"Not Making This Up" Disclaimer

""That's not bad writing; that actually happened.""

- The Nostalgia Critic on Michael Jordan playing baseball in Space Jam

Someone working on a show thinks the audience might not believe something being shown or described is real. It's not that the writer thinks the audience is stupid. It's that the thing being shown actually is ridiculous or silly enough that there is good reason enough to think it's not real. So the writer includes a disclaimer directly to the audience. Sometimes this is Breaking the Fourth Wall, but often it's a non-fiction show. Either way, this is making sure the audience knows this is not a joke, and, in case something seems too exaggerated, that legitimately it's Not Hyperbole.

This is often to avoid Aluminum Christmas Trees.

Poe's Law can also invoke this trope, if only to distinguish the made-up parody from the real deal. Then again, maybe not...

Compare Who Writes This Crap?, Take That, Reality Is Unrealistic.

Contrast Dan Browned.

Not to be confused with The Tasteless But True Story.

Note: If you really want other tropers to know you're not making something up, linking to this trope won't do much good. Instead, try linking to the proof that you're not making it up.

Advertising
"Only Which? use genuinely filthy dogs to test washing machines for pet odour removal. (Beat.) That's actually what we do."
 * An advert campaign for UK consumer magazine Which? relied on this trope, for instance:

Anime and Manga
"Narrator: Yeah, There really tried to do this people, Google it!!"
 * In Rurouni Kenshin, when local Badass Saitou Hajime casually mentions that he's married, the manga has a little note in the panel: "This is historical fact."
 * Made much funnier by the fact that none of the characters can believe anyone would marry Saitou. Kenshin remarks that his wife must have the patience of Buddha.
 * Axis Powers Hetalia gives us "The legend of Red Mount Fuji"

Comic Books

 * While Cartoon History of the Universe usually makes up quotes for Rule of Funny, occasionally a quote will come with a disclaimer of "Someone actually said this!"

Film

 * Swimming to Cambodia. Spalding Gray swears he's not making anything up - except that the banana sticks to the wall. You'll know it when you hear it.
 * Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The screenwriter kindly informs us at the start of the movie that "Most of what follows is true."
 * The Men Who Stare at Goats has text at the beginning stating "More of this is truer than you would believe." This itself becomes humorous in juxtaposition with the very first scene: a strait-laced man in a strait-laced military uniform with a strait-laced mustache running headlong into a wall and probably concussing himself.
 * The end of CSA: Confederate States of America has a section dedicated to showing the reality behind some of the wilder aspects of the Alternate History.
 * The poster tagline for Charlie Wilson's War reads: "Based on a true story. You think we could make this up?"
 * I Love You Phillip Morris: The unlikely true story of a gay con man escaping from a Texas prison five times to be reunited with his boyfriend (who he met in prison), becoming the CFO of a major company, faking his own death, and impersonating doctors, lawyers, FBI agents, etc, along the way. Hard to believe, right? So the filmakers begin with this disclaimer in the opening credits: "This really happened. It really did."
 * The tagline for The Informant is that it's "based on a true tattle-tale."
 * Fargo starts with a title screen saying that it's a true story. (The movie is completely fictional, but the Coen Brothers claim that some pieces of it came from various real cases.)
 * This trope is Older Than They Think, as evidenced by Cecil B. DeMille's 1929 silent melodrama The Godless Girl, which takes place for the most part in a reformatory ruled by a cruel head guard. A title card appears mid-film that claims that the guard's abuses of the inmates and the horrible conditions of the facility are commonplace in many reformatories, and must be called attention to for the better rehabilitation of our delinquent youth.
 * The HBO TV movie The Pentagon Wars has a title card that goes something like "The following story would be a comedy (beat) if it didn't really happen". Imagine you want to make, essentially, an armored Humvee for fast troop transport but your higher-ups kept adding More Dakka to the Cool Car to the point of actually endangering the troops.

