Leigh Bardugo has described Six of Crows as her heist novel, written in the manner of heist films, and it follows Ocean's Eleven's structure: a leader assembles specialists for an impossible job against an impregnable building, the plan is laid out, then revealed to have been a different plan all along. Bardugo has explicitly confirmed that Ocean's Eleven inspired the book: "I was driving down a street in Los Angeles, when I saw a billboard for a movie called Monuments Men starring George Clooney and Matt Damon. It didn't make me want to see the movie, but it instantly brought to mind Ocean's 11, and then I almost drove off the road because all I could think was MAGICAL HEIST."