Top 15 richest fictional characters...

todd s · 03-13-2006, 01:17 PM

Quote:

Boldly Going Nowhere

Rich Fictional Characters
03/09/06
Bret Burquest
Email this story to a friend

Once a year, Forbes Magazine compiles a list of the richest people in the world. In January of 2006, they published a list of the 15 richest fictional characters. If this is important to you, you need to get a new life.

1) Santa Claus – This fat, jolly toy maker lives at the North Pole with a wife, a bunch of elves and some flying reindeer. He is believed to be 1,651 years old with an unlimited surplus of wealth. He spends an entire year making toys; then distributes them in a single evening, via unlawful entry, to children throughout the planet. He also conducts covert surveillance on every boy and girl on the planet to determine who has been naughty or nice.

2) Oliver “Daddy” Warbucks – Age 52, net worth: $27.3 billion. He’s a defense contractor from New York City who is rarely seen in public. Although he’s divorced, he adopted an orphan named Annie and her Airedale terrier named Sandy. He has two bodyguards, Punjab and Asp, who have mystical powers and great strength.

3) Richie Rich – Age 10, net worth: $17 billion. This poor little rich kid inherited his father’s fortune. He attends Richville Elementary School in Richville (U.S.A.). While sharing his fortune with underprivileged kids, his more sinister escapades include genetic engineering of “dollarmation” dogs and excessive use of robotic maids.

4) Lex Luther – Age 36, net worth: $10.1 billion. He’s the CEO of LexCorp (defense contracts, computer software and real estate). As a resident of Metropolis (U.S.A.), he’s often peeved at a Daily Planet newspaper reporter named Clark Kent. Although generally mild-mannered, Kent occasionally cross-dresses into an outfit of blue tights with a red cape whereupon he fights for freedom, justice and the American way.

5) Charles Montgomery Burns – Age 104, net worth: $8.4 billion. As owner/operator of a nuclear plant in Springfield (U.S.A.), he has every disease known to man. The diseases counteract one another, allowing him to live a long life. He credits his longevity to Satan. One of his employees is a fellow named Homer Simpson.

6) Scrooge McDuck – Age 80, net worth: $8.2 billion. He lives in the world’s largest repository of gold coins, a five-story tower in Duckburg (U.S.A.). He amassed his fortune in gold and copper, and spends his free time swimming in money. His heirs include his nephew Donald, and grand-nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie.

7) Jed Clampett – Age 51, net worth: $6.6 billion. As a hillbilly in Tennessee, he accidentally stumbled upon a huge oil deposit that made him rich. So he moved his mother (Granny), his cousin (Jethro) and his daughter (Elly May) to Beverly Hills where they scared the neighbors and got even richer through banking.

8) Bruce Wayne – Age 32, net worth: $6.5 billion. He’s a wealthy playboy who inherited the family business. His stately mansion near Gotham City (U.S.A.) sits atop a complex of bat caves. He has a fetish for thwarting criminals by dressing up as a winged rodent (a bat) and putting an end to their dastardly deeds.

9) Thurston Howell III – Age 60, net worth: $5.7 billion. A Harvard man with a snooty attitude toward commonness, he founded Howell Industries (plastic and chemicals). He and his wife went on a three-hour boat tour and never returned. He is thought to be in seclusion on a private island somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.

10) Willy Wonka – Age 57, net worth: $2.3 billion. He lives in Kent, England, and owns a chocolate factory. Apparently, he was the son of a dentist and forbidden to eat chocolate as a child. Dentists can be very cruel.

Rounding out the top 15 richest fictional characters in the world are Arthur Bach (womanizing playboy, drunkard), Ebenezer Scrooge (rich miser, haunted by ghosts), Lara Croft (daughter of wealth, archeologist), Cruella De Vil (fashions fur coats from 99 Dalmatians) and Lucius Malfoy (wizard, enemy of Harry Potter).

