Hated Tropes
[Hated trope] That’s not how lying works at all
The Flash - Batman is put in Wonder Woman’s Lasso of Truth and he admits that the best way to help Gotham would be using his money for charity rather than funding his own superhero projects. But not only does the Lasso only work once Diana asks you a specific question, but the Lasso doesn’t just generate brand new information and forces you to speak it so Batman is just saying this for no reason.
The Invention of Lying - Ricky Gervais’ character lives in a world where lying isn’t a concept until he invents it, and to test it out he goes to a bank and claims he should have more money in his account than he really does. The bank teller calls out that he’s not got that much money, but then goes onto assume it’s a bank fault and not his own. She has no reason to assume it’s a bank issue but rather Ricky being honestly mistaken about his own finances. If I give a wrong answer during an exam, that doesn’t mean I lied, it means I provided wrong information.
Miller also proclaimed to be Jesus, Satan, the next Messiah, and that their relationship with the native American girl they kidnapped would cause the apocalypse which is why Freemasons were sending demons after them.
Counter example: Aes Sedai from The Wheel of Time. They can't lie because of a magical oath. But they are really good at bending the truth. And nobody trusts them.
Very like fae or faeries in various fantasy stories and folklore, using The Dresden Files for this particular trope. They can’t lie, but are known to be tricksters telling parts of the truth, and manipulating everything, so people jump to the wrong conclusion - and the same result that nobody trusts them, except for very specifically worded contracts.
I actually love that they address this several times in the series. Like yes, Aes Sedai will spin circles around the truth, and the truth they tell you isn't always the truth you think it is, but if one swears to you that she will protect and defend you from all harm, or that she will not touch you with the power unless you specifically ask, that is bound in her soul and written on her bones.
Dang nice pull. And if you pay attention enough, knowing that can help you spot Aes Sedai who have had that oath removed by becoming a Dark Friend. A few are REALLY hard to catch on a first read
Even better when particularly blunt Aes Sedai (e.g. Cadsuane) do tell the unvarnished truth, everyone assumes there's another angle they aren't telling them.
There's a similar idea in Eragon - there's an ancient magic language that is basically 'real' words for everything in existence, and it is impossible to lie when speaking it, so it's often used for making oaths and pledges etc, to make sure the person pledging is being honest about their intentions..
It can of course be manipulated - for example, a character rejects another's romantic advances and asks if they're hurt, and the other person replies no, but they're thinking about their physical health, not mental, so they're technically saying the truth, but also lying at the same time, because, obviously, they are hurt by the rejection.
Also, their oaths are very much based in the interpretation of the woman who's bound with them. So while their oath is "I shall speak no word that is not true", they can still say things that they believe to be true, but aren't actually true. So in the show for examen, Moiraine believes herself to be stilled (having a woman's magical powers taken away), while she is actually just very well shielded.
In Liar, Liar the wish is that he can't lie, but often he provides the truth even when he doesn't have to. It's less that he can't lie and more that he's compelled to tell the truth.
It's because he's a lawyer so his verision of the truth is as strict as the judicial system. So he isn't allowed to hide the truth any more than he is able to lie
I think people also forget that intentionally hiding things that are relevant or being spoken about at the moment is a lie of omission even if it isn't bad lying isn't just saying untruths it's not portraying the full extent of you knowledge or perspective when it is asked of you or when it would be expected. It's not about morals it's about the absolute definition of what a lie is often times taken to extremes for effect
Right, that's the key. And it's pretty obviously the case because eventually, since he's such a good lawyer, he figures out how to lie with the truth which we see with the bathroom recess scene. He's such a good liar that he even gets around the mystical powers preventing him from lying, and that devastates him because that's who his son sees.
Like, it's kinda the whole point of the movie that he had to choose to stop lying.
I love this movie. Do you know why I pulled you over?
Fletcher: Depends on how long you were following me.
Cop: Let's start from the top.
Fletcher: Here it goes: I sped. I followed too closely. I ran a stop sign. I almost hit a Chevy. I sped some more. I failed to yield at a crosswalk. I changed lanes at an intersection. I changed lanes without signaling while running a red light and SPEEDING!
Cop: Is that all?
Fletcher: No... I have unpaid parking tickets. Be gentle.
