Metaphorically True / Live-Action TV

• Discussed on The Amazing Race 19 by Marcus when talking about keeping that he had been a professional football player a secret. Technically, as a tight end, it was his job to protect the quarterback, so it was not lying to say he was in "protection", and as he was retired at that point if asked if he was a football player, it was technically correct if he said no.
• Aquila has a scene where an archaeologist explains, referencing the ancient African proverb about truth being an elephant surrounded by three blind men, that he simply gave the boys a point of view not involving copious amounts of money.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender (2024): In the third episode, a young woman tells the Fire Nation resistance that the war has cost her her mother and brother. The bit about her brother being dead is an outright lie, but technically speaking it has cost her them; her mother is missing under mysterious circumstances, and her brother was exiled for criticizing Fire Nation military tactics. The young woman in question is Azula.
• Babylon 5:
  • The Minbari claim that they never lie, and a mere accusation of doing so warrants "a lethal response". While the humans initially take this at face value, Mollari, having been told otherwise by Lennier, explains that the Minbari are allowed to tell white lies to save someone else from embarrassment or dishonor. Even other Minbari are irritated at the Grey Council following this trope. Kalin says at one point that the Grey Council "never tells you the whole truth."
  • A good example of Minbari half-truths comes with Delenn early in Season 3. She is shown footage of a Shadow vessel and is asked if she had ever seen a ship like it before. Delenn says no. When she is later questioned about this by she replies that whilst she was well aware of what the ship was, that was the first time she had actually seen one.
  • Similarly, she and Kosh claim to Sheridan that the Shadows killed his wife and her fellow crewmates, and even showed him a video to that effect. Later, when she shows up, Delenn claims that she wasn't lying because she assumed that's what they would have done. When Sheridan presses her on why she didn't tell him she didn't actually know for sure, she admits that he would've tried to stage a rescue and she couldn't allow that to happen. And then it is revealed that while her body is alive, his wife was forced into being a Wetware CPU for a Shadow vessel. Because of this, the woman she was, the woman John loved, is gone forever. Note that Delenn did not, in fact, know that last bit.
• The Blacklist: Liz and the team are told by others (and suspect themselves) that Raymond Reddington is Liz’s biological father. And that is true. It’s just that James Spader’s character isn’t Raymond Reddington; the real Reddington actually did die in that house fire and the one we’ve been following is an imposter.
• In Blake's 7, the crew gets captured by an enemy that can keep them from lying, so they resort to evasions to prevent them from finding out that Orac is a computer.
  Tarrant: If he's not on the ship, I don't know where he is.
  Caliph: How tall is he?
  Tarrant: (gestures to waist level, Orac's "height" when on a table)
  Caliph: A dwarf?
  Tarrant: We never think of him as one.
  Caliph: What is the color of his hair?
  Tarrant: He hasn't got any. A bald dwarf shouldn't be too hard to find.
• The Daily Show: Jon Stewart lampshaded this in his criticism of RNC Chairman Michael Steele.
  Fox Reporter: (archive footage) How much did you have when you took the reins?
  Michael Steele: (archive footage) About $20 or so million.
  Fox Reporter: (archive footage) And now you're down to three? So I realize you spent a lot of money for the campaign...
  Michael Steele: (archive footage) Yeah, we spent a lot of money, but I mean, Greta, you can't look at it in terms of what you begin and what you end.
  Jon Stewart: (amused) "...you can't look at it in terms of where you begin and where—" That is some Jedi bullshit right there, Michael Steele. "Yes, Greta; if you want to look at the budget in a linear, arithmetic way where we started with a high number and ended with a very low number, but what you're forgetting is children's dreams and rainbows, you can't put a price on that — is that a quarter behind your ear? Wait, a dove, SMOKE BOMB, Steele out."
• Daredevil (2015):
  • Usually, when Matt Murdock has to lie to cover up an injury that he sustained as Daredevil, he'll typically lie by omission. For instance, in the third episode of season 1, he shows up at the office sporting a visible bruise over his right eye from his fight with the Russians the night before, prompting obvious remarks of concern from Foggy and Karen, but he brushes off the injury saying "I just, uh, wasn’t paying attention last night. It’s my fault," which is technically the truth (the Russians had lured him into a trap) but just enough of a lie that Karen and Foggy are led to think Matt walked into a door.
  • Wilson Fisk kills Anatoly in brutal fashion for interrupting his date with Vanessa. Days later, when he meets up with Madame Gao, Nobu, and Leland Owlsley, they demand an explanation for why he killed Anatoly. Fisk contemplates for a few seconds as he tries to come up with an explanation that allows him to save face and then says, "It was a...a personal matter..." without much more detail.
