Cheaters Never Prosper in Live-Action TV
- 1000 Ways to Die, a show all about Karmic Deaths, has many instances where a victim cheats in a competition, and their outcome after the fact is very self-explanatory.
- "Cock-a-Doodle-Die": A man cheats in a cockfight by putting razors in his rooster's talons, which enables him to kill his opponent's rooster. The opponent catches on and forms an angry mob to kill the cheater, but the cheater's own rooster does the job for them, slashing his jugular vein with the hidden razors.
- "Texas Fold 'em": A junkyard owner playing poker with gang-connected heavies always cheats, and when one player catches on, they chase the cheater through the junkyard. The cheater hides in a wrecked minivan and manages to give the gang members the slip, but the van is slated to be junked that day, and he is crushed to death.
- "Slippery When Dead": During an oil-wrestling match, one contestant who cheats constantly loses her footing and impales her head on a spiked wrestling bell, with the announcer demanding to know whose idea it was to put a spike on said bell.
- "Chain on You": A motocross racer loses a race and her opponent is about to advance to the next race. Before the race starts, the cheating racer places a screw on her opponent's motorcycle chain, and once the race began, the screw would cause the chain to break and she would lose the race as a result. However, it backfires on the cheating racer big time: when the chain snaps off, it flies into her neck, causing her to bleed to death.
- Subverted by Married... with Children when Al Bundy uses a mistakenly issued senior citizens discount card to get into, and eventually win, the senior Olympics, beating out an honest competitor who had refused to do the very thing Al was in the process. Lampshaded at the episode's end with the narration "Bet you thought Al was going to let the old guy win. Well, then you haven't been paying attention for the last seven years."
- With Al himself giving the Broken Aesop "It's only cheating if you get caught."
- The Brady Bunch: The fifth-season episode "Quarterback Sneak" deals with the ethics of cheating and thwarting cheaters. Here, Greg, quarterback of the Westdale High football team, suspects that Marcia's new boyfriend, Jerry Rogers (the quarterback from rival Fairview High), is out to steal his team's playbook as his team is struggling to find a way to beat Westdale at the latter's homecoming. After a failed attempt to swipe the playbook during his first visit to the Bradys, Jerry invites himself over again and succeeds in the theft. Greg — instead of reporting to his coach the first theft attempt (especially since Bobby had seen Jerry try to steal the playbook, and thus would have been a reliable witness) — had prepared by creating a phony playbook. The boys laugh about how they've "put one over Jerry," but Mike overhears the boys' revelry and brings them down to earth by saying what he's done was just as dishonest and was unfair to the Fairview players and coaches who were playing by the rules. Eventually, the Fairview High coach finds out about Jerry's theft and kicks him off the team; it is not known what, if anything, happens to Greg ... although he is able to lead Westdale to a 20-7 victory.
- In the hit UK Realty Show Don't Tell The Bride where Grooms arrange their wedding without their bride's knowing went through the unthinkable when the Bridal Party went through the Groom's Emails using his Ipad, the bridesmaids slipped up on the secret trip to Paris where the service was to be done and so the Producers checked and cancelled the wedding.
- Game shows have had more than their share, but one lesser-known example comes from the 1980-1981 NBC game show Las Vegas Gambit, a Q&A-type game married to blackjack hosted by Wink Martindale. In an episode that pitted male-female teams of people previously strangers to each other, Martindale asks the question, "From what direction does the east wind blow — east to west or west to east?" The team answers, "West to east," which Martindale momentarily doesn't hear, and asks the team to repeat their answer. Perhaps realizing they gave a wrong answer, they try to change it to "east to west," but the off-stage judge — having heard the original response — signals to Martindale, who immediately snaps at them to repeat their first answer ... which they sheepishly do. To date, it is one of the only times Martindale has been upset (albeit briefly), and even that incident was quickly forgotten. The episode in question, by the way, originally aired in the summer of 1981, and was rerun on November 27 of that year ... the show's last broadcast day. (Incidentally, that airing is far better known for Martindale appearing — during the show's final act — in a box, announcing that the show had been canceled and that The Regis Philbin Show would take over the following Monday.)
- Gladiators (2024): In episode three, when heel Viper tries Deliberately Jumping the Gun in "Duel", he's immediately reprimanded, the contender's Ring Out is overturned, and the challenge is restarted. Viper then gets immediately flattened in a Curb-Stomp Battle as the contender gets some payback.