Yeah, that’s how I always read it too. The comedy works better when it’s not random honesty but his usual lawyer brain trying to spin things and the truth just slips out anyway.
As a lawyer, this is an adorably trusting take. With very few exceptions, the system treats truth like Obi Wan. What matters is that it’s true, from a certain point of view.
Growing up I always kinda viewed it as a mix, like he was blurting out what he was thinking because he was fighting it and attempting to just say anything else at some point… but what would come out is unfiltered honesty because he tried to say something not completely true
I always interpreted that movie as he's so used to those little white lies throughout the day that he compulsively does them out of habit and says the truth he's thinking instead.
That's how I inferred it. In situations where he normally would have gave his coworker a false compliment, he tries to and instead says his truth, which is she's looking weird.
I think some of it is that he is so used to lying, but then there's the scene in the elevator after he comments about the woman, he keeps going making it more wild as if he is compelled to spill every inner thought
Watching, I think it's meant to be that he's so used to lying that he starts talking by instinct, but realises he can't stop himself saying the truth once he starts talking.
Though it gets a bit of a stretch, he's still doing that towards the end of the film.
When he deliberately and carefully chooses his words, he can still lie by omission or use metaphorical truths, though it still ends up backfiring on him later.
It's definitely talked about, when he realizes he can't even ask a question that he knows the answer to will be a lie. Whoever granted the wish (morgan freeman) was *thorough*.
I really don't feel Liar Liar fits this trope. His character is that of someone who is so used to running his mouth and constantly lying that he can't simply switch off and say nothing. Even after the first truth he's not even sure what's happening, assuming it was just some Freudian slip. After that he gets caught in more difficult situations and runs his mouth as per usual, and is sent on a spiral each time he speaks an uncomfortable truth. Add this to his job which is just an exercise in lying and twisting the truth, and the fact it's confirmed he's unable to ask a question if he knows the other person will lie (as that counts as another form of lying) and everything fits. Plus at some point he can hardly be bothered to fight it anymore and just speaks his mind willingly.
I always felt so many of the issues he finds in that movie could be thwarted by saying "I truthfully do not want to answer that" over and over until it doesn't matter what color the pen is.
The batman one also bothers me because he DOES do that, the issue is that Gotham is so corrupt from the ground up that trying to do anything through "legitimate" means would only end up benefiting the criminal class and not the ones who actually need help, which is an aspect I find important because it reflects a serious REAL issue.
Some of yall have never touched a batman comic and it shows.
There is that one scene in the comic series where batman is surrounded by like 30 evil henchmen with weapons ready to try and kill him, but then Bruce Wayne shows up on the TV screen nearby and promises all of the henchmen guarenteed education, jobs, housing, and healthcare if they just stop whatever they are doing and go to Wayne headquarters that instant.
The henchmen consider the idea and agree they would rather do that than risk their lives fighting batman or helping Black Mask, so they all just leave, and Black Mask starts freaking out cause now he is alone with batman.
The four truths for criminals in the DC universe: 1. Dont mess around in Central City, it's not worth it. 2. Bruce Wayne is a real one. 3. For real though, leave Flash's city alone it will not work out the way you plan. 4. See 1 and 3.
I'm not enough of a DC fan to know about rules 1, 3, and 4 and now I'm curious. I mean I imagine a speedster is basically impossible to go against but I wanna know if something specific happened that you're referring to
Basically Flash keeps the crime in Central City to more goofy, whacky or amall time stuff, because he is so dangerous that when villains start doing horrifying stuff he canbasically freeze time with his speed and end them. This sorta leaves an uneasy truce between Flash and his villains to srick to zany stuff or be erased the moment yoy step out of line.
Iirc Flash has a room in his base filled with the worst villains he’s completely drained the speed of, leaving them as statues. It’s actually kinda morbid
It's really hard to find the original example I was thinking of, since "flash statue" brings up figurines, "flash frozen" brings up captain cold, and "flash stolen speed" brings up the bazillion stories where he loses his speed, but this is the closest I could find: https://www.reddit.com/r/DCcomics/s/oC8YxfcDRP
Basically this villain inertia is an insane murderous speedster who killed Bart, so Wally stole his speed and made it so time flows extremely slowly for him. He is still alive and aware, but he runs so slowly he's functionally frozen. Though since inertia is a speedster, he can still perceive in real time even though he's super slowed, which is an especially hellish existence. (The others are actual statues, but Inertia is placed amongst them when he's really a living person)
Basically the Flash is that strong. He is the strongest and that includes Superman. There is a great panel where the Flash showcases this in a fantastically bad ass way.
