How Do You Know if a Shopkeeper Can Speak Thieves Cant

"I wasn't kidding when I said pay! Now, you'll pay the ultimate price!!"

In some games, the role player is expected to grab everything not bolted down. In other games, yous have the option of non paying for wares at a shop, but doing so makes a shopkeeper attack you or send powerful mooks against you. Often, the attacker will be an Invincible Modest Minion that you accept no choice but to outrun. Expert luck with that. Other times, they'll just exist brutally overpowered, to the point that they could probably tackle the dungeon themselves and conquer it without fifty-fifty breaking a sweat. Either way, you lot'll probably exist wondering why you're even immune to effort to shoplift, seeing as it near-inevitably results in y'all suffering Notwithstanding Another Stupid Death.

See likewise Badass Bystander, Super-Stoic Shopkeeper. Compare Ballistic Discount, Disproportionate Retribution, Can't Go Away with Nuthin', I Fought the Law and the Law Won, Video Game Cruelty Punishment and Scolded for Not Buying.

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Examples:

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Video Games:

    Action-Gamble

• The Fable of Zelda:
  • In The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, if you're quick enough to steal from the shop in Mabe Village, you become a lilliputian bulletin request yous if you're proud of yourself. Your save file is also renamed to "THIEF," causing everyone to call y'all that for the residue of the game. And the next time yous effort to enter the shop, the shopkeeper kills you with lightning for an instant Game Over. Mind, this is the best way to achieve 100% Completion, as the Bow costs an exorbitant 980 Rupees. If you're playing the DX version, this is the ONLY fashion to get 100% completion, as 1 of the pictures needed for the pic book side-quest is of Link shoplifting. However, in lodge to get the true ending, you lot can't dice one time. Considering that you lot're likely to have to enter the shop at least one time more if yous try and store lift at whatsoever point other then right near the end of the game, this means to go 100% completion AND the true catastrophe it's advised the role player waits until right near the end of the game before getting this shoplifting picture.
  • The Happy Mask Shop Keeper from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Fourth dimension is also an example. He always has a grin on his face up coupled with Optics Always Shut, only if you don't take enough Rupees to pay dorsum the mask you sold, he'll be extremely angry and the angry face lone can be Nightmare Fuel for some people. Luckily this is the only thing he will exercise if you are short on funds.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess:
    • At that place is a parrot who attacks Link if he doesn't pay for his wares in a tiny box. However, since it doesn't do much damage (and you can down a red potion before leaving the stall), the bird isn't very persuasive. And information technology certainly doesn't help that Link can underpay (to the melody of a single Rupee) and the bird will only respond to this by calling him a cheapskate, sans divebombing. Of course, if you desire, you can pay a little actress in the box (or pay anything without ownership), prompting the parrot to call Link a "generous young man".
• NieR: Automata: Steal from Emil twice, and he'll evidence you how he managed to survive for millennia in a get-kart. Painfully.

    Run a risk

• Shoplifting gets you shot in Leisure Suit Larry, Infinite Quest IV: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers, (in a humorous style) and Police Quest: Open Season (in a more than serious way).
  • In Space Quest Iv, trying to leave a software store without paying for an particular will have the shop'due south anti-shoplifting device fatally zap you. There'south a change machine in the same game that will also defend itself with lethal force if you attempt and force it open.
  • Perchance more comical than Space Quest or Leisure Suit Larry, in Open Season a Korean woman shoots you lot, an LAPD homicide detective, in the face up at point-bare range if y'all endeavour to go out her convenience shop without paying for an apple.
  • Stiffing the cabbie in Leisure Adjust Larry will non just have him killed by the cabbie's fists, merely his carcass run over past his cab. Evil doesn't even begin to describe this!
  • Police Quest: SWAT has an early mission where the squad is called out to a Korean 7-11, later robbers enter and gunshots are heard. The mission tin have the gunmen shooting the store owners or holding them earnest, or it can piece of work the other way around with the store owners waving guns about, requiring an interpreter.
• A variant of this occurs in the 1997 Blade Runner video game. If you pull out your weapon more once in Bullet Bob'due south store, he'll Ane-Hitting Kill your donkey.
• In Déjà Vu (1985), you may take i cab trip without paying the driver afterwards - attempt it again and he'll call the cops on you lot. Coupled with the murder rap you're trying to beat, it's ten to life for you. Taking a Ballistic Discount doesn't piece of work either - it turns out that there'due south impenetrable drinking glass between y'all and the cabbie, and he's even quicker about calling the cops on you if you examination it. Perhaps you should endeavor shoplifting from the gun shop owner instead...
• In the commencement episode of Sam and Max Salvage the World, Bosco'southward automatic security system beats anyone who tries to steal something from his store unconscious, including the player if they leave with the Cheese item in their inventory. Sadly this doesn't prevent the villain Whizzer from bringing boxloads of video tapes into the shop. This is solved by sneaking the cheese into Whizzer's basket, triggering the defence force when he goes out for more merchandise. It besides comes into play after, when Sam is brainwashed into doing Whizzer's job. He can grab the cheese on his way out to trigger the security system and cure his brainwashing.
• In the starting area of Heist: The Offense of the Century at that place's a jewellery store and a famous gemstone known as the Python's Eye (which you need to solve a puzzle elsewhere). Disabling the alert involves flipping the switch under the counter and replacing the real jewel with a fake. Spiral upward and your thieving career comes to an abrupt finish.

    Shell 'em Up

• In the Streets of Rage fan remake, Blaze, of all people, pulls this trope if you dare to try to steal an unlockable without paying. If your estimator clock is set between 6 AM and seven AM, Blaze volition be sleeping and you tin can attempt to steal one item. Regardless of if y'all manage to steal the item or non (its a coinflip), yous will exist banned admission to the store at least until you consummate the main game once. If yous practice manage to steal the item, Blaze will confiscate all the money you earn during the chief game and won't open shop again for you until the debt is fully paid.

