"I got you a dollar!"
A type of prank involving a tied dollar bill, or some valuable object or even food, left on the ground and then pulled away when someone attempts to pick it up. May be used as a lure.
Compare Coin-on-a-String Trick, where the victim (usually a vending machine) believes they've ended up with the money. Often a form of Motivation on a Stick.
Examples:
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Advertising
- In an ad for State Farm👁 Image
, a woman who doesn't have State Farm is taunted by a fisherman who says that he got her a dollar.Fisherman: [pulling away the rod] Oooh, ya almost had it. Gotta be quicker than that.
Anime & Manga
- One Doraemon short involves this trick, though it's done with an empty box of a model kit attached to a fishing line. With Suneo discreetly filming on the other side to see who is dumb enough to try grabbing the box for a free toy. Sure enough, Nobita is the only person who falls for it, and later Suneo gleefully invites the entire class - Nobita included - to his house and broadcast the video.
- Appears in the censored version of the Dragon Ball anime, to replace Bulma using a lure of panties to catch Oolong transformed as a fish. It also sets up Goku catching him and saying "Would you look at that, a fishful of dollars!"
- Great Teacher Onizuka has a variant; Urumi puts a 10,000-yen bill on a small string-and-stick attached to Onizuka's headband, and tells him he can have the money if he catches it in his mouth while bicycling at 60 kph (with her riding on the back of the bike, of course).
Comic Books
- Disney Mouse and Duck Comics:
- Mickey Mouse's nephews Mortie and Ferdie once placed a purse on the floor to pull a prank on Donald Duck, who tried to prank them back by picking a quarter from his pockets and pretended to take it from the purse. The boys cried for the money and Donald told them the money wasn't theirs. Unfortunately for him, a random passerby overheard the conversation and believed Donald robbed the kids. The passerby socked him and gave them the quarter.
- On April Fool's day, Huey, Dewey and Louie placed a dollar bill coming off a wallet (found at the city dump) and dropped it with a string to pull a prank on Donald. The string didn't work, allowing Donald to keep the wallet and the dollar. Later on, they tried something similar with an empty wallet and no strings (they reasoned Donald wouldn't need to see any money this time). Unlike them, Donald knew those old wallets had secret pockets and decided to search them for money. He found a ten-dollar bill.
- Superman: Done by the Prankster in "The Terrible Trio", a story in Superman #88 (March 1954). He leaves a wallet lying on the sidewalk, but the string attached to it makes passersby assume it's a prank. However, the string actually triggers an explosive to blow a hole in the wall of a bank.
Comic Strips
- Garfield:
- This👁 Image
strip from 1979 featured Jon pulling this trick on Garfield. Jon used a blueberry muffin instead of money. Garfield retaliated by knocking down the table Jon was on. - Garfield pulled it on Jon with the last cookie.👁 Image
- A mouse did it to Jon.👁 Image
More than once.
- This👁 Image
- Peanuts: According to a strip from 1985, this is Spike's favorite April Fools' Plot, with a purse on a string. Because he's in the desert, however, no victims come by.
Spike: I'll wait for ten more hours, but then that's it.
- One Spy vs. Spy intro panel comic has Black Spy pulling this on White Spy, with a dollar tied to a string leading to a guillotine. The version of this gag MADtv (1995) has Black successful in defeating White this way, only for White's headless body to make a final successful grasp at the dollar and slump over after.
Fan Works
- Crowley pulls a variant in Not Quite The Devil You Know👁 Image
, gluing a coin to the sidewalk. It's Crowley's way of corrupting humanity; coveting the coin is Greed, and everyone who tries to pull the coin is invariably angry, or Wrathful. - Our Week Off Together!: Luz and Amity use a chocolate bar on a string to lure a Coven Guard close enough to them that Amity's Abomination could knock him out.
Coven Guard: I should know better. But the payout could be so good!
Film — Live-Action
- In Go West, Harpo uses this on Groucho. Groucho is trying to fleece Harpo & Chico out of all their money but H&C reverse it by giving Groucho a 10 and getting 9 change, over and over again.
- The Host (2006): The monster is intelligent enough to use a dollar bill on the ground as bait, as an unfortunate government worker discovers when he goes to pick it up.
- In Used Cars, Rudy uses a $10 bill on a fishing line to attract a customer from across the street at a competing car dealer. The customer is chasing the money and not looking at traffic.
- In The Wrong Guys, the bullying Grunsky brothers used this trick as children, to lure Richard into a snare trap that suspended him by his ankles. Years later, as adults, Richard and his friends find themselves and the Grunskys working together to escape a dangerous criminal, and Richard remembers the trick. They successfully bait the criminal, and he winds up helpless. Temporarily.
- Yellowbeard: Commander Clement wants to get some information out of Harvey "Blind" Pew but doesn't want to pay for it. Each time he drops a coin into Pew's cup, Clement yanks it back out again with a string.
Literature
- The Day of the Locust: Bratty kid Adore tries this on Homer Simpson (not that one) with a wallet. Simpson, at this point in a Heroic BSoD, ignores it, and when neither that nor rude gestures and faces get any reaction out of him, Adore throws a rock at Homer's face. Homer retaliates by chasing Adore until the boy trips and falls to the ground, whereupon Homer jumps up and down on his back until he dies, despite Tod's attempts to intervene.
Live-Action TV
- CSI: NY: Danny takes Sheldon to Coney Island to question someone as part of their investigation in "Past Imperfect". While there, they encounter two young boys playing a prank on tourists by sticking the corner of a folded $20 bill up through the slats of the boardwalk to get them to attempt to grab it, but pulling it away each time. Danny snatches it, then scolds the boys but gives the money back before sending them on their way.