- In a Growing Pains episode, Mike prepared cheat notes on the soles of his shoes for an important test. However, when doing the test, Mike found that he was able to do the test honestly since he legitimately knew the answers. However, Mike's notes are discovered at the end and the teacher logically assumes he used them to cheat and it takes the rest of the episode for Mike to convince his parents and teacher of the truth, both to allow him to prove that he knows the material and for his parents and teacher to drive home the point that preparing to cheat is wrong in itself, Mike retakes the test, on top of the desks, barefoot, and in his underwear to make sure he is using no unauthorized materials.
- In another episode, this philosophy is seriously subverted. Ben has the opportunity to cheat on a test but does not; he ends up getting a bad grade and is scolded by his parents. His friends do cheat, get excellent grades, and are rewarded by their parents. Ben's father is forced to concede that, in reality, cheaters prosper and win very often (saying that "in some cases, they even win the White House", an obvious reference to Watergate), although he does say that being honest can be far more rewarding in the long run.
- The UK version of Big Brother has seen two notable cheating scandals in its run:
- During the first series, contestant Nick Bateman hid writing materials in his luggage and attempted to influence the voting process by manipulating his fellow housemates. He was eventually confronted by Craig Phillips, in a sit-down conversation that had viewers riveted, before the producers stepped in and removed him from the house. As an extra kicker, Craig ended up winning the series after earning a lot of praise from the public for how he handled the Nick situation.
- During the 7th series, Dawn Blake made the decision to cheat and break the rule the forbidding contact with the outside world. She crafted a code with her sister to send a message passed off as a family tragedy notification, fooling Big Brother in the process. Dawn got busted when she admitted this code to several other house sites and incited several discussions about it, leading to her eventual ejection for the house but not before Dawn repeatedly told Big Brother to shut up when confronted. This behavior led to the live audience at the first eviction booing her with the host calling Dawn out for the harm she caused.
- Zigzagged in Cheers. When a crook tries to cheat Sam and his customers in rigged poker games, the Con Artist Harry the Hat agrees to help them because, in his own words, "I don't like the idea of someone else plucking my pigeons." While the crook cheats, Harry manages to win because, well Harry is a better cheater. (And it helped that Coach was helping him cheat.)
- Cobra Kai: Towards the end of season 4, Tory discovers that Terry Silver paid off the referee to favor Cobra Kai, making Tory's win a tainted one. When confronting him in the next season, Silver makes no hesitation of denying it, calling it an "insurance policy". However, when he does bribe the referee during the Sekai Taikai tryouts, the only instance that this backfire is that Sam manages to beat Devon clean. In the finale, Tory, along with the rest of Miyagi-do and Eagle Fang expose Silver's cheating, ultimately leading to the mass exodus of Cobra Kai students discarding their shirts once Silver is defeated by Daniel.
- In the Community pilot, Jeff asks Professor Duncan for every answer to every test he is due to write at Greendale. Duncan responds by quoting the trope name and doesn't give Jeff the answers.
- In an episode of MacGyver (1985), a race car driver tries to use an illegal Nitro Boost, which causes him to lose control of his car and spin out on the shoulder.
- In a Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide episode which deals with tests, aptly named "Survival Guide to: Cheaters". Alpha Bitch Bitsy Johnson constantly keeps copying off of Moze's papers despite her efforts to block her from looking at them. Eventually, Moze comes up with the idea to just put the wrong answers on her Spanish test and take a failing grade to get her to stop. When Bitsy complains to Moze about it and announces she can always find someone else to cheat off of, their Spanish teacher happens to walk by and overhear her. Bitsy is taken to the principal's office and her name plaque is removed from the honor roll board.
- In the Side Hustle episode "Thumb and Thumber", Presley squares off with her childhood thumb-wrestling rival, Rago, in a thumb-wrestling tournament where the grand prize is a brand-new boat so she, Lex and Munchy can finally pay off Tedward's old boat after they destroyed it. Rago's mother supposedly kisses his thumb for good luck before each match, which the trio finds totally gross, but she's kissing it with thumb grease, which allows Rago to slip out of his opponents' pins and win each match, which is supposedly how he was able to easily defeat Munchy in a practice round, breaking his thumb in the process, and Presley when they were seven years old, and perhaps win every tournament he competed in. After Munchy catches everything on video before Presley can face Rago in the final round, he and Lex secretly steal the thumb grease from his mother before she can give him the kiss. Without the grease, Rago is forced to prove to his mother he can beat Presley on his own as he did when they were seven years old, but Presley defeats him fair and square and she, Lex and Munchy are able to pay off Tedward's boat, until the trio ends up back at square one when they destroy Jagget's dune buggy.
