Mugging the Monster/Live-Action TV

Examples of Mugging the Monster in Live-Action TV include:

Monty Python's Flying Circus. One of Terry Gilliam's animations had a mugger saying "Hands up!" to a victim. The victim puts his hands up—and then another pair of hands (and arms), and another... then slams all of his hands on the mugger's head.
Alias Smith and Jones likes this one. The scenario usually goes that some random tough decides the too-clever-for-his-own good dark-haired cowboy is winning far to much at poker and accuses him of cheating. The cowboy's baby-faced blond partner then suggests that said accusation is taken back, the local tough declines the option and tells him to go for his gun. In the ensuing fast draw stand-off said gun is the pointed at the local tough before he has even had the chance to touch his own. Well done, you have just tried to draw against Kid Curry, the fastest gun in the west.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer is built on this very trope, with Buffy filling the role of "monster" and the one trying to "mug" the monster many times apiece. Joss Whedon has often stated that he felt sorry for that pretty, blonde girl in every horror movie who is inevitably monster food and wanted to make a movie (which later became this show) about letting her finally be the one to open up a can of whoop-ass on her attacker. Announcing this switcheroo of intent, it opens with a pair of apparent high school students, a nefarious young man who lures a timid, helpless-looking, blonde girl into a darkened school building. Once he assures her they are completely alone, that no one is going to catch them, she (Darla) turns on him and drinks his blood.
- Faith is actually introduced this way. A vampire seemingly seduces her in a club, and Buffy follows them out to an alley, only to see Faith stake the vampire and walk off.
- Played with in one season 6 episode, where Buffy rescues a woman from vampires... and holds back the lethal force at the last second when she realises the "vampires" are just ordinary muggers.

Buffy: But come on, rush me. It'll be funny.

Angel: Rogue Slayer Faith arrives in Los Angeles, homeless, broke, and shivering from the cold. A pimp at the bus station spies her predicament and tries to prey on her vulnerability in order to lure her into his employ. Cut to Faith leaving the station with his wallet full of cash, his leather jacket, and the keys to a flat whose owner won't be returning anytime soon. Bonus points are awarded for attacking him while his arms are trapped in his sleeves, as he attempts You Must Be Cold.
- When Connor first arrives in Los Angeles, he finds a drug dealer and his henchmen brutalizing an addict who won't pay up. They tell him to leave, and when he won't, attack him. Of course, Connor is also known as The Destroyer in a hell dimension, and has spent his entire life hunting down demons we couldn't imagine...
- In Las Vegas, two bouncers of a rather shady casino attack Angel. Cue vamp face.
And to complete the Whedonverse trifecta: In Firefly, a gang of thieves holds up a family in a wagon... unaware that they're our Big Damn Heroes in disguise. A crossdressing Malcolm Reynolds utters the memorable line "If your hand touches metal, I swear by my pretty floral bonnet I will end you."
The episode "The Big Wheel" of Criminal Minds had a pair of thugs trying to rob the episode's Serial Killer, an unstable obsessive-compulsive. The leader of the mugger duo gets knifed in the chest.
Towards the end of an episode of Homicide: Life on the Street Munch and some of the other detectives are walking out of a bar after having had a few post-work drinks when they notice a youth loitering around them, clearly with the intent of getting some easy money from these easy targets. After first sniggering about the youth's obvious lack of intelligence, Munch brazenly walks up to the kid, flashes his badge and sneers "Yo, we're cops. Go mug someone else."
- In another episode, in response to a series of murders of priests, members of the homicide unit are acting as decoys dressed as priests in various parts of town. Two youths accost Detective Munch at a bus stop.

Mugger: Hey Father, you know what time it is?
Munch: (pulls out gun) It's Glock time, you son of a bitch.

