Basic Trope: A character cannot restrain themselves from stealing, or steals things for any number of reasons including boredom, to see if they can or for their own entertainment.
- Straight: Alice cannot help but steal Bob's lunch every day at work.
- Exaggerated: Alice sees the Eiffel Tower on TV. The next day she has one hell of a lawn ornament.
- Downplayed: Alice isn't above stealing someone else's pen or lunch if she forgets or loses her own, but doesn't do it just because.
- Justified:
- Alice suffers from kleptomania (or at least the Hollywood version of it).
- Alice gets addicted to the adrenaline rush she gets from stealing stuff and getting away with it.
- Alice grew up as a Street Urchin who became The Artful Dodger to survive, and her thieving is part habit, and part connection to her past.
- Inverted:
- Alice cannot bring herself to take anything without the owner's permission. She won't even begin eating a hotdog until she's paid for it and been given her change.
- People sometimes find their houses broken into with random things being left there.
- Subverted:
- Alice was stealing Bob's lunch to set him up with Claire, who shares her lunch with him.
- Alice has been stealing Bob's possessions to assemble a creepy Stalker Shrine.
- Double Subverted: Alice could just have easily told them both how they feel about each other. She just found this way more fun.
- Parodied: Any time anyone turns their back on Alice, they turn back to find something large and unmissable has simply vanished and she is busily Acting Unnatural.
- Zig Zagged: ???
- Averted: Alice is never shown to be tempted to steal anything.
- Enforced: Alice is the party's thief. Stealing is what she does.
- Lampshaded: "My lunch is missing, have you seen Alice?"
- Invoked: "If I make a habit of stealing, no one will be surprised when I do it and they won't mind as much when I'm caught."
- Exploited: Claire decided to share her lunch with Bob to get his attention after realising Alice would always manage to steal it.
- Defied: Alice, Bob and Claire live in a country with (quite literally) Draconian laws. Alice doesn't dare steal a thing.
- Discussed: "Why does she keep taking my lunch, Claire?" "No idea, Bob...urm...You can have some of mine if you like."
- Conversed: "Oh, there's Alice with a lunch bag, I wonder who's it is."
- Deconstructed:
- Alice gets a reputation for theft and people start paying close attention to their belongings when they're around.
- Alice gets arrested.
- Bob starts packing disgusting lunches, like Dog-Food-On-Pumpernickel sandwiches and a thermos of week-old coffee.
- Reconstructed: Alice loves that people are trying to hide stuff from her. It makes it a game!
- Plotted A Good Waste: Alice is just doing it as a prank. She has no mental illness or hidden agenda. She's just a jerkass.
- Played For Laughs: Bob resorts to increasingly comical methods to protect his lunch, while Claire starts packing meals for two.
- Played For Drama: Bob becomes angry and confronts Alice. Can she calm him down without ruining her plan to bring Bob and Claire together?
Well, there was a link back to Sticky Fingers here, but I have no idea what could have happened to it. Really!
