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* In ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'', LCL has the density of water if someone is blowing bubbles in it, but has the density of air if someone is crying in it. The ways of the {{spoiler|blood of an [[Eldritch Abomination]]}} are mysterious indeed.
* Since we [[It Makes Sense in Context|talked about density]] and [[Serious Business|not only the portrayal of gold]], ''[[Gundam]]'' is a ''chaotic'' offender.
** ''[[Mobile Suit Gundam 00]]'' had it slightly realistic as the one made from average metal weighed up to 134 tons and [[Mighty Glacier|a walking brick]] to boot, these that are far lighter (around 60-70 tons) are stated to be made from E-carbon, a super strong material that used in the construction of Space Elevator (theoretically, [[Truth in Television]]) and yet, they're [[Noodle People|slender]], [[Fragile Speedster|far from invincible and prefer to dodge instead]].
** In ''[[Gundam Seed]]'' and ''[[Gundam Seed Destiny]]'', [[The Kingdom]] (Orb) has their [[Mecha
** Original ''[[Mobile Suit Gundam]]'', by the advancement of technology, Mobile Weapons constantly decreased in gross weight (and to a lesser extent, size) while retaining same or more firepower yet much faster than the original.
** ''[[Gundam Wing]]'' is the WORST offender in that case, while the titular Gundams are made from...well, [[Unobtainium|Gundanium Alloy]], that would be a [[Hand Wave]] for them having 7-8 ton. Meanwhile, 7.0 tons LEO are made from titanium alloy.
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* In ''[[Detective Conan]]'' one episode has golden bricks which were covered in moss to make them look like old stone bricks and the titular character easily lifted as if it were that light.
* ''[[Samurai Champloo]]'' ep. 13 opens with a group of pirates making a raid, at one point they effortlessly throw suitcases full of gold from ship to ship.
* In ''[[Umineko no Naku Koro
* Averted in ''[[Naruto]]''. The Fourth Kazekage has the power to control gold, but gold is realistically heavy and malleable in this series. Instead of using it offensively, he uses these properties of gold to interfere with his foes' physical attacks, making them heavier.
== [[Comic Books]] ==
* ''[[X
* ''[[Welcome to Tranquility]]'': Minxy builds a plane out of solid gold, and it is specifically mentioned that it will not fly because it is too soft and dense a metal. [[Rule of Cool|It does anyway.]]
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== [[Film]] ==
* ''[[The Italian Job]]'' features several Mini Coopers that are packed full with gold bars, but it doesn't affect their meaneuverability or speed as they zip around Italy. The [[The Italian Job (2003 film)|remake]] gives it a [[Hand Wave]] by stating that they've beefed up the shocks to accomodate the extra weight, though this wouldn't be sufficient in real life. The remake also features the plot point that the robbers identify which truck is carrying the gold based on how low it's sitting.
* In ''[[Die Hard With a Vengeance]]'', {{spoiler|the trucks loaded with looted gold bullion would not have been able to drive uphill}}. The producers admitted to making this mistake. {{spoiler|They wouldn't have been able to drive at all. In 1995, 150 billion dollars worth of gold should have weighed around 7.000 tons. 13 trucks? 130 would have had trouble carrying that load.}} One thief ''tosses'' a gold bar to another thief. The way it hits him when he catches it, it should've ruptured a few organs. On the other hand, Zeus is ''very'' surprised at how heavy a single gold brick is.
* In ''[[
* ''[[
** The book made of solid gold. And the sequel has a bracelet of the same material. Which is carried ''by a child'' most of the picture. Both would be near impossible to carry easily. Oddly enough, earlier in the film, when lugging around the bracelet in a box he comments it weighs a lot.
** To say nothing of the man-sized diamond one person is able to lift (while suspended from a dirigible) without uncoupling his spine.
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* Ice floats because it is less dense than liquid water. Many movies feature ice sinking in water and becoming a hazard.
** The 1950s sci-fi film ''Atomic Submarine'' features the title boat dodging ice falling off the bottom of the Arctic icecap.
