Fictional depictions of plagiarism in Anime and Manga.
- Action Heroine Cheer Fruits: At the start of the series, the protagonists put on stage shows based off of the popular Kamidaioh character, though it begins going in its own direction. However, when they start making their own merchandise, the owners of the Kamidaioh IP serve them with a Cease and Desist, that serves as the impetus for the girls to create their own original property. Later in the series, the girls see a clip from another Action Heroine show whose plot was almost identical to one they were going to use; even though it's a total coincidence, they have to throw out their original script and start over because using it now would look like plagiarism.
- Billy Bat first starts off when the maker of the titular character (an anthropomorphic bat detective in an American comic) realizes he may have accidentally plagiarized it from a character he saw while in Japan. The origin of the character turns out to be far more complicated than he'd ever imagined. Notably, there's also one scene where the cartoon character come to life, or a hallucination thereof, actually questions the concept of plagiarism, stating most of what humans regularly do had to have been copied from someone at some point.
- Case Closed: Being another detective series, it also deals with people being murdered over stolen ideas.
- In Haganai, Yozora does this in a rewrite of her screenplay for the club's movie in episode 9 of Season 2. While Maria mentions at the end of episode 8 that the story seems familiar, its not until episode 9 and after they've already shot some scenes that Kate points out to Kodaka the similarities with an obscure movie. He then checks the movie and finds out their film was a shot-for-shot remake of that obscure film. Yozora is forced to kneel while wearing a sign saying she plagiarized, and the club goes with Sena's script which she wrote as a backup just in case Yozora's script didn't work out.
- The Kindaichi Case Files: Plagiarism that causes the person stolen from to be Driven to Suicide (or outright murdered) becomes the motive for murder in several of the mysteries, and in fact provides the Start of Darkness for Kindaichi's greatest opponent.
- Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid: It's implied that Shouta's father ripped off Tolkien via precognition. He states that it didn't count as stealing since copyright isn't retroactive.
- My Girlfriend Without Wasabi: Soon after they met, Rino tells Nozomu the story of a girl who blanked out on the entrance exam and copy-pasted from Wikipedia. When Nozomu asked if the girl had a death wish Rino just smirks and gives a thumbs up.
- In Ojamajo Doremi, the backstory for Hazuki's mother, Reiko Fujiwara, involved a man by the name of Yoichi Sakuragi, who passed himself off as a fledgling poet by stealing previous poems. His motive? To marry her and get her family's fortune. When she confronted him after finding out, Sakuragi revealed his true Jerkass nature and basically told her he tried to sucker her for For the Evulz. Reiko was heartbroken.
- An episode of Pokémon: The Series is about someone who needs actors for a film. When asked what it's about, the director pretty much sums up Romeo and Juliet. After listening, Brock and Ash are moved to tears, but Misty asks, "Hasn't this already been done?'
- In Puella Magi Kazumi Magica, one of the main characters, Umika Misaki, had her first novel stolen by her editor, who published it under another author's name and actually had the nerve to ask Umika for more work. Because of this, she made a contract to become a magical girl and used her wish to meet an editor who would recognize her writing talent.
- Time Paradox Ghostwriter centers on a struggling mangaka who recreates a manga sent to him from ten years in the future. At first, Teppei feels free to do so because he assumed the manga he read was just a hallucination. He discovers the truth only after publishing a oneshot for his own version, and decides to continue because that's only way the story will be made at all in the current timeline.
