Worthless Yellow Rocks / Western Animation

• Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog (the funny cartoon) did this once when Sonic dressed up as a bumpkin and tricked Robotnik and his goons into trading all their stolen loot for a bag of "worthless yellow rocks". Turns out later that they were worthless: just chili beans painted gold. Stale chili beans, at that.
• Adventure Time: Adventurers tend to be ludicrously wealthy from treasure, while also living extremely modestly simply because they don't care to spend all that loot they get from slaying monsters or delving dungeons. Finn and Jake live in a smallish house built from an ancient tree, while Billy lives alone in a dank, rural cave he's fashioned into a home; for them, the quest itself is the reward, and treasure is just some shiny Bragging Rights Reward. In one episode, Finn and Jake start running out of room in their basement because it's literally overflowing with loot and only then does it cross their minds to actually spend some of it. They proceed to go on a wild spending spree in Wildberry Kingdom and practically crash the economy by themselves.
• American Dad!:
  • Roger the alien excretes gold inlaid with jewels as feces and doesn't recognize its value on Earth. A side gag in several episodes covers one specific gold doody that gets passed around many people, usually through murder or suicide, until the apocalypse episode where Roger needs it to fuel his starship.
  • In one Thanksgiving Episode, Stan is shocked to discover that his half-brother, Rusty, is rich. It turns out that years ago, their grandfather died and told them to divide up his assets: $20,000 and a big chunk of land in the desert. Stan took the money, while Rusty eventually discovered that his new land was full of copper, from which he makes several million dollars per year.
• On Apple & Onion, when the duo is looking around Falafel's apartment for his key, they find some loose change and an expensive antique watch and throw them both out the window.
• Arthur:
  • In the episode "The Shore Thing", Arthur is talking about not knowing what you may really discover in life during the episode's intro, which is set in the Yukon gold rush where Binky is sifting in the river for treasure. Binky finds a rock of gold which amazes Arthur, but Binky is more interested in a quarter he also managed to sift into his pan.
  • In "The Great Sock Mystery", Pal and Kate are trying to trade back D.W.'s sock, which has been acquired by a frog named Mr. Toad in the animal "sock market". Kate offers a five-dollar bill but Mr. Toad brushes it off; he already found a ton of that stuff behind the Crosswire's house and used it to wallpaper his home.
• Von Goosewing in Count Duckula attempts to dig his way into Duckula's castle. He completely obliterates the mountain it sits on in the attempt, finding only a bunch of "funny yellow rocks" in the process. The whole reason he can't find the castle is that Duckula has taken it on a trip to go gold prospecting, from which he returns empty-handed.
• Spoofed on Duck Dodgers. The Eager Young Space Cadet claims that "Diamonds haven't been valuable for centuries. Ever since we realized they're nothing but shiny rocks." Ironically, Duck Dodgers and the Cadet still had to go and stop the diamond smuggling, as the scarcity could make them valuable again.
• DuckTales (1987):
  • In one episode, the boys use a duplication device to double their pocket change so they'll have enough money to buy ice cream. But due to a bug in the duplicator, the cloned coins keep copying themselves. Soon, the town is flooded with coins, hyperinflation runs wild, the cheapest things cost millions of dollars, and Scrooge's own fortune can't even buy a pack of gum.
  • In another episode, Scrooge and a member of the Status Seekers Club want a rare mask from the king of a tropical island that would make either of them president of the club. They both offer the king expensive jewelry and other fancy gifts, but he just laughs and tells them he has no need for such material wealth. Eventually, Mrs. Beakley is able to get him to trade the mask for something he actually wants — a simple jar of peanut butter.
  • Yet another example, Scrooge finds an aquatic race who regard shipwreck treasure as worthless garbage and keep it in a landfill. When Scrooge takes it all to the surface, they curse him for stealing — until they realize he essentially just took out their garbage for them and did them a favor.
  • Subverted in the episode "Earth Quack", an adaptation of the Carl Barks story "Land Beneath the Ground" from the original comics: the Terra Firmies send Scrooge's money back up into the money bin after their earthquake cracks it open not because they don't think it's valuable, but because they know it's valuable — they didn't mean to steal it in the first place, so they felt guilty and made sure to give it back.
