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1This is a thought experiment that occurs in many {{Fandom}}s -- that the work in question is a {{Dramatization}} of real events. The theory goes something like this: While the fan accepts that what they are watching is a television show (or book, etc.), they theorise that [[BasedOnATrueStory events somewhat like it occurred in real life]]. Essentially, the fan surmises that the story is a covert re-telling of real events. Fans will sometimes claim to believe this wholeheartedly, even though it is more often just WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief, or even a RunningGag that members of the fandom try to take as far as possible for the fun of it.
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3Following from this, the theory normally takes one of two routes:
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5* {{Dramatization}}: The writers of the series are demoted to the roles of literary agents or ghostwriters for the characters. They are charged to transcribe their adventures, tasked to make only such changes to actual events as are required by the practicalities of the medium and to protect the confidentiality of those involved. Which is to say, [[Franchise/{{Dragnet}} "The story you are about to hear is true: only the names have been changed to protect the innocent."]] In this version, the characters whom the story is based on essentially want their story told but don't want anyone to know that they were involved.
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7* [[RippedFromTheHeadlines Loose Retelling]]: For whatever reason, the creator has taken someone else's story and retold it in a way that won't come back to them and won't be recognised as real. This point of view is a middle-ground between supposing what we see on-screen is absolutely real and admitting that it is just fiction. It may be claimed that several stories have been mashed together and [[CompositeCharacter certain people have been merged into single characters.]]
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9The Literary Agent Hypothesis opens up a huge range of fannish possibilities. Perhaps the most important of these is that we can easily dismiss [[SeriesContinuityError small continuity errors]]: the literary agent just cocked up a bit. It also allows us to easily dismiss certain production elements, such as a SpecialEffectFailure or TheOtherDarrin, or, most especially, the TranslationConvention: it didn't "really happen that way", but it's a convenience for the production crew and an [[AcceptableBreaksFromReality Acceptable Break from Reality.]] Without this notion, it's difficult to talk about how it really happened as, strictly speaking, it didn't really happen at all. This is often invoked when a visual effect is changed by the production team: the phasers didn't really change colour, the filmmaker has just worked out a more accurate way to depict what they ''always'' looked like.
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11While this line of thought has advantages for speculation and is somewhat less silly than supposing that what we are watching is real, it walks a fine line: beyond excusing production mistakes, this hypothesis is occasionally extended to allow for FanonDiscontinuity, supposing that the parts we don't like are the bits that are outright fabrication, and therefore allowing those fans to discard those parts. Within fantasy gaming circles, this is also the distinction between "Lore" and "Canon": "lore" assumes certain facts are InUniverse historic records and beliefs, making them more easily subject to change, while "{{canon}}" is a definitive statement regarding what happened, but can be seen as constricting to creativity and vulnerable to {{Retcon}}s.
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13Similar notions are DirectLineToTheAuthor (where the ''creator'' is the one claiming the work is a {{Dramatization}} of RealLife), FictionAsCoverUp (where InUniverse fiction is published to cover up the bizarre reality), ATrueStoryInMyUniverse (where ''characters'' are claiming that a previous version of the work is a {{Dramatization}} of InUniverse events), and TheWorldAsMyth (which supposes that all fictional universes are equally real, are accessible to one another via interdimensional travel, and moreover, that our universe is included in this). Compare and contrast WatsonianVsDoylist, which takes an either/or approach.
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15!!Examples:
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17[[foldercontrol]]
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19[[folder:Anime & Manga]]
20* ''Manga/SchoolRumble'' often reads like a ''Film/BigFish'' version of the author's life. The manga that Harima works on are probably just jokes at the expense of stories the author has written, the unrealistic points of the normal story could simply be exaggerations. His boss was intimidating, so he was 20 feet tall... The same could be applied to other characters who were very tall or even changed size, such as Tennouji.
21* More than one ''Webcomic/HetaliaAxisPowers'' Fanfic speculates that Himaruya ''might'' be doing this.
