The Cake Is a Lie: Difference between revisions

* In [[Power Girl]] (Issue #12 to be exact), super-villainess Satanna wants [[Mad Scientist]] Dr. Sivana to make her a super-weapon to kill Power Girl (Kryptonians being rather hard to kill). Sivana wants some bouncy-bouncy in exchange. Despite her disgust, Satanna complies, and afterwards Sivana points out that they are both "bad guys," and as long as he got his, he doesn't care that she doesn't get anything. So not only has she debased herself for nothing, he adds injury to insult by making his robots beat her up and throw her out of a fourth-story window. So not only is Sivana a ''complete'' pig, he's made Satanna's list -- helist—he'll be showing up in revenge-oriented tropes in the near future.

* 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—which [[Exact Words|turns out to mean]] jam tomorrow and jam yesterday, but never jam today.

* 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 -- butago—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 ''[[Shadowrun]]'' games, this is, way too often, what the "run offered by Mr. Johnson" turns out to be -- especiallybe—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!}}<br /><br />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.")

** Referenced in ''[[Minecraft]]''--one—one of the Achievements is to bake a cake, and its name is "The Lie".

* [[Word of God|Erik Wolpaw]], Portal's writer, had announced that there will be absolutely NO cake anywhere in the sequel, not even in the dialogue, because [[Discredited Meme|he is tired of cake jokes]]. However, with the binary code in the following comic translating to "the cake is a lie," and Doug Rattmann's drawing of the cake in the Portal 2 preview, that turned out to be a lie of its own. He even stated [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/video-games/8359173/Portal-2-developer-interview-Chet-Falisek-and-Erik-Wolpaw.html they couldn't resist putting one joke]--on—on a door claiming to lead to [[G La DOS]]' emergency shutdown and cake dispensary. [[The Cake Is a Lie|Take a guess as to the door's authenticity]]. Other than that, the [[Arc Words|Arc Word]] has turned into [[It Makes Sense in Context|"potato"]].

'''Kaiba''': [[The Cake Is a Lie|The cake is a lie,]] [[This Is for Emphasis, Bitch|bitch.]] }}

* 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--andbehavior—and they wonder why there's so many rebellious teenagers around.

* Although the exact amount is disputed Thomas Edison reportedly promised 10-50,000$ (1.1 million today) to anyone who could solve the crippling inefficiencies in his prototype automobile motors and electrical generators. [[Nikola Tesla]] solved them both while Edison refused to honor his agreement. Edison told Tesla he had a lot to learn about an American sense of humor--thehumor—the cruel irony is that Edison ''still'' gets the credit for being a genius despite inventing very little of what he's credited with while Tesla, who invented more things than Edison had patents, was all but forgotten (though that's starting to change).<br /><br />Edison also refused to raise Tesla's salary from 18 to 25 dollars a week (a rather reasonable request as the original salary was for a line worker while Tesla was now making some of the most advanced creations at Edison's plant). All of this was the main reason why Tesla went to work for Westinghouse, who not only fully acknowledged him, but also paid him a crap-load of money, which Tesla then immediately spent [[Mad Scientist|on various bizarre inventions]]. That said, Tesla indeed was one of the fathers of a modern AC power grid, and won the "War of Currents" for Westinghouse.