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What do I WANT? I don't really know. Most of the time I ignore my quest and walk into the homes of others, riffling through people's shelves...
Tidus: You're just gonna TAKE that?
As much as the motto for the FPS is, " If it moves, shoot it," the motto for the Adventure Game and Role Playing Game is, "When it's dead, loot it." or "Take everything that isn't nailed down or too heavy * and anything that can be pried loose is not considered nailed down). " (The latter advice appeared in the general strategy section of Infocom's manuals.)
When gaming began, and pretty much every game was a Dungeon Crawl, this made sense. The hero was typically at least tangentially a treasure hunter, so looting ancient caverns was part of the job description.
When games started to move into different settings, though, the need to MacGyver up a solution to a puzzle from found items remained, and thus it stayed necessary to pick up everything you could find, especially since absolutely essential items might be Lost Forever unless you grabbed them while you still could. In populated environments, this makes the hero come off as a bit of a kleptomaniac.
Fortunately, hardly anyone ever notices. In fact, as you wander around the world, particularly in RPGs, you will repeatedly just waltz uninvited into every house in the town, smash the breakables and loot it right before the owner's eyes, and be told " There are many guards in the castle."
Any game where theft is the main object (e.g. the aptly named Thief series) or thieving is a major character option will make stealing many things quite challenging, naturally enough, and there will usually be quite a few red herrings in the way of worthless items, boobytraps, and so on. There will still probably be some sucker who leaves his door and chest unlocked, though.
Sometimes the logical picks up, and instead of finding loot you find underwear.
Constant theft leaves your character carrying a ludicrously unfeasible weight. Somehow, he can run, jump and fight whilst carrying five swords, an axe, three daggers, four staffs, two bows, two hundred arrows, a spare suit of armour, twenty scrolls, a dozen books, thirty potions, ten thousand gold coins and a vast assortment of miscellaneous crap.
Note that this trope refers to the player's behavior of having the irresistible urge to pick up anything that is not glued to the floor. A game might have consequences if the player is caught trying to steal an item, but if that same game allows for some other way for the player to get a hold of that item (sneaking, murdering the owner of the house, pick up everything and escape before the guards show up, etc) just so they can make fat loot to sell, then it is still subject of this trope.
A subtrope is Empty Room Psych.
For items you may obtain in this fashion, see Vendor Trash and Take This, It May Help You On Your Quest. Contrast Money For Nothing, Worthless Yellow Rocks.
If you can steal from shops, however, you may risk provoking Izchak's Wrath...
See also Sticky Fingers, Video Game Stealing.
Examples:
Videogames
- Averted in one instance in Chrono Trigger. At the beginning of the game, whilst wandering through the Millennial Fair, Crono comes upon a bagged lunch that seems to be one of the many steal-able things in typical Kleptomaniac Hero style. However, we find that this lunch belongs to an old man, who shows up as a character witness in a trial against Crono later in the game.
- Played straight in Chrono Cross. Though there is one instance where this behavior is Lamp Shaded by Karsh, who scolds the player if they try to loot the chest in his room while he's sitting right there.
- All the Final Fantasy games, although Final Fantasy VII acknowledges this with a gag wherein a homeowner becomes annoyed that Cid has just taken one of the potions in his cabinet. Final Fantasy VIII has a similar scene where an old man berates Squall for stealing his life savings.
- Also in Final Fantasy VII if you don't steal something from a little boy that is sleeping in his bed (you're going to hell for even thinking about it) he gives you something better the next day.
- They attempted to justify it in Final Fantasy VII : Crisis Core by saying that all those treasure chests contained Shinra Property, so as a SOLDIER, it is your job to take them back.
- Most works of Interactive Fiction, though a game as early as the wordplay-themed Nord and Bert Couldn't Make Head or Tail of It (from Infocom) subverted this in one section: Given a six-pack and a list of "pretenses" (such as "The world is flat" and "2+ 2=5") in a lawful town, the player must "TAKE BEER UNDER FALSE PRETENSES".
- In the game Trinity (also from Infocom) you actually have to steal a gnomon off a sundial in the middle of a crowded Kensington Gardens.
- In DDO, you not can steal from bookshelves, dead adventurers, mushrooms, cabinets, and the standard breakables. Y Ou get BONUS XP for breaking crates and barrels.
- In the early Ultima games, NPCs would attack or call the guards if you took things from their homes while they were in the same room; it was possible to sneak in after they'd gone to bed to burgle unnoticed. In the later games, the hero, having become the focal point of Britannian religion and being bound to uphold the principles of good moral character, will be chided and possibly abandoned by his own party if he attempts to steal, though in Ultima VII it is possible to do so unpunished through a flaw in the game engine.
- Don't be silly. In Ultima VII, Iolo was the thief
 .
- The guards summoned were easily the toughest enemies in the game, too. Which raises the question, why wasn't Lord British sending them off to save the world instead of you?
- By Ultima IX, kleptomania had essentially become the Avatar's ninth virtue. You could take anything in front of its owner and never suffer any consequences. At all. Ever. You could even sell a shopkeeper his own goods back to him after stealing it right in front of him.
- All of the Dragon Quest games.
- In The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind, getting caught stealing too much can result in a DEATH SENTENCE being issued against the player. Once this occurs, all guards will attack on sight.
