The cake is a lie

[Becky]

Roughly translates to your promised reward is merely a fictitious motivator. Popularized by the game Portal (found on Half-Life 2s Orange Box game release for PC, X-Box 360, and PS3). During the game, an electronic voice encourages you to solve intricate puzzles using [cake] as a motivating perk. When you have broken out of the games initial testing phase (from threat of death), you find scrawls on walls of the innards of the testing center warning you that the cake is a lie.

[Mark Zuckerberg]

Implies that a promised reward for ones work is false, with the one proffering the reward never intending to give it in the first place, possibly because the reward never even existed (see also: there is no spoon). This phrase can be used to express grief or frustration regarding any situation where there is an imbalance between effort and reward. This phrase was popularized by the game Portal by Valve Software Corporation.
During the game, GlaDOS, an artificially intelligent operating system and the games passive-aggressive guide, uses the reward of cake as a motivating factor in an attempt to manipulate the player. It is first mentioned during the impossible puzzle room, where she urges the player to quit now and cake will be served immediately. In a later stage, the player can access a hidden area of the testing chamber to find a previous test participant had scrawled The cake is a lie! among other warning messages. Cake continues to remain the promised reward for completing the test and/or obeying GlaDOS, particularly in the final stages of the game. Finally, in the ending song, GlaDOS cheerfully sings about how theres no sense crying over every mistake, you just keep on trying till you run out of cake.
In the game, cake serves as a carefully calculated motivational device, but there are suggestions that it also serves as an essence of humanity--the ability to eat cake, taste it, and experience emotional pleasure from it--which a computer cannot experience even with artificial intelligence. In this less commonly-used sense, the phrase the cake is a lie can also imply that ones emotions or the basis of ones emotions are false, with cake representing emotion, emotional basis, or emotional capability.

[PussyCat]

expression used when something great has been promised from a third party but it ultimately is not so.

[Tina]

a phrase meaning something to the effect of you know that thing you where promised to be rewarded after you completed this task? well, it doesnt exist. could also be described as being trolled. the term was coined by the video game Portal in which your player would navigate through a labyrinth of tests while being driven to continue by the promise of cake. towards the end of the game, i becomes clear that there is in fact no cake and your efforts where in vain.

[Rihanna]

When they say there is cake, but there is an alternate motive that usually ends in ones humiliation/demise.

[Tanya Shivari]

An experience embodying thoughts and emotions that occurs in the moment, but is followed by a humbling experience.

[Jessica]

When a transsexual tricks a strait male into thinking hes a girl in bed.

[Tanya Shivari]

A joke that has gone on for far too f*cking long.

[Becky]

The Cake is a lie: To have a Cake you need time and money. Therefore: money time = Cake
According to smart people, time is money.
Therefore: 2time = Cake
According to other smart people, time goes on forever.
This indicating: time = infinity
Therefore: 2infinity = Cake
Because no person has achieved infinity, let alone 2infinity. The Cake is not possible.
The Cake is a lie!

[Tanya Shivari]

A euphemism for a girl who has a gorgeous figure (especially the posterior), but an ugly face.

[exinilu]

The phrase [the cake is a lie] [had its] origins on one of the *[chans]. It started in the lolicon image board also called /cake/ or [Delicious Cake] (Lolicon being drawn pornography depicting small children doing sexual favors.) On certain chans (Which will go unnamed) the /cake/ board shows picture of real small children instead of drawn. similar to their /jb/ or jailbait boards. Some of these picture can be found with a tag on them saying Open with [winrar]. When you do this these certain picture open text documents with links or bat info that leads to child porn or CP. when people would open these in winrar most of the time they would be linked to such a website as Goatse or tubgirl. The receiver of CP would then return to the original thread and [tag it] with the phrase [The cake is a lie] cake being Child Porn. This phrase is often mistaken for portal where at the end you are rewarded with cake promised throughout the game only to have it taken away. But that would leave incorrect. The meaning of this phrase was lost some time ago and was only brought back when portal was introduced and it fit so well.