• Doctor Who:
  • A straight in-story example in the old series. The Black Guardian tells Turlough that the Doctor is evil and must be stopped. When called out on it he claims he was not actually lying because "the Doctor's good is my evil".
  • Russell T Davies was accused of this during his time in charge of the show, particularly with respect to foreshadowing the season finales:
    • Series 2 continually said that Rose was going to die, and Rose (narrating) introduces the final two-parter as "the story of how I died". She doesn't die. She is taken to a parallel world and is presumed dead by the authorities.
    • In Series 4 finale, we are repeatedly told "One will still die." Nobody dies. Donna suffers a metaphorical death, erasing all of her Character Development and her relevance to the show.
  • "The Pandorica Opens": The Pandorica is a prison that was thought to be mythical, containing some terrible monster. The Doctor described it thus: "There was a goblin or a... trickster. Or a warrior. A nameless, terrible thing, soaked in the blood of a billion galaxies. The most feared being in all the cosmos. And nothing could stop it, or hold it, or... reason with it. One day it would just drop out of the sky and tear down your world." It opens, and it's empty. It turns out that the Doctor IS the monster. The description of it is how the Doctor is viewed by his enemies. To a Dalek, that's an accurate description of him.
  • A Meta-Example with show-runner Steven Moffat. In the lead up to Series 8, Moffat said there were no plans to bring back the Master. And that was because the Master had switched genders and was now going by the Mistress, or "Missy" for short. In fact, Moffat, being a Trolling Creator, loves to do this with his audience.
• In Farscape, Crichton hits on this trope as a way of fooling the Scarran heat probe, which forces people to tell the truth. For example, while disguised as a Peacekeeper defector, he tries to get access to his captive Sebacean girlfriend by propositioning a Sebacean nurse, and he gets caught by a Scarran:
  Scarran: Why the deception?
  Crichton: Cos — horny! Looking for a Sebacean woman.
  Nurse: You attacked me and attempted to release one of the patients.
  Crichton: No offense, but she's sexier than you are.
  Scarran: What would you have done had you gotten here?
  Crichton: Taken her back to my ship. Frelled her. Made babies.
• Firefly: In the pilot, Simon asks Mal what Jayne's job is. Mal answers, "Public relations." Jayne's usual method of relating to the public involves a very large gun named Vera. Then again, the majority of the public they relate with are thieves, scoundrels, and murderers...
• The Flash (2014): Season 1, Episode 3 has Iris ask how Barry doesn't gain weight, despite his Big Eater tendencies (necessary to keep him from passing out due to his Super-Speed enhancing his metabolism). As she doesn't know he's the Flash at this point, he merely replies that he's been jogging.
• Forever: Henry sometimes uses Exact Words and Sarcastic Confession but, especially with Jo as time goes on, he generally tries to stick to answers that are at least true in essence, even if he has to hedge details and facts.
  • An especially well-executed example is in a deleted scene from "The Night In Question" where Henry describes his wife of forty years to Jo:
  Henry: You asked me before what Abraham's mother meant to me... Though I knew her many years ago, when I was quite a bit younger, she was quite simply the most wonderful woman I've ever known. I don't often talk about my life, but suffice to say that before her, I was a lost soul. And as you know, I have certain...eccentricities...I suppose I've always had them.
  Jo: I can only imagine, a young Henry Morgan, with a little scarf.
  Henry: Yes, well, I wasn't much different than the man you see before you, but Abraham's mother loved me, despite all my oddities, when I needed it most. And although we didn't have much time together, when she was gone it left a hole.
• A Friends episode had Phoebe play for sympathy by saying her mother was killed by a drug dealer:
  Monica: I thought she killed herself?
  Phoebe: And she was a drug dealer.
• Game of Thrones:
  • Viserys Targaryen spends most of the first season complaining about how Khal Drogo promised to make him king of the Seven Kingdoms again. After Viserys finally confronts Drogo in a violent way, Drogo assures him that he will give him "a golden crown that men will tremble to behold." Then Drogo dumps a pot of molten gold over his head, which kills him horribly.
  • Again in Season 1 Ned Stark before parting ways with Jon Snow says that serving the Night's Watch has been for centuries a noble cause for the Starks, pointing out to Jon that "You may not have my name, but you have my blood", which makes sense since Jon is his illegitimate son. But makes even more sense since Jon has indeed Stark's blood...on his mother's side.
