I'm wondering if the example about Amadeus really counts. Did the creator ever try to present it as factual? I know a lot of people have challenged it for being essentially made up, but I'm pretty sure Peter Shaffer never tried to put it out there as 'a true story,' as it were, which he would need to do for it to fit this trope.
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That seems to be a lot of problems with these examples. Some people seem to think any work set in or around a historical period or event are automatically attempting to be accurate and faithful... which sort of sits at odds with the fact that this wiki has an entire section for Historical Fiction.
It seems that this trope should really be limited to works that are specifically labeled "Based on the true story" or which are claimed to be accurate tellings by their creators.
I seem to remember Peter Shaffer going out of his way to say it didn't really happen.
I seem to remember Peter Shaffer going out of his way to say it didn't really happen.
Spoiler: http://store.steampowered.com/app/303210
, which has its director as a narrator explaining that the story is from his life, but appears to be a work of fiction.
Looking at this page, it seems that there are a lot of examples of works that were never really intended to be seen as factual. Two different things are being conflated here: legitimate Based on a Great Big Lie examples wherein works are billed as being factual accounts, and works where they aren't really being billed as factual, but instead are being called such satirically or as Literary Agent Hypothesis. It seems like this trope as written should be about works that are really purported to be true stories. I am cleaning out examples.
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Removed some more examples where the "this is a true story" claim was used ironically or satirically and was never expected to be taken seriously. This may require a TRS thread, but there's no room at the moment.
The Education of Little Tree by Forrest Carter should be on here...
One TV example is cited as a Dragnet parody, in my opinion Dragnet itself is this. Inpsite of it's famous declaration of "Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent' many episodes, especially the drug related ones, where pure Urban Legends.
What exactly does "no real life examples" mean here? If it means no examples of actual works that are claimed by their creators to be based on a true story but are in fact not, restricting the examples to Show Within a Show type things, then most of the examples on the page should be deleted. On the other hand, it could just mean "no works that are presented as being things that happened to the creators themselves, in which case there are still a few examples that should be deleted.
How about Dave Pelzer's "A Child Called It" series? Even his brother called him out on it.
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Umptyscope — Mel Brook's Silent Movie — a film chock-full of impossible slapstick sight gags — had the "based on a true story" tag at the end.
Really needs cleanup, with other tropes jumbled in. This page should just be for hoaxes and frauds: fictions published with the intent to deceive, or Hollywoodization so extreme there's no truth left, not patently fictive devices like "I translated this rare old book" framing,