History Main / RomanAClef

* The Vassilis Vassilikos novel ''Literature/{{Z}}'' writes about the assassination of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregoris_Lambrakis a left-wing politician.]] That it is a Roman A Clef is made particularly clear in TheFilmOfTheBook, above.
* David Langford's ''The Leaky Establishment'' is a novel set in the everyday banality and grey bureaucracy of Britain's nuclear weapons research establishment. Except that Langford was a senior scientist at Aldermaston and that many other people in the know have testified to the truth of his depiction of day-to-day life in the nuclear weapons business and have even speculated on the real names of several otherwise fictional characters.
* Several of Melville's first novels - ''Typee'', ''Omoo'', and ''White-Jacket'', for example - are essentially factual accounts of his experiences.
* Many Hunter S. Thompson books - for example, ''Literature/FearAndLoathingInLasVegas'' - are novelizations for events in his life, with the names of he and his lawyer friend changed to aliases. This almost certainly helped [[ImplausibleDeniability avoid implicating himself in several felonies]] he somehow got away with.

* H.D.'s novel ''Asphodel'' contains a depiction of the literary world she moved in, with thinly-veiled portraits of such writers as Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, and D.H. Lawrence.
* ''News of a Kidnapping'' by Creator/GabrielGarciaMarquez is a novelized version of the kidnappings of reporters and other media personnel by Colombia's Medellin Cartel.
* There is evidence that ''Literature/ChronicleOfADeathForetold'' was very inspired in a real case from the fifties, with enough similarities left under the name and circumstances changes that one of the surviving characters sued the writer for benefits. García Marquez used to be a journalist for trade, so several of his novels have some degree of this in the guise of {{Historical In Joke}}s.
* ''Literature/HeartOfDarkness'' is a stab at Henry Morton Stanley.
* The Chilean book ''King Acab's Party''.
* Aldous Huxley's ''Point Counter Point''

* Although Proust denied it, ''In Search Of Lost Time'' is rife with barely hidden {{Captain Ersatz}}es of his contemporaries, such as [[CampGay Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac]].
* Harper Lee's ''Literature/ToKillAMockingbird'' is based off of her childhood as well as the Scottsboro Trials.
* Elie Weisel's ''Literature/{{Night}}'' is generally labeled a novel, although it is an account of his experiences

* ''Literature/PrimaryColors'', which used Bill Clinton's 1992 Presidential campaign as inspiration.

* In 1962, Kerry Wendell Thornley wrote a novel called ''TheIdleWarriors'' about a strange young man he had met while in the United States Marine Corps. That young man's name? ''[[WhoShotJFK Lee Harvey Oswald]]''.
* The vast majority of Creator/JackKerouac's novels are simply retellings of things that happened to him and the other Beat writers, with the names changed (and some parts taken out, as the first draft of ''Literature/OnTheRoad'' reveals). ''On The Road'' and ''Visions of Cody'' focus on his best friend Neal Cassady, ''The Dharma Bums'' is about his adventures with Gary Snyder, ''And The Hippos Were Boiled In Their Tanks'' (written with Creator/WilliamSBurroughs) was about a mutual friend who murdered a lover, and so forth. It became so well-known that the publisher insisted he use different character names in each book to prevent legal trouble for anyone involved, but [[http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1385865 they can still be decoded easily.]]
* ''Compulsion'', based on the Leopold & Loeb murder case, investigation, and trial. Told partially in [[SelfInsertFic first person]] - author Meyer Levin was a fraternity brother of Loeb's, though Leopold didn't remember him when Levin visited him in prison.

