Basic Trope: The backstory we thought a character had turns out to be false.
- Straight: We hear that an evil queen named Vile Valerie got the crown because she was the only one of her many siblings to be deemed a worthy successor by her mother. It later turns out that Valerie actually committed Matricide and took the crown herself.
- Exaggerated: Nothing about Valerie's initial backstory is true. Her name is actually Lorenzo, she doesn't rule over anything, all of her siblings were superior to her, and also she's not real.
- Downplayed: Valerie really did take the crown after her mother died. However, that was solely due to natural causes. But Valerie likes to tell her servants she did it on purpose to make herself look more menacing.
- Justified: The person telling Valerie's backstory is an Unreliable Expositor.
- Inverted:
- For some reason, Valerie thinks she's the one who killed her mother to get the crown. Everyone else has to keep telling her that's not what really happened.
- Valerie's backstory that seems to be fake is actually true.
- Subverted: We think the story about Valerie killing her mother is true. But later on, Valerie's mother shows up alive and well, seemingly disproving it. That is, until it turns out to be an impostor, revealing that Valerie's initial "fake" backstory is the real deal.
- Double Subverted: That wasn't actually her mother; it was just someone who pretended to be her to uphold the lie. Valerie's true fake backstory is fake.
- Parodied: There's one tiny difference between the stories. In what we hear, Valerie killed her mother at 4:05 PM, while in reality, she did it at 4:04 PM. Everyone acts as though this invalidates the rest of the story.
- Zig-Zagged:
- Many of the details between Valerie's fake and real backstories are either changed, confirmed, left ambiguous, or never brought up.
- Valerie has a Multiple-Choice Past where some details are kept consistent and others aren't.
- Averted: Valerie's backstory is true upfront and no attempt is made to mislead it.
- Enforced: "The way we tried to set up Valerie isn't as menacing and imposing as we thought. What if we say it's not actually what happened?"
- Lampshaded: "Hey, I thought Valerie just became queen because she was a promising choice! What do you mean, that's not what happened?"
- Invoked: Valerie has falsified all the public records of her coming into the crown.
- Exploited: Valerie hides her misdeeds from the public eye under the guise of her fake backstory.
- Defied: Valerie may be a murderer, but she's not a liar. She wants the truth out no matter what.
- Discussed: "You think that's really how Valerie became royalty?"
- Conversed: "Man, the writers really put all that work into a fake backstory, huh?"
- Played for Laughs: Valerie acts horrified upon hearing that she apparently killed her mother: "I liked my mother! It's my father I hated!"
Go back to Decoy Backstory, but take it with a grain of salt.
