Threw My Bike on the Roof
Here's a situation this could apply to: A Jerkass character is walking down a sidewalk when he sees a group of young little kids playing with a certain toy, such as a ball or a remote-controlled plane. He goes to them all casual-like and asks them what they're up to. The kids explain that they had just bought a new toy and are now playing with it. The Jerkass then calls the kids "cute" and some other innocent hullabaloo, the kids being oblivious to what he's planning to do. Next thing you know though, the Jerkass either borrows the toy or takes it by force and then either breaks it, throws it on top of a roof or in a body of water, takes it for his own, or whatever other nasty things a Jerkass is proud of doing. After he does this, he walks away laughing at what he's done while the poor little kids cry or shout angrily at him, hopelessly unable to do anything to fix or retrieve their toy.
This doesn't necessarily have to be exactly like that situation though; this trope applies to all types of jerkassery committed to all kinds of helpless people regarding their items. For example, when the Jerkass's co-worker just finished his project on a computer or whatever and is about to save it, the Jerkass goes out of his way to pull the plug of his co-worker's computer, making the co-worker lose all his hard work.
A Sub-Trope of Kick the Dog. Sister Trope to For the Evulz.
Anime and Manga
- This is how Yu-Gi-Oh! starts. Yugi is working on his puzzle when bullies Honda/Tristan and Jounichi/Joey start picking on him and playing Keep-Away with it. Then Joey throws a piece of the puzzle into the pool. This is the start of a beautiful friendship. No, seriously.
- "We're tormenting you~!"
- The beautiful friendship only starts when Yugi decides to Save the Villain (not that either of them could count as villains, but still), Jonouchi/Joey has a Heel Face Turn and dives into the pool to get the missing piece back for Yugi. THAT'S the start of the beautiful friendship.
Film
- Industrial-grade asshole, Biff, does this in Back to The Future.
- It is also subverted when Marty takes the kid's scooter then turns it into a skateboard, making it way cooler. After kicking some serious ass he gives the cooler toy back to the kids.
- Kung Fu Hustle has it when Sing stomps a football and says his first line: "NO MORE SOCCER!" It's a reference to the director's previous film Shaolin Soccer.
- Kiefer Sutherland's character does this with the boy's baseball cap in Stand by Me.
- In Dennis the Menace The Movie, the fugitive/convict/whatever comes up to a kid and asks "Whatcha eatin', sport?" The kid replies, "Uh Appul (A apple)." Then the convict stabs the apple with his knife and pulls it out of the kid's hand. Then he proceeds to eat a bite in front of the crying child.
- In Léon: The Professional, Stansfield steals a basketball from some kids on the street and when they complain states they should be in school anyway.
- Despicable Me: Gru's Establishing Character Moment is when he gives a young boy a balloon animal... and pops it with a pin. He sets up this trope just for fun.
Live-Action TV
- In the Are You Afraid of the Dark? episode "The Tale of the Dark Music", a bully takes a kid's bike and throws it onto the street where it gets run over by a passing bus.
- M*A*S*H: BJ and Hawkeye were feuding with Charles - he was playing his French horn annoying them, so they refused to shower until he stopped. Eventually the rest of the camp ganged up on BJ and Hawk and hosed them down. Charles watched this with delight... until someone took away his French horn, laid it on the ground, and ran over it with a jeep.
- This is a rare example of Charles being the victim rather than the snob.
Video Games
- In Yuuko's chapter of Ef: A Fairy Tale of the Two., bullies do this with Yuuko's indoor shoes, hiding them on top of the lockers, which causes her to have to go around all day in her socks. Eventually subverted--Yuuko hid them up there herself to create the illusion that she was being bullied, so that she could better manipulate Yuu.
- In Fallout 2, you can break a kid's toy in a small sidequest. You even get Experience Points for teaching him that "life is cruel and unfair".
Western Animation
- The Simpsons: Bart & Nelson are with Millhouse in the park, watching him play with his remote control plane and are thoroughly bored.
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Bart: Milhouse, this is boring. Make it crash or something. |
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- Another, though this time subverted, example from the show is when Mr. Burns does this simply out of curiosity, but he's so old and decrepit that "taking candy from a baby" is not as easy as he had thought.
- In the Ren and Stimpy short "Sven Hoek", Stimpy and Ren's equally moronic cousin, Sven, are seen playing their favourite board game, Don't Whiz on the Electric Fence, which indeed has an actual electric fence. When Ren comes home from work, he finds they've also, in their idiocy, destroyed his most precious belongings. In the midst of a psychotic rant outlining the terrible things he has planned for them, Ren discovers the board game, and asks tauntingly, "Do you like this game? Do you really, really like this game?" and proceeds to take a leak on it. The resulting short generates an explosion that literally blows them all straight to Hell, where the Devil admonishes them with "You whizzed on the electric fence, didn't ya?"
- Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Whenever Meat Wad gets something, anything, Shake destroys it. Eventually, Shake is reduced to burning holes in Meat Wad's carpet, the only thing he has left.
- This backfires on him in "Video Ouija". Shake commits suicide so he can haunt Meatwad through the titular Video Ouija game, but by this time Meatwad has grown bored of it, leaving Shake stuck as a ghost caring for a perpetually crying ghost baby.