    First-Person Shooter

• If you intermission a shop window in Fort Frolic in BioShock, the security system activates and sends auto-gun equipped helicopter robots to kill you. Since the usual things yous get from shop displays are inexpensive first-assistance kits and EVE hypos, there's usually no reason to risk it.
  • Unless you lot take the Natural Camouflage tonic, that is.
  • Or when you lot are so desperate you want to hack the said helicopter robots into your ain minions.
  • You don't even have to break it yourself; stray gunfire from enemies will set up them off as well, yet gunning for yous in detail. Note besides that glass can exist broken by electrical attacks, including the effects of the Static Belch tonic.
• If Booker in BioShock Infinite walks behind the counter in the Graveyard Shift bar, the bartender cocks a shotgun. If Booker takes something, or uses Possession on the vending machine (despite it probably not belonging to the bar's proprietor), almost everyone in the bar tries to kill him. The same happens when going backside the counter of the nutrient line in Shantytown to get an Infusion before the Vox Populi uprising, and taking annihilation from the "Employees Simply" room in Finkton Docks causes all the soldiers in the surface area to go hostile. Also, stealing from any of the greenbacks registers or breaking the glass case of the Vox Heater replica when commencement entering Soldier's Field causes the shopkeeper to assail forth with several law officers.
• In Postal 2, one of the starting time tasks is to get milk from the store. If yous take information technology and leave without paying, the owner volition come after y'all with a gun. Of course, this existence Postal, you can just shoot him. And of form, that'south assuming yous didn't already shoot him before even getting the milk. The game strongly implies that this is the preferred outcome: the objective is counted as complete as soon as you grab the milk without even hinting at actually paying for it. Plus, attempting to do so places yous in ridiculously long queue filled with people custom-designed to irritate the actor with their words and behaviour. That, and the shop owner is conspicuously a terrorist. Police force response, on the other mitt, is surprisingly measured. You can steal money from a bank vault, or even loot a police station, but if yous don't pull a gun yourself, cops volition not open fire on you. They will apply their batons on your back enthusiastically, though.
• Syphon Filter: The Omega Strain: In the Arms Boutique mission, taking anything from the chests in the market will accident your embrace.

    Platformer

• In Thing Thing Arena 2, if provoked the store keeper volition wail away at you with a minigun. It is, notwithstanding, possible to defeat him and he will drop limitless minigun ammo.
• In Abyss Odyssey, dying soldiers you encounter will sometimes mention they were killed by the Shopkeeper afterward trying to steal from him. And indeed, the Shopkeeper is more than a match for about low-level characters. The fact that he works every bit a shopkeeper in the Abyss should have been a clue.

    Point and Click

• Ane of the puzzles in the online flash game Johnny Rocketfingers Two is to figure out how to steal an item from a store without the shopkeeper blowing your head off. Fortunately, if yous don't guess right, he gives y'all the run a risk to return what you lot stole before killing yous, and just does so if you are an absolute idiot (i.due east. "Don't motility!" *do jumping jacks*).

    Roguelike

You'll probably notice that this folder's a bit bigger than the others. It's not clear whether information technology'south the relative lack of lasting touch on due to being contained within a single run, the smaller size of the game allowing for more options, or only developers finding it amusing to scout players get lit up for being greedy—this trope is a longstanding tradition of the Roguelike genre.

• NetHack'due south shopkeepers. They get indignant if the histrion tries to steal, trying to kill the actor themselves or sending the police - which happen to be the Keystone Kops - after the player. The shopkeepers will also charge you lot for damaged or eaten merchandise. They tend to be well armed (with the occasional Wand of Death); the Keystone Kops would be predictably ineffective merely for their overwhelming numbers. Information technology is most a certain expiry for any low leveled histrion who tries to steal from a shop without some kind of escape plan in mind, usually in the course of a scroll or a wand of teleportation. However, this trope can become inverted and shopkeepers can quickly become As well Dumb to Live if they sell a wand of wishing or a wand of death in their shop, since one zap from the latter will instantly kill the shopkeeper, who is non at all suspicious of y'all picking that thing upwards. In improver, they will only yell at you and charge a usage fee... while you're using up an entire wand of wishing to gain end-game level gear. And then y'all kill them in i hitting. In that location's a delightful variety of complications if you want to kill them anyway: they're killable but that counts as murder (which angers your god and incurs a luck punishment) for the non-chaotic (and fifty-fifty and so, chaotics still have a take chances of a luck penalty anyway), they can grab the graphic symbol's backpack if they attempt to tunnel through the floor while standing too close, they will prevent you from taking pickaxes into the shop, and will even catch a pickaxe if you endeavor to throw one in diagonally. characters with uncontrolled teleportitis should exist very conscientious indeed... On the other hand, a trained housepet can steal items and somehow avoid attracting any attending.
  • Whatever monster besides the player can steal from NetHack shops without penalty. Only a few 'greedy' monsters volition actually do so. Drop all your aureate in the shop (for store credit). Lead a greedy monster in (a dwarf will exercise), then back out. Kill them for your money, while keeping the store credit. Much more than reliable than pets.
  • The black marketeer 1 Eyed Sam who appears in NetHack variants such as Slash'EM and UnNetHack is even more aggressive about defending his stuff, and has several powerful baby-sit-critters patrolling his shop as well. He is equipped with gear rivaling that of belatedly-game players, and his weapon carries a chance of an instant kill. He also has nine various Demonic Spiders serving every bit guards, who also become hostile upon angering One Eyed Sam. In add-on, normal store stealing methods won't piece of work, since pets are forbidden in the store. You lot may be tempted to steal anyhow, since the Black Marketplace has so many good items that may be out of your price range... and god prevent you interruption anything.
• It's the same story in ADOM, except the cops summoned are generic thugs, and the shopkeeper himself is a tough enemy — and shopkeepers can throw gold pieces with bullet accuracy. Stealing from a store (unless your familiar does it) causes a driblet in alignment (shifting the player from lawful toward cluttered). The casino shop prevents you lot from teleporting out.
  • Shopkeepers in ADOM can besides get hostile just because you lot accept the unholy aura corruption ("Terminate scaring away the customers!") Past that time, it's fairly likely you can really kill a shopkeeper, which is no mean feat. (Unless you lot got corrupted early on on by unwisely playing with that powerful ancient scythe which just happened to exist lying around the dungeon ... then you're screwed.)
• In the Mystery Dungeon games, some very nasty dogs are sent later the thespian if they somehow get away with shoplifting.
  • In the Pokemon version, it's the Kecleon shopkeepers themselves that swarm the characters if you shoplift. Ironically, this is the merely way to recruit one to your team. Said Kecleon also accept a recruit rate of negative 33.nine%, thus to even take the tiniest gamble of recruiting them you need to be at to the lowest degree Level ninety if not 100, the level cap, due to the fact that the recruitment rates are highest at those levels, and be equipped with the Friend Bow. Even with the bonuses, the chance is 0.1%, as the highest bonus to recruit charge per unit yous can reach is 34%. In every game, the Kecleon are close to the level cap, and from Explorers onward, possess stats and then high that your Pokemon won't stand a chance even at the level cap if y'all haven't used tons of stat boosting items. In Gates To Infinity, they've wised up further and will spawn around the staircase, giving anyone who tries to escape with a Pure Seed a nasty surprise. Also you tin can't defeat them.
  • Zettai Hero Project has a similar case. Hell, the ''guard dogs'south'' descriptions are this.

