Metaphorically True / Webcomics

• The Order of the Stick:
  • After Roy, Haley, Elan and V attempt to escape from Azure City's prison, invokedDurkon — torn because he's being relied upon as the truthful one by a Knight Templar who would act unreasonably if told the truth, but he doesn't want to lie either — fools Miko with two examples of this trope back-to-back. One by saying that the five of them had never left their cells (because Durkon had stayed behind), then claiming that the cell door wasn't secure because of a mechanical defect (if you count "being able to be picked by a rogue" as a mechanical defect).
  • O-Chul pulls one too. When asked by Hinjo if he made the decision to destroy Soon's gate, he answers he did make that decision, and it was his blade that did the deed, and he will say no more lest he speak ill of the dead. After making said decision, the tide of the battle turned and it was no longer required. Miko ended up with his sword and destroyed the gate anyway — the resulting explosion killed her.
  • There's a later subversion with the Oracle. Belkar's asked if he would get to cause the death of one of the following: Roy, Miko, Miko's horse, Vaarsuvius or the Oracle himself. The Oracle simply responds "Yes" without ever saying which. On Belkar's return visit, the Oracle claims this prophecy has already been fulfilled. He argues, using increasingly dubious logic, that Belkar caused the death of Roy (a somewhat plausible argument), then also that he indirectly caused Miko's death (really reaching for that one), and that he killed Miko's horse (which is complete BS). Belkar finally loses patience and fulfills the prophecy then and there — by stabbing the Oracle to death. The dying Oracle then reveals that he didn't actually believe any of the stuff he was spouting, he was just trying to weasel out of being stabbed (though fortunately Death Is a Slap on the Wrist).
    Oracle: Yeah... I wasn't really buying those theories either... Worth a shot though...
  • Redcloak does this, too, explaining why he killed Tsukiko without admitting that the major part of his reason was that she had figured out he's been deceiving Xykon for the entire duration of their partnership and had decided to reveal this to Xykon, but without actually lying about anything either.
    • Redcloak avoids getting questioned any further about his statements by revealing more metaphorical truths that causes Xykon to have a squick reaction and quickly change the subject.
• Irregular Webcomic!:
  • A strip uses this trope to explain Obi-Wan's high opinion of the Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy.
  • And another one makes fun of the original quote. Sadly, it doesn't link to this page.
• Darths & Droids: "That's Jedi for "I lied my butt off," isn't it?" Later used in reference to the original... because the DM's opening exposition was what the people believed rather than the truth.
• Parodied on a page of The B-Movie Comic.
• In Sluggy Freelance a pair of Mafiya henchmen leave Riff and Torg "free to go." If being tied to railroad tracks fits into your definition of "free."
• Seen in an exchange from Between Failures. Nina thought Thomas was getting chewed out by their manager, but what he actually got was... more pleasant.
• Collar 6: Laura discovers Sixx's wealth and says "I thought you said you worked in a hotel?" Sixx replies. "I said I worked in the hotel business. By which I meant I own a few... hundred."
• Homestuck:
  • Doc Scratch, constantly. As he puts it:
    Doc Scratch: Lies of omission do not exist. The concept is a very human one. It is the product of your story writing again. You have written a story about the truth, making emotional demands of it, and in particular, of those in possession of it. Your demands are based on a feeling of entitlement to the facts, which is very childish. You can never know all of the facts. Only I can. And since it's impossible for me to reveal all facts to you, it is my discretion alone that decides which facts will be revealed in the finite time we have. If I do not volunteer information you deem critical to your fate, it possibly means that I am a scoundrel, but it does not mean that I am a liar. And it certainly means you did not ask the right questions. One can make either true statements or false statements about reality. All of the statements I make are true.
  • Most notably, he tells Rose that The Tumor has sufficient power to destroy the Green Sun (the main villain's power source), that setting it off at the site of the Green Sun would lead to his death, and that destroying the Green Sun would kill him. Then she and Dave go to the site of the Green Sun and find it empty, and the Tumor opens to reveal it channels exactly the amount of mass-energy the Green Sun contains...
