History Main / BasedOnAGreatBigLie

The best case scenario is that you get a wry chuckle from your fans and a nod in a couple of papers. A worse case scenario is that some folks get together and sue you for selling the story to them under false pretenses. The ''worst'' case scenario is when your supposedly true story is actually very close to someone else's ''actual'' true story, and you end up losing every penny of your profits in a humiliating lawsuit because nobody believes your sudden recantation. Best solution? Just say that it's fiction all along.

The net result of this trope is that viewers have to be wary of works that present themselves as a true story, as the creators may only be doing so because it makes people pay attention more. And in works that are combinations of real events and fictional ones, it is all too easy to get confused about what actually happened and is possible in real life, and what is just artistic license. This may be a major source of CommonKnowledge; if it happened in a story that really took place, it must be true, right?

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Pocahontas}}'' is a bit of a strange case. This and most other works about Pocahontas are based on the writings of John Smith, which are commonly believed to be true. However, research into Smith's other works quickly reveals this to be bunk, because Smith had a habit of portraying himself as an entirely unrealistic [[HerCodeNameWasMarySue demi-god of manliness and combat skill who found success, riches and sex wherever he went]]. It was also problematic in that Smith claimed Pocahontas was only about 12 years old when they met. Disney eventually decided to go this route on purpose, throwing out their research and making the film into a "legend" rather than a true story.
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Anastasia}}'': Historically, the Imperial family of Tsarist Russia was executed in 1918 during the UsefulNotes/RussianRevolution. However, a persistent urban legend lived on that the youngest daughter, Grand Duchess Anastasia, [[DidAnastasiaSurvive somehow escaped]], and several women came forward [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Duchess_Anastasia_Nikolaevna_of_Russia#False_reports_of_survival claiming to be Anastasia]]. The plot of the movie follows a scoundrel named Dimitri trying to train a young woman ([[DramaticIrony known to the audience but not herself to be the real Anastasia]]) [[PygmalionPlot how to act like royalty]] and return her to her surviving grandmother for a reward. In the years since the film, improved technology has verified that yes, Anastasia died with the rest of her family. Notably they took great care to market the film in Russia as a "historical FairyTale".

* ''Film/TheHauntingInConnecticut'' purports to be based on a true story. However, Ray Garton, the author of the book that the film (and a Creator/DiscoveryChannel documentary) was based on, has admitted that the "true story" was a fabrication. He has said that none of the family members could get their story straight, and that they were dealing with alcoholism and drug addiction at the time, which may have affected their judgment. He brought his concerns to Ed and Lorraine Warren, the case investigators and self-professed "demonologists" (who, not coincidentally, also investigated the Amityville case); they reportedly told him to "make it up and make it scary."

* ''Film/TheBlairWitchProject'' did this with its marketing campaign, claiming that the three actors were all killed by the eponymous Blair Witch, and that the footage detailed their final days. It helped that the actors use their real names in the movie, as if they're filming a real documentary on the subject. However, no such Blair Witch has ever existed, and all three actors were perfectly fine. The actors were told to deliberately not attend screenings or events related to the movie to make it seem as if they were really dead. It worked for a while, until the film became a massive success -- it made its minimal budget back almost ''ten thousand times'' over, and it still holds the world record for the highest cost-to-profit margin in movie history. After that, the actors couldn't resist the temptation to start appearing on late-night talk shows.

* ''Film/TheIrishman'' by Creator/MartinScorsese is based on the book ''I Heard You Paint Houses'' about one Frank Sheeran. Sheeran claimed he was a Mafia hitman who, among other things, participated in the murder of Jimmy Hoffa. The publishers were still claiming the book was a true story as of the film's release in 2019, but most historians believe Sheeran's stories to be fabrications.

* ''Film/BattleshipPotemkin'' is a purportedly historical film that depicts a massacre that, in truth, never happened; records are scarce and conflicting, and eyewitnesses were unreliable and confused. However, what we do know is that spirits in the city were running high at that moment, and there ''were'' several demonstrations that, by some accounts (including those of a British consul and a ''Times'' reporter) were put down using armed troops, but no massacre. Of course, Creator/SergeiEisenstein knew he wasn't making a documentary, but rather a propaganda flick, so he took really great liberties with the facts -- including the massacre. It's just that in doing so, he had several ideas how to edit the footage for maximum emotional impact, which worked so well that he basically became the father of all modern film editing, and the Odessa Steps Massacre [[RealityIsUnrealistic became firmly entrenched as a fact]]. It was even said that after seeing the movie, someone who was there turned himself into police in the U.S. and confessed to a murder.