* Thomas Mann's ''Literature/{{Buddenbrooks}}'' which is, for all intents and purposes, the history of his family (with the author himself being Thomas Buddenbrook's son Hanno).
* The first novel of Chilean writer Creator/IsabelAllende, ''Literature/TheHouseOfTheSpirits'', is essentially a name-and-some-details-changed version of the history of her country and her family. This isn't the only novel of hers where she did that: ''The Infinite Plan'' is in the middle between this trope and VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory on regards the life of her second husband; and while the plot and characters of ''Literature/EvaLuna'' are original, the setting and backgrounds events are so heavily inspired by the then-recent history of Venezuela (the country Allende was living when writing the book) isn't even funny.
** This trope is also played in a very meta way in ''Literature/EvaLuna'': the soap opera Eva ends writing turns out to be the very book we're reading (which, by the way, is mostly her autobiography and the biography of her love interests), and her UsefulNotes/{{transgender}} actress friend ends interpreting herself and her transition to great success and acclaim.
* Dave Peltzer's autiobiographical trilogy did this.
* ''Literature/LesLiaisonsDangereuses'' was popularly thought to be one of these. Several keys circulated around ''ancien regime'' France. Since several of the characters aren't very nice people, part of that was simple slander (though for what it's worth, the novelist Creator/{{Stendhal}} claimed that he had met the woman who inspired Mme de Merteuil when he was a child and she was an old, old lady.)
* The Hamiltons in ''Literature/EastOfEden'' are based on Creator/JohnSteinbeck's own relatives, without even changing their names. Events drawn from Steinbeck's own boyhood are interspersed among main plot points concerning between the Trasks and Hamiltons.

* ''The Making Of Series/TheGoodies Disaster Movie'' inverted this, revolving around a totally fake story but starring real people without names changed. The back of the book did a ''Franchise/{{Dragnet}}''-parodying disclaimer: "The story you're about to hear is true. [[DocumentaryOfLies Only the facts have been changed, to make it more interesting.]]"
* University don Dr Malcolm Bradbury was also a literary novelist. The only one of his books that got anywhere near "best seller" status was ''The History Man'', a thinly autobiographical account where a MartyStu character stalks the campus of what in the 1970's would have been a "new" university. Marty Stu is young, hip, intellectual, loved by the students - reciprocated more often than is wise in the case of his female undergrads, a man who communicates History and English Lit in an exciting and fresh and unstuffy way. Naturally his less intellectually gifted, stuffier and priggish colleagues grow jealous and attempt to stifle the new and exciting talent in their midst, but Professor Marty Stu thwarts them at every turn. The book is a VERY thin disguise of the University of UsefulNotes/EastAnglia, Norwich, and some of its teaching staff - characters who can so easily be identified by anyone who was around UEA in the time period 1970-86. In fact, the BBC got to film part of their TV adaptation at UEA....
* Creator/GeorgeMacDonaldFraser's ''Literature/McAuslan'' series of books, thinly disguised slices of the author's service in the Gordon Highlanders between 1946 - 48. Real people, including "Colonel J.F.G. Gordon" have been identified in the books, as have some of the events described.
* ''Literature/TheGirls'' is a story about a 14-year-old girl in 1969 who falls into a hippie cult led by an ex-con named Russell. It is an obvious story about UsefulNotes/CharlesManson and the Manson Family. The names are changed and a few details of the murders are tweaked (in the book they take place in Marin County rather than Los Angeles) but the parallels are clear. Evie mentions that she was briefly mentioned in a book about the murders written by a poet--in RealLife poet Ed Sanders wrote ''The Family'' in 1971. Evie's grandmother was a famous actress--in RealLife Creator/AngelaLansbury's daughter was a member of the Manson Family for a little while.
* ''Literature/{{HHHH}}'' (Himmlers Hirn heisst Heydrich) is this in spades, and the novelist Laurent Binet does interrupt the novel in between for a small paragraph where he states he is not sure how ''exactly'' things went he's just trying to paint a pretty picture of how it could've gone. He doesn't know ''what'' train someone took or if anybody else was in the coupé, but he ''does'' know he took a train. Several [[UrbanLegend Urban Legends]] are [[InvokedTrope invoked]] when he literally states he's using something based on Word of Mouth.
* Many Creator/HaroldRobbins novels qualify, most notably ''The Carpetbaggers'' (inspired, in part, by Creator/HowardHughes) and ''Where Love Has Gone'' (based on the Lana Turner / Joey Stompanato scandal).
* ''La Dame aux camélias'' by Creator/AlexandreDumasFils is based on the tragically short life of the famous courtesan Marie Duplessis, whom Dumas had an affair with. The AuthorAvatar is the transparently named Armand Duval.
* ''Literature/TheFixer'' by Bernard Malamud is based on the blood-libel trial of Mendel Beilis, going so far as to lift a good number of passages from Beilis's memoir ''The Story of My Sufferings''.
* ''Junky'', or depending on the version ''Junkie'', by Creator/WilliamSBurroughs is essentially an account of his life as a drug addict and dealer, but with the names changed, though he didn't much bother with his own, changing it to William Lee, which he also used as an author pseudonym for this book.
* ''Literature/APortraitOfTheArtistAsAYoungMan'' is an account of Creator/JamesJoyce's life up to the point where he left Ireland in self-imposed exile. Joyce changed the names, using some of those of real people for characters that don't stand in for them, and shuffled around some of the scenes, but reading ''My Brother's Keeper'', a memoir by Stanislaus Joyce about how it had been like to grow up with James Joyce is like reading ''A Portrait'' all over again.
* ''Literature/BrownsPineRidgeStories'': The names of individuals who were still alive at the time of its publishing in May 2014 were changed or [[NoNameGiven omitted altogether]].

