Portal developers utilized the phrase 'The cake is a lie' to motivate the player through its physics-based puzzles, a joke that originated from the team trying to figure out a reason for the protagonist to keep going.

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Portal developers utilized the phrase 'The cake is a lie' to motivate the player through its physics-based puzzles, a joke that originated from the team trying to figure out a reason for the protagonist to keep going. They settled on a baked good because it was absurd, completely unaware that early internet culture would latch onto that specific phrase and bludgeon it to death for nearly a decade. If you attended a gaming convention anytime between 2007 and 2012, you were mathematically guaranteed to hear someone scream this line until it lost all shred of comedic value. It is a grim reminder that whenever a writer creates a genuinely funny and subtle joke, the collective hive mind of fandom will inevitably ruin it through sheer, relentless repetition