- Used repeatedly throughout the CSI franchise, always ending with the cheater (or the cheated) becoming the Victim of the Week (be it because the objective of using the cheat was to kill the other guy, they pissed off someone enough to drive them to murder with the cheat, an opportunist third party with vested interests rigs the cheat so it is fatal, or the cheater (or cheated) is Too Dumb to Live and trigger the cheat just right).
- While Top Gear's racing competition with their Australian counterparts subverts this handily, since most of the tricks they pullednote work out as planned, for two events their cheating backfired on them:
- In the "Synchronized Drifting" event, the UK team tried to stack the deck by appointing Hammond and May as "fair and independent" judges of for both teams. After the Aussies' go, they both attempted to give them a score of 1.1, but Hammond mixed up his score cards and gave them an 11 instead, giving the Australians a combined score of 12.1, which was .1 higher than what they had given Clarkson for his run, handing the Aussies the event.
- In the "Sheep Herding" event, Clarkson had attempted to slight the Aussie team by giving them Austrian made bikes instead of Australian made ones. The Australians don't even care because the Austrian bikes are "THE best bikes", and are able to run circles around their sheep. Not that they needed the extra help anyway since the Brits are absolutely hopeless with motorbikes.
- Sidestepped on Head of the Class. Charlie had to take an economics course in order to keep his teaching certification (and his job) but was shown struggling with the subject matter, as it's out of his area of expertise. When he's gearing up to take his final exam, the IHP kids put together a composition book that contained all the formulas he would need to ace the test (they said he would be given two workbooks at the exam - one to write the answers in, one to use as a workbook and he could just substitute their workbook to use). The next day, when they ask how he did on the exam, he says he thinks he did fine - then pulled the workbook they gave him out of his desk, showing he didn't use it. When asked why he didn't use it, knowing he could lose his job if he failed the exam, he said, "I wouldn't be the teacher you deserve if I did."
- In the Knight Squad episode "Do the Knight Thing", the students from the sorcery school are battling with Phoenix Squad for the chance to stay at Knight School. The sorcery school students constantly use their magic to cheat and ultimately are disqualified for doing so.
- When cheating takes place in Saved by the Bell: The New Class, expect the whole scheme to become undone before the end of the episode. Below are some examples:
- In the Season 2 episode "Tommy the Tenor", Brian decides to join the Glee Club after seeing Rachel getting accepted into it. Unfortunately for Brian, he's Hollywood Tone-Deaf, so he gets help from Tommy, who shows no desire of entering it, by lip-synching his piece during his audition, while Tommy, hiding in the nearby hallway, sings for real, resulting in Brian not only being accepted into the Glee Club but getting a solo part as well. When the school board director comes to hear the Glee Club rehearsing, Brian enlists Tommy's help once again, but this time the plan fails because Mr. Belding and the school board director encounter Tommy in the hallway on the way to said rehearsal and, assuming Tommy is there for moral support, drag him into the Glee Club classroom, forcing Brian to do his solo part, well, solo. It goes as well as one would expect.
- In the Season 3 episode "Driving School", Maria is failing her Driver's Ed class as she's getting her car for her 16th birthday, so she gets Screech to tamper with her Driver's Ed test score to get her passed. Later on, she hits Mr. Belding's car while driving her own with the other students, and Mr. Belding finds out at the end despite the best efforts from Screech and the students to cover it up.
- In the Season 5 episode "Her Brother's Keeper", Ryan and Eric learn of a movie trivia contest where the winning prize is a jet ski. Ryan can't enter due to being an employee of the sponsoring franchise that's behind the contest, so he gets Eric to enter in his stead, training him via having Eric watch many movies to get him prepared. When that fails to work, Ryan resorts to cheating by having Eric wear a concealed earpiece while Ryan, hiding out of sight, whispers answers on a coordinated device for Eric to repeat to the contest proper. Too bad for them Screech spots Ryan in the act on his mall security guard shift as the scheme is ongoing, prompting Screech to stage an Engineered Public Confession using the same means Ryan uses for cheating before he proceeds to bust Ryan and Eric on the spot, which gets Eric disqualified.
- Nancy Drew (2019): A subplot in "The Trial of the Missing Witness" has George entering a cooking competition against a rival restaurant. Her younger sister discovers that the rival restaurant actually stole a recipe for chowder that belonged to George's family and used it to win the previous competitions. Despite this, George still manages to win.
