Dine and Dash

"If I go to a restaurant and the food's bad, I make it a policy to stiff 'em with the bill."

— Jotaro Kujo, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders

Characters either don't want to or can't pay for a meal, so they run (or sneak) out of the restaurant when or before the bill arrives. A common route is escaping through the bathroom window.

An attempt to invoke Refuge in Audacity. Often the result of a Shockingly Expensive Bill. A common alternative is Work Off the Debt. Not to be confused with Forgot to Pay the Bill. The inversion is They Wasted a Perfectly Good Sandwich, where a character pays for their food but never eats it.

Truth in Television and a particularly cruel form of crime, as often wait staff are expected to cover the costs of perpetrators' meals from their own tips and wages, even where this is illegal.

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Examples:

Advertising

• An ad for a Canadian credit card company involved this, with a frantic son calling his father after taking his girl to a too-expensive restaurant and asking whether the washrooms had windows you could wiggle out of.

Anime & Manga

• The second chapter of Black Cat opens with Train and Sven trying to collect a bounty on a serial dine-and-dasher. When he bolts, Train runs after him, leaving Sven to follow suit... and get labeled as a dine-and-dasher himself!
• Case Closed: Harley Hartwell wins a case-solving competition against Detective Moore while the latter is busy dining and drinking with one of the clients. Moore is so desperate for the TV appearance that he thought he would get from the competition that he demands that Harley come up with a crime for him to solve, suggesting that something as minor as a dine-and-dash would be sufficient. Another client is inspired by this suggestion to have Harley and Moore do an eating contest on TV (though without the "dash" part).
• Dragon Ball:
  • Dragon Ball Z: After the children's tournament is over, Goten and Trunks head up to the restaurant to have a feast. Goten then tells Trunks he's going to have to pay for it, but Trunks reveals he doesn't have any money on him (Goten assumed Trunks would pay with the prize money he earned, but Trunks hasn't received it yet). Naturally they try to sneak out and then run away when the cooks chase after them.
  • Dragon Ball Super: One of Space Patrolman Jaco's targets is "Burp Man", a serial dine-and-dasher.
• Fairy Tail: After she is freed from the Tower of Heaven and Jellal's control, Miliana eats some chocolate-covered bananas on a festival stand without planning to pay for them. She has to escape with Sho and Wally's help. Unusually, it wasn't because of any malice or stinginess, but because her years in slavery stunted her social and emotional development — she genuinely didn't know about the concept of paying for food. This incident is what convinces the trio that they need some time to adjust to the norms of the real world on their own time before they join the Fairy Tail guild.
• In Great Teacher Onizuka, Urumi is blackmailing Onizuka, and orders him to take her and some of her classmates to an expensive sushi restaurant, where they order several platters of expensive fatty tuna. Eventually, Onizuka snaps and buys five more servings for himself and starts eating like there's no tomorrow. Then he orders five more servings of abalone and sea urchin. And a sashimi boat. And 10 MORE servings of salmon roe, ark shell, and sweet shrimp. His plan from the beginning was to dine and dash, which he does, still clutching the sushi boat, with his students running behind him, pursued by the chef.
• In GTO: The Early Years, Eikichi and Ryuji each thought the other was paying for their meal, since both of them were pretty much broke. They end up sneaking out the bathroom window.
• Discussed in Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure Stardust Crusaders. Jotaro Kujo admits that "nobody ever said Jotaro Kujo was a nice guy", adding that he'll intentionally dine-and-dash if he thinks the food is lousy at a restaurant. However, as Jotaro notes, "even a bastard like me can still spot true evil when he sees it", as Jotaro said this to a pre-Heel–Face Turn Kakyoin who had seemingly killed an innocent woman.
• Monster Rancher: Hare attempted this in his first appearance in the anime. Played with in that he had the money to pay for the meal (and room) but was using this to delay the heroes while he made off with their prize money. Golem is forced to do manual labor by the restaurant while the other Searchers chase down the larcenous lagomorph, eventually dragging him back to pay his debt.
• Happens several times in One Piece:
  • Luffy's brother Ace has a bad habit of this, first dining and dashing in a flashback on Drum Island, then doing so again in the present Alabasta, as well as in his own mini-series in the kingdom of (named much later) Lulusia.
  • Luffy himself does the same thing in Alabasta, and at the same restaurant Ace was eating in (he unwittingly sent Ace crashing through the wall as he rushed in). To be fair, Smoker (who was confronting Ace and likewise knocked into the wall) had showed up, forcing him to flee.
  • Ace, Luffy and Sabo did this alot when they were kids as shown during in flashback during the Post-Marineford arc. The anime showing at one point they did a Totem Pole Trench to sneak into a resturant, ask for a private room, order up and eat their fill. Booking it when the maitre d got suspicious of them
• In Reborn! (2004), Tsuna's pals order expensive food, then dine and dash. Tsuna has to Work Off the Debt.
• Samurai Champloo: In “Baseball Blues”, the trio stop at a restaurant to eat with Mugen getting extra food that'll balloon their bill. Fu questions how they'll afford it but he says he has it covered. Once the three eat and the time comes to pay. Mugen reveals his plan, which is just run like heck and stiff the bill. Unfortunately he doesn't tell Fu or Jin this and he ends up stopped by a patron lobbing a baseball at him. They only avoid punishment when said patron offers to pay for their food if they help play in a baseball game he's organizing.

