Basic Trope: Rich people can buy their way out of trouble by paying people off.
- Straight: Alice is pulled over by a cop. She gets out of a ticket by dropping a few hundreds his way.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice gets out of the ticket by dropping a Briefcase Full of Money at the cop's feet.
- Alice is Corrupt Corporate Executive and a member of the Fiction 500 who can get away with holocausts and crimes against humanity while in everyone's plain sight.
- Downplayed:
- Alice, after getting caught stealing something, gives it to the officer who catches her, claiming it's an early birthday gift for him.
- While Alice isn't able to completely dodge punishment for committing a felony, she does manage to get her prison sentence greatly reduced after bribing the judge.
- Anytime Alice has an issue with the rules of an establishment, she purchases it and changes the rules.
- Alice regularly violates a business regulation, considering the fine she pays to be a simple business expense.
- Justified:
- Alice is in a third-world country with a corrupt police force.
- The world is a materialistic Dystopia where you need money in order to be able to eat.
- Alice can afford an Army of Lawyers who can help her bend laws as she wish.
- Inverted:
- Screw the Money, I Have Rules! and Screw the Money, This Is Personal!
- A Corrupt Cop offers bribes to anyone who witnesses his committing of police brutality.
- Alice has a large amount of money, and seems to give it to other people even when she's not supposed to.
- Alice is a regular rule-breaker because, being dirt-poor, she literally has nothing to lose.
- "Screw myself, money makes me!"
- Subverted: The cop doesn't take Alice's bribe, and she goes on trial.
- Double Subverted: ... where she pays off the judge.
- Parodied:
- Alice crosses the Moral Event Horizon and is let off scott-free when she gives out a Comically Small Bribe to the police.
- Alice pays more in bribe money than it would have cost for her to just pay the ticket.
- Alice is a poor woman who is wrongly imprisoned. After a long sentence she is finally exonerated and gets a large settlement. She then uses her newfound money to commit a crime and get away with it.
- Zig Zagged: Alice tries to pay off the cop, who refuses her money. She goes to trial, bribes the judge, and it looks like she's going to get off. However, she and the judge are both caught in the bribe, and so she's tried again, fails to bribe the new judge, and goes to jail. She then bribes the jailer into "accidentally" leaving the keys in the lock of her cell.
- Averted:
- Alice doesn't have enough money, or else, she wouldn't try it anyway.
- Alice is still punished regardless of bribery.
- Enforced: "We can't let the Rich Bitch get in trouble! She's the primary antagonist for this season; we need her for at least fifteen more episodes. Let's have her pay the guy off."
- Lampshaded: Cop: "Let me guess, you want to give me a little something to make this go away?"
- Invoked: Cop: "Give me a little something, and I could make this go away."
- Exploited: Bob takes note of Alice's ability to bribe authority figures so that she can go about her business unimpeded, begins to act suspiciously to arouse police interest, and when they take the bait, he points out that if Alice should be allowed to do whatever she damn well pleases, so should he, because the two are equal before the law.
- Defied:
- Cop: "Nice try, ma'am, but attempting bribery is also a crime."
- Alice: "Do I look like an ATM? I'll see you in traffic court!"
- "You're trying to bribe me, right now, when there's a tidal wave coming at us? Your money can't save you any more that it can save me!"
- Bob puts an end to Alice's bribery by shooting her.
- "You are not the only one with deep pockets. I will provide anyone that you harmed with a high powered lawyer, and I will sue you for everything that you are worth. Anyone that you try to buy off, I will pay them double."
- Day Fine is implemented, where fines scale to the person's income. Having to pay a $150,000 fine for speeding has got to sting.
- Discussed: "C'mon Alice, just pay the guy off, you have the money."
- Conversed: "I hate watching those rich bozos just bribe their way out of anything that goes wrong!"
- Implied: Alice is apparently very wealthy and was just served a court summons. Then, Gilligan Cut to her exulting that it's been cancelled.
- Deconstructed:
- Alice's constant bribery to get out of trouble is whittling down her bank account.
- So many rich people buying their way out of punishment, Alice included, ends up causing the people to lose trust in the justice system. This results in a huge spike of Vigilante Justice as the populace decide to take matters into their own hands and give criminals the punishment they feel is deserved while the justice system refuses to work as it should.
- Reconstructed:
- Alice's constant bribery to get out of trouble is whittling down her bank account but she runs a massive megacorporation which provides her more than she needs, and in some cases (especially in dystopias) paying your fines is actually cheaper than trying to follow the law in the long run.
- Alice decides to take a different approach. She doesn't bribe the police officer trying to arrest her. Instead, she spends money on the people who can make the cop's life a living hell. After a while, the threat of her whittling down her account is fixed: She doesn't even need to make bribes because she's built up a reputation and the threat of what will happen if people piss her off is enough. Fixes the problem of people who can't be bought, too: There's always someone who can.
- Played for Laughs: Alice can pay the police off with Comically Small Bribes.
- Played for Drama: Alice repeatedly bribes corrupt officials to get out of trouble. Fed up with this, a group of people decide to deal with her and the corrupt officials via extralegal means.
- Played for Horror: Alice gets away with inflicting Cruel And Unusual Deaths, Cold-Blooded Torture, Rape, and other horrendous crimes through the usage of money.
Bribe the Screw the Rules, I Have Money! page with money to get away with your crimes.
