Metaphorically True / Real Life

• The parable about the blind men and the elephant, where each man touches a different part of the elephant and declares that he knows its true form, explores the multifaceted nature of truth: one's subjective experience can be unassailably true, yet fail to account for the full picture (and thus, in the spirit of this trope, is only true in an esoteric sense).
• During the Battle of Copenhagen, in order to ignore a recall signal from his senior officer (which he knew was a tactical error but the officer did not), Lord Admiral Horatio Nelson held a spyglass to his near-blind eye, and reported, "I really do not see the signal." This is suspected to be where the saying "To turn a blind eye" comes from.
• It is true that Fanta was invented in Nazi Germany. However, it is not true that Fanta was invented by Nazi Germany, as in following some order or plan envisioned by the Nazi government, as it is often reported.
• "I did not have sexual relations with that woman." — Bill Clinton^note Clinton received oral sex from White House intern Monica Lewinsky which, while largely considered inappropriate, did not constitute "sexual relations" as the term was defined. (See Technical Virgin)
• "The government does not torture people" — George W. Bush ^note The Bush Administration coined the term "enhanced interrogation techniques" as a euphemism for the treatment of its prisoners. It's arguable whether this was even metaphorically true, since it was a mostly semantic distinction, but in any case, the Human Rights Convention updated its definition of torture to resolve any ambiguity. (See Enhanced Interrogation Techniques)
• A large number of proposition bets used by grifters can be solved by looking very carefully at the wording. For example, "I bet you that I can take a brand new deck of cards, make the ace jump out of the pack and fly across the room, then write your name on your forehead." If you hear this said aloud, most people assume that the ace will do all of the actions listed. Looking more carefully at the syntax of the sentence reveals that the actions can be done by the person making the bet rather than by the ace. (Incidentally, the usual way to win the bet is to flick the ace up from the bottom of the pack — where it usually is in most new, unshuffled decks — catch it, throw it across the room, and then take a pen to write the person's name on their forehead.)
• Politics as a whole can rest on this; for example, take this example of a British MP claiming that his party had not broken an election promise, as the law would not take effect until after the next election (but was voted on comfortably three years into Parliament).
• There's a free picture that comes on some iPod Touches that says "I didn't slap you, I high-fived your face." Technically true, since in a high-five only one hand needs to be involved.
• A billboard for Rebecca Black touted that her Friday video had over 100 million views on YouTube, trying to make it look like she was popular. While the part about the views is true, most of the people who watched it clicked the dislike button. In fact, this is a truism for any kind of measure based solely on views, including Nielsen ratings and box-office receipts. Just because people watch something doesn't mean they like it.
• A senior producer at EA-Maxis commented on the rocky launch of SimCity (2013), stating "What we saw was that players were having such a good time they didn't want to leave the game, which kept our servers packed and made it difficult for new players to join." While it may have been technically true that players that got in were indeed playing the game that they just bought (whod've thunk?), it glossed over the fact that the major source of complaints was the need to log onto a cloud server in order to play what was, ostensibly, a single-player game in the first place; let alone having set up servers with a population cap (either due to hardware limitations or software issues) that was estimated to be between as much as twenty to as little as five percent of even the number of users that preordered, let alone day-one purchases on top of that.
• An old, possibly apocryphal story about underage soldiers in The American Civil War says that when they went to join up, many of them would write "18" on a piece of paper and stick it in their shoe. When the recruiter asked how old they were, they could join without having lied, as they were "over 18." The same story is told in most of Europe in regards to soldiers signing up in WWI and WWII.
• The Other Wiki has an article on this sort of deception, mostly on the history of those who, for religious reasons, employed it as the result of being technically unwilling to lie.
• In a 1988 campaign speech, George H. W. Bush pledged that if Congress wanted to raise taxes, he would tell them: "Read my lips: no new taxes". He was elected and true to his word, there were no new taxes... but the population of the US got very irate over the fact that he raised all of the existing taxes.
• An old standby for people making a journey — "We're not lost; I know exactly where we are..." This is related to Insistent Terminology. The trick, of course, is in knowing where "where we are" is in relation to anywhere else. In a similar vein, Daniel Boone once said, "I can't say as ever I was lost, but I was bewildered once for three days."
• Before being revealed as Watergate scandal source Deep Throat, W. Mark Felt stated "I never leaked information to Woodward and Bernstein or anyone else!" This is actually logically true; since he met only with Bob Woodward, he could not have met with Woodward AND anyone.
• When feature development for MechWarrior Living Legends, a Crysis Wars mod was forcibly shut down after the release of update 0.7.0, the newer, competing Mechwarrior Online developers almost immediately stated "They agreed to shut down by mutual agreement!"
