Eating someone else's lunch to taunt or intimidate them in Live-Action TV.
- The Americans: In the pilot, after a child predator makes crude remarks about his daughter, Phillip catches the guy barbecuing in his backyard. Phillip beats his ass, threatens to kill him if he catches it happening again, and then walks away with a hot dog off of his grill.
- Brooklyn Nine-Nine:
- Amy takes the last danish for her coffee break. Gina takes it from her and starts eating it. Lampshaded. They are discussing characters from Terry's book for his children that are kind of based on them. Character based on Gina is a stone-cold bitch, while Amy's character is a pushover.Gina: Is that how people see us?
Amy: Well, you did just steal that danish out of my hand and start eating it. And I let you. And apologized. - Terry's intimidating brother-in-law who unfairly treats him like a wimp takes the sandwich that Terry prepared for himself and casually starts eating it.
- Amy takes the last danish for her coffee break. Gina takes it from her and starts eating it. Lampshaded. They are discussing characters from Terry's book for his children that are kind of based on them. Character based on Gina is a stone-cold bitch, while Amy's character is a pushover.
- In a Chappelle's Show sketch, Wayne Brady acts like a violent psychopath and reduces Dave Chappelle to tears. Then he takes Dave's food after they grab some from a drive thru.
- Chief of Staff: Inverted with Kim Hyeon-soo, the corrupt chairman of corrupt Bugang Electronics. Kim is eating lunch when Tae-joon confronts him, saying that Kim could face a fine of 100,000-200,000 won ($10K-20K) if he doesn't show up for the hearing in the assembly. Kim sniffs that he spends more than that on liquor, then gets up from his half-eaten lunch and says "You can eat the rest if you didn't eat."
- Daredevil (2015): Played for Laughs early in season 3 where Dex decides to play a prank by taking a bite out of a burger being delivered to Fisk from room service just to see how Fisk will react. He just cuts off the bitten piece and eats the rest of the burger with a spork.Dex: If I'm being honest that's not the way I thought this was gonna go.
Lim: Who eats a burger with a spork? - Diff'rent Strokes: The two-parter "Crime Story" has two teenage bullies stealing the lunches and money of both Arnold and Dudley. They are not depicted as being harmless or goofy; they back up their words with physical force. The bullies even beat up Willis, who intervenes for Arnold and Dudley, so badly that he has to be hospitalized!
- Doctor Who: In "The Sea Devils", the Third Doctor duels with the Master with swords. During the fight, he proceeds to steal the Master's sandwich and eat it in front of him.The Doctor: I always find (grabs the sandwich) that violent exercise makes me hungry. Don't you agree? (takes a bite)
- On ER, our first introduction to antagonist Kerry Weaver is when she eats several of Mark Greene's French fries (he was interviewing her over lunch). Although she does ask for them rather than taking them outright, she does proceed to be a thoroughly irritating thorn in his and practically everyone else's side for the next 12 years.
- Game of Thrones:
- In "Blackwater", Bronn and some gold cloaks and Lannister soldiers are drinking, singing and whoring in a tavern, expecting Stannis' siege. Then Sandor Clegane the Hound, King Joffrey's intimidating guard, enters with a guy, and he motions to two guys to get out from their table. They don't even blink an eye and go. One of them tries to take his mug of ale with him, but the Hound calmly takes it from his hands, sits and starts drinking. Pure alpha dog.
- The Hound, a former personal bodyguard to King, now wandering in Riverlands, calmly chugs down Polliver's mug of ale and demands one of his chickens when Polliver started getting confrontational. Bar Brawl ensues. With swords. Shortly before the Hound slaughters Polliver and three or four of his men.Polliver: You don't seem to understand the situation.
Hound: I understand that if any more words come pouring out your cunt mouth, I'm going to have to eat every fucking chicken in this room.
Polliver: You lived your life for the king. You’re going to die for some chickens?
Hound: Someone is.
- From the mini-series Horatio Hornblower:
- In "The Even Chance", Jack Simpson is a twisted bully who torments his fellow midshipmen. He steals Horatio's mutton and drinks from his mug in his very first scene.Horatio: What do you mean by helping yourself to my vittles, sir?
