The Artful Dodger

aka: Artful Dodger

"Please, the whole street is my home. Spare change would be nice, though."

"This only goes to show what little people can do!
And little people know when little people fight,
We may look easy pickings but we've got some bite!"

— Gavroche, Les Misérables, "Little People"

The Artful Dodger is like the Street Urchin, except that instead of being The Woobie that makes you want to take them up in your arms and care for them, they seem perfectly happy to take care of themselves. Oh, they'd let you take them home, just don't expect them (or any of your valuable possessions) to be there the next morning. In Real Life, a child who lives on the streets experiences horrors most people could not even imagine, but in some fictional works, a child on the street lives a happy-go-lucky life and practically thrives (often no longer visibly terrified thanks to having long since been Conditioned to Accept Horror).

They are exceptionally Street Smart, and can take care of themselves better than most adults, being a bit more experienced in the field. They're usually a criminal. Not the poor, innocent child who hates having to steal out of desperation, but the whip-smart trickster. The adult protagonist may feel sorry for them and try to help them at first, but it will usually turn out that the adult actually needs their help. They often have some sort of unique knowledge or skill that the protagonist needs in some circumstance, such as how to access any part of the city through the sewer system.

They'll probably start out as a pest, but they'll turn out to be one of the Hero's most powerful and stalwart allies when the chips are down. They're characterized by sarcasm, cynicism, skepticism, incredible resourcefulness, and a charming fascination with violence, but in the end, they's likely to succumb to the temptation of family life with the Hero, even if their life on the street was clearly more Awesome. They're also fairly likely to die by Taking the Bullet for the Hero. In this case, the Hero will retroactively adopt the Kid, for instance by putting their own surname on the Kid's tombstone. Can grow up to become a Satisfied Street Rat, but the Dodger is more of a trickster where archetypally the Street Rat is more of a cutthroat.

If the Artful Dodger is working for someone (as the original did), expect their boss to be some variety of The Fagin.

Usually male, but there are a few exceptions.

Compare with Lovable Rogue or Baker Street Regular.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Berserk: Isidro is a hot-headed kid who ran away from home in search of adventure, and since then he has supported his vagrant lifestyle through thievery, demonstrating the ability to carry off absurdly large amounts of stolen food and valuables inside his clothes. Even after joining Guts' new group and gaining some stability he still occasionally pickpockets people and shoplifts from merchants.
• In Ie Ga Moete Jinsei Dou Demo Yoku Natta Kara, the main characters meet a 10-year-old boy that tries to be one. Not only does his attempt at pickpocketing them get him a nice warning shot at his feet and lectures from both Atie and his own mother, but he tries to steal from a crime syndicate and suffers an especially Cruel and Unusual Death.
• Mattia from Ie Naki Ko Remi is the ringleader of the kids at the Orphanage of Fear and has quite sticky fingers, being able to thieve left and right without being noticed. It's not that he wants to, but Gaspard will beat the children if he doesn't. After he meets Remi, she encourages him to make money the honest way.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Phantom Blood: Robert E.O. Speedwagon starts off this way, living in the slums of Ogre Street, London, and living his whole life by stealing to survive and battling people specifically to know how noble they are. His Street Smarts are so developed, that he's able to determine how good or bad a person is merely by their scent. After he saw how noble of a gentleman Jonathan Joestar was, he and Speedwagon became Heterosexual Life-Partners up until Jonathan's untimely death on an exploding boat, and Speedwagon went on to found the Speedwagon Foundation.
• In Pokémon the Series: XY, Serena's Pancham starts out as this. He loved to perform and would steal props to use when performing in private. But he was embarrassed by his interest in performance to the point where he'd act out and ruin public performances if he drew too much attention to himself. When Serena wanted to take him in and tap his talent, he did not make it easy, though she eventually defeated and captured him in battle.
• In Rebuild World, the child gang that tries to mug Akira over 300 aurum is a subversion. Like him, they're orphans with no education, no food, and no one to turn to. They only barely scrape by and aren't especially bright or resourceful. Even after Akira explains that it'd cost more to shoot him than they'd get off him, they still try to kill him over pocket change, forcing Akira to kill them in self-defense.