* Leif G.W. Persson's ''Literature/{{Backstrom}}'' novel ''The Story of a Crime (Mellan sommarens längtan och vinterns köld)'', and its TV adaptation ''En Pilgrims Död'', concern the assassination of a Swedish Prime Minister only known as "Pilgrim". But when clues in the narrative are decoded, it can only be referring to the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Olof_Palme#Police_conspiracy still-unsolved murder of Olaf Palme]] in 1986. Persson uses the novel to advance his theory that the murder was an inside job by far-right groupings in the Swedish police and security services.
* Icelandic author Arnaldur Indriðason wrote what begins as a detective thriller about an abused boy who in adulthood takes revenge on his abusers. The policeman dealing with the case is also dealing with a seemingly unrelated case of a blackmailer found beaten nearly to death, presumably by an affonted would-be victim. But as Detective Sigurdur Óli discovers, it all links into a high-level fraud scandal being perpetrated by greedy bankers reaching too far, one with the potential to savage the Icelandic economy. ''Svörtuloft (Black Skies)'', written in 2009, reads like a clear and concise explanation of exactly ''how'' Icelandic bankers precipitated a financial crisis and a recession which fed into a wider world recession. And why Iceland is the only country to have actually put any of its bankers into prison for greed and corruption. [[note]]In Indriðason's novel, at least ''some'' of the arrested bankers are knowingly re-investing and laundering the proceeds of child pornography. (Which ties into the murder of an old man by the adult child he prostituted as a boy). As a former investigative journalist, it is possible Indriðason is hinting at other things he knows here. [[/note]]
* Not an example itself, but the Literature/NeroWolfe novel ''Murder By The Book'' revolves the murder of a man who wrote a ''Roman a Clef'' about unscrupulous goings on around the law firm in which he worked, with the book containing various clues about various unethical things that several people who worked there would rather were kept secret...
** Also, in the Literature/NeroWolfe short story ''See No Evil/The Squirt and the Monkey'' Wolfe 'decodes' a comic strip for a clue to a murder.

* Truman Capote's unfinished ''Literature/AnsweredPrayers'' thinly disguised his society friends who had confided the details of their foibles to him. Publication of its chapters led to Capote being ostracized.
* ''Dolores'' by Jackie Susann is based on Jackie Onassis.

