Tests are one of the greatest fears of any student; they make up a large portion of one's grades, require a lot of preparation, and there is no guarantee that what you focus on will be on the test. Some people, whether out of laziness, a lack of confidence, or opportunism, attempt to bypass all the stress by simply stealing the answers. Said stealing can occur in multiple ways, from copying the answer sheets, hacking into computers to get the answers, or even bribing the teachers. In addition, stolen test sheets can be very profitable, with some people making money selling answers to dishonest students.
Since Cheaters Never Prosper in fiction, people who resort to this tactic will almost always have it backfire on them. Some common reasons could be the stolen sheets being a decoy, the teachers discovering the answers were stolen and swapping the test, or the would-be thief getting caught.
See also Cheating by Copying, Cheating via Hidden Notes, Homework Slave, Altering the Grades, and Plagiarism in Fiction for other cases of academic dishonesty.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Naruto: An early stage of the chunin exams has a written test in a classroom, where some of the questions are expected to be unanswerable based on what they've learned so far. But some of the test takers are actually plants with the correct answers: the rest are expected to try for Stolen Test Answers, and one of the fail conditions for the test as a whole is attempting this and being caught at it; having the correct answers without being caught shows they're good at gathering intelligence while still being stealthy.
- Soul Eater: Black Star, while preparing for the Ultimate Written Exam, eventually decides to give up on studying and just steal the test answers. He gets caught by Professor Stein, beaten, and is given a zero on the test.
Fan Works
- In Business Over Brother
(a fanfic of The Loud House), this is defied — Luan wants to help her brother Lincoln study to make up for having two of their pets destroy his homework earlier so she finds the test answers online and offers to have him read them. However, he decides he doesn't want to cheat, so they just study together instead.
- Mother Hen: Lila attempts to frame Marinette for cheating by invoking this trope, stealing the test's answer sheet from Ms. Bustier's desk and planting it in Marinette's locker. It failed because Ms. Bustier had recently become the bearer of the Rooster Miraculous, and Orriko saw Lila approach the desk. Not only that, but Bustier knowing that Marinette is Ladybug makes her more trusting of her, and she believes Marinette over Lila.
- With Pearl and Ruby Glowing: One movie fragment in Veronica's story shows Trixie Tang telling her to steal some test answers for her.
Films — Live-Action
- Animal House: With a difficult test coming up and all of the denizens of Delta House having been too busy partying to study, D-Day and Bluto resort to rummaging through a dumpster until they find the carbon paper sheet (Technology Marches On: Before printers came into being, people used to make copies of items by inserting two sheets of paper into a typewriter with a sheet of carbon paper inserted between them, so that whatever was typed onto the first page would be imprinted by the carbon paper onto the second page) that the office secretary used to type up the test. What they don't know is that their rival fraternity anticipated that they'd do this, swiped the original carbon first, then put a phony carbon with the incorrect answers into the bin.
- The Perfect Score follows six teens who, fearing they'll bomb their SAT and ruin their chances of getting into good colleges, hatch a plan to break into the building where the test answers are kept and steal them the night before. The film then subverts the trope twice. First, they find the test questions, but not the answer key, so they spend the night pooling their knowledge to figure out the answers themselves. Then, on the day of the test, most of them realize they don't want to cheat and want to earn it. Plus, Francesca reveals she'd already aced the test the week prior and was just helping them for fun. Played straight with Roy, though, who distributes the answer keys in the bathroom for other students to use.
Literature
- The Berenstain Bears Big Chapter Books: In The Berenstain Bears and the Bermuda Triangle, the Bear Detectives investigate the suspicious behavior of their new upperclassman Bermuda McBear and soon discover, and report to the school's staff, that she's been collaborating with her boyfriend "Cool" Carl King to get the private modem number to the in-school computer network so he can break into his teacher's account, steal the answer key to her upcoming history test and sell copies to the other students in his class. As a result, everyone who bought the answer key is caught out and gets a week's suspension from school, while Carl himself gets three months' suspension and extra homework.
- Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency zig-zags this. In the backstory, while Dirk was at university, he posed as a psychic (by strenuously denying that he was psychic) then predicted the questions on an upcoming exam and allowed his fellow students to see them… for a fee. He actually just looked at the exams from past years and used those to guess what would be on this year’s exam; he expected his prediction would be close enough to continue fooling students who already thought he was psychic, but far enough off to not arouse the faculty’s suspicion. Instead, Dirk’s predictions were 100% accurate, down to the punctuation. Dirk was accused of stealing a copy of the exam and promptly expelled.
- In The Guest List by Lucy Foley, Will is revealed to have stolen the answers for the university entrance exams, and then, with the help of his then-best-friend Johnno, arranged for a boy who had found them to die to avoid the secret coming out. His father, who was the headmaster, knows he cheated, but assumes Johnno stole the answers for him.
- In Ph as in Phony, the Widowers are trying to figure out how a guy could have passed an extremely hard exam despite him not having the brains for the nearly perfect score. The trope is discussed, but from what they know, the answers were too well guarded, and he was too well watched. Finally, they figure out the way: the student bribed the professor into allowing him to write the questions.
- Sherlock Holmes: In "The Adventure of the Three Students", Holmes has to work out which of three students gained access to the tutor's room while he was out and took advantage of the opportunity to copy out a translation passage for an upcoming test.
Live-Action TV
- Columbo: The murder motive in "Columbo Goes to College" centers on two frat boys stealing their professor's test answers. The professor understandably says he's likely to have them both thrown out of the college for that and since such a thing would certainly get them cut off from their wealthy parents, they decide to take their professor out of the picture.
- CSI: NY: The victim-of-the-week in "Do or Die" is a popular high school girl who was being tutored by the smartest guy in her class, who hacked into the school's testing software to see the upcoming exams. For their Advanced American History class, he copied a water bottle label but replaced the nutrition section with answers to the multiple choice and fill-in-the-blank sections, so she could refer to it while sipping water during the test.
- Goosebumps (1995): In the episode "Click", Seth shows he's becoming more unscrupulous by deciding to use the Universal Remote Control to freeze time so he can steal the answers for an upcoming test. His friend Kevin objects, but Seth just shrugs, saying they're not going to get caught anyway.
- Grange Hill: Jenkins believes he has done this when he accidentally finds some geography exam papers in the teacher's desk. When he sits down to take the exam, he is grinning broadly, certain that he knows what the questions will be; this attracts Mr Mitchell's suspicion. His excitement is short-lived, when he finds the questions are not the same.
- Hannah Montana: When Jackson needs only to pass only one more test to graduate high school, he tries to take the easy way by paying for the test answers. Miley stops him at every interval, and he's eventually forced to write the answers on his arms. After Miley manages to erase them from his arms, Jackson realizes that he actually memorized the material from all the times he wrote the answers and goes on to pass the test legitimately.
- Malcolm in the Middle: In "Tutoring Reese", Malcolm tries to help his brother Reese out with a test by stealing the answers from the teacher's desk, making a copy with enough correct answers to get Reese a passing B grade, then sneaking it into the stack of completed tests. When the test comes back, everyone who's in on the ruse is surprised to see that the teacher still graded Reese an F, causing Malcolm to (correctly) suspect that the teacher has a grudge against Reese.
- In The Partridge Family episode "Trial of the Partridge One," Cindy Brown steals a copy of the math test. Afterwards, she asks Laurie to deliver it to the math teacher for her. Laurie is caught putting the envelope into the teacher's mailbox and is blamed for stealing the test, even though she didn't know what was in the envelope. Cindy justifies it by saying that as the principal's daughter, she can't get away with having mediocre grades.
- Party of Five (2020): In the second episode, Beto needs to get his grades up in order to avoid summer school, which would prevent him from working at the family restaurant. His twin sister, Lucia, has little faith in him but knows that they have the same teacher for one of their classes and that the teacher re-uses tests, so she hatches a plot to sneak Beto the answers to his upcoming test. Unfortunately, she gets waylaid and misses the window to slip him the answers, and thus he fails and has to retake the test. She tries to make up for it by promising to help him study for all his future tests.
