Estimated wealth: $65.4bn This one should come as no surprise, really, since the late, great Scrooge McDuck is best remembered for the image of him swimming in a pool filled with his immense personal fortune (in the form of gold coins). In fact, $65.4 billion is something of a low-ball estimate of his wealth, since some nerd on the internet once calculated that in order to fill a room that size the amount of coins, jewels etc would add up to roughly $27 TRILLION dollars. Which sounds like a made up number to us, although maybe not so much as the figure given in a Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck comic book that pegs his net worth as "five multiplujillion, nine impossibidillion, seven fantasticatrillion dollars and sixteen cents". We'll stick with the more conservative Forbes estimate, with conservative in considerable and vastly sardonic air quotes. Like his Dickensian namesake, Scrooge McDuck was a notorious skinflint, preferring to hoard money over spending it. Unlike Ebenezer, he amassed his fortune through finding buried treasure, owning the last living unicorn and, erm, going to foreign countries and enslaving the native peoples. Capitalism!
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
