The Cake Is a Lie: Difference between revisions

 

{{examples}}

* This occurs to Lina Inverse in the first ''[[Slayers]]'' movie. The character in question isn't evil and doesn't plan on hurting Lina per se, but it's definitely not a case of [[Moving the Goalposts]]. Needing Lina to risk her life by going back in time hundreds of years in order to save a much younger version of himself, his love, and a group of elves from a mazoku, the elderly ghost of an adventurer promises Lina to show her the location of "the fountain of growth", which she interprets, and is lead on to believe, will finally make her tall, curvy, and stacked. In reality, the ghost has lied, and the fountain in question is the reverse of the fountain of youth, aging things that touch its waters to death, making Lina's trials and tribulations completely meaningless (in her eyes). However, since Lina was particularly dumb for believing him, and since he's really the ancestor of her (not-yet-encountered-yet-at-the-time) love and life-long partner Gourry, it worked out in her favor anyways.

* There was a slight instance of this in the Battle City arc of ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!]]''; Arcana, one of Marik's servant's, is promised a reunion with his lost love upon fulfillment of a mission; Marik even put a mannequin shrouded by curtains in the room to persuade him. He fails his mission, and the last thing he sees before Marik kills him is that he never intended to keep his end of the deal.

* Used in a second-season episode of ''[[K-On!]]'', actually referencing cake. The girls were trying to wake up Yui by claiming that they bought her cake, but she went back to sleep when she noticed that there was no cake in the room.

 

* There was a ''[[Rugrats]]'' comic story where Chuckie had all but one of the collectible Reptar cards, and Angelica claimed she would give him the one he was missing if he performed a series of chores for her. When he finished them all, it turned out the card she gave him was a phony drawing.

* In the Gunslinger comic, one of the villains ask an addict for information on the heroes, implying that they will give him "metal" in exchange. After they are finished, the addict asks if he is getting gold or silver, the villain replies 'lead' and shoots him. (This is a visual re-telling of the incident from the original source, the novel ''[[The Dark Tower/Wizard and Glass|Wizard and Glass]]''.)

* Subverted in one Marvel comic. A skrull promises a human 'the most beautiful woman in the galaxy' to betray his species. He accepts, but then turns back when somebody points out to him 'Even if the Skrull was going to keep his promise, what's beautiful to a reptilian alien?' - then we see a beautiful Skrull woman waiting to be given away to some lowly human (out of love for the invading skrull). The Fridge Logic is, Skrulls are shapeshifters. He could send the ugliest woman, and she could change into the most beautiful.

* Subverted in an early issue of ''[[The Batman Adventures]]'', the [[Batman: The Animated Series|animated Batman spin-off comic]] from the 1990s. [[The Joker]] hijacks a cable television outlet and uses it to broadcast himself onto a closed-circuit TV set delivered to Selina Kyle's apartment. After revealing that [[Paranoia Fuel|he knows Selina is Catwoman]], Joker tells her that he has concocted a foolproof plan for stealing the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London, and asks her if she'd like to attempt the feat. Selina, who relishes this ultimate test of her burglary skills, still feels suspicious, even asking Joker, "What's the catch?" Turns out, Joker also wants her to snatch something ''else'' for him while she's in London (we're never told exactly what this is, but it's apparently microcircuitry or something similarly electronic). Once Selina has heard all the details, she goes through with Joker's plan - but Batman outsmarts her and manages to prevent her from swiping the jewels, and Catwoman barely escapes capture. She does, however, manage to acquire the technology Joker requested, and sends it to him at the end of the comic. (In the next issue, it's finally revealed that whatever Joker had Catwoman steal for him allows him to override every other TV station in Gotham City, so that he can broadcast his sadistic variety show on every channel.) But even though Catwoman didn't get what she wanted, Joker didn't care: she managed to get him on TV, and whether or not she also got the Crown Jewels was irrelevant.

 

== Fairy Tales ==

* In "[[The Pied Piper of Hamelin]]", the town offers a handsome reward for ridding them of the rats. When the piper succeeds flawlessly, they flatly refuse to pay him and boot him out of the town. It turns out pretty badly for them.

 

 

* In ''[[Dangerous Liaisons]]'', when Valmont breaks off his relationship with Madame de Tourvel and comes to collect his "reward" from Merteuil, she simply tells him "no," and [[Reason You Suck Speech|mocks him to his face]].

** Therefore, also seen in ''[[Cruel Intentions]]''.

** ''[[The Island]]'' is based on "The Clonus Horror" and has a similar lie. The clones are told that they are preparing for a trip to "The Island," the only haven from a "virus outbreak."

 

* This is also sometimes known as [[wikipedia:Jam tomorrow|"jam tomorrow"]] for the White Queen's promise in ''[[Alice in Wonderland|Through The Looking Glass]]'' to provide "jam every other day"—which [[Exact Words|turns out to mean]] jam tomorrow and jam yesterday, but never jam today.

* The White Witch in ''[[The Chronicles of Narnia|The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe]]'' promises Edmund more [[Evil Tastes Good|Turkish Delight]] for playing along with her.

* Played with in the [[Buffy]] spin-off novel ''Pretty Maids All In A Row'': The novel focuses on Spike and Dru, who are hired by a demon to do a job for him, with the promised reward being a powerful magical artifact Dru has decided she wants. A third of the way through, there's a flashback revealing that this artifact was stolen off the demon sixty years ago—but then two-thirds of the way through, there's another flashback revealing that thirty years ago the demon took it back. {{spoiler|Finally, when Spike and Dru come to claim the reward, he admits that when he hired them he'd already given it away to somebody else he wanted a favour from. Final score: [[Double Subversion]].}}

* In Sommerset Maugham's story "A Friend in Need", a wealthy businessman tells the narrator about an incident in which he promised a [[Remittance Man]] a position at the firm if he could successfully swim a treacherous length of water. The Remittance Man drowned to death, and the business man then casually reveals that he never had a position open in the first place.