    — Shoplifting must be punished by death.

  • Spiritual Successor The Guided Fate Paradox also spawns ridiculously powerful monsters to impale you if yous steal.
  • Chocobo'due south Dungeon ii has the Grim Freaking Reaper set on you. With multiple bodies. In higher levels, each body is stronger than the endboss, and respawns if "killed."
    • In Concluding Fantasy Fables, lifting a "super-rare" item volition crusade the shopkeep — *ahem* Dungeon Hero X to attack you lot. He moves twice a turn, knocks Chocobo into the far wall if he attacks, and has the "Mog Axle X", which ever does 777 harm. Y'all tin can try to escape the room instead to keep the detail, just if yous aren't quick, he freaking teleports on top of the stairs. However, this is the only way to get the Thief'south memories.
  • Shiren the Wanderer has a rather elaborate system to prevent shoplifting. First, upon picking up any item, the shopkeeper blocks the only go out until the player pays. If the player tries to attack the shopkeeper, he moves at double speed to eviscerate the player with powers rivaling the final boss. Finally, if the thespian manages to paralyse or otherwise subdue the shopkeeper, upon leaving the store the game will declare "Thief!" and then sic double-speed Guard Dogs and incredibly powerful Sheriffs on you until you somehow manage to exit the town or dungeon flooring. To add insult to injury, if you actually are able to kill any of these creatures, you gain neither feel nor items. Small wonder the stats screen has entries for both times you stole items and times yous successfully stole items.
  • In Torneko, if you get something and leave the room without paying, or attack the gargoyle shopkeeper, many other gargoyles will come up after you. And they're quick and kill you with a single accident.
  • Etrian Mystery Dungeon has Lizley, the shopkeeper, sic her Ruddy Lions on you lot and disables your ability to warp abroad. Each Cherry-red Lion is capable of dealing 100 points of fixed damage each turn.
  • Touhou Genso Wanderer has Mamiya and her tanuki mafia minding the shops in the dungeons. Try to rob them, and an unsuccessful escape will have DOROBOU! exist the final thing you hear before dying.
    • Also, pray y'all don't fight a Patchouli copy in a shop. Any items destroyed by their explosion will require you to pay the fee for them, with the to a higher place also happening if y'all don't.
    • And if a Shiki Eiki copy sees yous trying to shoplift, she'll smite y'all, and it'southward instadeath.
• In Dungeons of Dredmor, stealing an item from a store provokes the high-level shopkeeper to set on you and spawns mass armies of enforcer demons to kill yous. Unless you lot have admission to one of the game's many game breaking items, in which case you can subcontract the enforcer demons for infinite XP. Or unless you tin can impale every shopkeeper on the dungeon level simultaneously, in which instance no demons spawn and you can merely loot all the shops.
• Ragnarok (Roguelike) has ii kinds of shopkeepers. The kind of shopkeeper found in the village, sometimes in the dungeon and occasionally in other areas; these are difficult to defeat only normal characters tin can do it. Then there's the Boutique, an interdimensional trading mail service where y'all can discover nearly anything in the game (except for unique artifacts) if you're willing to pay for it. The boutique's six merchants are on par with godlings like the lords of Niflheim, and if you lot want to take something from the bazaar without paying, you take to impale all six of them. Most players will find it significantly easier to just beat the game normally.
• All versions of Spelunky characteristic some of the most fierce shopkeepers you'll find anywhere. Any set on (or even just throwing a bomb inside the shop), any vandalism (including things that aren't entirely your fault, similar a Burn down Frog exploding at the edge of their store), any pixel of their wares moved outside the shop, and every shopkeeper volition outset running you down like a maniac. They run at speeds the player can merely dream of, and come packing a shotgun ^note For the unenlightened, the shotgun in these games is basically a One-Hit Impale unless you've managed to accumulate a truly huge amount of health, and it stuns on top of that and then even and then it but gets downgraded to an inescapable stunlock. You can stun them by jumping on their head, which volition let you grab their shotgun, only even then the shopkeeper can throw you lot—which will allow them go their shotgun back and leave yous wide open to a face full of buckshot.
  • There's likewise the fact that in one case you piss off one, y'all'll become wanted; for the next few levels all shopkeepers will shoot on sight, and an extra one will be guarding the level leave. Killing just one shopkeeper will get out you wanted for the rest of the run. Existence wanted volition as well turn the Black Marketplace into a Savage Bonus Level featuring no less than 8 shopkeepers raring to go.
• Shoplifting in Enter the Gungeon tin't exist done at all without the use of certain items that allow you to do it undetected, and doing so will event in the role player being cursed. Firing your gun within the store, however, carries far more serious consequences: Exercise it in one case and Bello volition yell at you, exercise information technology again and he'll double the prices; practice it a 3rd time and he'll inundation the shop with nigh-undodgeable gunfire for several seconds. Once he calms down, he'll close shop then you lot tin't fifty-fifty boodle the place, and shops won't spawn for the rest of the run.
• If for some reason you determine to attack the jovial, singing merchant in Crypt Of The Necrodancer, he'll very quickly make y'all regret it. He does more damage than about bosses and tin move in any direction he wants on every single vanquish, making escape nearly impossible if yous have to take even i step in a direction that isn't directly abroad from him.
• The king of beasts shopkeeper of Feral Fury has a ton of HP and an set on rifle. Try to impale him and he will ruin yous. Still goes down like a pb zeppelin when shot with the Proton Cannon though. Averted with the Red Panda merchant, who is a I-Striking-Bespeak Wonder and can be summarily murdered for a blue bill of fare if you don't like what he has to trade. Both will never be seen again in the run if you do this.
• Attacking the Shopkeeper in 1 Step From Eden volition strength you to fight her, and she'southward much harder than all the other bosses in the game. Once you vanquish her, you lot can kill her for some random artifacts or spare her and she'll occasionally drop money at the start of a fight. She'southward also playable after yous defeat her and you need to kill her in order to unlock the True Genocide ending.
• In Hades, you might meet a pouch of obols in the dorsum of Charon'due south shop. You're given the option to "borrow" these obols, whereupon Charon will immediately notice and respond past "borrowing" your chance of a successful run. Much like all the other examples of this trope, Charon is one of the hardest bosses in the game and is on par with either of the Champions of Elysium stat-wise. After he kills you Zagreus is reminded that Charon is an aboriginal chthonic god, and it was stupid to steal from him. Defeating him allows Zagreus to keep his ill-gotten gains, at least until the next fourth dimension yous're forced to spend coin in his shop, and provides a small discount for the rest of the run.

