"This is gold, Mr. Bond. All my life I've been in love with its color... its brilliance, its divine heaviness."
— Auric Goldfinger, Goldfinger
Fiction is full of characters who love money. But some characters take it a step further. Rather than being in love with the idea of wealth, they are in love with one particular form of wealth: usually either a precious metal, or gems of a particular type.
These characters will do anything to increase their store of their particular commodity, and are usually willing to commit criminal acts to get it. If being paid, they will demand payment in that substance. And their ultimate dream would be to control the world's supply.
If a villain (and they usually are), they are extremely likely to suffer a Karmic Death in the form of a Death by Materialism caused by the commodity they love so much.
Compare Greed, Money Fetish, and Gold Fever which is a (usually) temporary obsession with gold which can overwhelm someone.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- One Piece has two notable examples:
- El Drago, Big Bad of One Piece: The Movie, is obsessed with gold to the point he is shown throwing away gemstones and bundles of paper money in favor of gold coins that are actually less valuable than the non-golden treasure he discarded.
- Zigzagged with Gran Tesoro, Big Bad of One Piece Film: Gold; he actually values wealth in all forms, but he focuses on surrounding himself with gold first and foremost, because his Devil Fruit gives him Extra-ore-dinary powers that only work on gold.
Comic Books
- Minor Batman foe Sterling Silversmith is obsessed with silver. All of his crimes are aimed at increasing his stock of it.
- Like his namesake, Iron Man foe Mordecai Midas is obsessed with gold. His obsession continues even after he transformed into a Living Statue of gold.
- In the Marvel Universe, Goldbug is a gold-obsessed thief who steals only gold. He even contracts radiation poisoning after inadvertently stealing a supply of irradiated gold.
Fan Works
- Pirate captain Quintus Kalmar is nicknamed "Gold" because it's obsessed with the metal - he wears golden armor, he sits on a golden throne, and he even took the time to plate his entire seven-kilometer long flagship in refined gold. When he dies, one of his fleet ships actually surrenders because its ammunition stores were filled with treasure.
Film — Animation
- In Jonny's Golden Quest, Dr. Zin gets Gold Fever, and much of the plot is driven by his efforts to turn lead into gold.
- Tulio and Miguel in The Road to El Dorado set out for the New World in search of riches, and impersonate gods in order to persuade the Mayincatec natives to give them tons of gold and treasure in tribute. In the end, though, they sacrifice the boatload of gold to protect El Dorado from Cortez and his Conquistadors (who themselves embody this trope).
- Prince John in Disney's Robin Hood (1973) may be driven mainly by spite and wounded pride, but he also seems to love the gold he's extorted from the overtaxed populace, judging from his cries of anguish when he finds that it's being stolen. He also keeps it all in his bedroom, apparently so he can cuddle up to bags of coins while sleeping.
Film — Live-Action
- This is Santer's motivation in Apache Gold, and he will stop at nothing to possess the eponymous treasure, even if it means stirring up war between the Apaches and the palefaces.
- Austin Powers in Goldmember: Johan van der Smut, better known as Goldmember, teams up with Dr. Evil to conquer the world. They plan to use the tractor beam which Goldmember had created to drag a gold asteroid onto the polar ice field and cause a flood. He loves gold so much that he lost his genitals in a smelting accident (suggesting he took the "Love" part of the trope too literally). He has subsequently replaced it with a golden metal one (which also doubles as a spare key to his tractor beam). Goldmember has a penchant for painting the penises of his male victims gold ("It's kinda my thing.") so that they mirror his own golden tallywacker.
- In Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze, Captain Seas murders Doc Savage's father in order to gain control of land in the Republic of Hidalgo, so he can mine its rich deposit of gold. However, he wants to control the gold flow to make money, as opposed to being interested in the gold for its own sake. On the other hand, Seas's ally in his endeavor is the even greedier Corrupt Bureaucrat Don Rubio Gorro. Gorro is so obsessed with gold that when dynamite is thrown into a lake of molten gold during the final battle results in an explosion, sending the liquid metal into the air, Gorro rushes out to try and catch the raining droplets in his bare hands, and ends up dying by being covered in the liquid gold, which hardens, turning him into a gold "statue."
- Auric Goldfinger in Goldfinger is obsessed with gold. In many respects, Gert Fröbe's portrayal of Goldfinger has become the Trope Codifier for this type of character and the movie's theme song is the Trope Namer. He has his henchman Oddjob paint the bodies of his dead female victims gold as a calling card, and he carries a gold-plated Colt Official Police revolver as his personal weapon. Despite the undeniable sexual element of painting dead, naked people gold, there's no indication Goldfinger has sex with them as he does in the novel. His Evil Plan, Operation Grand Slam, involves attempting to destroy Fort Knox's gold (and irradiate what would be left) to increase the value of his own already inestimable supply.