Literature
"died on the twenty-second of July, in the Palace of St. James, exactly as described in our story. And, as we described, for some unknown reason, though the official cause of death was stated as "consumption," his body was wrapped in lead and buried with almost obscene haste and in great secrecy. ... No one knows why he was treated in this odd fashion, though there has been a great deal of speculation by hundreds of scholars over the years. ... One almost does begin to believe in Sidhe. . .."
 * Günther Wallraff in Ganz Unten ("Lowest of the Low"), exposing the racism and horrible working conditions of the Turkish immigrant workers in the German Federal Republic.
 * In the afterword of Lords of the Bow, the author describes several areas where the novel differed from history—and at the very end, points out that the incident where several thousand young women jumped from the walls of Yenking (now Beijing) to their deaths rather than starve to death during the Mongol siege actually happened.
 * Mary Beth Bonacci is a Christian lecturer who talks to teenagers about abstinence. In her book, Real Love, she features answers to actual questions from teens about sexuality. One of the questions, essentially, is from a guy who is interested in a girl, and wants to know whether he should ask her out or simply rape her. Bonacci begins her answer with this disclaimer.
 * "I am not making this up" is a Catch Phrase of humor writer Dave Barry; he even named one of his books Dave Barry Is Not Making This Up. Although sometimes he is anyway. On occasion, when he's reporting something genuine but really ridiculous, he'll say something like "I'm pretty sure I must have made this up."
 * In one column, Steve Mirsky uses the phrase "I'm not kidding, that's the actual plot." after summarizing Relentless.
 * In the Author's Note at the end of The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, Terry Pratchett points out two plot points from the book that were taken from real life facts or events regarding rats. He also notes, "Most of the true stuff -- or, at least, the stuff that people say is true -- is so unbelievable that I didn't include it in case readers thought I'd made it up."
 * Another Discworld example is in The Truth when he mentions in the beginning his research about how cities dealt with flooding problems that inspired Ahnk-Morpork's method is based on the city Seattle, Washington's methods used towards the end of the 19th century.
 * Another example in Nation, where he says that, among other things, a cannon made of whatever was lying around has been used several times in real life.
 * The author's note/introduction to the Stephen King story collection Hearts in Atlantis, in a section that includes the usual "this is a work of fiction" disclaimer, also contains the line "Although it is difficult to believe, the sixties are not fictional; they actually happened."
 * Inverted in Complete World Knowledge. Each books starts with a reminder that John Hodgman is making this up. Although he has insisted that one blurb on the back of the first book, a letter of praise from a magus of the Church of Satan, is, in fact, genuine, although Hodgman himself is not a Satanist.
 * Mary Renault wrote in the novel Funeral Games that Alexander the Great's body didn't decompose during the 48 hours following his death even though he had died in Babylon during a heat wave. Critics accused Renault of falling prey to the modern Eastern Orthodox myth of the "incorruptible saint". Renault pointed out in an author's note to the second edition that the story of Alexander's incorruptibility is part of the historical record, and was likely the result of his troops mistaking a profound pre-death coma for actual death. This kind of thing happened all the time with Renault's works, with the critics screeching in rage about things she got right because they weren't in accordance with conventional politically correct (for the 50s) wisdom.
 * In the "Caveat, and Warning for Travelers" that opens the novel American Gods, Neil Gaiman states the following: "Furthermore, it goes without saying that all of the people, living, dead, and otherwise in this story are fictional or used in a fictional context. Only the gods are real."
 * Of course, at least one of the main ones was completely made up for the book.
 * The opening of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn opens with a fictional "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer: Although Tom Sawyer is not a real person, the book is told from Huck Finn's perspective, and therefore Tom is real to the narrator (because they are from the same universe). Huck breaks the fourth wall to acknowledge that "[The Adventures of Tom Sawyer] was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth . . . Mary, and the Widow Douglas, is all told about in that book--which is mostly a true book; with some stretchers, as I said before." Given that Tom Sawyer ends with, it's little wonder Huck was at such pains to make sure everybody knew it really happened.
 * Neil Strauss does this at the beginning of The Game. He would have to because no one would believe the crazy events and people that he wrote about in the book.
 * In the Orphanage / Jason Wander series by Robert Buettner, in the second book Orphan's Destiny, the main character quotes "I am not making this up". It almost has to be a deliberate nod to Dave Barry, as it occurs in Florida and is in reference to orange juice and space-industry politics.
 * The Mercedes Lackey novel This Sceptered Isle contains one character who moves permanently underhill (elfland) and is replaced by a construct which slowly falls apart in magic-poor england. His "corpse" is then wrapped in lead to hold it together and buried before anyone can look at it. The book's afterward explains that he:


 * 1632 ends with a disclaimer about which characters were real, which fictional, and which fictional but based on a real category of people.
 * For their novel Freedom Bird, Allan Cole and Chris Bunch inverted this with a disclaimer that "all of the people, places, times and events depicted herein" were completely fictional, "including Ronald Reagan, LSD25, Haight Street, Ashbury Street, the entire Year of 1967, the City of San Francisco and the State of California." It's so comforting to know that 1967 never actually happened.

Periodicals

 * Richard Littlejohn of the Daily Mail is memetically famous for the phrases yuman rights", "elf 'n safety", and "couldn't make this up". Except research has found that, yes, he actually does. Constantly.

Poetry
"who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked away unknown and forgotten into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alleyways & firetrucks, not even one free beer"
 * From Howl, by Allen Ginsberg. Of course, given his reputation for being a little bit of a drug enthusiast, there's no telling if it really did happen.