22* To a degree at least two levels removed, the ''That Is It'', itself written and drawn by an author, implies that the ''Manga/KOn'' series it was inspired by was written by Yui Hirasawa herself.
23* The OELManga ''Manga/DraculaEverlasting'' has the original work by Stoker as being a case of this.
24* ''Manga/DragonBall'': Son Goku was once interviewed by Shonen Jump.
25* A surprisingly popular fan theory about the ''Literature/HaruhiSuzumiya'' series (which makes quite a large presence on our very own WildMassGuessing pages) is that the events portrayed are nothing more than an [[LifeEmbellished embellished]] retelling of author Nagaru Tanigawa's actual high-school experience, with all the supernatural happenings just added so that the series is distinguishable from all the other SliceOfLife light novels and anime series out there. Of course, there is no evidence in the novels or anime whatsoever that this speculation is correct; it was probably inspired by the facts that Tanigawa refuses to reveal the real name of his FirstPersonPeripheralNarrator, that the unnamed city in which the events take place is described in just enough detail as to unmistakably be his hometown, and that he was, in fact, in a literature club back in high school.
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28[[folder:Blogs]]
29* ''Blog/AskErnstStavroBlofeld'': [[invoked]] The classic Eon films are said to be fictionalized, but extremely close to the real events. The Daniel Craig reboot is the result of the producers being forced to make stuff up now that the real James Bond has retired and that Blofeld is in jail. As a result, it is completely wrong in terms of events and very inaccurate in terms of characters — Blofeld is particularly disgusted by his MotiveDecay.
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32[[folder:Comic Books]]
33* ''Recap/AsterixAndTheMissingScroll'' concludes with a post-scriptum that implies that the Amorican village truly existed, and the tales of ComicBook/{{Asterix}}'s adventures are based on stories passed on through the generations by the Gaulish druids who verbally 'recorded' the narrative of Caesar's campaign against the village of indomitable Gauls, which Creator/ReneGoscinny and Creator/AlbertUderzo eventually picked up.
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36[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
37* ''Film/Buffalo66'': Encouraged by WordOfGod, the events in the movie were not what "really" happened but is Billy's perception of his own actions. Considering his low self-esteem, it makes sense.
38* ''Film/TheCountryBears'': The DVD features point towards the original attraction being a result of the movie band's early success within their whole mockumentaries about the history of the band.
39* ''{{Film/Mowgli}}'': One of the characters is named John Lockwood, named after Rudyard Kipling's father. If he is meant to be the same person, it implies John [[spoiler:survived his encounter with Hathi]] and will tell the stories of Mowgli to his son Rudyard who went on to write the Mowgli stories.
40* There are, in fact, ''[[http://www.theforce.net/SWTC/index.html entire web pages]]'' cataloging and debating how far this trope should be applied to ''Franchise/StarWars''... sometimes to an inane degree (see CanonFodder).
41* ''Film/StrangerThanFiction'': Fans assume that the book Karen was working on would ultimately become this film.
42* ''Film/{{Unbreakable}}'' has the character Elijah believe that comic books are form of passing on true stories, but have been jumbled up in the marketing engine to become so fantastical that society has forgotten that super heroes really did exist. This comes from him being born with brittle bones and after suffering his whole life came to believe that there has to be a balance with someone who is NighInvulnerable.
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45[[folder:Literature]]
46* Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's ''Literature/SherlockHolmes''. Dedicated fans use the conceit that Conan Doyle was merely Dr. Watson's literary agent, from whence comes the name of this trope. So basic to the Sherlockian fandom that you can go to a meeting of Sherlockians and never hear Conan Doyle referred to by any other name than "The Literary Agent". But note that Dr. Watson himself claims this to be the case -- and who are you going to believe: a real-life doctor and veteran of the War in Afghanistan (three thousand years and counting!), or some obscure literary agent?
