Times where someone attempts to undercut, undermine and ruin the success of another in Live-Action TV series.
- The gimmick for the 21st season of The Amazing Race was if the team who came in first on the first leg won the race, they’d get $2 million instead of the normal $1 million. Dating couple Abbie and Ryan won the first leg which put a target on their backs as no one else wanted them to get it. In leg 7, they took a gamble on a flight with a small layover that didn’t work out. They ended up about 12 hours behind everyone else with the another couple team Josh & Brent. While they were missing, the other three teams left plotted the plan that would end up being the nail in their coffin. Once they were both able to catch up with the teams in leg 9, 2nd place Jaymes & James had U-turned them while 3rd place Trey & Lexi U-turned the guys to burn the spot. They got eliminated but the plan didn’t quite work out as Josh & Brent pulled a Let's Get Dangerous! once they were able to use a once a day ferry trip to catch up for good. Josh was able to ace the finale’s tough memory challenge and they won.
- In Arrested Development, George Bluth Sr. would deliberately denigrate Michael's achievements and suggestions as a way of keeping Michael looking for his approval (while privately acknowledging that Michael actually does well), while the rest of the family mostly looks on Michael's work ethic and financial sense as him lording it over the others (which Michael occasionally admits is slightly true).
- Babylon 5: The Inquisitor in his eponymous episode accuses Delen of delusions of grandeur regarding her position in the resistance against the Shadows. He even references the nail getting hammered down, punctuating it with "Bang, bang, bang". Delen counters by accusing him of engaging in Tall Poppy Syndrome.Delenn: You are a creature who has received pain, and given pain, and taken too much joy in its application. You have aspired to dreams and been disappointed because you were not strong enough, or worthy enough, or right enough. So you lash out at anyone who believes they can make a difference because it reminds you of your own failure. You have to prove they're just as bad, just as flawed as you are. Am I close, Mr. Sebastian?
- Bridgerton: After the Queen compliments Daphne and the latter is subsequently declared the Incomparablenote , Daphne's younger sister Eloise comments that this will draw the ire of every other young lady who is out in society and seeking a husband.Daphne: Trust I was astonished Her Majesty offered me, out of two hundred young ladies present, a most gracious remark.
Eloise: Yes, it was quite a distinction. And now two hundred young ladies have a common adversary. - One episode of Cold Case involved the death of a black man who had managed to pass himself off as white in the 1950s. The murderer was motivated by this, accusing him of 'betraying his people'.
- Doctor Who:
- "Rose": After the department store that Rose worked at is blown up, her mother Jackie expresses the opinion that working there was giving her "airs and graces".
- "The Parting of the Ways": After Rose has been sent back to the 21st century and is in a Heroic BSoD, Mickey's contribution to the discussion is to bitterly ask if she thinks that saving worlds with the Doctor makes her better than everyone else.
- One episode late in Everybody Loves Raymond has Robert tasked with preparing invitations to his and Amy's wedding. He diligently sets to work, but Ray tells him that instead, he has to deliberately botch things up—if he does a good job, he'll be setting a precedent that he'll always have to uphold (plus it could threaten Ray's own Lazy Bum status). Trouble arises when Robert goes too far and ruins the invitations so badly that everyone is horrified.
- In an episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Will and Carlton try to get into a popular all-black fraternity. While the fraternity's leader is accepting of Will, he puts Carlton through a very biased Training from Hell, only to refuse to let him join anyway, claiming that he's not "black" enough to join, and goes so far as to call him a "sellout" for being from a wealthy family. Will starts to call him out, but Carlton stops him and instead handles the situation himself with a "The Reason You Suck" Speech.Carlton: You think I'm a sellout, why? Because I live in a big house or I dress a certain way? Or maybe it's because I like Barry Manilow. Being black isn't what I'm trying to be, it's what I am. I'm running the same race and jumping the same hurdles you are, so why are you tripping me up? You said we need to stick together, but you don't even know what that means. If you ask me, you're the real sellout.
- Phil describes the term best with the ending lines:Phil: You know, this... this really irritates me. I have worked very hard to give my family a good life and suddenly somebody tells me there's a penalty for success? I'm sorry you had to go through this, son. When are we going to stop doing this to each other?
- Phil describes the term best with the ending lines:
- Ghostwriter: The culprit in the "Building Bridges" arc had this with a mixture of Hard Work Hardly Works. Tony Boyd had been the top runner in Hurston Middle School's track and relay team for three years straight, until newcomer Victor Torres came along and within two months surpassed him, even being selected as the team's anchor legs by their coach. Tony was so full of rage and envy that he decided to vandalize the school and frame Victor for it, knowing that he'd been part of a street gang in the past and hoping he'd be expelled from the team and the school. When he's finally caught, he goes on a Motive Rant as to how hard he's been working for the past three years in the track team, and it's not fair that Victor comes along and takes his thunder just like that. Victor replies that he too has been working hard, especially to leave his past as a gang member behind and get a fresh start.
- "Three on a Couch", an episode of The Golden Girls, sees Rose, Dorothy, and Blanche visiting a psychiatrist when they seem unable to stop fighting with each other. The girls complain about each other's flaws, with Rose's Cloud Cuckoolander status and Blanche's insatiable sex drive as targets for derision. Dorothy's, though, is the fact that she's largely rule-abiding and level-headed; Rose and Blanche complain that she "lords it over" them and acts superior just because she has her life in order.
