Shoplift and Die: Difference between revisions

[[File:shoplifter.png|frame| [[You Have Been Warned]].]]

{{examples}}

* ''[[Nethack]]'''s shopkeepers. The trope was [[Trope Namer|formerly called]] Izchak's Wrath for a reason <ref>Izchak is the only shopkeeper guaranteed to be in [[Randomly Generated Levels|any playthrough.]]</ref>. They get indignant if the player tries to steal, trying to kill the player themselves or sending the police - which happen to be the [[wikipedia:Keystonechr(20)Cops|Keystone Kops]] - after the player. The shopkeepers will also charge you for damaged or eaten merchandise. They tend to be well armed (with the occasional Wand of Death); the Keystone Kops would be predictably ineffective but for their overwhelming numbers.<br />[[The Dev Team Thinks of Everything|There's a delightful variety of complications:]] they're killable but that counts as murder for the non-chaotic, they can grab the character's backpack if they try to tunnel through the floor while standing too close, characters with uncontrolled teleportitis should be very careful indeed... On the other hand, a trained housepet ''can'' steal items and somehow avoid attracting any attention.

* Been doing a little gambling in a casino in ''[[Grand Theft Auto San Andreas]]'', and you're a bit in the red? No problem, they'll give you time to pay them back...about two days. After that, the casino owner will send a hit squad of four guys with SMG's after you. Even if you happen to be the casino owner...

** And when you kill them, they drop a ''lot'' of money. An interesting way to pay off your debt.

*** It's required for [[One Hundred Percent Completion]] in ''Link's Awakening DX''; stealing an item gets you one of the photographs. But going back into the shop means you die, which disqualifies you for the [[Good Ending]]. This means that, in order to obtain both [[One Hundred Percent Completion]] AND the [[Good Ending]], you have to steal from the shop at the end of the game and NEVER GO BACK.

* All of ''[[The Elder Scrolls]]'' games have this as a gameplay mechanic. It is possible to steal from a store without getting caught. If you DO get caught, the shopkeeper and any guards in the place will run to attack you. Notably, in ''Morrowind'' and ''Oblivion'', you can be attacked for accidentally picking up random, nearly-worthless items that happen to be lying around and owned by the shopkeeper.

** Made worse by the fact that "Pickup object" and "Talk to shopkeeper" use the same key. When they put the shopkeeper behind a counter cluttered with towering knick-knacks, it's just asking for trouble.

** ''Police Quest: SWAT'' has an early mission where the team is called out to a Korean 7-11, after robbers enter and gunshots are heard. The mission can have the gunmen shooting the store owners or holding them hostage, or it can work the other way around with the store owners waving guns about, requiring an interpreter.

* In ''[[Space Quest]] II: Vohaul's Revenge'', Roger Wilco orders a whistle via mail required to solve a later puzzle. In both ''[[Space Quest]] III'' and ''[[Space Quest]] V'', the owners of the mail-order company dispatch Terminator-like androids to collect the debt or kill him (but mostly kill him).

* In ''[[Way of the Samurai]] 2'', it is possible to run off with items before paying. They won't chase you or harm you directly, but it does decrease your standing in the [[Karma Meter]]. You usually have two chances before the shopkeepers all over Amahara refuses to sell you anything. You then have to work for the townspeople to raise your standing all over again. If you're particularly unlucky, some random ronin will spot you as trouble and will try to take justice into his own hands...

** In the original ''[[Way of the Samurai]]'' however, there is only one shopkeeper in the game (the Blacksmith) who you can choose not to pay and will be attacked by. What makes him different from most games though is you can kill him, but will deprive yourself of a vendor for the rest of the game. You do get a unique weapon though.

* In ''[[Ultima IV]]'', underpaying a blind shopkeeper is not penalized physically, only causing you to lose ranks in the important [[Karma Meter|Honesty virtue]]. Clever players can pay 1 coin for a huge pile of expensive items, and then regain Honesty by purchasing cheap items at full price.

** In ''[[Ultima VIII]]'', any sort of theft or other misdemeanor you committed in the city would lead to you getting [[Kangaroo Court|blown up]] by the ([[Lord British Postulate|almost]]) invincible town sorcerer. It is possible to shoplift, e.g. from the blacksmith, but only by waiting or sleeping out of sight of him until he locks up and leaves on his regular walks downtown. Alternatively, you could just chuck something into a container (e.g. a large chest), then keep throwing the chest away until you're out of sight, where you can then safely loot the items from it.

* Pressing the attack key instead of the purchase key in ''[[Spelunky]]'' is a good way to be instantly killed by the shotgun-toting shopkeeper.

** ''Spelunky'' shopkeepers get angry over quite a few offenses, and there's a fairly complex system to determine their response to you. Killing a shopkeeper at any time, for any reason, causes the rest to be hostile to you for the rest of the game. Any other crime merely increases your [[Wanted Meter]], which goes down by one each floor. Notably, for whatever reason, stealing from a shopkeeper who is already angry doesn't count as a crime, which can be exploited for consequence-free robbery. As if that wasn't bad enough, some shopkeepers will not be in their stores, but waiting for you at the level exit hoping to catch you.

