Very Loosely Based on a True Story: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}{{Needs Image}}
{{quote|''"The following is based on actual events. Only the names, locations, and events have been changed."''
|'''''[[Anchorman]]'''''}}
The truth is a funny thing. It's slippery, it's not always self-evident, it can seem [[Reality Is Unrealistic|implausible]], it can even be inconvenient, and more often than not it's just plain boring. Very Loosely Based On A True Story occurs when a writer decides that reality just doesn't pack enough punch in some way, and decides to improve on the historical record. Arguably, this has actually ''saved'' some '''er...true stories.''' For example, ''[[The Patriot]]'' would have been two and a half hours of a group of Minute Men hiding for hours in swamps sniping English troops and then running away had they kept it true to the historical events of the time. Doesn't exactly sound riveting, does it?
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{{examples}}
== Comic Books ==
* [[Alan Moore]]'s ''[[From Hell]]'' was based primarily on an earlier book entitled ''Jack The Ripper: The Final Solution'', which was later largely discredited. Moore, in the book's lengthy annotations, freely admits he doesn't believe a word of it, but was never one to let facts get in the way of a good story. Despite this, the actual history portrayed in the book was [[Shown Their Work|vigorously researched]], more so than some scholarly works on the Ripper. [[The Movie]], however, plays fast
** [[The Book]] used, as part of its "evidence," the long-discredited ''Protocols of the Elders of Zion'', though mercifully taking it as anti-Masonic (the "Zion" in their interpretation being allegorical rather than literal) instead of anti-Semitic.
== Film ==
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* Parodied in ''[[Anchorman]]'' which opens with a title card claiming that it's a true story and "Only the names, locations and events have been changed."
** A similar parody occurs in the trailer for [[Terry Gilliam]]'s ''[[The Adventures of Baron Munchausen]]'', where it is claimed that "this story is based on real events. We have the movie to prove it."
* The movie ''[[21 (2008 film)|21]]'' and the book ''Bringing Down the House'', both based on the exploits of a blackjack card-counting team based at MIT, both fall squarely into this trope. Probably one of the most infamous changes is that the protagonist, who is Chinese-American in real life, [[Race Lift|became a Caucasian in the
* Spoofed in the '90s remake ''[[Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever|Attack of the 50 Foot Woman]]'' where the scientist introducing the movie assures us that everything that happened is absolutely true.
* Subverted/Lampshaded by ''Domino''. The trailer states "Based on a True Story... Sort of."
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* ''[[Sunset]]'': Wile highly fictional, the film does actually contain a few elements of truth. Wyatt Earp did live in Hollywood in the 1920s, did act as a technical advisor on several silent westerns, and was close friends with Tom Mix (who served as a pallbearer at Earp's funeral). The murder in the movie is very loosely based on the events surrounding the death of Thomas Ince (which did not involve Earp or Mix in any way).
* The films ''[[The Gumball Rally]]'' and ''[[Cannonball Run]]'' (as well as several others) were very loosely based on a real outlaw road rally, the [[wikipedia:Cannonball Baker Sea-To-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash|Cannonball Baker Sea-To-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash]].
* ''[[American Gangster]]''. Like many of the examples cited here, the basic outline of the story is true, but there are many differences. Film—Lucas and his wife are childless, Roberts is embroiled in a custody battle. [[Real Life]]—Lucas and his wife had a daughter, Roberts never had children. This is just ''one'' of many discrepancies.
* 2017's ''[[The Greatest Showman]]'' claims to be a biography of [[w:P. T. Barnum|P. T. Barnum]], but takes quite a few liberties, including completely fictionalizing his early life; compressing much of his career as an impresario into what appears to be a period of about a year or so; collapsing his four daughters into two; manufacturing an almost-affair with Swedish singer [[Jenny Lind]] as well as a near-breakup with his wife over it; and manufacturing a fictional partner and his interracial love affair (circa 1850).
== Literature ==
* This is noticeably averted in ''[[House of Leaves]]'' when in Johnny Truant's written introduction, he explicitly says that everything...''The Navidson Record'', all of the commentary on it in the book, ''all of it''...is fake or made-up. He hasn't been able to contact anyone who has ever heard of the film. The irony, according to him, is that what's real and what's not doesn't matter in the end since the consequences are the same. In a slightly more specific case, Johnny recounts a period of time where he lived with a doctor friend and his wife, and started going on medication, and generally getting his life back together. {{spoiler|The chapter ends with him telling the reader he was making it up completely, and ''laughing at the reader'' for believing it.}}
* [[Joyce Carol Oates]] was inspired by news of the mysterious death of a college student to write the story ''Landfill''. If anyone interpreted that story as being what actually happened, it would be a serious libel on the student's frat brothers and others. Faced by criticism from the student's family and accused of [[Ripped from the Headlines|sensationalism and exploitation]], Oates said that the story was never meant to be taken as anything but fiction, and that she writes however she's inspired to, news being an important source of ideas for her.
* Many fairy tales derived from tales of the lives of saints, such as St. Barbara ("[[Rapunzel]]") or St. Margaret of Cartona ("[[Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs (novel)|Snow White]]"). Alternatively, a number of people have been cited as possible inspirations for the fairy tale characters in question, like with [[wikipedia:Margaretha von Waldeck|Margaretha von Waldeck]] and Snow White.
* The middle section of ''[[Special Circumstances|Princess of Wands]]'' was inspired by the events at RavenCon, a [[Science Fiction]] convention, in 2006. Needless to say, there was no battle with a demon at RavenCon.
* ''[[Romance of the Three Kingdoms]]'' was written a thousand years after the events it depicts, and takes far more inspiration from the various legends that had grown around the major figures of the Three Kingdoms period, even freely mixing in supernatural events.
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* The Battle of Roncevaux Pass was a battle where the rear-guard of Charlemagne's army was massacred in the Pyrenees by a small guerrilla force of Basque Christians. In ''[[The Song of Roland]]'' the battle is between a small Christian rear-guard and a massive army of Saracen Muslims, takes place in Spain, and ends with the entire Saracen army destroyed by the main body of the army. Really, the story only resembles the historical event inasmuch as Charlemagne's rear-guard was destroyed.
* The heroic poem ''[[Jerusalem Delivered]]'' is about the siege of Jerusalem during the First Crusade. Only it takes place two years later, lasts six months, involves non-real heroes on both sides, involves a demonic forest and magic, and distorts the historic figures involved (Bishop Adhemar was not shot in the eye with an arrow but died of illness and Godfrey was not elected king until after the sack of the city).
== Live-Action TV ==
* The
* ''[[Law
** And the episode where a husband's fight to remove the feeding tube from his comatose wife led to his murder. Needless to say the people fighting to keep the wife alive are the killers.
** These examples are interesting subversions, because they are often closer than the truth than other works that are purported to be "based on true events," but they are always very careful to let us know that it has nothing to do with [[Real Life]] events.
* Parodied in an episode of ''[[Millennium (TV series)|Millennium]]'', where the protagonist Frank Black finds himself on the set of a slasher movie very loosely based on a murder he had investigated years prior. Black, not being much for pop culture, is understandably confused as to why a disabled geriatric victim killed in her driveway would be dramatized as a sexy blond co-ed murdered in her shower. [[It Got Worse|It Gets Worse
* ''[[Little House On the Prairie]]'' is somewhat infamous for this, to begin with the real life Ingalls family lived in Walnut Grove, Minnesota only for about three years, then
* Oh, where to begin on the historical inaccuracies in both ''[[The Tudors]]'' and ''[[Rome]]''.{{context|We best pick a place to start then.}}
* ''The Great Escape II: the Untold Story'', unlike ''[[The Great Escape]]'' uses the actual names of the real-life people involved. After that it borders on a [[Documentary of Lies]]. John Dodge really was an American-born Royal Army officer interned with RAF prisoners but he played no part in the murder investigation. Von Lindeiner, the Commandant, was not executed, he moved to London after the war. Most egregious was the depiction of Burchardt, the mastermind of the murders. Burchardt and Dodge face off in the climatic battle, Dodge armed with a pistol and Burchardt only with a rhinoceros hide whip. Dodge, nearly defeated, finally shoots and kills Burchardt. Burchardt was actually just one of the mooks in real life and received light punishment in the end. About the only facts in the mini series were that there was an investigation and prosecution of the murderers of "the fifty", John Dodge did escape from Sachsenhausen concentation camp after his recapture and Burchardt did own a rhinoceros hide whip.
* At no point in the docudrama miniseries ''[[Harley and the Davidsons]]'' did Discovery leave a disclaimer that the show, while inspired by historical events, took a lot of creative liberties in portraying Harley-Davidson's origins. While they did state in behind-the-scenes interviews that the "geography and timeline was compressed" for the sake of narrative, it still gave out the impression that most if not all of the show's events played out as it did in real life. Indian Motorcycle's rivalry with Harley was nowhere near as fierce as the show implied, and there is no way the Motor Company would dare reveal their newly-minted Knucklehead (referred to by company literature as simply the "OHV" standing for "'''O'''ver'''h'''ead '''V'''alve"; the Knucklehead moniker did not come into popular use until years later by the custom chopper scene) at an outlaw motorcycle race rather than at a formal AMA ceremony.
== Theatre ==
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[[Category:Horror Tropes]]
[[Category:Very Loosely Based on a True Story]]
[[Category:Derivative Works]]
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