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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. A subtrope of [[Family-Unfriendly Aesop]]. Compare [[Could Say It, But...]]. Take it further and you realize [[Real Life]] history is [[WrittenbytheWritten By the Winners]].
 
Compare [[Can't You Read the Sign|Can't You Read The Sign]]. And sometimes the villain in [[What You Are in The Dark]], or the foolhardly fellow teenager in [[Youth Is Wasted On the Dumb]] urges this trope to encourage something actually wrong.
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== [[Professional Wrestling]] ==
* Virtually half of the way the whole show works, especially with the manager or tag team partner getting in a few shots while the [[Easily -Distracted Referee|ref's back is turned]]. Mostly done by [[Heel|heels]], but sometimes by [[Face|faces]] against a heel who's really gone out of his way to deserve to be [[Hoist By His Own Petard]]. Though in [[The Nineties]] it became increasingly common for [[Darker and Edgier]] faces to consistently use "heel" tactics like this as well.
** Wrestlers can even do this by 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?
** [[Eddie Guerrero]] lampshaded it ("I Lie, I Cheat, I Steal"), and later in his career took to inverting it (e.g. by hitting ''the mat'' with a steel chair, tossing it to his opponent, then playing dead and winning by DQ, which worked even though normally refs only call a DQ if they ''see'' the illegal hit).
*** Eddie won his very last match in exactly this manner.
* In one Royal Rumble match, [[Stone Cold Steve Austin]], after being eliminated by [[Bret Hart|Bret "the Hitman" Hart]] while the [[Easily -Distracted Referee]] wasn't looking, jumped back into the ring quickly and cleared the ring to win the Rumble.
* A subversion sometimes happens in the form of the "Dusty Finish", named after Dusty Rhodes who used to book this sort of finish ''all the time''. In this case, the trope is played straight until the match is finished and one wrestler (often the face) is declared the winner, only for a second referee to come out and inform the first referee that the face did something to cause a disqualfication (usually throwing the heel over the top rope, which was illegal at the time), causing that referee to reverse the decision. Because the ''face'' is usually on the losing end of the Dusty Finish, this practice is widely hated among wrestling fans. The most infamous example occurred in the AWA, when [[Hulk Hogan]] apparently won the title from Nick Bockwinkel, only for AWA president Stanley Blackburn to personally reverse the decision because Hogan threw Bockwinkel over the top rope. The fans nearly rioted as a result, Hogan left the AWA for [[Vince McMahon]]'s WWF, and the rest is history.
* One laughable subversion of this was at Starcade 1999 in WCW, during a 'Master of the Powerbomb' match between [[Kevin Nash]] and Sid Vicious. In the storyline, the match could only be won by, surprisingly, Powerbombing one's opponent. After the [[Glass Jaw Referee|referee had been bumped]], Vicious had powerbombed Nash and various outside interference had muddied the waters, Nash attempted to powerbomb Vicious, but for whatever reason was unable to and simply left Vicious laying in the ring. When the referee finally awakened, Nash told the official 'I stuck him!' The referee, amazingly, believed him (!) and awarded the match to Nash.
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*** So House Baerne is cheating the rule that says under what circumstances it's permissible to cheat?
**** Presumably, the other seven ''would'' have a perfect pretext to unite and get rid of Baenre if survivors brought it before the Council. The hard part is to live long enough to do it, of course, and preferably stay alive after the deed as well. Another issue is whether one remains a noble and can make a claim if officially accepted as a merchant clan or mercenary company member, like Jarlaxle (Baenre himself). After all, his stand-in Kimmuriel Oblodra is the last from a punished House, but isn't targeted more than anyone in his position would be.
**** At that point in time, House Baenre is the First House because it's easily more powerful than any one (actually quite likely two and possibly more) of its rival Houses and enjoys the full favor of Lolth. [[Always Chaotic Evil|Drow]] [[Might Makes Right|being]] [[Chronic Backstabbing Disorder|drow]], an alliance powerful enough to unseat it on such a flimsy pretext just isn't going to ''happen''...and so history simply gets [[WrittenbytheWritten By the Winners]] once again.
