"The fact is, the only way to protect the Declaration is to steal it."
— Ben Gates, National Treasure.
There are times when a character has to take matters into their own hands when it comes to foiling crimes. This can result in them committing some crimes in order to prevent one from happening.
Stealing It To Protect It is when heroic characters take it upon themselves to steal a MacGuffin in order to protect it from villainous forces who intend to steal it themselves. The reason a character does this varies, but the usual reasons are finding security for the item lacking or having their warnings of a possible theft being ignored.
When this is done to a person, it falls under the heroic variant of The Kindnapper or Kidnapped by an Ally.
Sub-Trope of Caper Rationalization. Can sometimes happen during a Heist Clash. Not to be confused with Stealing from Thieves which is about stealing items while they are already in a thief's possession. Stealing an item while it is already in a villain's possession does not qualify as this trope. Compare Start X to Stop X.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Magic Kaito: Kaito Kid is a Phantom Thief who targets jewels. However, the reason for this is that he is looking for a specific type of jewel that the people who killed his father are after. When he learns a jewel he has stolen isn't the one he is after, he either discards them or returns them to their owners.
- Tweeny Witches: Atelia met Jidan when she rescued him while fighting the warlocks to retrieve the True Book of Spells. She intended to return the book to its rightful owner, only for him to steal it in order to prevent more fighting between witches and warlocks, as well as the destruction of the Human Realm.
Films — Live-Action
- National Treasure: The film revolves around a search for a hidden treasure, the location of which is on an invisible map hidden in the Declaration of Independence. Ben and Riley warn Dr. Abigail Chase that Ian intends to steal the Declaration from the National Archives. When she doesn't believe them, they decide to steal the Declaration themselves to make sure Ian and his crew don't get it.
- The Pink Panther 2: The climax reveals that Clouseau stole the real Pink Panther from the museum and swapped it with a fake to keep it safe from the Tornado. Clouseau also realizes that the real Tornado wasn't the thief when his supposed suicide note described the fake Pink Panther's beauty; since the Tornado was an expert on gems and their value, he would have known it was a fake.
Literature
- In the Usborne mystery stories book The Curse Of The Lost Idol: Archaeologist Professor Pott discovers the ancient Egyptian lost idol in a burial chamber, and finds that he is bound by a curse to protect it from thieves. He invites a lucky few people to travel to Egypt to see it. However, he hides the real idol in his boat cabin, and replaces it with a fake, which somebody does attempt to steal.
- Dark Sacred Night: The guy caught with the Andy Warhol prints from the old lady's apartment claims he took the prints for "safekeeping" after the old lady died. Detective Renee Ballard is not convinced, seeing as how he had to climb through a window to get them and arrests him.
- Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone: The climax of the book has Harry and his friends breaking into the forbidden area of Hogwarts to steal the Philosopher's Stone, in order to prevent the bad guys from getting hold of it. They did try to warn McGonagall about it first, but she brushed them off, saying the Stone was too well-protected to be in danger (which, as it turns out, is actually true: Dumbledore's magic defenses had totally stumped the villain, and even without Harry's intervention it was unlikely he would have found a way around them).
- Kraken: The theft which kicks off the plot turns out to be motivated by this: the thief who originally planned to steal the giant squid from the British Museum went to the Londonmancers to have his fortunes read in advance of the job. To their horror, they discovered that the squid's theft would somehow set off the apocalypse. To prevent that from happening, the Londonmancers stole the squid before the thief could, only for the squid's theft to set off the apocalypse.
- Wizard's First Rule: Richard's father stole the Book of Counted Shadows to prevent Darken Rahl from taking it.
Live-Action TV
- Leverage: In "The Two Live Crew Job", the Leverage team attempt to recover a painting for one of their clients only for another team of thieves to successfully steal it at the same time the Leverage team is making their own attempt. This was merely a Trial Run Crime for the other team, so the Leverage crew decides to go after the other team's true target in order to negotiate for the first painting. Naturally, the Leverage team's heist happens at the same time the other team attempts theirs.
- Star Trek: Discovery: For several episodes, the crew of the Discovery has been trying to keep the sphere data away from Control to avoid the AI becoming fully sentient and destroying all life in the universe. Using nanotechnology, Control takes over Leland, the head of Starfleet's Special Intelligence agency, and orders Agents Tyler and Georgiou to steal the sphere data from the Discovery's computers so that Section 31 can keep it safe. In actuality, their success will result in the Big Bad getting the device.
Video Games
- Al Gurbish in... Nick It & Run!
