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Monumental Theft (view source)

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** And a satellite full of money
** The latter three he did ''[[Serial Escalation|in the same damn movie]]''
** One notable aversion was in ''[[The Castle of Cagliostro (Anime)|The Castleof Cagliostro]]'', {{spoiler|the treasure of Cagliostro line is an almost perfectly preserved lost Roman city submerged in the lake the castle rests in}} Lupin admits that it's the greatest and most valuble thing he's ever come across but it's simply too big for him to take.
* Kaitou Kid, from ''[[Magic Kaito]]'', has accomplished a few as well, since he's an [[Expy]] of Lupin III's famous ancestor, [[Arsène Lupin]].
** And is from arguably the same universe, depending on how [[Canon]] you consider the ''Lupin III vs [[Detective Conan]]'' [[Crossover]] TV special)
* The titular character of ''[[Mouse]]'' has a tendency to make off with entire buildings just to get at one small treasure.
* Atomsk the Pirate King from ''[[FLCL]]'' is said to have stolen entire solar systems.
* Issac and Miria from ''[[Baccano (Light Novel)|Baccano]]!'' style themselves as Monumental Thieves. However, their ambition is offset by one simple fact: they are ... [[Cloudcuckoolander|mentally interesting]]. (For example, they once attempted to steal all of History itself... by stealing the front step of a museum, rendering it impossible to enter. Another theft saw them attempt to steal from the very Earth itself... by mining for gold. For nine months. In a cave that had no prior history of ever yielding gold.)
** [[Cloudcuckoolander|But the centipede]]! [[Sadly Mythtaken|Said to be the god of gold mining in countries of the Orient]], [[Large Ham|there's no way stealing from the cave it crawled in front of could fail to work]]! [[You Fail History Forever|Since nobody has ever stolen gold from the earth itself]], [[You Fail Logic Forever|that just means]] [[Refuge in Audacity|it should be that much more amazing]] [[Logical Fallacies|when they]] ''[[Logical Fallacies|do]]'' [[Logical Fallacies|pull off the heist]]!
 
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** Nothing's [[Impossible Task|impossible]]. You got a few options: any type of successful lethal force, soundproof box, [[Slashed Throat|tape recorder and a knife]], whatever causes laryngitis, any of the fine movies from [[Tear Jerker|our collection]]...
** Ultimately they steal the heroes' status as The Trinity, the ''three most important people in the world'', resulting in history itself changing.
* In his original incarnation, [[Superman (Comic Book)|Superman]] foe Brainiac used to use a shrink ray to steal entire cities. He's returned to this in modern interpretations.
* In [[The Silver Age of Comic Books]], Lex Luthor once planted bombs in all the world's great monuments, and threatened to detonate them unless [[Superman]] would physically steal them for him. Supes does eventually find a way to disarm the bombs, but not before he has had to carry half the world's monuments to Luthor's hideout.
* The Prankster, a minor [[Superman]] villain who has been around since [[The Golden Age of Comic Books]]. How can you not like a guy with no super-powers, whose only real goal is to pull the biggest practical jokes on the largest number of people possible, and whose favorite target is the most powerful being on Earth?
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* In ''[[Despicable Me]]'', {{spoiler|Vector}} manages to steal a pyramid of Giza and replace it with a giant pyramid-shaped balloon. Not to be outdone, for most of the movie, Gru concocts a plan to steal ''the moon''. (Admittedly after shrinking it to the size of a basketball.)
* Another phenomenal movie thief would be [[Fat Bastard]] in ''[[Austin Powers]]: The Spy Who Shagged Me''. He poses as a guard, sneaks up to the cryogenic tube in which Austin's naked body is frozen and employs a giant syringe to literally steal Austin's sexual energy (or "mojo"), which here is depicted in the material world as an icky red substance that looks a bit like melted licorice. Following this theft, Austin (in 1999) is in bed with a woman and suddenly discovers that - for the first time in his life - he is unable to make love.
* The plot of ''[[Men in Black (Filmfilm)|Men in Black]]'' hinges on an entire ''galaxy'' being held hostage by extraterrestrial terrorists. (Of course, since it's a microcosmic galaxy only about the size of a marble, this is not as difficult as one might think.)
 
