Give Me Back My Wallet

Nice try, kid.

"That's not for you."

— Keeper Artemus to a young Garrett, Thief

Out of nowhere, a pickpocket runs up and steals something from a character. In a display of street smarts and alertness, the victim immediately apprehends the pickpocket, retrieves his belongings, and lets the pickpocket scurry off in shame. A variation has the pickpocket steal the wallet, and find it contains nothing but a snarky note.

Often done to show that the intended victim was perhaps once a pickpocket himself. Sometimes takes place in a Wretched Hive where almost everyone is a thief of some kind, on top of which, just maybe, There Are No Police.

Another possible scenario is when a thief or former thief is part of the regular cast, and the other character simply demands their wallet back at the appropriate moment — usually implying not that they caught the thief in action, but simply that they find the pickpocket predictable.

See also The Killer Becomes the Killed, Five-Finger Discount and Sticky Fingers. See Mugging the Monster for the supertrope.

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Examples:

Advertising

• The girl in this Levi’s commercial gets caught trying to steal a guy’s wallet, so he steals her skirt in return. She’s revealed to be wearing Pink Panties with a Teddy Bear on them, which he reacts to by giving her a flirtatious grin, which she surprisingly reciprocates, unlike a random girl who witnessed the whole thing and just reacts with an annoyed gesture.

Anime & Manga

• A variation in Gintama. Seita gets away with Gintoki's wallet-thing only to find out that not only is there no money in it, but Gintoki stole his wallet. Gintoki ends up spending Seita's money on parfaits while lecturing him about his sub-par skills.
• In Gunslinger Girl, Henrietta's purse is stolen by a guy on a motorcycle. In a display of her cyborg abilities, she chases him down on foot and attacks him with her bare hands until he returns it. Not bad for a young girl.
• At the beginning of Kill la Kill, Matarou tries to pickpocket Ryuuko's purse, only to find that she switched it with a half-eaten lemon without his noticing. So he and his gang try to mug her instead... which doesn't go well at all.
• In Rurouni Kenshin, this is how Kaoru and Kenshin first meet up with Yahiko. Ironically, it's Kenshin who gets pickpocketed and Kaoru who catches Yahiko. Kenshin offers him the money anyways.
• In Sherlock Hound, a young pickpocket steals Watson's wallet, and Holmes is savvy enough to pickpocket it right back without the original thief noticing.
• In Slayers Next, Martina snatches a jewel from Lina's shoulder pads. It was such a bad idea, Lina had to stop her teammates trying to pursue the thief. In Slayers Perfect, a thief ran away with Lina's purse, only to be embarrassed when it turns out to have an extra cord several paces long.
• Early in Zombie Powder, Elwood runs off with Gamma's wallet. Subverted, though, as Gamma keeps a decoy in his pocket, with a note inside that just says "Nice try!"
• In Black Lagoon, a kid snatches Rock's wallet without him breaking stride. Revy assumes he's just being his usual oblivious self, but it turns out that he knows and just figured that the kid needs the money. She goes to get it back and warn the kid against getting too cocky about who he steals from, but gives him a few bills for Rock's sake.

Comic Books

• In The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones #11, Indy's old 'friend' Torino hugs Indy in greeting and lifts his wallet. Indy's response is:
  "It's good seein'you, too, Tori. And it'd be even better—if you'd give me back my wallet!"
• Hunter's Hellcats: Before they depart on their first mission, Ben Hunter shakes hands with each of the Boxed Crooks under his command. Resident pickpocket Light fingers attempts to lift his wristwatch, but is grabbed by Hunter.
  Hunter: Losing your touch, Light Fingers? Anyone could feel you fumble for my ticker!
  Light Fingers: Just rusty, lieutenant! I'll begin practicin' again!
• Lil i Put: The opening storyline of the 4'th book is about Kieszonka pickpocketing the Grim Reaper and him trying to get his pouch back. The pouch is full of souls he's collected.
• In the Lucky Luke episode "Fingers", the eponymous magician keeps pickpocketing Luke's pistol, much to his annoyance. But in the end, he gets even by pickpocketing Fingers' wallet and offering it in exchange for his pistol.
• Happens in The Sandman (1989), with Dream retrieving his ruby instead of his wallet. The pickpocket, however, refuses to admit to stealing it until Dream sets his dreams as nightmares about his future execution.
• Usagi Yojimbo:
  • Usagi and Kitsune's much-alluded to first meeting. And not the last time she stole his purse by any means.
  • In a flashback, Kitsune reveals that this happened to her mentor; the samurai who caught her was not as forgiving as Usagi.
• X-Men: This is how Charles Xavier initially met Storm — then a pickpocket on the streets of Cairo — years before he recruited her to the X-Men. Turns out that trying to go unnoticed by a telepath has low odds of success.