** Ice sinks in ''[[Voyage to
** ''[[G.I. Joe:
** ''[[King Kong]] vs [[Godzilla]]''. At the beginning of the movie, a submarine traveling underwater passes by the iceberg Godzilla was trapped in at the end of ''Godzilla's Counterattack'' and chunks of ice begin breaking off as Godzilla starts to stir. Said ice chunks drop like stones around the submarine on a beeline to the seabed.
** In the animated film of ''The Water Babies'', the heroes bombard an evil shark's castle by dropping giant snowballs and icicles from the iceberg floating above it. Granted, this ''is'' in a film where sea creatures speak, swordfish wear feathered hats, and [[A Boy and His Dog]] breathe water.
* At the start of ''[[
** And in ''[[Indiana Jones and
* In ''In Old Caliente'' a payroll wagon loaded with gold coins kept getting held up by bandits on horseback, so the teamsters decided to melt down the gold into a heap of slag too large to move on horseback. When they were forced to retreat after being waylaid again, they lit the wagon on fire, rendering the gold immoveable before the authorities could arrive.
* In ''[[The Dark Knight]]'', the bank robbers toss duffel bags stuffed full of stacked money into the bus like they were bags of balloons.
* ''The Long Ships'': A blatant example shows up in this 60's Viking movie. In it, the [[MacGuffin]] is a solid gold bell large enough to be mistaken for the roof of a small chapel. It is easily towed behind the Vikings' boat. No raft, no pontoons, just a solid gold bell floating effortlessly behind an oar-driven ship. Calculating the displacement, however, it might actually be possible if the bell had the right measurements and thickness.
* The movie ''[[Night
* ''[[Iron Man (
** Notably though, that 'glass' roof was over a nuclear reactor, and from the distance his arm hung into it after the glass broke, it was probably somewhere around half a foot thick, so it could very well have been able to support more weight than a drywall and 2x4 roof. Plus he fell further onto the house than the glass, in an earlier (more than likely more dense steel instead of the titanium-gold alloy) armor. And breaking even just an inch of perfectly normal glass, such as that in a computer monitor, takes a lot more effort than punching through drywall. The only reason glass breaks so easily normally is because it is normally very thin, less than a quarter inch, like the lenses in his helmet that did crack when Obadiah crushed it.
* In ''[[Heat]]'', the back robbers have to run from the police while carrying big duffel bags that are absolutely packed with paper currency. A full duffle would be able to hold enough stacked and bundled bills to weigh between 150 and 200 pounds.
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* Subverted in ''[[Secondhand Lions]]'': Walter correctly figures out that Garth couldn't have taken out the guards with all that gold weighing him down, leading him to admit "[[Retired Badass|Hub]] might have helped a little" and a cut to young Garth struggling to do anything.
* Averted in ''[[The Way of the Gun]]''. When the kidnappers ask for $15 million in the classic "small, unmarked bills," Taye Diggs' character can be heard yelling into the phone "Do you know how much that will weigh? Try a couple hundred pounds!" In the director commentary, Christopher McQuarrie says this came about when Benicio Del Toro, during filming, actually asked how much $15 million would weigh. The money eventually comes in three large dufflebags which are generally shown to be quite heavy.
* An [[
* In ''[[
* [[Soft Water|Water is soft,]] and according to many, many disaster movies, very light. [[Most Writers Are Human|Most of us use water every day,]] and we expect it to flow around anything it encounters that is denser than air. However, one liter (1 cubic decimeter) of water weighs one kilogram. This means that every cubic meter of water weighs 1,000 kg, or 2,204.6 lbs. ''This'' means that a 7-foot wall of water hits a building with 3.1 pounds per square inch, which is comparable to an explosion at close range. Now, scale this up to the 300-foot wave in ''[[The Day After Tomorrow]]'' or the 3500-foot wave in ''[[Deep Impact]]''. Bomb shelters built to withstand megaton nuclear blasts ''might'' survive, but they would be very hard-pressed.
* In ''[[Harry Potter (
** More evidence wizards are simply physically tougher than Muggles?
** Or perhaps the "duplicated" gold isn't really gold (because otherwise, in a universe with that type of magic, gold would quickly become [[Worthless Yellow Rocks]]).