- Porridge: When Godber is taking an exam for his prison education, Fletcher arranges for somebody to steal the exam papers. When Godber aces the exam, he reveals that the thief stole the papers for the wrong subject, so he did not cheat at all.
- Power Rangers Zeo: One episode has Tanya's prospect love interest, Shawn, revealing he accidentally got a hold of the answer sheet of an upcoming Algebra test. Tanya calls him out on this, and at first he refuses because he's at risk of being suspended from the baseball team if he fails, but at the end of the episode he hands over the answers to Mr. Caplan and asks Tanya to help him study.
- Small Wonder: In "The Cheater", after Jamie catches Jessica stealing copies of the seventh-grade test, he takes the blame in exchange for her affections.
- The Sopranos: In "Army of One", A.J. and a friend cheat on their midterms by hiding in the boiler room until after the school closes and stealing the answer sheets, waiting for so long that the two end up urinating on the floor. They immediately get caught because the dean obviously notices two flunking students suddenly get identical A+ scores. He gets the two to confess by bluffing and saying they managed to get their DNA from the urine in the boiler room (correctly counting on the two of them being dumb enough to think this is possible) and has them expelled.
- Suits:
- Inverted by Mike Ross, who got a reputation for taking the LSATs for those who paid him prior to getting hired at Pearson Hardman. In addition, a Flashback Episode reveals Mike selling math test answers in undergrad to the dean's daughter is what got him blacklisted from applying for law school himself.
- In "Tricks of the Trade", Mike discovers one of Rachel's friends was once a client who paid him to take the LSATs, and is afraid of getting caught as a cheat and a fraud. When Theresa tells Rachel about the genius she paid to take her test, Rachel, who, while otherwise competent, has failed theLSATs multiple times due to not testing well, considers doing the same (not knowing the genius is Mike) so she can finally move past being a paralegal. Mike convinces her not to do this and helps her study instead to avert this. In Season 2, she passes with a 172.
- Zoey 101: In "The Great Vince Blake", Chase catches Vince, the school's football hero, taking pictures of some test answers. People try to convince him to let it be, but after he fails to make Vince stop, he outs him in front of the entire class, and the teacher catches the answers on his phone. When he and the football team beat Chase, Michael, Logan, and Mark in retaliation for this, Vince gets expelled.
Video Games
- Yandere Simulator: One of the methods that the player can use to eliminate rivals is to get them expelled by stealing test answers from the faculty room, sneaking them into the rival's bag or locker to frame them, and reporting them to a teacher.
Web Animation
- Battle for Dream Island: In "Are You Smarter Than a Snowball?", Blocky steals the test answers without the Announcer knowing, allowing him and Pen to cheat by copying the answers. Unfortunately, none of them think to return the test answers when time runs out, thus the Announcer finds out that they're missing and, when he discovers that Blocky and Pen cheated using them, he reduces both of their scores to 0, thus ensuring the Squashy Grapes win the challenge instead of the Squishy Cherries.
- Swoozie recounts in his video "Cheating in High School: Vol. 2" how he and three other students conspired to cheat on their Algebra tests by having one of them steal a blank test sheet from the teacher's desk while Swoozie was on lookout. The test was then given to one girl who did the work on a separate paper before destroying the original, and during the test, she would pass the notes to everyone in the group after she finished hers. This worked for a while, but another student saw them taking a test and reported it to the teacher, who said if he found out who did it, then he would get whoever was involved expelled. This caused Swoozie and the others to fail the next test to avoid getting caught.
Western Animation
- Boyster: After Mr. Pluss is angered by Boyster, he gives the class an Impossible To Pass Test. To make up for it, Boyster and Rafik break into Pluss' house to retrieve the answers, in the process giving the teacher a "The Reason You Suck" Speech while impersonating his dead father. Unfortunately, this causes Pluss to have a change of heart and instead give the class a Nearly Impossible To Pass Test, which has entirely different answers to the ones they stole.