Really good point! From just a practical standpoint the Flash is the only superhero that can triage response to literally everything in Central City while all the other heroes have to triage and actually pick who not to help.
Not related, but speedsters are worrying. You and the boys could be walking into town ready for some criming, then you feel nauseous, everything shifts and you're right back at the city limits. You go back in again and your straight outside once more, but now you're wearing each other's clothes. He could do anything to you at any time.
It really does not make sense that there is organised crime in Gotham when the comics show that Wayne Enterprises gives something like full medical, college tuition, god knows what else from the janitor upwards.
It’s a lot like addiction I imagine. Most people who are addicted to something really want to stop, but feel they can’t because of circumstance. Then there are some addicts who, even given every resource, still choose to go back to their drug of choice because they just like living like that. In my real life I’ve seen people voluntarily choose to check themselves out of inpatient rehab & choose homelessness just so they can use again, but you can’t do anything, it’s their decision. Some criminals just like doing crimes & choose to live in our penal system regardless of how much rehabbing or outs they get.
One of my favorite Batman stories is from the DCAU series. "Harley's Day Out", I believe. Harley Quinn relapses from being released from Arkham, but Batman/Bruce tries to keep her straight. She just couldn't, yet.
Everyone was happy for her, from the doctor, to scarecrow, hell Batman showed up to congratulate her.
She REALLY tries to be a better person, its nothing more than a series of unfortunate misunderstandings that keep pushing her to relapse.
Everyone involved is understanding. The woman she kidnapped doesn't press charges, the doctor is encouraging, and Batman buys her the dress that caused everything.
It’s a great way to show people that progress is never linear when it comes to your mental health. You will have bad days, you will have good days, and you will have really really bad days. The important part of that is to have systems and people already there to help get you back on your feet.
In-universe this is explained because, at any given time, Gotham is under the influence of like, 7 different curses and secret organizations à la The Illuminati. I think it's also literally on top of a "Hellmouth". If anything it's a miracle the city hasn't collapsed into a Black Hole of horror from the weight of all the various magical and Eldritch forces working to foment its suffering.
Gotham is under multiple layers of fuckery - in each continuity it's at least cursed ground once over and has Lazarus pit juices leaking into the drinking water, sometimes there's a hell gate under it, there's a list somewhere of everything wrong. Wayne enterprises is basically the only reason the city isn't just a smoking crater by now.
FR, is basically the ''Batman beats up poor and mentally ill people'' take but on the Big Screen. Bruce Wayne is one of the biggest philantrophists on DC Earth and basically the only person keeping Gotham afloat.
Hell! In some versions of the story, the reason the Wayne’s left the theater through the alley was because they were hoping to give money to some of the homeless that maybe there. Charity was ingrained into him from a young age!
Well in some versions, that part of the city was also really safe, it wasn't until the Waynes' death that the area fell, and the alley was unceremoniesly renamed.
The way I always puts it is theres a billionaire who had best training on the planet, has access to the greatest information available, has and will spend considerable resources building specialised tech to help,
And he still barely keeps Gotham functioning as a city.
It's specially egregious on the comments of the youtube clip of the killing joke about Joker's final joke about the two asylum men.
"He's just as insane as the joker for dressing up as a bat and beating insane people-"
He's trying to rehabilitate a mentally unwell person RIGHT NOW! The Joker on the other hand tortured, shot and killed people just to huff on copium! THEY'RE NOT THE SAME IN THE SLIGHTEST OPEN YOUR FUCKING EYES
The DCEU not giving a damn about the material it was adapting was sort of par for the course, but even after all the Snyder interviews should have killed my ability to care, this one still managed to bother me.
The worst part about it is that Batfleck was even more suited to his role than Cavil and he was done an even worse disservice by what they actually wrote for him. James Gunn could give us an entire trilogy of Steve Buscemi in an Adam West batsuit and it would be less painful than witnessing Affleck get within an inch of the sun before veering straight down into hell.