Jack Simpson: I should have thought my intention was quite obvious. - In "Mutiny", a jerk of a sailor Randall tries to take Styles' mug from the table, but Styles demands he put it back, which he eventually does because of gunner Hobbs who just entered the room.
- In "The Even Chance", Jack Simpson is a twisted bully who torments his fellow midshipmen. He steals Horatio's mutton and drinks from his mug in his very first scene.
- In House, House steals Wilson's food repeatedly and sometimes eats it right in front of Wilson to tick him off. It's Played for Laughs as they are friends who bicker all the time. This is along with bigger versions of the same thing, such as getting him to lend him money and not repaying it. Eventually he admits that he does it as a way of quantitatively testing their friendship. Wilson plays games with him as well, for instance he began randomly switching between an extremely health-conscious diet and pure junk, leaving conflicting hints that he was going on a diet. This quickly drove House up the wall since he could never figure out why Wilson was doing it (House would eat his food either way). Eventually he realized Wilson was jerking him around just to fuck with him. There is also the time when Wilson's complaining about this served to trigger House's "Eureka!" Moment. Turns out the patient had an intestine parasite that was eating the medicine and generally messing up the tests.
- iCarly:
- Lewbert had his steak stolen by a trick-or-treating kid in "iScream on Halloween" who didn't get any candy. He angrily shrieks and throws vegetables at that kid.
- At the Groovy Smoothie, Carly had her fries eaten right in front of her eyes by the school bully Jocelyn in "iMake Sam Girlier".
- Parodied in Justified. Dickie Bennett, looking to build his reputation after being cut off by his mother, steals food as part of an attempt to intimidate Boyd. As it happens, Boyd and his henchmen were just discussing who they can target to establish themselves as being back in the criminal game. Dickie's pathetic attempts are seen by Boyd as good fortune, and he can't stop laughing when Dickie tries.
- Kamen Rider:
- Kamen Rider Ryuki: Asakura, a fugitive murderer, breaks into the flat of Kitaoka, a lawyer who refused to represent him in court, and ate his seafood right in front of him, shells and all. It did the job of disgusting and horrifying Kitaoka (and his Battle Butler Gorou, who’d prepared the dish) as if Asakura was not scary enough already.
- Kamen Rider Ex-Aid plays it as a Funny Background Event. When Parado "negotiated" with the staff of CR, Graphite found the cake prepared for Hiiro by his father and ate it. Simply 'see cake, eat cake'. It went mostly without opposition as Hiiro was not even there and everyone else was paying attention to Parado.
- Played for Laughs in Kamen Rider Zi-O, where Sougo’s biggest issue with Kadoya Tsukasa is that the latter ate his dinner while he was out, rather than the fact that Tsukasa is playing Psycho for Hire towards the Big Bad and has outright said he intends to destroy this world.
- Also an inversion - enemy makes your lunch. Daiki wanted to one-up Tsukasa, so he made everyone a breakfast. Which they barely touched because 1) they finally realized who he was, 2) he had already left before they could confront him, and 3) the whole thing was a distraction to steal all of the Ridewatches.
- Law & Order: Criminal Intent: While Goren and Eames are questioning a doctor at a dinner party, Goren helps himself to the doctor's steak.
- In one episode of Leverage, Tara walked up to a guy whose invitation to an auction they needed and started eating his sandwich. With a little help from Eliot's Death Glare, she intimidated him so badly he gave her the invitation. Without either Tara or Eliot saying a word.
- In episode 4 of Lupin (2021), Assane announces his presence at a man's table by taking a bite of his bread and jam, then dipping it into his coffee.
- Malcolm in the Middle: Exploited. Malcolm goes around the house scraping every disgusting bit of filth he can find onto a sandwich, knowing that Reese will steal it from him and eat it.
- In Max and Paddy's Road to Nowhere, Pepe, a Camp Gay black inmate at the prison Max and Paddy are staying in after they hijacked a school bus carrying Max's son, tries to intimidate a prisoner who's behind on "collection day" by scooping out a handful of sponge cake that the prisoner's daughter made for him. Max and Paddy successfully intimidate him into withdrawing by hitting him with a steel tray, but he takes revenge later on by reporting them to his boyfriend, Raymond the Bastard.