- Homicide: Life on the Street: Munch discusses this trope while interrogating a rich young Spoiled Brat suspected of murdering his own grandparents. It turns out that the kid had accidentally killed them in a rage-fueled tantrum about his father's neglect.Munch: Little bottom feeders like you don't appreciate what you have because other people have a little more. It's the algebra of greed!
- I Love Lucy has a rather humorous take on this: frustrated at Lucy's perpetual mistakes, Ricky draws up a very tight, rigorous schedule for her to do her chores. It actually seems to help the scatterbrained Lucy, until Ethel and her friends complain that Lucy's efficiency makes them look bad, that, "How can we say we can't get everything done in one day when you're doing just that?" An appeal to her vanity makes Lucy herself decide to derail the schedule, naturally when Ricky has friends over, and Hilarity Ensues.
- Happens a number of times in The Inbetweeners. When a character shows signs of making some form of progress in their social lives, the others conspire to bring them back to their level. Examples include Jay's football friend and Will's romance with Daisy.
- Probably closer to "crabs in a bucket" than tall poppies, but whenever one member of the Gang from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia seems to be pulling things together and potentially escape the squalor and misery of the others, the rest of the group will sabotage them.
- Kamen Rider Agito's antagonists, the Overlords, see themselves as humanity's shepherds and want to protect them from outside threats. However, also try to kill any humans who develop the Seed of Agito, under the logic of "We're protecting you, so you don't need to be exceptional."
- On Longmire a Victim of the Week was a Cheyenne man who left his tribe, got a college degree, married a non-Indian and then decided to come home so he could help others out of the crippling poverty that plagued the tribe. Quite a few of the Cheyenne considered him a traitor who sold out to the white man and was acting like he was better than them. He ended up being force-fed alcohol and painted red so he appeared more like a 'real Indian'.
- Played for Laughs with Rita Glossner on The Middle. She and her family are rednecks and she sees the Hecks as rich snobs when they're middle-class at best.
- On the All-Stars editions (from Seasons 2-6 plus UK vs The World) of RuPaul's Drag Race the format for elimination involved the queens getting to choose who to eliminate, and many times queens will take advantage of a contestant who did well suddenly having a bad week and thus take them out. Notable instances include Alaska eliminating Tatianna and Alyssa Edwards, Naomi Smalls eliminating Manila Luzon, Pangina Heals eliminating Jimbo, then Blu Hydrangea eliminating Pangina.
- Rutherford Falls: "Crab mentality", aka "crabs in a bucket" (someone out catching crabs doesn't have to cover their bucket as the crabs will pull each other down) informs Minishonkan social interactions. When Reagan gets featured on a billboard, the Minishonka badmouth her through gossip and social media out of the belief that she thinks she's better than the community. At first, Reagan tries to explain herself to the community but snaps and starts cutting down the ones who piss her off and ends up winning some favor.
- In The Sopranos, Villain Protagonist Tony is a narcissist who can't stand to see others happy when he isn't. When his sister's behavior improves from her anger management classes, he spitefully goads her into attacking him to sabotage her progress.
- Suits reveals in a flashback that Mike sold answers to an exam in college (and was expelled for it) because some frat boys cheated him and Trevor out of money that Trevor needed to pay to a drug dealer. The frat boys did it because Mike's Photographic Memory made him an A+ student and they felt that he made them look lazy and stupid in comparison. So they essentially robbed him of all his money so they could show him that he wasn't smarter than them.
- This principle appears in Survivor and just about every other reality show based on Voted Off the Island. If someone makes too good of a showing, the other contestants deem him/her a threat and vote them out. Justified since this format really is a zero-sum game where others' success comes at the expense of your own. However, this has been going on long enough that an inversion has come into play: people have realized that if someone makes too poor of a showing, then they're valuable to keep around to win against — and they paradoxically become a threat in their own right, since the other players have more incentive to keep them over you. As a result, players will sometimes specifically target the underachiever in order to create an opening for themselves.
- In Ted Lasso, Nathan Shelley is so used to being the worthless nobody that once he starts gaining some respect and attention, he starts putting down others who he views as more dominant and therefore a threat to his own worth. This even leads to him betraying Ted Lasso, the first person to give him respect and attention, by exposing his anxiety attacks to the media.
- In True Blood, this is the motivation behind a group of normal humans driving around and killing all humans with super-abilities. They don't try to hide it either.
- One episode of The Twilight Zone (1985), "Examination Day," paired this trope with Cruel Twist Ending. Richard "Dickie" Jordan, Jr. is a naturally inquisitive, curious child who loves to read and learn. On his twelfth birthday, he's taken in for the government-mandated intelligence test, and hopes he'll do well. He does—and that's a problem, as the state has made it a crime for people to be too smart. The whole point of the exam is to make sure that everyone stays the "right" level of stupid and unthinking, and—as is the case with Dickie—they kill any child who exceeds it.
- In the Law & Order: UK series written by Spookfan, Alesha Philips backstory includes the fact that she and her cousin Martha are the only people from their low class family to achieve something, with Alesha becoming a lawyer and Martha a doctor. It's explicitly stated several times throughout the series that their family regards them with disdain for this, accusing them of thinking that they're better than the everyone else. And in Alesha's case, resenting the fact that she doesn't use her job as a crown prosecutor to get them out of legal trouble.
- Utopia Falls: Phydra tells Bodhi that "the nail that sticks up gets hammered down" while interrogating him for performing a “new” song style (actually rediscovered hip-hop), as the government is suspicious of people having independent personal expression, as this could be subversive.
