The Cake Is a Lie/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A character lies about the reward that will be given for completing a task.

  • Straight: The evil computer GeneSYS promises Alice cake, she never gets it.
  • Exaggerated: GeneSYS promises Alice cake, a party, and to end world hunger. It never happens.
  • Justified: There was cake, but then somebody else ate it.
  • Inverted: GeneSYS insists that there is no cake, but it turns out that there is.
  • Subverted: The Stinger reveals that the cake is in fact not a lie.
  • Double Subverted: ...only it turns out the cake is made of plastic.
  • Parodied: GeneSYS says the eponymous line; Alice groans at this, telling GeneSYS that the meme got old years ago.
  • Deconstructed: The promised reward had a significant amount of important to Alice, and she ends up very distraught after she's lied to.
  • Reconstructed: This motivates Alice to defeat GeneSYS.
  • Zig Zagged: Alice discovers that The Cake Is a Lie, and that the real cake is waiting for her in the next level. This process repeats itself until the final boss fight.
  • Averted: There is no mention of a reward for any of Alice's actions.
  • Enforced: Justified done/shown openly in front of Alice's eyes.
  • Lampshaded: "Wait a minute, you're an AI, how on earth would you even go about getting a cake in the first place?"
  • Invoked:
  • Exploited: Alice understood that since GeneSYS is a villain and they usually use cakes as bribes, she declines the offer.
  • Defied: Alice simply buys a cake instead, since GeneSYS is probably lying about it anyways.
  • Discussed:

GeneSYS: "I find it kind of funny, in the dictionary sense of the term, when I request assistance from homo sapiens beings, they believe that a murderous, truth-fabricating, crapshoot AI will actually carry out with its truth-fabrication and reward them with their malnutritional object of desire."

  • Conversed: "Oh look, she's being promised cake, it's probably going to be a lie."
  • Played For Laughs: GeneSYS insists that its actions aren't a Portal reference, even more so than he insists that there will be cake. That turns out to be a lie.
  • Played For Drama:
  • Plotted A Good Waste:

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