- Morrowind completely follows the trope in another way however: it is possible, by wearing a piece of their Order's sacred armor and talking to one, to make the Ordinators (the guards in the city of Vivec) attack you on sight, regardless of your bounty. Ordinator gear is rather valuable, and since they're attacking you, you don't get in any trouble for either brutally murdering (in self defense) the guard force of a city or for looting the bodies postmortem.
- Morrowind also at least tries to make stealing a bit harder by making shopkeepers and some homeowners very alert. Steal something in their sight and they'll go berserk and attack you. But if you find or make telekinesis potions, it's possible to hide behind any object or wall and steal everything off a shop's shelves, and the shopkeeper won't mind as long as he doesn't see you - despite the items vanishing into thin air right in front of his eyes.
- It's also possible to steal pretty much everything of value from the Customs office where the game begins. Simply pause the game, pick up the item, then set it back down on the floor. The guard will reprimand you but, since you're not holding the item, he can't confiscate it. Pick it back up off the floor, and it's yours.
- The default play-style in Morrowind has been called the "Kleptomage." You steal things, you sell them, you get more spells, you train skills with your newly found source of infinite money, and you get more ways of stealing things. Rinse and repeat. The most fun I ever had with the game was in the Bloodmoon expansion, with a level 1 character managing to loot an extremely expensive sword from a trapped tomb by means of telekinesis. If you don't mind getting banned from the Mage's Guild and/or breaking the law, you can easily take a soul gem with a Winged Twilight in it and pawn it for 60,000 gold.
- If you join the guild in Balmora and do the Kajhit's first quest, then she will call Galbedeir down to the bottom floor, leaving the top floor and ALL THE SOUL GEMS AND EXPENSIVE ITEMS unguarded.
- The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion also contains a large number of items that can be stolen and sold for money. However, stolen items can only be sold to special "fence" NPCs (how a shopkeeper can suspect that an item is stolen when you got from a little shack in the middle of the forest at the other side of the world is another matter entirely), and if an NPC sees you stealing an item he will call the guards, who will try to arrest you. Additionally, the game world contains great amounts of "clutter" - items which may have theoretical value to the NPCs who own and use them but have no resale value, so that the protagonist cannot make money from looting them. This fact spawned several user-made modifications, which "corrected" this mistake.
- The game tries to make stealing in shops harder than in Morrowind by making shopkeepers walk around in order to keep you in sight at all times. Note the word used is walk - not run; the shopkeepers are all very slow, so the player can just time thefts carefully and the shopkeeper will be none the wiser.
- The items are also often kept in close proximity to the shopkeeper's main shelf, so that there's no way in which you can steal them without getting noticed. However, merely hitting said objects with an arrow will launch them away, so you can just get them somewhere the shopkeeper can't see, then quickly run there and steal everything before he can walk in visual range.
- The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall also had a few interesting takes on this trope. Most houses were locked, with doors that could be picked or bashed in (the former sometimes attracted guards, the latter always did). In both locked and unlocked buildings, one might find untended piles of random loot on the floor (which could be taken without consequence), and crates (which could be broken into, but would raise a "This is a crime, are you sure you want to?" prompt on attempting).
- Daggerfall also played with this trope in its shops, where "Steal" was an option next to "Buy". If the low success rate on such thefts isn't to your liking, it was also possible to break in after the shop closed, to clear off the shelves like any other inventory. Or, for no risk at all, it's possible to loiter inside a shop until after it closes and loot to your heart's content.
- Parodied in Phantasy Star IV, where searching cabinets in most houses caused the main character to remark "It's not nice to open cupboards in other people's houses without their permission!" or something similar.
- A similar remark would appear in Animal Crossing as one of the randomly generated lines you get upon opening a neighbor's drawers or cabinets.
- Lampshade Hanging: In Breath Of Fire 3, if Nina is in the party and Rei tries to search her room in the castle, she stops him demanding to know why he thinks he is allowed to do so. His response is, "You know I am a thief". (In fact, the main character has this excuse as well, since he was also raised by thieves.) This is especially notable as the game allows the characters to search every single shelf, bookshelf, wardrobe, cabinet, shipping crate and trunk in the entire game, often yielding small amounts of cash and early-game items.
- Breath Of Fire 4 subverts this; while you can still swipe things out of drawers, it causes you to lose "Game Points", which are vital for the main character's Dragon forms.
- Lampshaded in Golden Sun, where two actual thieves said that the townsfolk were asking for it because they'd left their doors wide open.
- Baldurs Gate. Some items were free for the taking, and others (marked in red) would cause the guards to be summoned if any NPC (this literally meant "any NPC" — a lone cat qualified as a witness) observed you taking them and you failed your thieving rolls. This was particularly annoying because there was little consistency to it; if you really wanted to take anything that could be taken, a lot of reloads were in order. (This editor learned to fear the City Watch of any town in Baldur's Gate as being the most deadly opponent in the game: If you took anything, even if one of your NPC allies, controlled by the game A.I., randomly opened a chest or cupboard in a stranger's house, the guards would appear out of nowhere and kill your group stonedead.)
- You could overcome this by knocking the entire household unconscious with unarmed attacks. You could then loot to your hearts content, and even come back later and the recovered inhabitants wouldn't show any signs of remembering you beating them unconscious and them waking up with all their valuables stolen- cranial trauma induced amnesia perhaps.
- In Baldur's Gate 2, the designers acknowledged this and restored the Kleptomaniac Hero to glory. Except when pickpocketing and stealing from shopkeepers, almost any item could be taken again with impunity by a good thief, even if the owner was around to see you pinch it.