- The New Avengers: The Avengers help themselves to the Unicorn's champagne while holding him prisoner in his apartment in "The Lion and the Unicorn".
- The Office (US):
- Michael, Pam and Ryan have returned from the Michael Scott Paper Company, and the others are jealous that they are getting special treatment. They have a secret meeting in the warehouse, saying it was their lunch break. Michael then proceeds to take their real lunches out of the fridge and eat them in front of the others with Pam and Ryan.
- Exploited by Dwight in a previous episode. When the top salesman of the branch chooses to side with Charles Miner and Dunder Mifflin in the DM-MSPC war, he goes to sabotage the MSPC, faking deciding to go meet up with Michael at lunch at a restaurant and betting on him deciding to bring his pre-ordered lunch with him as takeout. Once Michael realizes Dwight has turned on them, he tries to eat Dwight's lunch out of spite, only to realize to his disgusted that Dwight tricked him into eating the worst dish the restaurant has.
- In an episode of Once Upon a Time Emma gives a prisoner a bottle of water and a Pop-Tart for dinner - a Pop-Tart which she has taken a bite of. When he complains, she merely says "I've had my shots."
- Oz. Inmates eat other inmates' food so they can intimidate, usually leading to Prison Rape and other much worse things.
- Early in Power Rangers RPM, Ziggy and Dillon have landed themselves in jail. Many of the inmates already hate Ziggy, and in the prison lunchroom one intimidates him by bragging that he's such a big shot, he gets a special dessert of lime Jell-O just for him. While this is going on, Dillon is in the lunch line getting his food... including, very deliberately, the lime Jell-O. A fight ensues - which Dillon decisively wins, which catches the attention of the Rangers.
- In Ratched, Nurse Bucket does this with Mildred's peach that she brought for lunch, clearly trying to establish dominance. But Mildred still gets the last laugh when Bucket ends up vomiting it up during a lobotomy demonstration.
- In the Red Dwarf episode "Only the Good", Cat steals French fries from a fellow inmate in the hopes that he will be hospitalized for his troubles. Instead, it backfires hilariously and the inmate swears to become Cat's bitch.
- In Riget, Dr. Krogshøj pulls this on Dr. Helmer by drinking (what he thinks is) his cup of coffee. It backfires spectacularly as it turns out that it was actually a poisoned cup of coffee that Dr. Helmer was trying to dispose of.
- Saturday Night Live parodied the famous scene in There Will Be Blood by having Daniel Plainview host a Food Network show in which he visited malt shops and literally drank people's milkshakes.
- Scrubs: One episode has a moment where Turk casually sticks his finger in Carla's brother's drink as he walks past.
- In Sherlock season 3 episode His Last Wow, Magnussen considers himself untouchable due to the leverage he has over his enemies, and allows himself to engage in offensive behaviour whenever possible. One of these (not the worst one by far) include stirring the pasta in Sherlock's plate and eating an olive from his plate, then wash his fingers in his glass of water.
- In the episode 'Remember When' from The Sopranos, new boss of the New York-based Lupertazzi crime family Doc Santoro eats food off the plate of former acting boss Phil Leotardo during a formal dinner as a show of dominance. Phil later has him assassinated, leaving him as the official boss.
- Star Trek: Voyager. The episode "Counterpoint" opens with Devore Imperium soldiers boarding Voyager to search it for the umpteenth time. Our introduction to the episode antagonist, Inspector Kashyk, has the smug commander summoning Captain Janeway to her own Ready Room where he's sitting in her captain's chair (itself a severe violation of etiquette), ordering his underling to make them some coffee using her own replicator.
- Awesomely parodied by Stella, which includes a scene where Michael attempts to psych out his enemy by eating his ice cream cone in an intimidating fashion. Macho posturing and eating ice cream cones do not go well together.
- The Tick (2016): The Terror does this to establish his Evil Is Petty credentials. While blinding and murdering a superhero team he sees a boy sitting horror-struck at a table nearby, walks up and taunts him with his helplessness, then steals his ice cream, drinks it one gulp, and just walks off.
- In the Zoey 101 season 1 episode "Disc Golf", Coach Phelps angrily snatches Michael's bag of potato chips and berates the boy for eating in his gym class, only for Phelps to start munching on the chips himself.
