Basic Trope: Someone steals money from the bank.
- Straight: Evil Elliott leads a bank heist.
- Exaggerated:
- It's such an elaborate heist, you'd think he was trying to infiltrate the Pentagon or something!
- Evil Elliot goes on a spree of bank robberies across the country.
- Downplayed:
- Elliott defrauds an ATM.
- Elliott hands the teller a threatening note, but is not actually armed.
- Justified:
- Evil Elliot needs money, and sees this as a quick and easy way to get it.
- He's doing something bad just For the Evulz.
- The bank in question has really poor security, and is ripe for the picking.
- Elliot and his gang were sent to smokescreen the police, allowing The Don easier access to what he's after.
- Inverted:
- A bank teller steals money from Evil Elliott (either intentionally, or due to an error in bean-counting.)
- Evil Elliott deposits money in his bank account.
- Evil Elliott owns the bank as its CEO, and robs the customers via every fee and outright scam he and his employees can think up, and finally robs the country the bank is located in by demanding a bailout when the scammed customers start defaulting and the crappy investments fail.
- Subverted:
- Evil Elliott doesn't steal money from the bank...
- Evil Elliott robs a sperm bank, blood bank, etc. instead of a normal bank.
- Evil Elliott gets a job as an accountant or bank teller (or sends one of his Mooks to do so.)
- Evil Elliott attempts a bank robbery, but is arrested before he can complete the bank heist.
- 'Evil Elliott', working for Tropeson and Associates Security Evaluation Services, ranks the banks' security a D- and list a dozen points of improvement.
- Double Subverted:
- But participates in shady business practices and/or such things as drug-dealing and pimping, making ungodly amounts of money from that, or he robs someplace else containing valuables (such as a museum).
- But then sells the sperm/eggs/embryos/blood/whatever on the black market and makes money from that.
- The bank robbery is an inside job.
- Parodied:
- Evil Elliott enters the bank, removes his hat, waits patiently in line at the bank, allows a woman with two small children to go ahead of him in line, and when he gets to the bank teller, says, "Excuse me, I'm terribly sorry, but this is a bank robbery. Would you be so kind as to hand over the money?"
- Evil Elliott is proposing to Lilith Badgirl with a diamond ring he hid in one of the vaults.
- Evil Elliott is threatening... a piggy bank.
- The bank has a line with a special teller: "Robberies"
- Evil Elliott comes into the bank with his band of robbers, and meets Eric Evulz already robbing the bank. Hilarity Ensues as a battle begins over who gets to rob it.
- A bank has more robbers than legitimate customers, yet still has enough money to give them all somehow.
- Zig Zagged: ???
- Averted: Evil Elliott doesn't rob the bank
- Enforced:
- The writer really wants to tell an elaborate caper story with lots of intrigue and cool gadgets.
- The police released the CCTV footage for a Call For Aid.
- Lampshaded:Evil Elliot:"This is a robbery!"
Bank Teller:"Oh, not another one. Must be Monday." - Invoked: The evil Five-Man Band is getting low on funds.
- Exploited: Detective Joe, who's been searching for Elliott and his gang for years, tags all the money in the bank before hand and is intentionally slow in answering the silent alarm. When Evil Elliott returns to his hideout with the money, the police arrest him and his entire gang.
- Defied: Evil Elliott believes that robbing banks is kid stuff, and chooses another way to make an ill-gotten fortune.
- Discussed:Evil Elliot: "Hey guys, I'm thinking we should go do something evil... and preferably lucrative. How about we gear up and go rob a bank?"
Lilith Badgirl: "Are you stupid, Elliot? We try that, the entire city's worth of cops will be all over us before you can say "cha-ching"!" - Conversed: "This is the fifth issue in a row where Amazing Girl stops a bank robbery. You'd think the crooks would try something a bit more subtle to raise cash."
- Implied: Evil Elliot and his gang are shown with a pile of money bags marked with bank logos on their table, trying to decide what to spend it all on.
- Deconstructed: A bank robbery goes bad and ends in a hostage deal, several dead tellers and customers, and a stalemate with the cops.
- Reconstructed: The robbery was a surgically-precise caper that barely left any clues behind, much less ended in a police siege, and the detectives must unravel it before all leads are lost.
- Plotted A Good Waste: The movie is set up as being about a bank robbery, but over its course it becomes apparent that what happened wasn't an ordinary robbery at all.
- Played For Laughs:
- The bank is actually broke; when the Five-Man Band goes into the vault, they find cobwebs and an I.O.U. before complaining to the tellers outside.
- Bonus points if this is the result of another group of bad guys.
- Played For Drama: Joe Average is driven to rob a bank in order to pay for his little daughter's medicine.
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