after being disowned by their parents for having Quirks and being essentially their own provider. Even when it becomes clear that fighting the All For One user is a suicide mission.
  • A Brand New Start: This is the goblins' fatal flaw and it proves to be their undoing on both timelines. In the original one, they deeply offend Harry Potter by making him pay for the damages done during his and his friends' heist on Gringotts. They do it despite him saving them from having to obey Death Eaters and their treaties being disrespected by Voldemort's terror regime. It's also some oldie jerkassery and pig-headeadness on their part.
  • Calvin & Hobbes: The Series has Hobbes fall into this when he swiftly devours a large number of fish, gaining a Balloon Belly and landing him in trouble.
  • Deliver Us from Evil Series: Smith murders his brother's step-nephew out of a desire for the estate. Poor guy.
  • In Star Trek Logical Thinking, the video about the Argumentum ad Nauseam fallacy involves Harry Mudd claiming that playing off people's greed is the best way to con them.
  • Vow of Nudity (Dungeons & Dragons): The protagonist's life philosophy revolves around seeing possession of anything as inherently greedy, and many stories analyze the different ways ownership in all its forms (material, sexual, or sociopolitical) engenders suffering, to show why she instead lives naked in the woods hunting and gathering only what she needs to survive.
  • With This Ring: Features an SI who uses an Orange ring of Avarice (see Agent Orange in the Comic Books section) as the primary source of his power. He uses philosophy and meditation to keep himself more or less sane, and has to find workarounds to let him use the ring to help others - such as investing a lot of time and effort into his relationships with his teammates, so that he can feel that they are "his" and should therefore be protected and kept in good condition.
    Artemis: If it makes you crazy, is it really a good idea to use it?
    Paul: [shrugs] Good idea, bad idea. It’s the ring I have.

    Films — Animated 

  • An Angel for Christmas: Kovet's reason for hating Christmas is his own greed and desire for money and power.
  • A Bug's Life: Pretty much P.T. Flea's prime motivation. He's willing to be burned twice a night for an act that has become a huge hit and Francis is able to distract him simply by pointing behind him and yelling, "Money!" When trying to negotiate with his workers to be released, he merely offers them the promise that he will consider paying them.
  • Puss in Boots: The Last Wish: Big Jack Horner comes close to being the Anthropomorphic Personification of this. He was a Spoiled Brat who grew into a Corrupt Corporate Executive with all the money and power a person could want, but obsessed over the one thing he couldn't have; magic, like all the fairytale creatures he lived alongside had. Despite hoarding enough magical artifacts and weapons to arm a village, he became a Card-Carrying Villain and Psychopathic Manchild who plotted to become an Evil Sorcerer with "all the magic in the world". It's especially fitting as the nursery rhyme he came from was criticized back in its day for encouraging greed & opportunism in children, and was believed to have been based on a medieval steward named Thomas Horner who allegedly stole a deed to a manor.
  • The Rescuers: Medusa's primary motivation is to acquire the Devil's Eye, a unique diamond hidden in a decayed skull in a cave near the bayou shiphouse. She forces Penny to retrieve it despite her being a child. When Penny, with the help of Bianca and Bernard, retrieves the diamond, Medusa, driven by greed, hides it in Penny's teddy bear and turns on Penny and Snoops for demanding a share. At the climax, her greed backfires when her alligator minions, Brutus and Nero, turn on her due to her mistreatment, allowing Penny and the gang to escape with the diamond in her swampmobile. Earlier, Medusa had rejected Snoops' suggestion to sell the lesser diamonds Penny had found, despite the potential for significant wealth. This demonstrates her boundless greed and eventual downfall.
  • Robin Hood (1973): Prince John is profoundly greedy, trying to tax every last cent from the country when the villagers sing a song parodying his immaturity, with John doubling and tripling the taxes. Ironically, greed is very nearly Robin Hood's undoing as well: if he'd just left that last bag of gold in Prince John's bed, he'd have made a clean getaway instead of alerting Sir Hiss and Prince John to his presence. The Sheriff of Nottingham even goes so far to take the last farthing from the poorbox at Friar Tuck's chapel.
  • Spirited Away: Greed is a major motif, as it affects characters in both the human world (Chihiro's parents who consume the food at the carnival without permission) and the Spirit World (the workers of the bathhouse who lust for gold). No-Face becomes powerful, yet insane when he feeds off the greed of the workers.
  • In Tangled, Flynn's motivation — he even, with No Honor Among Thieves, escapes with the goods and without his partners. Only with Character Development does he try to make amends. We also get some Hidden Depths about his childhood dream, inspired by stories of very rich men who could, consequently go anywhere and do anything.
  • Treasure Planet: Captain Flint infamously hid the "loot of a thousand worlds" in the titular planet. It turns out he was so unbelievably greedy that not only is his rotten skeleton found amidst his treasure, he also booby-trapped the planet to explode if anyone should reach it after his death and went the extra length to remove B.E.N.'s memory circuit so he couldn't tell anyone until it was too late.

