Quotes / Very Loosely Based on a True Story

Anime and Manga

Osaka: Oh, Ah see. That story about the mold aliens was all made up!
Yomi: Why would you think... it was real?
Osaka: There was a real sense of reality to it.
Tomo: Of course there was! It was based on a true story!
Yomi: No, it was not!

—Azumanga Daioh

Film—Live-Action

some of this actually happened.

—Opening title to American Hustle

Logan: (to Laura) Looks like we got ourselves an X-Men fan. You know it's all bullshit, right? Maybe a quarter of it actually happened, and not like this.

—An in-universe variant in Logan

Andy Kaufman: (as Foreign Man): Hallo. I am Andy. And I would like to tank you for coming to my movie. I wish it was better, you know, but it is so stupid. It's terrible. I do not even like it. All of the most important things in my life are changed around and mixed up for dramatic purposes. So, I decided to cut out all of the baloney. Now the movie is much shorter. In fact, this is the end of the movie. Tank you veddy much. (pause) I am not fooling. (longer pause) Goodbye. Go. (Starts playing a phonograph as credits appear)

—Man on the Moon

Literature

I reckon there's more things told than are true.
And more things true than are told.

—Rudyard Kipling, The Ballad of Minepit Shaw

All of this is true. Most of it happened.

—James McBride, Introduction page to The Good Lord Bird

Live-action TV

The whole thing is loosely based on an evening I spent with Isiah Thomas.

—Tracy, 30 Rock

We would now like to thank you for bearing with us during this story, which contains no factual basis other than the existence of elephants — and gayness.

—Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

Newspapers

Newsies, we are informed as the movie opens, is based on actual events. I do not doubt this. I am sure that shortly before the turn of the century, newsboys organized a strike against the greedy Joseph Pulitzer, and were cheered on by a dance-hall madam with a heart of gold. Nor do I doubt that the lads, some of them boys of nine or ten, hung out in saloons and bought rounds of beer while making their plan, or that the proprietor of an evil city orphanage made himself rich by collecting fees from the city. I don't even doubt that the newsboys printed their own strike paper on an old flat-bed press down in the basement of Pulitzer's building. Of course I believe. Yes, Virginia.

—Roger Ebert

Newspaper Comics

The story you are about to see is absolutely true — except for the stuff we made up to make it more interesting.

—Television, Garfield

Video Games

Micht: Heh. Once upon a time, I took care of this little runt. You could say that since then the two of us've been stuck like glue.
Toval: Yeah, yeah. You took care of me. That's sure one way to put it. Especially if you ignore the fact that you USED me and turned my life into a freakin' bestseller!
Sara: Oooh, I read that one, actually! Your youth must have been quite the roller coaster, but at least it made for some good reading! By the way, who was that sister in it? She was really larger than life.
Toval: Tch... Half the book was stuff this old geezer exaggerated or made up!
Micht: Okay, sure, I might've bent the truth a liiittle bit in the part where I died.

— The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel

Web Original

Flyboys is based on the true life story (HAHAHAHAHAHAHA)

—Miles Antwiler on Flyboys (2006)

The best thing about the biopic is that Hollywood is free to embellish the back story as much as they would like. How do you know Ray Charles didn't really walk on the moon? Were you there? No, so shut up and watch the movie.

—Adam Brown, Cracked

It looks like the casting people just waltzed into an Applebee’s and randomly picked people to play the parts as fast as they could so they could get on with their 3 martini lunch. “You’re white. You can play Billy!” I look more like Jane Mancini than the actress playing Jane Mancini does. But you know, I wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s a Lifetime movie. I want community theater wigs, acting that makes Megan Fox look like Tilda Swinton and actors who look absolutely nothing like the person they’re playing. I want that shit to be a wreck from top to bottom. And judging by that picture, it looks like the Melrose Place movie is well on its way.

—Michael K., "The cast looked exactly like the original cast and by that I mean not at all."

By the way, would it kill Hollywood to produce a biopic that isn't one extended lie? They'll mangle any biography, and not even for the sake of juicy storytelling. Hawking's second wife was investigated for physically abusing him. THAT IS NOT BORING. And yet, it gets left out. Shit, there are 5,000 amazing psycho tidbits about Chris Kyle that they left out of American Sniper. If they made a biopic about John Lennon, they'd probably change the ending and have him retiring to Florida.

—Drew Magary on The Theory of Everything, "The Hater's Guide to the 2015 Oscars"

As Jess gains popularity, he gets an offer to work for the biggest promoter in the US: James Chaney.