  • Aradia, who admits she's taking a page from Doc Scratch's book, likewise never lies "but thr0ugh 0missi0n." She tells the other trolls that playing Sgrub is their only hope of surviving the end of the world; she doesn't tell them it's causing the same, and never did say they would win.
  • The narrator gets in on it, too. As Gamzee watches Jade's second prototyping from the CRITICAL MOMENT, the caption reads "The most important character in Homestuck fondly regards the miracle of a new beginning." [S] Cascade reveals that he has Li'l Cal (used to make Doc Scratch) in his lap, and is also watching Doc Scratch's body, which soon after rises as Lord English.
• The Repository of Dangerous Things have Davis trying to write a resume.
• Leftover Soup has Jamie saying "The last guy who pointed a gun at me and asked for my wallet wound up in two different body bags." That did happen, but the guy actually killed himself in drugged stupor while celebrating how he turned the police against Jamie.
  • Also, Jamie is unaware of it at the time but the real truth turns out to be that the guy who actually mugged Jamie gave police a false ID and then killed the guy who's ID it was, staging it to look like that guy killed himself by accident while high.
• Pumpkin Cake from Slice of Life is fond of using these.
  Carrot Cake: Did you send this to the Princess?
  (Displays letter from Pumpkin offering free cupcakes for life in exchange for magic lessons.)
  Pumpkin Cake: Technically, Spike sent it....
• Stand Still, Stay Silent:
  • This is Sigrun's go-to method for covering herself and others. Between the run-down state of their equipment and the even more run-down state of everything the Ghost City locations they are visiting, the phrase "it was already broken when we got here" has become associated with her.
  • Reynir did this when he first met Onni in the mage-exclusive dreamspace. Due to not knowing what the members of the crew other than Tuuri and Lalli look like, hearing Tuuri's name from Reynir's mouth made Onni assume he was one of them. Reynir answered "yes" to this, when in reality he was on his second day as a stowaway to the crew. And literally in the middle of becoming aware of the mage powers that would make him a more active member later on.
• In Champions of Far'aus, when Skye asks her father what happened to his shop when Dorawn was attacked, Arthur replied: "I didn't get a lot of trouble". The Imagine Spot flashback shows him not having "a lot of trouble" giving the cultists trying to attack his smithy a beat down.
• Gunnerkrigg Court: Coyote has never, in all his time as the foreign tyrant leader of the Gilette forest, told a direct lie. He lives up to his reputation as a trickster, as he uses all sorts of underhanded schemes up to and including Mind Control to keep his critics from asking the wrong questions.
• In Megan Kearney's Beauty and the Beast, about Beauty's mother being "taken" by illness:
  "Well...that's not so far from the truth. Albeit a little...creatively stated."
• Freefall:
  • Sam likes to do this. For example, take his statement that he met up with a bible salesman, exchanged business cards, had lunch, paid for both meals, and was directed to a lucrative contractee. The bible salesman is a smuggler, they stole each others' wallets, each was scammed out of the cost of both meals by a Genre Savvy waiter, and then he bugged Max enough that Max shoved him somewhere more profitable just to shut Sam up.
  • Sam is on the receiving end when he asks a maintenance worker if all the bodged machinery on the transfer station is normal. The worker assures him it is, then thinks "Probably not normal for other places, but it's normal for us."
• In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fan comic Twilight Strangeness, the Mane Five chase Twilight to her castle, and meet Princess Celestia, who tells them that Twilight isn’t there. What she doesn’t tell them is that Princess Twilight isn’t there, and that the one they were chasing was Twilight’s human counterpart from EQUESTRIA GIRLS.
• Unsounded: When Duane confronts Sette about lying to him and tricking him into Cresce she tries to claim she was only stretching the truth and was telling the truth from a certain point of view. Duane doesn't buy it and Sette was definitely outright lying.

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