    Role-Playing Games

• The Elder Scrolls:
  • Played directly in full general throughout the series. It is possible to steal from a shop without getting caught, though if you lot practice get caught, the shopkeeper will immediately attack y'all and any nearby guards volition move in to arrest you. It doesn't help that in most of the games in the series, the same push used for picking up items is also used to engage NPCs in dialogue. This makes accidentally shoplifting one of the nearly-worthless clutter items that happen to be lying around while attempting to speak with the shopkeeper a frequent outcome.
  • Morrowind:
    • Fifty-fifty if you aren't caught while stealing an item, merchants can recognize items as belonging to them if you endeavor to sell it back to them. That alone isn't unreasonable, simply the AI only remembers which blazon of item you stole, non the verbal item. Then if y'all steal one Iron Arrow from a merchant, so effort to sell him dorsum a different Fe Arrow, he'll think that you stole it from him. You'll become a bounty and he volition attack y'all on the spot. Therefore, it'due south best not to steal from merchants you regularly practice business concern with. This as well holds true for faction merchants. Steal some items from the Ald-Ruhn Mages Social club Hall and effort to sell them in the Balmora Mages Guild Hall? They'll recognize it equally theirs and assault. (And you'll exist kicked out of the faction if you belong as well.)
    • The "and Die" office of the trope is taken Up to Eleven in the Tribunal expansion. Due to being designed for loftier-level players, the merchants tin be level 30 and higher. They're hands capable of killing a low-level player very quickly if they attack.
  • Oblivion:
    • The added physics engine can atomic number 82 to this. It's piece of cake to accidentally knock something off a table while walking around the shop. In that location's a button which lets you lift an item and move it around, without placing information technology in your inventory. Naturally, this atomic number 82 to many players trying to put the displaced object dorsum where information technology belongs... but to be arrested for theft. It's meant to keep the player from moving the merchandise off the shelves to the entrance of the store and mashing the pick up item button so making a quick getaway. (And not even that works since you tin can easily merely dial/kick/knock items into night corners out of the shopkeeper's line-of-sight.)
    • The game averts the "and Die" part though, as most shopkeepers are unlikely to be able to kill all just the everyman-leveled players.
  • Skyrim:
    • Hearing the players' complaints almost the bug in previous games, shops and inns in Skyrim much more than rarely have items in positions where they can be accidentally "stolen" while trying to speak with the shopkeeper, downplaying the trope.
    • Averted in that you can just put a bucket over their heads and rob them blind.
    • Played straight in a different way in that even if you go away with stealing an item, the shopkeeper may still detect out that you lot stole it and transport either a gang of hired thugs or assassins afterward you. This can go taken to ridiculous levels in some cases. For instance, you lot can pickpocket a Forsworn Briarheart and take his briarheart - aka the thing sitting in identify of his heart keeping him alive. If you take it, he dies immediately, since you basically just ripped his heart out of his breast. That withal won't stop him from sending thugs after you to teach you lot a lesson, apparently from beyond the grave.
    • It'southward implied by shopkeepers that they volition kill you for trying to rob them by the fact that multiple shopkeepers will have a dagger backside their counter, even if they don't sell weapons.
    • Fortunately, if you do accidentally steal something...yous tin can easily merely bribe the guards (If y'all're in the Thieves Guild) or tell them that you're a Thane of the city (If you have completed a side-quest in the specific hold you're in) do either of these, and they just let you off, and they don't even have your loot! Even if yous can't apply those options, you tin can employ your Speechcraft to convince a guard that y'all simply aren't worth his time if your bounty is especially low.
• In Might and Magic VII a character with the Stealing Skill tin try to lift an item from a store (except a Magic Guild) without paying for it. Failing to do and then won't get y'all attacked, but even trying (whether you are successful or non) volition lower your reputation, and require you to pay a fine in the town where you shoplifted. (For some odd reason, a successful act of theft incurs a bigger fine than i where you fail and get caught.) The craziest role is, the fine you have to pay for shoplifting is in most cases more than than the one you have to pay for killing a peasant. (Meaning they consider stealing worse than murder.)
• In the Dink Smallwood comedic RPG, you could not only drink without paying, just menace the shopkeeper with decease. He then called two city guards. It was a good fashion to make money.
• In the game Fable, you can get abroad with diverse crimes if you're non seen, but if you're caught in the act yous'll be attacked past the guards. Once your guile level is loftier enough, you can try to steal items from shops. Getting defenseless sets the guards on you lot. This near counts every bit a Useless Useful Skill: by the time yous're leveled loftier enough, the stuff you can steal usually isn't worth the endeavor.
• In EarthBound, taking eggs and bananas from the Happy Happy Village'south food stand without paying causes the Unassuming Local Guy watching over it to attack. Yet, said Local Guy is weak and easy to defeat and doesn't attack again if yous beat him. In fact, the fight can be completely avoided if you only cull not to talk to him.

