History Main / DirectLinetotheAuthor

* ''Film/Fargo'': Opens with a quote that reads "This is a true story. The events depicted in this film took place in Minnesota in 1987. At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed. Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred." This is, for the most part, completely untrue. The Coen Brothers did take inspirations from various True Crime stories in the writing of the script (a body being disposed of in a wood chipper, a man hiring hitmen to kill his wife) but the events, plot, characters, and settings were all completely fictional. Joel Coen went on to say "The story was completely made up. Or, as we like to say, the only thing true about it is that it's a story."

* In Franchise/DocSavage novels, there are a couple of references to Monk and/or Patricia writing up details of Doc's adventures and passing them on to the man who writes the novels (i.e. Lester Dent a.k.a. 'Kenneth Robeson'). Doc himself is not very impressed by Dent's literary style.

** In his novels ''Tarzan Alive'' and ''Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life,'' he claims that Edgar Rice Burroughs and Lester Dent were just the biographers of Literature/{{Tarzan}} and Franchise/DocSavage. He claims that their books were highly fictionalized and sensationalized and presents somewhat more mundane, but still sensational versions of the stories that correct various factual inaccuracies and continuity errors. For example, he explains that whenever Tarzan encountered a lion, a plains-dwelling animal, in the jungle, it was actually a leopard and Burroughs exaggerated because lions were bigger and more dangerous looking. He also tries to explain away both characters' great strength and intelligence by claiming their [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wold_Newton_family ancestors were irradiated by a meteor]] and that other relatives of Tarzan and Savage whose ancestors were exposed to that radiation include [[Literature/PrideAndPrejudice Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam Darcy]], Literature/SherlockHolmes, Literature/FuManchu, and Literature/BulldogDrummond.

* ''Film/JakeSpeed'': This film has a premise where pulp novel heroes like Mack Bolan (from ''Literature/TheExecutioner''), Remo Williams (from ''Literature/TheDestroyer''), the title character of ''Franchise/DocSavage'', and the eponymous Jake Speed are all real; it's the ''authors'' that are fictional. (They use the proceeds from the novels to fund their adventures.) The hero even has a ghostwriter for a sidekick.

** ''Literature/PercyJacksonAndTheOlympians'': Riordan is a Senior Scribe at Camp Half-Blood, publishing the books as works of fiction. Even so, Percy takes time in the first book to warn the readers that if they think they're a half blood, to shut out that feeling and remember that it's just fiction. This continues in the rest of ''Literature.TheCampHalfBloodSeries'' (''Literature/TheHeroesOfOlympus'', ''Literature/TheTrialsOfApollo'', etc.).

* Some later publications of ''Literature/ArtemisFowl'' add a "[[Creator/EoinColfer this man]] is not my biographer" preword from Artemis... despite the epilogue already presenting the book as an LEP psych report.

* At the denouement of ''Sherlock Holmes vs. Jack the Ripper'', it's strongly implied that Watson ''made up'' the "Hound of the Baskervilles" case, to cover up the fact that he and Holmes had actually been in London at the time, where they'd solved the Whitechapel murders. [[spoiler: The in-game killer was Jewish, and Holmes knew that preventing an anti-Semitic bloodbath by outraged Londoners was more important than revealing the truth, so he had the man locked up in secret.]]

* ''Literature/SherlockHolmesAndDoctorWasNot'': In "The Adventure of the Madman", author Nancy Holder claims the story is transcribed from phongraph cylinders found in the effects of one of her ancestors, Mary Holder, who is a major character in the story.