* ''Film/SoundOfFreedom'': Much of the film's story is drawn from [[https://www.vice.com/en/article/4a3apm/anti-trafficking-group-with-long-history-of-false-claims-gets-its-hollywood-moment unsubstantiated]] or embellished claims made by the Operation Underground organization, who Tim Ballard is the founder and CEO of. As such, it's difficult to tell how accurate the events depicted in the film really are.

* ''VideoGame/FatalFrameI'' was localized with ''Based on a true story'' as a tagline on the cover. The creators themselves have said that any mansion that urban legends believe to be haunted in Japan were not based on or inspired Himuro Mansion.

* ''[[VideoGame/DrownedGod Drowned God: Conspiracy of the Ages]]'' has an unusual variation in that the supposed "true story" the game was based on was admitted by the game's creator Richard Horne AKA Harry Horse from the start to be a forgery, which itself was a fake manuscript posing as the work of a real 19th century poet named Richard Horne (no relation) claiming to have secret knowledge involving alien activity on Earth. Horse had created the forgery as a young starving artist in the early 80's, and after his hoax was discovered, he held onto the story in the manuscript for the game because he most likely [[ConspiracyTheorist genuinely believed in the ideas]] that led to the game's story.
* ''VideoGame/{{beatmania}} IIDX'' has several songs supposedly composed by a "Virkato Wakhmaninov" (1873-1974), and the video production comments for one of his songs, "Piano Concerto no. 1 'Anti-Ares'", speak of Wakhmaninov as if he existed. That said there are several hints in the song production comments that Wakhmaninov is in reality an alias of in-house composer Jun Wakita rather than an actual person:

** "WesternAnimation/WhoKilledWho" opens with a live-action presenter describing the following film as a true crime story "condensed from authentic criminal records." Considering the cartoon itself consists of the usual outlandish sight gags and fourth-wall breaking humor of Avery's other films, no one would have taken this seriously.

** The modern day Imperium itself is based on an absolutely ''colossal'' lie. Namely, the deification of their FounderOfTheKingdom, the God-Emperor Of Mankind. The same Emperor who, when he was still healthy and ambulatory, enforced state atheism ''very'' strictly indeed and would react about the same way to the modern day Imperial cult that he did with anyone else trying to worship him: ordering them to stop and stamping them out by force if they didn't. That said, given how [[EldritchLocation the Warp]] [[ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve works]]and the 10,000 years of constant worship, it's likely [[DeityOfHumanOrigin not a lie anymore]].

* Kids' show ''Wacaday'' had something very similar to this with its fictionalized historical fact segments, as they'd always [[CatchPhrase remind you at the end]] that ''"We know it's true [[HypocriticalHumor because we made it up ourselves!]]"''

* ''Film/EnemyAtTheGates'' presents an interesting example: Jude Law's sniper character was a real person, and, surprisingly, so was the LoveInterest played by Rachel Weisz. But the same can't be said of the German sniper and the main plot. [[RedsWithRockets Soviet officials]] insisted the story was true, but recent reappraisals of the available evidence have led historians to strongly suspect that the whole thing was just a load of made-up wartime propaganda. The villain of the piece is a Bavarian [[NaziNobleman aristocrat]] sniper named Erwin Konig; in reality, no conclusive evidence has been found that Konig ever even ''existed'', let alone that he fought a sniper duel in Stalingrad.

* ''Film/TheBoatThatRocked'' is actually an amalgamation of different stories; "Radio Rock" could refer to several different outfits that broadcast from a boat outside British waters. The one actually called "Radio Rock" did annoy the British government, but it also had a license and thus technically wasn't a "pirate" radio station at all. The others were actual pirate radio stations, in particular [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Caroline Radio Caroline]], which was infamous not only for broadcasting offshore from a boat without a license, but also for its ability to weather some astonishing mishaps, from being raided by British and Dutch authorities to their boats sinking (likely an inspiration for the film's climax). The film's ending is a bit more dramatic than the real one, when the government basically banned anyone from supplying them and waited for the crew to give up and come ashore, when they were promptly arrested. All this being said, former pirate [=DJs=] have said that the film does capture the flavour of shipboard life quite well.

