Tablecloth Yank

A white tablecloth. A beautiful placesetting (bonus points for a vase of fresh flowers). Our Hero takes one corner of the cloth, and with a single pull whips the tablecloth off the table without disturbing the placesetting.

The Tablecloth Yank trick is a good, showy way to demonstrate that a character is a stage magician. It demonstrates that the character knows physics — the dishes and glasses are held in place by inertia.

When this trick fails, sending china, silver and glass everywhere, it's even more showy.

Anime and Manga

 * A famous scene in the beginning of Black Butler.
 * Asuna does this in Mahou Sensei Negima.
 * In Revolutionary Girl Utena, when Anthy's dress disintegrates during a party due to a vicious prank, Utena whips a nearby tablecloth free (sending everything that was on the table flying in the process) and wraps it around her, making it into a new, toga-like dress to replace it.

Film
"Venkman: And the flowers are still standing!"
 * Ghostbusters had the comedy version. Venkman tries to whip a table cloth from under a set table and succeeds in sending every item on the table except the centerpiece crashing to the floor.


 * How the Grinch Stole Christmas: Done successfully by the Grinch when trying to retrieve a tablecloth... only for him to immediately run back to the table and knock everything over himself. The table included.

Literature

 * Death does this in Thief of Time, in which it's a Phlebotinum Analogy for what the History Monks do; the table is still laid, but the tablecloth can now be reused. Susan points out that the salt's fallen over and the tablecloth is stained, and Death replies, ""
 * Gleefully averted in Wolf In The Fold, in which Fisher snatches up a tablecloth to cover the naked body of a dead man. The toppling crash of place settings is described in all its destructive glory.

Live-Action TV

 * The MythBusters took on a viral video showing this trick being done on a banquet table, with a motorcycle.
 * Captain Awesome did this on Chuck.
 * Time Warp did both versions, showing you the secret to achieving both.
 * Benny Hill from The Benny Hill Show has done Tablecloth Yank quite a few times and has sometimes succeeded and sometimes failed. In one of the episodes, he also did an inversion of a classic Tablecloth Yank.

Music

 * The Literal Music Video of Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" makes fun of the trope. (In the original, they're just messing up the table on purpose.)

Video Games

 * One of the games in Wario Ware: Smooth Moves is exactly this.

Web Animation

 * In the animation Dad's Home, the titular Dad successfully pulls this near the end, for no particular reason and on a table that had no reason to be where it was. He also kicks the table over immediately afterwards.

Western Animation
"Tigger: Ha, ha, thought they were all gonna crash, didn't ya? [slams the door and the dishes all shatter]"
 * Bender in the Futurama episode "Bender Gets Made": This is a double subversion, in that Bender succeeds in performing this trick, but his success was really a failure, since he meant to single-subvert the trope by just pulling everything off the table.
 * In the Batman: The Animated Series episode "If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Rich?", Robin knocks a thug standing on a table off his feet by pulling out the tablecloth. "I love that trick, but I can never make it work."
 * In The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Tigger successfully pulls a cloth off Piglet's table without harming any of the dishes. Then he turns to leave the room: