Basic Trope: People with strong moral standards can't be paid to bend them.
- Straight: Bob is offered riches or power by Evulz, and refuses such an offer.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob refuses to help Alice, despite her generous offer, because it would break some trivial rule that Bob sets on himself.
- Bob is offered money from Evulz with no strings attached, Bob declines to avoid the appearance of corruption.
- Downplayed:
- The Knight in Sour Armor is certain the proposed gift will come with strings tightly attached (and happens to be correct on that point), so he negotiates his group's price down to expenses they would normally have incurred.
- Bob the restaurant manager decides whether to let Alice's rude behavior slide due to her generous tips. He ultimately decides that her behavior is not worth the money.
- Bob is a wealthy Honest Corporate Executive. A dishonest buck isn't worth it to someone with plenty of honest cash.
- Bob would be willing to bend his rules for enough money... but the amount Evulz offered wasn't enough.
- Justified:
- Bob is Lawful Good or Lawful Neutral, a Knight Templar, holds a personal grudge, has a belief that Money Is Not Power to him or some combination thereof.
- Bob knows what the conditions tied to the cash note mean to their value.
- Inverted:
- Bob is asked to do something that will cost him much money, simply because it's the right thing to do. He refuses.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Money!
- Subverted:
- Bob gets offered riches and power and it seems he will decline, only for him to accept the offer.
- Bob refuses Alice's bribe offer, because she is in no position to make demands. He takes her money anyway, knowing that she has no way to complain.
- Double Subverted: Bob accepts Evulz's offer of money only so he can get close enough to Evulz to destroy Evulz and the root and branch of his entire evil organization, and donates the money to charity.
- Parodied: Bob resists all attempts at bribery... and finally falls for a trivial offer by Evulz.
- Zig Zagged: To everybody's surprise, Bob accepts Evulz's offer. In a moment of privacy for Bob, we find out that he's actually trying to bring down Evulz's empire from within. But his brush with power makes him lust for more so he actually becomes the mask. Finally, his friends and/or loved ones manage to redeem him through The Power of Friendship or The Power of Love.
- Averted: When the Evulz and Bob are alone, Bob kills Evulz before he even has the chance to speak.
- Enforced: It must be made clear that the Lovable Rogue is actually a good guy, so give him a chance to betray Bobes for money and refuse it.
- Lampshaded: When discussing Bob, a villain mentions that he's "one of those principled bastards who can't be bought."
- Invoked: "You want me to leave you alone in exchange of cash? Don't insult me!"
- Exploited:
- Bob and Charlie are captured by Evulz. Bob suggests to give them what they want, and Charlie calls him out on it. They start to fight with each other. However, this is a ruse to overpower the guards who want to split them up or a Batman Gambit to make Evulz trust Bob.
- A minor good guy makes a Face–Heel Turn, but this isn't publicly known yet. He exploits this trope to make the bad guys overpay him for something he would have done anyway.
- Defied:
- The Big Bad says that, as he already has enough Mooks and Dragons, he isn't in the market for other hired help.
- Evulz doesn't offers Bob money for his help, but something much more important, like the continuous survival of everything he holds dear.
- With a few sweet words, Bob is convinced by Evulz that he is doing the right thing and getting paid for it, "I assure that he is a public menace, I know that you would not like working for someone like me, but you will be compensated handsomely".
- Discussed: A villain boasts that everybody has a price even though they might claim that their rules are more important to them.
- Conversed: "Looks like this would be the moment where Evulz offers Bob money to leave him alone."
- Implied: Bob is a heroic character who gets by on comparatively little.
- Deconstructed: The Anti-Hero refuses to take anything from the man who accidentally killed his brother, instead taking his vengeance in a fit of passion. His community exiles him for being too bloodthirsty.
- Reconstructed: Bob accepts the money... and uses it to hire a team of thugs to beat Evulz senseless.
- Plotted A Good Waste: The mention of not taking bribes because they have rules is a set-up for someone doing a Bait-and-Switch gag — especially if the "bribe" is something outrageous like a tanker truck full of beer.
- Played for Laughs: Evulz keeps upping his offer, to the point where he starts emptying his pockets to see if there might be something Bob wants.
- Played for Drama: Bob first falls for the offer of money, then has a My God, What Have I Done? moment and risks his life (or loses it) to do what he should have done in the first place.
- Played for Horror: Money Is Not Power when the Knight Templar Serial Killer is about to rip your heart out. And he wasn't going to rip your heart out, but turns out trying to bribe him is his Berserk Button because it goes against his honor code (however inhumanly twisted it is). Just because someone has rules it doesn't means he's inherently good or noble not even in a "not being nice" or "pragmatically villainous" way.
I'll g- No, Screw the Money, I Have Rules!!