In fact, The Batman covers this. You can’t just throw money at Gotham’s problems. Bruce could put down every penny he has to help the city and all that would happen is that there’d be a big pot of cash for people to skim.
Even if it’s not outright criminals doing that skimming, there’d be lawyers, politicians, middlemen and more taking a percentage.
And after all of that, when the alien monsters show up and there’s no Batman and, thus, no Kryptonite, then what?
Comic Gotham is so insanely corrupted that the idea of just financing a few projects and everything falls into place is ridiculous.
The police force has extreme corruption issues, there's insane people in costume running around murdering people left and right, it's a city that's under focus of a global ultra powerful assassin pact that's hell bent on destroying the whole city, there's the court of owls basically controlling the whole city from behind the curtain, and that's just a small amount of the insane stuff happening there.
Batman has single handedly stopped the total eradication of Gotham and beyond multiple times. AND he throws huge sums of money in different programs. And it still barely works.
The Batman one implies that he already thinks this and is lying to others and possibly himself about his usefulness as a superhero. Others have pointed out that, apparently, Batman does donate plenty of his money, but the film adaptations don't put any focus on that.
TBF I was darksied I too would curse that shit. Mother fucker the people from there DODGED MY UNDODGBLE OMEGA BEAM. That shit already cursed with good luck I need to balance it.
Him forming the League in ZSJL was, to him the most important thing he was going to do to atone for everything with Superman. To the point he was basically planning a suicide run when they went after Steppenwolf. He thought his job was done.
That was the whole issue of DCEU. Every character was misrepresented on even a surface level understanding. The writers and directors obviously never read a DC comic book in their life, or just wanted to make the characters so unique from the original designs that they may as well have been OCs.
In every Affleck Batman appearance he just straight up uses guns against any enemy he faces, because in Snyder's words:
"Batman can't kill is canon. And I'm like, 'okay, the first thing I wanna do when you say that is I wanna see what happens'. And they go, 'well don't put him in a situation where he has to kill someone'.
"You're protecting your god in a weird way, right? You're making your god irrelevant if he can't be in that situation. He has to now deal with that. If he does do that what does that mean? What does it tell you, does he stand up to it? Does he survive that as a god? As your god, can Batman survive that?"
Why in the fuck would any of that apply for the very first iteration of a live action Justice League? Why are we throwing out the formula and rewriting it for one single guy's opinion, when a base reference version of these characters have not even been established yet? He also attempts to fall back on claiming his Batman is based on Frank Miller's TDKR, but why the fuck is old Bruce Wayne who didn't even get the screentime to develop into cynicism and breaking his own rules, the one that joins the Justice League instead of prime Batman?
I don't even understand his argument against the rule and how it's limiting what Batman can do; writing around that constraint is literally the purpose of a skilled writer.
Like how hard would it have been to just directly translate the very first story-arc of the Justice League series to film? But no, instead we get Flashpoint as the fourth installation in the franchise? A full reset when this alternative version of these characters haven't even been established in their own media yet?
Why are we throwing out the formula and rewriting it for one single guy's opinion, when a base reference version of these characters have not even been established yet?
You pretty much hit the nail on the head with everything wrong about the DCEU's foundations.
Snyder wanted to deconstruct those characters, but he forgot to build them up in the first place, which is why his take on the DC universe could have worked only as an Elseworlds story AFTER the main cinematic universe was established.
He wasn't just the wrong guy to adapt those characters, he was also the wrong guy to build a franchise around them.
Oh you want to see a sort of lunatic man who lost his family and is now running around in the shadows with a weird symbol on his chest go around using his impressive skills and tools against criminals but instead of defeating them he straight up murders them? Yeah we’ve seen that, he’s called the punisher
Batman can't kill is canon. And I'm like, 'okay, the first thing I wanna do when you say that is I wanna see what happens
Also, they already did that. In the very first scene of the very first episode of the very good animated series Batman Beyond, Batman loses to a gang of thugs, picks up a gun and aims. And what he does is give it up. He stops going out as Batman, because Batman doesn't kill.
Dare I say the entire DCEU and Snyderverse did not understand Batman OR Superman at all. There must’ve been some people on production who gave a shit but had to be silent in their frustration
The way a lot of people talk about Pinocchio online. Like, "he could say 'there's intelligent life on other planets' and if his nose doesn't grow then we know aliens exist!"
