Cheaters Never Prosper in Animated and Live Action Films.
Animated Films
- In Cars, on the last leg of the final lap of the Piston Cup tiebreaker race, when Lightning takes the lead and is about to win the race, longtime second-placer Chick Hicks, determined to at least come in ahead of his longtime rival Strip "The King" Weathers once before the latter's retirement, desperately PIT maneuvers the King, sending him into a horrifying rollover crash that astonishes everyone. When Lightning sees what's happened, he, not wanting his idol's career to end the same abrupt and unceremonious way that his mentor Doc Hudson's (aka the "Hudson Hornet") did, stops short of the finish line, allowing Chick to win the Piston Cup, and goes back to help the King finish his final race and retire with the dignity he deserves. The fans, media, and sponsors all become touched by Lightning's act of true sportsmanship and cheer him on as the race's true winner, and Dinoco even offers him the sponsorship they'd promised the winner (which he ultimately turns down), while Chick, despite finally beating the King and winning the Piston Cup, is denied said sponsorship and the fame and glory of the victory, and is booed off the stage with his trophy by everyone for his act of cheating and unsportsmanlike behavior.
- Minor example in The Lion King (1994). After Nala pins Simba for the first time, Simba tries to get back at her by pouncing on her while she has her back turned on him. He ends up accidentally sending them both rolling down a nearby hill, and Nala still ends up pinning him anyway, now even more smug about it than the first time.
- In Monsters University, one fraternity is disqualified in the first round of the Scare Games because it was discovered that they were cheating (the challenge involved avoiding hazards and they used a gel to protect them). Later, Sulley secretly cheats to win the last round, rigging the device so that Mike will get a flawless result no matter what he does, and decides to confess when his teammates' disappointment in him makes him feel guilty.
- Oogie Boogie from The Nightmare Before Christmas is a demonic killer who uses a casino-themed Death Trap, and he blatantly cheats. For example, when he rolls a two, he slams his fist on the table, knocking the dice so they read a better number. While this does help him win at gambling, this results in him having to face Jack mano-a-mano, where he's finally taken down.
- In Puss in Boots: The Last Wish one of Puss' lost lives was caused by him shamelessly cheating in a game of cards against various big dogs. Death alludes to it in the Cave of Lost Souls scene where said lost life accuses him of cheating when he tries to personally end Puss' last life, with Death responding to the hypocritical accusation by smashing the crystal projecting it with his sickle.
- The bullies at the end of Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown use some really nasty tricks (even life-threatening to the Peanuts gang), but at the end can't reach the finish line due to their raft sinking.
- In The Swan Princess, Bromley cheats twice, first playing chess with Derek and again during the training session with the musicians, and he still loses both times.
Live-Action Films
- In Bad Times at the Battle Royale, Jason secretly tries to sabotage Johnson's chances of winning starting with the second round of the competition. Eventually, Elizabeth interrupts the final round in progress, publicly announces everything Jason did to sabotage the tournament and then disqualifies him on the spot, leaving Johnson free to win the grand prize due to having accumulated the most points out of everyone else up to that point.
- In The Blind Side, a defensive lineman on the Opposing Sports Team deliberately kicks Michael when he's down and after the play has already ended, and the referee not only ignores the kick but penalizes the Wingate Crusaders when Coach Cotton complains. This triggers Coach Cotton's Papa Wolf moment, which motivates Michael to lead the Miracle Rally.
- At least one of the opposing teams in Remember the Titans gets a big leg up from blatantly racist referees. The Titans, of course, go undefeated. Of course, in this case, it's justified because one of the Titans' coaches threatened to expose the refs' rigging of the game to the press if they didn't start calling the game fairly, so the refs backed down.
- Effectively the moral of The Big Short:Mark Baum: What bothers me isn't that fraud is "not nice," or that fraud is "mean." It's that for fifteen thousand years, fraud and short-sighted thinking have never, ever worked. Not once. Eventually, you get caught, things go south. When the hell did we forget all that?
- Zigzagged with Sebulba, Anakin's pod racing rival from The Phantom Menace, at least according to a few Expanded Universe sources. He clearly cheated to win; his racer's design violated many rules and was often equipped with weapons that he could use to disable or destroy his opponents' racers. However, losing to Anakin clearly did not teach him a lesson or keep him down for long. When Anakin put his racer up for sale, Sebulba was the one who bought it (through an intermediary, of course, because he knew that Anakin would never deal with him), made a few improvements, and continued his cheating ways; all he could say when he learned that Anakin had left Tattoine was "good riddance". Eventually, however, this trope may still apply, as his underhanded tactics did lead to him upsetting someone he shouldn't have, with unfortunate - and lethal - results.
- Kickboxer's Tears, starring Moon Lee, had Moon fighting an elite boxer opponent (imagine Rocky with kickboxing). When the opponent resorts to cheating by sprinkling hot chili on his gloves, causing his punches to blind Moon and paralyze half of her face, Moon responds by retaliating with a flurry of kicks and backflips, culminating in her shoving her knees into the back of his neck and spine, turning the cheating champ into a human vegetable for life.