- In Kingdom Hearts II, Goofy mentions "Adventuring Rule #8 - check every corner of a new place!"
- Games in the Exile series (and their remakes by Spiderweb Games, the Avernum series) allow you to pick up virtually everything, but some are more important than others and are labeled as "not yours". Taking these items hurts your reputation and can instantly make the town's guards hostile to you even if you're not seen. (The guards also have a special stat that instantly makes them three times more dangerous when they're hostile to YOU than when they're defending townsfolk from monsters!) Except in Avernum where the guards act as they should: if they don't see you taking the stuff isn't dangerous.
- Phoenix Wright, from the game series of the same name, will snatch up anything that looks like it might help him in his court cases (and a few things that seemingly don't). Apparently, this does not count as theft by the law system in their world. A lot of these things are even things that would be too big to fit in Phoenix's pockets. It's possible that a lot of these are just pictures of the evidence, but...
- This is parodied in the first game in case 3, when Phoenix grabs a copy of a map for Global Studios and Wendy Oldbag demands 50 cents for the map. Phoenix ignores her.
- Maya steals the map, but Nick still doesn't pay for it. Maya also steals a vital poster in the second game, and the keycard later in 1-3 - it's Lampshaded at that point: "Let's steal it!" "Borrow. You mean borrow." Ema also persuades Phoenix to steal evidence, except that stealing stuff while Ema's around is scientific.
- For the most part, it's pretty well established that Phoenix takes extensive photos of everything he can't pick up, since he typically asks the court to consider evidence from, literally, a different angle. The only other option is that the court brings that stuff in for the trial and then moves it back to where it was when court is adjourned. Even more than the rest of the games, that doesn't make sense.
- The evidence which needs to be literally turned on it's head is the stuff that he can take, generally. In case 1-2, for example, the receipt could easily be taken, and so could easily be flipped over when necessary. It's more likely that Detective Gumshoe took it to court, though.
- In the fourth game, case 4, you are still able to use the yellow envelope found in Kristoph's cell, even though he specifically asked you to leave it, and it's assumed that you do. However, you can still use it in court (thankfully, as it's a very vital piece of evidence) and when Kristoph lampshades it — saying that you can't possibly have it, the player discovers that Phoenix actually made a copy of it. It's also discovered that Phoenix has a video camera in the form of a badge on his hat, so maybe it's been a combination of photographs, video and copy-making the entire series.
- Based on a comment by Wright in game 3 case 2, this has gotten Phoenix some bad karma, seeing as how he is one of the series's Butt Monkeys.
- Godot shares this trait; he thinks the "safest place for crucial evidence" is his pocket.
- As does Edgeworth; his satchel is the safest place he knows. Godot is present when Edgeworth says this line chronologically prior to Godot's use, meaning that Godot probably stole the trope, and line, from Edgeworth.
- In case 2-4 Edgeworth manages to grab a life-sized stuffed bear. It doesn't disappear from the room, sure, but the game actually says, "Stuffed bear snatched up by Edgeworth", leading to the hilarious mental image of him wrestling it out the door while Phoenix just stands there and gapes.
- One begins to see why Maya calls Phoenix "Nick"...
- Subversion: In Kings Quest I, inside an impoverished couple's hut, there is a prominent lute on the other side of a tricky-to-navigate floor. If you cross the gaps and reach the lute successfully, attempting to take it yields the admonition "You cannot take their last possession!" This despite the manual explaining that you should take everything that's not nailed down.
- You can take the lute - after you give the couple a bowl that magically fills with soup and they offer it to you in gratitude.
- Subverted in the original Breath Of Fire, there was a chest in Auria that, when opened, caused the homeowner to call the cops on you. You could never take the contents.
- In a partial subversion, the game Questron required you to steal a Silver Trumpet and several keys from the King's Castle to advance, but the guards would hunt you down. However, if you left the castle with your ill-gotten gains and waited for a while, the King would actually reward you with increased rank for obtaining the Trumpet.
- In Deus Ex, while thieving (and tampering with peoples' computers, etc) wouldn't actually make friendlies go hostile, it would earn you a lot of dirty looks and irritated remarks.
- The only places in the game where this isn't true is Paris, where breaking into a house while the police or civilians are there to see you will invoke the wrath of the police and alert the MJ12 troops in the area. Using lockpicks in front of certain people, such as the MJ12 troops in Versalife during your first visit will cause them to attack you.
- Averted in its mod, The Nameless Mod; stealing in front of NPCs will cause them to sound alarms or attack you.
- Lampshaded in one instance. As you bust into a locked hotel room, Icarus contacts you and suggests you "observe your motivations for breaking the arbitrary laws of the current government".
- Subverted in the anime Mahoujin Guru Guru, where one character actually introduces another character to the idea of stealing herbs from homes, which backfires on the second character. This anime plays with other tropes, including a scene at the end where the characters defeat everything except the final boss, then leave without fighting him.
- It's not all that rare for a game to feature this trope prominently except for one homeowner who leaves his valuables unguarded — then comes home right after the hero leaves, and will get very cross if his stuff is missing. Generally, if you left the treasure alone, you'll get a reward worth more than whatever was in the box. See Super Mario RPG and Secret Of Evermore, for starters.
- A varation occurs in Cave Story, where you're required to steal an old man's gun very early on to be able to continue the game. Since you have to steal it, the being-nice reward is given when you return the gun near the end of the game, instead of trading it off for much more powerful weapons.