*** Gold has been said to be one of the few non-transfigurable items, so even though the objects in the vault are cursed to multiply whenever touched, they can't turn into real gold, just something that looks like it. This gold-substitute might well be lighter than real gold, so Harry and his friends would be fine.
* In the 2002 film ''[[Ghost Ship]],'' two men can lug around ''crates'' of gold bricks that in real life would require very heavy machinery.
* In ''[[The Thief and
* Almost at the end of ''[[The Fog]]'', when Father Malone picks up the gold cross, an object this size made of solid gold should have weighted al least 100 kilograms, probably more. To the credit of the actor, you can see him struggling to carry all this weight, but he shouldn't have been able to carry it alone. Specially problematic is when he lifts the cross with only his arms to hand it to the ghost, and keeps it in this position for a non-trivial amount of time.
* ''[[Battlefield Earth]]'' pretty much treats gold as weighing about as much as steel. It's hard to tell exactly, though, since the antagonist's have an undefined level of super strength, and they're the ones most often seen handling gold.
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== [[Literature]] ==
* Invoked in ''Sharpe's Siege'' by Bernard Cornwell - Sharpe and his confederates are accused of stealing the Imperial treasury of France (they didn't). [[The Lancer|Captain]] [[The Captain|Frederickson]] points out that the court is accusing them of removing four tons of gold, in small wooden boats, whilst under enemy fire. However, this defense doesn't work, because of the [[Miles Gloriosus|arrogant]], [[Upperclass Twit|aristocratic]], [[General Failure|incompetent]], [[Gung-Holier Than Thou|pretentious]] and [[Blue Blood|snobbish Colonel Wigram]] presiding over the [[Kangaroo Court|kangaroo court martial]].
* In an ''[[
* In the [[Honorverse]] books it was initially played straight, despite [[David Weber]] [[Shown Their Work|getting quite a bit else right]]. Once fans started pointing out the absurdly low density (on par with cigar smoke) with the largest ships, the numbers were fixed.
* In [[Terry Pratchett]]'s ''[[Discworld
* Pavel Bazhov's ''Malachite Casket'' happily averts this -- it ''is'' a collection of miners' fairytales, after all. In one story the hero doesn't let himself to be deceived by the [[Fair Folk]] because he knows ''exactly'' how heavy the gold is, so he immediately sees that the teenage girl effortlessly holding a tray full of gold sand, ingots and lumps (that would weigh hundreds of kilos in [[Real Life]]) is a fake.
** In another story two boys who do not know this yet find come across magical gold which, if picked up, shouldn't be dropped, or all the gold will turn into rock. One boy grabs happily a large lump and suddenly finds it unbearably heavy, but is too afraid to drop it and just warns his friend. The latter picks up much smaller, but still heavy piece and realizes that his friend is way over-encumbered. After an argument, the second boy deliberately drops his lump, so all gold turns into rock and his friend won't hurt himself.
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* Averted in the ''[[Belgariad]]'' novels. When at a formal dinner in Mal Zeth, Belgarion is informed that he's in a position to make millions. Belgarion replies that he couldn't carry it: he knows how much that kind of money weighs. Polgara uses a similar argument when deciding to not empty out her account in the Sendarian royal treasury, taking only a minuscule percentage of the money for expenses (She also good reason to wish to be inconspicuous, which being visibly wealthy would interfere with).
** Of course, both ''could'' move the weights if they wanted to; the real reason is probably that they know economics very well via long experience, are investing in the preservation of countries rather than account balances, and have no serious use for money anyway.
* Averted in the second ''[[
* Averted in ''[[Cryptonomicon]]'', where the protagonist mentions the weight of a gold brick as one reason why moving lots of gold bars by chopper or by Jeep across the deep jungle is impossible.
* Subverted in the [[James Bond]] short story ''Octopussy''. The main character carries a briefcase containing gold to bypass customs. He takes amphetamines to be able to lift it easily enough to conceal its weight.