- In The Goonies, legendary pirate captain and Posthumous Character One-Eyed Willie loved gold and jewels and other treasure so much that instead of actually spending all the loot he and his crew stole, he shut himself (and his ship!) up in a cave. After apparently murdering all of his men, Willie appears to have just sat at the head of a big banquet table covered in gold until he died. At least this is how the Goonies find his skeleton.
- In The Hobbit film trilogy:
- Thrór during the prologue of An Unexpected Journey is shown to have become obsessed with hoarding gold, jewels and other material wealth, the brilliant Arkenstone above all else. This is said to be a result of "dragon sickness," which drives one to obsessively hoard treasure instead of spending it. His hoarding so much of it in one spot as opposed to spending it makes it a target the dragon Smaug can't pass up, leading to the destruction of Erebor and the loss of the treasured Arkenstone.
- Smaug himself in the The Desolation of Smaug is this writ large. If you thought Thrór was bad, Smaug is worse. He is willing to destroy two cities (Erebor and its neighbor, the human city Dale) and mutilate, massacre and displace thousands upon thousands of dwarves and humans in order to possess Thrór's famous hoard... after which all he does for decades and decades is, much like Thrór himself, keep it for the sole purpose of having it for no practical purpose (he does however seem to enjoy burying himself in it to sleep). He tells Bilbo he won't part with even a single cent of it, to the point where he won't even let Bilbo take the Arkenstone to give to Thorin; his love of all the treasure in his stolen hoard is worth more to him than even the sadistic pleasure of seeing Thorin end up like his grandfather.
Smaug: I will not part with a single coin! Not one piece of it!
- The Master in The Battle of the Five Armies chooses to save his gold rather than any of his subjects during Smaug's attack. When Alfrid realizes that it's weighing their ship down and suggests dumping it, the Master responds by throwing him out instead in a scene similar to If Looks Could Kill below.
The Master: The town is lost! Save the gold!
[...]
The Master: [as some of the gold falls out of the boat] My gold! My gold!
Alfrid: We're carryin' too much weight! We need to dump something!
The Master: Quite right, Alfrid. [throws him into the water] - And finally, there is Thorin Oakenshield. Much like his grandfather Thrór, the minute Smaug dies and he and his Company wind up in possession of the vast mountains of gold and jewels, he gets fierce Gold Fever, suspiciously thinking everyone, even his own kin, are out to steal it, the Arkenstone especially. Fortunately, he gradually is able to realize he is becoming just like his grandfather, and is able to shake off the "dragon sickness" and become a better person (er, dwarf).
Thorin: [examining the treasure hoard for the first time] Gold. Gold beyond measure. Beyond sorrow and grief. Behold the great treasure hoard of Thrór.
[...]
Thorin: [disturbingly echoing Smaug later] The treasure in this mountain does not belong to the people of Lake-town. This gold is ours. And ours alone. On my life, I will not part with a single coin. Not one piece of it.
- Augustus Steranko in If Looks Could Kill, who steals gold to make coins bearing his likeness. When escaping at the end, he loads his getaway helicopter with so much of it the thing will barely get more than thirty feet off the ground. Repeated entreaties by his right-hand woman Ilsa Grunt to throw the gold out are met with refusal. Forced to decide between her and the gold in order to make his helicopter lighter, Steranko throws her out. He dies when Michael Corben shoots at the copter, causing the gold to fall out. Letting go of the steering stick, Steranko falls out with the gold trying to save it, and is killed when the now pilotless helicopter lands on him as a result.
Steranko: [grabbing desperately at falling coins] No! My money! My gold!
Michael: Time to cash it in, Steranko!
Steranko: Not my gold! [falls out] Aahhhhh! - British Army Captain William "Billy" Boone in The Jungle Book. He leads a mutiny against his fiancée Kitty Brydon's father to kidnap her and force Mowgli to take him and his men to the lost monkey city so he can get his hands on the fabled gold there. He doesn't care about a single one of the men he loses along the way (except maybe Wilkins). Upon actually arriving at the city, he very quickly proves he loves the treasure more than Kitty. Ignoring Mowgli's warnings that the treasure "only brings death," Boone helps himself to the treasure, and is promptly attacked by Kaa, who knocks him into a moat. The backpack full of gold he's wearing drags him down to his watery doom.
Boone: [as Kitty is escaping with Mowgli] All right, then! Go! Go with your jungle boy! I got what I came for! I don't need you!
- Goldie in Left for Dead is obsessed with gold and will do anything to obtain it: even Robbing the Dead by extracting the gold teeth from a murdered bounty hunter and stealing Clem's wedding ring.