* Michael Korda wrote a novel called ''Queenie'' about a half-caste Indian girl who is able to pass for white, and does so in 1930s Hollywood. It's based off his aunt, Hollywood star Merle Oberon. 'Queenie' was her nickname in her youth.
* James Salter's debut novel,''The Hunters,'' was about his experiences as a Korean War jet fighter pilot in MIG Alley. He wrote under a pseudonym (his real name was James Horowitz) because in addition to detailing his own frustrations (Salter only had one kill in the war), the antagonist was based on Lieutenant James F. Low, who had nine kills to his credit in Korea. When Low discovered he was so portrayed he publicly assailed Salter's skill as a pilot and lack of a killer instinct.
* ''Literature/{{Anathem}}'' by ''Creator/NealStephenson'' this for the whole history of Western philosophy. Readers can identify individuals such as Plato , Diogenes or Bertrand Russell, or movements such as Kantian thought.
* ''Literature/ATheatricalNovel'' by Mikhail Bulgakov features numerous characters from the literary world of the 20's Russia as well as the actors and employees of the historical MAT (Moscow Art Theatre), disguised as the Independent Theatre, starting with Konstantin Stanislavski, famous due to his method.
* ''The Red Room'' by Creator/AugustStrindberg is a novel about Strindberg's poverty and suffering as a young aspiring writer. The plot is a series of scenes satirizing the hypocrisy and selfishness that Strindberg found everywhere in society. Characters in the novel are often based on specific people, but those people are completely unknown to modern readers and were only famous in Strindberg's days, so modern editions of ''The Red Room'' usually don't bother explaining who any character is based on.
* In the early 2020s former Music/GirlsGeneration member Jessica Jung wrote two young adult romance novels, ''Shine'' and its sequel ''Bright''. Both books are based on Jung's life story as a K-Pop trainee and eventually an idol. In particular, some of Bright's plot bears heavy resemblance to events from Jung's career, most notably the main character establishes a fashion line and eventually leaves her group.
* Literature/WeEatOurOwn is about the infamous TroubledProduction of ''Film/CannibalHolocaust''. The protagonist, Richard, is based on Carl Gabriel Yorke, lead actor of the real film; director Ugo Velluto is a stand-in for Ruggero Deodato; and many of the incidents that the crew faces during filming, such as [[NoAnimalsWereHarmed having to kill real animals for the production]], actually happened on set. The only wholly fictional part is the side plot involving guerrillas [[spoiler: who interfere with the shoot]].
* ''Helen Fleetwood'', a 1852 novel by Charlotte Elizabeth about child labour in London, makes it clear in the text that while Helen might not have existed by that name, her experiences most definitely did:
-->Let no-one suppose that we are going to write fiction, or to conjure up phantoms of a heated imagination, to aid the cause which we avowedly embrace. Names may be altered, [[CompositeCharacter characters may be grouped]], with some latitude of license; but not an incident shall be coined to serve the purpose, however good, so far as relates to our main subject -- that is, to the factories of this, our free and happy England. Vivid indeed, and fertile in devices must be the fancy that could invent a horror beyond the bare, every-day reality of the thing! Nay, we shall set forth nothing but what has been set forth on oath, corroberated on oath, and on oath confirmed beyond the possibility of an evasive question.

