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Not Cheating Unless You Get Caught
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"Statement: I have no idea, master. Cheating seems to be a relevant term only when one is caught in the act. Otherwise it is viewed as intelligence, no?"
Rules are made to be broken, and that goes double for these rules.
Basically, the protagonists are given rules which are less instructions for keeping order and safety, and more a Secret Test Of Sneakiness. It's understood by all parties that the rule is not to be followed, and the only question is whether you can break it without getting caught.
This sometimes takes the form of an admonishment not to cheat on an upcoming game/test/whatever, which comes so out-of-the-blue that it can only be interpreted as an encouragement to cheat. Compare Could Say It But.
Compare Can't You Read The Sign.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- In Death Note, Light Yagami claims that if Kira is caught, he's evil. However, if he isn't, he is justice.
- In a very early Naruto episode, during the Chunin exams the ninjas-in-training are given a difficult written test with the unusual rule that they cannot be caught cheating more than four times. So, needless to say, all of the skilled students discreetly use their ninja skills to do so without getting caught. Which was, of course, the entire point. (They would have to pass anyway—a few students were plants that actually had correct answers, so copying them was the goal—but it was just a Secret Test Of Character.)
- This is further complicated by the idea of teamwork being thrown into the mix. If one person in the squad failed or got caught five times, the whole squad failed. If one person got none of them right (the questions were intended to be too hard for regular genin to be answered), the rest of the squad also failed.
- In the end, getting the test answers right really didn't matter. The test proctor was a torture expert, and each new rule was designed to mindscrew with the genin kids. Naruto passed despite leaving his entire paper blank.
- D'arby the Gambler, user of the Osiris Stand in Jojos Bizarre Adventure, has this as his motto. For example, it's not his fault that Polnareff didn't know that, when they were betting on what meat a cat would eat first, the cat belonged to D'arby (and thus D'arby could choose which piece would be eaten).
Card Games
- This is, literally, the first rule of satirical card game Munchkin. It's only cheating if they catch you at it.
- And then they introduce a flurry of cards permitting you to cheat even when everyone's looking, for example the Cheat card.
- Unhinged, one of the joke sets for Magic The Gathering has a card called Cheatyface
 , which you're allowed to put into play for free as long as your opponent doesn't catch you doing it.
- Particularly amusing when paired with Ashnod's Coupon (Target player gets you target drink). While they're in the kitchen, there is nothing stopping you from putting all 49 copies of the card you possess into play.
- Steve Jackson Games' conspiracy-theory themed card game Illuminati has a set of "cheating" rules in which almost anything goes (e.g. stealing money from the bank, misstating the powers of your cards, etc) as long as you don't get caught. (If you do get caught, the only penalty is that you have to undo that specific cheating attempt.) It is recommended that you play this version of the game only with "very good friends or people you will never see again."
- The entire premise of the card game known varyingly as Cheat, BS, or I Doubt It. A good tactic is to entirely remove several sets of numbers from the deck and then play them, and call others who try, at your leisure.
- Another good tactic: Hiding all the cards that would technically be unable to play, and then winning without ever being in danger of being caught. Cheating only in the ways the other players expect you to isn't really cheating at all.
Film
- In the movie Spies Like Us one of the two "heroes" (to use the term loosely) managed to pressure the other into helping him cheat on their government promotion tests, through good, old-fashioned Chevy Chase-style chuztpah. When discovered, in order to cover themselves, they worked together by reflex to cover each other. The CIA test givers were so impressed that they gave them an immediate promotion to field agents. (Of course, this was a plot to throw expendable agents into the field as a diversion for more nefarious activities ... but the trope connection is solid.)
- In Star Trek II, Kirk reveals that he rigged the Kobayashi Maru test to make the scenario winnable... and got a commendation for "original thinking."
- In the 2009 film the alternate Kirk tries the same thing... and gets court-martialed.
- Of course, presumably, Kirk-Prime would ALSO have at the least gone in front of a review board for tampering with the equipment. Alternate Kirk's court martial was interrupted, so if Vulcan hadn't come under attack in the middle of it, he might have walked out of there with the commendation as well.
- Recall also that Alternate Kirk was a complete asshole about it.
- In Back To School, Derek (Robert Downey Jr.), best friend of the main character's son, uses sunlight reflected from a mirror, and then an air horn, to distract divers from the opposing dive team, preventing them from making good dives so that his friend can win.
- In Ski School, the "good guys" Ski team must beat the Big Bad and other innocent bystander competitors to stay on the slopes, so they pull shenanigans like pouring oil on the snow to make their competitors slip and fall, or have buxom ladies flash passing skiers to make their competitors slip and fall. High fives all around.
Literature
- In the Discworld Assassins' Guild, student assassins are given a list of places which are "out of bounds." This is defined not as places they can't go, but as places they can't be seen by a master, which should give them lots of practice at the skills required by Guild members.
- It's also considered a pass if you assassinate your examiner - though considering he's an experienced assassin himself, you're advised to be very sure you will succeed before trying it.
- In Tamora Pierce's Tortall books, Pages and Squires train at the Palace - and one of the rules is "Don't get into fights", even though these things happen all the time, and if you do get caught, you just have to say "I fell down."
