Most of the films start with Egon coming out of jail and being enthusiastically welcomed by Benny and Kjeld. The three men will then have a beer together in the living room of Kjeld's home in
Valby, where Egon will inform his friends of his latest plan for making them millionaires. Plans are often two-step plans, where the first heist will get the equipment for the real, second plan. The plans usually feature everyday artifacts such as
Lego, party balloons, cigarettes, etc., which are then brought together in surprising ways in elaborate and well-timed plans, often including clever
social engineering. Benny's function in the heists, besides get-away-driver, is picking locks and starting machinery using "The Thing", a specially shaped brass piece used for manipulating machinery and opening doors. Egon often serves time in prison with lawyers or executives who provide him with the information he needs, such as duty rosters for the national public record office. Egon is also a brilliant
safecracker, operating manually, specializing in the fictive "Franz Jäger" brand. Egon's plans often bring the gang into perilously close contact with white-collar criminals from the Danish business (and political) elite. For example, in the ninth installment named "Olsen-banden deruda" well-connected people try to make money out of the so-called "butter mountain", a huge amount of butter bought up and stored by the
EEC (now the
EU) to keep prices up. Egon Olsen learns about this from a lawyer who is serving prison time, and the gang interferes with the plan to secure the millions for themselves, but as always, Egon – after having succeeded with a genius plan – fails for a variety of reasons, for instance underestimating the power and unscrupulousness of these people, bad luck, interference from Kjeld's wife Yvonne, or other surprising elements. For several films, the role of the antagonist was filled by CEO Hallandsen of the fictive, multinational company Hallandsen Inc. - or variations thereof. Egon is usually arrested in the end, for various reasons: scapegoat, bad luck, some irrelevant crime, or even turning himself in as a matter of honor. A recurring part of the film is making fun of Danish authorities, especially the police. In some earlier installments, the clumsy Police Inspector Mortensen is used for slapstick comic relief; he is later replaced by Superintendent Jensen, an older, troubled man who has seen better days. He is a resigned character who despises the Danish government as he often criticizes Hallandsen crimes going unnoticed and mentions to his assistant, Inspector Holm: "The only thing the police can do when the real big criminals come by is offer them protection!" Jensen incredulously uses the recurring exclamation "Bagmændene!" (Behind-men/Big Fishes) to reference the in-joke of powerful players moving outside of the law. In the early installments, profanity and soft-erotica (scantily-clad women) were more freely used than in later ones, where such content was somewhat watered down to suit younger viewers. Later films focused on the satirical interplay between Jensen and Holm and Egon and his crew, with a frequent outburst of anger from Egon. His long list of slurs is especially famous, like "social democrats!", "insane woman!" (to Yvonne), "lousy amateurs!", "cowards!", "dog heads!", "porridge peasants!", "sop!", "scumbags!", to name a few. == Characters ==