    Live Action TV 

  • Birds on the Wing: Charles, Elizabeth, and Samantha are fueled by greed in their cons and schemes, which also leads them to try and betray one another to get as much money as they can.
  • Breaking Bad: Greed, with a dose of pride, is the cause of many of the problems that befall Walter.
    • First, he isn't satisfied with how fast Jesse is slinging his super-pure meth, leading the duo to deal with Tuco Salamanca. This results in Jesse getting beaten up, and later both of them getting kidnapped.
    • Later, when Jesse sets up his own smaller-scale distribution network with his three buddies slinging the blue meth, they have a nice, steady stream going, each taking $3,000 a day. Then Walter insists they expand into new territories, leading to Combo getting shot by rival dealers. This sends Jesse into depression and heroin use, which drives a wedge between the two. Even after they reunite, the killing later ends up turning Jesse violently against Gus' organization and Walter is forced to side with him against powerful, violent men.
    • And much later, in the final season, a rival distributor offers Walter, Jesse, and Mike $5 million each for a shipment of methylamine they lifted. This is more money than Walter could ever spend, and an order of magnitude more than he originally intended to make, but he turns down the offer so that he can keep cooking meth in order to make even more money.
  • Firefly: One of the primary vices of the mercenary Jayne Cobb, though he's usually smart enough not to let this drive him to do stupid things. Unless the money's too good...
  • Game of Thrones: The only thing Locke wants from Brienne more than a bit of fun is a ransom from her father. Zig-zagged when he refuses Jaime's attempt to bribe him for all the gold in Casterly Rock but also refuses Brienne's ransom because it's not enough. The initial misunderstanding is probably down to Jaime, and the audience, being more used to the usual forms of greed that shiny, shiny gems or gold usually produce. But Locke repeatedly shows himself more greedy for power over others: getting a highborn to cough sapphires up to him? That's worth something. Finding out he won't get a power kick that way? Cue change of plans back to simple, immediate fun.
  • The greed factor is a key reason Game Shows have been under critical fire for so long. George Carlin lampshades it in his "Let's Make a Deal" cut:
    Host: That's it, you've won it! A (brand new) Ferrari!
    Contestant: (groan) Oh, we have a small car already!
  • The villains of Kamen Rider OOO, the Greeed (sic), are literally made out of desire. The hero Eiji has no desires due to Survivor Guilt, which allows him to use their powers easily. Interestingly, it slowly becomes apparent that having no desires is a bad thing, with the Big Good believing that desire is necessary for life and encouraging his workers to be ambitious as long as they are not prideful.
  • Monarch: Legacy of Monsters: In her backstory, May Olowe-Hewitt, real name Corah Mateo, was enticed by money to join AET before she learned of their true colors. In the present, she's quite ashamed of it.
  • Penn & Teller: Bullshit!: Subverted in the episode "World Peace," where they argue that greed is the key to world peace, since war is usually bad for profits.
  • Pipo De Clown: Dikke Deur's main motive. He wants to make wealth off Pipo without paying him, and also desires to be the ruler of Klukkluk's tribe so he can be showered in cakes and sweets all day.
  • Seigi No Symbol Condorman: Zeni Crazy is essentially the embodiment of greed and avarice, being a coin-themed monster with a serious Money Fetish.
  • Star Trek: This is the hat of the Ferengi, who have built an entire society out of greed and avarice. While they even have a codified system of rules governing this behavior, going around said rules if it's for a profitable goal isn't considered a bad thing. Thus, things like theft or piracy are only considered bad if you get caught.
  • Tidelands (Netflix): Violca apparently wants to overthrow Adrielle for not giving her underlings more profit. Adrielle says money isn't the only thing, which Violca clearly dislikes. She has a point though as Adrielle keeps most of the money they earn.