Fan Works

• Personality Conflicts: Parker O'Neil is targeted by, and catches, a young canid pickpocket in Though the Heavens Fall.
• The Rigel Black Chronicles: It takes a bit of a chase, but Harry is able to catch the boy who stole her money pouch, levitate him with her magic, and get it back, advising him to "next time steal from someone who looks too fat to run after you." (She later learns that he took it to heart and became one of the Rogue's most successful pickpockets, to her mild chagrin.)

Films — Live-Action

• In 2 Fast 2 Furious, Roman steals a cigar cutter from Verone:
  Carter Verone: Hey, you! Your pockets aren't empty.
  Roman: [hands the cigar cutter back] Hey, man, I figured you had, like 12 or 13...
• At the end of 48 Hrs., Reggie Hammond tells Jack Cates that he intends to go straight after he's paroled, "But just in case I don't, what makes you think you can catch me?" Jack replies: "Can I have my lighter back?"
• In Angels with Dirty Faces, our gangster protagonist gets introduced to the Dead Ends kids when he notices one of them pickpocketing him. A former child thief himself, he knows exactly the hiding spot they'd used and confronts them while giving them some tips on how to be bad better.
• A variation in Bulletproof Monk. Kar picks someone's pocket, then the Monk picks Kar's pocket and pretends the original victim had dropped his wallet. The Monk implies he will continue to do so until Kar starts listening to him and taking him seriously.
• Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom has Indy explain that he more-or-less adopted Short Round after he caught the kid trying to pick his pocket. Prior to that, Shorty was living on the street because the Japanese bombings of Shanghai made him an orphan.
• A different take on this is in The Man Who Would be King. Peachy steals a pocket watch from Rudyard Kipling at a train station, only to realise he's a fellow Mason. He then boards the train and blames an Indian passenger for the loss of the watch so he can return it. Kipling points out that he noticed his watch was missing... back at the station.
• Maid to Order (1987): In the first scene with Charles, Jessie's long-suffering father, she slyly takes his wallet, but he catches her in the act and immediately grabs it back.
  Jessie: But, Dad, please! I'm zeroed out.
  Charles: I gave you $200.00.
  Jessie: Well, it's ancient history!
  Charles: I believe it was lunch time.
• Maverick. The title character does this the first time Annabelle Bransford lifts his wallet. The second time, he doesn't notice the theft at the time and has to track her down, after which she gives him back the wallet without having to be asked. At the end of the movie, after they've both earned a modicum of respect from the other, she steals his wallet again, and he calmly tells her to give it back. "Old habits die hard" indeed.
• In Mrs. Doubtfire, a guy tries to run off with the title character's purse as she's walking down the street. "She" grabs the dude and growls at him to back off.
• Ocean's Eleven:
  • Danny watches Linus pick someone's pocket on a train. Later, Linus discovers that Danny has picked his pocket and replaced the wallet with a note complimenting him and offering him a job.
  • Later Linus does Danny one better by lifting a plane ticket that Danny still has his hand on without him noticing.
• The Perfect Weapon (1991): Jeff is confronted by 4 muggers who want his wallet - after saying "You want it? Take it!" and throwing it to them, he dispatches all four of them effortlessly with his Kenpo skills, before casually picking up the wallet again and walking off.
• In the movie To Rob a Thief:
  • It's performed by the protagonist and the antagonist (a thief and a former thief respectively) at the same time, just to say that they're still the best thieves.
  • It's performed earlier in the movie when the protagonist steals the wallet of a smuggler, only to be caught by him and threatened with a gun just a minute later.