- Danny Phantom: In The Ultimate Enemy, Danny finds himself in trouble upon realizing that he has an upcoming Career Aptitude Test that he didn't have time to study for, only to accidentally stumble upon the answer sheet and is naturally tempted to use it to cheat on the test. One Bad Future shows that doing so caused the deaths of his family, friends, and his teacher. This left Danny grief-stricken enough to seek out his Arch-Enemy Vlad to sever his ghostly half from him, only for said ghostly half to absorb Vlad's ghost, kill Human Danny, and terrorize both Amity Park and the ghost world for ten years as Dark Danny. Fortunately, by the end of the special, he changes his mind and promptly returns the answer sheet to Mr. Lancer.
- Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids: In the episode "Faking the Grade" a student named Owen makes money by selling test answers to other students. He sells Dumb Donald the answers to a math test, which Donald decides not to use in favor of studying. Donald's decision turned out to be for the better, as the teachers discovered what Owen was doing and changed the test, which resulted in the people who tried to cheat flunking and getting suspended, while Donald's studying helped him pass the test.
- Fillmore!:
- The episode "Test of the Tested" focuses on a variation — someone stealing the fictional SATTY-9 standardized tests before they could be graded, with Fillmore and Ingrid needing to catch the culprit. While investigating the theft, another student was caught with a box of cheat sheets, however.
- The episode "A Cold Day at X" centers around Fillmore learning that a group of students are planning on stealing the answers to their upcoming algebra test. So he guards the classroom overnight and during the unexpected snow day the next day when the students try to take advantage of him being alone.
- The Legend of Prince Valiant had an episode where a girl participates in a competition to become a knight. She wins the final contest, which is archery, but is then disqualified because she earlier convinced one of the heroes to make her better arrows. That means she must have broken the rules by peeking at the records stating what the finale will be.
- Martha Speaks: In "The Cheating Chum Caper", T.D. surprises Helen by suddenly getting good grades despite usually being Book Dumb, and wonders if he has been reading the test answers. Subverted, since he is actually being tutored.
- The Simpsons:
- In "Lisa Gets An A", Lisa takes some sick leave from school and ends up playing video games instead of doing the homework that was assigned to her, including revising for a test. When she sits down to take the test and realises she can't answer any of the questions, she fakes sickness in order to leave the classroom, and Nelson offers to sell her a cheat sheet with the test answers on it. She accepts and is then faced with a moral quandary when her test is graded A+++ and singlehandedly raises the school's average test scores enough to make them eligible for additional funding.
- In "The President Wore Pearls", Nelson is a runaway candidate for student president because he gives out the answer keys to every test. Mrs. Krabappel is about to stop him until he gives her the answers to get a job in real estate instead.
- Sonic Boom: In the episode "Mister Eggman", after finding out he needs one more class to truly earn his doctorate, Eggman takes a class on evil, which he completely stinks in. Knowing passing the final is the only chance he has to pass the class, he breaks in to steal the test answers. As it turns out, they were ridiculous decoy answers, like an efficient power source being a tomato. Eggman breaking the rules of this is pointed out by his teacher to be evil. Being a class on evil, the true final exam was to steal the final exam, of which only Eggman passed.
- Superbook (2011): In the episode "The Fiery Furnace," Chris forgets to study for a science test, which he really wants to pass because the students who get a certain score get to go to an amusement park. Chris and several other students buy the test answers from Todd, but Chris's conscience ultimately leads him to not cheat. Todd's test answers turn out to be worthless because the teacher swapped the test, and she punishes the cheaters by having them retake it without being able to go to the park, though Chris was able to go as he didn't cheat and the teacher also gave him enough extra credit by having him answer a bonus question.
- Winx Club: In season 1's "Honor Above All", one of the teachers intentionally invokes this trope as part of a Secret Test of Character. He first announces he's going to give his class an exam soon, and then "accidentally" drops an envelope supposedly containing the answers to this exam near each of the students. Those that can't resist the temptation and open the envelope find it does not contain any answers but a mud spell, which quickly exposes the would-be cheaters to the teacher and causes them to fail the exam while those that didn't open the envelope pass.