Comic Books

• The teens Torr and Tarra in Swordquest are twin orphans who survive on the streets through stealing.

Films — Animation

• The title character of Disney's Aladdin (not so much in the original Arabian Nights). He seems to be more grown-up, but since his age is never revealed, it can be assumed that he is just a teenager of about 17 or 18.
• Tony Toponi from An American Tail fits this trope well. He's a streetwise orphan mouse who Fievel meets in a sweatshop. After they bust out, Tony helps Fievel find his family.
• Dodger from Disney's Oliver & Company is on the cusp of this trope; mostly because he's much older (thanks to being voiced by Billy Joel), not to mention being a dog. Of course, he is a literal expy of the trope namer.
• Vanellope von Schweetz in Wreck-It Ralph lives in Diet Cola Mountain in Sugar Rush, and sleeps under candy wrappers. She finds the Hero's Duty medal and teases Ralph, which prompts him to make a deal to help her become a regular member of the Sugar Rush starting lineup in exchange for getting his medal back. When they get to the go-cart factory, King Candy has a "Stay Out" poster on the door, banning Vanellope. Due to her glitching and King Candy controlling the memory banks, she gets bullied by the other racers, telling Ralph that if she became a regular racer, they would treat her with more respect.

Films — Live-Action

• '71: The young boy that happens upon Hook and navigates him through the hostile streets of Belfast is a good example. His precocity and ties to the Protestant paramilitaries make him a particularly bold little dude, scolding men twice his age when one makes the mistake of taking him lightly by naming his uncle (apparently a high-level member in a paramilitary group).
• The Kid from Dick Tracy: a scrawny street orphan who survives by eating out of garbage cans and is a protege of Steve the Tramp.
• Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom: an eleven-year old taxicab driver in Shanghai, Short Round was orphaned when the Japanese bombed Shanghai in 1932; he helps Indiana escape from Lao Che.
• Phillipe in Ladyhawke is in his late teens and is perfectly fine with being a petty thief and a purse-cutter. The film opens with him escaping from an inescapable dungeon, then instantly going back to thievery. He's shown being perfectly capable of fending for himself throughout the entire story.
• The Feral Kid in Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior: a boy who lives in the wasteland near the refinery settlement. He speaks only in growls and grunts. The boy wears shorts and boots made from hide, and defends himself with a lethal metal Battle Boomerang which he can catch using an improvised mail glove.
• The Odd Angry Shot: One of these pulls a money-changing scam on a pair of marines in Saigon, but gets caught by Bung. The Aussies and the Yanks shake the punk down for everything he has and split it between them.
• In Solo, Han Solo claims to have been running scams on the streets of Corellia and stealing landspeeders since he was ten. And he had to pick pockets and steal stuff and bring it to Lady Proxima, like the other scrumrats.
• In Stuart Little 2, Margalo the canary is this at the beginning, when she pretends to be friends with Stuart, to steal Mrs. Little's ring and give it to Falcon. But when she begins to really enjoy her friendship with Stuart, it makes she forget about her main assignment. And this makes Falcon begin to lose patience.
• The movie version of Toby from Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is like this. He is the apprentice of Signor Adolfo Pirelli, and helps the fake Italian sell fake potions for hair, made of "piss and ink". In the stage musical, Toby is portrayed as a mentally handicapped adult.

