ViralWorld

2007·Early YouTube·funny

The cake is a lie

This one never had a single recording. What is known is below.

This Moment was released commercially before the internet carried it. Originally published on commercial-release.

  • SourceNot an upload originally
  • MediaNot held by ViralWorld

A line of graffiti hidden in a 2007 game that escaped into general English and would not leave.

The story

What this was

A phrase classified under baking.

It first appeared in 2007, during early YouTube.

It became the shorthand for any promised reward that is not coming — a job, a bonus, a policy — used constantly by people who have never played the game. It is one of the clearest cases of a piece of environmental detail in a work of fiction outgrowing the work, and Valve's own designers have described being bemused by it.

By the time Portal 2 arrived in 2011 the line had been so thoroughly worn out that its writers deliberately refused to use it again, which is an unusual position for a studio to take about its own most famous line. The phrase remains in circulation nearly twenty years on.

You were there

More from 2007

The same internet

Early YouTube

More like this

Related

Grouped by explicit relationships where evidence exists, and by shared theme otherwise.

What we know

Where it came from

There is no original upload to identify: this Moment did not begin as one. ViralWorld holds no copy of it either — what it was, when it appeared and what people called it is the record.

Nothing here is claimed to be the first publication of this Moment, because the first publication was not an upload. This Moment was released commercially before the internet carried it. Originally published on commercial-release.

Not established. This index only names a creator where the evidence supports it.

What happens
A phrase classified under baking.
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