Basic Trope: A character accidentally commits theft.
- Straight: Bob leaves a store without realizing he forgot to pay for the pack of gum he picked up.
- Exaggerated: All theft is accidental, even forgetting to return a pen one uses while filling out a form, and everyone who does so views it as a serious crime.
- Downplayed: Bob accidentally steals one item in the process of intentionally stealing others.
- Justified:
- Bob has the item smuggled into his backpack by someone who is attempting to steal, making him indirectly responsible.
- Bob accidentally takes someone else’s item because it looks exactly like his.
- Subverted:
- Bob is later revealed to have intentionally stolen the item.
- The accidentally stolen item is then revealed to have been free all along, so it wasn’t technically theft in the first place.
- Double Subverted: But then it turns out that he’d accidentally stolen the wrong thing.
- Inverted: Bob accidentally returns something he stole.
- Zig-Zagged: Some of what Bob steals is intentional, some of it not.
- Lampshaded: “C’mon, you don’t think I stole that on purpose, do you?”
- Averted: All theft is intentional.
Return to Accidental Theft.