Live-Action TV

 * The Chaser's War on Everything, known for Gag Subs, did this for their segment on Middle East TV, with the disclaimer "All translations independently verified by the ABC". It included things such as a member of the Egyptian Unique Mustache Association praising Adolf Hitler's mustache (along with his genocide of Jews).
 * In the Flight of the Conchords documentary A Texan Odyssey, a series of shots of Texans with cowboy hats dancing to country music in a bar is accompanied with the voiceover, "The people you see here are not actors. They're really like that."
 * The CBBC show Horrible Histories(the more recent live-action show) has signs pop up during sketches, to the effect that they're not making up certain historical details. They even do it in the Expository Theme Tune when telling the audience that the show is hosted by a talking rat, although that was dropped after the first series.
 * This sketch on Victorian-era names has a line at the beginning explaining that all the names are real, and makes special note to put a sign after every single name to reassure the view that they are, in fact, real names. Given how absurd most of them are it's entirely justified.
 * They also occasionally have signs telling the audience when they are making it up, usually saying something like "This is Silly."
 * On The Daily Show, Jon Stewart will occasionally insist "And this is true" whenever something that actually happened sounded like a joke, due to the show's humorous way of re-telling actual news stories.
 * Note that the show is fond of the Blatant Lies version, for humor ("This is a real photo and in no way doctored"), but it takes pains to make the two very easy to tell apart, since the Blatant Lies are done in an over the top manner often involving nonsensical things like unicorns and poorly photoshopped photos. So they try to make it easy to distinguish when they're making a joke or listing serious facts.
 * In the Colbert Report, Stephen insists that Nabisco literally sent him a one page memo about how to promote Wheat Thins and what the brand represents.
 * The Soup uses similar disclaimers ("We did not doctor this, it really happened!") when showing real television clips that are uncomfortably close to the kind of satirical videos the show sometimes airs. See for example Spaghetti Cat.
 * British TV has a show, The Bubble, around this trope: four celeb guests are kept incommunicado for a week, then brought on stage and asked to guess which of a collection of news items really happened while they were out of touch and which are made up. They rarely do better than blind guessing.
 * Evan Wright, author of Generation Kill, provides commentary in the DVD release of the miniseries adaptation. He says "this really happened" for a few of the more ridiculous-looking events, notably when Corporal Person has a moment of Casual Danger Dialog where he calmly gets out of his vehicle and stands out in the open to yell at another driver to move, during the middle of an ambush with bullets flying everywhere around him.
 * During Charlie Murphy's True Hollywood Stories on Chappelle's Show, he tells a story about Prince inviting him, his brother and some friends to play basketball. After trouncing the Murphys' team, Prince makes them pancakes, at which point the camera cuts back to Charlie Murphy, who assures us, "Really. Pancakes." After that Charlie assures us even further by asking the audience who in their right mind would make this up, and then demands that if we don't believe him to challenge Prince to a game of basketball ourselves and see how talented he is.
 * During the True Hollywood Stories about Rick James, Rick James himself assures the audience that the insanity between him and Charlie Murphy they are about to see actually happened by saying, "Now this is true."
 * Lois and Clark dragged out the Will They or Won't They? between the eponymous characters for so long, with them supposedly getting married twice, that they titled the actual marriage episode "Swear to God, This Time We're Not Kidding".
 * Of course, this takes after the original DC Comics source material; that publisher has a long tradition of doing such things as marrying Lois and Clark, featured prominently on comic book covers, and having it turn out to be in an alternate universe or something; in the 1960s and 1970s, it was common to use the blurb "Not a hoax, not a dream, not an imaginary story!" when the story was actually part of the normal continuity.
 * The Kung Fu Monkey blog frequently acts as a Disclaimer for Leverage. That's not just for the plots Ripped from the Headlines, either; according to Word of God, when a Big Bad cuts loose with the Evil Gloating, it's frequently taken from genuine transcripts of crooks and fat cats doing exactly that. Any changes are because Rogers and his writing staff have to tone them down.
 * The skit 'Los Caquitos', from the Chespirito TV show, has an episode were Botija bets with Chompiras in a poker game based on the "good luck" that his horoscope predicted, yet it ends backfiring. The episode ends with a disclaimer saying that the horoscopes used through the episode were not made up by the writer, but taken verbatim from an actual Mexican newspaper.
 * In an interview with Conan O'Brien, Paul Giamatti said that "Thunderpants is a fine motion picture that I made in England a long time ago about a kid who farts uncontrollably. This came across my desk and I had to be a part of it... I play a guy from NASA who kidnaps him so that he can power a rocket." Giamatti had to repeatedly assure Conan that this was a real movie and Conan never seemed to be entirely sure whether or not Giamatti was joking. It's a real movie.
 * The author of Sir Orfeo added this disclaimer when claiming that Thrace (a region in modern-day Turkey) was the old name for the city of Winchester in England.
 * This is done in-universe on How I Met Your Mother. Ted is an Unreliable Narrator who is telling his teenage children the story of the many events leading up to him meeting their mother for the first time. Every so often the events he describes are so ridiculous that he has to emphasize to his children that things really happened that way.
 * True story. - Barney Stinson