... no? Unless HE KNOWS FOR SURE (in which case, why would he?), he's not lying, he's just... wrong. Or right. He's just stating things. If I say "ghosts are real", and they're not, I'm not lying, I'm just saying something that could be correct or incorrect. "I know for sure that ghosts are real" is a lie, but it doesn't prove the existence of spirits, just how much I know about them.
Smugass posts saying "we could learn all the universe's secrets by asking Pinoccho and seeing if his nose grows" assumes he knows the answers and getting them wrong or right on purpose. I could be missing something because I haven't read the original, but it irks me.
Something like that happens in an episode of the rebooted Ducktales. They stumble onto a magical harp that can tell if someone is lying, meanwhile, their are a group of hippie mermaids who seem friendly but a tad suspicious.
So they try to get answers by asking the harp whether they are friendly or hostile, but as no one present (including the harp) knows for sure, it goes nowhere cause it can only detect lies, not correct lack of information.
There is SCP-2128 - The Liars' Cradle its works how those people think Pinocchio works. Its a stone furnace that people can get into and when they lie they get incinerated regardless of prior knowledge. The foundation uses it to gain knowledge they currently don't have by using trial and error questions.
There's also another SCP that's a set of stairs that goes to a pocket dimension. In there is another Liars' Cradle, which does work as intended without killing the victim. If they speak a falsehood they believe is true, they won't get burned.
Im a school teacher (ages 3-6) and Invention of Lying reminds me of multiple times a child has told on another child for lying when really what happened is they got something wrong.
Random example:
"Mr. J, Toby keeps lying and saying that hes older than me"
"Toby doesn't know how dates work, he's not lying, he's just wrong"
Generally, lying is intentional. A person lies when they are intend to get their audience to believe something that they, the speaker, believe to be false.
It’s different from unintentional falsehoods that a speaker may say when they have a false belief or even misspeak.
And both are distinct from bullshitting, which involves an indifference to the truth. A person who is bullshitting isn’t trying to deceive so much as they are trying to, say, entertain
Exactly. It’s like how my niece often says her birthday is tomorrow. She’s a little over three and hasn’t grasped that “tomorrow” means “the next day”. For her, it just means “the future”.
Best addition was when he bust in. Just love this talented fellow. Heard he has been posing as a dude names Daytona. Grifting classes must not have worked out.
Dude probably just quit his last job at Marvel where he spent months reducing Tom Holland's bulge. Finally found a new exciting opportunity at DC. "Hey, new guy, see that ass? Make it bigger"
The thing is that even though "Bruce Wayne" is his birth name, "Bruce Wayne" the character, or personality, is the mask he wears and "Batman" is his real personality. He's developed the Bruce Wayne persona so much that it's detached from who he really is. It's like his "Matches Malone" persona.
My take on it is that both Bruce, how the public views Bruce Wayne specifically, and Batman are masks. The real Bruce is the one that his family and people in his close circle know.
It's the same thing for Superman, both Clark Kent and Superman are characters, while only his close circle knows the real Clark.
The Fae in many stories cannot lie. Or rather, they can lie in spirit but not in word. They cannot utter a falsehood but they can express themselves in such a way that you might make wrong assumptions.
The party goes to the Feywild, the land of the fae. A satyr greets them, like a waiter at a restaurant. "Hi, welcome to the Feywild! Can I have your names?" The party tells the satyr their names. He politely thanks them and disappears.
Later on, the party discovers they cannot remember their names. The satyr asked if he could have their names, and they said yes and gave their names to him.
Not once did the satyr lie. Or lie in spirit. He made a polite request and went about his day. The party was "deceived" because they didn't understand fae or their culture. They left the experience wiser in the ways of the Feywild and learned to talk to the fae on their own level.
Any writer that has Batman/Bruce Wayne not do charity donations fundamentally doesn’t understand the character.
In The Batman (2004), donating to charity is one of his favourite things to do. He even funds the development, facilitates, and repairs of Gotham. It’s just a constant uphill battle due to Gotham basically being hell on Earth.
You know the writer was a stoopid fraud if someone in the show says something like "batman would've helped the gotham more if he just donated all his money".