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== [[Live Action TV]] ==
* On ''[[30 Rock
* At the other end of the scale, one episode of ''[[CSI]]'' has the team investigating a casino heist, supposedly of ten million dollars in cash. Grissom realizes the money would weigh around two hundred pounds -- far too much for one man (seen in security footage) to practically carry. (It isn't stated, but it would also be unfeasibly bulky.)
** The 200 pounds (actually closer to 220) presumes it's all in $100 banknotes. A more normal mix of currency would about double this. A million US dollars in mixed currency fills a large suitcase, and one would probably have to pay over-weight charges to fly with it. $250,000 (in $100 bills) fits carefully into an [[Evil Mastermind]]-syle aluminum attache case.
* In ''[[Merlin (TV series)|Merlin]]'', a character uses alchemy to create a big lump of solid gold, which the characters lift and carry as easily as if it was polystyrene.
* A DVD commentary on ''[[Smallville]]'' pointed out this trope to highlight actors John Schnieder's acting abilities. In a scene where Johnathan Kent and [[Superman|Clark Kent]] are moving bales of hay, Johnathan is visibly having a hard time carrying the prop hay. The production staff had forgotten real hay bales do weigh a lot and Schnieder, who had had some farm experience, decided to portray this right. The actor playing Clark Kent had no such experience, but given [[Super Strength|who he is]], it actually helped to make the two characters believable.
* Appeared in an episode of ''[[American Justice]]'', discussing the case of a woman who had killed and dismembered and beheaded a man, the video of her statement has her comment on picking up the head and being surprised at how much it weighed. A detective who'd worked the case commented that's one of the reasons they were confident the confession was valid: unless you'd actually picked up a detached head, it's not the sort of thing someone would think about.
* Played with in ''[[Sharpe]]'s Rifles''. Sharpe is assigned to escort a party carrying a box that, to allay suspicion, they claim is full of old papers and documents. However, they lift the box around with ease invoking this trope. After Sharpe (and the audience) have accepted that, Harper conversationally points out that they are being hoodwinked because paper weighs ''a lot'' and whatever the box contains is very light. {{spoiler|It is actually a flag that is a cultural treasure and propaganda rallying point}}.
* ''[[The Twilight Zone]]'' episode "The Rip Van Winkle Caper" plays this straight when some gangsters steal a truck full of gold and hide out in a cave where they hibernate for many years. When they wake up, they crash the truck trying to get back to town, and hike back to town instead, carrying backpacks full of dozens of gold ingots each. Later on, one man drops his canteen and the other offers him a drink for a bar of gold - he eventually ends up with both their shares of gold on his back, but doesn't even slow down.
* Averted, surprisingly, in an episode of ''[[Batman (TV series)|Batman]]'', a series not usually known for its scientific accuracy. In an episode in the third season, Egghead steals two pounds of radium in order to hatch a dinosaur egg (see previous comment about scientific accuracy). Egghead handles the box of radium as if it were very heavy—the radium only weighs two pounds, but the lead shielding adds a lot more.
** Played basically straight in another episode—also starring Egghead, coincidentally—he pilfers a giant egg (maybe three feet long) made of solid gold. No one short of the Incredible Hulk should be able to lift that thing, but Egghead picks it up and carries it out, though he's straining with the effort and can't lift it above his waist.
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
* Classic ''[[
* First Edition ''[[Dungeons and Dragons
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** In lieu of such possible hoarding, certain games may opt for body slots for items of negligible weight, meaning only a certain number of these items may be worn at a time.
** And since it keeps coming up, many of these games give you a strict limit to how much equipment you can carry, say, 100 lbs. And then lets you carry around, on your person, hundreds of thousands of units (typically coins) of gold which don't factor into encumbrance ''at all''.
* Most fantasy CRPGs (such as ''[[Neverwinter Nights]]'', ''[[
** The problem with various [[Role Playing Game|Role Playing Games]], especially those based on on (A)D&D is the cost of not so rare items that sometimes reaches hundreds of thousands "gold pieces". This is actually magnitude of late medieval war contributions and budgets of duchies or smaller kingdoms.