Music
"For the mouse is a creature of great personal valor! For — this is a true case — ''Cat takes female mouse: male mouse will not depart, But stands threatening and daring..."
 * There is a really brilliant choral cantata called Rejoice In The Lamb by Benjamin Britten, based off the semi-crazy poem Jubilate Agno by the semi-crazy Christopher Smart. The alto solo begins like this:

"Now believe me when I tell you that my song is really true I want everyone to listen and believe ''It's about some little people from a long time ago And all the things the neighbors didn't know..."
 * Luke Ski prefaces "Born To Lose" by assuring listeners that every word (and hence, every humiliation of his that it recounts) is absolutely true.
 * Frank Zappa's "Let's Make The Water Turn Black", which recalls the hijinks of brothers Ronnie and Kenny Williams, Frank's neighbors during the early 1960s.

New Media

 * The Twitter feed for The Bugle mostly features the same type of satire as the podcast, with the label "FACT ALERT" for the bits that aren't.

Newspaper Comics

 * One Bloom County strip showed new father Hodgepodge wearing a bra-like bib which holds bottles to allow men to "experience the joy of breastfeeding", as the narration puts it. After a Beat Panel, Hodge looks at the "camera" and says "That's it. The joke is that we're not kidding. $79, Sharper Image."

Oral Tradition, Religion, Myths and Legends
"Acts 26:25-26: But Paul said, "I am not going mad, most noble Festus, but speak the words of truth and sound mind. For the king, before whom I also speak freely, knows these things; for I am convinced that none of these things escapes his attention, since this thing was not done in a corner." 1 Corinthians 15:6: After [Christ was raised up,] he was seen by over five hundred brothers at once, the most of whom remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep. 2 Peter 1:16: For we did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of His majesty."
 * Several apostles have made this claim in The Bible, often appealing to the fact that there were still-living witnesses at the time:

"Habakkuk 1:5: Behold ye among the heathen, and regard, and wonder marvelously: for I will work a work in your days, which ye will not believe, though it be told to you."
 * There's also the pre-emptive invocation of this trope:

Radio

 * Rush Limbaugh uses this as a sort of catch phrase when quoting news stories out of the newspaper that are... Well absurd.
 * Herman Cain (while substituting for Neal Boortz) has reassured listeners that the Congressional switch board is indeed XXX-SOB-USOB and he is not making the number up. It turned out that the number, while allowing the caller to be connected to their congressman's office, belonged to a lobbying firm, not the government.
 * Al Franken came up with the number as well.
 * Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me's Peter Sagal also says "... and this is true:" a lot. While the fact thus introduced may indeed be true, it's usually followed up by another one that's blatantly false.
 * The "Bluff the Listener" challenge is this inverted, two panelists will make stories up, and a third will tell a true story, and the listener has to guess the true one.
 * There's a round called Notes And Queries on I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, in which Humph asks a question and one of the panellists come up with a possible answer, before Humph reads out the real one. Whenever the questions or answers got ridiculous enough, Humph would remind everyone that they were "out of a real book".

Recorded and Stand-Up Comedy
""On my children... I did not write that, I am repeating it.""
 * If a comedian tells a true story to get laughs, you will often hear from them, "I'm not making this up" (or a variation of the phrase). Despite this disclaimer, it's still pretty hard to tell whether or not the story in question is true.
 * Christopher Titus used it when describing to the audience his father's exact wishes on how he wanted his funeral and how he wanted to be buried. And that isn't even covering what he wanted done with his ashes...

""Stopped drinking because it's not really good for your health - and I fell into a bonfire." *audience laughs, Titus mock-laughs* "Yeah, you're done drinkin' then, you don't need AA.""
 * Just listening to Titus' stuff, it's not hard to realize he's making rather little of it up. The majority of it seems to be true, with just a little exaggeration here and there. He's admitted himself, his job is rather like therapy for him, as he's telling stories from his life and having people laugh along with him. If he "mock laughs", he's still working on finding it funny.

"Dana Carvey: You can't write this shit!"
 * Also happens in his special Neverlution when he is talking about the attempted Times Square car bomb. He says "I've been in comedy for 25 years, and I have never been that funny."
 * Jeff Dunham starts his show "Arguing With Myself" relating an incident involving customs officers and Peanut (one of his puppets). "This is all true, it's too stupid to make up..."
 * Not to mention the jokes Peanut makes about... the geniuses who brought a bunch of deaf people to a ventriloquist act. Jeff finishes with: "the sad thing is, this is all completely true."
 * Dana Carvey also used this in regards to the Presidency of George W. Bush.