• DuckTales (2017) features this in the episode entitled "Whatever Happened to Della Duck?" In it, we discover that upon departing Earth and getting caught in a cosmic storm, Della crash-landed on the moon. After a series of events, she sets to work fixing her ship only to discover that it runs on gold. At the end of the episode, Della assumes that she's stranded and gladly takes the aliens (Penumbra and Lunaris) she encountered up on their offer to make a new home on the moon. Upon entering the city, Della realizes that everything is made of gold. Penumbra explains that since it's so common, they often just throw it in the trash (which is also made of gold).
• The Fairly OddParents! episode "Beach Bummed" involves Cosmo and Wanda losing their wands on the beach. Wanda instructs Cosmo to dig... Fridge Brilliance kicks in when you realize that, given their powers, Cosmo and Wanda (plus any fairy) could simply conjure or transport anything they wanted directly to them, so they probably don't have much of a concept of mercantilism.
  Cosmo: I did dig! But all I found was this old baseball card [namely, a vintage Honus Wagner card, one of the rarest and most expensive in the world], this ancient lamp [as in Aladdin's magic lamp], and this guy with the big collar and the peanut butter and banana sandwich!
  "E": Cosmo, ah-promise me you won't tell anyone about my secret underground rock 'n roll beach kingdom.
  [later]
  Wanda: Cosmo, I found something!
  Cosmo: Ugh, let me guess—another Holy Grail?
• In Freakazoid!, Jeepers created a watch that could turn beavers into gold. But there's very little call for gold beavers, so he ends up with a closet full of them.
• Futurama plays with this several times throughout the show:
  • In "Where the Buggalo Roam" it's revealed an ancestor of the Wong family long ago traded a single bead to the native Martians in exchange for the entire western hemisphere of Mars. Generations later, the Martians, thinking they'd been scammed, exact revenge on the Wongs and try to kill Kif with the bead - which proves to be a gigantic, extremely valuable diamond. The chief of the Martians believed that their people had been duped due to their lack of a concept of ownership, but when offered the hemisphere in exchange for the diamond, he refuses because they now do have a concept of ownership and wealth, with which they decide they'll just buy a new planet to call home.
  • When all Earthicans are granted a $300 tax rebate after the conquering of another planet in the episode "Three Hundred Big Boys", Bender uses his rebate to buy a $300 burglary kit which includes a basketball-sized cut diamond he uses to cut a glass display case. As soon as he's done using the diamond, he tosses it aside, as it is effectively worthless in comparison to a massive $10,000 cigar made from the Declaration of Independence and hand-rolled by Queen Elizabeth II during her "wild years". In the same episode, Dr. Zoidberg tries to spend the money he got on items considered luxuries, he perceives them as worthless, calling ornate jewelry and gemstones "shiny pebbles" and complaining that beluga caviar and foie gras are "the garbage parts of the food".
  • The episode "Bendin' in the Wind", the crew uses an old Volkswagen bus excavated from the ruins of Old New York (which still runs somehow, even after being buried for 1,000+ years) to travel across country following Bender who is on tour with Beck. A stop at a laundromat where Zoidberg washes his whole exoskeleton with everyone else's clothes leads to all their cash (bills and coins) in their pockets destroyed. Now starving after several days on the road, Zoidberg begins to feel sick from the car exhaust and coughs up several blue-and-pink-swirled pearls, which Amy and Leela swoon over their beauty and they decide to sell the unique pearl necklaces at the next stop, but Zoidberg is just disgusted that they're touching what's effectively his own vomit.
  • At the end of the episode "Anthology of Interest", Professor Farnsworth concludes his What-if Machine is broken, saying that it's "not worth the gold it's made of", before simply tossing it in the trash.
• In one episode of Garfield and Friends, Garfield finds himself in a hidden city filled with smurf-like people who regard Italian food (such as the lasagna they stole from him, which began the whole episode) as money, and money as food.
• On Jimmy Two-Shoes, Beezy bribes Heloise with a box filled with gold. She happily accepts it... so she can have the box it comes in.
