Over £100 million of counterfeit pound sterling notes were claimed to have been dumped in the lake after Operation Bernhard, which was never fully put into action.

In 1959, investigators recovered £700 million of counterfeit notes from the lake, which Hitler had planned on using to sabotage Britain's economy.

[2] The area is only accessible on foot, via a private mile-long track that serves the Fischerhütte (Fisherman's Hut) restaurant at the western end.

For Fröbe, this was a tongue-in-cheek reference to the 1959 German movie Der Schatz vom Toplitzsee, where he also played the main antagonist – the undercover ex-SS officer who (within the context of Goldfinger) had led both the placement of the Nazi hoard in the lake, and the post-war recovery operation.

In the 1981 TV series Private Schulz, Lake Toplitz serves as a location where 50 million forged British pounds are being dumped by the Nazis; the scene in question, however, was filmed at a reservoir in South Wales.