Comic Books

• Zatanna: Everyday Magic: During a Bad Date montage, one of Zatanna's dates wants her to use her magic so they can get away without paying, which Zatanna doesn't want to do for moral reasons, so she dumps him on the spot and teleports away by herself, leaving him to pay the bill by himself by cleaning the dishes.

Comic Strips

• Inverted in one Pearls Before Swine strip. Pig tells Rat about a "prank" he just pulled: going to a fast food restaurant's drive-thru, paying more than his meal was worth, then driving off without the food.
• Popeye: Popeye's friend J. Wellington Wimpy, an infamous mooch, pulls this constantly, as evidenced by his catchphrase: "I'd gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today". He will often use this phrase to scrounge off one of his beloved hamburgers from a restaurant, or otherwise make one of his friends pay for him. Naturally, he never comes back on Tuesday. Despite the fact that his technique rarely changes, he keeps getting away with it. Recurring character Rough House, who owns a diner, hates Wimpy because of the many hamburgers he has managed to sponge off him.

Films — Animation

• In the beginning of Eight Crazy Nights, Davey leaves the Chinese restaurant while drunk without paying. He gets caught which leads him to evade the police on foot and eventually gets arrested which becomes the plot having one too many run-ins with the law being forced to clean up his act or face prison.

Films — Live-Action

• In About Scout, Scout obtains a milkshake for Lulu this way. She says that her "boyfriend" (Sam, who happens to be sitting next to her) will pay for it. The waitress yells that the glass isn't for takeout, but Scout runs away.
• The Blues Brothers: The band are booked at a western bar. They order some drinks in between performances, but come time to pay, find out it's more than they can afford. With this plus the arrival of the real country band whose place they took, Elwood and Jake end up fleeing, with said band and the bar owner now added to their list of pursuers.
• Blues Brothers 2000: In the sequel, the band stop at a diner to get some food, but are tracked by some officers looking for Elwood. Upon seeing this, Elwood fakes a disease by covering his head in shaving cream and having Big Mac warn the patrons to stay away as they, along with Buster, stumble out of the building, Big Mac grabbing his sandwich on the way out. Humorously, the owner of the place, who was also the owner of the bar (converted in the years since the first movie) experiences deja vu and asks the band if he knows them. The band quickly eat their food and call for their check.
• Early in Heart of Dragon, the autistic Manchild Dodo is dragged into an expensive restaurant by a bunch of neighbourhood kids, with Dodo posing as their dad, only to find out after eating that the food is much more expensive than they can afford. The children, being a bunch of Fairweather Friends, then leave one at a time (each with a flimsy excuse that they "need to do their homework" or "walk the dog") until Dodo is alone and left at mercy of the pissed-off manager.
• In Something Wild, Lulu offers to pay for their dinner at an Italian restaurant, forcing him to do this when he realizes he can't cover it. This is part of her Manic Pixie Dream Girl way of flirting. When Charlie does the same thing to Ray later on at a diner, it's a different dynamic.
• In Victor/Victoria two broke actors eat a sumptuous meal, planning to avoid paying by claiming there's a cockroach (which they brought with them) in their food. The waiter is not fooled, but the cockroach flies to another table, causing the patrons to scream. In the ensuing chaos the actors decide to just run for it

