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"When someone says 'We've got people everywhere', you expect it to be hyperbole! Lots of people say that. Florists use that expression. It doesn't mean that they've got somebody working for them inside the bloody room!"
It is a staple of fiction, and indeed casual dialog, to exaggerate when describing something. Everyone has heard it before: "I'm gonna hit you into next week!" "I'm the biggest baddest guy in town!" "He's the size of a house." Of course we all know the people saying these things don't actually mean what they're saying. They're just using dramatic flair, that's all. It enhances the conversation or just makes it funnier. So when the Mighty Glacier tells his opponent that he's about to be punched through a wall, he can't actually do exactly what he just said.
Unless he then proceeds to do exactly what he just said.
That's where this trope comes in. Not Hyperbole is a massive subversion of the exaggerations and hyperboles that we've all become used to in conversation. The character means exactly what he just said and nothing less and usually proceeds to prove it.
Usually part of a Badass Boast. See also Literal Metaphor. Literal Ass Kicking is a subtrope. "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer is a common variation.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
Comic Books
Comic Strips
- Dilbert
- Alice will often follow through on her implausible threats, for instance when she stuffed Asok into his own shirt sleeve and punted him into the ceiling.
- She's also promised to "punch someone into next week" (or next <insert day of week here>), only for the last panel to show them emerging from a time portal. Several times.
- In another she threatened to punch a man so hard he'd have to drop his pants to say hello. The past panel shows a pair of arms sticking out of the top of a pair of pants, and Dilbert and Wally wondering what that odd "Melp, melp!" sound is.
- Garfield once kicked Odie into next week. True enough, Odie didn't appear until the following Monday, when he fell on Garfield.
Literature
Films — Live-Action
- Used and lampshaded by M in Quantum of Solace, for the sheer Refuge in Audacity, as per the quote above. For context: Bond drags in a bad guy at the beginning of the movie who is resistant to interrogation. When the bad guy smugly informs Bond that, "Well, one thing you should know is that we have people everywhere," one of M's personal bodyguards pulls out his weapon and tries to assassinate her.
- In The Chronicles Of Riddick, when a couple of guards harass Riddick's friend Kyra, Riddick calmly informs one that he can kill him with a tea cup. And then he does. Next, he holds up a key to a sardine tin and puts it down meaningfully in the same place where the tea cup was — and the other two get the hell out of there.
- From the John Ritter film Hero at Large
 , Steve is talking to his agent Marty about Marty not getting him any stage work (instead of all the commercials he's doing).
Steve: Marty, how much can you do with, "That's what I call beer"? Marty, get me a play, any play. Marty: It's not like you never had one. Last summer, Shakespeare in the Park. Steve: I carried a spear. Marty, that's a joke. When an actor says he carried a spear, he doesn't mean he carried a spear. I. Carried. A spear.
- Hancock goes to prison and tells some prisoners to leave him alone or "your head is going up his ass". They don't leave him alone. The first one's head goes up the second one's ass. And it is humiliating.
Live-Action TV
- Supernatural
- There are some people who will claim that they're older than God. Death might actually be telling the truth. (Maybe. Neither Death nor God can remember anymore.)
- Similarly, in "Dark Side of the Moon", Dean tells the men who are about to kill him that he'll come back and kill them. Sure enough....
- In Arrested Development Lucille is one of the world's worst drivers. Her clip from World's Worst Drivers showed her responding to a space she might have had to parallel park into by driving in vertically, leaving her car covering half the road.
- In one episode of Parks and Recreation, Ron goes into a diner and asks the waiter to give him "all the bacon and eggs you have." When the waiter starts to leave, Ron stops him and adds:
Ron: I'm worried that what you heard was, "give me a lot of bacon and eggs." What I said was, "give me all the bacon and eggs you have."
- In Babylon 5, Londo claims about G'Kar. "I will kill him one day." Without prompting, he explains it isn't a threat, it isn't him being annoyed. Centauri have prophetic dreams. He knows that they will die strangling each other. Years later, they do.