  • Used rather cruelly in the season finale. After Ned Stark is arrested attempting to overthrow King Joffrey, his daughter Sansa, Joffrey's fiancee, pleads with the king to spare his life. Joffrey agrees to "show mercy" if Ned confesses to treason. Ned publicly confesses, and Joffrey has him beheaded. In response to Sansa calling him out on this, Joffrey says he did show mercy... by giving Ned a clean death instead of having him drawn and quartered.
  • A real-life case with everyone's statements about whether Jon Snow was really killed at the end of Season 5. Several cast and crew members stated that Jon really was killed, but left out that this didn't mean he was permanently dead. They also tried to play off Kit Harrington and Carice van Houten being spotted together when Season 6 started filming by saying they just happened to be working on separate projects in the same area...in addition to the scene where Mellisandre resurrects Jon. Finally, Kit Harrington just went rogue and spilled that Jon would be coming back.
• Deconstructed in The Wedding Bride, a fake movie from How I Met Your Mother about Stella's failed relationship with Ted from her ex-boyfriend's perspective, making him the good guy getting The Woobie Stella out of a loveless marriage when in reality, it was nothing like that. We see the real reaction of the said guy who was left at the altar, Ted.
  • The Season 9 DVD set for the show claims the finale as one of the most talked-about in TV history. While true, it does leave out that the discussion was caused by the significant Broken Base that said finale brought about.
• Hawkeye (2021): While being held captive by the Tracksuit Mafia, Clint claims that Ronin is dead and that Black Widow killed him. When asked how he knows this, he says that he was also there. Of course, Clint actually is Ronin, and is referring to the scene in Avengers: Endgame where Natasha convinced him to abandon his Vigilante Man rampage.
• JAG: In "Dungaree Justice", the article 32 hearing of Mac’s dubious actions in "People v. Mac" takes place and it is discussed to what extent she had lied in the earlier episode.
  Lt. Commander Alan Mattoni: Major Sarah Mackenzie, having taken a lawful oath in a trial by court-martial that she would testify truly, did willfully, corruptly and contrary to such oath, testify falsely regarding the killing of her husband, Christopher Ragle.
  Lt. Commander Harmon Rabb: Sir, Major Mackenzie did testify that she shot and killed her husband. There was no lie there.
  Lt. Commander Alan Mattoni: But she omitted certain details, including the fact that Lieutenant Colonel Farrow was present at the time.
  Lt. Commander Harmon Rabb: She took the blame, sir, to protect an innocent man.
  Lt. Commander Alan Mattoni: A lie of omission, no matter how noble the intention, is still a lie.
  Lt. Commander Harmon Rabb: Yes. But for it to be perjury, it must be material to the case. Murder charges against Major Mackenzie and Lieutenant Colonel Farrow were subsequently dismissed. Therefore, I submit: the detail of Colonel Farrow's presence was not material, and the omission of said detail should not be considered perjury.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Much of the background Halbrand “revealed” to Galadriel is accurate in a very broad, vague sense, but deeply deceptive in truth, though coached in a way that likely reflects his Self-Serving Memory; he is, in a way, a "king" of the Southlands appointed by Morgoth, and has indeed done horrible, horrible things that Galadriel and other people would cast him out for it... he’s just leaving out how direct his relationship to Morgoth was and the actual scale and personal nature of his offenses.
  Halbrand/Sauron: I told you I found this on a dead man.
  Galadriel in shock: No... No, on the raft, you saved me.
  Halbrand/Sauron: On the raft, you saved me.
  Galadriel: You convinced Miriel to save the man of Middle-earth.
  Halbrand/Sauron: You convinced her. I wanted to remain in Numenor.
  Galadriel: You fought beside me.
  Halbrand/Sauron: Against you enemy. And mine.
• Lost:
  • In one of the most well-known twists, John Locke, at the conclusion of his first flashback episode, is revealed to have been a disabled man who used a wheelchair prior to crashing on the island and miraculously regaining his ability to walk:
    Tour Guide: You misrepresented yourself.
    Locke: I never lied.
    Tour Guide: By omission, Mr. Locke. You neglected to tell us about your condition.
  • Another example is the cover story told by the survivors who escape the island. They claim that Boone died of internal injuries from the plane crash, Charlie drowned, and Libby did not survive long either, all of which are technically true, but leave out massively important context details: Boone died because he was inside a smaller plane when it fell from some trees while he was trying to use its radio, Charlie drowned saving Desmond by sealing the door, preventing the Looking Glass station being flooded, and Libby did not survive for long... as a result of injuries from an accidental gunshot wound from Michael (who had just killed Ana Lucia in cold blood).