Literature

• In the Doctor Who Expanded Universe novel Verdigris, the Master pulls a form of this - while chatting with the disguised Monster of the Week at a Chinese takeaway, he walks to the counter, retrieves two packages and leaves. When the hapless monster leans in to ask where's its food, it turns out the Master walked out with both his food and the monster's, sticking it with the bill for both.
• Diana Tregarde: In Jinx High, Fay Harper is reminded that she needs to feed her demon allies soon, and then sees two asshole cops outside their jurisdiction hassling some teens. When the cops come into the restaurant she's having lunch at, she frames herself for this on the (correct) assumption that the restaurant manager will send those cops after her instead of wasting time calling 911. Cue two asshole cops becoming Demon Chow. She then runs back in claiming it was a case of Forgot to Pay the Bill, lest the manager give up waiting for those cops to come back and call 911 anyway.
• In the Discworld novel Going Postal, Moist has some unspecified plan for doing this when he takes Adora to the ritziest restaurant in Ankh-Morpork. In the end, they do escape paying the bill, but ironically thanks to the villain of the novel rather than anything Moist intentionally does.
• In Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?, Bell does this unintentionally when he flees the Hostess of Fertility pub in humiliation after overhearing Bete Loga mock him for needing to be saved by Ais. Bell only realizes this a day later after passing out from all the monster hunting he did in the dungeon, returning and apologizing while also paying for the meal.

Live-Action TV

• Booth wanted to do this with Brennan on Bones because she'd never done anything like it before. But she hangs back a few seconds when they get up to dash out and throws money down on the table before following him.
• The Cheers episode "Young Dr. Weinstein" ends with Sam Malone trying to run out on a check at a fancy, ultra-exclusive restaurant. He has secured a reservation there and eaten a meal while pretending to be someone else, but when it comes time to settle the bill, he attempts to pay with either a credit card or check with his own name on it, which the restaurant won't accept.
  Sam: Oh, well, why don't you, uh, put it on this credit card anyway, and I'll take this Malone guy out to dinner some other time, hmm?
  Waiter: I'm afraid not.
  Sam: Well, all right, I don't suppose you take a personal check, do you?
  Waiter: And whose name would be on that?
  Sam: Okay, well, uh, why don't we try this, then? Oh, my God, look at the size of that cat!
  Waiter: Hey, you, come back here!
• In the Community episode "Critical Film Studies", Abed and Troy are having dinner at a fancy restaurant. When they see the bill, they agree to run out without paying.
  Troy: It said "market price"! What market are you shopping at?!!
• Intimate: When Leo starts working at a café, the guys assume they all can eat there for free, only for the annoyed owner to tell them Leo himself can have a discount and that's it. Emil and Max then leave separately, both telling Leo (who's sitting outside talking to his recent hookup Jonas instead of working) the other has paid. Leo half-heartedly yells at Max to come back, but when Jonas invites him to his place, he decides to just leave as well.
• Mad Men: Subverted in the last season. Don Draper takes his teenage daughter Sally out to dinner during a period where he's not in good graces with his own company, essentially being on paid suspension, on the verge of being outright fired. When they're finished he tells Sally in a worried tone to go outside and get the car engine running, then admits he's just kidding.
• Married... with Children: One episode dealt with the Bundys getting a tax refund. On advice from the Darcys, try family decides to splurge on an expensive meal for themselves, with Al even figuring out exactly what the family should order so they aren't a penny over their windfall. Unfortunately Al forgets his wallet and (rather unwisely) dispatches his kids to retrieve it for him while he and Peggy remain to stave off the inevitable payment. Bud and Kelly reason that since they've already had the meal, paying for it wouldn't really be any fun, so they decide to abscond with the check to buy concert tickets for themselves. When Peg and Al realize they've been abandoned, and with the waitstaff getting more and more anxious about wanting their money, Peg decides to use one of Al's notoriously noxious shoes to force their way out of the restaurant, even leaving behind a sock to prevent anyone from chasing them down.
• Subverted in Sex Education when Eric and Rahim bail on a stuffy French restaurant, with Rahim shrugging off the bill because, "You cannot live in fear." Eric begins to run out, but throws money on the table when the waitress calls him out.
• That '70s Show had the aptly titled episode "Dine and Dash." After Kelso's grandmother gives him $100, he treats the rest of the gang to dinner at a nice restaurant, and he tells them they should leave without paying, but after they convince him not to do it, he hesitantly goes to Eric's car, where he left his wallet, so he can pay for dinner. When Donna says he drove off laughing, they wait for sometime before realizing he left them there. Fez says Kelso's probably waiting for them in the parking lot and says he'll get the money from him, but after some waiting, they realize he's not coming back either. Jackie says she'll use the public phone in the lobby to call her dad, but after some time, it's determined she just went home, and Hyde decides to just make a break for it, leaving Eric and Donna stranded. After a minor argument, Eric and Donna decide to run away without paying. As payback for ditching them, Eric and Donna give the others laxative laced "special" brownies.
• Zig-Zagged in the Ugly Betty episode "Bad Amanda". Amanda and Betty, attempting to spend $10,000 worth of goods and services without actually paying for it, go to an expensive restaurant with two artists. The guys do this, sticking them with the bill, and Amanda suggests playing the trope straight. Betty talks her out of it, and bluffs their way out of paying for the bill by telling the manager they're reviewing the restaurant for the magazine they work at (which is true, in a way).
• Victorious: In the aptly named "The Great Ping-Pong Scam", Tori comes across a scheme her friends have concocted where they've created a ping-pong team and “go compete in the locals” when really they use the majority of the money given to them to go to a fancy restaurant and use the rest to buy a trophy. Tori joins in on it and it goes off as planned... except the bill turns out to be more expensive then expected due to Robbie ordering caviar which put them over their intended budget. As the group argue what to do, Sikowitz quickly ducks out while no one's looking, intending to do this. Luckily the group get out of it by acting as the entertainment of the restaurant when the initial one had to cancel (with Sikowitz even returning).
• The White Lotus: Jack and Portia get arancini and run out of the restaurant without paying for it. Tanya, who is at this point suspicious of Jack and his association with their wealthy patron Quentin, is unimpressed by this story. She points out that arancinis are not expensive at all.