- Goal 2 both subverts this trope and plays it straight. In the first minute of the Champions League Final, a (fictional) Arsenal player dives to win a penalty, the subversion being that he scores the one he dived to win, but then, with his team 2 goals ahead with less than five minutes left, his teammate wins a penalty fairly and he misses. Cue Miracle Rally from Real Madrid.
- The penultimate Chariot Race of Magadheera between the hero, Kala Bhairava, and the princess' evil, power-hungry cousin, Ranadeev Billa, has Billa cheating by arranging for mercenaries to sabotage Bhairava's chances of winning and attempting to make Bhairava crash into a pool of quicksand when the race course reaches a desert. Bhairava wins, nonetheless, and the disgraced Billa is forcefully exiled from the kingdom as a result.
- James Bond examples:
- In Goldfinger, Bond uncovers Goldfinger's attempts at cheating during games of gin rummy and golf, making him lose.
- Similarly, in Octopussy, Bond subtly reveals Kamal Khan's attempts at cheating in backgammon, beating him with his own loaded dice.
- In A View to a Kill, during a horse race, Zorin uses remote-controlled obstacles to trip up Bond's horse, then has thugs jump onto the track and attack Bond. Bond fights them off and still pulls ahead. However, when Bond decides he's had enough and abandons the race, Zorin declares himself the winner.
- The Living Daylights: KGB director Leonid Pushkin chews Brad Whitaker out for not only being a Phony Veteran, but that he was also expelled from West Point for cheating.
- In the Disney Channel Original Movie Hounded, Jay Martin (played by Tahj Mowry) is a smart kid who prepares a presentation to apply for a scholarship to a prestigious school. His main competitor is Ronny Van Dusen (played by Shia LaBeouf), the lazy son of the school headmaster, Ward Van Dusen (played by Ed Begley Jr.) and the scholarship is the only one of its kind available. After Ward confiscates Jay's presentation notecards, he tells Ronny to use the notes as a reference and come up with a better speech. Ronny, being lazy, copies Jay's speech word-for-word and presents it ahead of Jay. Jay doesn't do his speech, as it would sound as if he's the cheater. It seems as if the trope is averted in that Ronny gets the scholarship. However, by the end of the film, the truth is out, and Ronny is shipped off to military school (under the command of Jay's Drill Sergeant Nasty older brother, Mike), while Ward is demoted to secretary, with his father-in-law, whose ancestors founded the school, coming out of retirement and retaking his old position as headmaster, and Jay is rightfully awarded the scholarship.
- The final showdown of Shanghai Noon has Roy facing corrupt Sheriff Van Cleef. Roy's down to his last bullet, so Van Cleef fakes a sense of sportsmanship and lies that he's emptied his guns so that he and Roy both have one shot left. Every single one of Van Cleef's shots miss. Roy's one shot hits Van Cleef in the chest, right through his badge no less.
- Bad Genius plays with the trope. On one hand, Lynn's piano code is never found out, but the school finds out that she completed a classmate's test for him, resulting in her losing her scholarship. Nevertheless, the students who paid her for it get the grades they need. In the end, the students in on the scheme get the STIC scores they wanted, but Bank is caught, banned from studying abroad, and expelled from the school. He attempts to blackmail Lynn into running another heist with him, but Lynn decides to blow the whistle on the operation herself.
- In the second match in The Mighty Ducks, Coach Gordon Bombay tries to get District 5's team to win by having his team fake injuries to get. Unfortunately, the team was about as good at faking injuries as they were at playing Hockey and lose the match anyway.
- The entire point of the educational film Cheating. Johnny gets away with cheating on one test when he asks his friend Mary for help. When he tries again, he's caught by his teacher and both get zeroes on their tests. However, the film goes all-out Disproportionate Retribution by also stripping him of his Student Class President title and ostracizing him from his peers. When featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000, it's parodied when Crow copies Gypsy's paper and Tom Servo wants him dead for it.
- Averted in the Romantic Comedy, IQ. Ed Walters, an uneducated mechanic, falls in love with Catherine Boyd. She's a doctoral candidate at Princeton and is only interested in men who are academically gifted. With some help from his mentor, Albert Einstein, he attempts to pass himself off as a genius. He cheats on a cognitive function test and also presents a previously unpublished paper written by Einstein as his own. His ruse is eventually uncovered, but despite this, he still ends up with Catherine in the end.
- Gremlins: Stripe instantly shoots another Gremlin for trying to sneak extra cards into their poker game.
- St Trinian's (2007): during the field hockey match St Trinian's plays fair in spite of being a school filled with delinquents... Then the visitors from Cheltenham knock out the referee and start cheating, at which point St Trinian's show why it's a bad idea to cheat against a team of delinquents and wins both by scoring more points and viciously taking down most of the opposite players.
