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* ArtisticLicenseLaw: When Carl tracks Frank down to Montrichard. Carl warns Frank that the police will shoot him on sight of he attempts to leave. It's very unlikely that a Western nation would authorize a shoot on sight initiative as Frank is never considered by the authorities to be armed. More importantly, even if Frank is a criminal, shooting a foreign national would trigger a serious international incident.
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* RiseAndFallGangsterArc: A white collar crime example. Frank works his way up from petty forgery as a rookie to being a master check forger, which gives him an extravagant lifestyle complete with luxury cars and beautiful women. Things start falling apart as he realizes he can't simply "leave" his criminal lifestyle when he falls in love with Brenda, and that his father is backhandedly using his criminal activities to get back at the IRS. By the time Carl corners Frank in Montrichard, Frank is running out of money and is a frantic, paranoid nervous wreck who only avoids being shot due to Carl's intervention. By the scene shown in the beginning of the film he's a sick prison inmate about to be extradited back to America.
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* MarriedToTheJob: Carl is a divorcee who very rarely sees his daughter, and as a result throws himself into his work to the point of volunteering to work the Christmas shift. It's what makes him so effective at what he does.
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* WeddingSmashers: Carl and the FBI interrupt the engagement party between Frank and Brenda rather than the wedding, but close enough.
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* ArtisticLicenseHistory: Frank is imprisoned in Atlanta Federal Penitentiary after he's extradited to the US. The Federal Bureau of Prisons released a statement in 1982 that the real Frank Abagnale was never incarcerated at Atlanta, after he started claiming to have escaped from there.
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* TaughtByTelevision: Subverted. Frank watching medical and legal procedurals doesn't do anything to actually enhance his cover as a doctor and a lawyer respectively -- mostly because [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome there's much more to both careers than words]] and all Frank can do is parrot back what was said on the shows without context to the confusion of his "colleagues."
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* TaughtByTelevision: Subverted. Frank watching medical and legal procedurals doesn't do anything to actually enhance his cover as a doctor and a lawyer respectively -- mostly because [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome there's much more to both careers than words]] words and all Frank can do is parrot back what was said on the shows without context to the confusion of his "colleagues."
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* ItsForABook: More like It's For A School Newspaper Article. Frank pumps a Pan Am exec for info about how the airline industry works, using this tactic.
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* ItsForABook: More like It's For A School Newspaper Article. Frank pumps a Pan Am exec for info about how the airline industry works, using this tactic.by saying it's for a school newspaper article.
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* ArtisticLicenseHistory: Brenda's father tells Frank, now working for him as an assistant prosecutor, that they're having lunch with "Governor Davey" that day. Louisiana has never had a "Governor Davey" -- the governor of Louisiana during the events of the film would have been John [=McKeithen=].
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Changed line(s) 43 (click to see context) from:
* ArtisticLicenseHistory: Brenda's father tells Frank, now working for him as an assistant prosecutor, that they're having lunch with "Governor Davey" that day. Louisiana has never had a "Governor Davey" -- the governor of Louisiana during the events of the film would have been John McKeithen.
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* ArtisticLicenseHistory: Brenda's father tells Frank, now working for him as an assistant prosecutor, that they're having lunch with "Governor Davey" that day. Louisiana has never had a "Governor Davey" -- the governor of Louisiana during the events of the film would have been John McKeithen.[=McKeithen=].
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* ArtisticLicenseHistory: Brenda's father tells Frank, now working for him as an assistant prosecutor, that they're having lunch with "Governor Davey" that day. Louisiana has never had a "Governor Davey" -- the governor of Louisiana during the events of the film would have been John McKeithen.
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* TaughtByTelevision: Subverted. Frank watching medical and legal procedurals doesn't do anything to actually enhance his cover as a doctor and a lawyer respectively -- mostly because [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome there's much more to both careers than words]] and all Frank can do is parrot back what was said on the shows without context to the confusion of his "colleagues."
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* BreakTheCutie: Dear god, '''Brenda.''' The poor girl goes through absolute hell. Prior to the movie her parents paid for an abortion for her only to disown her, and when we're first introduced to Brenda she's being chewed out by her boss and is left in tears thinking she's going to be fired. Meeting Frank, to her a charming young doctor and lawyer, reunites her family as she falls in love with him and reconciles with her parents...and then she discovers during the engagement party that he's a teenaged con-artist and runaway who lied about everything. It's left ambiguous but it's also possible that she was coerced into helping the FBI set a trap for Frank at the airport. The fallout the whole ordeal has on her -- and whether she stays reconciled with her parents -- is also left unaddressed.
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* AbsurdlyElderlyMother: Frank was already a teenager by the time his mother divorced Frank Sr., married Jack Barnes and had a daughter with him. Nathalie Marie Andrée Baye was 54 at the time of release unless it was a case of PlayingGertrude. Even if she were younger it's not outside the realm of possibility but it's still a stretch.
