History Main / CheatersNeverProsper

* In my town there are two high schools. They play at least one football game against each other a year. One year my team won, and it was okay. Then we had to forfeit because we had one player play, who had played in the freshman game. Which meant he had played too many quarters in one week. Oops. The next morning, the other team realized ''they violated the exact same rule'' leading to a double forfeit. It was my most favorite Civil War Game, because it meant those shirts with the tally marks would either stop, or add another column for Nobody winning.

* In MinamiKe, Kana challenges Fujioka to see who can get better grades. Despite repeatedly cheating and rewriting her scores, she still always falls behind by a few points.
* Inverted in episodes 24 and 25 of YumeiroPatissiere, when Miya Koshiro ("The Heiress")'s team defeats Team Ichigo in the Cake Grand Prix semi-finals by having one of its members spy on Ichigo in order to steal Team Ichigo's recipe. To add injury to insult, said spy went so far as to make the room hotter, thus ruining the chocolate Team Ichigo was making. To add further to the humiliation, Team Ichigo lost by only ONE point.

* The Film ''Goal 2'' both subverts this trope and plays it straight. In the first minute of the Champions League Final, a (fictional) Arsenal player dives to win a penalty, the subversion being that he scores the one he dived to win, but then, with his team 2 goals ahead with less than five minutes left, his team mate wins a penalty fairly and he misses. Cue {{Miracle Rally}} from Real Madrid.

* In ''FutureGPXCyberFormula SAGA'', the Aoi team got disqualified from the series for one year after they cheated in the Japan Grand Prix by doping, and kidnapping the lead character the night before the race.

* Jyonouchi in ''{{Yu-Gi-Oh}}''! has a habit of dueling cheaters, such as Mai (perfume) and Bandit Keith (cards in his bracelets) in the Duelist Kingdom arc, and Espa (had his brothers spy on his opponents) and Weevil (sabotaged his deck) in Battle City. Predictably, they all lost to him.

* In ''FutureGPXCyberFormula SAGA'', the Aoi team got disqualified from the series after they cheated in the Japan Grand Prix by doping, and kidnapping the lead character the night before the race.

* Jyonouchi in ''{{Yu-Gi-Oh}}''! has a habit of dueling cheaters, such as Mai (perfume) and Bandit Keith (card in his bracelets) in the Duelist Kingdom arc, and Espa (had his brothers spy on his opponents) in Battle City. Predictably, they all lost to him.

* Averted in ''{{Monster}}'', where Tenma and Gillen come in second and first in their class, respectively, after cheating on a major test.

* Generally played with in the {{Asterix}} comics. The Roman team (which includes Asterix) at the Games is humiliated by the various Greek cities, and because they're so useless the Greeks come up with a special Roman-only event. The Roman competitors take this extremely seriously, so Asterix induces them all to take a dose of the magic potion, which constitutes a drug offence. [[spoiler: In the race the next day, Asterix, the only competitor not to cheat, comes a distant last, but the Romans are exposed and Asterix is declared the winner. He then gives away the laurel wreath to one of the Roman competitors, who gets all the credit back in Rome and is promoted as a result.]]

* The bullies at the end of RaceForYourLifeCharlieBrown use some really nasty tricks (even life threatening to the Peanuts gang), but at the end can't reach the finish line due to their raft sinking.

** With Al himself giving the BrokenAesop "It's only cheating, if you get caught."

* Averted hard in AvatarTheLastAirbender where Toph, Sokka and Katara spend an episode cheating fire-nation folk out of their money with such varied methods as cheating a cheater in three card monty to a full on flopsy scheme. They end up in trouble, but only because they indirectly become famous. They never give back any of the ill gotten goods either.

* At least one of the opposing teams in ''RememberTheTitans'' gets a big leg up from blatantly racist referees. The Titans, of course, go undefeated.

** Actually a pretty consistent theme in the show. Compare how well Team Rocket tends to do when they play by the rules compared to when [[DickDastardlyStopsToCheat they cheat.]]