"These people come up to me after the show and go "Is that true?" and I go "Yeah", and they go "Is it?" and I'm not really sure what to say to that. I guess I could go "YEAH!" and they'd go "It's probably true, he said it louder"."
 * Similarly, in Will Ferrell's one-man show You're Welcome America, in which he played Dubya, a screen would occasionally ding loudly and display "Actual Quote" to distinguish Ferrell's brand of inanity from Bush's (The authentic quotes were usually dumber).
 * Mike Birbiglia actually lampshades his use of it in one routine, taking a moment to comment on how hard it is to convince people that he is, in fact, telling the truth.

"And I'm quoting here, because I don't have the time or the energy to make shit up anymore. He said, "How money you make.""
 * Wendy Bagwell: "And this is a fact, what I'm telling you, with my hand up..." (1:25). That phrase shows up in some form in most of Wendy's stories.
 * "And this is true -- unlike all the other bullshit I've been feeding you. 'When she started to tell the truth at the end, it really opened up for me, I just walked through, I felt connection for once...' " - Kate Clinton
 * Otis Lee Crenshaw, delivering a joke about psychopath Charles Manson, states that he "holds the world record for one-armed press-ups, and - I am not making this up - the world record for tossing midget."
 * When Lewis Black talks about his experiences in Miami, specifically when his rental car was stolen, he describes an encounter with a police officer who did not have a firm grasp of the English language. Verbs eluded him. Before repeating what the officer said, Black quips:

"Regan: And I swear, it says "Microwave on high for three seconds"... If you're wakin', eatin', and haulin' in 3 seconds, it's time for a change of lifestyle."
 * Brian Regan used a bit where he related some of the most inane instructions he'd ever seen... on the side of a box of Pop-Tarts. It had, like, 17 steps to it (actually just 3), along with microwave instructions!

Theatre

 * During Anna Russell's synopsis of Richard Wagner's Der Ring Des Nibelungen, she looks at the audience and says "I'm not making this up, you know!" (And she isn't.) Due to the context and delivery, it's one of the biggest laugh lines in her entire Ring routine. (This phrase became so strongly identified with her that it is in fact the title of her autobiography.)
 * The Fly-By-Night Club, a comedy revue in Alaska that performed at a (now long-closed) theater, had the running-gag line of "We're not making this up, people; we're not that good", when talking about epic non-politics failures by US Representative Don Young and Senator Lisa Murkowski (they bet in one of Alaska's only legal pool bets, that the ice at a specific spot on a specific river would break... On April 31).
 * In the musical The Robber Bridegroom, the opening number, "Once Upon the Natchez Trace", contains repeated assertions that "this is true." Of course, this song talks about things like a man whose brother was only a talking head, and a woman whose beauty was so incredible that her sleeping naked under a full moon caused the moon to burn as hot as the sun.

Video Games
"Summons and dismisses a rideable Magic Rooster. No, seriously. This is a very fast mount."
 * World of Warcraft now has one of these:


 * An achievement in Portal 2 bears the description "That Just Happened." Given how you earn it, it's nice to have the confirmation.

Web Comics

 * Penny Arcade has this in a strip discussing the gay porn Collection Sidequest in Shadow Hearts: Covenant: "That's not the joke. This is something you actually do."
 * The title of the strip detailing Gabe's encounter with Jack Thompson is entitled And All Of It True.
 * Also, the Gillette Razor Power Fusion Gamer: This Is Actually A Real Thing.
 * Seen in this parody in Touhou Nekokayou.
 * This xkcd strip puts the disclaimer in the alt-text.
 * Full Frontal Nerdity does it in this strip. And again in this strip.
 * This comic from PHD, recounting artist Jorge Cham's experiences at British customs - which were absurd enough that there are not one, but two, disclaimers.
 * Used in the opening panel of this classic (and utterly hilarious) VG Cats.
 * Lil Formers did a comic parodying handheld games, including a panel about Scribblenauts, which included in The Rant a note, "The above strip is not even a joke, that's really how I beat that level."
 * This Cyanide & Happiness strip points out that Tim Buckley actually said this in the file name.
 * Darths and Droids has done this by name at least once, linking back to TV Tropes. Note that this is incorrect use, and should not be mimicked.
 * In Concession, Kate (who is a pedophile) takes Artie (who is not, despite that one time with the 9 year old transgendered kid) to a NAMBLA meeting. In The Rant, Immy assured the reader that this is, in fact, a real thing.
 * In one Real Life Comics strip, a Dave and Busters waitress refuses to serve Greg a Pepsi because he's not old enough to drink alcohol. In The Rant, Greg Dean says that this actually happened to him.
 * Used by Sonya of Ménage à 3 here (she really didn't make it up - Zii made it up for her).
 * Girl Genius carried a message of goodwill to its colourist and his wife who was going through childbirth. When referencing her, they felt the need to clarify that yes, her middle name really is Danger.