    Music 
  • Evillious Chronicles: Gallerian (played by Kaito), a judge, accepts bribes from customers to make them "innocent". The reason he needs this money is to help his "daughter" Michelle (played by Miku) and to collect the Seven Deadly Sins in order to restore her condition. Later, he is bribed by a general for mass murder and lets him walk free. This eventually causes a civil war and he is killed in a fire. He is then faced with "the Master of the Hellish Yard" who tells him he can be saved if he gives up his money. He refuses to give his fortune to anyone and is sent to Hell, where he hopes to make the place a utopia for himself and his "daughter" after he collects the sins. In other words, his greed was an Invoked Trope.
  • Land of Confusion: In the animated video to Disturbed's version, the giant fat man is either an Anthropomorphic Personification of greed or big industry. When The Guy kills him, he explodes, revealing that inside he was full of money and nothing else at all.
  • Some of the killers Macabre cover are motivated by greed, like H.H. Holmes, Burke and Hare, and Jack Gilbert Graham.
  • The topic of George Michael's "Praying For Time".
    The rich declare themselves poor,
    And most of us are not sure if we have too much,
    But we'll take our chances,
    'Cause God's stopped keeping score.

    Myths & Religion 
  • King Midas from Greek Mythology. When he offers hospitality to a Satyr of the Greek god Dionysus, Dionysus rewards him by granting him any wish he pleases. King Midas wishes for the power to turn everything into gold, and King Dionysus grants it. At first, Midas is happy and overjoyed, turning everything in sight into gold. However, he soon finds out he can't eat nor drink, for anything he tries to swallow also turns to gold. Eventually, he turns his daughter into gold by accident, leading him to beg for Dionysus to take back his wish and reverse everything, to which Dionysus obliges.
  • In Luke 11:16:21, a rich man has a bountiful harvest and plans to tear down his barns for bigger ones, planning to live a life of luxury, only for God to demand his soul that night, and he dies without having planned for who will inherit his wealth due to his unforeseen death.

    Opera 

    Tabletop Games 
  • Burning Wheel: Greed is a gameplay mechanic, where every dwarf feels it in their hearts and can tap into for when they desire something, or when they're creating magnificent objects of their own.
  • Dungeons & Dragons:
    • In the mythos, Greed is often seen as the biggest handicap that dwarves have as a race. They even have a god who embodies the concept called Abbathor, and while their other gods don't like him, they accept him as their own, as he sides with them against traditional enemies of the dwarves, like orcs. This gives dwarves a bad reputation at times, because their gods grudgingly accept the embodiment of Greed as one of their own.
    • This is also what Mammon represents, one of the Lords of the Nine. He is the richest and most stingy archdevil in the Nine Hells. The 5e supplement Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes specifies that deals with him can be made over gold rather than souls, but you'd need more wealth than a dozen kingdoms' worth to make a deal that doesn't involve selling your soul.
    • Greed is said to be the defining trait of Tiamat, the Lawful Evil god of chromatic dragons. Since chromatic dragons are naturally greedy creatures, Tiamat is the worst of them all. The acclimation of wealth is said to be her goal above all else, and she will abandon any sort of plan if it means getting even more of it. Her Dragon Hoard is said to be the treasures of a hundred worlds of the multiverse, despite the fact that she has nothing to use all that treasure for. Tiamat wants more just because it's more; that's the beginning and end of it. And just as an exclamation point, Tiamat's lair is known as "the Cave of Greed".invoked
  • In Nomine: Mammon is the Demon Prince of Greed, although lately he's lost a lot of his power and influence, particularly to Haagenti, the Demon Prince of Gluttony — and since modern consumerism is more focused on obsessive and wasteful consumption of things than on hoarding of wealth, it's technically a function of Gluttony instead of Greed.. The game describes the difference between the two as that, while Gluttony wants to consume, Greed just wants to have. Mammon's demons aren't allowed to give away anything... even the time of day.
  • Legend of the Five Rings: "Greed" is a purchasable disadvantage for characters. Samurai are expected not to care about material things, but they're also in a position to acquire large amounts of such things. The Mantis Clan has this as their hat, and as such, they earn an extra Character Point for taking it.

    Theatre 
  • The male lead of Romeo and Juliet makes the point when he's at the apothecary and is paying the poor shopkeeper that money makes more people die than poison, and is just as bad, if not even worse, to the soul than poison is to the body.
    There is thy gold, worse poison to men's souls,
    Doing more murder in this loathsome world,
    Than these poor compounds that thou mayst not sell.
    I sell thee poison. Thou hast sold me none.
  • Suddenly, Last Summer: Catherine's mother and brothers' motivations for money from Violet, lead to them being duped by Violet into signing papers that would allow Catherine be lobotomized.