The X-Files episode "Terms of Endearment" involves a part-demon man who would extract the demonic fetuses of his wives before they could be born and reveal his secret. Until he tries it on one woman who wakes up during the extraction process. "I said, what are you doing, Wayne?" In the end, she escapes with the baby, and Mulder and Scully conclude that he finally found someone more evil than he.
In Being Human (UK), Owen is a scum of a man who murders Annie and, even after seeing her as a ghost, continues to hurt her going so far as to indirectly tell her that he cheated on her before her death while comfortingly holding his new girlfriend (and Annie's old friend). He believes that Annie can do nothing to him since she is shy and insecure. Until she digs up some courage and has George and Mitchell stand behind her. Suddenly, Owen finds himself confronted with a werewolf, a vampire, and his former fiancée who stare him down before Annie tells him "the secret only the dead know", which is apparently horrific. Sometime shortly after, Owen is incarcerated into the nut house.
In the pilot episode of Burn Notice, a drug dealer named "Sugar" learns to his everlasting detriment that one does not mess with Michael Westen, no matter how much of a pushover Michael may look like.
- In another episode a groups of Russian mercenaries are quite aware how dangerous Michael is and come prepared. However, they do not realize that the man they kidnap alongside Michael is actually an important business associate of one of the heads of the Russian Mafiya. No matter how things turn up they are royally screwed either way.
In one episode of Dexter this was toyed with, as though both Dexter and the perp knew one another (he being a member of an escaped victim's gang). Dexter plays it off as an attempted mugging, leading to many trope-invoking comments from the other Miami PD.
In The Sarah Connor Chronicles, similar to the Terminator example, the three protagonists teleport to the future and arrive naked. Three street thugs confront the naked hot girl Cameron, who turns out to be a powerful robot. She beats them up and steals their clothes.
- Later on, the leader of an organized crime group threatens the Connors by saying he's got an assassin watching Sarah's children and, if they don't comply with his demands, will have them both kidnapped/killed. Unfortunately for both the crime boss and his luckless assassin, they have no idea that one of Sarah's "children" is Cameron, and she is far better at spotting lurking threats than the assassin. The next scene we see of Cameron has her nonchalantly stuffing the assassin's brutalized corpse in the trunk of his car.
- Lampshaded by Derek, who amusedly points out that the assassin has no idea what he's walking into.
Jekyll: "He's got a knife. Minimum necessary force." Of course, it's Mister Hyde's definition of minimum necessary force.
In the Doctor Who story "Silver Nemesis", a pair of men try to mug the time-traveling 17th century villain Lady Peinforte and her criminal servant Richard. The next time we see the men, they're hanging by their ankles from a tree, Bound and Gagged, in only their underpants as their clothes burn in a pile beneath them.
- The expression on Richard's face when the robber demands money and pulls a knife on him is actually quite charming. After a long time being a Fish Out of Temporal Water, he's finally encountered a situation he understands.
From 1000 Ways to Die, a mugger tries to rob a sweet, friendly-looking old woman... who happens to be a fifth degree black belt and has been practicing for most of her life. Needless to say, it's a Curb Stomp Battle, and ends with the old lady punching the mugger in the throat, crushing his larynx with his Adam's apple. Crowning Moment of Awesome also applies. Also from this show, a rapist attacks a crossdresser, who happens to be a champion boxer. "I ain't NO lady!" Cue the rapist on the asphalt in the alley and dead.
NCIS
- In the episode "Blowback", Ziva and McGee are out on an Op when three punks try to sexually harrass Ziva. As in, a lady who used to kill terrorists for a living.
- In another case a hitman was hired to kidnap Abby. By the time Gibbs and Tony found them, Abby has subdued him with her taser.
Star Trek: Voyager has the episode "Scorpion". In the opening credits two Borg Cubes advance on something offscreen, while saying their usual "You Will Be Assimilated" greeting. Just as the cubes get to "resistance is...", said something blows both cubes up. And then It Gets Worse.
Happened several times on Charmed.
In Babylon 5, the Streib are a race that kidnaps specimens from other races and experiments on them. Then they tried that on the Minbari. As Delenn puts it, the Minbari "made sure they understood the depth of their mistake."
