"Here I am, ya greedy bastard!"
Everyone knows that living things can be exchanged for other goods or currency, but sometimes they are traded so regularly they can be (and sometimes are) considered currency themselves. In this case, something sufficiently close to alive counts too, for instance: a completely autonomous Clockwork Creature.
A Sub-Trope to Weird Currency, if the organism is edible or produces some other useful commodity may be Practical Currency.
Examples:
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Advertising
- The main character of Cryptoland is Connie, a coin.
- One of GEICO's many recurring ad campaigns
showed people being stalked by a lone strap of cash with cute googly-eyes sitting on top named Kash, representing all the money they could be saving by switching insurance carriers, set to Mysto & Pizzi's cover of "Somebody's Watching Me".
Anime & Manga
- One monster of the week in Digimon Xros Wars: The Young Hunters Who Leapt Through Time is Ganemon, a living ten-yen coin that feeds on the greed carried by human currency. He grows larger and his appearance changes to resemble more valuable metals the more he feeds on. He also has a massive swarm of Zenimon (five-yen) and KoZenimon (one-yen) minions in his briefcase.
Comic Books
- In Bone, residents of the valley use things like livestock as currency.
- As the title suggests, Eight Billion Genies is about an Earth where, upon the population reaching eight billion humans, everyone is immediately granted a genie who will grant them any one wish they desire*. It doesn't take long for the genies themselves to basically replace currency in the world; if physics have become topsy-turvy and everyone gets a chance at their greatest desire, material wealth is now meaningless. Ergo, if someone wants something valuable, like to live in a haven where wishes have no effect, they must usually give up their genie to the person(s) in charge.
- Wonder Woman once dealt with this concept: how do you establish a galactic currency when wildly-varying worlds use gold or steel or wood. The rather squicky solution that some unethical individuals come up with is using minds sucked out of their original bodies.
Comic Strips
- In B.C., the cavemen use live clams as currency.
- Madam & Eve: The embodiment of the Rand (the South African dollar) shows up from time to time; one storyline also has him encounter embodiments of the American Dollar, a few other currencies, and Gold and Platinum as well.
Literature
- Childe Cycle: The interstellar currency is largely based on skilled professionals. If a planet needs someone or something, they hire out a specialist in exchange.
- Discworld:
- In the villages of Lancre, where hard currency is a rarity, commerce is more likely to be negotiated in chickens than in coins.
- While not technically currency (as no one directly spends them), Making Money has Ankh-Morpork switch over from the Gold Standard to the Golem Standard; the value of money is guaranteed by being worth an equivalent amount of labor from the recently unearthed army of golems.
- In the same book, Moist suggests that same type of imps that run disorganisers and iconographs could be embedded in banknotes and trained to say things like "Is this purchase really necessary?"
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: On some planets, elderly relatives are used as currency.
Live-Action TV
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Demons use kittens when playing poker.
- Arrested Development: Tobias spends some time in prison to research for a role. George Sr trades him to White Power Bill for a pack of cigarettes.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons: Fiends use souls, in the form of lower fiends, as currency. Especially the larvae produced when a mortal stays in Hades too long since they're particularly helpless and the plane's resident Yugoloths are the most mercenary of fiends.
- Eclipse Phase: On the Nine Lives syndicate's hidden space habitat Legba cortical stacks might be used as currency.
- HoL: The currency is grobules, which are grobling eggs. If you hoard them too long, the groblings will hatch and attack their former owner.
- Ironclaw: The Phelan tribes use cumalai, Domesticated Dinosaurs that are used like cattle, as a general measurement of value. For instance, an "exotic" slave from the kingdom of Calebria would cost two cumalai.
- Pathfinder: Demons often use larvae, the form adopted by evil souls sent to the Abyss, as a cross between livestock and currency, as they will both consume them and exchange them for goods and services in an extensive barter system.
Video Games
- Conker's Bad Fur Day, wads of bank notes are anthropomorphized. And foul-mouthed, too. At least they willingly let Conker grab them.