- The Suite Life of Zack & Cody: This trope serves as the moral of the episode "Going for the Gold", where Arwin always managed to lose to his rival, Irv Wheldon, who works for the Tipton's rival hotel chain, the St. Mark, year after year in a competition for hotel maintenance engineers. Arwin believes he's not as good as Irv, but the twins, confident he could beat him, find out Irv was cheating year after year, but each time they try to expose him, Irv always manages to cover his tracks very well. During the last leg of the race, after the boys try to even the playing field by sabotaging the elevator Irv was using after he just repaired it, only for Arwin to stop them, preferring to come in second fairly than cheat, Irv tries to cut corners by jumping over the railing of the stairs in the hotel lobby, only to end up hurting himself, leaving Arwin to rightfully get ahead of him and win.
- In the tenth season of the US version of The Apprentice, Trump confronts Anand about allegations that he was texting friends to come buy from him and boost his sales numbers. Anand lies to Trump's face and claims he never did, only to admit his misdeeds when Trump reads the texts aloud. Anand is then fired on the spot. The best part? None of the people he texted showed up during the challenge.
- Exaggerated Decon-Recon Switch in Kamen Rider Zero-One. Gai Amatsu flagrantly cheats during the Workplace Competition in various ways; being in on the enigmatic Raiders that disrupt the competitions, attacking his rival Aruto constantly (forcing him to use a Restraining Bolt that hijacks him whenever he does), engaging in a tangential conspiracy to take over the mind of A.I.M.S.' Isamu Fuwa alongside Fuwa's reluctant partner and generally waging copious amounts of corporate warfare at all given times. He's playing so much Xanatos Speed Chess he doesn't just counter Aruto's attempts to expose him in the final round, but outright reverses it into positive PR. The cherry on the sundae is when he arms the Humagear of the final round with a ZetsumeRiser on live television and allows it to run amok to demonstrate Raiders as a self-defense tool; managing to pin the entire debacle on Aruto and sway the public against Humagears. Even with Aruto taming the Superpowered Evil Side with a workaround and Isamu defeating Gai in battle repeatedly, Gai wins the competition in the end; exiling Aruto on the spot. Then he finds out the previous CEO linked the trademark for Hiden Intelligence's unique tech (The reason Gai wanted Hiden at all) to the family name rather than the company name, meaning Aruto isn't stripped of anything other than his position despite the losses and Gai now has a useless puppet-company. Gai's cheating was both foolproof and absolutely pointless. Cue Oh, Crap! followed by six whole episodes of back-to-back Curb Stomp Battles headed in his direction as the "winner" devolves into puppy-kicking Stupid Evil and everyone, including the local band of genocidal robo-terrorists, put their differences aside to demolish him in all capacities.
- During the second semifinal of the 2022 Eurovision Song Contest, the juries for Azerbaijan, Georgia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania and San Marino were all disqualified and had a substitute jury vote created for them, based the (legitimate) jury votes from countries with similar voting records to theirs, in both that semifinal and final. According to one of Belgium's broadcasters, they had made agreements to vote for one another.
- LazyTown: "Sports Day": Robbie gave himself a huge advantage by tricking Ziggy into giving Sportacus a sugar apple. He also tried to slip up Trixie with marbles and has his gear equipped with turbo boosters. Despite this, Sportacus was able to beat him after recovering and win the race foiling Robbie's plans.
- Walker, Texas Ranger has dealt with this sort of thing from time to time:
- Season 6's "Rainbow's End" involves the Villain of the Week, James Lee Crown, seeking the bolster the value of his racehorses by making sure they win all their races, and sometimes, it means killing off the competition. After Crown kills a rival racehorse and its owner and trainer (the latter of whom working for him) after they win a race, Walker and Trivette are called in to investigate, and during this time, Crown sets his sights on another racehorse owned by a close friend of Walker's, which happens to be the titular horse. Halfway through the investigation, when Rainbow's End's food is spiked with poison by Crown (due to one of his men posing as one of the stablemen after stealing his uniform) just before a match race, Rainbow is still able to win by a nose, but at the same time, the poison takes full effect. Walker arrests the fake stableman (who cooperates in the investigation of the previous murder and Rainbow's attempted murder after being interrogated by Trivette), and then arrests Crown. Rainbow luckily survives the poison and goes on to win in the Texas Derby. It is unknown of what happened to Crown after his arrest; either he got life in prison or the death penalty.
