Not Cheating Unless You Get Caught - Television Tropes & Idioms

The Zeroth Commandment: Thou shalt not get caught.

"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?"

—HK-47, Knights Of The Old Republic

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 Can't You Read The Sign.

Examples:

In Death Note, Light Yagami claims that if Kira is caught, he's evil. However, if he isn't, he is justice.
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.
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."
Avatar example, in "Sokka's Master" Sokka is complimented for using his terrain to his advantage and for throwing dust in his opponent's eye. This troper can't help but feel that if a non-protagonist did so, it would be cheating. But since Sokka did it, it was intelligence.
- To be fair, since most sword-fight situations would involve people trying to kill Sokka, they'd be a bit past the point of fighting dirty or not.
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.)
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.
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 mindfuck with the genin kids. Naruto passed despite leaving his entire paper blank.
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.
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 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.
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.
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."
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.
In Gunnerkrigg Court, Eglamore's advice to Antimony was probably not the opinion of anyone else in the Court. Annie initially criticizes this advice, but she has no trouble following it later.
Eglamore: We have rules for a reason. For your safety. And if you're going to break them, you should try harder to not get caught.
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).
Truth In Television, for the hiring test for a certain spy agency.
Truth In Television, This trooper'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.
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.
  - While dressed as Edward James Olmos in Stand and Deliver. "How do I reach these keeeds!?"
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.
This troper/criminal likes to say that "it's not a crime until you've been convicted by a jury of your peers" when it comes to smoking weed.
Girl Genius here
Dimo: Ve din' get caught, you eediots.
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."
Real Life: the entire premise of the card game known as Cheat. 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.
- This wouldn't be a variation of the game BS, would it?
- 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.
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."
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). That information was outside your security clearance. Please report for termination. Have a pleasant day. The Computer is your friend.