** There was an episode where the League travels to a different, [[UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfComicBooks Golden Age]]-like world featuring some villains and superheroes that resemble those of Franchise/GreenLantern's favorite childhood series. After some initial confusion, ComicBook/MartianManhunter posits the authors wrote under "some sort of psychic link to this world" unknowingly. After finding the graves of his heroes and hidden wreckage from war, he finds that the reason the series was canceled was that [[CrapsackWorld the bad guys won]] and most of the rest of the world is [[spoiler:all just an illusion created by the villain.]]
** The "psychic link between comic author and parallel world" paradigm was also used in the [[Comicbook/TheFlash Flash]] story "Flash of Two Worlds", where Barry Allen vibrates fast enough to wind up on Earth-2, where Jay Garrick is the Flash instead of him. Barry knew Jay from the comics he read as a kid, therefore he reaches the same conclusion.

* The ''Literature/LorienLegacies'' series takes this UpToEleven: the alleged 'author' of the books is a character - Pittacus Lore, the most prominent of the Elders - and the actual authors, James Frey and Jobie Hughes, get little to no credit (they are referenced in ''I Am Number Four'', where 'James Hughes' and 'Jobie Frey' are potential pseudonyms for Four's next life). However, the immersion is shattered somewhat in ''Fall Of Five'', where Malcolm confirms that the character of Pittacus Lore is dead.

* In ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles'', it's heavily alluded to that Bram Stoker wrote ''{{Dracula}}'' on a commission from rival supernatural factions to educate people on the nature and weaknesses of Black Court vampires. The result is that the Black Court is nearly extinct in the present day. And, in one of the recent "extra" stories, it's pointed out that the ''Necronomicon'' was actually a Grimoire of great power -- until the White Council found it and published it all over the place, and by making it available to every minor mage and wannabe in existence, effectively nullified the power by spreading the effect over the entire world.
** In an interview with the author, a fan asked whether H. P. Lovecraft was onto something in the same way. The answer - yes. OhCrap.
** The rulebooks for [[TabletopGame/TheDresdenFiles the tabletop RPG]] are presented as Billy's attempt to recreate Stoker's success by publishing an all-purpose guide to the supernatural in the ''guise'' of a tabletop role-playing game. It's an early draft, so it also has commentary from Harry and Bob scribbled in the margins (much of it telling him to cut top-secret information that Harry doesn't want getting out).
** The books themselves are implied to be Harry narrating his case files to, well, the reader. The RPG book lampshades this by pointing out that Harry names all his major cases with two word titles that have the same character length (''Storm Front, Fool Moon, Grave Peril,'' etc.).

* ''[[Theatre/AVeryPotterMusical A Very Potter Senior Year]]'' posits that [[Literature/HarryPotter the Harry Potter books]] were published by Gilderoy Lockhart, who got Hermione to write "essays" about Harry's real adventures, did some creative editing, and traveled back in time to publish them before the events took place.
-->'''Lockhart:''' I had to rearrange everything! I changed Voldemort, of course. He's arguably Harry's main villain, but in your story, he's defeated in year two. That's moronic! I made sure he was in it throughout, and only gets beat at the end climax!

[[folder:Myths & Religion]]
* Inverted in ''Literature/TrueHistory'' which, while written to sound like other works of its day, was intended by its writer Lucian of Samosata as a satire about them; he declared it was about "things I have neither seen nor experienced nor heard tell of from anybody else; things, what is more, that do not in fact exist and could not ever exist at all. So my readers must not believe a word I say." Yes, the first "none of this is real" disclaimer.
[[/folder]]

* The storyteller from ''Webcomic/GirlGenius'' is all but stated to be Phil Foglio, and the series is him re-telling what he knows of Agatha's rise to power. Though he also admits in-story that he's been exposed to so many mind-altering chemicals and energies that he can't [[UnreliableNarrator be sure exactly what happened]]. The novelization confirms that the Storyteller is supposed to be Phil Foglio.

** ''Literature/PercyJacksonAndTheOlympians'': Riordan is a Senior Scribe at Camp Half-Blood, publishing the books as works of fiction. Even so, Percy takes time in the first book to warn the readers that if they think they're a half blood, to shut out that feeling and remember that it's just fiction. This continues in ''Literature/TheHeroesOfOlympus''.

