"Thirty pieces of silver"
Burns on the traitor's brain;
"Thirty pieces of silver!
Oh! It is hellish gain!"
Burns on the traitor's brain;
"Thirty pieces of silver!
Oh! It is hellish gain!"
— William Blane, "Thirty Pieces of Silver"
In The Bible, thirty pieces of silver was the price of a slave/bond-servant. It is also the price which Judas Iscariot was paid for betraying Jesus to the Sanhedrin, ultimately leading to his crucifixion at the hands of the Romans.
As such, it is fairly common in fiction to refer to the "thirty pieces of silver" in reference to someone's betrayal of their friends and/or ideals.
Some may go as far as to present the offending party with a literal thirty pieces of silver. Some may actually do a conversion and pay out the amount in modern value.note
The implication is that the person betrayed someone/thing not out of a sense of moral obligation or higher ideals, but merely to benefit themselves, often for a paltry amount.
It could serve as a Jerkass Realization or Heel Realization for the party who is hit with this reference, or it could result in an Insult Backfire, or a Shut Up, Kirk!. If the former, there may be a Heel–Face Turn, unless the original Biblical story is being used as allegory, at which point they'll likely cross the Despair Event Horizon and be Driven to Suicide. It is often paired with the "Kiss of Judas" as a stock act of betrayal.
Of course, a mere accusation of betrayal doesn't make it true, or show that it rises to the same level as the original story, in which case it may be Played for Laughs, owing to someone's Skewed Priorities.
If the original thirty pieces of silver show up, that's a case of Public Domain Artifact, and such examples should go there unless there is overlap with an act of betrayal.
Frequently overlaps Rule of Symbolism. Sub-Trope of Stock Shout-Outs and Metallic Motifs.
Contrast Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves, where the price of treachery is paid by the traitor themself rather than the party that the traitor is defecting to.
Examples:
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Blogs
- Bad Traffic SMP Ideas: In the hypothetical season Jesus Life
, a Judas is chosen every session to betray a member of their alliance, and will receive 30 iron ingots — the closest visual substitute to pieces of silver in vanilla Minecraft — if they succeed.
Comic Books
- Batman
- It's believed that Two-Face's coin was made from one of the original thirty pieces. Given how another term for traitor can be "two-faced", it seems fitting.
- Batman: Hush: When Batman figures out that Harold had betrayed him to Hush, he asks "What thirty pieces of silver did they offer you?" The answer?
Harold: Happiness.
- Blake and Mortimer:
- In The Francis Blake Affair (in which Blake appears to have turned traitor), Mortimer finds 30,000 pounds hidden in their apartment and calls it the "thirty pieces of Judas".
- The Curse of the Thirty Denarii has the search for the grave of Judas Iscariot and his silver as the MacGuffin.
- Civil War (2006): When Daredevil, who is on the anti-registration side, is imprisoned in the Negative Zone, he gives Tony Stark, who is on the pro-registration side, a silver dollar and tells him:
Daredevil: Guess that's thirty-one pieces of silver you've got now, huh? Sleep well, Judas.
- Sturmtruppen: In the "Messiah" Heinz storyline, Heinz is driving the officers insane with his miracles, prompting the captain to say he'd be willing to pay for anyone to stop it... And Musolesi, who had previously installed himself as Heinz's pope, to offer in exchange for thirty Reichsmarks (that are, of course, silver coins).
- In one of Gold Key Comics' The Twilight Zone stories, an archaeologist discovers a series of sealed containers each containing a fortune in gems. To open each one, he must commit a specific crime; each crime increasing in heinousness. However, the final crime is "betray a friend". When he opens this container, he finds that instead of gems, this one contains thirty pieces of silver. He has just enough time to realise the significance of this before the obligatory Twilight Zone Twist Ending kicks in.
Fan Works
- Dangerverse: After Cho Chang sells out Dumbledore's Army to Umbridge, the Pride rewards her by giving her a necklace as a Christmas present — a necklace made of thirty pieces of silver.
- In Dearest Hermione, Harry's Spiteful Will, read after his suicide, bequeaths thirty sickles (silver coins) each to Ron and Hermione (she also gets his sixth-year Potions book she'd been hassling him about during that school year). When they were on their way home from Hogwarts following Dumbledore's death, they'd been busy with younger students the whole trip, but had not told Harry, so he thought they had abandoned him to go "enjoy" each other. He was mistaken about that, but does not find out until an after-life meeting with Hermione and Lily.