 
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* The [[Carmen Sandiego]] series of game shows (''Where In The World Is...?'' and ''Where In Time Is...?'') has this, too, of course. [[That Other Wiki]] has a nifty episode list which assures that Carmen's henchmen managed to steal, among other things, the Portuguese language, the moon, Malta, the North Pole, [[The ABC]], the Bermuda Triangle, Old Faithful, Ipanema Beach, Mt. Everest, the International Date Line, the Ozone Layer, Cuba, the internet, ''tai chi'', ''{{and to top it all, [[Serial Escalation]] the frickin' Milky Way Galaxy}}''. Wrap your head around ''that''. It's worth noting that the alien henchwoman Kneemoi was responsible for most of the more bizarre thefts. Bizarre as in concepts that don't exist in any physical sense, like the International Date Line, Portuguese language, and tai chi. The human henchmen usually stuck to physical objects, even if they were buildings, geological formations, or celestial bodies. And then there was the episode of the game show where her henchmen stole the [[Funny Aneurysm Moment|World Trade Center]]... which, in retrospect, could have been for the best.
* ''[[Mirai Sentai Timeranger]]'' and ''[[Power Rangers Time Force]]'' start with something like this - the respective [[Big Bad|Big Bads]] didn't just stage prison breakouts, they ''stole the prison''.
* One episode of ''[[Michael BentinesBentine's Potty Time (TV)|Michael Bentines Potty Time]]'' had someone stealing Nelson's Column, the Effiel Tower and the Statue of Liberty. It turned out he had only removed them so he could have them cleaned as gifts to the respective governments.
* The ''[[Leverage]]'' team specializes in some amazing tactics to get what they're after and leave their client's enemies holding the proverbial bag. The targets of their clever thefts and elaborate con-jobs are never small-time, either. Their first job netted them "retire and buy an island money" (which is why they work on an [[Arc Words|"alternate revenue stream"]] for all the jobs after the first) and upset the ''entire industry'' of the guy who double-crossed them, on top of causing an international incident. It helps when you have four amazing thieves lead by a grandmaster of the [[Batman Gambit]].
* After discovering that [[Divine Race Lift|God is black]] (as in the race, not the color), [[Sarah Silverman]] snark that she's cool with it and ''not'' one of those racists who would wonder if a black God is going to steal the Moon (heavily implying she is EXACTLY that kind of racist).
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== Tabletop Games ==
* The Thief of Legend epic destiny from ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]'' 4th edition lets players be this. What else would you call someone capable of stealing the color of people's eyes, their memories of their childhood, or any intangible quality of them? Plus, once a day, you can steal any unattended object and hide it anywhere on that plane. Epic. Oh, and they steal their own soul from the forces of death on a regular basis.
* In ''[[Magic: theThe Gathering]]'', it's possible to steal...just about anything from your opponent. Artifacts, creatures, lands, '''[[Serial Escalation|enchantments]]'''.
 
 
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* In the ''[[Thief]]'' series, the main character manages to steal from eclectic nobles, zombies, ''other thieves'', monsters, wizards, the mystic brotherhood of shadows that ''trained him'', and even a '''[[Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?|god]]'''. And from what I heard of the game's female fans, he's also stolen a few hearts.
* The Thieves from ''[[Disgaea]]''; they can steal ''your enemies' stats''.
** {{spoiler|Tyrant Overlord Baal}} in ''[[Disgaea 3 Absence of Justice]]'' could classify. He, among other things, steals various people's height, stardom, screen time, the letter "a" and a space out of their names, the game they starred in, their anime DVD collection, their innocent heart, an unspecified "item," their friends, and a one billion HL savings account. And after all that, it's revealed that he ''might or might not'' have actually stolen all of those things and may have just been engaging in "insurance fraud."
* Kay Faraday from ''[[Ace Attorney Investigations]]'' ''tries'' to be a Monumental Thief, but fails at it mostly. All she manages to steal are Edgeworth's lines and poses and Gumshoe's supporting role. Her actual goal, stealing ''the truth'' is foiled by the fact that her "partner" would rather find it the traditional way.
* In ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics]]'', some games allow the thief to steal hearts, experience, and the like.
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* The season three finale of ''[[Justice League]]'' featured Lord Chronos stealing historic landmarks from throughout space and time. And displaying them in the streets of Neo Gotham. This included, among others, the Titanic, the Sphinx, and the Colosseum.
* The ''[[Hoppity Hooper]]'' episode "Colonel Clabber--Limburger Cheese Statue" featured a villain who was stealing the world's great landmarks and having them transported to his estate because he was unable to travel to see them.
* Of course, the cartoon adaptation ''[[Where Onon Earth Is Carmen Sandiego?]]'' also involved Carmen's larger than life heists, but worked hard to make her seemingly outrageous crimes semi-plausible in their execution. The pilot has her stealing the talent of famous athletes and musicians by using a prototype neural scanner to scramble their nervous systems while overlaying her own with an imprint of their abilities. A later plot to steal an uncracked Liberty Bell is accomplished by hijacking a Russian military time-travel project and then using it to travel back to the 18th century. A plain to make her the most famous crook in time by stealing Roman Colosseum from Ancient Rome, the deals with stolen miniature landmarks, ACME's first Chronoskimmer, a burst of a Roman leader, a electric magnet from the future, & Hannibal's elephants. True to the trope, she always commits her crimes just to prove she can, and allows the stolen goods to be recovered once the theft's been accomplished.
* An episode of ''[[Totally Spies]]'' featured a villain who used a shrink ray to steal several monuments (i.e. the Taj Mahal and Mount Rushmore).
* An one-shot villain from ''[[Kids Next Door]]'' shrank and captured monuments - ''and'' his rival, Numbuh 2 - to defeat him in a spectacular mini-golf (''"[[Insistent Terminology|It's miniature golf!]]"'') game, also causing ''the planet'' to shrink so he could play a galactic golf game. Really.
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* ''[[Phineas and Ferb]]'' has an episode where Doofenschmirtz steals the Eiffel Tower, among other thngs, by shrinking them.
* In the original series ''{{Transformers}'' episode 'Thief in the night', the Decepticon Trypticon steals several famous landmarks - including Fort Knox, the Taj Mahal, the St. Basil's Cathedral (mistakenly called 'the Kremlin') and the Eiffel Tower) in return for large supplies of high-quality fuel from the fictional nation Carbombya. The heists were neither very well-planned nor particularly cunningly performed: he basically just ''went there'' and pulled the buildings out of the ground before carrying them off (Trypticon is rather a large Transformer).
* 1973/74 ''[[Super FriendsSuperfriends]]'' episode "Menace of the White Dwarf". The super villain Raven uses a fragment of a white dwarf star to steal the Washington Monument.
* In ''[[The Looney Tunes Show]]'' episode "Eligible Bachelors", Colonel Frankenheimer attempts to steal the Eifel Tower by hooking it to a zeppelin and flying it to Germany.
* In the first episode of [[Kim Possible]], Drakken steals an entire toy factory.
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