About

Don't Believe His Lies is a multi-panel exploitable image series using screen captures of a scene from the 2000 psychological thriller film Memento in which a man writes the phrase “Don’t believe his lifes” on a Polaroid instant film.

Origin

Throughout the film Memento, originally released on March 16th, 2001, the protagonist Leonard Shelby (played by Guy Pearce) writes notes to himself in order to keep track of important information that he would otherwise forget due to the memory loss caused by anterograde amnesia. In one of the pivotal scenes, Shelby is seen writing “don’t believe his lies” on the backside of an instant film of a man named Teddy (played by Joe Pantoliano) after identifying him as a suspect of the man he is looking for.

On January 9th, 2012, Redditor SWozniak submitted a post titled "Don't believe his lies," featuring three screen captures of the Memento scene with video game designer Peter Molyneux photoshopped on to the Polaroid (shown below). Prior to being archived, the post gained over 1,400 votes (88% upvoted) on the /r/gaming^[3] subreddit.

Spread

On January 21st, 2013, Redditor murraya submitted a variation of the image featuring an illustration of Gandhi on the photo titled "I made a little reminder for myself for when I start a new Civ 5 game" to the /r/gaming^[4] subreddit, where it gathered more than 2,600 votes (95% upvoted) prior to being archived. On March 10th, 2013, Redditor vesci posted a photoshopped version of the exploitable with a Sim City non-player character on the photo to the /r/SimCity^[6] subreddit. Before the post was archived, it reached over 1,600 votes (91% upvoted) and 200 comments.

On January 7th, 2015, Tumblr user silosenovengo^[7] posted a photoshopped version of the Polaroid screencapture featuring Valve CEO Gabe Newell (shown below, left). On January 20th, Redditor AHG94 submitted a GIF of the Memento scene titled "MRW I leave myself a reminder in preparation for talking to my Jewish friend" to the /r/shittreactiongifs^[5] subreddit, where it received upwards of 3,500 votes (97% upvoted) and 100 comments in the first month (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References