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Patched Together from the Headlines

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Think Ripped from the Headlines meets X Meets Y.

You've heard of this sensational story. But, as you're watching, there is an additional element. It may appear in the case of a Halfway Plot Switch, or it may have been there from the very beginning. The key element is, rather than being merely Very Loosely Based on a True Story, you also recognize this from the headlines, just a separate one. It also need not be another particular crime, but a sensationalist topic that has gained a lot of press coverage. Very likely to involve No Celebrities Were Harmed and Composite Character.

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Please note that this is not inherently negative. It can be a clever way of connecting multiple social problems in the same story, or simply a case of getting inspiration from more than on place, but it can be at its worst, evidence of If It Bleeds, It Leads happening twice alongside We're Still Relevant, Dammit!.


Examples

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    Comics 

    Film - Live Action 
  • Arlington Road: The protagonist's wife dies in a misguided bust on a compound that is essentially Ruby Ridge, which is just the inciting incident that places her husband and son as next-door neighbors to a family who commit crimes loosely based on Timothy McVeigh's.
  • Vox Lux begins with Columbine, and concludes with a beach-set shooting much like the 2015 Sousse attacks, while there's also a more than passing resemblance between washed up teen sensation turned dark and edgy adult singer Celeste and Britney Spears.
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    Literature 

  • The Handmaid's Tale essentially imagines that the Iranian revolution took place in Reagan-era America, and features expys of Phyllis Schafly and the religious right during that period, including gay conversion camps and the anti-abortion movement. Atwood has said that every draconian element of Gilead was inspired by a real-life totalitarian regime or ideology somewhere in world history.
  • Emma Donoghue has credited Elisabeth Fritzl as the inspiration for Room, but the story also bears a resemblance to the kidnapping of Jaycee Dugard, in that Ma's kidnapper is a total stranger who abducted her on the way to school, but like Elisabeth Fritzl, she lived in total captivity for years, and her child's whole life.
  • Jame Gumb in The Silence of the Lambs is a composite of Ted Bundy's Wounded Gazelle Gambit tactics to abduct women; like Gary Heidnik he keeps his victims imprisoned in a pit in his basement, and like Ed Gein, he uses their body parts for furniture and a skin suit.

    Live-Action TV 

    Video Games 

  • In L.A. Noire, every single case is based on or loosely inspired by a real-life Los Angeles case in the 1940s.

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