Web Original
"We're going to do battle with ancient Egyptian laser beams! (Caption: THIS ISN'T A JOKE - IT REALLY HAPPENS)"
 * Strong Bad Gameways ends with a brief video of Strong Bad's Cool Game For Attractive People that shows Strong Bad standing and then walking away due to impatience. The screen says, "ACTUAL GAMEPLAY FOOTAGE!"
 * "Actual 4Kids dialog" from Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Abridged Series, and a variation in Sailor Moon Abridged

"Polnareff: OH, what's that? You say I can beat your bum? Oh, you're into that stuff! (Caption: ACTUAL DUB DIALOGUE)"
 * Also, in Teen Titans Abridged, with "INSTANCES OF ACTUAL DIALOGUE".
 * Two more instances, in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Abridged in regards to one particularly weird line:

"Kakyoin: POLNAREFF! He's in the CHROME of the STEERING WHEEL! (Caption: ACTUAL DUB INFLECTION)"
 * And the second in regards to a bizarre case of Lip Lock in the dub, when Kakyoin spots J. Geil's Hanged Man in the steering wheel of their pickup:

"No really, I'm not joking, they steal the music from Rocky."
 * In Gargoyles Abridged, an "ACTUAL EPISODE DIALOGUE" message pops up when Demona says "blast your soul."
 * Most of the Newgrounds You Are A Fucking Moron animations have Reginald say something like this at least once.
 * When The Nostalgia Critic noted the Real Life part of Space Jam.
 * In his review of the animated... adaptation... Titanic: The Legend Goes On, he holds up the DVD case as proof that it actually exists e repeated the gag.
 * In his review of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen: "!... [pause] I'm really not kidding!"
 * A similar gag is featured in the Topless Robot's Transformers 2 post-review FAQ.
 * And in The Editing Room abridged script of the movie.
 * In his review of the Cannon Films' Captain America (comics), he states he is not making "Captain America escapes an ambush by hot chicks by entering a pick-up truck driven by Ned Beatty" up.
 * In his Captain N review he made sure to point out that the oo-we-oo sounds from The Wizard of Oz weren't added to the scene of marching Mooks by him, but were actually from the show itself.
 * THIS IS REALLY HAPPENING! In The Neverending Story III.
 * In his Inspector Gadget film review, he points out that when a billboard advertising Yahoo falls on the Big Bad's car, he isn't the one who dubbed in the Yahoo jingle of the time (a man singing "Yahooooo~ooo!" in a vaguely hillbilly-sounding voice).
 * The cafe in this video is a real place. The last part even gives you the address in case you want to stop by.
 * Every time The Angry Video Game Nerd says "I am dead fucking serious."
 * In his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III review, when the screen fades from that random rat to Splinter and back, he says that he's "not making that up, they actually did that fade".
 * In one of Stegblob's YouTube Poop videos, he showed a blooper where Grounder's mouth was moving but Sonic was talking. Stegblob put up a banner at the bottom saying, "I DID NOT POOP THIS BIT!" (This was actually quite common in DiC's cartoons.)
 * it was Robotnik Becomes Prime Minister (at 2:33)
 * When Zero Punctuation says "I wish I was fucking kidding!" when describing the ending of Condemned 2.
 * Also with a gun in Painkiller. "I wish I could make this up! It shoots shurikens and lightning! It could only be more awesome if it had tits and was on fire."
 * Spoony also used this during the Training Montage of Clones Of Bruce Lee

"Then, and I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP, Batman orders Robin to "Use your Bat Lube!""
 * Again for Highlander the Source. Before showing the finale, he spends a good minute assuring the viewer that the scene is completely unchanged (apart from adding the Benny Hill music) and was shot like that, to be shown on national TV.
 * He also spends a good 15 seconds in "The Importance of Wearing Pants" reassuring us that he's not making up the story about the player who somehow left the house without his pants.
 * When talking about the mass-censorship of comics in the mid 20th century, Moviebob added this disclaimer saying (complete with emphasis) "THIS. ACTUALLY. HAPPENED.'"
 * Occurs quite a lot in The Agony Booth recaps. Sometimes there's a screencap to prove it.
 * Even came up in an interview once...
 * One of the mods has even adopted "No, really." as his catchphrase.
 * The Jabootu review of the movie Sphere says this about the movie's ending: "No, really, that's what they came up with. No, I am not making this up just to make the movie sound stupider than it already is..."
 * Another Jabootu example, from the review of the Superfriends episode "The Time Trap":

"Linkara It's also the story where Mary-Jane was killed by Peter Parker's radioactive sperm... I am not kidding at all."
 * In the Atop the Fourth Wall review of AllStar Batman, Linkara reads out the script that came with the special edition in which Frank Miller details Vicki Vale's ass shot. All he does is read it out and put up a caption that says "This is not a joke. This is the actual script."
 * In his Ultimates 3 review, he keeps using his hilarious drunk voice for Tony Stark even after
 * His live review of the Spider-Man Manga, when he mentions it's by the same writer as Spider-Man: Reign.

