True Story is a rage comic reaction face based on a line drawing of Barney Stinson from How I Met Your Mother smirking while holding a wine glass, typically placed in the last panel of a comic to confirm, often sarcastically, that the events depicted really happened.

Where did True Story come from?

The face was crowdsourced on Reddit, where user acodemaster opened a submission thread on r/fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu on February 2nd, 2011, and the community picked the drawing made by Redditor vorin as the official version.

What does True Story mean?

The phrase is a colloquial affirmation that something actually happened, used online at least as far back as a 1995 Usenet post by David Sewell and defined on Urban Dictionary in 2004.

How do you use True Story?

The image is typically dropped into the final panel of a rage comic next to the words "true story," either to confirm a real event from the author's life or to deliver a punchline by vouching for something obviously made up.

Is True Story still popular?

The face is still recognized as part of the classic rage face set documented in libraries like All The Rage Faces, though active use declined with rage comics as a whole after the mid-2010s.

True Story

2011reaction imageclassic

Published October 3, 2026

True Story is a rage comic reaction face based on a smug black-and-white drawing of Barney Stinson from How I Met Your Mother, holding a wine glass with a self-satisfied smile. Reddit's r/fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu community picked the winning illustration in February 2011, and the face quickly became the standard closing panel for rage comics claiming something actually happened1.

rage comics reaction memes catchphrase memes tv show memes subreddit origin memes

Overview

The True Story rage face is a contour drawing of Neil Patrick Harris as Barney Stinson, smirking while holding up a glass of wine. The character almost always sits in the final panel of a rage comic as the punchline, with the words "true story" written next to it to either confirm the preceding events happened or sarcastically insist they did when they obviously did not3.

The phrase itself was already a running gag on How I Met Your Mother, where Barney uses it to cap off absurd theories and tall tales that are usually complete nonsense1. The rage comic version inherited that same tone, which is why the face reads as smug and unreliable rather than earnest. On the f7u12 subreddit, posts using it were typically tagged with "[True Story]" in the title3.

Beyond rage comics, the drawing was pulled out of its original panel format and used as a standalone reaction image on Tumblr and in forum replies, often with no additional text at all3. The combination of the pose, the smirk and the loaded phrase did all the work.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

Reddit (r/fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu)

Creator

Redditor vorin

Date

2011

The expression "true story" has been used colloquially for decades to vouch for an account, and an early online use appears in a Usenet post by David Sewell on November 2nd, 1995, in which he used the disclaimer when sharing a personal anecdote about a professor and a noisy student2. An Urban Dictionary entry defining the phrase was submitted on June 20th, 20044. The expression picked up catchphrase status thanks to Barney Stinson, who began using it as a punchline when the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother started airing in 20053.

The rage face itself was crowdsourced on Reddit. On February 2nd, 2011, user acodemaster opened a thread on r/fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu asking for submissions for a dedicated "True Story" panel, pointing to a still of Stinson from the season four premiere "Do I Know You?" as reference3. Several contour drawings were posted in response, and the version by Redditor vorin was adopted by the community as the official face3.

How It Spread

After vorin's drawing won the submission thread in February 20111, the face was added to the All The Rage Faces library on September 11th, 2011, giving it a permanent slot in the standard rage comic toolkit5. On r/fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu, searches for the phrase returned more than 12,000 results by September 2012, making it one of the most heavily used faces on the subreddit1.

The character spread outward to the other big rage comic hubs of the early 2010s, including Memebase, FunnyJunk and 9gag, and a DIYLOL image macro generator was built around the face so anyone could slap text onto it1. Merchandise featuring the drawing was listed on Zazzle and Etsy1. A Facebook fan page dedicated to the character had over 157,000 likes as of September 20121.

Use of the face tapered off alongside the broader decline of rage comics in the mid-2010s, but the drawing is still recognized as part of the classic rage face set and gets referenced in retrospectives about the format5.

Timeline

1995-11-02

David Sewell posts an early online use of the "true story" disclaimer in a Usenet diatribe about seasoned posters and newbies[3].

2004-06-20

An Urban Dictionary entry for "True Story" is submitted, defining it as a phrase used to affirm sincerity[4].

2005

How I Met Your Mother premieres on CBS, with Barney Stinson repeatedly using "true story" to cap off absurd claims[2].

2011-02-02

Redditor acodemaster opens a submission thread on r/fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu for a Barney Stinson "True Story" rage face; vorin's drawing is picked as the winner[1].

2011-09-11

The True Story face is added to the All The Rage Faces library[5].

2012-09

The r/fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu subreddit has over 12,000 posts containing "true story," and the Facebook fan page passes 157,000 likes[1].

How to Use This Meme

Common convention places the True Story face in the last panel of a rage comic to deliver the punchline, usually accompanied by the words "true story" to assert that what just happened in the comic really did happen to the author. The joke often works the other way around too, with the face attached to a wildly implausible story so that the smug confirmation becomes the gag. People also drop the image into text posts or chat replies on its own as a reaction when co-signing someone else's statement.