History Main / TheyStoleOurAct

* According to Joseph Simmons (Reverend Run of Music/RunDMC) in his autobiography, Music/LLCoolJ was stealing their stage raps and other parts of their performance during the 1986 Together Forever tour (consisting of Run-DMC, the Music/BeastieBoys and LL Cool J) and using them during his slot as the opening act. LL was kicked off the tour for it.

* ''Series/{{Glee}}'': New Directions faces this problem during sectionals, when their set list is leaked to the other schools' glee clubs.

* ''WesternAnimation/FostersHomeForImaginaryFriends'': Bloo plans a hiccup act for a talent show, but his rival Blake Superior uses the same act, only with burping. This leads to a burp-hiccup competition between the two that Bloo wins. Neither of them, however, win the talent show; they are beaten by [[DarkHorseVictory a friend who plays his armpits.]]

* ''WesternAnimation/LittlestPetShop2012'': Zoe auditions for an acapella group, only to be told too late that only cats are allowed. Zoe, always desperate for a spotlight and now out for revenge, [[StartMyOwn makes her own group]] to enter the competition. The group she auditioned for uses the song she auditioned with and had been planning to use (the cat who kicked her out claimed she thought they had Zoe's permission). In this case, there's a rule that each team must have a unique song, and Zoe doesn't have time to teach her group a brand new act from scratch. Luckily, they remember [[ChekhovsGun a jingle from an old pet food commercial Zoe starred in]] and enter with that, allowing them to win.

[[folder: Literature]]
* In the ''Franchise/StatTrekExpandedUniverse'' book ''Legends of the Ferengi'', one of the stories describes how two Ferengi comedians -- whose rivalry was so great, they'd refuse to play a town the other did -- agreed to bury the hatchet and both appear on the bill for a major event ... and the one who appeared first did the whole of the other's act before his own.

[[folder:Film]]

[[folder: Real Life]]

* Slight variation of this done on the TV show version of ''The Ten Things I Hate About You''. Bianca and Chastity find out ahead of time that they are doing the same song, and Bianca has to do a song switch. After Chastity's Auto-Tune breaks during the show, she and Bianca agree to sing the original song together.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'': In the tryouts of a kid Idol show, Lisa's original song was 'Hush Little Baby', but the girl ahead of her sung it really well. Homer makes up a song about Springfield on the spot for her and she gets into the show.

* Chris Rock has said that if comedians had feuds like rappers do, the worst thing one could do to another would be to do their entire act verbatim right before they go on.

* According to Joseph Simmons (Reverend Run of Music/RunDMC) in his autobiography, LL Cool J was stealing their stage raps and other parts of their performance during the 1986 Together Forever tour (consisting of Run-DMC, the Music/BeastieBoys and LL Cool J) and using them during his slot as the opening act. LL was kicked off the tour for it.

* In Episode 5 of ''Anime/ZombieLandSaga Revenge'', Lily enters a talent show, reaches the regional final, and plans to perform a song she used to sing with her father. The other finalist goes first... and announces he's going to perform the exact same song. In the time it takes him to do so, Lily manages to come up with a jazzy, upbeat [[{{Scatting scat-singing]] rendition of the song, which she then performs. [[spoiler:She doesn't win, but the performance goes viral, and her opponent is left feeling as though the wrong person won.]]

* ''Literature/EmmetOttersJugBandChristmas': The eponymous jug band discovers that a guy going before them in the talent show sings the old favorite "Barbeque", which they had planned to sing. Fortunately they have time to go out in the alley and work up a new number.

** Also, Fuwa Sho deals with this problem when a band comes out of nowhere and blatantly plagiarizes his already-published work. [[spoiler: then his soon-to-be-published work as well]]

* ''Series/{{Glee}}'': New Directions faces this problem during sectionals, when their set list is leaked to the other school's glee clubs.

* Slight variation of this done on the TV show version of ''The Ten Things I Hate About You." Bianca and Chastity find out ahead of time that they are doing the same song, and Bianca has to do a song switch. After Chastity's Auto-Tune breaks during the show, she and Bianca agree to sing the original song together.

* The ''{{WesternAnimation/Doug}}'' episode "Doug's No Dummy" had Doug work up a ventriliquism act (after Roger entered him in the school talent show), only to see Chalky Studebaker perform a similar act with ''two'' dummies.

* Music/{{Abba}} were presumably less impressed when copycat band The Brotherhood of Man came along - composed of two guys and two girls who performed pop songs. They must have been reaching for the lawyers when after the success of their hit ''Fernando'', about a couple prepared to nobly die together for a greater cause in [[{{Spexico}} Latin America]], the [=BoM=] did one called ''Angelo'' - about a freeddom fighter prepared to give up a grieving lover to die nobly for the greater good in UsefulNotes/{{Spain}}.

* ''Film/BringItOn''. A high school cheerleading team is humiliated at Regionals when the team performing before them uses their routine. Turns out that the guy who taught them the routine had been peddling it to many different schools.

* ''BringItOn''. A high school cheerleading team is humiliated at Regionals when the team performing before them uses their routine. Turns out that the guy who taught them the routine had been peddling it to many different schools.

* Music/{{Abba}} were presumably less impressed when copycat band The Brotherhood of Man came along - composed of two guys and two girls who performed pop songs. They must have been reaching for the lawyers when after the success of their hit ''Fernando'', about a couple prepared to nobly die together for a greater cause in [[{{Spexico}} Latin America]], the BoM did one called ''Angelo'' - about a freeddom fighter prepared to give up a grieving lover to die nobly for the greater good in UsefulNotes/{{Spain}}.

--> '''Mark''': I think it's ''very clear'' what we do. I'm gonna suggest we be ''bold''. We open ... with ''"Wanderin'"''.
--> '''Jerry''': Did you ''miss'' the last couple of minutes? They're currently ''butchering'' ... turn it back up again. You wanna hear it?
--> '''Mark''': We give the audience ... a ''choice''. We say, "You can enjoy <mockingly> a toothpaste commercial <normal> or ... ''folk'' music.

* ''Literature/EmmetOttersJugBandChristmas'': The eponymous jug band discovers that a guy going before them in the talent show sings the old favorite "Barbeque", which they had planned to sing. Fortunately they have time to go out in the alley and work up a new number.

* ''Manga/SkipBeat'': Moko and Kyoko have worked out a great routine for their audition, and... The Libby has stolen it from them. [[spoiler: They change the skit on the fly and pass the audition.]]

* In the episode of ''TheWonderYears'' where Kevin learns piano, this happens to him at the end-of-year recital.

* This happened in an episode of ''Series/DrakeAndJosh''. After a chorus stole and performed Drake's song, Drake and Josh instead perform ''Soul Man'' from ''TheBluesBrothers''.