Top 15 richest fictional characters... (1 Viewer)

[todd s]

 

[Holadem]

This list is completely useless without Monte-Cristo .

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H

 

[Hunter P]

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]

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]

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

 

[Lew Crippen]

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.

 

[Adam_S]

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]

Tony Stark?

 

[Garrett Lundy]

What, no mention of Rich Uncle Pennybags?! (of Monopoly® fame)

Edit: Nevermind, i guess he just wanted to be rich...
From Wikipedia:

 

[Brook K]

At some point didn't Stark go bankrupt and lose control of Stark Industries? I haven't read comics in years so I'm not up on current events.

Charles Xavier? How many times has he paid to have the mansion rebuilt? No way does he have insurance on that. And can you imagine his grocery bill, not to mention property taxes on an estate of that size in Westchester.

Reed Richards? The property taxes and electricity bill for the Baxter Building must be killer (unless NYC has given them a tax waiver for do-gooding). And again, no way are they carrying insurance riders for all the stuff on the interior that regularly gets destroyed.

The 7 Dwarfs had their own gem mine though they didn't seem to spend money on anything.

Wile E. Coyote must have had some source of wealth if he was having rockets and giant magnets drop shipped to the middle of the desert in the 50's when there weren't UPS trucks every 10 feet. Maybe he just kept stiffing Acme on a charge account?

 

[PattyFraser]

I understand Lord Peter Wimsey is loaded, even though he's a second son.