"So please, before we begin, bear in mind that I am making NONE of this up, and everything I am about to describe actually happened, live on a PPV. This is not, just to clarify, an LSD hallucination gone wrong, or a dream sequence that ended with Pat Patterson waking up in the shower in the next morning."
 * As Cleolinda Jones put it in her overview, "Hand to God, I did not make one word of that up. Twilight means never having to say you're kidding".
 * She does it again in her The Happening In Fifteen Minutes script, having a reporter say that the event "may be an act of God we may never fully understand" and then instantly pointing out that this line comes directly from the movie.
 * Scott Keith, wrestling critic, reviews Undertaker vs. Yokozuna at Royal Rumble 1994.

"Subtitle: Seriously, I didn't make that up."
 * When Todd in the Shadows reviewed "Bedrock", he listed a couple of names from Young Money: "Mack Maine, Jae Millz, Lil Chuckee, Lil Twist, T-Streets, and a bunch of other names that sound like I'm just making them up, though I swear to God I'm not."
 * This disclaimer also shows up on the review of "Break Up" by Mario, Gucci Mane and Sean Garrett after the line, "Don't I make your earlobe freeze?"

""Not only was her design based on a drag queen..." [shows picture of Divine] "No, really."
 * Auto Tune the News once sampled a speech by Steve Buyer warning that smoking lettuce is as harmful to your health as smoking tobacco. Immediately after, just to prove no Manipulative Editing was at work, they include a news report about the actual speech, with the whole thing remixed together into Crowning Music of Awesome.
 * The Nostalgia Chick, on Ursula:

"We're not sure about Van Susteren, but her husband is a level 8, the highest level currently available (can only be achieved while on a boat at sea; seriously, we are not making this shit up)."
 * In Freddy Got Fingered, Oancitizen says regarding acclaimed performance art involving a woman stripping, bathing in honey and doing a monologue about poop in BDSM: "Before you ask, I'm not making a word of that up".
 * Oan's show had during The Doom Generation a monologue performed by 90s Kid that the caption reveals was actually used in the film's marketing campaign!
 * Sean O'Neal's article on an upcoming Miley Cyrus movie, with the twist being that he seems to be trying to convince himself that this god-awful premise is actually real.
 * In Cracked.com
 * One in an article on Celebrities who are secretly Happyologists.

"One of the survivors was put in a program called Paws for Tales, where kids too shy to read aloud to human audiences practice their reading skills in front of dogs. No, really. That's not a sarcastic fake program we made up. (And that's not a stock image. That's Jonny Justice, the actual dog we're talking about.)"
 * From 5 Animal Rights Campaigns That Managed to Screw Over Animals, about the dogs rescued from Michael Vick's dogfighting ring:

"(No, we didn't get the names mixed up -- Clyde is the video game villain, Wizard is the cabbie. Go figure.)"
 * Early in "5 Movies For Kids That Stole Their Plot from Adult Movies", Mark Hill and JM McNab intentionally switch the setups of The Santa Clause and An American Werewolf in London, assuming that readers will get the joke. But later, when comparing Wizard from Taxi Driver to Clyde from Wreck-It Ralph, they comment on the former's video-game-character-like name and feel the need to point this out:

"This is a real game that exists. Don't say it isn't... it is!"
 * GameCentral's review of Coronation Street: The Mystery of the Missing Hotpot Recipe begins

"174. Furby® is not allowed into classified areas. (I swear to the gods, I did not make that up, it's actually DOD policy.)"
 * Used by Mr. Plinkett in his review of Baby's Day Out... while claiming that the movie spawned a Congressional hearing on whether the federal government should ban the production of Hollywood movies.
 * Skippy's List has examples:

"Dr. Ashen: I am not making this up, I promise!"
 * While reviewing Human Killing Machine, Dr. Ashen does this after explaining that once you defeat Igor, you must fight his dog, named "Shepski."