  • When Jin and Sun learn Ana Lucia and Libby are dead, they ask Michael, the killer, how they died. He tells them, "They were murdered."
  • Benjamin Linus is distrusted by every character on the show for his pathological penchant for this trope. "John Locke is dead" is somewhat different than "John Locke is dead because I killed him." Similarly, when Jack asks him, "Did you know Locke killed himself?", Ben can honestly answer, "No." Though sometimes Ben just straight out lies.
  • Sayid was a Communications Officer in the Iraqi military. He encouraged people to communicate.
• Adam and Jimmie of The Man Show got dozens of women to sign a petition to end Women's Suffrage (the right to vote) by phrasing it to sound like they meant "suffering". Things like, "Women have been suffraging in this country for decades, and nobody's done anything to stop it!"
• Masters of Horror: In the episode "Family": When the Fullers confront Harold about his murder of their daughter, he recalls that they told him she died of cancer. Their reply: "You ARE cancer."
• Million Yen Women: The main household consists of Shin and five women who have been invited to live with him by an unknown person. One night, Minami, one of the women, decides to take Shin to her workplace. Once there, one of Minami's employees asks her who Shin is, prompting her to answer that Shin is her husband and that she lives with him, four girls and a cat. Aside from the fact that the household adopted a cat in the first episode of the series, it is true that all four of the other women are technically younger (26-17) than both Shin (31) and Minami (30), making them the "parents" of the household.
• On Misfits, a show about a bunch of "problem teens" on community service (who develop superpowers), the inevitable conversation soon arises — "what did you do to end up here?" While most of them admit to plausible-sounding crimes (drunk-driving, arson, drug possession etc.) Nathan constantly insists — to the point where it becomes a Running Gag — that all he did was steal some "pickin' mix". As we later find out, the incident actually did start with him stealing some sweets. He neglected to mention, however, that he subsequently ran riot in the bowling alley, trying to hurl himself down the back of one of the bowling lanes and causing a fair bit of criminal damage. When he was finally restrained he refused to pay for the damages (or co-operate in the slightest), persistently mocked the security guard, and eventually attacked the guy with a stapler. However, it's entirely possible that Nathan really doesn't think he did anything wrong beyond eating the pick'n'mix.
• Very well done in Nikita, where Alex is hooked up to a brainwave-reading lie detector that can't be fooled. She gets around it by stringing together several statements that are each individually true, but together paint a very different picture than what actually happened, and gets herself free from suspicion.
• Once Upon a Time:
  • When Granny tells her granddaughter Red that her red cloak keeps the Big Bad Wolf away/protects Red from the Wolf, she was speaking the truth. After all, the cloak is enchanted to prevent Red from turning into the Big Bad Wolf.
  • Mr. Gold told Regina that "something tragic" would happen to Kathryn. When Kathryn shows up alive and Regina asks Mr. Gold why she isn't dead, he reminds her of what he said and points out that her abduction was tragic.
  • Rumplestiltskin telling Regina that magic cannot revive her lost love. It's "technically" true, considering that both magic AND science are needed to revive the dead, even if they Came Back Wrong.
  • Merlin told Emma that the first Dark One killed the woman he loved. What he didn't tell her was that she killed the good inside her to BECOME the first Dark One.
• Our Flag Means Death: Ed privately tells Stede that he's never really killed anyone as a pirate. When he ends up confessing that he murdered his abusive father, he insists he wasn't fully lying as he never killed anyone since, and certainly not any innocent person. Then Calico Jack exposes that as a lie too, as Ed once set a ship he raided on fire, leading to the deaths of many of it's innocent passengers. An ashamed Ed then insists again to Stede that he wasn't lying because he didn't actively or deliberately murder any of them, they just died in the fire he started.
• Inspired by a real-life hoax originating in the 80s, on Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, the duo use this trope to get environmental activists to sign a petition to ban water. They sent someone to a gathering of them to get names for a petition to abolish the use of "dihydrogen monoxide" — which means water. They went around saying all kinds of technically true things about water (things like "its a chemical solvent", which is true, and "over six thousand people are killed by this stuff in the US every year", which is also true) while making it sound like a toxin. They got lots of names. The point of the exercise was to demonstrate how many people would sign a petition without bothering to check any of the facts first.
• Stargate SG-1: In the episode "Threads", pretty much everything "Jim" says to Daniel before his true identity as Anubis is revealed. He never actually lies, but words the truth in an incredibly misleading way to get to Daniel to trust him.
  Daniel: Why are you talking to me?
  "Jim": Oh, you mean because these other snobs won't even look at you? I'm different, like Oma.