47* It's been suggested several times that Literature/NeroWolfe was a real person and Archie Goodwin was making cash on the side by selling their case records to Creator/RexStout(and the reason why [[AlwaysMurder Wolfe only seems to solve murders]] is because they sell better than plain old theft or corruption). This is especially appropriate since Wolfe was allegedly inspired by Sherlock Holmes and has been accused of being related to him in some way (either his actual son by Irene Adler or as his nephew by his brother Mycroft, who Wolfe greatly resembles).
48* George [=MacDonald=] Fraser's ''Literature/{{Flashman}}'' series blurs a number of lines. The title character is lifted from a Victorian novel (along with at least two supporting characters), and occasional supporting characters are lifted from other works of fiction (notably Colonel Sebastian Jack Moran and Literature/SherlockHolmes himself), but most characters are from actual recorded history (minor characters are often invented by Fraser). Despite Flashman's life story being preposterous, the conceit worked well enough that (according to a 1969 article in Time magazine), at least 10 American reviewers of the first novel thought it was an actual autobiography. Taken even further in one novel set shortly after the publication of ''Literature/TomBrownsSchoolDays'', in which Flashman is outraged by the portrayal of himself therein and sues Thomas Hughes for libel.
49* ''Literature/TheGreatGatsby'' features what would seem to be a mistake when the narrator talks about "the events of two years ago" when he's meant to be relating the story of only one year ago. However, some hypothesize that the extra year was deliberately written in to give the impression that the character spent that time writing and publishing the book.
50* The Franchise/StarWarsExpandedUniverse novel ''Literature/LukeSkywalkerAndTheShadowsOfMindor'' is speculated, based on a number of things including a rather silly villain name, to be the basis for a holothriller(movie) or its novelization, written by one of the characters for the Star Wars Universe. The [[http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Luke_Skywalker_and_the_Shadows_of_Mindor wiki]] has more info.
51* Allan Dean Foster does it in ''{{Literature/Quozl}}''. The titular aliens meet humans, first a brother, then his sister. They grow up and the sister goes to work in TV. She turns the story of meeting the Quozl into a cartoon show. Her brother and two Quozl confront her and she says she was paving the way for a future reveal. How much of that is true, is left up to the reader.
52* Some people believe that JJ Benitez's series of sci-fi time travel books ''Caballo de Troya'' are based on real events.
53* ''Literature/TheWorldOfIceAndFire'' is written in-universe by Maester Yandel, with excerpts taken from other sources.
54* ''Literature/HolmesOnTheRange'': Exaggerated In-universe. Exageratted. ''Every'' detective story published in magazines, from ''Literature/SherlockHolmes'', to ''Literature/NickCarter'' is presented as having been sold as factual memoirs (although many in fact are not, others are), with the Alingmeyer brothers publishing their own.
55* ''{{Literature/Monstrumologist}}'': Rick Yancey is only the editor/publisher. The follios were actually written by Will Henry and Yancey is reading them in the hopes of learning the truth about the man who left them behind.
56* ''Literature/TheCityOfDreamingBooks'': This is (the first part of) Optimus Yarnspinner's autobiography, which Walter Moers merely translated.
57* In a case of the creator deliberately invoking it, Creator/RobertEHoward used this trope to justify the AnachronicOrder of his Franchise/ConanTheBarbarian stories. Howard explained that he wrote them as if an aged Conan was recounting stories of his youthful adventures to him.
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60[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
61* The only plausible explanation for the CelebrityParadox in the RecursiveCanon is that ''Series/DrakeAndJosh'' is a TV show in TheVerse of ''Series/ICarly'', ''Series/{{Zoey 101}}'' and ''Series/{{Victorious}}''. When Carly and Spencer from ''Series/ICarly'' are watching ''Drake and Josh'', neither of them makes any mention that the characters on the show are identical to them. Ergo, the in-universe version of the show must not have had Megan and Crazy Steve being played by Creator/MirandaCosgrove (who plays Carly) and Jerry Trainor (who plays Spencer), but instead by two other actors. But then there's TheStinger at the end of one episode, where Drake walks in, says hi to "Megan", and asks where Josh is. Not to mention the Victorious episode where Helen comes up, she is still the little girl of a show and mentions Crazy Steve.