** Jerzy Kosinski's ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Painted_Bird The Painted Bird]]'' was a fiction book that was supposedly based on the author's RealLife war experiences in German-occupied Poland, which turned out to be false. Poles often accuse the author of being a Holocaust profiteer, as some parts ''heavily'' resembled Holocaust pornography; for this reason, the book was [[BannedInChina banned in Poland]] for more than 20 years. Most egregiously, the couple who took care of him as a boy alongside other Jewish children that they protected was depicted as abusers and rapists; they were naturally rather ''pissed'' when they found out.

* Back in TheSeventies, the very first film claiming to be a SnuffFilm ([[SarcasmMode imaginatively]] entitled ''[[http://www.agonybooth.com/snuff/ Snuff]]'') purported to depict the actual on-camera murder of an actress. Despite all the controversy that was stirred up -- which was [[NoSuchThingAsBadPublicity the entire point]] -- the murder was later revealed to be a hoax, and not a very convincing one at that, the "snuff footage" looked 'unbelievably'' fake. In fact, the distributors of the movie had just bought some random South American BMovie, ''Slaughter'' (1971), and grafted on their own completely different short bit of footage (the "snuff"), replacing the [[NoEnding actual movie's ending]].

* ''Film/CatchMeIfYouCan'': Much of what is shown of Frank Abagnale's criminal career is embellished from Abagnale's memoir, but what ''was'' taken from the memoir was made up too, as the book is mostly fabricated. Abagnale never impersonated a doctor. He never took the bar exam in Louisiana or practiced law. He didn't escape custody by climbing out of an airplane toilet—that's physically impossible. He never worked for the FBI as a consultant in fighting check forgery. While he did sometimes wear a pilot's uniform as part of his check kiting, he did not use it to hitch plane rides around the world. And he was convicted of forging not $2.5 million in checks, but $1448.60.

* Back in TheSeventies, the very first film claiming to be a SnuffFilm ([[SarcasmMode imaginatively]] entitled ''[[http://www.agonybooth.com/snuff/ Snuff]]'') purported to depict the actual on-camera murder of an actress. Despite all the controversy that was stirred up -- which was [[NoSuchThingAsBadPublicity the entire point]] -- the murder was later revealed to be a hoax, and not a very convincing one at that. ([[http://www.agonybooth.com/recaps/Snuff_1976.aspx?Page=9 See for yourself]]; the "snuff footage" looked ''unbelievably'' fake.) In fact, the distributors of the movie had just bought some random South American BMovie, ''Slaughter'' (1971), and grafted on their own completely different short bit of footage (the "snuff"), replacing the [[NoEnding actual movie's ending]].

* The works of Carlos Castaneda, specifically his first three books about his time with ostensible Yaqui shaman Don Juan, were quite popular in anthropology circles in the 1970s. After detailed examination of the timelines and locations described by Castaneda, critics pointed out that that they could not have have possibly happened as described. While the books do show some knowledge of native Southwestern tribes, at least once description of a peyote ceremony was determined to be lifted from an anthropology textbook available at the school where Castaneda studied. While he never fully admitted to the books being fictional, he acknowledged "taking liberties" with the times and locations. To date, no independent verification of Don Juan's identity, or some of the ceremonies Castaneda described, has been found. Meanwhile, Castaneda made a fortune off the books and [[https://www.salon.com/2007/04/12/castaneda/ started a cult]] consisting primarily of women students, some of whom killed themselves after his death hoping to rejoin him.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'' episode "The Great Divide", two tribes have been fighting for over a century over a crime one of their ancestors apparently committed against the other. Aang diffuses the conflict by revealing that the whole event was a misunderstanding of a dispute their ancestors had while playing a silly ball game. But by the end of the episode, Aang reveals to his friends he made the whole thing up to stop the tribes from fighting.