: This indie Fan Game revolves around the secret agent Al Gurbish, who is tasked with stealing "The Stan's" (a silver statue of Stan from the Monkey Island series), the most prestigious Adventure Game award in order to protect it from being stolen by a bunch of crooks.
- Danger Girl: The PlayStation game has a level where Sydney Savage has to infiltrate the British Museum to steal a doomsday artifact before the Hammer syndicate can beat her to it. This is the only mission in the game where you're not allowed to kill anyone, instead using knockout gas and tranquilizer darts to take down museum guards as you try to reach the vault.
Web Video
- Rerez: Played for Laughs in Shane and Adam's review of the Batman & Robin game. At one point, Batman sneaks into a jewelry store and steals a diamond to prevent Mr. Freeze from getting to it. Shane and Adam call him out on this, but he insists that all he's doing is protecting the diamond.
- SuperMarioLogan: Played with in the episode, "Black Yoshi's House Arrest!". Mario sends Black Yoshi to the Tom Thumb gas station to buy him a Pepsi with a $5.00 bill. The cashier leaves to get some change, leaving the cash register drawer open. Black Yoshi steals all the money inside and is found out and arrested by Officer Brooklyn T. Guy. Black Yoshi claims that the only reason he stole the money was that he saw a car full of robbers outside the gas station, and decided to take the money before they could, intending to return it afterwards. He even compares his actions to that of Benjamin Franklin Gates in National Treasure. Mario and Brooklyn immediately call his bluff and he is put under house arrest as a result.
Western Animation
- The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius: In "The Great Egg Heist", the gang are recruited by Princess Quin Shi Su to retrieve a Jade Egg which her brother plans to use as a Power Source for his Doomsday Device. As the egg is in a museum, the heroes have to steal it and replace it with a fake. The entire mission is revealed to be a plan by Professor Calamitous to trick the heroes into stealing the egg for him by disguising himself as the princess. Thankfully, he ends up with the replica instead due to a mishap by Carl.
- Carmen Sandiego:
- Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego?: In "The Tigress", Carmen repeatedly running into a new thief, the eponymous Tigress, who keeps making off with Carmen's intended loot. The Tigress is actually Ivy in disguise, and the reason she keeps running into Carmen on her heists is that Ivy and Zack were able to solve Carmen's clues in advance, then placed the items Carmen was going to steal in protective custody and made sure Carmen encountered Ivy in her Tigress disguise leaving the scene every time. This was all a plan to lure Carmen to Antarctica where they had set a trap for her.
- Carmen Sandiego: Carmen steals the items VILE is after before they can get to them. Once she is sure VILE has fled, she leaves the items for the police to find and return to their rightful owners.
- The Fantastic Four (1978): Feigned in "The Menace of Magneto". Magneto gets the Four to help him steal money from a bank so that actual bank robbers can't steal it. Of course, Magneto is just making up excuses and proceeds to take the money for himself.
- Jackie Chan Adventures: In "Enter The Viper", Jackie's warnings to the New York Metropolitan Museum that the Dark Hand will steal the snake talisman are ignored. He takes it upon himself to steal the talisman in order to protect it from the villains. Things get complicated when another thief breaks into the museum to steal a valuable diamond, resulting in her and Jackie accidentally swapping their respective loot.
- Josie And The Pussy Cats: In "Never Mind a Master Mind", the heroes mistakenly receive a message warning of the villain Master Mind's plan to steal an anti-gravity gun from a science symposium in Amsterdam. The heroes decide to steal the device themselves and have it replaced with a fake before Mastermind can get his hands on it. Unfortunately, three members of the group, including the one with the anti-gravity gun, are captured by Master Mind.
- Ninjago: The second Fangblade is part of the trophy for a competition Cole's father has entered and won multiple times. The ninja decide to enter the competition so they can steal the trophy before the Serpentine can. Unfortunately, Cole's father overhears their plan and is very disappointed in Cole for trying to steal the trophy, prompting the ninja to win the trophy through fair means. The trophy still gets stolen by the Serpentine afterward. There is some solace in Cole's father accepting him again.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987): In "Sword of Yurikawa", Splinter sends the Turtles to guard the titular artifact, which is on display in the Japanese embassy. Due to Turtles stopping for pizza along the way, the sword has already been stolen by a mysterious ninja, while two fakes were stolen by a different party each. The climax reveals that Splinter stole the real sword to keep it out of evil hands.
Real Life
- During the Nazi occupation of France, some museum workers took it upon themselves to steal and hide artworks so they wouldn't be stolen by Nazis.