Literature
- In the Artemis Fowl series, the Fowls' family motto is "Aurum potestas est": "Gold is power". In a flashback in the first book, Artemis Senior notes how gold holds its value better than other forms of investment, and tells his son to "buy gold, and keep it safe"; Artemis takes the advice to heart, as the ransom he demands from the fairies is one metric ton of gold. The trait is downplayed in later installments as Artemis and his father gradually become more heroic.
- Bridge of Birds: Lotus Cloud only appreciates gifts of jade and pearls from her admirers. She also only likes receiving the gifts, and Number Ten Ox finds her love for the stuff to be somehow lacking in avarice. It's because she's an amnesiac goddess named Jade Pearl, and she loves jade and pearls because they faintly remind her of her true name. She's not being greedy; it is the role of a goddess to receive offerings.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive and Big Bad extraordinaire Louis Strack Jr. in the Novelization of Darkman by Randall Boyll. In a subplot ultimately removed from the film and existing only in this book, Strack is obsessed with investing in South African krugerrands. When his father Louis Strack Sr. disagrees, insisting the Stracks are in construction and real estate, not gold, Strack Jr. has him killed. Near the end of the book, Strack takes the "Love" part of the trope to a literal level when he has a pile of gold krugerrands piled onto his bed and has sex with it.
- Dwarfs in the Discworld are often accused of loving gold. They retort this is not true. They only say that so as to get into bed with it.
- Auric Goldfinger in Goldfinger. Goldfinger is obsessed with gold, going so far as to have yellow-bound erotic photographs, and have his lovers painted head to toe in gold so that he can make love to gold and carries a gold Colt Model 1908 Vest Pocket as his personal gun. He plots Operation: Grand Slam; a scheme to rob the US Bullion Depository at Fort Knox.
- The Hobbit:
- Smaug, who destroys the dwarf kingdom of Erebor and the human city of Dale to obtain the famous hoard of King Thrór. He has no practical use for it, being a dragon and all, having it just to have it, and flying into a murderous rage and attacking the nearby human settlement of Lake-town (all that remains of Dale) because Bilbo stole a gold cup in order to prove his prowess as a burglar to Thorin. J. R. R. Tolkien describes Smaug as experiencing what basically amounts to "rich people's anger" at the loss of this one single solitary item from the treasure hoard.
- Thorin Oakenshield, although to a lesser extent than Smaug. And certainly not as much as in the movie. And his obsession is mostly limited to the Arkenstone specifically, with his refusal to share the gold with the survivors of Lake-town being because they've allied with his enemy the Elvenking (so, Jerkass Has a Point). That said, the people of Lake-town are those who are descended from the original survivors of Dale, so they have legitimate claims to at least a portion of the treasure, since not all of it belonged to Thrór; a lot of it was stolen from Dale, too. Thorin's refusal to give it to them to suggests he has grown too big for his britches after retaking Erebor. He comes around, though.
Live-Action TV
- Marsha, Queen of Diamonds in Batman (1966) is a crafty seductive villainess who thought diamonds were a girl's best friend.
- In HarmonQuest, Eddie Lizard will pretty much only help out the party in exchange for gold. By the end, he has all the party's gold and most of the cult's gold, too.
- Kamen Rider Gotchard: Geryon, who serves as The Heavy of the show's third arc, is obsessed with gold; he wears gold accents in his clothing, carries a golden Rubik's Cube which he uses to empower Golden Malgams, and wants to turn the whole world into gold.
- Professor Turner in The New Avengers episode "The Midas Touch". Gold is Turner's obsession, which is why he names his secret project Midas. A Plaguemaster, Turner creates a Poisonous Person named Midas that he intends to sell to the power that can pay him the greatest amount of gold.
- Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation: Crime boss Silver, a sapient silver back gorilla, loves silver and makes a point of snagging any he sees. This is especially seen when he and his gang rob an old man of a winning lottery ticket and Silver also grabs the man's silver cigarette lighter.
Myths & Religion
- King Midas. In Greek mythology, Midas was a king of Phrygia, a region nowadays part of Turkey. Some of his subjects brought him a satyr they found in his vineyard. Midas recognized the satyr as Silenus, the companion of the god Dionysus, and ordered him set free. When Dionysus turned up to collect Silenus, he offered Midas whatever he wanted as a reward for treating Silenus with dignity. Midas asked for everything he touched to turn to gold. Dionysus asked Midas if he was sure before granting the wish. Midas was initially overjoyed with his gift. He began to realize that he was Blessed with Suck when all of his food turned to gold as he tried to eat it. In some versions, he accidentally turns his daughter into a gold statue when she tries to comfort him. Midas has to petition Dionysus to have his "gift" removed.
Tabletop Games
- According to Dragon magazine, Dungeons & Dragons dwarves have a saying: Gold doesn't burn. The simple meaning is that they prefer gold to other forms of payment because its value is consistent. The deeper one is that they prize constancy in other things as well, which they consider to be "like gold".
