Broken Treasure

Cousin to the Dead Pet Sketch, this plot involves one of the main characters accidentally breaking or losing another character's treasured item or Charm Point while they're away. Now they must repair it, get it back, or get a new one before the other character comes back and sees what happened.

A common subversion is for the plot to end with a Milholland Relationship Moment. This is frequently the other character, at the end, explaining that the item wasn't as valuable as the first character thought - in fact, it's nearly worthless. A more sappy variation is for the other character to come back, find the broken item, see the attempts to fix it, and forgive the first character, saying that they aren't angry or upset because love is more valuable than the material thing.

See also Dead Pet Sketch, Lost Wedding Ring and Never Lend to a Friend. Can lead to the creation of a Well Intentioned Replacement.

Examples of Broken Treasure include:

Anime and Manga

• In Eyeshield 21, Sena accidentally damages Monta's most prized possession, a baseball glove he received from his lifetime idol Masaru Honjou. The fact that Monta was in the middle of a Heroic BSOD about facing Honjou's son Taka at the Christmas Bowl didn't help, and he gets into a fight with Sena. They finally manage to resolve it in the end, with Sena frantically looking for a replacement glove... and ending up with a whole box of football gloves sent in by all the receivers and corner backs Monta had faced so far.
• When, in Ouran High School Host Club, the group spills coffee on Usa-chan, Hani-senpai's beloved stuffed bunny, they panic and scramble to fix it before Hani wakes up from his nap. Mori then diffuses the situation fairly easily, rendering the crazy scheme completely meaningless.
• In Ranma ½, Kasumi's favorite china cup is broken. The family is terrified to find out what a mad Kasumi is like, so they prepare a surprise party and everything, but think she's about to erupt anyway. Finally, they resort to tying up Ranma and sacrificing him (as usual). When Kasumi discovers her broken cup, she goes into the classic Kasumi over-the-top sturm-and-drang response ... she taps Ranma on the head and calls him naughty. (She then wonders if she overreacted.)
• Subverted in Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad: Ryusuke gives Koyuki an old guitar, which he later claims was given to him by his friend Eddie from the band Dying Breed. Later, Koyuki accidentally drops it off a bridge and watches it get run over by a passing truck. A few episodes later, he gets it fixed, but then it gets broken again by Rikiya. We find out in the same episode that the guitar that Ryusuke gave to Koyuki wasn't Eddie's guitar after all.
• In an episode of Minami-ke, Chiaki and Kana break a rabbit necklace belonging to Haruka. They scramble to get other characters to find a replacement. Hilarity Ensues.

Film

• Risky Business comes close to this, with the Tom Cruise character asked to mind the family home while his parents are away. After turning the house into a brothel, he only has an hour or so to get the whole house back in order, and a precious glass decorative item that his mother treasured highly almost breaks, though he manages to rescue it just in time.
• The final plot of the normally slice-of-life movie, The Sandlot, was to get a Babe Ruth-signed baseball back from a mean junkyard dog after the main character carelessly hits it over the fence into the neighbor's yard where it lives. Turns out the dog's owner knew Babe Ruth, and he gives the boys a ball signed by all of the '27 Yankees.
  • Somewhat subverted in that the kid still got grounded by his father, but it's implied his grounding is shorter then it would've been normally because of the above mentioned spoiler.
• Played both ways in Superbad. Seth has to bring alcohol to a party in order to impress Jules, and manages to succeed despite many setbacks. Evan has to bring a specific brand of vodka to impress Becca, but it breaks on the way. It all works out in the end though.

Literature

• The short story "The Necklace" by Guy de Maupassant has a nasty deconstruction: a proud and greedy woman of modest means borrows a friend's emerald necklace so she can look fancy at a formal dinner party. She loses the necklace and spends a large sum to buy a replacement rather than admit the loss to her friend. She is ruined by the act, and spends the next twenty years in hard labor, ruining her health and beauty. Eventually, she sees her happy and healthy friend walking on the street and pours her heart to her, to which the friend, aghast, replies that her original necklace was fake and not worth very much at all. (The replacement was real.)
• Ethan Frome: Ethan and Zeena don't have the best of marriages, what with Zeena being a hypochondriac shrew; but during a visit from Mattie (whom Ethan likes), the cat is startled and breaks her wedding gift (a bowl), signifying that their relationship is in serious trouble.