  "You won this confrontation. But the good side of you must ache with regret. Ha ha ha."

• In Quest for Glory I the Kleptomaniac Hero can easily steal potions from Healer with no immediate consequences. Very tempting, considering how poor he is at the first, and that she is the only easy target. However, when the hero leaves and comes dorsum, she calls him a thief and refuses to open the door. If this happens before she makes Damsel'southward potion, the chief quest cannot exist completed. Otherwise the game becomes much harder without a identify to sell components and buy potions cheaply.
• In Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide, an NPC has a device that allows you to recharge magic items. If you use the device and try to go out without paying for information technology, he turns y'all into a penguin. And magically seals the door then you can't go out.
• In Ultima IV, underpaying a blind shopkeeper is not penalized physically, only causing y'all to lose ranks in the important Honesty virtue. Clever players tin can pay 1 coin for a huge pile of expensive items, and then regain Honesty past purchasing cheap items at full toll.
  • In Ultima VIII, any sort of theft or other misdemeanor you lot committed in the city would atomic number 82 to you getting blown upwardly by the (well-nigh) invincible boondocks sorcerer. It is possible to shoplift, east.g. from the blacksmith, only only past waiting or sleeping out of sight of him until he locks upwardly and leaves on his regular walks downtown. Alternatively, yous could just chuck something into a container (due east.m. a big chest), then keep throwing the chest away until you're out of sight, where you can then safely loot the items from it.
  • Ultima Online featured teleporting insta-kill guards that executed you about half a second after a successful theft. No penalty for those who immediately looted all your belongings (including the stolen particular) from your dead torso though.
• In Pinball Quest, you tin can try to steal items from the Blackness Market Imps, but if you neglect, you'll lose one-half of your gold as punishment.
• In the Fallout series, getting caught stealing from a shopkeeper will ordinarily make said shopkeeper (or the bodyguards that some of them retain for that very purpose) offset shooting. And virtually of the time, if you shoot i person in town, the entire boondocks becomes hostile. Except for two guys in Fallout 2 - Tubby and Flick in Den and Eldridge in New Reno, who tin be killed with minimal consequences.
  • There'southward one example in Fallout 3, where you lot can shoot Smiling Jack, loot a key (and his unique gainsay shotgun), and open a prophylactic to get his entire store'south wares. But to be fair, he'due south in the middle of a raider stronghold called Evergreen Mills. There'southward a few other cases with the same possibility (salve for the unique weapon) in other places, most notably Tenpenny Tower.
  • Fallout 3 is a specially odd example. As normal they go ballistic if you touch their property, but they also give ominous warnings when you lot simply glance at the merchandise. Even taking a piece of trash from a trash can can set up them off.
  • One of the loading screen hints warns explicitly that in that location is no institutionalized justice in the Capital Wasteland. Not simply are at that place no courts or judges, there aren't even any jails. The threat of physical harm - until you run away or until you're expressionless - is literally the just manner all simply the largest mail service-war settlements can utilize to keep order, nevermind individual merchants.
  • Fallout: New Vegas has the Van Graffs of the Silver Rush, who not only have a number of well-armed guards wearing combat armor but make information technology a point to confiscate the weapons of customers to prevent them from trying a Ballistic Disbelieve. They don't take away your Stealth Boys, yet. And the game besides includes holdout weapons for this exact purpose so you can stay armed in areas that take away your weapons.
    • Fifty-fifty better, the Gun Runners have a impenetrable booth built effectually their Vendortron robot. Another shops otherwise allow the same case for annexation a key or picking a lock and stealing their wares. One case is particularly notable for non only letting you get a unique weapon (ii of them, in fact, if you bought it legitimately right earlier) just also being filled to the brim with weightless, worthless novelty toys that respawn fifty-fifty if you try to take them all to get rid of them for the poor shopkeeper.
  • Also in New Vegas, just hanging around in an owned firm also long may cause the owner to plow on you.
  • In i of the loading seen hints for New Vegas, it's noted that the NCR'due south military machine doesn't similar being in the office of "peace-keeper", then all crimes across the Mojave are typically punished by decease.
  • In Fallout four, certain items, such as those at KL-E-0's and Daisy'south shops in Goodneighbor, seem to be hard-coded to automatically aggro the owner and passersby if taken, no matter how stealthy the player is.
• In Wizardry 7 PCs tin can steal from traders, merely tin can be caught and then NPC gets angry (leaves or attacks with reinforcements). In Wizardry 8 traders tin can eventually effigy out where their stuff gone fifty-fifty if they fail to catch PCs immediately (obvious protection from The Mighty Wand of Save/Load).
  • "Smiley'due south Shop" in Wizardry: Tale of the Forsaken State. This time y'all get two chances to render the detail and if you take either of them cypher happens. Non to mention they actually warn y'all on the sign the security guards are very powerful. Ignore both warnings and you get attacked by a grouping of four enemies collectively much harder than fifty-fifty the final dominate and that you unremarkably fight one at a time, very rarely on the concluding level of the main game. Defeat them (which actually isn't as hard equally it sounds) and you get to keep the item (not really a big deal), get a lot of experience and gold... and the shop closes forever.
• Subverted in Temple of Elemental Evil while Rannos Davl and Gremag are listed as CR 20 (designed to employ 1/four of a 20th level (the cap in the unmodded game is 10) party's resource on their ain, merely Iuz, who y'all are not meant to, but can, beat is higher) in the games bestiary they are only a decent challenge for a group of commencement level characters, particularly if y'all bring Elmo.