- Demon's Souls: Souls are the standard currency in the game and in its spiritual successor Dark Souls, since they are a source of great power.
- Darksiders: Vulgrim trades upgrades and items in exchange for souls.
- Fallen London: The official currency is the Echo, but there are a wide variety of items used for barter that can also be bought and sold at the Echo Bazaar, including many varieties of soul. The Boatman will also accept Lucky Weasels and Sulky Bats in exchange for bringing the player back to the world of the living. A less obvious example is the Deep Amber used by the Rubbery Men, which is "alive" in the sense that they use it to collect life essence for their flesh-transforming experiments. And while you're in Polythreme, a land where everything is alive, all currency counts as "living"; the local currency is known for being especially treacherous.
- RuneScape: The TzHaar forge the bodies of their dead into obsidian coins, which are holy to them. They abandon the practice when they learn the Awful Truth that this treatment leaves the dead aware and in torment.
- Star Control 2 has an alien race called the Druuge whose primary form of acceptable payment is...your own crew. And don't expect them to be well-treated, the gimmick of Druuge ships is that they can instantly recharge their slow batteries by tossing crewmembers into the furnace. You need to make at least one deal with them to complete the story too, and the game punishes you for doing so; if you do it once there will be a nasty rumor going around about you. Do it again, and the price of new crewmembers skyrockets, as no one wants to work for you now. Luckily, there are a few valuable artifacts scattered around the galaxy that the Druuge will accept as an alternate form of payment, so you can complete the campaign without ever selling out one of your crew.
- Star Fox Adventures has scarab beetles as currency, with shell color denoting different denominations. They're usually found hiding under boulders.
- Vangers: Beebs, harmless insects that spawn around wherever the player drives, are the setting's currency. They can be run over, which adds to the player's purse. Certain tasks require the player to gather a number of "fresh" beebs this way.
- In King of Dragon Pass, cows are considered the measure of wealth in Orlanthian society; the more cows your clan can breed and maintain, the more prosperous it is. Everything else, like your trade goods, is measured by its value in cows.
- The Poe ghosts in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom are re-imagined as this. They can be found all over the Depths in large groups, and certain Poes are worth 5 ("Big Poes") or 20 ("Grand Poes"). The Bargainer Statues have the job of sending them to the afterlife, and they exchange certain valuable items should Link offers Poes to them.
Web Animation
- There are literal examples in Object Shows which are made blatant with their self-explanatory names. This includes...
- Coiny from Battle for Dream Island, not to be confused with three different similarly named Coins from Action Arena, Open Source Objectsnote , and Village of Objects
- Nickel from Inanimate Insanity, Battle for Dream Island, and Object Madness
- Doubloon from Chaotic Ambition
- Arcade Token from Galactic Conquest
- Three different Dollars from Battle for Object Destination, Object Invasion and Object Lockdown
- Two different Pennies from Open Source Objectsnote and Object Madness
- And finally, Pound from Clash To Be Champion
Western Animation
- Mike, Lu & Og: In "Money", the people of Albonquetine use pigs and crabs as currency until Mike introduces them to paper money.
- The Simpsons: In one episode, Milhouse cries to Chief Wiggum that he can't go to juvenile hall because "they'll pass me around like currency!"
- Teen Titans Go!: In "Two Bumblebees and a Wasp", Beast Boy starts his own currency system by using live bees/wasps as money.
- SpongeBob SquarePants: Mr. Krabs trades his soul to The Flying Dutchman for the ability to talk to money. The talking currency appears as this, and they constantly tell Mr. Krabs to spend them. Something a penny pincher like him would do the least.
- King: In one episode, King Russel sees that the kingdom of Under uses a bartering system, and tries to introduce the kingdom to the concept of currency. After hearing about slang terms for money, his royal assistants Vernon and Loopy opt to make frog-like creatures known as "greenbacks" the kingdom's currency. After the villainous Bob Wire obtained the kingdom's greenback population in his casino, the kingdom abandoned currency and went back to bartering.