- Subverted in Dreamweb, where taking everything that wasn't nailed down would result in having an inventory full of useless objects.
- The old Monkey Island games literally force you to pick up everything you can find because it will become useful later, often as part of some complicated crazy scheme that requires using several items in concert... the challenge is figuring out how. Fortunately, our hero Guybrush has unlimited carrying space in his trouser pockets or under his jacket. There's even room for the live monkey and the 10' extensible banana plucker.
- Excuse me, in his pockets?
- Monkey Island 2 makes a subtle joke about this: one island has a wanted poster for your character listing a variety of thefts (and other misdemeanors) performed by Guybrush as the game progresses. A certain book in the library also contains the definition of a kleptomaniac, eliciting a "Hmm..." from Guybrush.
- At the end of the game a possible answer to a question is "I stole a bunch of stuff and caused two huge explosions."
- In Guybrush's case this is an actual rule, not simply something he does for problem-solving. According to Guybrush in the narrative walk-through of the third game, the Pirate Handbook officially states that "pirates by principle have to steal everything that isn't nailed down (and if you can find a way to remove the nails and steal it, do so)."
- At one point in the third game, you actually do get to remove the nails from something, but you can't steal it anyway. The nails themselves come in handy, though.
- In Tales Of Monkey Island this is lampshaded by Guybrush asking someone if he can take an empty bucket. She asks him what he's going to do with it, and he says he doesn't know. She asks him why he would want to take it, then, and his response is "Because it's there, I guess."
- In Bioshock, the player's character at one point can eat a candybar on a table next to a Little Sister, in Tenebaum's safehouse. The Little Sister says "That's mine!" in a quiet, indignant voice. If you eat the other candy bar on the table, she loudly says "Hey!"
- Also, you can loot just about any dead body (whether you kill it or it was room temperature) and their weapons, as well as any container, from crates, suitcases, handbags, cabinets, shelves, safes, cash registers... makes you wonder exactly what memories your character had "tattooed into his mind" when he was administered the mental programming plasmid.
- Heck, at one point in Haphaestus in the first game, Andrew Ryan will mock you for wandering around his city, breaking and looting.
- One particularly nasty treasure chest in the second half of the Sega CD RPG Vay, affectionately named the "Gold Vortex" by translators, will suck away all of the gold you've earned if you're foolish enough to open it. Naturally, it looks like all of the other chests in town, which usually hide good stuff. Guide Dang It!
- Subverted in Scarface: The World Is Yours, where carjacking is an effective way of drawing police attention.
- Partial subversion: In Knights of the Old Republic, there is one situation where, if you try to take the contents of a chest while the family is still there, they state that since you're better armed than they are, they can't stop you. Of course, this does garner you Dark Side points...
- Otherwise, your noble and virtuous Jedi can loot and steal with impunity.
- Not in KoTOR 1, where you can loot the Tarisian apartments without any consequences. The residents will still beg you to spare their families, though.
- Early on in the sequel, a guy gets angry at you when he finds you stealing his stuff, leaving you to either kill him or leave and apologise.
- Note however that even after the apology he doesn't ask for his stuff back.
- Another subversion in the original is in the Sand People settlement. If you open any of their wicker baskets to loot stuff, they attack you.
- Severely subverted in Magi Nation, where hero Tony Jones at one point expresses his dissatisfaction that "I go through all the trouble to break into strangers' houses, but there's never anything good inside! Inconsiderate strangers!"
- In Icewind Dale a high enough lockpick skill reveals a note in Hrothgar's chest. It's a note warning you that the town treats theft as Serious Business. Not that he minds you taking the few other things in his room.
- In Icewind Dale II it's quite hilariously lampshaded; in the final dungeon if you happen to be carrying around dead bodies (there are some that can be put in your inventory) you can intimidate a late game boss by showing them to him.
- You need, point of fact, a dead woman, a dead man, and a dead cat. The boss will (rightfully so) consider you to be utterly deranged and let you pass without incident. The cat is also used in an early conversation near the start of the game:
Anson: Eh, what the hells are ye carrying a dead cat around for, then? Player Character: I was kind of hoping it might be the solution to someone's problem and that I could learn something from the experience. I guess not this time. Anson: If I were you — thank the Gods I'm not — I'd get out of the cold before your brain freezes anymore than it has. When a fool goes to carrying a dead cat around, that's when you need to start asking yourself some serious questions.
- He's wrong about that last part, of course: you can take this subplot further and eventually get some XP for your cat carcass carrying.
- In addition, there's a short early side-quest that rewards you for stealing from an unconscious NPC. The catch? The item you steal is a note to your party, explaining that the NPC is a seer and predicted you would steal from them. They're not angry about it in the least, because they also happen to need your help.
- Exemplified in Blue Dragon, where you can go through entire towns and dungeons, looting the contents of every setpiece you find, as well as the occasional chest. Worse yet, there is an NPC who rewards you based on the amount of times you fail to find anything in setpieces.
- Why did I find 10 Gold in a cooked fish? Why is there 100 exp in a medical machine that doesn't work anymore? Why is it that in a game of magic, bat people, and shadow monsters, my suspension of disbelief is shattered by finding 2 Skill Points in a flower pot!?
- In the game Nox by Westwood (before it was eaten by EA), the character is generally able to destroy and loot anything that's possible to destroy or loot, even in friendly towns and cities. In fact, in one room, the character walks in and a woman says something to the effect of "What are you doing in my house?" But if the character opens a chest, he can take a few hundred gold, and she just stands there.