• World of Warcraft,
  • Averted in the vast majority of the game, where almost vendors can't be attacked, almost things you can pick up in towns without talking to a vendor are free for the taking, and well-nigh enemies in the world don't intendance what you lot pick up on the ground about them. One place in the game that plays this trope direct, maybe the only identify, is in the Grim Guzzler bar in the city of Blackrock Depths, an instance. Players can freely walk into the bar from a golem-manufacturing area, but the backdoor of the bar cannot exist opened ordinarily or lockpicked. There are several means to open it, some of which fit this trope, including killing the bartender for the central (and he's definitely the toughest mob in the bar, and this volition make some of the other mobs in the bar ambitious and might bring in metropolis guards to "suspension upward the fight") and getting one particular dwarf drunk, who will then become rowdy and break open the door and/or bring in the city guards on his own.
  • The part of this that actually fits is a platter of mugs of dark iron ale, and another with a roast boar that can both be picked up will trigger the bartender to attack yous. And since he provides the booze, most of the bar will turn hostile and set on if y'all get too shut.
  • Not truly shoplifting, merely the innkeeper at The Filthy Animal (the tavern at the Horde district in Dalaran) threatens to feed the player to her hounds if he tries to start a fight. (You have to assume that's truthful, considering PVP isn't possible in Dalaran.)
  • An agreeable subversion comes in the Tian Monastery sub-arc of the Jade Wood. One quest requires you to gather reeds for a training exercise afterwards down the road. Y'all -can- get out into the wilderness to gather them, simply one of the local merchants has more than than plenty to complete that fetch quest. If you lot only beginning grabbing them from around him he acts with indignation, and threatens to stand up up with vague overtures of a threat... then admits he's too lazy to really do anything and praises your "skill" at stealing.
• Runescape tries to play this trope straight with the Thieving skill. If a NPC catches you picking their pocket, they volition smack you, if a baby-sit sees you steal from a market stall he volition assail you, and some chests and doors are armed with traps. Notwithstanding, said smacks and traps exercise little damage and the guards are too weak to pose a threat past low levels, and so it'due south non and so much Shoplift And Die as Shoplift And Be Briefly Annoyed.
• The old Apple Ii game Legacy Of The Ancients immune yous to steal from shopkeepers. If you did, though, you lot would go a few waves of city guards sent later you, and for a good portion of the game you were too weak to actually stand upwardly to them. Of course, when you became powerful enough...
• In Knights of the Old Commonwealth, the histrion can boodle virtually every room in an flat block, but one contains a bounty hunter who tells your player in no uncertain terms to leave. If you lot accept her stuff, she attacks and won't surrender until either she or everyone in your party die. She's a wanted criminal though, and you get money for killing her.
• In Divine Divinity, stealing from shopkeepers will lower their attitude towards yous, possibly making them turn down to merchandise with you lot in the future. (You can fix it past giving them free stuff.) If they go aroused enough, they will call the guards. You can get away with stealing, however, if you've already killed all the guards in the area or if y'all simply steal outside of the shopkeepers' line of sight.
• Played fairly realistically in Spiderweb Software's Geneforge series. While shopkeepers can't be stolen from, a lot of the loot lying effectually is locked upwards and protected. The results of stealing from NPCs will vary. If i is not caught (there is no NPC nearby to see), in that location'south no penalization. If one is caught stealing, reactions range from losing friendship points with a particular faction, to instant mob assail. Some faction alignment quests crave the actor graphic symbol stealing from, and thereby completely alienating, a rival faction.
  • This is an improvement over Spiderweb's earlier Exile/Avernum and Nethergate series, in which certain items were marked "not yours." You could safely pick them upward if there was nobody around, but if something like, say, an invisible guardian-type monster was in the same room and watched you do that, the entire boondocks would instantly learn a death wish for y'all (including the guards who volition of a sudden exist three times stronger than when fighting anyone else.)
  • Exile/Avernum iii had i particularly notable instance also—there was an NPC who had a series of 1-way teleporters you could employ for a fee, and one sidequest involved stealing a rare book from him. If you do, he'll act like yous got away scot-free... just the adjacent fourth dimension yous employ whatsoever teleporter it'll instead drop you lot in a cavern full of fire drakes, possibly on the other end of the continent from where yous wanted to go. (This tin be escaped from, however, and if y'all return he'll allow you lot employ the portals normally, since as far equally he's concerned yous've learned your lesson—and he also implies that if you do anything like that once again, he could send you to a far worse identify than that if he wanted. Thankfully, there's cypher else in that identify you need to get.)
• In Baldur's Gate, in that location are only two things to do with the shoplifting/pickpocketing skill: either get information technology up to maximum and savescum relentlessly, or simply never use it. This is because a failed theft or pickpocketing effort volition call down the wrath of every NPC inside quite a wide radius, leading to your reputation dropping like a cartoon anvil and huge pointless pitched battles in the Athkatla regime heart. In improver, stolen items can only be sold to very specific shopkeeps. (Don't inquire u.s. how they manage to discern a stolen generic longsword from the hundreds of thousands of others scattered around Amn.)
• While non taking identify in the game per se, OC Remix's "Satomi Tadashi remix from Persona showcases the shopkeeper ranting virtually teens invading his shop in an exaggerated Japanese accent.