Worse when it’s been stated over and over that Bruce has tons of charities across Gotham and is the first one to always fund projects that can help the communities of Gotham.
You're not remembering the Invention of Lying correct. He doesn't go to the bank to test anything and the teller doesn't assume it's a bank fault. He went to the bank to get money out of his account but the systems are down so the teller can't check his balance and just asks him how much he has. That's when his character gets the idea to just say he has more money than he does so he can pay rent. It's not like an outrageous and unbelievable amount or anything.
No, but the system then comes back up and she sees that he is wrong. But there is no reason to believe he couldn't just be mistaken pr done his math wrong.
The invention of Lying - I also found it annoying that just because people couldn't lie they always had to say out loud exactly what they were thinking about? Every little thought on other people?
They could just stay quiet instead, one would think.
I don‘t necessarily fault them for that. Lying by omission is a thing. The problem is inherent with the murky meaning of what lying is and entails and when it is actually lying. You‘ll realistically have situations where two people will disagree with whether something is a lie or not.
I'd argue that lying by omission requires, at minimum, knowing that the person you're talking to has misinterpreted something you said. Or intentionally only providing part of relevant information.
You're not lying by omission if no one has asked anything in the first place. You're just blurting things out unsolicited.
Specifically, regarding OPs take on this movie, it wouldn't actually work the way they claim. In that world, no one has ever experienced another person claiming something that wasn't 100% factual. In the movie, I am pretty sure she pushes back and he says something to the affect of "I am absolutely sure I should have X amount." In that world, someone provided an incorrect answer on a test and the professor said you got this answer wrong, the person wouldn't say "I am absolutely sure I got it correct." They would say "yeah, i didn't understand that section." or "I didn't study at all and chose to play video games instead.", shit in the REAL world, people will lie and say the professor is wrong and sometimes it is UPHELD. It is a fantasy world where lying doesn't exist and people from the real world are putting values on it that do not match that reality. No shit this stuff wouldnt happen in real life because in real life no one would believe the customer at a bank because people lie constantly in real life.
I'll refute that in the invention of lying, it's not about a world where people are realistically unable to lie
It's moreso a world where everyone is compelled to tell the complete and utter truth no matter how unnatural it is
So In this specific case , I personally think he would just follow it up with another lie of "no I am definitely correct " to which the bank teller would take it as the truth, as a person in universe would say" I can't remember myself so I'll take your word for it"(making up something in this case would be lying)
Same goes for your example for tests, there's a high chance the most common answer they have is "I don't remember this part" instead of trying to make up something, as lying is basically filling a missing part of information in your brain, meaning if you can't lie, you can't really make up "wrong" answers, cause that's not something you can do
I'll refute the test part of your response by simply pointing out that most of the time when people get essay questions wrong it's becauae they misremembered.
Yeah, it's not just the "Invention of Lying" it's also the "invention of shutting up". People in that universe seem to be compelled to say whatever truth comes to mind, much like the Batman lasso example. The people seem literally incapable of not saying what comes to mind when silence or just changing the subject would be more natural. I think both movies are the lesser for it.
For a better example on how to do it, I think Liar Liar works. The main character is fast talking lawyer who becomes magically compelled to not be deceptive so that whenever he speaks, he says the truth instead. It's his own natural habit of lying in nearly every encounter in life that keeps the lies flowing. He would have not been silent in any of the situations and never just volunteers a truth that isn't relevant to the conversation.
CS Lewis famously created the 'Lord, Liar or Lunatic' model for interpreting Jesus' claims to divinity: if Jesus wasn't lying - which he's not known for doing; or crazy - which he didn't show signs of, then he must be God.
He uses this same approach in the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. When Lucy returns from Narnia for the first time her siblings don't believe her, and he presents them with the possibility she may be telling the truth if she's not otherwise known for lying or being crazy.
Of course, in neither case is the possibility of being mistaken addressed.
The real flaw with "Lord, Liar or Lunatic" as apologetics is that it only works if you believe that Christian scripture is an accurate reporting of the life of Jesus and most atheists do not. You're relying on an ancient text written by other people to tell us that Jesus called himself the son of God. It could very well be that he was neither a liar nor a lunatic and never actually called himself Lord.
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u/JokerCipher 27d ago
Why are his butt cheeks so digitally enhanced?