** ''[[Asherons Call]]'' originally averted this but they changed it later.
** ''[[Albion]]'' averts this - money has a definite weight.
** And old dungeon crawler computer game called ''[[
** ''[[GURPS]]'' takes some time to discuss this. The writers point out that adventurers without superhuman strength wouldn't be able to carry off piles of gold. Gold coins ''are'' pretty heavy but in a fantasy setting gold, especially in the form of jewelry, would have had a better value/weight ratio than we think of today.
** Averted by ''[[Return to Krondor]]'', where coinage had a definite weight. However, it wasn't very noticeable for the first few chapters of the game, where it would auto-exchange coins for high-value gems whenever you visited a shop. Towards the middle of the game, there's a chapter that involves traveling from Krondor to a small village, with no shops to stop in along the way to exchange coins. You will inevitably be leaving behind quite a large amount of treasure on monster corpses before the chapter is up.
*** ''[[Betrayal
* The info in the Pokédex in ''[[Pokémon]]'' frequently applies this to living things, giving weights that are often ridiculously heavy or light: Wailord is 14.5 m long, yet only weights about 400 kg.
** Apparently some Pokémon are ''less dense than hydrogen.''
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** Maybe you automatically visit a bank during loading screens or something?
* ''[[The Elder Scrolls]]''
** In ''[[The Elder Scrolls III Morrowind
** Everything but money, actually. As opposed to its predecessor, ''[[The Elder Scrolls II Daggerfall
** Hilariously, in the sequel they went overboard; some weapons were weighing in at twenty, thirty, some even sixty pounds. No, just no.
*** Of course, one must also remember that the encumbrance units are not specified as being in pounds. They're just numbers without an associated unit. They could be in nanograms for all we know.
** In ''[[The Elder Scrolls II Daggerfall
** While we're on the subject of ''[[The Elder Scrolls]]'', let's not forget steel equipment inexplicably weighing more than comparable iron items.
* Many games with a storage system will often overlook that the amount of items and weight of some of them will either not fit in the specified container used, or would end up being so weighty and bulky the character couldn't move around as effectively as they are shown to. Of note, ''[[Metal Gear Solid]] 3'' comes to mind with its backpack inventory system, fitting an RPG, two rifles, and an assortment of pistol sized weapons, along with medical supplies, rations, and any critter you caught, while not weighing Big Boss down. They only become weighty when equipped on his person.
** Also is ''[[Resident Evil]] 4'', with the Attache case. Never mind an RPG weighs a lot, or that a fully loaded case would probably be too heavy to lift. And how does the Merchant hide that in his coat?
** Don't forget Link in...well, every ''Zelda'' game ever. But especially ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
*** In ''[[The Legend of Zelda (
** ''[[Ever Quest]]'' assigned weight to coins, as well as having money come in different denominations (copper, silver, gold and platinum). Along with the way fall damage was calculated, it meant it was entirely possible to commit unintentional suicide by grabbing a couple thousand platinum from the bank - and abruptly taking 20k damage from the "drop" when you stepped off the threshold of the bank's front door.
** ''[[ADOM]]'' also assigns weight to gold pieces. It's quite possible to get crushed under the weight the gold you are carrying if your magic fails you. With normal in-game methods you can accumulate hundreds of kilos of gold. Abusing a bug you can get hundred thousand kilos.
* In ''[[Uncharted]]: Drake's Fortune'', Nate realizes the golden statue they're looking for was brought to the island when he looks at some old freight logs and notices something weighing "about 500 pounds". A cube of gold that weighed 500 pounds would have about 8.94 inches (22.7 cm) to a side. The statue they find looks like it should weight several ''tons'' at least.
** But then, {{spoiler|the statue isn't solid}}.
* Not sure if it's a subversion or what, but in ''[[
* In the [[Fallout 3]] expansion ''The Pitt'' you are sent on a quest to collect 100 ingots. If you collect them all in one go, then they stack and only weigh as much as the first ingot, but if you collect some, turn them in and then go back, then they still stack but their weight quickly adds up, so both playing the trope straight and averting it at the same time.