Manhua
- Defied in Old Master Q in a short when Chiu tries pranking Master Q with a hanging 100-dollar bill (presumably from his own pocket) from a corner. Master Q, however, is Genre Savvy enough to brandish a pair of scissors and cut the string before fleeing with the money, much to Chiu's dismay.
Music
Puppet Shows
- The Book of Pooh In "You Can Lead Eeyore to Books", Winnie the Pooh and his friends use a tied carrot to lure Eeyore to Owl's library so that he can pick out a book of his own after he doesn't like the ones they suggest to him.
Video Games
- In Breath of Fire II and Breath of Fire III, you can catch the fish-man merchant Maniro by baiting your hook with a gold bar.
- The Fishin' Lakitu from Super Mario World tries to lure you with a 1-Up Mushroom on a fishing rod. If you pick it up, he'll start throwing spinies. Fishin' Boo copies the same strategy in some Ghost Houses, but since its "lure" is a dangerous blue fireball the temptation to snag it isn't there for most players.
- Super Paper Mario plays this trope straight by featuring Super Mushrooms on a string at a few key points in the game; players typically have to fall for the traps in order to progress. What's nice is that you the Mushrooms are legit, and if when you grab one you get healed as you normally might (ex. if using a Shroom Shake). Most prominently used near the start of the ambiguously trapped Merlee's Mansion (Chapter 2-2) - it's clear that Mimi, posing as Merlee's personal maid had a lot of fun setting up this and the other traps.
- Toontown Online has the Lure Gag track, which offers $1, $5, and $10 bills you can use to bait a singular Cog. In return, the gags have low accuracy, and you have to grind in order to get said bills.
- Wario Land II has an enemy that lures Wario in with a coin on a fishing rod — when he attempts to collect it, he's instead pulled up to a higher area.
Western Animation
- Beavis and Butt-Head: In "Couch Fishing", the boys bait a fishing rod with random trash they pull out of their couch and cast it out the window. They reel in a raccoon with an old slice of pizza, Stewart with a broken tape player, and an old woman with a box of prunes.
- Used in the Captain Flamingo episode "Whack-a-Max" where Milo uses a dollar tied to a string to distract the big kids from playing the Whack-a-Mole game in which Max is stuck in. It backfires when they eventually retrieve the dollar to continue playing the game.
- On Family Guy, when it's revealed that Lois' mother is Jewish, Carter, her husband, attempts to bait her with money. She doesn't fall for it.
- Another episode has Peter doing this so he could have an anvil fall on someone's head. He then proceeds to fall for his own lure and get hit by the anvil.
- Used to distract Grunkle Stan in the Gravity Falls episode "Double Dipper", when one of the Dipper clones dangles a dollar bill on a fishing pole in front of him.
Grunkle Stan: Yeah, right, like I'm gonna fall for that... [Beat. He dives for the bill.] Gimme that floating money!
- Used in the Johnny Test episode "Johnny Bench" where Johnny uses twenty bucks tied to a string to lure Bumper out of the woodshop class so that he can use his bench to trick Mr. Teacherman that he made that bench but he then saw what he did to it by using someone else's bench, causing the plan to backfire as he has to make a bench made entirely by him or else he will go to summer school.
- One episode of The Kids from Room 402 started with Mr. Besser falling victim to the classic dollar bill with a string prank. The prankster later placed a coin with sellotape for another prank. At the end, someone dropped a ten-dollar bill and Mr. Besser, wrongfully assuming it was another prank, didn't try to pick it up.
- In the Lilo & Stitch: The Series episode "PJ", Lilo and Stitch first meet the titular Experiment 133 (PJ) as they almost arrive at home when said experiment tricks Stitch into chasing a twenty dollar bill on a fish line, causing Stitch to jump in a mud puddle. Moments later in the kitchen, Pleakley tries to pull the same prank on himself, holding the line with the bill in one hand and pulling it away when he tries to reach it with his other hand. Although he easily amuses himself, no one else laughs, though PJ then sucks up the line and the bill through his Gag Nose almost immediately thereafter, causing Pleakley to wonder where it went and Lilo and Stitch to laugh.
- The Simpsons:
- Mr. Burns does it in one episode to bait children: dangling a large denomination bill on a string out of the window of his limousine and then driving away as Bart tries to pick it up.
- In "How Lisa Got Her Marge Back", Bart tries it himself with a dollar bill and a special fishing line. Nobody falls for it, with Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel outright saying that even he's not that gullible. Shortly after giving up, Bart notices a quarter on the ground and tries to pick it up, but it is glued there by a bunch of teenagers from Riverdale.
- In the Sonic Boom episode "Next Top Villain," the Lightning Bolt Society pull a variant of this prank by gluing a quarter to the ground for people to try (and fail) to pick up. They end up falling for it themselves, however. Later, Tails falls for it too.
- One animated Mad TV Spy vs. Spy sketch had White following a dollar on a string, straight into a guillotine operated by Black. Black pulls the cord and chuckles sinisterly as White is decapitated, but White's body makes one final successful lunge for the dollar before slumping over.
- In the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Frankendoodle", SpongeBob does this to Squidward.
- In The Tick, the wallet anglers that inhabit the sewers of The City use a "living wallet" as bait.
Real Life
- When Alex Rodriguez left the Mariners to play for the Rangers (and eventually the Yankees), he got a cold reception when he came back to play against his former team. One of the disgruntled Seattle fans put a dollar bill on a fishing line and cast it out onto the field when A-Rod showed up to bat. The fan was ejected from Safeco, but not before the rest of the Seattle crowd cheered his protest.