Fictional depictions of plagiarism in Live-Action Films.
- In Back to School, Thornton Melon turns in an essay about a book by Kurt Vonnegut, written by Kurt Vonnegut himself, which he passes off as his own. The English professor gives him an F, telling him that whoever wrote the essay "doesn't know the first thing about Kurt Vonnegut." Later on, Thornton gets called in by the dean of the college, with accusations that Thornton has committed academic fraud by turning in homework done by someone else.
- In Big Fat Liar, Jason Shepard is given a creative writing assignment, but has such a noted history of chronic lying that he is forced to write it by hand so the teacher is sure he didn't plagiarize something off the Internet. Then, through a stroke of bad luck, major Hollywood producer Marty Wolfe steals his paper and turns it into his next big film. Hilarity Ensues as Jason tries to get Wolfe to admit to plagiarizing his work while unable to convince anyone but his best friend that he's not lying this time.
- Bring It On: New cheer captain Torrance learns that her squad's winning routines were all stolen from another school by her predecessor. Determined to win the national championship honestly, she resorts to hiring a professional choreographer, only to learn too late that he's sold the exact routine to several other schools (one of which performs immediately after them, outing them both).
- The Dead Pool: Subverted. When Harlan Rook reveals himself as the Dead Pool killer, he rants and raves that prima-donna director Peter Swan had stolen his film ideas and so his killing spree, which was designed to try to frame Swan, was justified revenge. He also kills a film critic earlier while ranting that how dare she denigrate and mock his work. The subversion is in the scene that reveals Rook's the man Harry Callahan is looking for: a psychiatrist explains that Rook is just a Loony Fan of Swan that has devolved and the plagiarism is merely a delusion.
- Jamal in Finding Forrester is accused of plagiarism when he turns in an essay written with Forrester's help. Fortunately, Forrester shows up at the disciplinary hearing to explain what happened.
- In the 2009 film Gentlemen Broncos, a teenager's science fiction story is plagiarized by a writer he idolizes.
- Gulliver's Travels (2010): Gulliver is made to write a travel article for a newspaper. Stuck with writer's block, he plagiarizes from several other travel columns. The paper's editor, Darcy, is initially fooled, though she notices that it's a blend of different styles, sounding like they come from different sources, only to later realizes that they are indeed from said sources.
- IQ: Ed Walters falls in love with Catherine Boyd, a brilliant mathematician and doctoral candidate at Princeton. However, she's only interested in academically accomplished men and Ed is just a mechanic who barely passed high school. He gets ahold of a scientific paper on a theory for cold fusion which was written, but never published, by Albert Einstein. He then pretends to be an undiscovered prodigy by presenting this paper to the academic community and passing it off as his own. He succeeds in getting Catherine to notice him and she slowly starts to fall for him. Unfortunately, his paper also attracts the attention of scientists and the government who are excited about the possibility of cold fusion. Meanwhile, Catherine's jealous fiancé is convinced that Ed could not have written the paper and he sets out to prove that Ed is a fraud. Eventually, the attention from so many different parties is too much and Ed is forced to admit that he did not write the paper. Despite his deception, he still ends up with Catherine in the end.
- In Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, the reason Spencer and Fridge are in detention is they were caught plagiarizing. Spencer wrote a paper for Fridge to turn in, but it was so similar to his previous papers, the teacher recognized it.
- Kapoor & Sons: Part of why Arjun dislikes his brother is that he suspects Rahul stole his idea for a novel. It turns out their mother Sunita gave Arjun's manuscript to Rahul because she didn't believe that Arjun was serious about becoming a writer.
- Ji-yun of Korean horror film Killer Toon becomes a prime suspect for murder after the grisly deaths she draws in her horror comic books start coming true in Real Life. She is then forced to admit that she is a plagiarist who has been publishing as her own work comic books that are being emailed to her by an anonymous author.
- The Milk of Sorrow: Aida, a singer with a bad case of Writer's Block, takes a song written by her maid Fausta and passes it off as her own. When Fausta makes an innocuous comment about how the audience at the concert liked the song, Aida promptly throws her out of the car, leaving her stuck by the side of the road.
- In the 1962 version of The Phantom of the Opera, the titular Phantom's backstory is that he was a Starving Artist who went to an influential aristocrat for help in getting his musical compositions published. That man ended up claiming the works as his own, triggering a chain of events that would result in the real composer being horrifically scarred from acid and becoming the masked Phantom. He is determined to sabotage the premiere of his stolen opera.
- In Raising the Wind, a drunken Mervyn sells Sid and Harry what he thinks is an original tune, unaware it is the "Alexandra Valtz".
- Secret Window is about an author who gets a knock on the door from a stranger who accuses him of plagiarizing a short story he wrote. The truth is more complicated and leads to several dead people.
- The B-plot of The Social Network has the Winklevoss twins and Divya Narendra suing Mark Zuckerberg over his alleged plagiarism of the idea (though not any of the code or assets) for their social networking site, The Harvard Connection, which they consider intellectual property theft.
- In The Squid and the Whale, Walt tries to pass off Pink Floyd's "Hey You" as an original song he wrote for the school talent show.
- In Throw Momma from the Train, Larry's ex-wife Margaret gets rich publishing a novel he wrote as if it was her own work.
- The plot of TRON is triggered by Flynn’s hacking into his old employer’s systems for documented proof of his old rival plagiarizing a series of games he created while he worked there.
- Twister: Jonas does many things in his role as the film's resident Hate Sink, and one of these is the reveal that he stole the concept of Bill's "Dorothy" project and passed it off to corporate sponsors as his own, named "D.O.T." (the jerk couldn't even think of a different name). The way Jonas puts it, the fact that the idea was still "unrealized" at the moment he took it means he felt he had free reign.
- What's Up, Doc?: One of the film's many subplots regards Hugh, The Rival to Howard for the Larrabee Foundation grant, a grant that he has already in his pocket with an even better research paper than Howard's. However in the film's epilogue, as he gloats about his victory and explains his research paper, Manic Pixie Dream Girl Judy (who has Photographic Memory and has been expelled from every major university in America) mentions to Mrs. Larrabee that Hugh's research is replicated from a book by a foreign musicologist, which was translated and printed only once sixty years ago. Hugh really, really hoped nobody else had ever read that book.
- In the 2012 movie The Words, A writer who is having trouble getting published happens upon an old manuscript which he passes off as his own and becomes a success.
- This exchange from World's Greatest Dad when Robin Williams' character stops a student during a poem recital.Lance: Stop. Jason, you didn't write that. It's a Queen/Bowie song, "Under Pressure". What Were You Thinking??
Jason: I didn't think you knew that one.
Lance: Jason, I'm white. Sit down.