62* ''Series/DoctorWho'''s main fandom wiki uses this as an official editorial guideline, as the Whoniverse is a gigantic pile of contradictions even before the ExpandedUniverse gets involved, and the articles are primarily written in an in-universe style. As a result, blatantly contradictory information about a subject will be written about framed in such a way to talk about differing "accounts".
63* ''Series/GarthMarenghisDarkplace'' is presented as if "[[ShowWithinAShow Darkplace]]" was a real TV show in the 1980's that's now being re-aired. Tremendous care is taken to faithfully [[{{Retraux}} recreate the look of a low budget show from the '80s]], all the way down to using an older version of the Channel 4 logo.
64* The series finale of ''Series/Babylon5'' implies the show was a low-budget {{Docudrama}} produced by [[AlphabetNewsNetwork ISN]] several decades after the events depicted.
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67[[folder:Podcasts]]
68* In the ''Podcast/CoolKidsTable'' ''Franchise/HarryPotter''-themed game ''Hogwarts: The New Class'', almost everything from ''Harry Potter'' is real, and JK Rowling is a squib who wrote dramatizations of Harry's adventures. [=McGonagall=] was the one who recommended Creator/MaggieSmith to play her in the films. More importantly, the players are all muggle-borns whose records were lost and never got to develop their powers.
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71[[folder:Video Games]]
72* ''VideoGame/DragonAgeII'': The game you play is explicitly a story that Varric is telling Cassandra, and Varric occasionally drops into BlatantLies that Cassandra has to call out to get the real story. Because of this, it's commonly assumed that any oddities or GameplayAndStorySegregation is Varric embellishing his story in ways too minor for Cassandra to bother with. Enemies popping out of nowhere? He's just spicing up long-ish sequences where nothing really happened. Obvious magic use in mage-unfriendly Kirkwall? Look, it's more fun to say that Mage Hawke went around incinerating people with fireballs rather than bonking them with staves. His brother being a complete JerkAss while Varric himself is suspiciously patient? Varric is twisting things due to his rivalry with Bartrand, etc. Amusingly enough, ''Inquisition'' will actually have Varric called on this, as one of his readers will ask where all the enemies came from.
73* The Silicon Knights remake of ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid'', ''The Twin Snakes'', had no connection to the original studio other than Hideo Kojima's supervision and the dialogue scenes, which were made from scratch by Konami. The entirety of the original title was rebuilt from the ground up including these new scenes, and while it was the same game in heart, it was basically made with a new brand of cloth. As such, the whole story underwent a bit of a genre shift, as the original game was a very deadpan action-suspense-drama account of a mission which takes place over a short period of time and was not apparent to anyone outside of the know. The remake, on the other hand, graciously exaggerates the narrative, featuring scenes in which bullets are sliced (with a vibrating blade, no less), the protagonist super-leaps about 15 feet across a gap and onto a raised area, and a bunch of missiles explode in some cataclysmically unrealistic way. As a lot of fans of the series played both games within a half-decade time-frame, the differences were all too notable, and many have taken to break the two down, former and latter, into "how it happened" and "how it was told."
74** This theory is aided somewhat by the in-universe existence of the book ''In The Darkness of Shadow Moses'', an account of the game's events written by one of your contacts in the game. ''Twin Snakes'' could therefore either be considered a reading of the book, or even a film or game based on that account. [[spoiler:You could even argue that The Patriots had the film made with all that bullet time nonsense to make people believe it wasn't true.]]
75** Several scenes throughout the series note that soldiers are increasingly being trained to fight in Virtual Reality without any real battlefield experience. [=MGS2's=] MindScrew finale explicitly associates the non-canon game ''Metal Gear: Ghost Babel'' with this practice, implying that it exists within the MGS world as a VR scenario.
76** This is also another explanation for ''The Twin Snakes;'' it's not a movie adaptation of ''In the Darkness of Shadow Moses,'' it's the VR training of the Shadow Moses incident Raiden mentions having gone through during his training before ''Sons of Liberty.'' The reverse can also be true. Flashbacks in [=MGS4=] feature footage not from [=MGS1=], but from ''Twin Snakes'', implying that it may be the canonical version.
