This came up in a brilliant way in a manga I was reading.

Two combat pros are facing off in a back alley, the aggressor trying to “test” their victim. The loser protagonist, who’s useless in a fight, hears the altercation from his store job, and rushes out to help his friend. He throws a paint bomb, used by stores to identify robbers, at the assailant.

The assailant runs, and spends the rest of the issue in a panic about how to conceal the paint; since they’d very much been relying on the option of being able to sneak out through crowds.