10 Secret Memes Hidden In Video Games

10. The Cake Is A Lie - Assassin's Creed Valhalla

There might be few if any video game memes that have exploded quite like Portal's legendary non-sequitur. If you've been on the internet any time in the last decade you've seen it. If you were online in 2007, you couldn't move for it. It was so constant that people got pretty sick of the cake being a lie and so Portal 2 made almost no follow-up to it. Which is fine, because it spread to all kinds of other media.

For context, if it's at all needed, the meme refers to a false promise made by the experiment-obsessed AI GLaDOS in Valve's classic puzzler. The suggestion of cake is used as a humorous motivator. However, in various spots outside of the game's test chambers, there are mad scrawlings on the walls, one line repeating over and over: "the cake is a lie".

Ironically, "the cake is a lie is a lie" is also a meme because of the game's final shot that reveals it really does exist.

A very direct reference to not just the line but the entire point behind it can be found in Assassin's Creed Valhalla. In Essexe lives a man named Chad the Riddler who tasks the player with three brainteasers and the promise of cake as a prize. The actual prize is 20 pieces of silver because, of course, the baked goods were a falsehood.