* ''[[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 [[Death Is Cheap|warning]] than a [[Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies|bolt of purple lightning]]).
** That information was outside your security clearance. Please report for termination. [[Dissonant Serenity|Have a pleasant daycycle.]] [[The Computer Is Your Friend]].
** On the other hand, if the rulebook also includes a pre-written mission, then the prohibition on players reading the mission is clearly labeled [[Sincerity Mode|"no, really, this time we really mean it!"]]
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== Western Animation ==
* ''[[South Park]]'': Eric Cartman once 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.
** [[Shout -Out|While dressed as Edward James Olmos]] in ''Stand and Deliver''. [[Beam Me Up, Scotty|"How do I reach these keeeds!?"]]
*** And to top it off, he continually referenced [[Take That|Bill Belichek and the 2007 Patriots]], claiming that the moral of that situation was ''not'' "Don't cheat" - but rather "If you got to where you were by cheating, ''keep cheating''!"
* Megatron once tried doing this against Optimus Prime in an episode of ''[[Transformers Generation One]]''; he challenges Optimus to a duel of honor, with the loser exiling themselves, only to use a machine to transfer his underlings' powers into him and sending the Constructicons out to destroy the Autobots' computer, so it wouldn't be able to warn them of the duplicity. It doesn't work, in the end, but Optimus [[What an Idiot!|did completely miss the obvious signs of cheating on Megs' part during the battle]].
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* Any school exam under the honor system.
* Some public transportation in Europe runs by an honor code where you get on a bus or train under the assumption you already payed your fare. Of course there's the risk that an inspector may ask to see your ticket...
* The [http://en.[wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Naval_Conference:Washington Naval Conference|Washington Naval Conference]] laid down strict limitations on the construction of warships, with the idea of preventing an out-and-out, ruinously expensive battleship arms race (similar to the one Britain and Germany engaged in prior to [[World War I]]). Of course, the nations that didn't [[Loophole Abuse|wiggle through the loopholes]] (it's 10,000 tons and it carries 15 fast-firing main guns, but it's still classified as an innocent-sounding and unrestricted "light cruiser" just because the guns are six-inchers) decided "screw tonnage limitations!" and started laying down ships that exceeded the tonnage limitations by 25 to 40%. Special mention goes to the Japanese, who categorically denied Western rumors that they [[Exact Words|were building forty- to fifty-thousand ton battleships]] (when the limit was 35,000 tons). The battleships in question turned out to be the [http://en.[wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamato_class_battleship:Yamato class battleship|''Yamato'' class]], which weighed in at ''65,000 tons''. Nobody knew their exact weight until ''after'' [[World War II]].
** Japan was also building 8-inch gun turrets that didn't have ships to go with them, ostensibly as spare parts for their heavy cruisers. In actuality, those 15-gun light cruisers were always intended to have their 6-inchers replaced by 8-inchers as soon as Japan could get away with it. And those cruisers were ''also'' already weighing in at 12,500 tons rather than the official 10,000.
** Similarly, the Italians relied heavily on outright cheating to bypass the treaty, but turned out to just not be as good at it as the Japanese. Prior to [[World War II]], other nations' naval officials were astonished at how Italy managed to built cruisers that were a good 50% faster than comparable ships of other nations. It turned out, the way Italy managed that was to send the ships on their shakedown cruises without carrying such minor items as gun turrets, thus making them come in (barely) below the 10,000 ton limit. In actual combat conditions, the added weight from actually carrying weapons meant that Italy's ships, far from the speed demons they seemed to be pre-war, were actually ''slower'' than their British and American counterparts.
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[[Category:Morality Tropes]]
[[Category:Not Cheating Unless You Get Caught]]
[[Category:Trope]]
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