 * Among the snippets used by Rage Comic there is a Memetic Mutation Linearts of Barney Stinson's "True Story" line and pose. Used by authors of Rage Comics to invoke this trope.
 * Did the 10:10 Movement really make a video which showed people, including children, being apathetic about climate change being blown up? Was it really introduced by Mr. Pauchuri in his official capacity as the head of the UN IPCC? Seriously, the UN didn't officially state that anyone doubting climate change should be murdered brutally? "No Pressure".

Western Animation
""Be very careful, Joey!""
 * South Park had the message "This Is What Scientologists Actually Believe" played over a scene showing the mythos of Scientology. Note this is almost verbatim the text of OT3, a regular part of the Scientology doctrine. Scientologists have been trying to forget that certain aspect of their religion Believe or not, South Park's portrayal is actually LESS RIDICULOUS than the actual mythology. South Park proclaims that frozen aliens were dumped into various volcanoes all over Earth's surface; in reality, Scientology teaches the frozen aliens were strapped to the volcanoes and then BLOWN UP with imperial-engineered hydrogen bombs. Then the disembodied souls - "thetans" - were forced by psychiatrists to watch a "three-D, super colossal motion picture" at a theater which implanted all the ideas about religion into their minds. And it ought to be noted that these souls were lured to Earth Teegeeack on the pretense of income tax inspections. Put it this way: if the makers of the episode were making all that stuff up, it would have been fairly normal.
 * Although the character in question is somewhat more humanoid than depicted...
 * In "The Return of Chef", they had a similar disclaimer about the Super Adventure Club, a Fictional Counterpart of Scientology. The episode was essentially a Take That to Scientology (again) because the creators believed the organization forced Isaac Hayes (who voiced Chef) to leave the show.
 * In Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Abridged Series, similar subtitles are used in the shameless JCVD Expy's Scientology description.


 * In Titan Maximum, they had a sword made out of aggregated diamond nanorods, the hardest substance in the known universe. What sounds like typical technobabble is remarked by saying that aggregated diamond nanorods are, in fact, a real thing, and they're every bit as hard as advertised. Making a sword out of the things probably wouldn't be a great idea (hardness isn't the only trait a good sword needs), but they really are the hardest substance known to man.
 * Near the end of the second episode of Family Guy Presents Laugh It Up Fuzzball, Brian (as Chewbacca) asks why Mort (Lando) is wearing Han's clothes. Brian then turns to the camera and explains that this isn't some weird joke they've made up. If you watch The Empire Strikes Back, Lando really is wearing Han's clothes for this scene.

Real Life
"I am not making it up. I'll say it one more time: Tim's publicist's name is Bumble Ward. There is somebody on this planet... named Bumble."
 * As Mark Twain put it - "Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't."
 * The New Jersey Nets basketball team had an abysmal 2009-2010 season, with a final record of 12–70. Once, after winning a game, one paper's headline read: "It's true: Nets win!"
 * Said by Kevin Smith in an anecdote about his interactions with Tim Burton, when he brings up Burton's publicist, whose actual, real name is Bumble Ward.


 * From an LA Times article about an Italian politician whose sex scandal with transsexual South American prostitutes drove him to a monastery: "Note to reader: The writer would love to pretend he has made all this up, but this is Italy, where one's imagination pales beside the operatic brio of real-life librettos that unfold with delicious, unseemly decadence."
 * The non-fiction book The Wrestlecrap Book Of Lists said that professional wrestler Joanie Laurer (Chyna) appeared as a judge for a Most Beautiful Transsexual contest, following that statement up with a "Not Making This Up Disclaimer.
 * The infamous Canadian Liberal Party attack ads of 2006 used these disclaimers while claiming outrageous things about their opponent Stephen Harper of the Conservative Party. This went into Narm territory with the ads that added "We are not allowed to make this up."
 * Inverted with the movie about Audie Murphy... starring Audie Murphy. The man -- as talented a soldier as he was -- deliberately cut out some of his exploits from the movie believing that not even a "I Did Not Make This Up" disclaimer would be able to make the viewers believe it actually happened.
 * Part of the reason why The Strangeways Prison riot was able to spread so quickly was because it started on April 1, causing several of the upper staff in control of the prison to question the authenticity of the calls for help.
 * "I am not kidding." said Dick Van Dyke, after being rescued by porpoises.
 * In the book Website Creation In Plain English, the author says of a certain ASCII character, "it makes a computer go beep." He then explains he's not making this up and links to That Other Wiki's article on the [wp:Bell character|Bell Character]. That's the thing to put on an infinite loop in high school computer science.
 * During June 2011 several tornadoes touched down in Massachusetts, and the various news outlets covering it had to repeatedly reassure their viewers that this was, in fact, actually happening. In this case it was trying to keep people from putting themselves in the path of the tornadoes.
 * The Boston Globe once ran an article where the first sentence was literally "We are not making this up: Boston is a very safe place to drive." Given the city's reputation, the disclaimer was necessary.