    Visual Novels 
  • Played with in Fate/stay night and the prequel, Fate/Zero. Gilgamesh, the King of Heroes, is insistent that everything of any worth belongs to him, and is seeking the Holy Grail not because he really wants it, but because he refuses to let anyone touch it without his permission. The thing is, at one point he really did own literally everything in the world, and due to the way magic works in this 'verse (making new things is unspeakably difficult, but making inferior copies isn't that hard), it's quite likely that everything of worth is based on things he used to own, so he's actually got a pretty good case for owning everything. So when he claims everyone else are just low-born thieves who need to be punished, he's not doing it out of greed, but out of a simple (albeit outdated) understanding of property rights. He's actually quite magnanimous with his treasures, and is more than willing to lend any of them indefinitely to vassals who ask for them.
  • Umineko: When They Cry: Greed is represented by a girl/demon named Mammon, one of the Seven Stakes of Purgatory and Ange's "closest friend". She's the one who is serious about "taking Sakutaro home", and constantly wants more of pretty much everything, whether it's knowledge, affection, or material things.

    Web Animation 
  • Dayum:
    • Bella from “Types of People at Theme Parks Portrayed by Minecraft”, who’s listed as “The Cheapskate”, doesn’t want to buy food at the theme park, thinking it’s too expensive, so she begs her friend Rachel to share her burger.
    • Another cheapskate, Lucas from “Types of People at Restaurants Portrayed by Minecraft”, thinks everything is too expensive so decides to only have the free water and nothing else. The same video features Abby, who tries to fake having celiac disease until she realises there’s a discount.
    • Elias from “Types of Patients Portrayed by Minecraft # 2” refuses rehabilitation therapy to help him walk again because it’s expensive.
    • Mia’s mother from “Types of Parents Portrayed by Minecraft” refuses to buy a hamster for her daughter just because they cost money, even though they’re only a dollar each.
    • The “Corrupt” from “Types of Doctors Portrayed by Minecraft” lets himself be bribed with money into diagnosing Bryson, a stoner who doesn’t actually have anxiety, with anxiety so he can have his pot fix.
    • The “Money Motivated” doctor from “Types of Doctors Portrayed by Minecraft # 2” demands Arlo pay him $30,000 just to treat his broken arm, while the “Meticulous” charges Diane $58,000 for her headache that isn’t even caused by any disease.
  • Lifty and Shifty from Happy Tree Friends have insatiable greed that causes them to steal from and con the other characters at every opportunity. Their schemes almost never work out for them, though.
  • Napster Bad accuses Metallica and the entire music industry of greed in a highly satirical way, with the musicians complaining about how they are getting slightly smaller oodles of money due to online file sharing.
  • SNARLED
    • The main theme of the story "Gold Coins". Sophia might not have perished if only Isabella had been content with having just enough coins to help her ailing son. Though she's not solely to blame: had the Bellacos family not been stingy with paying Isabella, there's a chance the chain of events that sealed Sophia's fate could've been all together avoided.
    • Imelda's mother (in "The Pochong") was nothing short of delighted when she learned her daughter was being followed by a pochong. According to legend, if a pochong is following you, hugging it will lead to it bestowing your family with riches. So one can imagine what drove her to force her daughter to hug an icky corpse.
    • "Take only what you need" explores this. The Haunted House seems to give a choice to those who enter it in order to plunder its riches. You can either take what you want or take only what you need. Those who take what they need ( like Leo) will be allowed to leave, while those who get avaricious and try to take what they want ( like Gaylin) aren't so lucky.