* The first expansion for ''[[Fallout: New Vegas]]'', ''Dead Money'', subverts this at the end when the player finds a vault with of 37 gold bars. Each bar is worth 10,439 caps, a ridiculously large amount, but each bar also weighs 35 pounds. If a player wanted to take all the bars, a total of 382,913 caps (enough money that he/she would basically never need the money acquired from the main missions to complete the game), he/she would be carrying 1,295 pounds. The highest possible weight any player can carry without cheating is 300 pounds, so a player could only carry 8 of the bars without being over-encumbered after dropping all of his/her equipment.
** To make this all sillier, no vendor in the game ever has more than 8,000 caps. It's impossible to sell even a single bar for its total value. Some have speculated that this is meant to tie into a theme of letting greed go.
*** Impossible? If you can't get its full value in caps, get the difference in ammo instead. A practical investment. Old world money, being also weightless (outside of Hardcore mode), is another alternative.
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**** [[Good Bad Bugs|You mean loading the gold into a certain dead body, decapitating it and carrying the head manually?]]
** New Vegas also features a partial aversion to this with "Hardcore Mode" - where (among other things) ammo has weight. At first, it doesn't make much of a difference when individual bullets weigh 1/15 to 1/10 of a pound - but when players start acquiring automatic weapons that eat bullets like candy, or come across rocket launchers whose individual rockets weigh two pounds apiece, it really starts to cut down on what you can carry compared to normal mode. (Though even in hardcore, there are many completely weightless items - including gunpowder and shell casings.)
* Lampshaded in the ''[[Umineko no Naku Koro
== Webcomics ==
* [http://www.airshipentertainment.com/growfcomic.php?date=20070506 These] two [http://www.airshipentertainment.com/growfcomic.php?date=20070513 pages] of ''[[What's New
== Web Original ==
* An otherwise hilarious [[
== Western Animation ==
* The episode of ''[[Batman: The Animated Series
* In [[The Stinger]] at the end of ''[[Finding Nemo]]'', the water in the fish bags floats above the water in the ocean.
* ''[[Futurama]]''
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* Averted in an episode of ''[[Inspector Gadget]]'', Penny realizes that a stack of gold bricks is fake because she can lift them too easily.
* Averted in ''[[Pinky and The Brain]]''. One of their first capers was to break into Fort Knox and steal all the nation's gold. Unfortunately, the two couldn't pick up even one brick.
* In ''[[
** In fact, large objects impossibly retaining their structure when lifted by a human with one spot is ''very'' common when it comes to the portrayal of [[Super Strength]], so much that part of the common "Tactile Telekinesis" [[Hand Wave]] is that their [[Required Secondary Powers]] are holding the object together.
*** Although only the new Superboy (Kon-El/Connor) actually has it on his power list. He would mention he was using it. All. The. Time.
* Partially averted in ''[[The Spectacular Spider
* In ''[[The Simpsons (
* They carry stuff made out of solid gold rather effortlessly in ''[[
** To say nothing of the Golden Condor, ''[[Up to Eleven|an airplane made out of solid gold]]''.
* One episode of ''[[Mummies Alive]]'' featured the ghosts of Gold Rush prospectors as villains, and they went around stealing every bit of gold they could find. Including [[Big Guy]] Armon's golden arm. Now, being the [[Big Guy]] it's not such a strain that he can make use of an arm made of gold, but their twelve-year-old friend Presley can lift it as easily as if it was made of cardboard.
* ''[[Lilo and Stitch]]'': Stitch is too dense to be able to swim, yet David and even five-year-old Lilo are able to pick him up with no more effort than they might expend lifting a corgi (in fact, David even does this when Stitch is, yes, sinking like a rock in the ocean).
** He's unable to swim ''under his own power''. Given his short limbs and oddly-shaped feet, this isn't entirely implausible: the basset hound is a real-life example of a dog too dense to swim more than a very short distance. A strong swimmer like David ''should'' be able to rescue him; Lilo's ability to carry him is a little more far-fetched (bassets weigh 35 to 50 pounds, nearly as much as Lilo herself should weigh).
* Density is a plot point in the ''[[
* ''[[
* ''[[Puss in Boots (
|