• Johnny Bravo:
  • One episode involves a cat burglar in a museum trying to steal the world's largest cut piece of cubic zirconium, a cheap diamond substitute. When trying to remove it from its case, she discovers she can't break through it because it wasn't made of glass as she thought:
    Burglar: Rats! The case around it is made of pure diamond! How ironic.
  • One of the items that Johnny finds while on an archaeological dig with Carl is an Egyptian urn, which he throws offscreen without a second thought.
• An episode of Jungle Cubs has the main cast searching for a hidden treasure. In the end, they find a chamber full of gold and jewels but, being wild animals, they find no value from it.
• An episode of the Krazy Kat animated series revolved around Krazy being Born Lucky. For instance, after getting violently ejected through a ceiling, she finds a cache of paper money and is delighted — "more pictures of presidents for my collection".
• Looney Tunes:
  • In a few shorts, Bugs Bunny or some other character will be in trouble because he has a bunch of "funny yellow rocks" on his person and villains like Yosemite Sam or Blacque Jacque Shellacque find out. In at least one instance ("Bonanza Bunny"), they are just Worthless Yellow Rocks: Bugs remarks how much fun you can have with some rocks and a can of yellow paint...
  • Subverted in a Daffy Duck cartoon of all things, where Daffy finds himself lost in the desert after finding a huge gold nugget. He spends the entire cartoon rebuffing a pack rat that wants to trade some water for his shiny rock. Finally, Daffy gives in and trades the nugget... just seconds before a flash storm floods the entire desert up to his neck. Surprisingly, Daffy only smiles and says, "When I buy water, I sure get my money's worth!"
  • In "Tease for Two", the Goofy Gophers cover a rock with gold paint and toss it into the hole in which Daffy is digging for gold. Daffy, of course, thinks it's real.
• Megas XLR, "Battle Royale": In space, Jamie's pocket lint is more valuable than his two coins.
• In Men in Black: The Series, the Worm Guys drink coffee all the time because it's a sacred substance on their homeworld that only royalty is allowed to drink. On Earth, millions of gallons of the stuff is brewed daily so people can get through their day.
• Inverted on the Mighty Max cartoon: Max and his friends end up fighting a band of aliens who seemingly want to conquer and plunder the Earth. Eventually, he realizes that what the aliens want is toxic waste, which they use for fuel. Realizing that the planet would actually benefit without this, Max quickly "surrenders" and agrees to pay the aliens the "tribute" regularly.
• In My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic goes back and forth on this. Gems at first look like this, but only because one of the main characters has the power of finding them in abundance and another, a dragon, eats them. In another episode, their value fluctuates wildly, a single jewel can be used for buying things ranging from four round- trip train tickets plus pet fees to an industrial-sized hair dryer, (and the tiniest one buys the most expensive item, and vice versa). Although they were mostly being used as bribes in that episode, so it wasn't like the characters were getting them appraised first. Rarity later gives small ones out like tips, and most ponies react like she handed them a hundred dollar bill. So it seems some of them are rare and worth a lot, while others, may be so plentiful there is no good use for them other than cake garnish and door stops. In "Rock Solid Friendship", Maud Pie is unimpressed by a large pile of jewels and comments that they are practically worthless because they are so common. She is also unimpressed by Princess Twilight Sparkle's crystal castle, asking what makes it different from any other structure made from minerals.
• In the first episode of The Owl House while rummaging through a sack of human world artifacts, Eda discards a smartphone, a diamond ring, and the Holy Grail before settling on the "real" treasure, a pair of novelty spring-eye glasses.
• The Penguins of Madagascar: King Julien went to the Lost Stuff box to find something funny or entertaining. Tossing aside a bunch of dollar bills and a huge gold collar:
  Julien: Paper trash.... Metal trash...
• Episode 11 of Plasmo features Sparky, a construction robot from a planet of robots where gold is the most common metal available. Unfortunately for her, the rest of the galaxy considers gold a lot more valuable than her people do.
• Used with produce instead of minerals in The Ren & Stimpy Show episode "City Hicks": the episode starts with the duo running a farm that grows dust, which they apparently turn into food. When it rains and the dust is washed away, they consider the growth of plant life in their fields to be a bad thing and move to the city when they believe the fruits and vegetables that are now growing in their fields to be worthless.