• Pete Best, annoyed at the royalties his former bandmates and their imitators were getting, once released an album called "Best of The Beatles". When people complained (it was all original music) and talked about lawsuits, he pointed out the technical truth of the name: "[Pete] Best [formerly] of The Beatles".
• This is how the DHMO (dihydrogen monoxide, more commonly known as water) hoax works: water's 'harmful' effects are mentioned alongside a smattering of Scary Science Words, but it's neglected to say the effects only happen if you drink too much of it or that there's no cause-and-effect between the two.
• In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court held unanimously in Bronston v. United States that sworn testimony that is "literally truthful but technically misleading" cannot be prosecuted as perjury. The prescribed remedy, instead, is more adroit and specific followup questions by the examining lawyer. In their defense, the Court was somewhat dubious of sustaining a perjury prosecution on the basis of a possible misunderstanding. To provide further context, Bronston's testimony was only technically incomplete, but on its face only answered a specific part of the question, and the lawyer in question failed to ask an obvious followup question.
  "Q. Do you have any bank accounts in Swiss banks, Mr. Bronston?" "A. No, sir." "Q. Have you ever?" "A. The company had an account there for about six months, in Zurich." (Bronston had had a personal Swiss account as well previously, but note that the subject at hand was the company's bankruptcy.)
  • Cases like this are the reason most competent lawyers will press any witness who answers a "yes or no" question with anything other than "yes" or "no".
• Cryptic crossword puzzles have clues that only make sense when read in a highly constrained manner, typically involving wordplay, anagrams, and the like. The Other Wiki has the details.
• When Mila Kunis was asked how old she was when auditioning for That '70s Show, she replied that she'd turn eighteen on her birthday. Which of course, was true, but it wasn't her next birthday. They felt the response was in character and cast her even though they were looking for someone older to play a high-schooler.
• Back before railroads had crossing gates, they had actual flagmen who would stand at an intersection and swing a lantern to warn approaching traffic of the train. In a lawsuit over damage and injuries due to a collision at night the flagman, who might have been intoxicated at the time, testified that he did swing his lamp to try and warn the approaching motorist. This may or may not have been true, but he failed to mention that his lamp was not lit.
• In the Middle Ages to early modern period, there was much debate over what, from a Catholic perspective, counted as lying. For instance, there was the story of a bishop of Alexandria fleeing persecution by the Romans, who didn't know his appearance. Coming upon him with his students, they asked where he had gone. The man told them back the way he had just come. Some defended this, since it was technically true.
• James Garfield was shot in 1881, but the bullet was barely a flesh wound — he died of a raging infection, caused by Worst Aid because of We Have to Get the Bullet Out!. Naturally, his assassin Charles Guiteau decided to use this as a defense in court, admitting to the shooting but arguing that it was the doctors who really committed the murder. He was convicted anyway, because it was his shooting that prompted the doctors to do anything at all.
• Frankie Laine, the man who sung the title song for Blazing Saddles, was told the film was a "Western about a black sheriff dealing with racism". What he didn't know was that the film was a comedy and he wound up giving a heartfelt, sincere performance. Mel Brooks didn't have the heart to tell him after hearing the song and Laine didn't find out the truth until he actually saw the movie. Which, to Brooks's relief, became hilarious when Laine found it Actually Pretty Funny. In addition, Brooks's casting call was for "a Frankie Laine-type singer", so he was very much surprised (and happy) when the real Frankie Laine auditioned.
• A common line often mentioned regarding a well-known employee/manager/cast member/etc in any business suddenly disappearing from work and not showing up from that day forward is to issue a statement along the lines that the "staff member has left the company to pursue other business interests/jobs" and leave it at that. Often times, this is because the staff member in question was offered the option to resign with dignity or be fired and escorted off the premises over some screw up on their part. Alternatively, the staff member in question may have just issued the heads of management a spontaneous notice of resignation, who rather not reveal any potential parting words that was issued by the employee. Similarly, a common reason given for leaving a job, especially among politicians, is "to spend more time with my family." While this may certainly be a benefit of such a decision, it's rarely the sole (or even primary) reason; more likely it's a cover-up for something the person would prefer to keep hidden.
• SpacePOP was advertised as having 15 million channel views, 50,000+ subscribers and approximately 300,000 hours of viewed programming. While this is technically true if you add up the numbers, viewership averages at 100,000 to only 10,000 views per episode, decreasing sharply over time. Each episode is only 3 minutes long not counting compilations, for a total of only 375 minutes, or 6 hours and 15 minutes.
