History Main / DisqualificationInducedVictory

* ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' season five episode, "Brotherhooves Social". Due to Applejack having to go out of town on a Friendship Mission, Big Mac offers to compete with Apple Bloom for the Sisterhooves Social...dressed in drag as cousin "Orchard Blossom". Eventually, it comes down to the final event, a simple race, and Big Mac and Apple Bloom manage to win. However they're disqualified, but not because Big Mac was disguised (In fact, the judge even mentions that it wasn't necessary and would've allowed him to compete regardless of gender. [[PaperThinDisguise Didn't help that pretty much nopony was falling for the ruse anyway]]) but because of generally poor sportsmanship on Mac's part due to getting a bit too competitive and practically rampaging through the track, which is not something they endorse. Thus Rainbow Dash and Scootaloo, who came in second, end up winning.

* In ''WesternAnimation/MonstersUniversity'', Mike and Sully join the Scare Games with Oozma Kappa. The first game is a race where you have to avoid poisonous sea urchins. Mike and Sully run ahead of the rest of the team, cross the finish line, and at first it seems that they have made second place... but then they're informed that the '''entire''' team has to cross the finish line for it to count, and the rest of Oozma Kappa arrives last. Since each game ends with the worst team getting kicked out, it seems that all is lost... but then it's revealed that one of the teams used a gel that rendered them immune to the urchins, resulting in their disqualification. Hence, Oozma Kappa manages to move on to the next round after all. In a CallForward, viewers who watched the original ''WesternAnimation/MonstersInc'' will recognize the member of the disqualified team who gets used as an example as George Sanderson, the monster who continually got in trouble for bringing human items into the monster world by accident.

* The film ''Film/{{Cannonball}}'' sees one driver in the cross-country road race (the one in the Blazer) cheat by flying across the country. He claims victory, but can't find the bottle of champagne he planned to use to celebrate. His female companion says they must have left it on the plane while surrounded by reporters and race judges.

* The ''VideoGame/WipEout'' series has this happen at the end of the 2206 [=FX300=] League Championship featured in ''Wipeout Pure'', when Australian-based racing team Triakis is stripped of their victory by the Anti-Gravity Racing Commission over their use of the reverse-inertia deceleration system--a technology that let their LightningBruiser of a craft go through corners more quickly than any other team. Instead, the AGRC awarded the victory to the second-place team, Japan's AG Systems.

* The ''VideoGame/WipEout'' series has this happen at the end of the 2206 FX300 League Championship featured in ''Wipeout Pure'', when Australian-based racing team Triakis is stripped of their victory by the Anti-Gravity Racing Commission over their use of the reverse-inertia deceleration system--a technology that let their LightningBruiser of a craft go through corners more quickly than any other team. Instead, the AGRC awarded the victory to the second-place team, Japan's AG Systems.

* In [[Creator/Beverly Cleary Beverly Cleary's]] ''Literature/DearMrHenshaw'', Leigh enters a writing contest that allows the winners to have lunch with a children's book writer. Leigh initially got an honorable mention prize, but it was soon revealed that the 2nd place winner had plagiarized her entry so she was removed, and Leigh essentially was bumped up to 3rd place and thus is allowed to go to the lunch.

* In Creator/Beverly Cleary's ''Literature/DearMrHenshaw'', Leigh enters a writing contest that allows the winners to have lunch with a children's book writer. Leigh initially got an honorable mention prize, but it was soon revealed that the 2nd place winner had plagiarized her entry so she was removed, and Leigh essentially was bumped up to 3rd place and thus is allowed to go. It's a slight variation where neither the cheater or the replacement actually makes it to 1st place.

* In regards to the [[VideoGame/SuperSmashBrosForNintendo3DSAndWiiU Smash Ballot]], VideoGame/{{Bayonetta}} was declared as the winner, but this was due to a rule of "realizable candidates". What this meant isn't exactly clear, but the most general interpretation was this being characters who debuted in works other than video games, or third-party characters whose creators could not be negotiated with in a reasonable time period. While the exact results have never been made public, Creator/MasahiroSakurai eventually revealed that the final DLC fighter for ''[[VideoGame/SuperSmashBrosUltimate Ultimate]]'', [[Franchise/KingdomHearts Sora]], actually got the most votes in the ballot, but the developers needed much more time to negotiate the rights for him than for Bayonetta. It was also due to the ballot that three heavily requested characters, [[VideoGame/{{Castlevania}} Simon Belmont]], [[VideoGame/{{Metroid}} Ridley]], and [[VideoGame/DonkeyKongCountry King K. Rool]], were implemented at launch.

** One of the most famous examples in the 100 meter finals at the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson and American sprinter Carl Lewis were bitter rivals and the top two contenders to win the gold medal. During the race Ben Johnson won the gold medal, beating his rival for the first time, but 24 hours later, he tested positive for performace enhancing drugs. He was immediaty stripped of his gold medal and Lewis who finished second got the gold in his place. What makes this case still debated to this day, however, is that future investigations revealed 80 percent of athletes at the Seoul Olympics, with most being from Track and Field, tested positive for steroids, including Carl Lewis, but their test were cleared and only Ben Johnson was not cleared, which many found suspicious.

* In the history of the UsefulNotes/OlympicGames, 149 medals have been stripped due to cheating (all but seven were drug violations); it's a tiny fraction of the total number of medals given out, but it's certainly not unheard of (and when it ''does'' happen, it's often an international headline, which can create the impression that it's more common than it is). Individuals or teams found to have cheated can be stripped of their medal or placement, which often, though not always (see below) results in moving whoever was behind them up to their place, no matter how long ago the fraud occurred.[[note]]There are some exceptions to this rule; if a competitor violated a rule that had a statute of limitations at the time they competed, such as some iterations of the [[TooQualifiedToApply amateurism rules]] that were in place for a time, that can't be changed ''post facto''. However, most offenses have no such restrictions.[[/note]]

* Averted with the 1994 US Women's Figure Skating Championship. After winner Tonya Harding pled guilty to hindering prosecution regarding the attack on her rival Nancy Kerrigan, the USFSA stripped her of the title but opted to leave the spot blank rather than advance everyone who finished behind her.

* UnderdogsNeverLose: