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Based on a Great Big Lie

539 statements
101 feature instances
164 referencing feature instances

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Based on a Great Big Lie	label	Based on a Great Big Lie
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Based on a Great Big Lie	comment	Basing a book on a true story is a handy way to get some publicity for a project. But hey! Why not save time and effort by cutting out the middleman? Just come up with your own, entirely fictional story and tell everyone that it actually happened. Who's going to find out? Everyone who visits the IMDb, for a start. The best-case scenario is that you get a wry chuckle from your fans and a nod in a couple of papers. A worse-case scenario is that some folks get together and sue you for selling the story to them under false pretenses. The worst case scenario is when your supposedly true story is actually very close to someone else's actual true story, and you end up losing every penny of your profits in a humiliating lawsuit because nobody believes your sudden recantation. Best solution? Just say that it's fiction all along. The net result of this trope is that viewers have to be wary of works that present themselves as a true story, as the creators may only be doing so because it makes people pay attention more. And in works that are combinations of real and fictional events, it is easy to get confused about what actually happened and is possible in real life and what is just artistic license. This may be a major source of Common Knowledge; if it happened in a story that really took place, it must be true, right? Based on a Great Big Lie is a specific type of Falsely Advertised Accuracy. The author may make heavy use of Metaphorically True to justify himself. Compare Very Loosely Based on a True Story (largely fiction but based on a kernel of truth), Direct Line to the Author, Mockumentary (pure fiction presenting itself as nonfiction) and Literary Agent Hypothesis (fan speculation that a work is an interpretation of something that "really" happened). Contrast Roman Ã Clef. See Self-Made Myth for fictional characters who do this.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_11f35fc3	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_11f35fc3	comment	Used in-universe in Northwestward, from The Further Adventures of Batman: its premise is that Bruce Wayne was an actual person assisting the police by solving crimes, creating the basis of the comic book character Batman. That is only true within the fictional world of the Black Widowers.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_139db449	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_139db449	comment	Shadow People claims to be based off of real-life events, including "archival footage" with different actors contrasted against the "dramatized" events of the rest of the film, and ending with an "in memoriam" statement about the protagonist, Charlie Crowe. None of it is real.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_13bb4300	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_13bb4300	comment	The opening credits to The Wicker Man (1973) thank Lord Summerisle and the people of his island for their cooperation in depicting their religion. There was no such lord, no such island, and no Scottish community practicing any such religion in the twentieth century.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_14941c5a	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_14941c5a	comment	House Hunters on HGTV, which purports to show people looking for new homes, in fact often shows people who have already closed on their new homes, and sometimes shows them visiting homes that aren't actually for sale. Most of the house-hunting imitators that have sprung up in the wake of House Hunters are similarly Based On a Great Big Lie. You can see for yourself: note how rarely a realtor's "For Sale" sign will be seen in front of a property that is supposedly for sale. (A woman who appeared on House Hunters International twice wrote about how the show is totally faked.)
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_14af8b03	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_14af8b03	comment	Les Liaisons Dangereuses has two prefaces, both written by the author. The author's preface is called the "Editor's" and claims all the letters in the book are true; he's just edited out boring bits. The publisher's preface warns that it's all false, but in a deliberately ridiculous way — the "publisher" claims the story obviously can't be true because nobody in this country, in this oh-so-enlightened era, would ever behave as these characters do. (So the real message is that yes, the story itself is fiction, but it's a satire on how people really do act.)
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_1786e1ea	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_1786e1ea	comment	The Emerald Forest is supposedly based on an honest-to-God account of an American engineer whose son was kidnapped and Raised by Natives. Thanks to a little digging by Harlan Ellison, it was exposed as bearing about as much resemblance to the facts as Pocahontas has to its real-life origin.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_19328272	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_19328272	comment	Scorpion is based on the true story of real life Walter O'Brien, a.k.a. genius hacker Scorpion with an IQ of 197, who started a company at the age of 13 and helped catch the Boston Marathon bombers and prevent a nuclear meltdown. Or more accurately, it is based on the stories made up by Walter O'Brien, because not one of those is actually true. It's worth noting that his claim of hacking NASA when he was 13 is both false and patently impossible. Ireland wasn't connected to the internet yet in 1988 - it would be three more years before there was any internet connections in the country, let alone available to rural famers. Also, Homeland Security wouldn't exist for another 14-ish years and couldn't possibly have been the agency to respond even if this did happen.note Although he claimed the NSA in an interview, the series showed Homeland Security, which is a deeply baffling decision that does nothing for the credibility of the claim either way.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_1ed3cac7	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_1ed3cac7	comment	An American Haunting, based on a book by the same name about the Bell Witch of Tennessee, has problems. Lots of them. There's been no historical evidence found to indicate John Bell ever sexually abused his daughter, just for starters.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_1f5ca475	comment	King Arthur (2004) is billed as the true historical story of King Arthur, but instead is little more than a "remix" of the popular Arthurian Legend with some garbled bits of Late Roman/Early Medieval history. Whether there was a historical Arthur at all remains a matter of fierce historical debate, and there are several potential candidates for the basis of the character, none of which bear more than a surface similarity to the movie's Arthur. It's not exactly a success as a "true historical story" either — the entire movie is one long historical inaccuracy. Heck, the title character himself lived (if he lived) in the century after the events of the movie are supposed to take place. Though it does deserve props for being one of the few films about King Arthur to be set around the same time period instead of in the high middle ages that happen almost 900 years after King Arthur would've lived.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_22532d78	comment	The 2014-2017 TV remake of Fargo, like the film it was based on, also claimed to be based on true stories, despite the four stories being set in the same region of the country in different decades, with the first season having such a similar-but-markedly-different plot that it and the movie they can't both have happened without someone mentioning it. The series follows the Coens' admission that the events of the film were fictional, so the boilerplate is meant to be taken with a grain of salt.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_248a0d14	comment	Lie to Me inverts this with a disclaimer at the beginning of each episode, stating that the events and characters of the series are entirely false. While nothing like any of the episodes has ever happened in real life, Lightman is based off of a real-life person, Dr. Paul Ekman. The disclaimer may be to avoid legal wrangling, given the show's tendencies. For example, Lightman may declare that he knows another character is lying by the way that person touches his hand to his lips — then, as the show goes to commercial, we are shown news photos of real-life people (mostly politicians) performing the same gesture.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_249ada68	comment	Chyna released an autobiography in 2001 titled If Only They Knew. Her former trainer Killer Kowalski immediately slammed it as inaccurate, calling her "the biggest liar". X-Pac had similar sentiments. April Hunter likewise had good things to say about Chyna, but called some of her descriptions in the book impossible to match with the facts. It would later become a recurring issue for her to have a Self-Serving Memory when recalling stories of her WWE career.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_24e3c086	comment	The Iceman is based on the prison confessions of Richard Kuklinski, who told a number of colorful tales about being a prolific mob hitman responsible for hundreds of murders using a variety of bizarre methods. The problem is that almost none of Kuklinski's claims (including having killed Jimmy Hoffa) have been verified by any actual evidence, and some are outright refuted. He was almost certainly a lowly psychopath who liked attention rather than a legendary assassin.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_28a0e7d9	comment	The Possession is said to be based on a true story of a little girl who was possessed by the dibbuk, a Hebrew demon that lived in a cursed box. There's one glaring problem: no little girl ever owned the box, and the guy who bought it was an adult male (who claimed the demon made him sever his fingers and those of his roommates).
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_2d940749	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_2d940749	comment	beatmania IIDX has several songs supposedly composed by a "Virkato Wakhmaninov" (1873-1974), and the video production comments for one of his songs, "Piano Concerto no. 1 'Anti-Ares'", speak of Wakhmaninov as if he existed. That said, there are several hints in the song production comments that Wakhmaninov is in reality an alias of in-house composer Jun Wakita rather than an actual person: The first three letters of his surname are an allusion to "wac", Wakita's most commonly-used alias. For "Anti-Ares", it's mentioned that Wakhmaninov spoke of "an arrangement for a keyboard of seven keys", obviously referring to the 7-key controller used for IIDX. It's mentioned that the video for "Anti-Ares" was done with permission from Wakhmaninov, even though he had been dead for 30 years, assuming he existed, at the time of the song's inclusion in IIDX. The video production comments even lampshade this:
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_304de1c6	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_304de1c6	comment	The horror movie The Strangers, about a masked trio of psychopaths who stalk, terrorize, and eventually murder a couple in a vacation home, is supposedly based on a true story, but it was primarily inspired by an incident from the director's childhood in which a pair of "strangers" came to the door and were later found to be breaking into houses if no one was home when they knocked. It also took cues from an actual set of unsolved murders, but they were absolutely nothing like the plot of the movie — while staying in a cabin in a resort town, a woman in her thirties, two of her children, and a friend of one of the children were mysteriously bludgeoned and stabbed to death.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_31e0f4e6	comment	Weird: The Al Yankovic Story does this deliberately, as a parody of music biopics that play fast and loose with history. It would probably be quicker to list the film's similarities to the life of the real "Weird Al" Yankovic than it would to list the many blatantly false deviations, such as Weird Al having an affair with Madonna, getting into a gunfight with Pablo Escobar, and being assassinated at an award show in 1985.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_32070c3c	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_32070c3c	comment	Much of Knute Rockne, All American takes the Very Loosely Based on a True Story approach that was common to biopics of the era. Surprisingly, the film's iconic "win one for the Gipper" halftime speech is actually more or less accurate, being based on a real speech that Rockne gave his team at halftime of a 1928 game against Army. The problem is that Rockne based the speech on a Motivational Lie; he wasn't even there when Gipp died, and Gipp never said any such thing. This makes the film's depiction of Gipp's death highly dramatized, although not quite intentionally so.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_33155c18	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_33155c18	comment	The original 1974 Texas Chainsaw Massacre was supposedly based on a true story, but no such "massacre" ever took place. Leatherface is allegedly loosely based on the killerbecause technically he can't be called a "serial killer", as the FBI's definition requires a person to kill at least three people (with a "cooldown" period between the murders), and Gein had only two murders that they could prove in court. Ed Gein, but there's isn't that much linking the two. The director mentions in the DVD commentary that the dates on which the fictional events supposedly occur correspond somewhat with the dates that they were filming the movie.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_35696e16	comment	My Week with Marilyn: Majority opinion holds that the writer of the book made up the story of his quasi-affair with Marilyn Monroe. Most tellingly, he made no mention of it in a 1995 book about the filming of The Prince and the Showgirl, not telling the story until he wrote another book five years later.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_38a8873c	comment	Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates famously contains the Story Within a Story about "The Hero of Haarlem", a little Dutch boy who heroically saved a town by using his finger to stop a hole in the dike. Not only does it have no basis in history, it's not even from Dutch folklore, being a purely literary invention, and isn't recognized in the Netherlands at all (except a few fanciful statues put up to benefit the tourists who kept asking about it). A few moments' reflection might have demonstrated that any leak small enough to be plugged with a child's finger wouldn't have seriously threatened the town anyway. (In 1953 when a man really did stop a threatening breach in a dike, he used an entire cargo ship and tons of sandbags.)
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_3b34143f	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_3b34143f	comment	Harry Potter has an in-universe twist on this in the second book. Gilderoy Lockhart has written several self-serving autobiographies about his impossibly heroic escapades, which seem to be a pack of lies if only because Lockhart is totally incompetent at everything we see him doing. But the stories are true — except for the part about Lockhart being the hero. He based them on various real incidents and wiped the memories of the real heroes, making it impossible to prove that he was lying. Karma bites Lockhart in the butt when he tries to wipe Harry and Ron's memories and the spell backfires and hits him instead.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_3e44e6dd	comment	The 2012 film The Devil Inside, a horror film about demonic possession, is said to be based on actual events. The film even ends on a cliffhanger saying the murders that took place in the film are still under investigation and directing viewers to a website for more information. The home video release bills itself as "the movie The Vatican doesn't want you to see." (Neither do quite a few movie critics, who considered it a candidate for worst film of the year.)
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_3ec5b7a6	comment	House of Leaves plays with this, with the framing manuscript claiming to be a critical analysis of a documentary that the editor of the manuscript assures us doesn't really exist, about a photojournalist who documents footage of his very strange house.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_41adfb9c	comment	Hidalgo is based on the actual stories of Frank Hopkins — but Hopkins is known to history as a con man and quite possibly a pathological liar. Hopkins was not part Native American, did not ever work in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, never visited the Middle East (and certainly was never in a gigantic race in the Middle East, which no one can prove even happened in the first place). On some level, however, you've got to admire the guy for inventing a story that Hollywood thought was worthy of a movie, given that so many have tried and failed.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_420172c7	comment	Catch Me If You Can: A lot of the movie embroiders Abagnale's memoir—the fraught relationship with his father is fictional, Brenda is a composite of two different people described in Abagnale's book, etc. But later research has shown that most everything that the movie did take from Abagnale's book, in fact the whole book, is essentially made up. Abagnale never impersonated a doctor. He never took the bar exam in Louisiana or practiced law. He didn't escape custody by climbing out of an airplane toilet—that's physically impossible. He never worked for the FBI as a consultant in fighting check forgery. While he did sometimes wear a pilot's uniform as part of his check kiting, he did not use it to hitch plane rides around the world, but rather to perform "medical examination" on college students. And he was convicted of forging not up to $4 million in checks, but only $1,448.60. Wikipedia has much more about this. Perhaps the biggest example is that Abagnale is depicted pulling off most or all of his scams in The '60s when he's under 21. He was actually incarcerated at Great Meadow Prison in Comstock, New York, for three years from 1965 at age 17 until December 1968. He was then arrested for theft in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in February 1969, where he was sentenced to probation that June and fled to Europe, where he was arrested in September for theft, sentenced to several months in prison in France and Sweden and deported back to the United States in June 1970.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_43296442	comment	Horace Walpole originally passed off The Castle of Otranto as an antique manuscript penned by an Italian clergyman. At the time he wrote it, supernatural tales were regarded as embarrassing products of ignorance, not entertainment, and Walpole probably feared for his credibility if his name were attached to literature's first Gothic novel.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_43d5d8e7	comment	Pippin begins with the Leading Player imploring the audience to "cast all previous misconceptions aside" of Pippin's life, because "what you are about to see is the true life story of Pippin." Even discounting the blatant No Fourth Wall unrealism, there are very few things in the show that loosely correspond to anything that happened in the Real Life Carolingian Empire.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_43e4ba78	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_43e4ba78	comment	Drowned God: Conspiracy of the Ages has an unusual variation in that the supposed "true story" the game was based on was admitted by the game's creator Richard Horne AKA Harry Horse from the start to be a forgery, which itself was a fake manuscript posing as the work of a real 19th-century poet named Richard Horne (no relation) claiming to have secret knowledge involving alien activity on Earth. Horse had created the forgery as a young starving artist in the early 80's, and after his hoax was discovered, he held onto the story in the manuscript for the game because he most likely genuinely believed in the ideas that led to the game's story.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_476eb43	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_476eb43	comment	Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red combines this with a Dub-Induced Plotline Change: it includes a supposed rewrite of Stesichoros' Geryoneis that is almost entirely Carson's original work, prefaced by an essay designed to mislead the reader into thinking it's a straight translation. It's full of obvious anachronisms (hot plates, weekends, glass-bottomed boats), so a certain amount of playfulness must be in effect.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_48ed41c8	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_48ed41c8	comment	Pocahontas is a bit of a strange case. This and most other works about Pocahontas are based on the writings of John Smith, which are commonly believed to be true. However, research into Smith's other works quickly reveals this to be bunk because Smith had a habit of portraying himself as an entirely unrealistic demi-god of manliness and combat skill who found success, riches, and sex wherever he went. It was also problematic in that Smith claimed Pocahontas was only about 12 years old when they met. Disney eventually decided to go this route on purpose, throwing out their research and making the film into a "legend" rather than a true story.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_518a1ae5	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_518a1ae5	comment	The sci-fi/horror movie The Fourth Kind has, as its tagline, the claim that the movie is "based on actual case studies," and even claims to include actual footage of alien abductions. Guess what? It's a hoax.
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_518a1ae5	featureApplicability	1.0
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_518b056d	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_518b056d	comment	Second, it got hit by The Da Vinci Code, which used the same mythology and caused an identical resurgence in public interest in it. The Da Vinci Code doesn't exactly rip off Holy Blood, Holy Grail, and it in fact name-drops the book as one of Teabing's resources on the Grail.note And "Teabing", by the way, is an anagram of "Baigent", one of the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail However, the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail amusingly saw fit to sue Dan Brown for copyright infringement. They ran into a severe case of Morton's Fork: if the story is real, it's not copyrightable and Brown could use it as a MacGuffin. So if they wanted to win the case, they had to admit they made it up, and they didn't want to do that (not that it would have worked, as the idea is general enough that it's still not copyright infringement). But Dan Brown, not content with winning the case, himself started claiming it was all real.
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_518b056d	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Da Vinci Code	hasFeature	Based on a Great Big Lie / int_518b056d
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_5670021	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_5670021	comment	A member of the production crew of Hoarders warns that the subjects are encouraged to make their places look messier. The production people even bring in prop trash to strew around. On close inspection you can see the same items (e.g., stuffed animals) turning up in house after house.
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_5670021	featureApplicability	1.0
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_585e50f5	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_585e50f5	comment	The majority of the film JFK is entirely made up, with the only real events being the assassination and the Clay Shaw trial (which was an affront to justice). Perhaps the worst made-up element was the crucial "smoke from the grassy knoll"; none of the rifles used would emit any visible smoke, so Oliver Stone had to have a special-effects man blow smoke out of a bellows in order to get that effect (and many commentators would joke about him literally "blowing smoke"). Most of the film's facts are taken from the writings of Jim Garrison, who is also the central character in the film. Almost every expert on the Kennedy assassination — even those who believe in a conspiracy — believe Garrison to be unreliable at best and insane at worst.
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_585e50f5	featureApplicability	1.0
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_594b85e4	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_594b85e4	comment	Roots, Alex Haley's history of his family, was a bestseller and adapted into a hugely popular TV miniseries. While Haley's book was classified as a novel and much of the plot was Haley's invention, he claimed that he had in fact traced his ancestry to a Mandinka warrior named Kunta Kinte who was kidnapped by slavers and sold into slavery in the American South when he was seventeen years old. As The Other Wiki notes, most of the follow-up research contradicts Haley's story. There is little basis in fact for Haley's account of his history prior to his great-great-grandfather "Chicken George" Lea.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_60c0bfcf	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_60c0bfcf	comment	"Who Killed Who?" opens with a live-action presenter describing the following film as a true crime story "condensed from authentic criminal records." Considering the cartoon itself consists of the usual outlandish sight gags and fourth-wall-breaking humor of Avery's other films, no one would have taken this seriously.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_61052082	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_61052082	comment	The Pentagon Wars was based on a book written by Colonel James Burton recounting his involvement in the development of the M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle. The film depicts the Bradley development being rife with corruption and mismanagement. In particular that the Army knew they were pushing out a vehicle with poor protection and actively covering it up from the public and Burton himself bravely blew the whistle. In reality, the Bradley program was completed well under budget and met its design goals, and Burton's main dispute was with the exact testing process he wanted done (firing at a Bradley with weapons it wasn't designed to protect against), which would have added additional cost to the program with little actual benefit. It's widely accepted that Burton embellished or straight up lied about experiences to push his "Reformer" agenda or sabotage the Bradley project in revenge for one of his own proposed projects getting rejected.
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_61052082	featureApplicability	1.0
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_6300d32a	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_6300d32a	comment	300 is another example of a "historical" film claiming to be accurate but which doesn't even depict events which are certain to have happened and is instead based on mythology. But this one is trickier to pin down because of its Unreliable Narrator and the sense that it's the kind of exaggeration the historical Spartans themselves would have told and appreciated. Those involved with the project (including Zack Snyder and Frank Miller) are inconsistent as to whether this is supposed to be an accurate depiction of historical events, a dramatization of those events, or an accurate historical depiction of a dramatization of those events.
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300	hasFeature	Based on a Great Big Lie / int_6300d32a
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_6633a097	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_6633a097	comment	One Woody Woodpecker cartoon (a parody of Dragnet) begins with, "The story you are about to see is a big fat lie. No names have been changed to protect anyone."
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_6633a097	featureApplicability	1.0
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_6633a097	featureConfidence	1.0
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_6825287d	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_6825287d	comment	Mormon youth counselor Beatrice Sparks made a habit of writing books that purport to be real diaries of teenagers who deal with Very Special Problems, like AIDS (It Happened to Nancy) or teen pregnancy (Annie's Baby). They were all invented from whole cloth, but not before they were taken as true by terrified parents trying to save their children from the world around them. Among her most famous: Go Ask Alice, which addresses the evils of drugs, offers the compelling tale of a young suburban girl who is sucked into the world of drugs and eventually ends up dead. It's quoted so often that it had to be debunked by Snopes. Jay's Journal, a botched attempt at this that got Sparks sued by the real Jay's family. Jay was a real boy named Alden Barrett, who suffered from depression and committed suicide in 1971. His parents, themselves devout Mormons who believed Go Ask Alice was real, asked Sparks to publish Alden's diary. Only a fragment of the book actually comes from Alden's diary; the rest was a fabricated story about how he was lured into Satanism and ultimately killed himself for that reason. However, despite the bulk of the diary being entirely fictional, Sparks either left in or failed to sufficiently alter many identifying details, making it trivially easy to figure out that "Jay" was Barrett. This led her readers (not taking kindly to Satanism) to desecrate his grave, and his family was torn apart over whether he really did fall into Satanism. Jay's brother left Mormonism entirely and wrote A Place in the Sun about the whole ordeal (later adapted into a rock opera).
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_6825287d	featureApplicability	1.0
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Very Special Episode	hasFeature	Based on a Great Big Lie / int_6825287d
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_72262aee	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_72262aee	comment	In the Avatar: The Last Airbender episode "The Great Divide", two tribes have been fighting for over a century over a crime one of their ancestors apparently committed against the other. Aang defuses the conflict by revealing that the whole event was a misunderstanding of a dispute their ancestors had while playing a silly ball game. But by the end of the episode, Aang reveals to his friends he made the whole thing up to stop the tribes from fighting.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_727259ac	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_727259ac	comment	The Ren & Stimpy Show episode "Son of Stimpy" (a.k.a. "Stimpy's First Fart") began with a voiceover declaring that "this is a true story that we made up".
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_727259ac	featureApplicability	1.0
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_727259ac	featureConfidence	1.0
The Ren & Stimpy Show	hasFeature	Based on a Great Big Lie / int_727259ac
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_75584731	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_75584731	comment	Tropic Thunder viciously parodies this as part of a larger satire on Oscar Bait movies, with the Movie Within a Movie being based on the falsified memoirs of a Phony Veteran who is so devoted to upholding the lie that he wears fake prostheses in public to make it seem like he has hooks for hands.
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_75584731	featureApplicability	1.0
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_75584731	featureConfidence	1.0
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_7a4d8a39	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_7a4d8a39	comment	The Things They Carried, is, at first, a war story about a platoon in Vietnam. But halfway through, the author admits that he made certain details more gory to make things more interesting, and moves beyond Vietnam — the entire book was more about what happened in the past and keeping memories alive than Vietnam itself.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_7b0ba742	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_7b0ba742	comment	The Boat That Rocked is actually an amalgamation of different stories; "Radio Rock" could refer to several different outfits that broadcast from a boat outside British waters. The one actually called "Radio Rock" did annoy the British government, but it also had a license and thus technically wasn't a "pirate" radio station at all. The others were actual pirate radio stations, in particular Radio Caroline, which was infamous not only for broadcasting offshore from a boat without a license, but also for its ability to weather some astonishing mishaps, from being raided by British and Dutch authorities to their boats sinking (likely an inspiration for the film's climax, although Radio Caroline's boat sank in 1980, 13 years after the film is set). The film's ending is a bit more dramatic than the real one, when the government basically banned anyone from supplying them and waited for the crew to give up and come ashore, when they were promptly arrested. All this being said, former pirate DJs have said that the film does capture the flavour of shipboard life quite well.
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_7b0ba742	featureApplicability	1.0
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_7d26256a	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_7d26256a	comment	The Pushcart War claimed it was based on a true story. While certain events are implausible (like attacking trucks with pea-shooters), it's theoretically possible... until you realize that the copyright date is before the time that the events in the book supposedly take place. This is deliberate, as the book was presented as a history written long after the events described therein. Interestingly, its publishers update the "historical" time frame with each new edition. It was originally published in 1964 describing events in 1975. Later releases said 1986 and 1998. The most recent version says 2029.
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_7d26256a	featureApplicability	1.0
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_7d8ba0a	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_7d8ba0a	comment	Panfilov's 28 Men is a drama about the legendary stand of Panfilov's 28 Guardsmen, a squad of foot soldiers who heroically held up the German advance towards Moscow for a whole day, taking out 18 German tanks for the loss of 22 of their men. It's an inspiring story and an exciting movie, and it was believed to be true in Russia for decades—there is a grand stone memorial to the men at the spot where it happened. It was completely made up, a bit of wartime propaganda that caught on and became legend.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_80f0f61b	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_80f0f61b	comment	At the start, Armed and Dangerous says that it was based on a true story. Considering that this game includes a tea-drinking robot, miniature black holes, and a land shark gun (among many other things), this was probably not supposed to be taken seriously.
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_80f0f61b	featureApplicability	1.0
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_82066ce7	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_82066ce7	comment	The Haunting in Connecticut purports to be based on a true story. However, Ray Garton, the author of the book on which the film (and a Discovery Channel documentary) was based, has admitted that the "true story" was a fabrication. He has said that none of the family members could get their story straight, and that they were dealing with alcoholism and drug addiction at the time, which may have affected their judgment. He brought his concerns to Ed and Lorraine Warren, the case investigators and self-professed "demonologists" (who, not coincidentally, also investigated the Amityville case); they reportedly told him to "make it up and make it scary."
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_82066ce7	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Haunting in Connecticut	hasFeature	Based on a Great Big Lie / int_82066ce7
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_83b628ad	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_83b628ad	comment	Fatal Frame was localized with Based on a true story as a tagline on the cover. The creators themselves have said that any mansion that urban legends believe to be haunted in Japan was not based on or inspired Himuro Mansion.
