There is an art to lying, but if the person being lied to doesn’t have a reason to think they are being deceived, one might get away with it. But, for better or worse, some liars embrace the idea of going big and going home.
Someone asked “What’s the most insane lie someone has ever told you—one that was so ridiculously easy to fact-check that you could literally prove they were lying in 30 seconds?” and netizens shared their most unhinged stories. So get comfortable as you scroll through, upvote the worst offenders and be sure to add your own examples to the comments below.
#1
Mexico will pay for it
Largest inauguration crowd ever
Gas is under $2/gal
Other countries pay the tariffs
They’re begging to make a deal
I ended 7, 8, 9, 10 wars.
Largest inauguration crowd ever
Gas is under $2/gal
Other countries pay the tariffs
They’re begging to make a deal
I ended 7, 8, 9, 10 wars.
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47points
#2
That tariffs are paid by foreign governments rather than American consumers.
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45points
#3
I will send every American adult a $5000 dividend as long as Republicans win the midterms.
There are others, of course, but I wanted to cite the one in most recent memory.
There are others, of course, but I wanted to cite the one in most recent memory.
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36points
#4
"You gotta send me a new phone, bro, I'm in the Marines and mine broke!"
"Semper fi, brother, which unit are you with?"
"The 6th"
"Uhhh regiment? Divison?"
"Division"
"You sure about that?"
"Yes, of course!"
"Yeah... so... they disbanded that one in like 1946"
And then he hung up.
"Semper fi, brother, which unit are you with?"
"The 6th"
"Uhhh regiment? Divison?"
"Division"
"You sure about that?"
"Yes, of course!"
"Yeah... so... they disbanded that one in like 1946"
And then he hung up.
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30points
#7
In high school, my mom and I moved out of our house that was falling apart. We took all our stuff other than trash. The fire department came and did a controlled burn to destroy it and to practice rescue scenarios. We then had a prefabricated house built on the existing foundation.
A girl who lived about a mile away, and who was in the same grade in the same school as me, told her friends that our house caught fire and that we had "lost everything" and were lucky to be alive.
I talked to her about it. She refused to believe me. My own house, that I lived in, and supposedly survived a fire in.
I eventually gave up and told her and her friends that she was right, except it was a very slow fire, and once we noticed it, we had about a week to save our belongings.
A girl who lived about a mile away, and who was in the same grade in the same school as me, told her friends that our house caught fire and that we had "lost everything" and were lucky to be alive.
I talked to her about it. She refused to believe me. My own house, that I lived in, and supposedly survived a fire in.
I eventually gave up and told her and her friends that she was right, except it was a very slow fire, and once we noticed it, we had about a week to save our belongings.
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28points
#8
When I was 10, my friend tried to sell me a Gameboy his dad had accidentally gifted him not knowing he already had one.
Except it was my Gameboy, with very specific stickers covering it, that I'd shown that friend two days before and had been stolen from my school locker later that that day.
Except it was my Gameboy, with very specific stickers covering it, that I'd shown that friend two days before and had been stolen from my school locker later that that day.
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26points
#9
Kid in my fourth grade class told us he invented Pokemon. This was in 1999, right after it came out. We pointed out that Pokemon was Japanese. He told us that he had recently been to Japan and had told someone his idea and that’s how it got made. Three of us got sent to the principal’s office for saying that clearly wasn’t true, which upset him. We were told it’s not nice to accuse someone of lying.
24points
#10
At my first job a guy insisted that he was rejected from the Navy Seals for scoring too high on the intelligence and physical fitness tests. That his obvious superiority would "hurt unit cohesion".
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23points
#12
Oh my god, I’ve known a few pathological liars in my life. I can think of many examples that fit this.
I think one that was the funniest was a boss whose age was constantly changing, and she just kept getting younger. She started off saying she was in her mid 40s. Then it turned into her early 40s. Then her late 30s. I finally googled her and she was like 59 or something.
We heard like 6 different stories about how her dad passed away when she was young. (At other times we heard her parents gave her up, and she went to live with an aunt.) We used to joke that her dad was a cat who had 9 lives.
She pretended to be a minority, but at times would slip up and tell stories of growing up as a very white child in a very rural area.
The first time I met her, she declared her husband worked on a popular cartoon show and that Seth Green and Guillermo del Toro had been at her house over the weekend to look at some stuff her husband had built for the show. Yeah right. They’re going to fly out to the rural Midwest to see this stuff in person, instead of having you just send pics of it. Ok.
She wound up getting fired for her lying. Not for any of the things above though.
I think one that was the funniest was a boss whose age was constantly changing, and she just kept getting younger. She started off saying she was in her mid 40s. Then it turned into her early 40s. Then her late 30s. I finally googled her and she was like 59 or something.