• The Fractured Fairy Tales version of King Midas featured on Rocky and Bullwinkle encounters this when, in an attempt to improve his public image, gives himself the "Golden Touch" (actually just discreetly painting objects gold). His subjects clamor to the castle to get various objects turned gold, but they do it so much that gold eventually becomes worthless to them. The kingdom shifts from the gold standard to turnips — something comparatively valuable, but which King Midas doesn't have, making him the poorest person in his own kingdom.
• On Rocky And The Dodos, Rocky, Tantra, and Elvis dismiss gold coins they find with a metal detector, as they thought that it would help them find Limpets.
• On Rugrats, the babies trekked through a sandbox to find nickels, discarding a diamond ring, a million-dollar bill and other treasures as they went. Of course, they are babies.
• One episode of Seabert The Seal had a con-artist exploiting a group of jungle-dwelling natives by providing agricultural services in return for sacks of "colored glass". Needless to say, the glass was diamonds which the natives had no use for.
• The Simpsons:
  • In "Homer's Barbershop Quartet", Homer rummages through a box at a yard sale and finds an original copy of the Declaration of Independence, the first issue of the Action Comics comic book, reams of Inverted Jenny stamps, and a Stradivarius violin ("Stradi-who-vious?") He discards all of them as "junk".
  • In "Boy-Scoutz 'N the Hood", Homer digs behind his couch in hopes of finding a lost peanut and is disappointed when he only finds a twenty-dollar bill. His brain has to remind him "Money can be exchanged for goods and services."
  • In "Worst Episode Ever", Martin's mother almost sells the original handwritten script of Star Wars (alternate ending: Luke's father is Chewbacca!) to Comic Book Guy for $5, but Bart and Milhouse warn her that she's being ripped off, earning them a lifetime ban from the store.
  • Inverted when Marge brings to John what she thinks is an antique Civil War soldier statue, but is just a bottle of Johnny Reb whiskey.
    John: Ahhhh, that'll make your bull run.
  • In "The Burns and the Bees", Prof. Frink uses a perfume to attract bees. Moments after using it, an incredibly sexy woman walks up to him begging him to marry her and she will support him for life. Frink only states that she isn't a bee, deems the perfume useless and throws it away.
  • In "The Joy of Sect", Jimbo, Dolph, and Kearney steal other peoples' luggage at the airport. Kearney's bag turns out to contain a set of rare Fabergé eggs, which he dismisses as "a bunch of fruity Easter eggs."
  • In one episode Homer has one dollar which is enough to buy a candy bar or lottery ticket he has found is a winner (by holding up to the light). He agonizes for a moment but then buys the candy.
  • In "Future-Drama", Bart is in Mr. Burns' house and sees a gigantic diamond. Mr. Burns comments that he's going to have all his diamonds retromorphed into the most valuable substance on Earth, coal.
• In The Smurfs (1981) story, "Gargamel the Generous", Clumsy comes across a batch of crystals that turn out to be useless for the current building project (they're making pebbles for a new walkway in the village). He's disposing of them, disappointed in himself for not finding anything useful; they are too tough to fashion anything with them and when Hefty is strong enough to shatter one, it disintegrates into dust. When he tries dumping them, Gargamel approaches with the unusual attitude mentioned in the story title. Because unlike the Smurfs, Gargamel has a use for diamonds. Of all the Smurfs, only Papa recognizes what diamonds are and knows about their value in human society.
• Sofia the First: While looking for more cave crystals, Gnarly finds an emerald and dismisses it as worthless because it doesn't glow. He later finds a diamond and casts it aside.
• Space Goofs: In the episode "Short Changed"^note In other episodes, the aliens do use money to pay for stuff, the aliens find a ton of money and don't know what to do with it. They try eating it, burning it and using it as a fancy wallpaper. In the end, Etno finds a use for the "paper rectangles" as toilet paper.
• Spongebob Squarepants:
  • Done in the episode "Idiot Box". It begins with the titular character buying a humongous flat-screen television, only to throw it away. It's quickly revealed that he actually bought it for the cardboard box it was packed in. Humorously enough, the television itself may be worth less than it seems as when Squidward took it, he found the TV came with only box-related content.