- Lampshade Hanging in one of the new Sam And Max games, Reality 2.0. Sam goes to steal some binoculars, on the grounds he needs them more than the owner. Max remarks that that's a pretty flimsy justification for stealing, and Sam agrees. After a pause, they decide to steal them anyway.
- This trope was lampshaded again in Bright Side of the Moon, where Harry Moleman at the moon's gift stand comments that "some people will steal anything that isn't bolted to the floor".
- Used for humorous effect in this Darths and Droids strip.
- In Legend Of Zelda: The Minish Cap, a Wind Tribe lady tells you she has so many Kinstones she wishes somebody would take some, explaining why you can go through her house, at least. Doesn't explain how you got away with all the theiving and vandalism you will have inevitably done already though...
- The Links in general are little kleptomaniacs, really.
- Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess does try to break Link's habit of taking anything that isn't nailed down and guarded by Hyrule's entire army. You can walk up to the stand selling apples and take one, but Link will say he sees better looking apples at another stand and put the one he has back. If you go to the other stand he'll say the other ones look better, so you'll never actually get an apple. Of course he still destroys every pot and loots every treasue chest he can get his hands on.
- Subverted in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. When you enter the house of a wealthy man on Windfall Island you are confronted with a row of beautiful expensive vases that even sparkle! However, if you smash one, not only do you not find an item hidden within, you are also chastised by the owner of the vases and warned to not break any more. If you do, not only do you not get any rupees, you are forced to pay a fee relative to the number of vases you destroyed.
- If you wreck all his jars and you have no money to pay, he'll be more upset that he has to pay to replace the vases with his own money.
- When it comes to Link, it's best if you just act like nothing happened...◊
- In Link's Awakening it is possible to steal from the shopkeeper near the starting location by making him look away and then run out. However the game immediatly reminds you that stealing is bad and you should feel guilty now. If you go into the shop again, the shopkeeper will kill you with a Death Ray - also, everyone in the village will call you thief from now on. On the other hand, his prices are insane so theft is almost the only option to buy Bow and Arrow, except for excessive money grinding.
- The very first puzzle in Phantom Hourglass requires you to break into and rob the treasure vault of the kindly old man who just took you in, thus gaining an item necessary for you to travel north and kill wildlife in order to reach the town to the east. Why? Because it's better than waiting for a Broken Bridge to be fixed. In fact, when you make it to the town, the bridge is already fixed. Nice going.
- The Pokemon video games practically require the main character to take whatever they can. Sometimes it has to be taken to move forwards in the plot. If there really is one.
- Almost never from someone's house, though. It's usually found in caves, dungeons, forests, etc. And sometimes in the bad guy's hideouts, but that doesn't count as stealing 'cuz they're Team Rocket!
- A quite odd example comes from the item leftovers. This incredibly rare item makes your pokemon recover a certain percentage of its hp every turn. How do you find it? By searching in a trash can.
- Subversion in the Mystery Dungeon games. Whilst yes, you can steal from Kecleon's shop inside dungeons (by picking up items then not paying for them), it is rather inadviseable, as Kecleon will fight back, and he happens to be stronger than any of the story mode bosses.
- Partially Subverted in the RPG Septerra Core, where taking items from peoples' houses isn't problematic, but if either of the two "thief" members of your party get caught stealing from stores, your prices there go up. Also, stealing from stores in a town, caught or not, increases the prices of all items sold by all stores in the town until you purchase enough items to placate the shopkeeps. This usually involves buying the still useful and ridiculously cheap Bread or Core Relics in huge quantities.
- Mortal Kombat Deception allows you to walk into people's huts, open their treasure chests, and abscond with the goodies. You can also beat up most townspeople with little repercussions. In fact, the only crime the game will ever punish you for is staying out past curfew in orderrealm.
- The "take everything that isn't nailed down" comment is parodied in the Homestar Runner text adventure game "Thy Dungeonman", in which there's a flask in a room which IS nailed down, and if you forcefully attempt to take it, the game tells you it was a load-bearing flask, and the dungeon collapses on you.
- Lampshaded in Anachronox, where the player's party can break into a room. Once inside, an NPC will assume that they are there to steal everything he owns, and tells them to go ahead and that he won't report them.
- In the Fallout series, the main character can search most bookshelves and drawers with impunity, but if you try to search certain containers while their owner is in view, they won't let you, and will even attack you if you try it repeatedly. Lampshaded in the second game, see the quote.
- It was even possible, but very difficult to steal from shopkeepers and sell them their own wares back repeatedly. In at least one case in the second game, the shopkeeper never seems to notice that you've sold him a unique, one of a kind gun repeatedly.
- In Fallout 3, stealing anything "owned" by another character will make you lose karma points (unless said owners are slavers, in which case you aren't punished), and if the owner catches you doing it, they'll take back what you stole. Do it enough and they'll attack you. Then their neighbors will also call you out for it. Shopkeepers also have their inventories stored in unpickable containers, the key to which can only be looted from their corpses, not pickpocketed (most of the time). If a computer terminal is owned, you'll lose karma each time you use it. Thankfully, balancining out the karma loss is easy enough.
- Of course, a lot of the time the player character is more [[BFG heavily armed]] than the people they're robbing, and it's a Crapsack World.
- In Shining of the Holy Ark, at the first village you can search one of the houses where you find 1 coin under a bed. If you talk to the NPC in the house they say that you shouldn't be taking stuff from peoples houses but seeing as you went to so much trouble getting that 1 coin you can keep it because you clearly need it more.