Literature

• In the first Artemis Fowl novel, someone tries to pickpocket Butler, and gets his fingers broken without so much as a wayward glance.
• In Mercedes Lackey's Children of the Night, Diana Tregarde doesn't have the energy to confront a pickpocket, since all he got was a decoy wallet filled with newspaper.
• Happens in Citizen of the Galaxy during a festival held by the Free Traders; protagonist Thorby lets the pickpocket go out of respect for the status the job had on the streets of the Wretched Hive Jubblepore, when he was a beggar with his adoptive father.
• In Jack Vance's The Demon Princes series, a mugger tries to waylay Howard Alan Treesong. The problem is, he's just waylaid the Lord of the Overmen - king of all criminals - who has licensed all criminal activity in the sector... and this mugger isn't one of them. Bad move.
• In the novelization of the Dick Tracy movie, the Kid bumps into Tracy, then backs away, apologizing. Presumably, he'd have gotten away with it had Tracy's "watch", which is actually a two-way radio, not been attached to him via a wire.
• Discworld novels:
  • In Night Watch, Vimes carries out a calm conversation with a young pickpocket (a certain C.W. St. J. Nobbs) and then at the end reels off a list of items that the pickpocket has lifted from him during that conversation. The kid is impressed.
  • In Thief of Time, when Lobsang Ludd an incarnation of Time steals a small shovel from Lu-Tze, Lu-Tze asks Lobsang to return the item. Lobsang puts the item back, and Lu-Tze is impressed, since he didn't see Lobsang move (Lu-Tze is so fast he can almost outrun lightning).
  • The Moist von Lipwig books have a Running Gag of Moist stealing Clerk Drumknott's pencil just to see if he can, and Vetinari always noticing. Even when Drumknott put the pencil in his pocket and didn't notice Moist had stolen it. They never ask for or take the pencil back, though; it's just to set up Moist's nature and (further) demonstrate how observant Vetinari is.
• Used as a gambit by Roland in the Dark Tower novel The Drawing of the Three. Roland plants Jack's wallet, then tells the police (who did not notice Roland planting the wallet) his wallet was taken by the shopkeeper. This gambit was all to purchase some bullets (which he cannot do without a background check).
• Happens near the beginning of the novella "Gulf". FBS (Federal Bureau of Security) agent Joe Briggs grabs the hand of a pickpocket as he's picking Joe's pocket. Subverted when the pickpocket turns out to be a secret agent who had already switched the wallet for a duplicate.
• Invoked Trope in Hannibal. Commendatore Pazzi suspects that Doctor Fell is Hannibal Lecter, but needs a fingerprint to confirm it. So he gets a pickpocket to steal from him, relying on the fact that Lecter will notice and grab his wrist which is covered by a shiny metal bracelet Pazzi has given him. It works, but Lecter doesn't just grab his arm but also stabs the pickpocket in the groin with a knife, and Pazzi lets him bleed to death so as not to blow his own cover.
• The Han Solo Trilogy: Han notices a local pickpocket approaching him, but has the boy so outclassed that he deliberately walks closer, swiping the boy's own wallet while the boy gets nothing from him in return. Han then accosts him and uses the wallet as leverage to get information.
• In Orson Scott Card's Hart's Hope, the main character manages to retrieve his money from the pickpocket by threatening to remove the pickpocket's testicles with his bare hands.
• The In Death series gives us Roarke, who returns to the slums he grew up in to find a young child of ten try and pick his pocket. His response? "I was better than you when I was six."
• A variation shows up in the Known Space story "Flatlander": Earth is so overcrowded that the government has thrown up its hands and legalized pickpocketing; in response, it's become customary to include return postage along with the owner's identification so the pickpocket can return the wallet after extracting the money.
• The Sleeping Beauty: During the course of a short walk, Siegfried grabs the wrists of two pickpockets as they're trying for his belt pouch. The first one is just a boy, so he scares the kid and lets him go. The second time, he can tell by feel that he grabbed an adult so he breaks the man's arm. The local pickpockets leave Siegfried alone for the rest of the novel.
• In Langston Hughes' short story "Thank You, Ma'am," a woman not only apprehends a teenaged purse-snatcher and gives him a Literal Ass-Kicking but drags him all the way back to her house, where she shares a meal with him and freely gives him the money he wanted as a gift.
• In the bodice-ripper Romance Novel Whisper To Me Of Love, a trio of brother and sister pickpockets are ordered by their employer to rob a group of wealthy gentlemen attending a sparring match. All goes well until sure enough, the final victim instantly realizes what's happening when the young woman stumbles and falls against him. When he grabs onto her wrist, she flirtatiously thanks him for keeping her from falling, then has an Oh, Crap! reaction when he demands that she return his watch.
• In Windwalker, Khelben Arunsun was shocked by his lady love's offhanded mention that she found her cute Gold Elf pupil in Skullport. Then it got better.
  Khelben: No! A gold elf, in that cesspool of a city? What the Nine bloody Hells was she doing there?
  Laeral: Surviving, and doing a damn good job of it. She lifted my purse. The thing was magically warded, and she still almost got away with it.
  Khelben: That convinced you to bring her to my tower as an apprentice?
  Laeral: Why not? Talent is talent. For that matter, Sharlarra isn't a gold elf. But we're getting sidetracked.