  • In "Penny Foolish", where Mr. Krabs is trying to get a penny from SpongeBob, it's revealed he was only picking up a piece of chewed-up gum for his collection. SpongeBob tosses it when he realizes it wasn't a piece of chewed gum after all, just a $500 bill.
  • In "Porous Pockets", SpongeBob and Patrick find a valuable pearl, which they were going to use as a volleyball. If a scrupulous pawn shop owner didn't come by and buy it from them for a "small fortune", this trope would have almost certainly gone its natural course. At the end of the episode, they're about to do the same with a huge diamond Patrick found in a mine.
  • In "Mustard O' Mine", SpongeBob, Patrick, and Squidward are sent underground to mine for mustard, where SpongeBob and Patrick are uninterested when they find gold and diamonds instead.
  • "Atlantis SquarePantis" zig-zags this with a huge vault of treasure the Atlanteans have which they are aware of its monetary value, but disregarded it a long time ago for the pursuit of knowledge. They let Mr. Krabs play with it.
  • In "Under the Small Top", when SpongeBob receives his mail, he's given a check for $1,000,000 from a contest that he won, but rips it in half because he only cares about getting the sea flea circus that he ordered.
• One episode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has the heroes in a halfshell meet a race of turtle aliens. The aliens have machines that can make gold, but only use it for building material as they absorb nutrients from gold-reflected light. The aliens want to move to Earth, but the turtles realize that their gold-makers would wreak havoc on the economy.
• The ThunderCats find gold (which they've never encountered before) in one episode, and Panthro says it's "soft, pulls apart too easily. Has a low melting point. Won't react with other metals or chemicals. It's just... junk." Wouldn't you know it, they need the gold to help repower a fire spirit who can help Lion-O repair his Wrecked Weapon. This one's weird; it showcases the cats' non-materialism, but either Panthro (mechanic and tech) or Tygra (chemist) could be expected to keep some around for further experimentation. But Cheetara only kept some of it because it was pretty; the rest got dumped.
• Timon & Pumbaa: Timon and Pumbaa initially regard the gold they found as worthless until a nearby criminal reminds them that they can use it to buy bugs to eat. They even call them useless yellow rocks.
• In The Transformers, Transformers tend to see gold as worthless, though Decepticons understand that it can be used to bribe humans. Starscream understands its usefulness in electronics, as in one episode he demands gold and uses it to construct an electromagnetic generator. In "Nightmare Planet", a princess offers to pay Springer and Razorclaw with gold. Springer says that won't be necessary, but Razorclaw is intrigued, prompting a fan theory that Razorclaw likes gold because it is pretty.
• The Trolls: TrollsTopia episode "Glitter Rush" is about all the trolls mining for glitter due to a shortage. At one point Smidge expresses frustration that they're mostly finding gold, tossing a freshly dug nugget into a massive pile of them.
• In an episode of Turbo F.A.S.T., Skidmark is mixing chemicals together in the hopes of reverse-engineering his own pickle juice. Instead, the mixture turns into a gold bar, which he throws away revealing that he has a whole pile of them from previous attempts.
• One Underdog cartoon features an alien race called Cloud Men, who have so much gold they make furniture out of it. It's worthless to them; what they really need is silver (because all clouds need a silver lining) so they steal it from other planets. Eventually, Polly convinces them to trade their gold for silver (which they apparently never considered).
• An episode of The Venture Bros. involves Gary/21 trying to pay Doctor Venture in the form of a comic book, which Doc laughs off. After all, there's no way a comic featuring "Ka-Zar the Great and 12 pages of jungle adventure!" could be worth much of any money, and he ends up letting his son Hank have it. Over the course of the episode, the comic is destroyed, and the audience even gets an onscreen counter as it declines from half a million dollars to worthless.
• Wild Kratts: When the brothers try out their new hermit crab power-discs, they start out at human-size and are too big to use regular snail shells. Frantically seeking an alternative, Chris finds an old treasure chest filled with gold coins on the beach, and - overwhelmed by hermit crab instinct — dumps the coins out on the sand without a glance so he can use the chest to protect his vulnerable abdomen.