Music

• The music video for "Dine and Dash" by The Chats features the band members singing about and doing exactly this, only for the police to catch them when they try to leave. They slip away when the cops are distracted by another famous dine-and-dasher.
• The music video for "Take On Me" by a-ha has a woman pulled by a man into the newspaper comic strip she's reading at a restaurant. When her waitress comes by for payment, she doesn't see her there and, assuming she's dined and dashed, angrily crumples up the newspaper (with her still in it) and throws it into the trash can. When the woman gets out of the newspaper, she finds herself behind the sales counter.

Theatre

• Giacomo Puccini's opera La Bohème in the second act has the principal characters (the Bohemians) stop at a cafe and order lunches. Musetta is already at the cafe with Sugar Daddy Alcindoro, but she longs to rejoin the Lovable Rogue Marcello. Musetta feigns having an overtight shoe, and sends Alcindoro to the cobbler's shop to stretch it. The Bohemians join a passing parade to dodge payment. When the man returns, the Bohemians have taken their meals and departed, leaving Alcindoro on the hook for their collective tab.

Video Games

• Battle Fantasia: Coyori's base story involves a goblin eating at her restaurant and running off without paying. When Coyori catches him taking off, she gives chase with intent on getting him to pay.
• Diner Dash: In addition to customers who are fed up with waiting for the cheque, this is the MO of one of Mr. Big's goons, Skip. He'll order time consuming dishes that take up space in the cooking line, then attempt to flee without paying, damaging the player's business. The only way to stop him is to tap him when it looks like he's about to flee, forcing him to pay, which can be difficult if you're busy with other customers and aren't paying attention to his visual cues.
• Pumkin Land: In the "Hungry Pumkin" minigame, the Hungry Pumkin doesn't pay for the food you serve him at the end of the minigame. He either says "That was fantastic, I'll be back in 10 minutes!", "Well, that wasn't too bad," or "That was terrible! I'm never coming back," depending on how many times you gave him the correct food item.
• The Shantae series: Shantae and the Pirate's Curse: Squid Baron's Character Spotlight description mentions that he does "dining and ditching", in a Call-Back to him doing that in Shantae: Risky's Revenge after getting a TASTY MEAL.
• The Sims 2: In the Nightlife expansion pack, which introduces restaurants for Sims to go to on dates and outings, they have the option to skip out on the bill where they have to avoid the host for an hour before they can call a taxi (or more simply just drive off if they have a car). However, if caught, the Sim will be scolded by the host and be forced to pay the bill.
• The first game of the Galaxy Angel II trilogy has someone attempt to do this. Unfortunately for him, Anise (not yet an official Angel at the time) and a returning Ranpha are very fast on the uptake. Anise had revealed the guy's intentions having snatched his wallet, while Ranpha decked him before he could retaliate.
• Yakuza 3: There are a few substories about a notorious repeat offender who successfully escapes each time (and he's really fast for his weight). He does it solely for the thrill, and once Kiryu catches him the first time, he becomes amused by trying to escape from him and dines and dashes to bait Kiryu and try to successfully escape from him in later encounters.
• In Way of the Samurai 4, you can choose to do this by not paying the bill after eating a meal at a restaurant or outdoor food stand. Doing so is considered a crime and will cause the owner to call for the guards to arrest you.