Literature

• At the end of The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole, a minor character Boz is a possible example.
  Boz is going to help me fix the brakes on my bike, he is an expert bike-fixer. He has been stealing them since he was six.
• Sara-Kate from Afternoon of the Elves fancies herself to be this, lying and stealing to keep herself and her ailing mother "safe" from outsiders and preserve their makeshift life together. It backfires in the end.
• Beyond the Western Sea has two, Fred No-name and Ralph Toggs.^note "Look at his togs, Fagin," said Charley, putting the light so close to Oliver's new jacket as nearly to set him on fire.
• Briar of the Circle of Magic books by Tamora Pierce started out this way, he was even named Roach by the leader of his street gang. However, this life is in no way romanticized, as by the start of the book he had experienced routine hunger, gang wars, physical abuse by police and other adults, had been arrested three times, and was on his way to punishment labour (which it was implied he would not survive more than a couple of years) before Nico found him.
• Piccadilly from The Deptford Mice is a streetwise orphan mouse with a Cockney accent and a cheeky attitude.
• The main character of Terry Pratchett's Dodger is both a tribute to Dickens' version and a Deconstruction of the trope.
• In Five go to Demon's Rocks from The Famous Five, the policeman refers to the thief Jacob as an artful dodger.
• Young Locke Lamora of the Gentleman Bastard series was a classic Artful Dodger despite actually living under realistically miserable conditions for a street urchin. (Seriously, The Thiefmaker's hill is awful.) He's just that happy to take others' stuff.
• Lyra of His Dark Materials is a rare female example. Well, she just acts like this despite having a good place to stay. Later on, when she really ends up on the street in a strange city, she finds it's not so fun.
• Kimball O'Hara, eponymous hero of Rudyard Kipling's Kim. Living a vagabond existence in India under British rule in the late 19th century, Kim earns his living by begging and running small errands on the streets of Lahore. He occasionally works for Mahbub Ali, a Pashtun horse trader who is one of the native operatives of the British secret service. Kim is so immersed in the local culture that few realise he is a white child.
• Huckleberry Finn was pretty much this, though moreso in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
• Gavroche in Les Misérables - but Hugo investigates the source of Gavroche's lifestyle and its probable end. Gavroche springs from parents (the Thenardiers) who are cutthroat and depraved, but also incredibly resourceful. Hugo describes Gavroche's quick mind and high spirits but says that though he's slipped through the cracks all his life, he's on the cusp of outgrowing the life he lives. Then, he might ally with the noble cause of the Friends of the ABC (who include a few working-class idealists in their ranks), or else, Hugo compares at least one vicious and brutal thug in M. Thenardier's gang to a grown-up Gavroche. As it turns out, he dies at the barricade before he can grow up for either good or ill.
• Parodied in Night Watch with young Nobby as the Artful Nudger (specifically a parody of Gavroche, since most of the book is a Deconstruction of Les Misérables). When Vimes gets sent to the past in Night Watch, he immediately hires Nobby as an informant when they cross paths, recognizing the utility of small cheeky street urchins (what with having known Nobby for most of their mutual lives).
• Oliver Twist:
  • Being the Trope Namer, The Artful Dodger is the epitome of this trope ...until his boss's gambit goes awry, the police search his home and he gets deported to Australia.
  • Peter David's sequel, Artful, features a vampyre-hunting Artful Dodger.
• Isaac Asimov's Prelude to Foundation: Raych, a charming alley kid (his mother is briefly mentioned) in the Dahl sector, initially demands a knife as payment for leading Seldon and Venabili to Mother Rittah. Seldon is able to convince him that a computer that teaches him to read is more valuable, and pays him that way. They repeatedly have to haggle with Raych to ensure they get what they want from him, and eventually adopt him as their child.
• Any number of Horatio Alger, Jr. characters. His first (and arguably best) children's novel, Ragged Dick, is the archetype of Alger's street hero books.
• Magpie from Renegades is a young girl living on the streets and making money pickpocketing. This lasts until Adrian catches her trying to rob Nova, and takes her to the Renegade headquarters so that she may be reformed - something she's not happy about, even though they give her food and bed.
• Jimmy the Hand from Raymond E. Feist's The Riftwar Cycle is introduced as a clever young member of the Mockers who knows his way around the streets and sewers of Krondor. In the Serpentwar books, it's mentioned that when now-Duke James threw out his grandchildren onto the streets for a while to remind them of just how well they had it in the palace, they thrived by their own wits and ended up with a controlling interest in a brothel.
• Lupus in The Roman Mysteries. Lupus was born Lukos on the Greek island, Symi, to Melissa and Alexandros. His father was killed when he was quite young by his Uncle Phillipos, later known as Venalicius, who also cuts out Lupus' tongue and takes him to sell as a slave. Lupus escapes from the slave ship, and, while living as a beggar in Ostia, meets Flavia Gemina, Nubia and Jonathan ben Mordecai.
• Sherlock Holmes had a whole gang of these, called the Baker Street Irregulars, to help him search for things or people all over the city.
• Jan from The Silver Sword is a classic example, who ends up becoming a hero by the end of the book as he saves Edek from drowning.
• Arya Stark in A Song of Ice and Fire was always a Rebellious Princess with a habit of running away from the ladylike upbringing her parents provide and getting into scraps. When she's forced to go on the run from King's Landing she is thrust into this lifestyle full-time and finds that while it's harder and more traumatic than she's used to, she has a knack for survival. On escaping to Braavos she takes several fake identities posing as street urchins while secretly training to be an assassin.
• The Tinker Tots from Super Minion. They run penny-ante extortion schemes and set up booby-traps, which they frequently use to either steal from people while they're stuck or demand payment to help people get out. Most members of Hellion's Henchmen find them annoying, but not enough to warrant the violence it would take to get rid of them.
• Skif from Take a Thief is an adept street rat and thief who, at first, lifts food from the rich to feed himself, and later joins up with The Fagin's gang to live in decent comfort while pilfering valuable items. Most of his original gangmates also get out decently, however. This phase of his life comes to an end when his home is burned down by an arsonist, catapulting him into adulthood early and driving him to become a true master thief, and later leading him to the Heralds.
• Talen in David Eddings' Elenium/Tamuli 'verse has one of these - a street-urchin with enough talents to classify as a borderline Marty Stu (eidetic memory, incredible artistic skills, unbeatable in lockpicking and pickpocketing, highly intelligent, does complicated math in his head despite having little formal education...)