Live Action TV
- Al Bundy says as much in an episode of Married With Children where Al enters himself in an athletic competition for senior citizens. When he's standing victoriously on the podium and holding his medals, he says, "It's only cheating if you get caught."
- Porridge basically is this trope, with Fletcher delivering lines like:
Godber: I mean, we're all here for different reasons, aren't we?
Fletcher: With respect, Godber, we are all here for the same reason. ... We got caught.
Music
- "Tweeter and the Monkey Man", by the Traveling Wilburys. "Janet told him many times, 'It was *you* to *me* who taught in Jersey everything's legal as long as you don't get caught."
Real Life
- In Real Life, the ever-present Sparta would basically feed its young by encouraging them to steal food. Of course, getting caught would get you punished like you had no permission at all.
- Of course, you weren't being punished for stealing. You were being punished for being careless enough to get caught.
- This is, of course, a staple of Professional Wrestling, where the manager or partner of the Heel will get in a few shots while the ref's back is turned.
- Wrestlers can even do this themselves if they can get the referee to turn his back. I mean, sure, the ref looked away for two seconds and now one of the wrestlers is lying unconscious on the mat, with a steel chair next to him - but he didn't SEE it, so he can't just go blaming the only other guy in the ring, can he?
- Subverted by Eddie Guerrero. His last match featured Eddie attempting to hit his opponent while the ref was down, but when Eddie saw the ref getting up, he just kinda tossed the chair so his bewildered opponent caught it, then played dead and won by DQ.
- Truth In Television, for the hiring test for a certain spy agency.
- Truth In Television, This troper's high school history teacher explicitly had this policy for tests and quizzes. Only amongst his honors/advanced class of course.
- This Troper's high school chemistry teacher did something similar, but to discourage cheating: if you could ever prove that you had cheated and gotten away with it, you would get an A for the year. If you were ever caught, you would get a 0 for the year. Nobody ever tried.
- My World Geography teacher repeatedly told the class "Anyone cheating off a moron deserves their failing grade. As such, the only person in this class worth cheating off of is him." And then, he pointed at me. There were fights over the seats around me.
- My Spanish 3 teacher scheduled a speaker to talk to the class about the Army the same day the seniors were taking their finals. We argue she did this on purpose, as besides being a senior, I also had the highest grade in class and only had one referral, from her class, for cheating via sharing homework when I got busted by an assistant principal. All the seniors in that class got A's on their final. It was never questioned.
- Two of the unwritten rules for special forces (read: commando) groups are "if you ain't cheating, you ain't trying", and "if you're caught cheating, maybe you're not special forces material."
Tabletop Games
- One of the scenario ideas in the GURPS setting book GURPS IOU, set in a very peculiar university, involves the final exam for the Advanced Cheating class. The questions are just random obscure trivia; the actual test is finding a good way to cheat in it. If you get caught, you fail. If you don't even try to cheat, you'll be expelled for "terminal cluelessness."
- A similar test was used in one of the earliest volumes of the Naruto manga. Mildly subverted, as Sakura was brainy enough to actually work out the answers to the questions on her own, and Naruto himself just didn't answer any.
- Drow from Dungeons & Dragons. Their entire legal system is based around this trope. As an example, in the city of Menzoberranzan if a Drow Noble House wants to eliminate another Noble House they must do it in a way that leaves no member of the eliminated house alive, since only the attacked house has the right of accusation against the attacking house, and are the only ones allowed to witness. Anyone else who happens to see the attack are merely "spectators." If even one member of the attacked house is alive to accuse the attackers, the attacking family will, according to the law, be eradicated. If no one is left alive to witness, everyone will act as if the now deceased house never existed in the first place, except for vaguely praising the attackers for a succesful raid.
- Paranoia officially prohibits players from even knowing the rules. It then acknowledges that the players will read them anyway. To provide a "don't get caught" aspect, summary execution of a character is recommended if the player tries to Metagame (although with five backup clones, this is more a warning than a bolt of purple lightning).
Video Games
- Space Quest V: At the very beginning of the game, you have to get a perfect score on a multiple choice exam of unusual questions. Luckily, you can look at another test-taker's answers as long as you don't let the resident anti-cheating robot see you.
- It's 100% possible to finish the quiz on your own (since Deus Ex Machina ends up giving you a higher score than is technically possible). However, if you cheat off the guy who's not the brainiac, your previously poor academic performance gets you kicked out of the academy immediately.
- In Breath Of Fire III, there's a minigame where you have to train a scrawny man's skills so he can beat a musclehead in a duel. You get disqualified only if anyone sees you interfere with the fight itself.
- Of course, the other side of that is that the musclehead will only get distracted after landing a critical blow. So you can't cheat your way to victory without the mandatory (and incredibly boring) training, since the scrawny man will get murdered by a critical hit otherwise.
- In Americas Army 3, during Combat Lifesaving training, you are specifically told several times that no cheating or talking is allowed. This doesn't stop you at all from asking the student beside you for answers to the test and getting a perfect score.
Webcomics
Western Animation
- Eric Cartman once tried to teach this to a class.
- To clarify: He posed as a teacher for a bunch of hooligan teens. Instead of teaching them all that normal stuff, he taught them to cheat at tests.
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