* ''Cobb'', starring Creator/TommyLeeJones, is about the last days of controversial baseball legend Ty Cobb. It's based on the account of sportswriter Al Stump, who ghotstwrote Cobb's memoir and later wrote a magazine article about Cobb's final months. As a coup de grace, Stump wrote another, much, ''much'' less complimentary biography, titled, ''Cobb: The Life and Times of the Meanest Man Who Ever Played Baseball''. In the years since, Stump's writing about Cobb has been debunked. While Cobb was ''not'' a nice person by any means, Stump describes events that never happened. [[http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-knife-in-ty-cobbs-back-65618032/ This article]] outlines some of the falsehoods.

** [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurel_Rose_Willson Laurel Rose Willson's]] ''[[http://swallowingthecamel.me/2011/07/02/the-prodigal-witch-ix-lauren-stratford/ Satan's]] [[http://swallowingthecamel.me/2011/07/20/the-prodigal-witch-ix-lauren-stratford-part-ii/ Underground]]'', published under the name Lauren Stratford, spoke of the author being brought up as a "[[BabyFactory baby breeder]]" by a Satanic cult, giving birth to babies to be used in sacrifices or {{snuff film}}s. The evangelical magazine ''Cornerstone'' [[https://web.archive.org/web/20140813230052/http://holysmoke.org/sdhok/side.htm exposed it as a hoax]] when not only it pointed out that the dates and events she gave didn't line up with hospital and school records, but it also mentioned several incidents of Willson's past in which she falsely accused her family (especially her mother) of abusing her. Willson later reappeared [[http://swallowingthecamel.me/2011/07/20/the-prodigal-witch-ix-lauren-stratford-part-iii/ as "Laura Grabowski"]], claiming to be a survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau and a victim of [[MadDoctor Dr. Josef Mengele]]; this, too, was exposed as a fraud when a Jewish group investigated her claims.

* ''Film/KingArthur2004'' is billed as the true historical story of Myth/KingArthur, but instead is little more than a "remix" of the popular Myth/ArthurianLegend with some garbled bits of Late Roman/Early Medieval history. Whether there was a historical Arthur at all remains a matter of fierce historical debate, and there are several potential candidates for the basis of the character, none of which bear more than a surface similarity to the movie's Arthur. It's not exactly a success as a "true historical story" either -- the entire movie is one [[HollywoodHistory long]] [[TheThemeParkVersion historical]] [[AnachronismStew inaccuracy]]. Heck, the title character himself lived (''if'' he lived) in the century after the events of the movie are supposed to take place.

* ''Film/PanfilovsTwentyEightMen'' is a drama about the legendary stand of Panfilov's 28 Guardsmen, a squad of foot soldiers who heroically held up the German advance towards Moscow for a whole day, taking out 18 German tanks for the loss of 22 of their men. It's an inspiring story and an exciting movie, and it was believed to be true in Russia for decades--there is a grand stone memorial to the men at the spot where it happened. It was completely made up, a bit of wartime propaganda that caught on and became legend.

* Swedish author [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liza_Marklund Liza Marklund]] co-authored [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6mda a whole series of books]] with a woman calling herself "Mia", detailing the abuse and persecution "Mia" and those close to her suffered from her Muslim ex-boyfriend. The events in the books were claimed to be completely true, with only names and places changed to protect those involved, and Marklund spent years using the books as proof in political debates. In 2008, Monica Antonsson wrote a book proving that the books about "Mia" are almost completely fictional. After trying to claim that Antonsson was lying, Marklund changed her tune and claimed the books were never meant to be taken as fact and were clearly fiction all along.

Based on a Great Big Lie is a specific type of DanBrowned. The author may make heavy use of MetaphoricallyTrue to justify himself.

** Second, it got hit by ''Literature/TheDaVinciCode'', which used the same mythology and caused an identical resurgence in public interest in it. ''The Da Vinci Code'' doesn't exactly rip off ''Holy Blood, Holy Grail'', and it in fact name-drops the book as one of Teabing's resources on the Grail.[[note]]And "Teabing", by the way, is an anagram of "Baigent", one of the authors of ''Holy Blood, Holy Grail''[[/note]] However, the authors of ''Holy Blood, Holy Grail'' amusingly saw fit to sue Creator/DanBrown for copyright infringement. They ran into a severe case of MortonsFork: if the story is real, it's not copyrightable and Brown could use it as a MacGuffin. So if they wanted to win the case, they had to [[HeadsIWinTailsYouLose admit they made it up]], and they didn't want to do that (not that it would have worked, as the idea is general enough that it's ''still'' not copyright infringement). But Dan Brown, not content with winning the case, ''himself'' started [[DanBrowned claiming it was all real]].

* ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Education_of_Little_Tree The Education of Little Tree]]'', first published in 1976 as "A True Story," was purportedly the memoirs of a boy who lived with his Cherokee grandparents in the Appalachian mountains during UsefulNotes/TheGreatDepression. It was popular enough for many high schools to put it on their reading lists. Then it was discovered that the author "Forrest Carter" was really [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asa_Earl_Carter Asa Earl Carter]], a Ku Klux Klan member and author of George Wallace's famous "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever" line. [[Series/TheOprahWinfreyShow Oprah]] had to [[OverlyLongGag pull this book from her reading lists too]], but it took her a while -- she recommended it in 1994 only to pull it from her website ''in 2007''.

* The book ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Education_of_Little_Tree The Education of Little Tree]]'' was a popular account in TheNineties of a boy living with his Cherokee grandparents in the Appalachian mountains. It was popular enough for many high schools to put it on their reading lists. Then it was discovered that the author "Forrest Carter" was really [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asa_Earl_Carter Asa Earl Carter]], a Ku Klux Klan member and author of George Wallace's famous "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever" line. [[Series/TheOprahWinfreyShow Oprah]] had to [[OverlyLongGag pull this book from her reading lists too]], but it took her a while -- she recommended it in 1994 only to pull it from her website ''in 2007''.

* Deborah Feldman's memoir ''Unorthodox'', basis for the Netflix series of the same name, has a [[http://deborah-feldman-exposed.blogspot.com/ webpage devoted to debunking it]], and a former friend of Feldman's gives her own take on things [[https://forward.com/culture/195634/deborah-feldman-isnt-telling-you-the-whole-story/ here]].

* ''Cobb'', starring Creator/TommyLeeJones, is about the last days of controversial baseball legend Ty Cobb. It's based on the account of sportswriter Al Stump, who ghotstwrote Cobb's memoir and later wrote a magazine article about Cobb's final months. As a coup de grace, Stump wrote another, much, ''much'' less complimentary biography, titled, ''Cobb: The Life and Times of the Meanest Man Who Ever Played Baseball''. In the years since, Stump's writing about Cobb has been debunked. While Cobb was ''not'' a nice person by any means, Stump describes events that never happened. [[http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-knife-in-ty-cobbs-back-65618032/ This article]]'' outlines some of the falsehoods.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Anastasia}}'': Historically, the Imperial family of Tsarist Russia was executed in 1918 during the UsefulNotes/RussianRevolution. However, a persistent urban legend lived on that the youngest daughter, Grand Duchess Anastasia, [[DidAnastasiaSurvive somehow escaped]], and several women came forward [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Duchess_Anastasia_Nikolaevna_of_Russia#False_reports_of_survival claiming to be Anastasia]]. The plot of the movie follows a scoundrel named Dimitri trying to train a young woman ([[DramaticIrony known to the audience but not herself to be the real Anastasia]]) [[PygmalionPlot how to act like royalty]] and return her to her surviving grandmother for a reward. In the years since the film, improved technology has verified that yes, Anastasia died with the rest of her family.

* ''Cobb'', starring Creator/TommyLeeJones, is about the last days of controversial baseball legend Ty Cobb. It's based on the account of sportswriter Al Stump, who ghotstwrote Cobb's memoir and later wrote a magazine article about Cobb's final months. As a coup de grace, Stump wrote another, much, ''much'' less complimentary biography, titled, ''Cobb: The Life and Times of the Meanest Man Who Ever Played Baseball''. In the years since, Stump's writing about Cobb has been debunked. Cobb was ''not'' a nice person by any means, Stump describes events that never happened. [[http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-knife-in-ty-cobbs-back-65618032/ This article]]'' outlines some of the falsehoods.