  Daniel: Really? 'Cause I kinda got the impression that you two don't quite see eye-to-eye.
  "Jim": What, that little...? [laughs] Oh, that was nothing. We both operate somewhat outside the normal rules and regulations. Sometimes we disagree on how far outside we should go, that's all.
• Star Trek:
  • The Ferengi have this trope as a point in their "Rules of Acquisition".
    126. A lie isn't a lie, it's just the truth seen from a different point of view.
  • A possible interpretation of the end of "The Most Toys" where Data apparently outright lies to Riker about whether or not he attempted to shoot Kivas Fajo: when Riker asks him about the transporter picking up a weapon's discharge (Data was beamed away just as he was about to shoot Fajo), Data replies "Perhaps something happened during transport". Something did happen, namely Data pulling the trigger. Riker's expression indicates he's not entirely buying this, however.
  • In a Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode, Garak was dying because an Obsidian Order anti-torture device in his brain was breaking down, and as Bashir struggled to remove or replace it, Garak gave several wildly varying accounts of the event that had gotten him kicked out of the Order and left on Deep Space Nine. At the end of the episode, Bashir demanded to know which version was true.
    Garak: My dear doctor, they were all true.
    Bashir: Even the lies?
    Garak: Especially the lies.
  • As it turns out in the relaunch novel A Stitch in Time, they actually were almost all true. Kinda. The book is written by Andrew J. Robinson, the actor who played Garak, and thus from a certain point of view it's Garak's autobiography.
  • Vulcans are always honest, except when they're deceiving, misleading, or flat out lying.
    • In the original series episode "The Enterprise Incident", Spock explains to the Romulan Commander that the Vulcan reputation for being truthful is overblown. They'll lie just like anyone else if they have a [logical] reason to.
    • In one early episode of Star Trek: Voyager, Tuvok tells Chakotay that he is always honest, to which Chakotay points out that he wasn't being honest when he pretended to be a Maquis in order to infiltrate Chakotay's ship. Tuvok then counters that he was being honest to his principles and within the defined parameters of his mission. Chakotay recognizes this as a load of crap.
    • In another episode, he flat out lies to intimidate a prisoner. Janeway bluffs that she is gonna send the prisoner off to some people she's scammed (the prisoner, not Janeway). She asks Tuvok to tell her about the conditions of that world's prisons, and Tuvok wildly invents a tale of deplorable conditions where most prisoners don't survive long enough to be put on trial. The prisoner knows just enough about Vulcans to believe the story that they never lie, so she caves in.
    • The trick is that in both these cases, Tuvok had a perfectly logical reason to lie. We might reasonably assume that most Vulcans would not lie, for example, to spare a friend's feelings (from the Vulcan perspective, allowing emotions to influence a decision is illogical), or get out of a tedious duty (the duty needs to be done, so procrastination would be illogical), and other species would remember those instances of honesty as unusual, even extreme. Vulcans (clearly) have the capacity to lie if the situation warrants it, they just won't do it unless there's a logical reason why it's necessary; since most lies that a human would tell wouldn't be necessary from a Vulcan point of view, it gives the (not quite correct) impression that Vulcans don't or can't lie.
• A lot of the lies and half-truths that Scott and Stiles of Teen Wolf have been using to hide the werewolves would fall into this category. Stiles even gets caught in an Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap! moment by his father when the alibis start blending together.
  Sheriff Stilinski: So you lied to me?
  Stiles: That depends on how you define lying.
  Sheriff Stilinski: Well, I define it as not telling the truth, how do you define it?
  Stiles: Pff... reclining your body in a horizontal position.
• In the British documentary, X-Rated Ambition: The Traci Lords Story, the narration mentions Lords' 1984 Penthouse issue was the magazine's biggest seller ever. It neglects to mention why: It was the infamous Vanessa Williams issue.^note Prior to winning the Miss America crown, Williams had done some nude modeling, including a non-explicit set with another woman. Penthouse ran the photos after Williams' win, causing the pageant to strip her of the title. She got over it, and, in a lucky break for Williams, since Lords was under-aged at the time of the pictorial, copies of said can not be legally owned or traded.
• Wallenberg: A Hero's Story: Wallenberg claims to be half-Jewish as opposed to one-sixteenth Jewish.
  Wallenberg: All right, I'm one-sixteenth. Call me a liar for a fraction.
• The War of the Worlds (2019): This is rejected by the priest who resists the idea that faith in God and Country didn't defeat the Martians, but "decay and rot". When this is pitched as humanity building up a resistance to disease through the sacrifice of generations, he just dismisses this as spouting Darwinism.

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