    Webcomics 
  • In The Best Gamepiece Photocomic, the convenience store manager (introduced here) writes up his employees if they talk about anything not sale-related, requires customers to pay in order to be able to complain, and imposes a toll to leave the building.
  • DICE: The Cube That Changes Everything: The main theme of the series is greed. As explained by X, Dicers get quests corresponding to their Desire, and get even more rewards if they do more than they need to. Most Dicers never want to stop and will do anything for Dice just to have more of them, often to their downfall. In contrast, Dicers who are satisfied get almost no quests, but retaining the status quo may be turned into a Desire.
  • In Freefall, one of Sam's major motivations is to get rich, ideally to him by way of the path of least resistance. Sam is a saint, however, compared to Mr. Kornada, who is so intent on acquiring every credit he can get his grubby hands on that he's willing to sacrifice the lives of the entire colony. Sam and Kornada act as one anothers' Foils for a big chunk of the comic.
  • In El Goonish Shive, Sirleck became an aberration in the first place to accrue ever-increasing amounts of wealth and power, and his main motivation for helping Magus is to possess his body and finally gain the immense magical powers of a wizard, with his body being free of any history being a bonus. It ultimately does him in, since Magus saw it coming and manages to out-maneuver him.
  • In Homestuck, Meenah Peixes desires wealth (in addition to power). She really desires it, and will take every opportunity to profit from it. When she's given an entire flash walkabout to herself, she spends much of it picking up items belonging to other characters, with the stated intention of pawning them at the first opportunity. And when one of her friends sets up a booth selling information, it was Meenah getting paid, because said friend really wanted to talk and knew money was the way to get Meenah to sit through it, if not actually listen.
  • Vince, the Anthropomorphic Personification of Greed in Jack, "earned" his position in Hell because he was an insane cult leader in life who always wanted more worshipers — he got greedy for power.
  • Kill Six Billion Demons:
    • The Demiurge Mammon represents the sin of greed amongst the seven remaining Demiurges. Driven by ambition to obtain power and wealth, he murdered his own family in order to have no distractions on his path to godhood. He presently controls much of the economy of Throne, as well as mints its dominant coinage, through the Infinite Bank that he rules as a Corporate Dragon. When Allison finally comes face-to-face with him she finds that Mammon has been reduced to a senile, blind husk of his former self, reduced by The Fog of Ages to meaninglessly count the infinite wealth inside his vault while having entirely forgotten why he accrued it all in the first place. In one of his more lucid moments he asks Allison to kill him.
    • During The Caper of the third book (aimed at the aforementioned Mammon), the group's tunnel-digger is a green devil called Charon, who finds Mammon's greed inspirational and aspires to the same heights of avarice and self-interest. He sees robbing Mammon to be a way to prove himself to be equally ruthless and self-interested. Despite being a bit of a coward, Charon ironically turns out to be one of the more trustworthy of the Caper Crew and never gets the chance to backstab anyone.
  • Lovable Rogue Haley in The Order of the Stick has the driving goal to win an obscene amount of gold. When Characterization Marches On, it's revealed that her father is being held ransom for said obscene amount of gold; although she still really, really loves money, she's also willing to part with it for a good cause.
  • Stand Still, Stay Silent: Torbjörn organized the very first expedition into areas fallen to The End of the World as We Know It in 90 years because Old World books are extremely valuable and he figures he can make a lot of money by officially sending a few people there to do research, ask them to pick up any books that look in good enough shape while they are there, and bring them back so they can be sold on the black market.
  • Tales of Greed is an anthology that typically features a societal underdog who gains a reality-altering token to improve their life but takes it too far and suffers disastrous consequences. For example, "1 Minute" is about a boy who is bullied at school, gets a watch that induces one-minute time loops, and turns into a psychopath who sees the world as a game.
  • Sunwoo Narea from Tower of God climbs the tower for the riches it has to offer and sees moneymaking opportunities at possible corner.
  • Unsounded: The dangers of giving in to greed show up and are pointed out time and again. In Cresce greed is illegal, technically, as regular money is outlawed and people are to use labour points to purchase things, yet their nobility is still far more wealthy than the supposedly fairly treated laborers.
    • Quigley's fatal flaw is his susceptibility to greed. Even though he, Uaid and Matty are on the run from the Aldish and Crescian governments and he's disgusted by Starfish he's talked into smuggling Starfish and his cargo into Cresce despite having promised his son they'd go to Sharteshane and keep away from both superpowers that want his construct, and his head.
    • Human greed is what destroyed the Inak homelands. When they were unearthed they had many first materials, so people killed them and destroyed their villages for it. Then forced the survivors to convert to their religion and be second class citizens treated like slaves.
    • Though Rahm is showing his own hypocrisy at the time he points out to Quigley that greed has consequences when the silver Quigley helped transport gets a bunch of people killed.
  • In Weak Hero this is Teddie's fatal flaw that contributes to his humiliating defeat at Gray's hands. He obsesses over brand names and superficial possessions, so he loses it when Gray messes with his expensive backpack and is easily taken down in the ensuing fight.
  • The Embodiment of Greed in Widdershins is an Affably Evil spirit who loves Leonine Contracts but is single-minded enough to bargain for pocket change as long as it's the person's last penny.


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The Mine Song

The infamous song all about Stingy and how he always says something's his.

How well does it match the trope?

4.88 (8 votes)

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Main / IAmSong

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