    Wide-Open Sandbox

• Chiliad Theft Auto:
  • Been doing a footling gambling in a casino in Chiliad Theft Car: San Andreas, and you're a bit in the blood-red? No problem, they'll give you time to pay them back...most five minutes real fourth dimension. Afterwards that, the casino owner will transport a hit squad of iv guys with SMGs after yous. Fifty-fifty if you happen to be the casino owner...
    • And when you impale them, they drib a lot of coin. An interesting way to pay off your debt.
  • K Theft Auto: Vice City actually required you lot to agree up all of the stores in the game, (salvage for the Ammu-Nation stores) in guild to receive 100% Completion.
  • Holding up a convenience shop (particularly one y'all frequently hit) in Grand Theft Motorcar V will possibly and understandably terminate with the clerk pulling out a shotgun. This same response can too happen when yous shoplift a candy bar in Online.
• Saints Row:
  • Saints Row had the Outset Born Loans company. Go ahead, take out a loan. Only pay them back on time. If you didn't, they'd send ii guys in a car with a knife. And then two guys with pistols. So four with shotguns, etc. up to the helicopter with two assault burglarize gunners (which would not stop spawning until yous paid off the loan).
    • You lot tin also rob stores by aiming your gun reticle at the cashier, forcing them to pb you lot to the shop condom (or but give you everything in greenbacks annals). All the same, if you aim your gun away from them for likewise long, the store alarm will sound, immediately giving you 3 stars of law notoriety and no greenbacks.
  • Saints Row 2 no longer has the loans, but does bring dorsum shop robbery. Notwithstanding, now the alarm volition withal ring even later on you successfully rob the store and take the greenbacks. This makes robbing stores much less lucrative and not worth the hassle compared to the original- the only reason to carp doing so is to unlock the Homie gained by successfully robbing enough stores. Too, one time y'all buy and own a shop, yous can no longer rob it.
  • Saints Row: The Tertiary continues store robberies; it subverted this trope, however, due to the fact that you could now rob stores you own (giving y'all notoriety), only to walk exterior and reenter the shop (which removes all notoriety because y'all own information technology.) But really, yous're given so much money you'd never have to do this (other than just to be a dick, or for that i assassination where it's required to lure out the target).
  • In several games in the serial you can strip the histrion character nude and engage in a streaking minigame. Should the law run across you doing this, they will open up fire.
• In Style of the Samurai two, it is possible to run off with items earlier paying. They won't chase you or damage you direct, simply it does decrease your standing in the Karma Meter. You unremarkably accept two chances before the shopkeepers all over Amahara refuses to sell you anything. Yous and so have to piece of work for the townspeople to raise your continuing all over again. If y'all're specially unlucky, some random ronin volition spot you as trouble and volition try to take justice into his ain easily...
  • In the original Way of the Samurai however, there is just one shopkeeper in the game (the Blacksmith) who you tin can choose not to pay and will exist attacked by. What makes him different from most games though is you can impale him, but volition deprive yourself of a vendor for the rest of the game. You do become a unique weapon though.
  • The third game has a variation on this: While the shopkeepers themselves will not assail you, their bodyguards will. An exception is the Legendary Merchant who is armed himself. The difficulty of the battles depend on who are yous snitching from (both the Legendary Merchant and the guard for the Takatane Item Merchant are pretty bad; the rest of the bodyguards are quite decent), and the difficulty. Playing in Instant Impale Style pretty much guarantees you to want to pay, or go the first strike in.

Not-Video Game:

    Anime & Manga

• Inverted bizarrely in the Pokémon episode "Hither Comes the Squirtle Squad". When Ash arrives at the shop where he needs to buy a super potion, Team Rocket are holding the place upwards. Seconds afterwards they get out with the demanded items, he enters and asks for the potion, just to find multiple guns pointed at him. Guns that everyone completely failed to employ against Team Rocket, for some reason. They just relent when Officeholder Jenny arrives and tells them that he's not a Team Rocket member. Weirdly, this was retained in international versions, which are notoriously tough on firearms.

    Fan Works

• Gold Magic in The Keys Stand Alone: The Soft World has signs that read "TRY TO STEAL SOMETHING—WE DARE You" and "DEATH MAGIC IS THE EASIEST KIND OF MAGIC". The four protagonists, neither stupid nor crooks, don't exam this.

    Films

• Ray Charles in the get-go The Blues Brothers movie. Despite being blind, he just barely missed a shoplifter with his gun from across the room. The kid promptly left without trying that again.

    Literature

• Fighting Fantasy books tends to accept shopkeepers which are powerful wizards and sorcerers, and attempting to rob them is an epic Besides Dumb to Live option.
  • The Keen Sorcerer of Yore, Yaztromo, debuting in The Forest of Doom, runs a shop too, and have the abilities to transform his enemies into animals. More than 1 unfortunate idiot who tried robbing him ends up condign animals, with you lot becoming a toad should you really desire to attack him.
  • Trying to rob the three-optics Haag in Legend of Zagor, and he volition summon a genie to paralyze you on the spot. Forever. From the same book at that place is Elranel the Elven Thief, who proves to exist a powerful fighter if you tried stealing from him; and even if you win, turns out Elranel's sack of goodies have a teleport spell that makes it disappear, making the entire fight pointless. In both cases it's best to just pay and go.