Web Animation

• ASDF Movie: Parodied. When a waiter approaches a leaving customer stating that she had to pay for her food, she promptly refuses and regurgitates the burger she ate back onto the waiter's plate before leaving. The burger is somehow still intact as if it was never eaten.
• Pencilmation: While the episode "I Know What You Did Last Number'' is more a case of Forgot to Pay the Bill, one of its thumbnails shows Pencilmate consciously doing this.

Webcomics

• The Fourth: While doing some small-time crimes in the kingdom, Ecta, Davis, Slice, and Floyd pull off a dine 'n dash.
• The Order of the Stick: In Strip #389, Elan plans to pay for his drink with a "30 ft. per round movement rate".
• PepsiaPhobia: An early storyline involves Phobia's father being wanted for multiple counts of dine-and-dash.

Web Original

• Occasionally crops up in the stories on Not Always Right. Sometimes it's even part of a story on Not Always Working, such as one in which a number of simultaneous dine-and-dashes alert the district manager of a restaurant chain to the fact that something bad has happened at one of his locations. He then learns that the restaurant manager viciously fired a server for no reason in front of a room full of guests and even snatched a tip out of her hand; the multiple dine-and-dashes were the result of horrified customers walking out on their bills.

Western Animation

• Big City Greens: In "Desserted", Cricket intends to win an ice cream challenge with his family so he won't have to pay for the expensive meal he ordered. The problem is that the family is too full to eat the giant tub of ice cream and to make matters worse, Cricket knew they wouldn't go along with his plan, so he replaced all of Bill's money with fake cash so he wouldn't pay for it.
• Bob's Burgers: In "Tweentrepreneurs", a guy pulls a dine-and-dash in Bob's restaurant in full view of the only staff members, then comes back to do it again twice. He just liked the burgers that much. In the end, he finally pays them back for all the money he owes them and says he wants to become a legitimate customer, which Bob accepts, but not before taking some precautions: he has him sit on a specific bar stool away from the cash register and as far from the door as possible, Louise duct-tapes his hands and legs together, he can only manipulate his wallet with his nose, any change he'd normally receive is automatically converted to tips instead, and Tina will be feeding him like a baby.
• Camp Lazlo: In "Prickly Pining Dining", Scoutmaster Lumpus takes the Bean Scouts into town to eat at Beef Lumberjack's. After seeing the huge bill, Lumpus makes a break for it to avoid the wrath of the chainsaw-wielding waiter, only to be forced to go back (Disguised in Drag, of course) when he finds out that he left Lazlo, Raj and Clam there.
• Futurama:
  • In "The Cyber House Rules", Bender and his adopted human children go to a restaurant and run away without paying.
  • In "Bender Gets Made", Elzar treats the Planet Express crew to dinner after he accidentally blinds Leela during a show (which was Bender's fault actually). But when they find out about the bill (even though he said it was his treat), he has them arrested. Bender decides to work in the kitchen in order to pay off the debt.
• In the Hey Arnold! episode "Dinner For Four", Helga wins a dinner for four at a fancy French restaurant, inviting Arnold, Gerald, and Phoebe to come along. They order a huge meal—only for Helga to discover too late that the prize was for "Chez Pierre," and they've gone to "Chez Paris" by mistake. Ignoring Phoebe's suggestions to just explain the error and come to some agreement with the staff, Helga (not wanting to humiliate herself in front of Arnold) pulls several elaborate lies in hopes of getting out of the building without paying a dime, which naturally only lead to a "Fawlty Towers" Plot ending with the restaurant risking closure and the kids doing dishes to work off their meal and all the damage they did.
• Kevin Spencer: One episode shows that Percy Spencer has a list of how to pull off a Dine 'n Dash (1.Walk Into Restaurant. 2.Eat Food. 3.Run Away). After an altercation which involved throwing a midget across the restaurant because he was standing in front of the door, he updated the list (1.Walk Into Restaurant. 2.Eat Food. 3.Throw Midget. 4.Run Away.).
• The Simpsons: In "We're on the Road to D'oh-where", Homer takes Bart on a trip to a reform camp and stops at a diner along the way. While there, Bart gets Homer in trouble by pretending to escape through the bathroom window so that Homer can get stuck trying to go through after him, and then telling the cook about a guy in the bathroom trying to dine-and-dash.
• In Symphony in Slang, due to Mary eating like a horse and causing his money to run out him, thus leaving him in a pickle, the Hipster gives the management the slip and hides in the foothills.

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