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Troperville

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Told from the criminal viewpoint, a group plans and executes a robbery. The criminals are usually more rounded than the opposition, or at least more colorful. Usually contains at least one A Team Montage or Avengers Assemble sequence. May feature an Eigen Plot. Alternatly called a "heist."

The Caper is more action-oriented than The Con. See also Impossible Mission, The Infiltration, Armed Blag, Train Job, and Double Caper.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• A lot of the filler arcs of Get Backers qualify as The Caper. Even though the titular characters only steal items to return then to their original owners, sometimes the definition of "original owner" can get really fuzzy (especially with Clayman).
• In an episode of Keroro Gunsou, Momoka, Natsumi, and Moa form the "Phantom Thief Troupe: More Peach Summer" to steal the painting "The Birth of Venus"... which turns out to be an embarassing portrait of Momoka as a baby, naked.

Film

• Topkapi, Rififi, and The League of Gentlemen — all were direct inspiration for Mission Impossible.
• The Bank Job
• Inside Man, in a roundabout fashion.
• The Italian Job - both the new one and the proper one from 1969.
• The Stanley Kubrick film The Killing.
• Ocean's Eleven (original, remake, and remake sequels).
• The Danish film-series Olsen-banden and its Swedish and Norwegian counterparts consists pretty much of nothing but this.
• The latest St. Trinians movie (and the older ones, too).
• Sneakers. Multiple times.
• Both versions of The Thomas Crown Affair.
• Used in both straight and subverted forms in The Usual Suspects.
• Vabank (''Hit the bank'' in USA), as a revenge.
• Sexy Beast, though the main character spends most of his energies trying to avoid participation in the caper.

Literature

• The Great Train Robbery by Michael Crichton.

Live Action TV

• Firefly: "The Train Job," "Ariel," and "Trash."
• The Knights of Prosperity, originally titled Let's Rob Mick Jagger.
• Leverage uses this trope as its main premise often mixing it with The Con.
• Mac Gyver episode "The Heist".
• Although Mission Impossible prided itself on its use of The Con, they weren't above pulling off an occasional Caper.
• The short-lived series Thieves.
• Hustle is normally about The Con, but sometimes the crew has to pull The Caper.
• The FX character drama Thief revolves around this trope, as does the NBC actioner, Heist.

Video Games

• The final quest for the Thieves Guild in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is called "The Ultimate Heist" — rightly so, because it sees you breaking into the Emperor's Palace and stealing one of the titular Elder Scrolls. The preparations for this mission comprise the three penultimate quests that you perform for the Grey Fox himself.
• Some of the subplots of Thief enter into this trope; Garrett sometimes goes through elaborate plans over multiple game levels to enter secure locations.
• Parodied in one Saints Row 2 mission where an elaborate plan is thought up for a heist, but the plan is scrapped in favor of just killing everyone.

Web Animation

• Strong Bad and The Cheat of Homestar Runner occasionally engage in capers. These ventures rarely turn out to be successful. On one notable occasion, Strong Bad gets mad at The Cheat for screwing up one of these capers but then later feels bad about it, which leads to him writing a song about how he's glad The Cheat is not dead.
  • Then there's the one where they somehow manage to set Homestar adrift in the Arctic Ocean, and can't for the life of them remember how they pulled off their "greatest caper ever". It apparently started with The Cheat peeing in Homestar's melonade...

Western Animation

• The Justice League Unlimited episode "Task Force X" featured a makeshift criminal team executing a daring theft from the League's orbital headquarters.

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