Live-Action TV

• Banjun Drama: The two leads' Meet Cute in "Something to Tell You" begins with this. The female lead, a pickpocket, tries to steal the wallet of yet another victim, but the man turns out to be a detective who quickly catches her and sends her to the police station. He lets her off with a warning after finding out she's an orphan, and she promptly (successfully) pickpockets him again. Their relationship goes from there.

• Played for comedy in Caroline in the City, with Richard accidentally mugging someone when he mistakenly thought that his own wallet had been stolen. It's a lot funnier (and more meaningful) in context: Richard had previously been mugged by a scrawny short guy whom Caroline managed to subdue and turn over to the police. After spending a while embarrassed by this, the aforementioned incident happens... with the "victim" being much taller and more muscular than Richard. After Richard is bailed out of jail, both Caroline and Richard take pride in this fact.
• Averted in CSI: NY, where the pickpocket brings Mac his wallet back, but Mac is still determined to see him punished for it. Especially when it later turns out he's connected to a larger crime.
• On Dexter, the title character's wallet is stolen by a juvenile delinquent named Jeremy whom Dexter was targeting because he was a killer. When Jeremy says that his victims had raped him in Juvie, causing Dexter to determine to let him live, Dexter passes off his ambush as taking back his wallet and lets Jeremy go.
• Doctor Who: In "Victory of the Daleks", Winston Churchill tries to pickpocket the Doctor's TARDIS key. The Doctor doesn't notice, but his companion Amy does and asks for the key back.
• The Dukes of Hazzard had a few instances of this between Boss Hogg and his nephew, Hughie.
• Firefly: In "Message", Mal apprehends a kid in the act of attempting to pick his pocket.
• A flashback on Highlander showed this is how Duncan and Amanda met in the 1600's.
• Leverage: Parker's mentor Archie asks her for his wallet back after they share an embrace.
  • Nate also catches her at this once.
  • Said to be how they met as well (Archie was already a master thief, but was impressed by Parker, noting that she had "the gift").
  • It's also how Parker recruited Archie for the big con in "The Last Dam Job" — by stealing not only Archie's wallet, but also his daughter's wallet and his granddaughter's lollipop.
  • And you also hear "Put it back, Parker" in a few episodes.
• Married... with Children:
  • Al has his wallet lifted regularly, by both kids AND his wife. Sometimes he catches them in the act, sometimes not (which apparently led to deportation in one instance).
  • In Season Five's "Dance Show", Peggy is taken with a handsome man at a dance club; while they are dancing, he notices her lift his wallet; seeming genuinely chagrined, she hands it back and apologizes, explaining "force of habit";
    • The next evening, he removes his wallet from his pants pocket and tucks it down one of his socks before approaching her.
  • In one episode, Al invites over a friend who Peggy despises because he stole her mother's cigarette lighter at their wedding. Al defends the guy, claiming that "he probably thought it was in the folds of a couch" (a Running Gag was how grotesquely fat Peggy's unseen mother was). As the man and his son are leaving:
    Peggy: Charlie?
    Charlie: Yes, enchantress?
    Peggy: [lifts hand to show her bare wrist] My watch.
• MacGyver (1985): Mac's first encounter with a Gypsy girl has him snap around just before she's out of arm reach and grab her hand. Mac takes his knife back and then points out what she did wrong before sending her on her way.
• Murder Rooms. Dr. Bell meets a photographer and his assistant, an irredeemable street thug who does the bump-into-and-steal-wallet trick on Bell. The photographer promptly knocks him down and forces him to return the wallet, whereupon Bell shows he'd already stolen the thug's cosh.
• Our Miss Brooks: In "The Burglar", Mr. Conklin wakes up from his nap discovering a burglar in the process of absconding with the basket of fried chicken his wife cooked for him.
• A subversion in Person of Interest happens when Reese needs to get hired as a bodyguard and he steals the wallets of the other bodyguards scheduled to be interviewed with him. None of them caught him, and he just starts pulling them out one by one while making it look like he had absentmindedly misplaced his own wallet and giving the wallets to their original owners in front of the employer.
• In a Christmas Episode of Psych, a little girl/con artist hugs Shawn and thanks him for saving her dad. Shawn immediately asks for his wallet back. Then her dad comes over to thank Shawn for saving him... and immediately tries to pull the same trick his daughter did.
• Stargate SG-1: In season 9 episode 3, Vala Mal Doran asks for a parting hug from Daniel Jackson — to steal back the valuable artifact he just confiscated from her. Daniel still sees it coming and pry it back.
• Star Trek: Voyager. Tom Paris mentions being pickpocketed in France, to Harry Kim's surprise. He explains that they just do it for tourists, and give the money back.
• Titans (2018). A variation when Rose is shown on CCTV leaning across a desk, and when she sits down again a letter opener has disappeared. Dick Grayson appears not to have noticed, but when saying goodbye later tells her she can keep the letter opener. She finds this Actually Pretty Funny.
• White Collar: Neal Caffrey has stolen Peter Burke's wallet more than once, and it's even used in a promotional spot for White Collar and Psych when Neal lifts Gus's wallet and Gus decides he doesn't want to hang out with Neal anymore.