* ''Creator/MichaelChabon Presents: The Incredible History of the Escapist'' is a collection of stories pastiching various comic trends, based on the fictional comics described in his novel ''Literature/TheAdventuresOfKavalierAndClay''. According to Chabon's introduction, however, it's a collection of long-forgotten vintage comic books that he assembled while researching the very true story of Joe Kavalier and Sam Clay and the entirely real comics they created.

* ''Literature/TheSagaOfDarrenShan'': it is canon in author Darren Shan's books that he assembled his stories from [[spoiler:diaries sent to him by his younger alternate self in an aborted timeline where]] he became a vampire. It [[MakesSenseInContext makes more sense in context]]... kind of. Essentially, [[spoiler:Darren altered the timeline so that he never became a vampire, thus resetting himself to the first book. His diaries chronicling the series survived and were sent to the alternate Darren, who is was already a writer.]] Thus the books actually happened, only [[spoiler: to someone else, an innocent bystander roped into Darren's "tragic" (but heartwarming) life, forced to reenact his exact actions... see the series' Fridge page for deconstruction]].

* ''Literature/TheSagaOfDarrenShan'': it is canon in Creator/DarrenShan's books that he assembled his stories from [[spoiler:diaries sent to him by his younger alternate self in an aborted timeline where]] he became a vampire. It [[MakesSenseInContext makes more sense in context]]... kinda. Essentially, [[spoiler:Darren altered the timeline so the events of the series didn't happen, thus resetting himself to how he was at the beginning of the first book. Somehow his diaries chronicling the series survived and were sent to the new Darren, who is an author...]] Thus the books actually happened. [[spoiler:In another timestream]].

* ''Series/RoseRed'': There was once a fake website purporting to belong to Joyce Reardon and Beaumont University, giving information about the Rose Red project and implying she was a real person. Similarly, the "Making Of" segment which aired on TV prior to the miniseries itself made use of actors to play the "real" Joyce and Steve, told the whole story of Rose Red as if it were real history, and included segments from real-life historians and Seattle public figures acting as if Rose Red were real. Finally, the ''Diary of Ellen Rimbauer'' itself, though [[IncrediblyLamePun ghost-written]] by Ridley Pearson (for a time hints within the text and cagey comments from people at Hyperion made fans think Tabitha King, Stephen's wife, was the writer), had no author indicated when published, instead having a foreword written by its supposed editor Joyce Reardon after the book was 'found' in an estate sale. All in all, a rather complex and well-done effort, if fairly obvious as a fake.

* Lewis Padgett's short story "Literature/MimsyWereTheBorogoves" applies this trope retroactively to another famous series of books. In the story, a scientist millions of years in Earth's future sends two boxes of strange toys back through time, where they are discovered by children. The main plot centers on the box that lands in 1942 (contemporary time when the story was published); Scott and Emma, a brother and sister, find the toys and begin to display TroublingUnchildlikeBehavior as they influence them. The toys compel the pair to build a strange machine, but they can't quite figure out how to make it work because they lack a key equation to activate it. The solution is presented when readers discover where the other box landed--"the latter half of the nineteenth century." There, an unnamed little girl hums a poem to herself, to the delight of a nearby adult taking care of her. He remarks that he will put the rhyme in one of the books he is writing, which are based on the stories the girl's "magical toys" tell her, although he has to change them immensely to make them understandable to others. The girl then refers to him as "[[Creator/LewisCarroll Uncle Charles]]," revealing her identity as Alice Liddell--the poem is "Jabberwocky," and the stories are ''Literature/AlicesAdventuresInWonderland''. Alice herself is too old to be fully affected by the toys, but the books, and especially "Jabberwocky," are "the way out" and provide Emma and Scott the equation they need to activate their machine and vanish through time and space.

* ''{{Webcomic/Unsounded}}'': Letters written by a researcher who found Duane's journal are inserted here and there, implying that the comic is (possibly) pieced together from his and other accounts.

[[/folder]]