Live Action TV

• In Black Books, Manny and Bernard accidentally drink a very expensive bottle of wine, due to be handed to the Pope, and attempt to emulate it with a variety of ingredients. In an odd example, they get away with it. After a fashion. It's revealed at the end that the Pope has actually died as a result of drinking the 'inferior wine' and the guy who was doing the presenting gets arrested for it.
• Degrassi Junior High: Yick has to do a class presentation on his family, and he doesn't think they're very interesting—so he buys a cheap vase at a knick-knack shop and tells Arthur it's a "priceless family heirloom from the old country -- Ming Dynasty." Arthur breaks the "heirloom" two days before the presentation and goes mad trying to reglue it before Yick notices.
• Played with in an episode of Frasier, in which Frasier meets an elderly, blind fan of his who reveals that he took the doctor's advice to keep something sentimental of his wife close by after her death - a mask that she had made of her face once. Frasier accidentally breaks it, and spends most of the episode attempting to fix it without the blind fan noticing. He actually manages to fix it covertly, but guilt finally gets the better of him and he confesses what has happened. Far from being angry, the blind fan genially waves it off and notes that he's broken it several times himself - he is blind, after all.
  • In another episode, Frasier fiddles with and breaks a precious carved figure of an animal in the middle of a job interview.
• The Golden Girls: Rose and Sophia scramble to replace Blanche's broken plate. When Blanche returns, her feelings for the plate have changed, and she intentionally smashes the replacement plate.
• Done and subverted in Lizzie McGuire, where the kids bust Dad's prized Walter Payton signed football and replace it with a Dick Butkus signed football... and Mom tells them that they should've just signed a football, like she did when she destroyed Dad's prized Walter Payton football.
• On Road to Avonlea, Janet receives an heirloom haircomb from one of her husband's relatives. It's hideous, but she doesn't want to say so, so her husband and in-laws are insulted when she won't wear it. Her kids lose it somehow, and when she finally agrees to wear it, she can't find it. She ends up spending a lot of money to have a replica made, and after taking a good look at it, her in-laws realize how ugly it is and don't blame her for not wanting to wear it.
• Parodied in a Saturday Night Live episode. Heisman Trophy winner Doug Flutie appears on a TV Show with Nobel Prize Winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu (played by Eddie Murphy). Tutu breaks Flutie's statue, and during the remainder of the sketch, Flutie is asked to analyze the same signature highlight over and over again while Archbishop Tutu solders the statue back together, eventually using his Nobel Peace Prize to complete the repair.
• Saved by the Bell did this with an Elvis Presley statute that belonged to Screech's mom, forcing the gang to scramble and find a replacement before she got back from visiting Graceland.
• The George Lopez Show did this with George's prized Steve Garvey signed baseball. His son took it to practice with and the dog chewed it up.
• Mama's Family: When ironing Fran's brand-new dress that she plans to wear to an important banquet, Mama accidentally burns a hole it. She and Ellen run to the store to buy a replacement, but it doesn't fool Fran: the new dress is full of tucks and looks more like a parachute than a dress.
• Several times in George and the Dragon. In one episode, George grinds up Gabrielle's WWII medals. In another episode, George breaks Gabrialle's records (big black round things that make music when placed in a thing called a record player).
• In Community, when she breaks a limited edition DVD Annie is persuaded against the usual Broken Treasure plot, on the basis that her telly-addict roommate has seen all those sitcoms before. So instead, she resorts to Faking and Entering and it gets blamed on the landlord until she steps forward.

Newspaper Comics

• In the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, Calvin breaks his dad's binoculars, but they're too expensive for a six-year-old to replace. Calvin has a nervous breakdown waiting for his dad to find out. At first his dad screams, but Calvin feels so bad that his father (sort of) forgives him. "In perspective, this isn't so bad... in another ten years you'll probably be wrecking my car." Further subverted when his dad buys Calvin a pair of toy binoculars so he'll at least be breaking his own things, and Calvin considers trying to obtain a set of power tools the same way.
  • Note: It doesn't take ten years.
    • Hey, the car doesn't take much damage.
      • The car incident follows this trope too. Calvin effectivly goes for a brief "joyride" in his parents new car (he releases the parking brake and the car rolls straight back into a ditch). But, his parents are so relieved that he didn't get hurt and that he was honest with them that they don't get as mad as Calvin expected they would.
        • ...but try keeping live worms in your Dad's...
        • "THAT WAS THE UNVARNISHED TRUTH!"

Western Animation

• Daria: Daria and Jane are filming a music video of Mystik Spiral in the Lane family gazebo while the Lanes are away. It suddenly collapses. They then go through much time, money, and a twisted Chain of Deals to make build a look-alike gazebo before the Lanes come home. They succeed. When Mrs. Lane comes back, she says that the gazebo is very old, run-down and fragile, and will probably collapse soon, so she's going to have it demolished.
• Doug had Doug and Skeeter accidentally toss Patti's "Wacky Whizzer" frisbee-esque toy into a yard guarded by a vicious dog. It got chewed up at the end, but when they went to her house to apologize, she showed them a whole box of them her father had gotten free from work.
• In an episode of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, a statue of Madame Foster gets broken and much time and effort is expended attempting to repair it. It turns out that Foster has dozens of copies of the thing, because they're always getting broken.
• Parodied by Futurama, twice. Once, Fry eats what he believes is jerky, only to find out it's a mummified, ancient Pharaoh. The Professor is furious, because he was going to eat that Pharaoh! The second time, Dr. Zoidberg breaks a tiny piece of the Professor's model ship in a bottle and frantically tries to repair the damage. Each attempt only makes it worse, until the bottle and ship are both smashed to pieces. Zoidberg resorts to framing Fry, then toward the end tries to commit honorable ritual suicide. The joke is, the whole thing was worth $10. Which neither Fry nor Zoidberg had in their posession. Then, the sword Zoidberg attempts suicide with was worth 10,000 dollars, which gets ruined by Zoidberg trying to stab himself through his tough shell.

Host: That sword was worth ten thousand DOLLARS DORRU! Zoidberg: Fry did it!

• Kappa Mikey, "Mikey Impossible": While producer Ozu is on vacation, Mikey destroys his favorite bonsai tree, and the gang tries to replace it. Of course, Ozu walks in just after Mikey destroys the replacement bonsai tree.
  • There was also the time Mikey lost all the pictures in Mitsuki's photo album and took new ones to replace them.
• Taz-Mania had Taz break his mother's vase and sell off his treasured bottlecap collection to buy a new one, only to find that his mother was just going to sell it at a garage sale and didn't expect to get more than $5 for it.
• Done in Recess when Spinelli loses Vince's lucky marble. After attempting in various ways to get it back, she finally tells him, only to have his reaction cut short by the discovery of a shiny nickel, which he proclaims to be "better than that crummy old marble".
• In the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Wet Painters", Spongebob and Patrick accidentally get paint on Mr. Krabs' first—and most valuable—dollar while painting his hourse. They then resort to numerous, far-out ways to get the paint off—only to have Mr. Krabs tell them that the paint comes off with saliva.