Forbes Wealthiest Fictional Characters

Scrooge McDuck, Richie Rich, Bruce Wayne, and Tony Stark make the cut.

Forbes’ Fictional 15 is out, calculating the wealth of the wealthiest characters in popular fiction.

The biggest change to this year’s list comes at the very top. For the first time in the Fictional 15’s history, Santa Claus has been unseated from the number-one spot, replaced by defense contractor Oliver ”Daddy” Warbucks. We still estimate Claus’ net worth as infinite, but we excluded him from this year’s rankings after being bombarded by letters from outraged children insisting that Claus is “real.” We don’t claim to have settled the ongoing controversy concerning Claus’ existence, but after taking into account the physical evidence–toys delivered, milk and cookies devoured–we felt it was safer to remove him from consideration.

In the absence of the tubby toy titan, Oliver Warbucks now reigns as the world’s richest fictional character. The ex-U.S. Army general turned industrialist saw his net worth surge to $36.2 billion, thanks to the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and because of a contract to provide oil-well maintenance in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

[…]
Also making his Fictional 15 debut: spam entrepreneur Prince Abakaliki of Nigeria. Abakaliki is notable for being the only fictional character on our list who regularly e-mails real people, usually begging for assistance in recovering large sums of money. We estimate Abakaliki to be worth more than $2.8 billion.

The entire list:

  1. Oliver “Daddy” Warbucks
  2. Montgomery Burns
  3. Scrooge McDuck
  4. Richie Rich
  5. Jed Clampett
  6. Mr. Monopoly
  7. Bruce Wayne
  8. Tony Stark
  9. Prince Abakaliki of Nigeria
  10. Thurston Howell III
  11. Willy Wonka
  12. Lucius Malfoy
  13. Tony Montana
  14. Lara Croft
  15. Mario
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James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Comments

  1. Wayne says:

    Obviously they only take the most popular ones that they know of. There are sci-fi characters that own entire planets and magical types that could create as much wealth as they want. It falls into line of most of these so call 50 most sexist people in world junk where you have a hand full of individuals giving their opinion.