Live-Action TV

• Boxey in Battlestar Galactica (2003) was going to become this, until the character was written out due to a lack of time for the planned development.
• Parodied in The Bleak Old Shop Of Stuff with the Artful Codger ("codger" being British slang for an elderly person), who has spent his entire life with a gang of urchin kids because he failed the exam to graduate to "vagabond" or "ne'er-do-well".
• Dickensian has the trope namer, portrayed as a sneakthief and pickpocket who also passes messages from Bill Sykes to Fagin (although he is so far shown as the only child working with them, so Fagin isn't exactly The Fagin yet.)
• Doctor Who:
  • Adric, one of the Doctor's companions in the Classic Series, was originally intended to be an "Artful Dodger" character; Matthew Waterhouse even assumed he would have to put on a Cockney accent when auditioning for the role. However, subsequent scripts deviated from this, resulting in a character whom many fans came to regard as one of the most annoying companions in the series.
  • Nancy of "The Empty Child"/"The Doctor Dances" is a lesser example; although she used the clever tricks to survive which are trademark to this trope, she is anything but happy-go-lucky.
• Phoebe Buffay in Friends may well have been an Artful Dodger in her teens. She had to live on the streets from the age of 14 and is unlikely to have been an instance of The Woobie judging by her character during the series. In one episode it's revealed that she once mugged a young Ross Geller.
• Captain Marvelous and Luka Millfy of Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger were this in flashbacks to their childhoods.
• Parker had this as her back story on Leverage as she had left the foster system as a teenager after spending six months in Juvie. Notable in that she managed to pickpocket one of the best thieves in the world and later became his apprentice.
• Albert on Little House on the Prairie was portrayed as this type of urchin, stealing or conning people to get by when he was first encountered living on the streets of Winoka. Though he found a home with the Ingalls' family and was portrayed as more or less straight-laced after that, Albert was not above using his street smarts to con people in subsequent episodes. For example, he gave a sob story in "Men Will Be Boys" to get food and shelter, pretended to be buying for a relative in "The Odyssey" only to take off with the goods, and convinced Mrs. Oleson in "Author, Author" that his adoptive grandfather's memoirs contained racy material so that she would agree to sell the book in her store.
• Parallax: Francis Zapmeister is a textbook example. The third episode is even called "The Artful Dodger".
• Liam in Tracy Beaker Returns. Support worker Mike Milligan collects him from the police station and runs into Tracy who just published her first book followed by this discussion:
  Mike Milligan: See, Liam, if you want to get on in life, maybe we could have a little less artful dodger and a bit more Tracy Beaker.
  Liam: I am like Tracy! We both got nicked! ^note "nick" meaning "arrested" in British slang.
  Mike: [after Tracy's explanation for being in the station] You published your own book with Cam's money?! Tracy, how could you?
  Tracy: [defensive] Cam's a writer! She'll understand! I'll pay her back when the book sells.
  Mike: [facepalms] Oh, Tracy...
  Liam: So Mike, I think I'd better stick with the artful dodger thing for now. What d'you reckon?