- Lampshaded in the PS2/Xbox "remake" of The Bard's Tale, right towards the beginning. After opening his first chest, the narrator will comment on how horrible it is that The Bard is stealing, and the two will engage in a brief argument over it. Helpfully, all of the "junk" that The Bard finds (wanted posters of himself, animal hides, etc) will be automatically converted into silver, since the game understands that most... okay, all players would just sell those items at the store for money.
- Mass Effect does this in a bigger way than most: once you look inside a container, it is literally impossible to exit the container interface without looting everything inside. Curious players that look inside other people's things are forced to steal everything! Naturally, no one ever cares, but given the roleplay-centric emphasis of the game, it's rather surprising to run into such an immersion-breaker.
- People also never seem to mind if you hack their computers or FIRE YOUR GUNS WILDLY IN THE AIR. Granted, Spectres aren't held responsible by the law, but still, you'd expect some citizens to have a reaction to you stealing their stuff, or get scared of the mad man firing guns randomly into crowded areas (sadly you can't shoot anybody that isn't a hostile).
- It gets very, very odd in the sequel, which has streamlined the loot system to involve only credits, medigel, metals, and research plans. Lootable safes, PD As, and computers containing credits are everywhere, and the game mechanic that rewards taking the time to hack them open continues to be at odds with immersion. In one of the first planets, you enter a quarantine zone with a lot of empty apartments. Most players loot everything in sight. At one point you can even convince some refugees that you are here to rescue them, then hack their safe while they watch silently. Then you come across some other looters, who you can chastise for being despicable looters. You then proceed to a medical clinic set up for the plague victims. A background character comments on the despicable looters and their despicableness. You can then proceed to swipe valueable metals and medigel from the clinic, all without anyone batting an eyelid. A lampshade hanging is all but expected but never occurs. Perhaps the writers meant to keep this bit of Hypocritical Humor deliciously subtle.
- It gets parodied later on though, when you run into Conrad Verner.
Shepard: So...you just wander the galaxy, righting wrongs?
Conrad: Hey, don't say it like that! I talk to people, y'know? Ask them if they have big problems that only I can solve. You'd be surprised how many people are just waiting for someone to talk to them. (looks around) Sometimes I poke through crates. You know, for extra credits.
- And sometimes it's just strange, period. One mission involves exploring ancient ruins of a long-abandoned Quarian colony. In one room you find an "ancient wall safe"—which has, yes, credits in it.
- On a related note, Mass Effect 2 research activities require mining planets and collecting the metals necessary to buy the upgrades, which you do by scanning planets and firing off probes—regardless of whether the worlds are colonized or who actually owns the mining rights.
- Parodied in Earthbound, where the heroes can get items out of... well, trashcans. Yes, even food items. The game also lets you steal from a self-service food cart, but not without a fight.
- Also lampshaded in Earthbound. Cookies are healing items; a character sitting in a room full of gift-wrapped boxes informs you that he made cookies for everybody. Take the cookies from the boxes and he asks, reasonably enough, "How could you?"
- Even more lampshaded inside the Dungeon Man, where one sign states that the more obvious the treasure, the less likely it'll be of worth.
- The Mother 2 manga mocks gamers who walk around pressing A in front of everything on this page◊. (The third panel shows Ness trying to "Check" the drawer, with the text "No problem here" on the bottom, imitating the game's verbage.)
- Mother 3 goes as far as placing presents out in the open that... fart. If you're lucky they might play some new music or launch some fireworks.
- Lampshaded in the first Discworld CD ROM game. Rincewind needs to help himself to virtually everything that can be moved in every location he visits as most of them will prove useful later on. If you speak to Nobby the City Watchman at the gate during Act I, he mentions there's been a few strange thefts around town recently.
- Kyle Hyde in Hotel Dusk Room 215 certainly takes some things he shouldn't with him (like a crowbar from a toolbox that isn't his). Other times he might just look at stuff. There is a point in the game where carrying stuff that doesn't belong to you will result in a Game Over screen.
- Averted in Planescape: Torment. NPCs will be confused and offended when you casually walk into their house with your armored entourage, and will attack you if they see you swiping their stuff. Some of them even put traps on their various containers to prevent. Seems a bit paranoid, though the apparent lack of door locks to their houses might explain it.
- The Quest For Glory series averts this one. If you pick someone's pocket and fail the skill check, a nice little popup appears stating that you "Go Directly to Jail, while you're in jail the bad guy wins." and you need to reload. Thus it pays to level your pick pocketing on target dummies rather than people.
- King Graham's famous saying: "Take anything that isn't nailed down." The Companion Guide attributes this saying to his father.
- This applies to just about all of Sierra's adventure games, however.
- The game Sacred follows this trope - you can open any container in any area with no consequences. Add in the fact that the contents value increases as your level does and can be further boosted by certain abilities and items that increase your chance of finding more valuable loot you can end up with a barrel inside a peasant's hovel containing hundreds or thousands of gold pieces or a valuable magic item worth thousands. When you factor in quest rewards can include magic items as well, finding a farmer's sheep can result in being given XP, 2000 gold pieces and a magic sword as a common result - never mind the ludicrous nature of that.
- The Gothic series certainly allows The Hero to act on his thieving tendencies, but the owner of the house will hear the rummaging and come running in (no matter how far away he or she initially was) and attack if you refuse to stand down. The fact that every NPC in the vicinity - including those you have to avoid killing - chips in is an extra deterrent.