  • It was also stated in a press kit to be outperforming Monster High and My Little Pony: Equestria Girls at the same stage in the brand life cycle. The former was on DVD, YouTube, and Netflix and the dolls sold very well, which indicates they didn't add together the numbers as they did for their own show, while the latter's YouTube videos weren't official uploads so no accurate data could be found.
  • Skewed comparisons◊ to competing brands were also listed that downplay or ignore qualities the other shows do have, and the team page doesn't mention that Genius Brands' credentials seem solely based on the executive producer/CEO, Andy Heyward, who worked at DiC before it got liquidated. Similarly, while Steve Banks was a writer for season 4 of SpongeBob, Paul Tibbitt was the showrunner then, and nothing is mentioned of Erin Downing, who wrote the tie-in books the first 78 episodes of the cartoon were largely based on, at all.
• "The theory of natural selection doesn't explain the origin of life." This is actually true, but it's also completely irrelevant, since natural selection only applies to living systems, not to nonliving matter and it says nothing about how one turned into the other. Even people who should know better (such as Sir Anthony Kenny, in his history of Western Philosophy) have used this line.
• "The theory of Evolution [by natural selection] is "just" a theory". It is a scientific theory, which requires a standard of procedure and backing evidence, not an opinion or undemonstrated speculation (i.e. what the people who say this sentence want to imply). And nope, scientific theories don't get "upgraded" to laws when they are "proven".^note  "Law" denotes the scope of a scientific proposition, not it's empirical backing. A law and a theory can conceivably have the same degree of proof, but a law will deal with a broad, general scientific observation while a theory will deal with a narrower scientific explanation. Contrast, for example, the Law of Universal Gravitation, that observes that all things with mass exert and are subject to gravity, and the Theory of General Relativity, which tries to explain why. This is also an example of the Four Terms Fallacy - more on that on Gravity Is Only a Theory page.
• The relationship between Las Vegas and the world-famous Las Vegas Strip is built on this trope. To clarify, many of the casinos and even the "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas" sign located on the Las Vegas Strip are NOT located within the actual city of Vegas itself, but rather in a nearby unincorporated community named Paradise. However, both Vegas itself and the surrounding metro area (including Paradise and the Strip) is called the Las Vegas Valley, making the association of the Strip and its attractions with Vegas technically accurate. Also, the United States Postal Service defines "Las Vegas" to include not only the city proper, but also all of the Valley's unincorporated communities.
• Presumably as an attempt at cross-promotion, Atlantic Records issued a promotional single of Phil Collins' "Groovy Kind of Love" with a song by a newer artist on the label as the B-Side: Namely "Cool on Your Island" by Y Kant Tori Read. After the group disbanded but before her own solo career, lead vocalist Tori Amos traveled to Germany and was detained by police because she had been in the company of a friend who was in possession of marijuana: During interrogation, Tori stated she was a professional musician who had been "on a record with Phil Collins", and that impressed police enough that she was let go.
• Elizabeth II once vacationed at Balmoral Castle^note A royal residence in Scotland personally owned by the reigning British monarch—but not the official Scottish residence, which is Holyrood Castle in Edinburgh. The Queen would die at Balmoral in 2022. and went on a walk in plainclothes with a security guard. She encountered American tourists who didn't recognize her and who asked if she had ever met the Queen. She replied that she had never "met" the Queen, but her bodyguard had. The tourists then requested that she take a group photo of them with him on their camera.
• One man paid to ship some kilograms of soil from Texas to New York, because his wife was on labour and he wanted his child to be born on "Texan soil". It didn't quite work the first time because of safety procedures during childbirth in the hospital, although the bag of Texas soil was wrapped in the state flag to make the newborn son of someone else touch the package with his toes right after his birth, “…so that he would "step foot on Texas soil before any other". The man claimed that the idea came after his staying in Siena, Italy, where a similar practice was told him by the locals.
• Pimax, a manufacturer of consumer Virtual Reality headsets, loves to do this when naming their products. For example, the "Pimax 8K," consists of two screens, each with a number of pixels consistent with a 4K screen. Therefore, it's "8K," by virtue of being 4K, times two. This is consistent with the measuring scheme adopted for 2K, 4K, 8K, etcetera, which, unlike 720p and 1080p, counts the number of horizontal pixels. However, the colloquially understood meaning of "8K," assumes 16:9, 16:10, or another commonly used aspect ratio, meaning a screen that's twice as large as a 4K screen horizontally and vertically. So while technically capable of displaying approximately eight-thousand horizontal pixels, the Pimax 8K has half the resolution that the name implies.

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