In the Stargate SG-1 episode "Memento Mori", Vala, an intergalactic con artist and mercenary, loses her memory and settles into a "life" as a diner waitress in a small town. Two armed thugs decide it is a good idea to rob from everybody there. Vala knocks one of them unconscious and holds one of their weapons against another one's head without breaking a sweat (as the detective questioning her puts it).
In the Farscape episode "I-Yensch, You-Yensch", a couple of petty crooks try to rob a bar and grill where Scorpius, Braca, D'Argo, and Rygel are attempting to engage in tense negotiations. However the crooks' incompetence ends up making the situation even more dangerous and volatile, despite how superior the regulars are to them.
Human Target introduces Baptiste, notorious talented assassin for hire, by having a mugger ask for his wallet and watch. Baptiste takes the mugger's gun, removes the clip in about half a second, hands it back, and tells the mugger to run along.
- It was worse than that. Baptiste doesn't even take it out of the mugger's hands. He just waits until he is distracted by something then dismantles the gun in a fraction of a second by hitting the magazine release, the slide release, and pulling the slide off. He does this so fast it looks like he just touched the gun and it fell apart on it's own.
In an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, an alien race called the Husnock attack a Federation colony which happens to be inhabited by an omnipotent entity posing as a married, elderly man. The pacifistic entity refuses to fight, until he discovers his human wife among the casualties. The entity reacts by utterly obliterating the entire Husnock species.
In Volume Five of Heroes, a Rabid Cop locks the door of an interrogation room, disconnects the camera, and threatens to beat a murder confession out of his rather mild-mannered suspect. Too bad for him the suspect in question is Sylar (currently suffering Laser-Guided Amnesia, which is why he's so mild-mannered), who instinctively uses his telekinesis to toss the cop through the room's one-way mirror.
- A pair of muggers target Mohinder after he injects himself with a Super Serum.
In Boardwalk Empire, a pair of low grade messenger boys for a local crime boss try to mug Jimmy Darmody (Jimmy's a World War I vet, has been The Dragon in two different major mobs already, is a ruthless personal friend of Al Capone, etc.) when he's coming out of a poker game a few bucks richer. Jimmy kills both of the gunmen with his combat knife and bare hands.
This occurs on Leverage when a Loan Shark targets Nate's favorite bar. Nate's father was also a loan shark, making things worse.
On an early episode of The West Wing a few guys get a bit aggressive when flirting with Zoey Bartlet and promptly end up arrested after Josh presses a panic button.
The pilot of Person of Interest. Some wannabe toughs start hassling a hobo on a New York subway. When one gets rough, the hobo, a Special Forces-trained ex-CIA operative named John Reese, takes them down with alarming rapidity.
A random passerby, while texting, brushes the tall, cadverous man in black, then has the nerve to tell him to watch where he's going. Nice job provoking Death, dumbass.
In Knight Rider, many a random criminal has tried to steal or damage KITT, who looks like a cool but normal car, but is actually both sentient and super tough. KITT's responses range from snapping at the crooks for disturbing him to deliberately freaking them out to simply sitting there and confusing them with his invulnerability all their attacks.
This is Omar's occupation in The Wire as a stickup boy. The best example is when he steals from drug kingpin Marlo Stanfield.
In Wednesday, the protagonist has been on both sides of this Trope (something that tends to be a trend for The Addams Family in general). In the pilot alone, Wednesday's Establishing Character Moment occurs when a gang of bullies stuffs Pugsley into a locker; she confronts them while they are in a swimming pool and releases piranha into the pool. Later, however, at Nevermore academy, she sees Bianca mocking a student in the fencing class. Wednesday challenges her to a duel without the masks and the rapiers not blunted, the winner being the one who draws blood first. This time, Bianca proves a better fencer, and Wednesday loses.
In an episode of Power Rangers Wild Force, Mason enters a Greasy Spoon truck stop, and then a gang of biker thugs come in and accost the manager. Mason tells them to get lost, and they decide to pick a fight; after he curb stomps them, they decide to heed his advice and get lost.

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