* Japanese film ''Film/VengeanceIsMine'' is about RealLife SerialKiller Akira Nishiguchi and his 78-day, five-murder crime spree, but with the character's name changed to Iwao Enoziku and other details fictionalized.
* TheFilmOfTheBook ''Film/{{Z}}'', mentioned below. During the opening credits, the text "Toute ressemblance avec des évènements réels, des personnes mortes ou vivantes n'est pas le fait du hasard" appears on the screen. The English translation: "Any similarity to actual events or persons, living or dead, is '''NOT''' accidental."
* ''Film/CitizenKane'' blends the line between ''mockumentary'' and this trope, as the character of Charles Foster Kane is loosely based on newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. Hearst did ''not'' take to the similarities kindly. Probably to keep Hearst from suing him, there is a line in the beginning of the film where one of the men who is making the documentary about the late Mr. Kane asks what makes him different from other famous newspaper magnates like Pulitzer, or Hearst. [[ExpyCoexistence Mentioning Hearst as someone other than Kane meant lawyers could plausibly argue the character wasn't the real person.]] Legalities might also be part of the reason Kane buys his ingenue an opera house, as opposed to the movie studio Hearst purchased for Creator/MarionDavies. In RealLife, millionaire Samuel Insull built the Chicago Civic Opera House in order to feature his less-than-talented wife; if Hearst had sued Welles, RKO or Herman Mankiewicz, they could have claimed that the film was based on Insull as much as anyone else.
* 1935 Creator/JeanHarlow vehicle ''Film/{{Reckless}}'', features Harlow as a torch singer who marries a rich heir, only for the heir to kill himself. Based on the RealLife story of torch singer Libby Holman's marriage to tobacco heir Zachary Reynolds, who killed himself in 1932. Libby Holman was said to be happy when this film bombed at the box office for the only flop of Jean Harlow's career.
* ''Film/TheThreeStooges'' shorts that knock at Nazi Germany use "Any resemblance to real persons or events is a crying shame."
* ''Film/PrimaryColors'' was a famous one. The novel it was based on was a thinly disguised portrait of the 1992 Democratic nomination race.
* ''Film/VelvetGoldmine''. Interesting in that it is two Roman a clef put together: that of David Bowie/the emergent glam rock scene as well as Citizen Kane (a Roman a clef itself), with bits of Oscar Wilde thrown in.

* ''Film/AlmostFamous'' is a fictionalized autobiography of writer-director Cameron Crowe's teenage years as a writer for Rolling Stone in TheSeventies, with the FakeBand Stillwater as expy of Music/LedZeppelin and other bands he encountered. (There was a band Stillwater that existed IRL, just not with the songs played during the movie.)
* ''Film/DogDayAfternoon'' was based off of a real 1972 Brooklyn bank robbery and keeps many details true to RealLife, with the notable exception of the ending, where [[spoiler:Al Pacino's character reluctantly sells his partner out in exchange of a plea bargain. Reportedly, this put his real life counterpart on bad sheets with his fellow inmates at the correctional facility he was in when they played the movie there, giving him the reputation of a rat.]]

* Creator/DavidFincher's 2007 film ''Film/{{Zodiac|2007}}'', based on the novel of the same name by Robert Graysmith. The movie uses the real names of all the people involved, and is thus actually truer to real life than the book, which used pseudonyms at the time.
* ''Film/{{Casino}}'' extensively utilizes this trope for almost all of the real-life figures in the story.

* Bob Fosse's semi-autobiographical film ''Film/AllThatJazz''; which also functions as an exercise in SelfDeprecation.

* The members of Creator/MontyPython had to invoke this when critics of their Biblical satire ''Film/MontyPythonsLifeOfBrian'' accused them of making fun of Jesus, even though Jesus and Brian are two separate characters.
* Parodied in the faux disclaimer at the start of ''Film/AnchormanTheLegendOfRonBurgundy''
--> ''"The following is based on actual events. Only the names, locations, and events have been changed."''
* ''Film/Bombshell1933'' features Creator/JeanHarlow as Lola Burns, in a satirical take on the life of Creator/ClaraBow. Lola wants to get married and retire to the desert, which Bow did in RealLife.

