"The Wolf and the Fox" is a German Fairy Tale collected by The Brothers Grimm.
A wolf forced a fox to hunt for it. One day, the fox stole a lamb for the wolf, and wolf not being satisfied with one, it went to the same field for another, but a farmer noticed the wolf and chased it away. Then the fox stole some pancakes for the wolf, and the wolf not being satisfied, went to the same house for more, but the humans noticed the wolf again and chased it out. Then they went together to a farmer's cellar where meat was being stored, the fox ate from the meat, but kept checking if he was not too fat to get back out the way they came in. The wolf on the other hand ate to its heart's content carelessly. The farmer heard noises from the cellar and went to see what it was, the fox noticed the man coming, so it quickly escaped. But the wolf was too fat to get out, was found by the farmer and got killed, and the fox was free.
Tropes:
- Balloon Belly: The fox leads the wolf to a hunter's supply of salted meat which they access by crawling through a hole in the wall. Both characters pig out, to the point where the fox worries that he might not fit through the hole once they've finished. The wolf insists on staying until he's eaten everything, a move that proves fatal when his gluttony gets him stuck.
- The Big Bad Wolf: A wolf enslaves a fox to help to hunt for food with the greedy and gluttonous wolf getting the lion's share. In contrast to the cunning fox, the wolf is a poor hunter who has no sneaking skills, and bumbles any attempt to steal food from the farmer.
- Cunning Like a Fox: The fox sets up a scheme where it shows the wolf a cellar storing meat. The fox lets the wolf to eat until it gets so fat it cannot get out the way it came in, so the fox is able to escape when the farmer checks on his cellar and kills the wolf.
- Death by Materialism: The wolf is so greedy it barely lets the fox have any food. When they get in a cellar storing meat, the wolf eats so much it gets stuck in the way it entered, so the cellar's owner finds and kills the wolf, while the fox is able to escape.
- The Dog Bites Back: The wolf mistreats the fox and forces it to hunt, but barely leaves any food for the fox to eat. The fox tricks the wolf to go in a meat storage where it eats so much, the wolf cannot get out the way it came in. So the storage's owner finds and kills the wolf.
- Help, I'm Stuck!: The wolf eats so much in the meat storage that it gets too fat to get out the way it came in. The storage's owner finds and kills the wolf.
- Jabba Table Manners: The wolf eats most of the food the fox worked hard to find, so the fox barely gets any. Even when they are eating in a meat storage, the wolf gets so fat it cannot get out the way it went in.
- Karmic Trickster: The wolf enslaves the fox and forces to fox to hunt for the wolf, and the wolf eats most of the food when the fox gets much less. So the fox sets up a scheme where it shows the wolf a cellar storing meat. The fox lets the wolf to eat until it gets so fat it cannot get out the way it came in, so the fox is able to escape when the farmer checks on his cellar and kills the wolf.
- Nameless Narrative: Everyone is left unnamed.
- The Noun and the Noun: It is called "the wolf and the fox".
- Sapient Eat Sapient: The wolf threatens to eat the fox if it does not provide a place to find food.
- Villainous Glutton: All that the the Wolf cares about is food, when he can't catch prey by himself anymore he enlists help from a fox, whom he threatens to eat him if he doesn't, the fox is much more successful in catching prey and bringing back other food, the wolf hogs it all for himself, the fox eventually devises a plan to get rid of him, he takes him to a meat storage cellar where the wolf eats until he can't move which gets him shot by the owner.