How naval treaty displacement limits were bent

What were the most obvious violations of the Washington and London naval treaties?

Italian and Japanese cruisers stand out, but the wider system tolerated modest excess while discouraging openly enormous breaches.

Italian and Japanese cruiser programmes provide early examples, followed by carriers and even British Tribal-class destroyers. Standard displacement could grow through optimistic accounting, design changes, and wartime additions. The treaty system nevertheless constrained the scale of the competition because a navy could not exceed the published limit too dramatically without making the breach obvious. The agreements controlled the level of cheating even when they did not produce literal compliance.