Tabletop Games

• In Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, this is a popular build for Rogues. The artful dodger is dexterous and charismatic, and an ideal build for halflings.

Theater

• Gavroche of Les Misérables — this example is a great deal straighter than the one in the book. He also gets some of the best Greek Chorus lines, which The Movie only enhances — "This is the land that fought for liberty, now when we fight, we fight for bread! That is the thing about equality: Everyone's equal when they're dead."

Video Games

• Davis Pickle in Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! is a 10-year-old orphan boy who makes his living scavenging bits of useful technology from the wreckage of Dahl spaceships and installations on Elpis. He actually does pretty well for himself, being clever and nimble enough to outmaneuver other scav gangs, and has enough money to hire the player characters and other subcontractors.
• Shift from BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Storm walks a blurry line between this and Satisfied Street Rat. He’s a bit older than you’d expect from the former, being in his late teens or early twenties, but he’s cheerful and not nearly as cutthroat as you’d expect from the latter. In either case, life in the streets suits him just fine, until he gets recruited into your party.
• Wirt from the original Diablo took to thieving soon after being kidnapped and tortured by demons and losing his leg. He's a quite sullen boy who sells rare items that he steals from others, though he tends to charge a lot for them.
• In The Elder Scrolls series' backstory, Barenziah, the Lost Orphaned Royalty future Queen of Morrowind, spent her youth after escaping from her foster family lying, stealing, and sleeping around. She actually enjoyed it and would even join the Thieves' Guild.
• Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach hints at this trope with the player character, Gregory. The one star ending, as well as other hints throughout the game (such as his lack of records being brought up several times), suggest he's either an orphan or runaway who has been living on the streets for some time, with that ending showing him sleeping in a Cardboard Box Home in an alleyway. He's also the most resourceful of the FNAF protagonists, such as knowing how to use jumper cables in a different ending and not only being ruthless enough to take the other Glamrocks' upgrades but executing the means to acquire them. It's likely because he's had to learn how to fend for himself at a young age. In some endings Freddy and Gregory escape together, meaning he now has a father figure in his life. This also explains why he's being targeted by Vanny the way he is: as a homeless child, he likely has no one who'd look for him if something happened, and would be more likely to be lured to his death with the promise of food and other useful goods.
• Mission Vao from Knights of the Old Republic. She's very cheerful, good at picking locks and pockets, looks out for her Wookiee buddy (she's the brains, he's the brawn), an excellent scout (high stealth), and higher on the Karma Meter than the party's Jedi. And grew up in one of the filthiest Wretched Hives in the galaxy despite being of an age, attractiveness level, species, and gender that would have normally railroaded her into slavery and / or prostitution.
• Maeve from Paladins Is not only an Artful Dodger by definition, hailing from "The mean streets" while being very skilled in thievery and knife fighting, one of her Legendary cards is even called "Artful Dodger".
• Notkin in Pathologic is one of these, having become the leader of a gang of urchin children known as the Soul-And-A-Halves. Despite his brash attitude, he is good at heart and aids the protagonists — especially the Haruspex, who may charge himself with taking care of the young urchin.
• This is an achievement for Scout in Team Fortress 2 - taking over 1000 damage while invincible. In addition to being a baseball reference, it references his backstory, where he's the youngest of eight brothers who happened to form themselves into a gang simply out of boredom.
• Nathan Drake from the Uncharted series is one as a teenager until Sully "adopts" him as a protégé.