I know what you’re asking:

WHO?!

I guess this is supposed to be Vince, save for the fact that he looks nothing like Vince and isn’t, in fact, named 'Vince'. Jess works his way up the ladder, finally getting a championship match against the promotion’s champion…Kanyon. Don’t ask, it gets much worse.

—Wrestlecrap on The Jesse Ventura Story (1998)''

Web Video

Mike: Red Tails tells the story of Native-American fighter pilots in World War I, and has been praised by critics for its historical accuracy, memorable characters, and moving realism. So far, Red Tails has smashed box office records, even sailing past James Cameron's Avatar, and is generally loved by moviegoers and film critics alike. How's that for an intro?
Jay: Well, just like the movie itself, everything in it is wrong.

—Half in the Bag on Red Tails

...a film based on a graphic novel, based on an older film, based on ancient Greek propaganda, based on a true story.

—Honest Trailers: 300

Based on the tragedy that spawned thousands of heart-breaking true stories... comes this fake one.

—Honest Trailers: Titanic

So yes, The Three Musketeers, originally serialized in French papers in 1844, is a mostly fictional story based on a semi-fictional story based on some potentially true but probably exaggerated stories about a real life person.

—Dominic Noble, Lost In Adaptation

Western Animation

The story you are about to see is true, and by 'true', I mean false. It's all lies. But they're entertaining lies, and in the end, isn't that the real truth? The answer is no.

—Leonard Nimoy, The Simpsons, "The Springfield Files"

Real Life

God writes lousy theatre.

—Noël Coward ^note Or maybe George Bernard Shaw

It's a wonderful story. But it's not mine.

—Maria von Trapp, about The Sound of Music

"Sarah Jessica Parker smokes all the time, and I would never smoke. And she didn't contact me—she's playing my life, and she didn't bother to do any research...'I just got done telling everyone how I'm playing the worst actress in the history of film!' That wasn't nice. She didn't know me."

—Dolores Fuller on Ed Wood

"I like when they say a movie is inspired by a true story. That's kind of silly. 'Hey, Mitch, did you hear that story about that lady who drove her car into the lake with her kids and they all drowned?' 'Yeah, I did, and you know what — that inspires me to write a movie about a gorilla!'"

—Mitch Hedberg, "Do You Believe in Gosh?"

"It's like someone wrote a biography of Michael Jordan in which all the stats and scores are correct, but you come away with the impression that Michael Jordan wasn't very good at playing basketball."

—Tanner Colby on Bob Woodward's "biography" of John Belushi

Yes, Bloodsport was based on a true story. Often, those who see their lives put to screen are unhappy with how they're portrayed, with many taking legal action over claims of misrepresentation, as elements of the story get changed, dropped, or invented entirely, to fit the best narrative structure for a movie. Not so with Frank Dux, whose fictional portrayal was an almost verbatim recreation of how it all went down for real...Chong Li existed, and had blinded Dux in the final fight, albeit accidentally by flicking sweat into his eyes.

—Stuart Millard, Smoke & Mirrors and Steven Seagal

From the accounts which have reached me, the Death Star assault in Star Wars is a better fictionalization of the attack on Pearl Harbor than Pearl Harbor.

—Benjamin "Gryphon" Hutchins, Eyrie Productions Unlimited Forums

When you use the language of "fact checking" to talk about a film, I think you're sort of fundamentally misunderstanding how art works. You don't fact check Monet's Water Lilies. That's not what water lilies look like, that's what the sensation of experiencing water lilies feels like. That's the goal of the piece ... A lot of historical films sometimes feel like people reading a Wikipedia page to you onscreen, like just reciting 'and then he did that, and then he did that, and then he did this other thing' — it's like a 'Greatest Hits' compilation. We wanted the movie to be emotional and passionate. Our goal was to give you 'What does Alan Turing feel like?' 'What does his story feel like?'

—Screenwriter Graham Moore defending the historical inaccuracies in The Imitation Game

Michael Fassbender: Thomas Rongen was a Dutch football player himself, and then he ended up going to the States and coaching there. The Thomas that we bring to the screen...
Taika Waititi: ...is different.
Michael Fassbender: Is different, for sure.
Taika Waititi: We had our way with a lot of the real life characters, just to be clear. There's a documentary. Why would I make the exact same thing?

—Discussing Next Goal Wins (2023) on The Zoe Ball Breakfast Show

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