** “Smiley's Shop” in ''Wizardry: Tale of the Forsaken Land''. This time you get two chances to return the item and if you take either of them nothing happens. Not to mention they actually warn you on the sign the security guards are very powerful. Ignore both warnings and you get attacked by a group of four enemies collectively much harder than even the final boss and that you normally fight one at a time, very rarely on the final level of the main game. Defeat them (which actually isn't as hard as it sounds) and you get to keep the item (not really a big deal), get a lot of experience and gold... and the shop closes forever.

* In ''[[Thing Thing]] Arena 2'', if provoked the shop keeper will wail away at you with a minigun. It is, however, possible to defeat him and he will drop limitless minigun ammo.

* Subverted in ''[[Temple of Elemental Evil]]'' while Rannos Davl and Gremag are listed as CR 20 (designed to use 1/4 of a 20th level (the cap in the unmodded game is 10) party's resources on their own, only Iuz, [[Hopeless Boss Fight|who you are not meant to, but can, beat]] is higher) in the games bestiary they are only a decent challenge for a group of first level characters, particularly if you bring Elmo.

* In ''[[Postal]] 2'', one of the first tasks is to get milk from the store. If you take it and leave without paying, the owner will come after you with a gun. Of course, this being Postal, you can just shoot him. And of course, that's assuming you didn't [[Video Game Cruelty Potential|already shoot him before even getting the milk]]. The game strongly implies that this is the preferred outcome: the objective is counted as complete as soon as you grab the milk without even hinting at actually paying for it. Plus, attempting to do so places you in ridiculously long queue filled with people custom-designed to irritate the player with their words and behaviour. [[Acceptable Targets|That, and the shop owner is clearly a terrorist.]]

* Averted in the vast majority of ''[[World of Warcraft]]'', where most vendors can't be attacked, most things you can pick up in towns without talking to a vendor are free for the taking, and most enemies in the world don't care what you pick up on the ground near them. One place in the game that plays this trope straight, maybe the only place, is in the Grim Guzzler bar in the city of Blackrock Depths, an instance. Players can freely walk into the bar from a golem-manufacturing area, but the backdoor of the bar cannot be opened normally or lockpicked. There are several ways to open it, some of which fit this trope, including killing the bartender for the key (and he's definitely the toughest mob in the bar, and this will make some of the other mobs in the bar aggressive and might bring in city guards to "break up the fight") and getting one particular dwarf drunk, who will then get rowdy and break open the door and/or bring in the city guards on his own.

* In ''[[Deja Vu]]'', you may take ''one'' cab trip without paying the driver afterwards - try it again and he'll call the cops on you. Coupled with the murder rap you're trying to beat, it's ten to life for you. Taking a [[Ballistic Discount]] doesn't work either - it turns out that there's bulletproof glass between you and the cabbie, and he's even quicker about calling the cops on you if you test it. Perhaps you should try [[Schmuck Bait|shoplifting from the]] [[Ballistic Discount|gun shop owner]] instead...

* ''[[Runescape]]'' tries to play this trope straight with the Thieving skill. If a NPC catches you picking their pocket, they will smack you, if a guard sees you steal from a market stall he will attack you, and some chests and doors are armed with traps. However, said smacks and traps do little damage and the guards are too weak to pose a threat past low levels, so it's not so much Shoplift And Die as Shoplift And Be Briefly Annoyed.

* In ''[[Knights of the Old Republic]]'', the player can loot virtually every room in an apartment block, but one contains a bounty hunter who tells your player in no certain terms to leave. If you take her stuff, she attacks and won't surrender until either she or everyone in your party die. She's a wanted criminal though, and you get money for killing her.

* One of the puzzles in the online flash game ''[[Johnny Rocketfingers]] II'' is to figure out how to steal an item from a store without the shopkeeper blowing your head off. Fortunately, if you don't guess right, he gives you the chance to return what you stole before killing you, and only does so if [[Idiot Ball|you are an absolute idiot]] (i.e. "Don't move!" *do jumping jacks*).

* In the ''[[Streets of Rage]]'' fan remake, Blaze, of all people, pulls this trope if you dare to try to steal an unlockable without paying. If your computer clock is set between 6 AM and 7 AM, Blaze will be sleeping and you can attempt to steal one item. If you fail, you get banned from the store for a day. If you managed to successfully steal the item, you get banned from the shop and every time you complete the game, Blaze will take all the money you collected to pay off the item you stole until it is fully paid.

* In ''[[Divine Divinity]]'', stealing from shopkeepers will lower their attitude towards you, possibly making them refuse to trade with you in the future. (You can fix it by giving them free stuff.) If they get angry enough, they will call the guards. You can get away with stealing, however, if you've already killed all the guards in the area or if you just steal outside of the shopkeepers' line of sight.

* Non-video game (but still relevant) example: In the webcomic ''[[Kid Radd]]'', taking place in a world of video game characters, easily angered invincible shopkeepers are used as human shields/weapons.

* Another non-video game example is Ray Charles in the first ''[[Blues Brothers]] movie''. Despite being blind, he just barely missed a shoplifter with his gun from across the room. The kid promptly left without trying that again.

{{reflist}}