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* AbsurdlyElderlyMother: Frank was already a teenager by the time his mother divorced Frank Sr., married Jack Barnes and had a daughter with him. Nathalie Marie Andrée Baye was 54 at the time of release unless it -- even if Frank's mother was a case of PlayingGertrude. Even if she were younger than that it's not outside the realm of possibility but it's still a stretch.
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* AbsurdlyElderlyMother: Frank was already a teenager by the time his mother divorced Frank Sr., married Jack Barnes and had a daughter with him. Nathalie Marie Andrée Baye was 54 at the time of release unless it was a case of PlayingGertrude. Even if she were younger it's not outside the realm of possibility but it's still a stretch.
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* PracticallyDifferentGenerations: Frank is at least ten years older than his half-sister, whom he briefly meets after discovering that his mother has remarried Jack Barnes.
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* NeverendingTerror: With Frank as the VillainProtagonist, this is how he sees Hanratty's and the FBI's pursuit of him. At various points Frank tries to bargain with Hanratty to let him retire, but as Hanratty explains, Frank broke the law, stole millions of dollars, and embarassed a lot of people--his crimes are simply too egregious to let him off the hook. Moreover, it's literally Hanratty's ''job'' to catch Frank, it's ''all'' he does, and no matter where Frank goes, he will always be looking over his shoulder until the government catches him.
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* NeverendingTerror: With Frank as the VillainProtagonist, this is how he sees Hanratty's [[HeroAntagonist Hanratty]]'s and the FBI's pursuit of him. At various points Frank tries to bargain with Hanratty to let him retire, but as Hanratty explains, Frank broke the law, stole millions of dollars, and embarassed a lot of people--his crimes are simply too egregious to let him off the hook. Moreover, it's literally Hanratty's ''job'' to catch Frank, it's ''all'' he does, and no matter where Frank goes, he will always be looking over his shoulder until the government catches him.
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* NeverendingTerror: With Frank as the VillainProtagonist, this is how he sees Hanratty's and the FBI's pursuit of him. At various points Frank tries to bargain with Hanratty to let him retire, but as Hanratty explains, Frank broke the law, stole millions of dollars, and embarassed a lot of people--his crimes are simply too egregious to let him off the hook. Moreover, it's literally Hanratty's ''job'' to catch Frank, it's ''all'' he does, and no matter where Frank goes, he will always be looking over his shoulder until the government catches him.
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* OlderThanTheyLook: In-universe. Multiple people comment on Frank looking young for his apparent age given that he has to pass himself off as various professions including a pilot, a doctor and a lawyer -- not knowing that he's actually a teenager. He manages to talk his way out of it each time, such as correcting someone commenting that he looks too young to be a pilot by clarifying that he's a ''copilot'' and that it's his first week on the job.
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* NervousWreck: Carl seems to have had fairly little field experience as experienced by his first encounter with Frank. He's visibly pressured and frantically screaming at the perfectly calm Frank to put his hands up, knocking over various things in the room. After Frank leaves Carl can only let out a tense sigh of relief. It's probably why Carl bought Frank's story about being a Secret Service agent.
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In the story, the cream churns to butter so he can escape.
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** When accepting an award, Frank Sr. tells the story of two mice who fell into a bucket of cream, one gave up and drowned while another kept swimming until the cream turned into cheese and was able to escape. The analogy is obvious but the context as applied to the characters is always left abstract, even as it is shared multiple times over the course of the film. The subtext here is that there isn't a point where Frank can just stop and everything will be okay.
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** When accepting an award, Frank Sr. tells the story of two mice who fell into a bucket of cream, one gave up and drowned while another kept swimming until the cream turned into cheese butter and was able to escape. The analogy is obvious but the context as applied to the characters is always left abstract, even as it is shared multiple times over the course of the film. The subtext here is that there isn't a point where Frank can just stop and everything will be okay.
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* ButtMonkey: A lot of jokes are made at Carl's expense. In his very first scene the FBI agents during the meeting to discuss the then-unknown Frank's check forgery are mostly laughing and brushing him off, and later Frank having a liaison with a high priced call girl at a hotel is contrasted with Carl getting his laundry ruined at a laundromat. Then of course there's Carl getting hoodwinked by Frank impersonating a Secret Service agent when Carl had him dead to rights, humiliating and embarrassing him in front of his colleagues.
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* NervesOfSteel: When Frank manages to bluff his way out of the confrontation with Carl by pretending to be a Secret Service agent. Frank's ability to keep his composure when confronted by an FBI agent pointing a gun at him with virtually no warning is nothing short of remarkable. Keep in mind, Frank was still a ''teenager.''