Video Games
- Drogoz the Greedy from Paladins is a Draconic Humanoid with a huge lust for gold, to the point that his champion teaser
has him taking out an enemy over a single gold coin.
- Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew: Quentin is a treasure hunter who is obsessed with amassing loot. He doesn't have a real job on the Red Marley and spends his time fishing in the sea, although he is trying to catch treasure instead of fish.
- The Golden Queen from Skylanders is utterly obsessed with gold, and would rather possess all the gold in Skylands rather than rule it as its supreme overlord. Her obsession with gold even led her to learn how to use a Midas Touch.
- Wario of the Super Mario Bros. franchise is a money-grubbing jerk no matter how you slice it, but he adores anything gold. Many of his adventures start off with him hunting for treasure, and his WarioWare incarnation has him get into the video game industry solely to see more green and gold. He hardly seems to care for anything else.
Western Animation
- In Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers five-parter "To the Rescue," the Goldfinger-esque Aldrin Chlordane uses a giant lime gelatin mold as a sort of makeshift Earthquake Machine to steal all the gold (represented as gold coins) from the gold reserve and chooses to abandon all of his men and escape with the trainload of gold all by himself when the police show up. His decision to keep all the gold to himself comes back to bite him when the Rescue Rangers turn out to have stowed away and Chlordane has to alternate between trying to drive the train and fight the pesky heroes. As a result, he can't do both, and ends up being unable to stop the train from crashing. If he'd chosen to save his men, someone could've remained in the engine and stopped in time while he went out to deal with the Rescue Rangers.
- In the Darkwing Duck two-part episode "Darkly Dawns the Duck," Taurus Bulba is obsessed with getting his hands on the Ram Rod, an anti-gravity beam weapon. After going through all the trouble of stealing it and learning the activation code, and ends up just using it to steal all the gold from the federal gold depository. He goes so far as to vow to "strip St. Canard clean, then hit every city in the country." Whether he meant gold specifically or just wealth in general is unclear. What is clear, though, that with all the possibilities and potential of an anti-gravity gun, he's only interested in the Ram Rod as a means to accumulate lots and lots of gold.
- In Dinotrux, Goldtrux is a gold-obsessed Stegarbasaur that kidnaps Reptools and Junktools to work in mining and refining gold to make into plating for himself.
- DuckTales (1987):
- Although he makes a good page image to visually illustrate the love of gold, Scrooge McDuck is actually a subversion. Yes, he really, really loves gold, jewels and vast wealth, and wants to amass as much of he can and half the time can barely stand spending any of it, and enjoys swimming in it, but he does not love only gold; he also loves his friends and family deeply. Besides, he is at heart a charitable man (er, duck), one who earned his wealth through a lifetime of mining (often with his own hands), investments and hard work, and his stinginess is more through a dislike of reckless spending writ large as opposed to actual greed for the gold itself.
- In contrast, El Capitán from the five-part episode "Treasure of the Golden Suns" is so greedy for gold that even though he's a four-hundred year old (!) Spanish captain he has sustained himself over the years through sheer determination to survive thanks to Gold Fever. He wants to raise a sunken ship containing an unfathomably wealthy hoard of treasure, and is willing to do anything to do it.
- James Bond Jr. has Goldfinger's daughter Goldie Finger, who shares her father's obsession with gold, and is possibly even greedier than he is, as while Goldfinger was willing to wait the few months that it would take to remove all of the gold from a mine, Goldie petulantly whines that she wants it all now.
- The episode "The Midas Mix-Up" has Josie and the Pussycats encounter a reclusive Mad Scientist who would threaten, "Unless I am paid half the gold in the world, I shall destroy all the gold in the world!" Midas has perfected a microbe mist that can dissolve gold, and plans to export the stuff disguised as spray cologne.
- Secret Squirrel: Secret Squirrel's archenemy Yellow Pinkie specialized in stealing gold in the original 1965 cartoon, while the 90s revival segment from 2 Stupid Dogs had a similar villain also obsessed with gold named Goldflipper.
- The episode "Vowel Play" from Disney Television's TaleSpin has the villain Heimlich Minudo, a Funny Animal leopard with an obsession for diamonds, to the point where he has implanted diamonds in place of his teeth. His Evil Plan involves holding Cape Suzette hostage unless he's given all of its diamonds.
Real Life
- There are plenty of people in Real Life who think fiat currency will cause the world economy to collapse any day now and therefore invest in as much gold as they can, never questioning why dealers are willing to exchange their precious gold for "worthless government paper". On the flipside, one has to wonder why financial advisors recommended against it while banks and even businesses (for example Palantir) have been increasingly stockpiling gold in recent years if it's not valuable in an economic crisisnote .
