Bank Robbery/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Basic Trope: Someone steals money from the bank.
  • Played Straight: Evil Elliott leads a bank heist.
  • Exaggerated: It's such an elaborate heist, you'd think he was trying to infiltrate the Pentagon or something!
  • Justified:
  • Inverted:
    • A bank teller steals money from Evil Elliott (either intentionally, or due to an error in bean-counting.)
    • Evil Elliott deposits money in his bank account.
  • Subverted:
    • Evil Elliott doesn't steal money from the bank...
    • Evil Elliott robs a sperm bank, blood bank, etc. instead of a normal bank.
    • Evil Elliott gets a job as an accountant or bank teller (or sends one of his Mooks to do so.)
    • Evil Elliott attempts a bank robbery, but is arrested before he can complete the bank heist.
  • Double Subverted:
    • But participates in shady business practices and/or such things as drug-dealing and pimping, making ungodly amounts of money from that, or he robs someplace else containing valuables (such as a museum).
    • But then sells the sperm/eggs/embryos/blood/whatever on the black market and makes money from that.
    • The bank robbery is an inside job.
  • Deconstructed: A bank robbery goes bad and ends in a hostage deal, several dead tellers and customers, and a stalemate with the cops.
  • Reconstructed: The Hero pulls Big Damn Heroes to end the stalemate.
  • Parodied:
  • Lampshaded:

Evil Elliot:"This is a robbery!"
Bank Teller:"Oh, not another one. Must be Monday."

  • Averted: Evil Elliott doesn't rob the bank
  • Enforced:
  • Invoked: The Five-Bad Band is getting low on funds.
  • Defied: Evil Elliott believes that robbing banks is kid stuff, and chooses another way to make an ill-gotten fortune.
  • Discussed:
  • Conversed:
  • Played For Laughs:
    • The bank is actually broke; when the Five-Bad Band goes into the vault, they find cobwebs and an I.O.U. before complaining to the tellers outside.
    • Bonus points if this is the result of another group of bad guys.
  • Played For Drama: Almost always is.