* ''Film/{{Badlands}}'' is a fictionalized version of the Charles Starkweather murders. Most of the changes serve to make Kit and Holly less monstrous than their Real Life counterparts. The real Starkweather didn't just kill Fugate's father, he killed her mother, stepfather, and two-year-old baby sister. The real Starkweather didn't let that rich guy in the fancy house live, but instead killed him, his wife, and the maid. Fugate mutilated the corpse of the young woman who died with her boyfriend in the storm cellar. At his trial, Starkweather claimed that Fugate killed two of the victims attributed to him (the young woman in the storm cellar, and the rich man's wife).
* An InUniverse example is a RunningGag in ''Film/TheDarjeelingLimited''; Jack's family have all read his novel and talk as if it's obvious that it's about them. Jack's automatic response is always "[[BlatantLies The characters are all fictional.]]"
* In the BasedOnATrueStory film ''Film/PointOfOrigin'' about fire investigator and serial arsonist John Orr, his wife Wanda reads his unpublished manuscript for a novel about an arsonist. She finds it creepy how similar the hero is to him. The manuscript ends up being used as evidence against him, as it contains details only the arsonist would know.
* ''Film/TheHarderTheyFall1956'': This film, in which sleazy boxing promoters build up a boxer named Toro into a heavyweight championship contender via a series of fixed fights, is a take on the controversial career of Primo Carnera, 1930s boxer. Like Toro, Carnera was a foreign import (Argentina for Toro, Italy for Carnera). Like Toro, Carnera was a giant of a man who hulked over the smaller heavyweights of that era. Like Toro, Carnera was in the clutches of shady corrupt promoters. Like Toro, Carnera won a series of boxing matches that were later said to be rigged in his favor. Like Toro, Carnera takes a brutal beating when he faces a real boxer, getting knocked down 11 times before he finally loses by TKO. And just to make it more obvious, the boxer who knocks out Toro is played by Max Baer, who knocked out Carnera in RealLife, and thus is playing a fictionalized version of himself.
* The infamous 1979 ExploitationFilm ''Film/GuyanaCrimeOfTheCentury'' (aka ''Guyana: Cult of the Damned'') was made just months after the Jonestown tragedy, and was all about Congressman "[[UsefulNotes/LeoRyan Lee O'Brien]]" and his journey to Guyana to investigate Rev. "[[UsefulNotes/JimJones James Johnson]]" and his remote jungle commune called "Johnsontown".

* Invoked in-universe in ''Film/SavingGrace'', when at the end after Grace publishes a novel based on the events in the movie, her new boyfriend dismisses the allegations that he is a criminal as described in the book, by saying he and the character in the book are different nationalities.
* ''Film/PrinceOfTheCity'' takes place in the early to late 1970's as opposed to the late 60's to early 70's, and it changes the characters' names. Other than that, it hews ''very'' closely to actual events. The book it is based upon is non-fiction, using the real names, and the contains many, many quotes and references taken directly from the book.

* It's widely implied that Temperance Brennan in ''Series/{{Bones}}'' does this, too.
* The very premise of ''Series/{{Castle|2009}}'' is that the eponymous author is trailing Detective Beckett around for inspiration. While the plots of his novels don't draw directly from the cases he "consults" on, the characters do. This is no secret in-universe. A method actress cast as Castle's protagonist Nikki Heat even got in-character by joining him in following Beckett around to learn her mannerisms. And Beckett's not even his first muse. The protagonist of one of his earlier series, Clara Striker, is based on a CIA agent he shadowed. No word on who "inspired" his one male protagonist, Derek Storm, but based on his track record, the in-universe real life version is probably walking around somewhere.
* On ''Series/BarneyMiller'', Harris's book ''Blood on the Badge'' was based on his experiences as a NY cop. He got all his colleagues to sign waivers (or whatever it's called, to allow their likenesses in the book), but he didn't bother with an AmbulanceChaser that he had occasional dealings with and who was in the book. When the lawyer found out about the book he sued Harris for defamation (or something) and bankrupted him.
%% * ''Series/AbsolutelyFabulous''
* The ''[[Series/StarTrekVoyager Voyager]]'' episode "Author Author" deconstructs this by having the Doctor create a RomanAClef holo-novel with himself as the hero and thinly-disguised versions of his shipmates as the villains.
* ''Series/{{Entourage}}'' is based on Mark Wahlberg's meteoric rise to fame and notoriety.
* ''Literature/GenerationKill'' uses this on occasion; while most of the protagonist Marines are known by their actual names, a couple of the [[TheNeidermeyer less-competent officers]] are referred to only by their nicknames. Captain America, Casey Kasem, and Encino Man are probably the best examples (they were never named in the original book either, in a specific attempt by the author to avoid having them be targets later).
* The characters of Ron and Mark on ''Series/ParksAndRecreation'' are loosely based on real people whom the creators met while researching the show. Notably, the person who inspired Ron was a woman, if you can imagine (like Ron, she was a Libertarian who didn't believe in the mission of her own job).

