The big news is Santa Claus being ousted due to not actually being a fictional character. Scrooge MccDuck saw huge gains over last year with his personal fortune bumping up over $2 billion, allowing him to leapfrog over Richie Rich and Lex Luthor to the number three spot behind Monty Burns and Daddy Warbucks. Lex, suprisingly, drops off the list all together after squandering his fortune in an attempt to off Superman in this past summer’s movie.

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.

Read Forbes’ complete article and lists here.

Movie/TV, Comics