Films — Animation
- The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Disney): During the montage of Frollo searching for Esmeralda, Frollo is shown offering Roma silver for information about Esmeralda twice. The first time, he's offering ten pieces. The second time, he's offering twenty pieces. The reference becomes clear between the quantity those two sums add up to, the quantity that would have logically been offered in an eventual off-screen third time and the fact that the Roma are being offered the money to betray one of their own.
Films — Live-Action
- The Reveal of Dracula 2000 is that the eponymous vampire is Judas Iscariot himself. The aversion to crucifixes and other Christian iconography comes his guilt over causing Jesus's death, while the weakness to silver is derived from the thirty pieces of silver that the chief priests paid Judas for his betrayal.
- In Once Upon a Time in the West, Harmonica makes a Whammy Bid for Jill's land for $5,000, the amount of money that Cheyenne has on his head, which he intends to pay for by turning Cheyenne in. Cheyenne is less than pleased at this betrayal, and this famous exchange goes down:
Harmonica: The reward for this man is 5,000 dollars, is that right?
Cheyenne: Judas was content for 4,970 dollars less.
Harmonica: There were no dollars in them days.
Cheyenne: But sons of bitches... yeah. - Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves: Friar Tuck shoves the corrupt Bishop of Hereford, who falsely accused Robin's father of witchcraft and got him executed on the Sheriff of Nottingham's behest, through a window after loading him up with his ill-gotten gold and then throwing a tiny bag on top, saying, "And here's thirty pieces of silver to pay the Devil ON YOUR WAY TO HELL!"
- Serenity (2005): Mr. Universe takes a bribe from the Operative to lure the Serenity crew into an Alliance naval fleet at the climax of the film. After getting off a video call with them, Mr. Universe turns to the Operative and says, "All right, hand me my thirty coin, but I got news for you–" Which is when the Operative runs him through with his sword rather than pay him.
Literature
- Adrian Mole: In Wilderness Years, Adrian's therapist Leonora charges £30 per hour. He is sexually obsessed with her, and on one occasion he notes that he feels like a client paying a whore, and another time, he snaps "take your thirty pieces of silver", after a terrible session with her.
- In Crime and Punishment, Sonia earns 30 roubles for selling herself.
- The Dresden Files: The actual silver coins that Judas was paid with now act as Soul Jars for an order of fallen angels known as the Knights of the Blackened Denarius who possess human hosts in order to influence reality; Harry gleans the connection instantly when Micheal mentions there being thirty coins.
- Elmer Gantry: After Gantry exposes a professor at a seminary as an atheist, the professor is ruined, and an anonymous person sends Gantry thirty dimes wrapped in a Bible tract as his 'thirty pieces of silver.' Gantry being Gantry, he isn't troubled at all; he quotes the tract in his sermons and uses the money to buy pornography.
- In Son of Rosemary, Anti-Anti-Christ Andy's girlfriend Judith S. Kharyat turns out to be The Mole. She is murdered by the cult, her corpse left to be found with thirty silver items (cutlery, etc.) scattered around it. Lampshaded by Rosemary, who realises that she is being denounced as a traitor.
- Played for Laughs in H. Beam Piper's Uller Uprising. When Rakkeed, the native instigator of the titular uprising, is turned over to the Terrans by one of the native rulers, General von Schlichten orders that Rakkeed be tried and executed by the natives with the Terrans staying out of sight. This prompts Paula Quinton to call out, "Soap and towels, for General Pontius von Pilate!" and for Colonel Hideyoshi O'Leary to comment, "I was wondering what to give Yoorkerk as a testimonial present. A nice thirty-piece silver set!"
- Wild Cards I: In one story, an Ace voluntarily testifies against another Ace during the McCarthy hearings, and is never forgiven by the rest of the Ace community. Several years later, he goes to a restaurant that's known as an Ace hangout; he's not refused service, but his entree comes out from the kitchen surrounded by a neat circle of thirty dimes.
Live-Action TV
- Angel: When Wesley finds out that Angel made a secret deal with Wolfram & Hart, but did not know what it was, he started to suspect that Angel might have been responsible for Fred's death. When he confronted Angel with the orb containing Connor's original memories (not realizing what it was), he asked "Was this your thirty pieces of silver?"
- Babylon 5: William Edgars manages to convince Garibaldi to betray Captain Sheridan to the authorities (unaware that this only worked because Bester had messed with Garibaldi's head). When Garibaldi reports to him that the trap has been set, Edgars assures him that he's doing the right thing and promises that, once Sheridan is in custody, he'll tell him everything about his own plan to bring down President Clark. Garibaldi, who is clearly still heavily conflicted about betraying his friend, mutters that the last guy got thirty pieces of silver for the same job.