Rich characters, fictional or otherwise, are just like the rest of us – they’re often a bit weird. The only difference is that regular weirdos are considered to be unbalanced while rich weirdos are merely eccentric.

I always thought Donald Trump was one of the richest fictional characters in the world, but I was wrong.

Holadem · 03-13-2006, 02:03 PM

This list is completely useless without Monte-Cristo

.

--
H

Hunter P · 03-13-2006, 03:24 PM

Quote:

Lucius Malfoy (wizard, enemy of Harry Potter).

I never read the books but I remember the scene from the first movie where Harry went to the bank and saw all that gold that his parents left for him. Wasn't he well off too?

Joseph DeMartino · 03-13-2006, 03:46 PM

Of course, the list doesn't adjust for inflation, doesn't indicate where its estimates come from, and doesn't indicate which "era" some of its members should be counted as belonging to. ("Daddy" Warbucks, as his name indicated, made his fortune as a defense contractor in WWI and increased it during WWII. But he still "exists" in a contemporary Annie strip.)

It is very hard to compare levels of wealth between different eras. John D. Rockefeller was probably worth a good deal more in the dollars of his time than Bill Gates is in today's dollars. J. P. Morgan once personally prevented a national recession by moving his own money around and shoring up various companies. It is hard to imagine any one person doing something like that today. Marcus Licinius Crassus, a contemporary of Julius Caesar's, once said that no man should count himself rich who could not afford to pay for an army out of his own pocket. Try to imagine a modern billionaire raising, training, equipping and maintaining a couple of divisions of the U.S. Army with all their logistics and support personnel. Crassus could and did do the equivalent. (So did Caesar, who thanks to his conquests ended up even richer than Crassus, from who he'd once borrowed money.)

I suspect several mythological and legendary kings (including Croesus and Midas, both proverbial for their wealth) would also dwarf Gates's fortune - especially if you threw in the value of the real estate, since as absolute monarchs they theorectially owned at least most of the unpopulated land. (The Pharoahs of Egypt owned all the land. And Egypt was a lot bigger then.

)

Joe

Casey Trowbridg · 03-13-2006, 04:28 PM

I'm thinking that Emperor Palpetine would've had to be on this list before getting the shaft.

**HTF Ads**

Lew Crippen · 03-13-2006, 04:32 PM

A part of the problem with the Forbes list is that their very first character is [/i]mythical[/i], not fictional.

A second part is that is that is contemporary (Scrooge is omni-present every Christmas).

And finally, it is Anglo-centric.

Of course the editors get to make their own choices, but they don’t ever get it right with the one Dickens character they include (Dickens’ characters are mostly poor, working-class and middle-class, the wealthy characters being extremely rich, only by comparison). Scrooge had money only in comparison to his employees, but wa not extremely wealthy.

Just a couple of modest suggestions (I’m sure that there are many, many more):

Although it is hard to make a comparison, Hikaru Genji of Lady Murasaki Shikibu’s Tale of the Genji has everything in medieval Japan (even being an illegitimate son of the Emperor is a good thing).

War and Peace has severa; wealthy characters including Pierre Bezukhov, Prince Kuragin and Prince Andrei Bolkonski.

Joseph J.D · 03-13-2006, 08:46 PM

Bruce Wayne number 8? No way! He has to be a hell of a lot higher on that list than that. He'd have to be richer than Bill Gates just so that he could support his *ahem* extra-curricular activities. Crime fighting ain't cheap nowadays.

Adam_S · 03-14-2006, 02:04 AM

and here I clicked on the thread expecting to see things like Huck Finn, Don Quixote, Paul Atriedes, Oliver Twist, Det. Scottie Ferguson, Tyrion Lannister, Humbert Humbert, Ender Wiggin etc...

guess I was thinking of a different kind of rich in the context of the term 'fictional characters'

but yeah Bruce Wayne should definitely be way higher to fund what he does.

MichaelBA · 03-14-2006, 07:36 AM

Tony Stark?