Erm . . . a LIST may consist of a single scalar value. That single scalar value is concatenated with all the other elements in the LIST (very quickly, obviously, since they're non-existent) and the bytes in that concatenated string (i.e. the single scalar argument) are returned in reverse order, just like the docs say.

Then tell me why this prints hello and not olleh?

$ perl -wle 'print reverse(q{hello})'
hello
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--
Andreas

Because print takes a LIST and hence provides a list context to reverse which triggers the list context behavior from the latter (and a 1 element list reversed is indistinguishable from the original 1 element list for obvious reasons). Stick a scalar in there after the print, and/or store the reverse into a scalar temporary variable, and you'll see the behavior you're expecting.

The cake is a lie.
The cake is a lie.
The cake is a lie.

Because you did not RTFM :)

reverse LIST
        In list context, returns a list value consisting of the elemen
+ts
        of LIST in the opposite order. In scalar context, concatenates
        the elements of LIST and returns a string value with all
        characters in the opposite order.

            print reverse <>;           # line tac, last line first

            undef $/;                   # for efficiency of <>
            print scalar reverse <>;    # character tac, last line tsr
+if

        Used without arguments in scalar context, reverse() reverses $
+_.

        This operator is also handy for inverting a hash, although the
+re
        are some caveats. If a value is duplicated in the original has
+h,
        only one of those can be represented as a key in the inverted
        hash. Also, this has to unwind one hash and build a whole new
        one, which may take some time on a large hash, such as from a
        DBM file.

            %by_name = reverse %by_address;     # Invert the hash
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