    Web Original

• Acts of Gord features a few accounts of Gord chasing down shoplifters and throwing them into fences and and so forth.
• One of Cracked's 31 Life Lessons You Can Only Learn From Video Games is to avoid this past putting a basket on the shopkeeper's head. "Robbery is easier than you retrieve."

    Webcomics

• Kid Radd, taking place in a world of video game characters, easily angered invincible shopkeepers are used every bit human being shields/weapons.
• An Oglaf strip shows a familiar-looking green-hatted hero insisting that he's The Chosen One and needs an Infinity +1 Sword to relieve the earth, but an unmoved shopkeeper refuses to give it up.

  Shopkeeper: I'thou alarm you, walk out that door and get a Crossbow of Annihilation to the back of the caput.
  Chosen One: ...Y'all're bluffing.

    Western Animation

• In an episode of Drawn Together, Wooldoor steals a bag of candy from a store in the mall, prompting a security guard to threaten him into giving himself up by property a woman at gunpoint. The woman's scream of "Run! He's gonna kill me no affair you do!" turns out to be truthful.
• Those caught stealing from The Gash wear shop on American Dad! are sent to a Due south American sweatshop for the residual of their lives.
• The Simpsons:
  • The episode "Radio Bart" has a scene where Bart plays the arcade game Larry the Looter. Bart manages to interruption open the window and steal from the first store he comes across. Immediately after moving ahead 1 screen, he comes beyond the angry shopkeeper, who blows Larry's head off with a shotgun.
  • The running joke involving Apu getting robbed or shot is mundane to his job, only occasionally he stands upward to protect his establishment. Examples include when his shotgun-wielding nephew covers for him and threatens Dolph, Kearney, and Jimbo, and when Springfield falls into anarchy, to which he respondes by he standing on the roof of his store with a rifle shooting at potential shoplifters.

    Real Life

• Truth in Television set in many places. Even if in that location's no obvious security personnel, many shops have guns correct under the counter, making whatsoever would-be robber have a very bad mean solar day.
  • With the country's brutal drug cartels and occasional acts of domestic terrorism, some jewelry stores in Mexico employ security guards armed with submachine guns. Attempting shoplifting and/or robbery at these shops would undoubtedly be an constructive way to commit suicide.
  • PROTIP: Robbing the local gunstore, police office or Bad-Guy Bar is a bad idea.
  • A popular sign in stores with gun-owning shopkeepers reads "At that place is cipher in hither worth your life."
• During the Bloody Lawmaking in England, this was literally the case ^note See Shoplifting Act 1699, 11 William III, c.23 ..
  • ..or information technology could exist a one-way trip to New South Wales.
• Truth in Tv in this case, guy steals beer, shopkeeper shoots him in the head.
  • In other words, this trope is averted in Real Life (or at least, in America), as killing someone for shoplifting in a case where you lot aren't acting in self-defense is murder. That'south why a reasonable shopkeeper will only break out the gun if the thief brought a gun (or other deadly weapon, e.g. a knife or a club) first: showing the weapon in a threatening style means the thief has used or threatened deadly force, which entitles the shopkeeper to practise the same to the extent needed to protect his personal safety.
  • That said, the "Castle Doctrine Laws" does vary from jurisdiction. Some states crave the owner to first give observe to the fact that they are armed or at the very least, cannot shoot the robber in the back. Others are looser, with Stand Your Ground laws that let for the use of forcefulness if there is someone univited on your holding (though yous can't invite them, then rescind the invitation). In more pro-gun control areas, they might put further restrictions on the owner, such as making this only permissible if they cannot reasonably flee the robber. Regardless, nearly all states take a dimmer view if you fire warning shots, which can make it harder to prove self defense, and can be dangerous in and of themselves. It'south also uncommon for the thief to be unarmed for any number of reasons ("Clean Guns", or guns with no criminal history are hard to come by for criminals and the gun will either have to be dirty (used in some other crime... and if they arrest you lot y'all can be charged with that crime), stolen, or forged (very expensive), or they might be the Honest Cheat (or on parole and doesn't want to exist farther charged with weapons possesion) who doesn't desire to kill anyone, just not above proverb that they have a weapon).
• As a rule of thumb, attempting to rob a sporting appurtenances shop, an army surplus shop, a pawn store, or a gun shop is non a skillful idea, doubly so if it's well known that the owner/proprietor is ex-military machine. Attempting a Ballistic Disbelieve at a gun shop won't help you in existent life, since the gun yous become is unloaded, and in many cases not functional until the firing pin is installed, and the person you lot talk with volition usually know how to utilise a gun themselves. They'll also be watching you carefully, since they've heard the stories as well, and if you make a funny motion (such equally moving to load the gun), you might find yourself in deep problem.
• During the 1992 Los Angeles Riots, many shopkeepers decided to protect their livelihood, and none were more famous than the paradigm of Korean shopkeepers on their roofs with rifles and shotguns defending their neighborhood. Ethnic tensions between Koreans and African Americans were very poor before the riots began, and much of the violence was directed at Koreatown, which suffered greatly. Koreatown was considered a depression priority by the less than spectacular LAPD, who retreated to the wealthy and mostly white areas of the city. One shopkeeper even witnessed police officers fleeing from the audio of gunshots, leaving the shopkeepers and citizens to fend for themselves. So the shopkeepers and Korean volunteers took matters into their own easily and dedicated their shops with firearms and improvised weapons until the National Guard showed up to restore guild.
• A sign in front of the vendor area at an anime convention showed a screenshot of a Titan and the text "Shoplifters will exist EATEN".
• Sign at the Renaissance Festival. "Shoplifter Special. Steal 1 sword get free throwing pocketknife".
  • Photographic evidence of another sign of similar spirit at the LA canton coroner'southward part gift shop. ◊

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Source: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ShopliftAndDie

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