Magazines

• A Dragon magazine article describing techniques for Dungeons & Dragons rogues was written from the perspective of a master thief who'd caught some kid new to the city trying to steal his purse, and decided to give him some advice.

Video Games

• Assassin's Creed
  • A variation can occur in Assassin's Creed II if your reflexes are good enough and you're paying attention. Pickpockets will show up on your radar. All you have to do is make sure you're facing away from them, draw a weapon, and kill them when they get close. Or you can chase them down after they steal from you, but it's a huge pain in the ass. These kinds of enemies show up in a lot of the games after this point.
  • Jacob and Evie can do this to young pickpockets in Assassin's Creed Syndicate. Adult thieves get tackled to the ground instead.
• Dragon Age:
  • Happens off-screen in Dragon Age: Origins: Daveth, one of the Grey Warden recruits who team up with you in the beginning, tells you that he got recruited when he picked Duncan's pocket; but the old Grey Warden chased him halfway across town, where he finally ran headfirst into a guard-detail, who were only too happy to finally have a chance to hang him. Duncan was so impressed with his agility and stamina that he conscripted the thief on the spot, saving him from the gallows.
  • In Dragon Age II, Varric introduces himself to the player by apprehending a kid who had picked your pocket.
• Pickpocketing is an optional skill in The Elder Scrolls, with this trope ensuing if your skill is not high enough to avoid detection.
• In Icewind Dale Hrothgar's chest can be unlocked at the very beginning of the game. The only reward is a note taunting the thief.
• Lego Batman 2: DC Superheroes starts off with the Joker robbing the attendants of an award ceremony at the Gotham Opera House, including Lex Luthor. This comes back as a Brick Joke when Luthor breaks the Joker out of Arkham afterwards.
  Joker: Oh! Hey, Lex. You come to get your watch back, or did the bus to Metropolis get lost and break down?
  Lex: First; I don't take the bus. And second; yes, give me back my watch.
• Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII; one sidequest features a young(ish) pickpocket, who'll snatch 100 gil from the player character. Said player character is Claire "Lightning" Farron: former sergeant of the Guardian Corps, former champion of the goddess Etro, currently savior for the god Bhunivelze. And the pickpocket is a named NPC. You get notified the moment he snatches your money, and you can have it back before Hope's ringtone is even over.
• Possible in Planescape: Torment, if your Dexterity is high enough. If the Nameless One is currently a thief himself, you can instead choose to bait the pickpocket into trying their luck a second time in order to observe their technique and improve your own pickpocketing skills.
• In The Sims Medieval, if a Spy has low success odds of pickpocketing, the person he's trying to pickpocket might turn around too soon and catch him. This leads to 1. the Spy not getting the money and 2. the Spy being sent to the stocks as soon as the constable is available to arrest him.
• Happens (naturally) in Thief. The whole mess starts when Street Urchin Garrett tries to pickpocket a Keeper. The Keeper, Artemus, catches him but is impressed, since most people fail to notice Keepers when they don't want to be noticed, let alone target and follow them. He then takes Garrett under his wing to train him as a Keeper which, as you can probably tell by the title, doesn't stick.
  • Happens again at the end of Deadly Shadows, this time with Garrett in the Keeper's spot.
• Played with in Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception. Here, the person whose wallet is being stolen is Victor Sullivan and the wallet thief is... Nathan Drake when he was 14 years old! This is how they first met.
  • The best part is Nate took the wallet, stole the key inside it, and handed the wallet back to Sully by giving just enough resistance to make his mark think that all he wanted was the wallet. Sully doesn't notice the key missing at all[[/note. That wallet thief is just that good.
  • Gets a Call-Back in Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, when Chloe Frazer is walking through the market with a young girl. The girl bumps into her to steal her Ganesha figurine, but Chloe sees right through it and asks for it back, commenting that she has decent technique.

