Basic Trope: A character plagiarizes or steals the credit for something, and it backfires.
- Straight:
- Bob has his older sister Sam write an essay for him. She does the job too well, so the teacher thinks Bob is brilliant and starts assigning him more work and asking him harder questions in class.
- Bob copies an essay off the Internet. While the plagiarism isn't caught, Bob gets a bad grade because it turns out that the essay was written by a kid whose research was shoddy.
- Bob copies an essay off the Internet. The original was good, but Bob's attempts at "improvements" and making it look like his own work ended up making it bad.
- Bob copies an essay off an obscure website, hoping that it's so obscure that no one will notice. That would be the case if it weren't for the fact that that essay was plagiarized from a well-known source.
- Exaggerated: Bob has Sam write an essay for him. She does the job way too well, throwing in numerous concepts well above Bob's level. Now everyone thinks Bob is a prodigy, which develops into a Snowball Lie.
- Downplayed: Bob has trouble with an essay, so he pays Sam $20 to do it for him. She didn't do a very good job, so Bob might as well have done it himself and saved those 20 bucks.
- Justified: Bob is infamous for his half-hearted essays. When he suddenly has a good one, of course it's suspicious.
- Inverted:
- Bob and Sam collaborate on a project. Bob calls Sam the driving force behind it, so if the idea fails, she takes the fall.
- Bob and Sam write a story together. Bob, thinking it wasn't very good, says it was Sam's idea, only to be surprised when it turns out quite popular.
- Subverted:
- The episode keeps talking about how Cheaters Never Prosper, but Bob gets away with taking credit for his sister's essay.
- When the teacher asks Bob hard questions, he rises to the occasion because he's Brilliant, but Lazy.
- Double Subverted:
- However, Bob later fails his exam because he didn't bother to study when he could just pay people to do his essays for him.
- But he resents having to put forth any effort and still decides that stealing credit wasn't worth it.
- Even he has his limits, though, and the class soon becomes too difficult for him.
- Parodied: ???
- Zig-Zagged: Bob gets away with cheating, and never suffers the consequences. However, he dies having to live with the guilt.
- Averted: Bob has Sam do his essay for him. He gets an undeserved good grade on that assignment, and that's all that happens.
- Enforced: The executives insisted on message about how Cheaters Never Prosper.
- Lampshaded: "Man, I can't believe I expected to get away with cheating."
- Invoked: Bob asks Sam to do his essay for him, but she's upset that he thinks she'll help him cheat. When Bob doesn't stop nagging, she pretends to give in and eventually gives him a "paper" full of statements like "I am a spoiled little brat who makes others do my work for me", knowing that Bob might be dumb enough to hand in her "essay" as-is without looking at it...
- Exploited: Sam gives Bob an ultimatum - increase her pay, or she self-reports their cheating.
- Defied:
- Bob has trouble with an essay, and finds one on the Internet he intends to plagarize. However, he notices the shoddy research and decides he's better off writing one himself from scratch, even if it would be a bit of a rushed mess.
- Bob, being a Ridiculous Procrastinator, runs out of time to write the essay. He considers plagiarizing before deciding that it would probably backfire and he's better off handing in nothing.
- Bob borrows from many different sources and makes sure to label it as "research" in a proper acknowledgment section and very extensive notes about agreeing or dissenting with said sources. If it works, he can shoulder being labeled a "hack", and technically it is not plagiarism.
- Discussed:
- Conversed:
- Played for Laughs:
- Bob plagiarizes an essay, and is caught because he didn't bother to check the author's name. It was his teacher's.
- Bob is supposed to write an essay in Spanish, decides to just copy a text from the Internet... and fails because he ended up copying something in Portuguese.
- Played for Drama: Bob plagiarizes work because it's the only way he can live up to his Education Mama's impossible standards, and now she knows that not only is he not that good, but he was cheating...
- Played for Horror: Bob is a Miles Gloriosus who steals the credit for taking down some of The Queenpin's goons even though he could hardly kill a small dog. The Queenpin goes after him, and she quickly gets him killed horribly as he has no idea what he's doing.
- Implied: Bob brags about his plan to cheat on his essay. He's seen looking miserable after turning it in, but when asked if he's caught, he says he wasn't, but it still went badly.
- Deconstructed: Charlie, Bob's classmate cheats more effectively and avoids any sort of consequences. He then concludes that cheating is okay because unlike Bob, he didn't suffer any consequences.
Back to Stolen Credit Backfire.