 

* [[Doctor Who]]: "Yes, I lied, it's a jammy dodger. But [[It Makes Sense in Context|I was promised tea!]]"

* The premise of the US [[The Office|Office]] episode "Scott's Tots" was founded on this.

* The crew on ''[[Farscape]]'' once visited an agricultural world where tomorrow was ''always'' a rest day, but it never came because the workers' memories kept getting re-written as to what day it was.

 

* A song written by songwriter Ed Pickford, and popular with many folk singers, is Pound a Week Rise. The workers of the coal mines are fed up and want a raise. When they confront the then chairman of the National Coal Board (Lord Robens), he tells them that he used to be a miner and knows how hard it can be so he makes them a deal. If he can get their output to break records, he'll give raise their pay by a pound per week (hence the title). When they finally accomplish this, he laughs at them, denies them the raise he promised and yells at them to get back to their jobs.

* The [[Child Ballad]] "The Golden Vanity" takes this and puts a rather...dark spin on it. {{spoiler|The captain promises the hero (the ship's boy) money and his daughter, if he will swim to the enemy vessel and drill holes in it, but when the hero sinks the enemy ship, the captain leaves him in the ocean to drown}}.

* According to [[That Other Wiki]], in the non-Bowdlerized ending to the song "Big Rock Candy Mountain", the candy is a lie.

 

* In ''[[Shadowrun]]'' games, this is, way too often, what the "run offered by Mr. Johnson" turns out to be—especially if the [[Game Master]] [[Killer Game Master|really likes screwing his players over]].

 

* ''[[Portal (series)|Portal]]'': [[Trope Namer]] ("THE CAKE IS A LIE" being written on walls in various places by Doug Rattmann, an employee turned test subject). Note that there ''was'' cake, it just wasn't for you. {{spoiler|YOU ARE GOING TO BE THE CAKE!}}

** Moreover, note the wording by GlaDOS: "There will be cake" (and similar vague statements, like "cake will be served" and "cake... will be available"). It's not until later (when her lies become more transparent) does GLaDOS suggest that Chell will be the one to eat it ("Okay, the test is over now. You win! Go back to the recovery annex for your cake.")

'''Kid''': THAT'S A LIE! }}

 

{{quote|'''Marik''': Shut up! What we came here to do is defeat Yugi Muto, once and for all!

'''Bonz''': Brains. [I came here for the free tacos.]

* In ''[[Suburban Knights]]'', [[The Nostalgia Critic]] lured everyone to Chicago under the promise of a free car.

 

* In ''[[Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas]]'', Forte promises a musical solo for his henchman Fife in exchange for performing many of the tasks that would help Forte challenge/endanger Belle. Near the end of the movie when Forte gets confronted by Belle, Beast and the gang, Fife finds the pages for his solo to be blank.

* In ''[[Invader Zim]]'', the kids have to sell candy bars to raise money for new desks. Zim goes to great lengths to sell the most in order to win the secret ultimate prize, which turns out to be...{{spoiler|absolutely nothing. It was just a trick to motivate the kids}}.

* In ''[[Dave the Barbarian]]'', Fang tricks Dave into entering a Mongrel Hordes Boot Camp, by saying they were going to a hat show.

 

* In a 1996 ad campaign to promote ''Pepsi Stuff'', commercials for the film ''True Lies'' claimed that if anyone collected 7,000,000 points, Pepsi would give that person a Harrier jet (featured in the movie). A man by the name of John Leonard redeemed a check equivalent to the amount of the 7,000,000 points, but Pepsi refused on the grounds that the jet was not really being offered. After a lawsuit was filed, a federal judge sided with Pepsi.

** [http://www.snopes.com/business/market/mars.asp Seems Pepsi could have used a lesson from] [[Burma-Shave]], which did manage to fulfill a "win a trip to Mars" joke promotion by delivering a vacation to Moers, North Rhine-Westphalia, West Germany.

* Burrell Smith (who designed the hardware for the original [[Apple Macintosh|Macintosh]]) would often promise to [https://web.archive.org/web/20140711084803/http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=I%27ll_Be_Your_Best_Friend.txt&sortOrder=Sort%20by%20Date&detail=medium be your best friend] in order to get you to do something. This relationship, however, only lasts a few milliseconds.

* Happens all too often when you're a toddler. Your parent will promise you a reward if you do something or go through something, and once that's over with they take back their word. This even happens to kids, teenagers, and even adults, and it encourages kids to engage in rebellious behavior—and they wonder why there's so many rebellious teenagers around.

* A literal, if subverted, example: Twinkies. [[Squick|Read the ingredients list]]; very little of it sounds even remotely like cake, more like industrial sludge...and yet, like the disgusting ingredients of the infamous [[Portal (series)|Portal]] cake, it all comes together to form...yup. Cake.

* Atheists tend to view religious claims of [[Fluffy Cloud Heaven|an afterlife]] as examples of this trope, with heaven as "the cake" (or more precisely "[http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/282700.html Pie in the Sky]" or "[http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/jam-tomorrow.html Jam Tomorrow]"). There is no evidence that the cake exists, and you can't ask anyone who has finished the test. You only have [[GLaDOS]]'s promise, combined with your own desire for cake.

 

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{{reflist}}

[[Category:Have Your Cake and Trope It Too]]

[[Category:Dirty Social Tricks]]

[[Category:Trope Names From Memes]]

[[Category:Plots]]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cake Is a Lie, The}}