Webcomics

• Lil' Ragamuffin in Guttersnipe is a parody of this trope, a street girl fanatically devoted to the "urchin life" and proud of her "unfancy" living situation.
• Rabble-Rouser (real name Reginald) in RPG World counts. He's actually Diane's little brother that was actually abandoned in South City as a baby because his father was a human and his mother was a monster. They used a magic spell to make Diane look more human because otherwise they wouldn't be allowed to keep her. The spell didn't work so well on Rabble-Rouser, so he was left to grow up on the streets.
• Raggamuffin Amelie from Semi-Auto Semla is a bit of a Deconstruction of this trope. While she's a hyperactive, cheery ball of theft and zany schemes, it's repeatedly shown that these antics of her do her more harm than good. Furthermore, it's implied that her happy nature is just a coping mechanism for the horrors she's seen on the streets.

Web Original

• Sylvester in Twig becomes this after he deserts the Academy of Evil. He doesn't lack for money or comforts, since he knows how to get them, and if he needs something he steals it. This stands in stark contrast to other homeless children in the setting who are closer to the Street Urchin archetype, lacking Sy's background as a Child Soldier with access to a Psycho Serum which gives him an edge.

Western Animation

• Peep from Jimmy Two-Shoes, who gleefully uses his Sticky Fingers to rob Miseryville blind. Appropriately, his dad runs the local Honest John's Dealership.
• Lucky Seven Sampson from Schoolhouse Rock! says he, "never did a whole day's work in my life; still, everything seemed to turn out right," as he was born, "'neath a lucky star". He uses this luck of his to hitch rides on flatbed trucks and eat any food he comes across, with his favorite hobbies being making people happy and helping out children with their schoolwork.
• Manic from Sonic Underground was one at the start of the series, having been stolen off the doorstep of his intended foster home and raised by thieves instead. Having spent his whole life working with them, he's perfectly happy with his station (and very good at it). Of course, once the call finds out where he lives, he's forced to abandon that lifestyle and team up with his long-lost siblings as part of La Ressitance, where his thieving skills prove helpful on several occasions.
• In ThunderCats (2011), The Thunderkittens are lower-caste slum-dwelling Trickster Twins who manage to survive fairly well in the Fantastic Ghettos of Thundera. As a Magical Flutist, Wilykit puts their marks into a trance while her brother Wilykat uses a Five-Finger Discount to rob them blind. Their skill at what they do helps keep them cheery and optimistic.

Real Life

• Colton Harris-Moore, more commonly known as the Barefoot Bandit. He started living in the wild at the age of seven and would break into vacation homes; stealing blankets, food, and water before disappearing into the forest for days. His first conviction for stolen property came at age 12, and by the time he was 13, he had three more. He's suspected of about 100 thefts in Washington, Idaho, and Canada, including bicycles, automobiles, LIGHT AIRCRAFT, and SPEEDBOATS. He most likely learned how to fly small planes by reading aircraft manuals and playing flight simulator computer games. He was captured in the Bahamas: he'd stolen a small plane and flown it down there, then was captured by police after they shot out his speedboat's engine during a FRIGGIN' HIGH-SPEED WATER CHASE. He is nick-named the Barefoot Bandit (or Barefoot Burglar, if you prefer) because he would filch items from stores whilst barefoot and painted footprints on the floor to taunt police... In April 2010, 20th Century Fox bought the rights to make a movie about him.

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