- The Big Bang Theory: When Leonard takes Penny to Switzerland to see the Large Hadron Collider for Valentine's Day, Sheldon, who made Leonard promise in the Roommate Agreement to take him to the Large Hadron Collider if he was ever invited to do so, drops a tray off in front of Leonard, who notes that it's "Thirty pieces of silverware."
- House: In the Cliffhanger to "Finding Judas", Wilson opens his conversation selling out House out to Trotter by saying that he'll "need [his] thirty pieces of silver".
- Yes, Minister: At the climax of "A Question of Loyalty", after realising Hacker had deliberately sold him and the department out regarding the select committees' probe into the department of Administrative Affairs commitment to eliminating government waste, the furious Sir Humphrey mockingly wonders aloud how much it was worth "say, thirty pieces of silver".
Mythology & Religion
- The Bible:
- The Trope Namer, Trope Maker, and Ur-Example come from The Four Gospels, where Judas was paid thirty pieces of silver to betray Jesus.
- The Old Testament has numerous places where the thirty pieces of silver and their role in the betrayal of Jesus were foretold.
Zech 11:12-13: Then I said to them, "If it is [a]agreeable to you, give me my wages; and if not, refrain." So they weighed out for my wages thirty pieces of silver. And the Lord said to me, "Throw it to the potter" — that princely price they set on me. So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them into the house of the Lord for the potter.
Tabletop Games
- BattleTech: In the aftermath of Clan Wolf's taking Terra, IlKhan Alaric Ward Held a ceremony for the combatants in the IlClan Trial. For the portion of Wolf's Dragoons that came to Terra and fought on Clan Wolf's side, the unit's members got a medallion, and the unit as a whole was given 30 pieces of silver. The reason was that in the runup to the initial Clan Invasion, the Dragoons, ostensibly a recon unit meant to gauge the Inner Sphere's military readiness and strength, had gone native and ended up helping the Sphere's powers fight the Clan threat. To Alaric's mind, the thirty pieces were a poetic Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves. The symbolism was not lost on the Dragoons, and those who didn't go to Terra saw the act as a fatal insult and the invitation for a Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
Theater
- Henry IV, Part 2: The mistress of Falstaff asks "and didst thou not kiss me, and bid me fetch thee thirty shillings?"
- Jesus Christ Superstar: As in the source material, Judas is offered thirty pieces of silver to betray Jesus, which Ananias says are "Pretty good wages for one little kiss." Judas initially rejects the "blood money," but then reluctantly accepts it when it's framed as "a fee, nothing more." In the 2011 Villagers Theater production, Judas throws the blood money at Jesus during The Last Supper.
Video Games
- In Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, if V first sides with Songbird during "Firestarter" and subsequently sides with Reed and the NUSA at the end by handing her over to him after she confesses that she was never going to cure V, Johnny makes his displeasure very clear:
Johnny: Thought about how you're gonna spend your thirty pieces of silver?
- Kingdom Come: Deliverance II: If you snitch on the Guild's activities to the guard of Kuttenberg, you'll be rewarded with 30 groschen (which are made out of silver).
Webcomics
- In Thunderstruck (Grayson Towler), Jude (a.k.a. Judas Iscariot) tells Sharon, Gail and Thrud (daughter of the Norse god Thor) the truth about the thirty pieces: they were actually given to him by Jesus to buy supplies for their journey. After Jesus' death and Jude's transformation into the first vampire, the coins would no longer leave his hand and would act as indestructible Attack Drones when he was in danger. He had no idea how this happened: His best guess is that the ritual that transformed him put a piece of his soul into the coins. Gail realizes the real truth: the coins weren't empowered by his soul, but by that of Jesus himself.
Real Life
- During a debate between Michael Palin and John Cleese with Christian broadcaster Malcolm Muggeridge and Bishop Mervyn Stockwood about whether or not Life of Brian was sacrilegious or not, Palin was growing increasingly frustrated because he felt they were being summarily dismissed, while Cleese felt they were winning the debate. However, the Bishop did dismiss them by saying, "You've earned your thirty pieces of silver."
- This WWII-era Cinderella Stamp◊ features a caricature of Vidkun Quisling, the Trope Namer for The Quisling. Fittingly, its value is 30 pieces of silver.
Sorry, no refunds.