- Subverted in the Tabletop RPG Unknown Armies (not surprising, considering the game's deconstructive tendencies). The corebook notes quite pointedly that any criminal act the P Cs commit can have legal reprecussions. There is the magick school of Kleptomancy, but it also subverts this trope by charging up only via thefts that are noticable (so no taking stuff left in the attic for years) and are done only for the sake of stealing. Kleptomancy also averts the 'heroic' part of the trope as well, seeing as it's practiced mostly by twisted, pathetic individuals with bizarre ethics that don't particularly condemn rape and murder.
- Lampshaded in Eternal Sonata, after attemping to take from yet another barrel Polka says:
Polka: I wonder why it's so hard to resist looking inside these barrels?
- Lampshaded in Trail of Anguish (www.rinkworks.com/adventure):
"I hope I don't look funny carrying around all these items," you say.
He squints for a few seconds before he sees them. Then he replies, "Nah, it's okay. Everyone's on an adventure of some sort, after all." You nod, only now noticing that he's somehow concealing a bicycle, a bungee cord, and a horse in his pocket. Looks exciting.
- In Fable, you'll be arrested if you pick up an item belonging to someone else. Since shopkeepers display their items on counters, accidentally picking one up instead of interacting with the owner happens annoyingly often. You'll have to go into stealth mode to try and satisfy your kleptomania.
- Getting the shopkeepers drunk helps with the shoplifting process.
- In Final Fantasy IX, you are able to take a hidden stash of money from a shop very early in the game - which, upon finding it, will tell you you're the new owner of "Granny's savings", amounting to a measly 6 gil. Nobody minds you stealing from old ladies, and you're never punished. Not even by Granny herself, who is standing right next to you at the time...
- In Divine Divinity, you can take anything that isn't nailed down, and a few things that are, but more often then not the owner of the house or tavern (alive or otherwise) will refuse to help you, beat you up and take back what you stole (sometimes with the rest of your money), and occasionally will keep attacking you until one of you is dead.
- In Secret Of Evermore, a woman in the first village you reach says you should take everything from the gourds and pots in all the huts, since you'll probably end up helping them in the long run.
- There is exactly one chest in the entire game you are not supposed to loot. If you wait, the owner will later thank you for it and give you an item superior to what you would have gotten if you looted it right away. Unfortunately, this is the only time this happens and there is no clue that you should not take from the chest, making it a case of Guide Dang It.
- Appears more or less constantly in Neverwinter Nights; occasionally they have characters who will tell you you can take whatever you want, but just as often someone will be sitting there talking quite amiably with the man/elf/gnome/whatever who just klepto'd everything he owned that could fit handily in a Bag of Holding.
- In the expansion Hordes of the Underdark, stealing items in certain areas results in an alignment shift towards Chaotic, which depending on your class choices can range from harmless to absolutely devastating. (For example, you can only level in paladin and monk classes if you are lawful.)
- In the sequel you can pick pocket very good items from various characters who show no concern if they catch you.
- In Jade Empire you can loot all you like, though on at least one occasion an NPC will call you out on stealing his stuff while he was away. You can choose whether you want to return the money to him or not.
- Lampshaded in Lost Odyssey: Innkeepers kindly inform you that everything in their inn is complimentary and you're welcome to take anything you find, despite the fact that you can pull down hundreds of gold, which is several times what it costs to stay there. One wonders how they stay in business.
- Similarly, in one cozy family home that you stomp into, the mother of the household tells you to keep anything you find stuck in the pots or bookshelves, because her kids like to stash "weird stuff" around. In this context, "weird stuff" means piles of gold coins and useful potions.
- Lina Inverse of The Slayers did this often. Although she said it didn't belong to the bandits she stole from in the first place, later she mentions feeling an itch to attack bandits and steal the loot.
- Marisa Kirisame is a
thief collector who steals borrows without returning pretty much anything she feels like, particularly Patchouli's books; her thought process is illustrated here. She has been noted as saying she will return all the things she's borrowed when she dies, and as she's a normal human living amongst long-living youkai this is at least partially reasonable... or would be, if she weren't trying to develop an elixir of immortality.
- Marisa also has a habit of finding things of incredible value; in the clutter of her home, Rinnosuke finds, of all things, the legendary Kusanagi no Tsurugi.
- Perhaps the best example of this is in Embodiment of Scarlet Devil: Reimu goes to investigate the source of the mist because it's disrupting regular activities in Gensokyo, while Marisa investigates it because she concludes that a being powerful enough to create such a thing will also have lots of good stuff to steal.
- This was also Marisa's primary motivation in the PC-98 Lotus Land Story.
- Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann shows that Kleptomania is not only acceptable for the heroes, but a viable battle tactic when you enemies are the only ones who can build Humongous Mecha.
- The Bard from The Bards Tale insists that he is not this trope, but that he takes items for safekeeping against others of this trope. The narrator doesn't buy it.
- In Okami you can set off bombs in people's houses to get food or coins from the ensuing wreckage. Since this game evolved from The Legend Of Zelda, it's expected.
- The first Simon The Sorcerer game had tons of items you'd accumulate, most of which were used maybe once, and then stayed in your inventory instead of being lost. There are two times in the game where you (thankfully) lose your possessions though, and the assorted crap forms a HUGE pile.