77* ''Franchise/TouhouProject'' fandom often postulate the idea (jokingly or not) that ZUN acquires all the necessary information to make the games and [[AllThereInTheManual supplementary material]] from [[http://safebooru.org/index.php?page=post&s=view&id=294113 conversations with his drinking buddy,]] [[RealityWarper Yukari]]. Any contradictions are therefore Yukari being deliberately misleading or ZUN forgetting a detail.
78** The various official ''Franchise/TouhouProject'' fanbooks are in-universe documents, complete with bias, apocryphal information, and outright speculation. ''[[http://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Bohemian_Archive_in_Japanese_Red Bohemian Archive in Japanese Red]]'' was written by [[IntrepidReporter Aya]] for her newspaper, ''[[http://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Perfect_Memento_in_Strict_Sense Perfect Memento in Strict Sense]]'' is the latest edition of the Gensoukyou Chronicle as written by [[PhotographicMemory Hieda no Akyu]], and the ''[[http://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/The_Grimoire_of_Marisa The Grimoire of Marisa]]'' is a spellcard encyclopedia [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin written by Marisa]].
79*** ''Perfect Memento'' is a particularly good example of this, as in the Monologue, Akyu outright admits that not only is the [[DocumentaryOfLies entire work a gross exaggeration]], but the Youkai ''actively asked her'' to make them sound scarier: ''"I got a great number of requests from youkai, such as, 'make me sound stronger', or 'what do you think of this power?'"''
80* Though it's not official, one popular theory for puzzling out ''Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda'' series's snagged-up timeline is that it ''is'' a legend, with details being changed with each retelling of the story of Ganondorf trying to take over Hyrule, becoming the monster Ganon, [[SaveThePrincess kidnapping Zelda]], and being stopped by a certain green-clad HeroicMime. Therefore, they say, there really is no single timeline -- instead, each game is a kind of remake of the previous ones.
81** This also explains why details such as the appearance of monsters and the general layout of Hyrule are not remotely consistent between subsequent games.
82** Nintendo released a book called the Hyrule Historia, which features a timeline that lists the entire chronology of the series. Turns out the timeline splits in three.
83*** Even with a split, it is possible that the official timeline showcases the route the story has evolved rather than actual chronology. ''Skyward Sword'' would be the earliest telling, and the splits would then become different avenues storytellers took with the ending of ''Ocarina of Time''.
84* ''VideoGame/APrimerOnTheCaptureAndIdentificationOfTheLittleFolk Of Myth And Legend'': InUniverse. As the opening says:
85--> ''Whilst researching pixies for my short story, "Blue", I stumbled across an ancient-looking field guide at the back of a local bookshop. It was called'' A Primer On The Capture And Identification Of The Little Folk Of Myth And Legend. ''The cover was wrecked, and half the pages had fallen out, so I have no idea who wrote it. The author comes across as somewhat... eccentric. I found it incredibly useful though - especially the flowchart section at the back. I couldn't find any record of the book online, so I took the liberty of transcribing that chapter into digital form. I hope someone finds it useful!''
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88[[folder:Web Original]]
89* ''Website/SCPFoundation'': [[invoked]] Entry [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-4128 "SCP-4128"]] is a man with SuperStrength who displayed his anomalous abilities in front of a young man named [[ComicBook/{{Superman}} Jerry Siegel (sic)]] and claimed to be an alien.
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92[[folder:Western Animation]]
93* Some technically-minded fans attempt to reconcile the exaggerated action of the ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsCloneWars'' miniseries with the films and ExpandedUniverse by explaining that the cartoons are in-universe propaganda created by [[http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Paxi_Sylo a minor character]] from the miniseries. According to the official Databank, this may actually be the case.
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96[[folder: Older]]
97* This trope has become somewhat of a MemeticMutation. People would jokingly propose "what if X is real", as though either the fictional characters were real or in some form, the story itself is real.
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