- A interesting inversion, a Not Understatement / Not Sarcasm Mode if you want: In Sherlock, a reimagination of the Sherlock Holmes Mythos in the 21st century, the first episode has John Watson being kidnapped and confronted with an upperclass gentleman who casually refers to himself as "the closest thing [Sherlock] could consider a friend: An enemy; he would probably call me 'his arch-enemy' — he is always so melodramatic." He offers to put Watson on his payroll in exchange for information on Holmes' movements, since "I constantly worry about him; he is never far from my thoughts." All of this screamed Professor Moriarty to the well-read viewer, only for us to learn at the end of the episode that the shadowy figure was in fact Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock's big brother.
John: So when you say you're concerned about him... you really are concerned about him?
Mycroft: Yes, of course.
John: And when he says that it's a childish feud... it really is a childish feud?
New Media
Puppet Shows
Video Games
- Duke Nukem 3 D
- In Iji, one Komato is named "Iosa The Invincible". This is, as she will tell you outright, a title she earned. Among other things, the shield that surrounds her body was powerful enough to survive a planet-busting Alpha Strike. You can only ever harm her by hacking into her shields and deactivating them.
Web Animation
- In an early season of Red vs. Blue, Church recounts a time when Tex pulled out an enemy's skull and then beat him to death with it. Naturally, upon hearing this, Tucker declares, "What? That doesn't seem physically possible!" to which Church replies: "That's exactly what Jimmy kept screaming." And sure enough...
- In One Ring to Rule Them All, Sauron tells Wayne the goblin that he'll get a job as an evil henchman in 5 seconds. Literally.
Web Comics
- The Order of the Stick
Lien: My parents were fishermen. When I was a little girl, I stood right here and learned how to clean the fish that they caught. I'm telling you this so that you know that when I say that if you take one more step, I will gut you like the catch of the day — IT IS NOT HYPERBOLE!
- In another strip, when Heroic Comedic Sociopath Belkar says, "I am going to rip off your stupid bug head and piss down your neck hole!", he happens to be serious.
- It appears that one of these was the last straw in the marriage of Elan's parents.
Tarquin: You sound like your mother. "Oh Tarquin, you jerk! When you said that you would liquefy every man in the tavern if one of them grabbed my butt again during my shift, I didn't think you meant it!"
- When two people in Books Don't Work Here talk about how you should still be polite while playing God here, it's practical advice.
- Used in Questionable Content here. One person says it's hyperbole, the other insists it isn't.
- Tagon from Schlock Mercenary does this here.
Tagon: You know, for all I've threatened to do it in the past, this is the first time I've actually torn someone a new one with my bare hands.
- In Girl Genius, when Dr. Sun threatens to dismantle a battlemech with his bare fists, he means it.
- Misfile
- Homestuck
- In Mindflayed the halfling just had to ask the wrong question◊. Or a horribly right question, depending how you look at it.
"...Would it be an understatement to say I was being sarcastic??"
Western Animation
- An episode of The Angry Beavers focuses on Dagget annoying his brother Norbert. Norb threatens to punch Dag into last week, and he does... Only for Dagget to start annoying him all over again. It goes on and on, until finally when trying avoid annoying Norb, he ends up getting punched in prehistoric times.
- On an episode of Codename Kids Next Door, Cree threatens to turn the treehouse upside down if Numbuh One doesn't tell her where her sister is. He tells her he'd like to see her try. Cut to the treehouse literally turned upside down and Numbuh One stating he didn't think she could actually do it.
- Archer:
Cyril: I got the 50 million in bearer bonds.
Spelvin: Unbelievable!
Cyril: (smiling as if complimented) Well, I...
Spelvin: No, I mean I literally don't believe you.
- Metalocalypse:
Nathan: Aw man, I hate Finland. I need a hundred beers.
(cut to a bar)
Nathan: I need a hundred beers. Exactly. Exactly one hundred. Thank you.
- Inverted in the American Dad episode "Moon Over Isla Island", where Roger has been duped into disguising himself and standing in for the dictator of an island nation, mistakenly thinking he's simply in in costume and the Presidental palace he is staying in is simply a 5-star hotel. When he is served dinner he doesn't like he describes in detail how the chef should be mutilated and killed, and unbeknownst to him his "order" is carried out.
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