* The BBC adaptation of novelist/university lecturer Malcolm Bradbury's ''The History Man'' (see above).
* ''Series/TheEmpressOfChina'' covers Tang Taizong's expedition to Goguryeo using this method, by changing the names of the Korean places and persons involved.

* Spoofed in "Mathnet", a Dragnet parody about detectives that used math skills to solve crimes that ran as part of ''Series/SquareOneTV''. Every episode began with the narrator stating "the story you're about to hear is a fib, but it's short. The names are made up but the (math) problems are real."

* Spoofed on the Creator/{{CBBC}} magazine/sketch show ''On the Waterfront'' which once had a sketch with a ''Dragnet'' style voice over saying "The story you are about to see is true. Sort of true. All right, it's complete lies. The names have been changed because the original ones were silly."

* The second series of ''Ashley Blaker: 6.5 Children'', an autobiographical show about raising kids with special needs, interspersed with clips from the family, has a ColdOpen to the first epsiode with Ashley telling the kids that, to protect their privacy, this series is going to give them all new names. He then ''explains which of them is which'' on-air. After the titles, he introduces the show with "Hello, my name is still Ashley Blaker. No-one cares about ''my'' privacy." There are several moments in the episode where he forgets the pseudonyms, and one of his sons keeps arguing that, if he's getting a new name, he wants it to be Sebastian.

* ''Theatre/CyranoDeBergerac'': A strange case of a subverted RomanAClef where the names did not change combined with a VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory: According to [[http://cyranose.wikispaces.com/the+real+Cyrano this wiki about the play]]:
-->"Everything that happens in the play actually occurred in Cyrano's life [[VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory except what many now remember about the story: his unrequited love for Roxane]]."
* Max Frisch's play ''Andorra'' is quite obviously not set in Andorra, but rather in another small mountainous country, namely Frisch's homeland Switzerland.
* ''Kanadehon Chūshingura'' is a puppet show (later adapted to Kabuki) that tells the tale of UsefulNotes/The47Ronin. Due to the Shogunate's censorship laws, however, the names are changed and it is nominally set in the UsefulNotes/SengokuJidai, instead of the Edo period.
* ''Theatre/InheritTheWind'', a dramatization of the Scopes Monkey Trial with names changed and some dramatic liberties taken (in particular, Matthew Brady dying at the end of the trial, whereas William Jennings Bryan didn't die until five days after).
* Discussed in ''Theatre/TheMoonIsBlue'': Patty once had an affair with a writer, and months after breaking up with him was shocked to read a short story in ''Magazine/TheNewYorker'' written by him telling what was identical to the story of their break-up except for the names.
* ''Theatre/LongDaysJourneyIntoNight'' is based more or less on episodes from Creator/EugeneONeill's own youth. O'Neill deliberately refused to allow the play to be published or produced until after his death, probably out of worry that he would be too closely identified with the play's protagonist, Edmund Tyrone. (O'Neill had a brother named Edmund who died in infancy, like Edmund Tyrone's brother Eugene.)
* ''Theatre/LaughterOnThe23rdFloor'' is a play written by Creator/NeilSimon based on his experience as a young writer for Creator/SidCaesar.

Compare VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory, {{Biopic}}, {{Docudrama}}, AnonymousRinger, HistoricalDomainCharacter. For an inversion, see BiographyAClef, where CaptainErsatz of fictional characters and events are retrofitted to tell the life of the artist and creator.