We heard like 6 different stories about how her dad passed away when she was young. (At other times we heard her parents gave her up, and she went to live with an aunt.) We used to joke that her dad was a cat who had 9 lives.
She pretended to be a minority, but at times would slip up and tell stories of growing up as a very white child in a very rural area.
The first time I met her, she declared her husband worked on a popular cartoon show and that Seth Green and Guillermo del Toro had been at her house over the weekend to look at some stuff her husband had built for the show. Yeah right. They’re going to fly out to the rural Midwest to see this stuff in person, instead of having you just send pics of it. Ok.
She wound up getting fired for her lying. Not for any of the things above though.
21points
#13
Ex wife's new boyfriend told her he got a job at my company as my supervisor. He only has factory assembly line experience, and I work as a software developer. He doubled down and she believed him and it created a big drama that i was just lying to make him look bad.
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21points
#15
I mean really, how much time do you have?? I’m pretty sure my ex husband was a pathological liar. Two of my favorites.
1. I was digging through the glove box and found the certified check for rent he was supposed to turn in. I asked him “wth?”. This man says “that’s where that went! I lost it and had to get a new one, don’t worry the rent was paid.”
Like I’m not going to figure out real quickly if rent was or was not paid. Spoiler Alert— it was not paid.
1. He totally didn’t [text] his ex-gf. You see what had happened was. There he was laying on the top bunk in his barracks room sound asleep when at like 2am he was awoken by *something*. He looks over and down and you’ll never believe it but there was some random man!!!! Reaching through the window of his 3rd floor barracks room window texting on his phone!! No idea how he could have known the code, ***or*** how he opened the window when for sure the security stick was in place ***or*** why he wouldn’t have just stolen the *brand new* *iPhones* instead choosing some random chick out of the contacts to [text]. But don’t worry when he called out to ask wth, the man ran off. So naturally he just rolled over and went back to sleep.
1. I was digging through the glove box and found the certified check for rent he was supposed to turn in. I asked him “wth?”. This man says “that’s where that went! I lost it and had to get a new one, don’t worry the rent was paid.”
Like I’m not going to figure out real quickly if rent was or was not paid. Spoiler Alert— it was not paid.
1. He totally didn’t [text] his ex-gf. You see what had happened was. There he was laying on the top bunk in his barracks room sound asleep when at like 2am he was awoken by *something*. He looks over and down and you’ll never believe it but there was some random man!!!! Reaching through the window of his 3rd floor barracks room window texting on his phone!! No idea how he could have known the code, ***or*** how he opened the window when for sure the security stick was in place ***or*** why he wouldn’t have just stolen the *brand new* *iPhones* instead choosing some random chick out of the contacts to [text]. But don’t worry when he called out to ask wth, the man ran off. So naturally he just rolled over and went back to sleep.
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19points
#16
Someone once repeated verbatim a story that I told them six months prior but they made themselves the main character.
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18points
#17
A man I know told me that he was a direct descendant of George Washington who famously had no biological children.
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18points
#18
I was in a writing workshop, and one of the participants submitted my story. Like... a story I'd already gotten published in an anthology. I mentioned it to her privately, because I didn't want to start something that awkward in a group setting. She broke down crying, just the two of us, and accused me *with no witnesses present* of trying to steal her story. Then she went to the people running the workshop and told them I was going to falsely accuse her of plagiarism. They came to me, and I had to *buy an ebook copy* right there on my phone to show them it was my work. She had made no changes whatsoever except putting her name on it. The workshop runners were completely baffled by the sheer lunatic audacity of it all. I told them I suspected that she was legitimately insane. She showed up to the following session with a different story that a cursory Google search revealed was also plagiarized.
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16points
#19
That during college he did some scientific study in Antarctica, and that he had a close encounter with a polar bear there. I was like, wait a minute you're a smart guy but were into computers, nothing to do with Antarctica, and more critically there are no polar bears in Antarctica. He claimed there was a small contingent of them there, after which I asked how they got there, by riding an iceberg from the Arctic all the way down? Of course yes, that's how they got there.
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16points
#20
I know a guy who runs a martial arts school. He insists that he's fluent in Japanese, that he's studied with real ninja assassins in Japan, and that he personally translated a scroll of secret martial arts techniques from the 1600s. I played along and asked him where he'd learned to read classical Japanese, since even native Japanese speakers today would struggle to read something written any earlier than the late 1800s due to major changes in the writing system... he doubled down and claimed that he can only understand Japanese when he's in a meditative trance state, and that he only has to touch the scroll to absorb its contents.
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16points