- In the old Deja Vu games, you could literally pick up everything that wasn't nailed down too hard. Books? Check. Flowerpot with dead flower? Sure. Board nailed over a window? Just yank it loose and stick it in your coat, it might come in handy. Since there were quite a few items you actually needed to win, but you don't know which ones the first time, you tended to pick up literally everything, just in case.
- Tales Of Vesperia hangs a lampshade on this a few times. Firstly, in one of the hotel rooms in Capua Nor, you can inspect a drawer and receive the following caption: "You found 500 Gald! ...Let's put it back..." Of course, the fact that there are several knights in the room watching you may explain this restraint.
- Then, in Dahngrest, you can inspect the toilet in one of the prison cells. Your character responds "Found an Apple Gel in the toilet. No way am I picking that up!"
- Games based on Agatha Christie novels play with this, though you don't have to pick up everything, are not allowed to go through people's luggage when they are present, and when you do, you mostly find clothing — and some item, such as a postcard or book, which has some significance. Interestingly enough, in the first one And Then There Were None, the player character also demonstrated the psychic ability to know which objects he would need later, and which would "draw unnecessary attention to [his] snooping."
- Parodied in this webcomic about Velvet Assassin, where you gain XP by swiping random junk owned by Nazis, where her "Crowning Achievement" was stealing Himmler's left boot.
- There's a house in RuneScape inhabited by an old man who will scold PCs for breaking and entering, then kick them out before they get the chance to do any looting.
- The again, there's a thieving SKILL, but it doesn't help in that case, and for example, trying to steal from a stall while the owner of said stall is right in front of you will only result in him screaming for guards, and you have to wait before you can sell what you stole. It's a great skill to have in general, though.
- Borderlands has chests/safes/boxes/lockers you can open and loot the ammo/gun(s)/money stored inside. Given the influences from Diablo and Fallout, this isn't surprising (although you can't loot stores (except for any of the aforementioned containers that happen to be inside stores), as the stores are vending machines). Then there's the ammo in the refrigerators, mailboxes, washing machines...and toilets (giving a new meaning to the term "ammo dump"!)...
- Lampshaded by the New Haven resident standing outside the gun shop, who complains that his gun is missing, and notes, "Seems like a lot of things have gone missing lately. Makes you wonder."
- Lampshaded in Robopon. A townsman actually says: "You can even go into someone's house without permission and take things! Here we have a law called what's mine is yours! I really don't have an opinion on the law, but it's strange!"
- Both played straight and averted in Mystery Case Files: Dire Grove. You need to break into several buildings as you search for the missing students. However, at one point you crack open a safe containing a key (which you need) and a stack of cash. Clicking on the cash will cause the game to scold you.
- Double Subversion in The Godfather game. At first, stealing cars, whether parked or those you as Aldo have forced the driver out of, raises your Heat with the cops. However, the level four upgrade for Street Smarts allows you to take parked cars without Heat. Taking cars that you force the drivers out of still increases your Heat, though.
- Lampshaded in Murder on the Orient Express (the game), when a steward on the train remarks that lots of things have mysteriously gone missing. The Player Character, whose inventory is filled with everything from handkerchiefs to a large bowl of orange juice, responds by suggesting that "maybe someone had a good reason for taking it?"
- The Lufia games have always had the protagonist able to check people's property, such as pots and drawers, for items. Ruins of Lore takes it to a new level however by having the protagonist take three bags of 10 gold from bushes he cut down. Why is this notable? Because the three bags were in a graveyard for three people.
- In Assassin's Creed 2, Ezio can empty the pockets of an entire crowd by just walking through them. However, this will increase the Notoriety Meter, which will cause guards to be more vigilant.
- Played absolutely straight in The Witcher where the first thing you usually do upon entering a house is hold ALT to highlight any interactable objects and then run around stealing the owner's food, clothes, valuables and books before talking to them.
- In Spongebob Squarepants battle for bikini bottom and the movie, you can randomly destroy items like chairs, and tables for absolutly no reason at all. Actually destroying some stuff actually REWARDS you with socks or golden spatulas the Mcguffins of the games. One weird example is by smashing a tv while Mermaid Man was watching it. It grants you a sock. Its like some random dude comes into your room and smashes your tv while you were watching it, and a sock appears. He grabs it destroys a couple of other stuff then runs away. Yeah, Id be scared too.
- During a funeral in Cosmic Fantasy 2, you can walk up to the coffin and take the heirloom sword meant to be buried with the guy. While his family is standing right there. They don't notice.
- Total aversion in Below The Root. Unless it is on a public walkway, you need to find the owner and ask nicely. You also had limits on what you could carry, dictated by the character's strength stat. Pomma couldn't carry much at all.
- In Dragon Age, it's more prevalent if you're a rogue, but there are still plenty of chests and dead bodies to loot. It's mostly played straight, but you're occasionally called on it. If you fail a pickpocketing save you may be confronted by the authorities, and the mad hermit in the forest will attack if you try to steal from him. And if you steal in Haven the town turns hostile. But that will happen no matter what, so it's only a semi-subversion, really.
- Resident Evil is literally built around this trope. In this series, a key has the exact same potential for unlocking a new area as, say, a bag of fertilizer.
- Played with in Zork Grand Inquisitor, where one of the puzzles involves getting your hands on a six-pack of canned mead, which is protected by the burglar alarm at a store. To get the mead, you have to turn up the volume on a nearby propaganda-spouting speaker until it drowns out the burglar alarm.
Live Action
- This college humor skit.
Web Comics
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