Webcomics

• In Dragonball Elsewhere, a pickpocket attempts to steal Yamcha's wallet using super speed. Unfortunately, it's not quite super enough, and Yamcha notices, knocks him out, and takes his wallet back.
• In Errant Story, this happens twice in one comic between Anti-Hero Jon and single mom, kleptomaniac and "seamstress" Polly, mainly to show what a nice guy Jon really is.
• Zig-Zagged in Freefall: Sam Starfall picks the pocket of someone with whom he was "discussing business", goes to buy lunch with it, and realizes that his pocket was picked at the same time.
• GF Serendipity: In Fiddleford's Log, he says Stan became someone he could trust but not with his wallet. Page 2 ends with an unimpressed Fiddleford making a "give it back" move with his hand while Stan sheepishly returns the wallet. Word of God says Fiddleford "brings at least one decoy wallet" and "Stan usually takes it just to mess with him (most of the time...)." Word of God also says "Fiddleford's become nearly impossible to be robbed by anyone else".
• Guilded Age: Bandit is introduced to the comic this way when she nicks Syr'nj's wallet. This event also serves to unite the group (minus Best or Bandit) together for the first time.
• The Order of the Stick: Haley turns the tables by picking the pickpockets' pockets—and is either clever enough to write a very specific note for the decoy wallet in advance, or fast enough to write the note in the act. She's good enough to pilfer from across the fourth wall, so either is plausible.
  Haley: Seriously, Durkon, if you're going to get your pocket picked in every city we visit, could you at least try to attract higher-level thieves? 12 silver and some pieces of string is sort of a waste of my talents.
• Subverted in Something*Positive: Jason has a decoy wallet containing only a chain letter that urges the pickpocket to put it into other victims' pockets.

• In The War of Winds, Talon steals from Ravar and is caught, threatened, & picked up off the ground. He asked for it back, but Talon countered the Grapple and escapes via the rooftops. Talon, thinking he's escaped, finally finds a place to rest and was caught by Ravar, who retrieved what he had stolen from him.

Western Animation

• Carmen Sandiego has a slight variation. Carmen is talking to a teen girl who's an art thief being scouted by V.I.L.E. and trying to convince her that crime doesn't pay. As they're walking down the street, the girl steals a watch from a man on the street. He doesn't notice, but Carmen sees it, steals it back, and returns it. When the girl tries to smugly show off to Carmen, she realizes she's holding up nothing. Unfortunately, this display of Carmen's ability convinces the girl that she should get the same training.

• Subverted for a comedic B-plot in an episode of King of the Hill: While at a rather shady mall, a man bumps into Hank and walks off holding up a wallet. Hank grabs the guy and demands he hand it over; after the man runs off in terror, Peggy catches up and says she had Hank's wallet, which makes him realize he accidentally mugged the poor guy. Hank attempts to apologize and return the wallet, but that poor fellow had been a Cosmic Plaything up to that point, and what happened at the mall was the last straw for him, so when Hank shows up at his house the man pulls out a baseball bat and attacks.
• An Animated Adaptation of Oliver Twist has this trope as the introductory scene between Oliver and the Dodger. In a subversion, however, Oliver isn't actually trying to pick Dodger's pocket - he's trying to retrieve his pet frog, which has jumped into the pocket in question.
• In the pilot of Star Wars Rebels, Ezra steals Kanan's lightsaber when the ship jolts. Kanan knows he did, but decides to confront him about it later, in the hope that Ezra's curiosity about the lightsaber will make him more amiable to joining them. It works.

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