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_83b628ad	featureApplicability	1.0
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_83b628ad	featureConfidence	1.0
Fatal Frame (Video Game)	hasFeature	Based on a Great Big Lie / int_83b628ad
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_86f058b4	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_86f058b4	comment	Bloodsport is based on Frank Dux's claims of having won a secret underground fighting competition. There is simply no evidence that any part of Dux's outrageous story actually took place. Even the trophy he claims to have won was purchased by him at a local shop. The film ends with a bunch of "records" that Dux supposedly achieved during his bloodsport career, which in a world educated by Mixed Martial Arts now look fairly absurd. Some aspects of Dux's story aren't even possible, such as his claim that he defeated 52 other fighters (in fights "to the death") to win the tournament, which would imply a single-elimination tournament with 4.5 quadrillion participants (i.e. more human beings than have ever existed). Several people have also pointed out that the story bears quite a few similarities to the equally false claims of Count Dante, aka John Keenan, who in the 60â€™s and early 70â€™s professed to win a tournament to the death no one can prove existed.
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_86f058b4	featureApplicability	1.0
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_88d897d1	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_88d897d1	comment	The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a notorious antisemitic tract claiming to be the records of a meeting by a Jewish cabal plotting to Take Over the World. In reality, it was written by the Okhrana, the Secret Police of Tsarist Russia, as a tool for starting pogroms and otherwise convincing people that anything other than reactionary Christian monarchy was directly authored by Satan. It was later carried into western Europe and the US by White Russians in the wake of Red October, and popularized in the Anglosphere by Henry Ford who serialized the Protocols in his newspaper The Dearborn Independent. It was exposed as a forgery by The Times of London in 1921, who revealed that large sections of the book were cribbed wholesale from a 19th-century anti-Napoleonic tract by Maurice Joly. Even so, it was made part of the school curriculum in Nazi Germany, and anti-Semites to this day cite it as "evidence" of a Jewish conspiracy. Not to mention that several Middle Eastern regimes and leaders have endorsed the Protocols as authentic (despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary).
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_8dbc88c4	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_8dbc88c4	comment	Square One TV's Mathnet (a Dragnet parody) always started with the same narration: "The story you're about to see is a fib, but it's short. The names are made up, but the problems are real."
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_8dbc88c4	featureApplicability	1.0
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Square One TV	hasFeature	Based on a Great Big Lie / int_8dbc88c4
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_8e6a5adf	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_8e6a5adf	comment	Saturday Night Fever was based on Nik Cohn's article "Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night", about Cohn witnessing a fight outside the 2001 Odyssey disco. 20 years after the article's publication, Cohn admitted it was complete fiction.
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_8e6a5adf	featureApplicability	1.0
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_8e72406b	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_8e72406b	comment	The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love is, despite its title, a fictional film. It's a bit confusing; the "incredibly true" part refers to an in-universe play which, according to the characters' descriptions, is about a lesbian romance that's based on a true story (but in-universe).
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_911abba4	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_911abba4	comment	1000 Ways to Die ping-pongs between this and Very Loosely Based on a True Story, with occasional (and still very heavily exaggerated) flirtations with truth.
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_911abba4	featureApplicability	1.0
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_911abba4	featureConfidence	1.0
1000 Ways to Die	hasFeature	Based on a Great Big Lie / int_911abba4
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_9442b4aa	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_9442b4aa	comment	Virginia City starts with a peculiar title card saying that while the characters are fictional, the story of 73 Confederate sympathizers trying to smuggle a bunch of gold out of Nevada is true. It isn't.
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_9442b4aa	featureApplicability	1.0
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_9b9e565c	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_9b9e565c	comment	The Irishman by Martin Scorsese is based on the book I Heard You Paint Houses about one Frank Sheeran. Sheeran claimed he was a Mafia hitman who, among other things, participated in the murder of Jimmy Hoffa. The publishers still claimed the book was a true story as of the film's release in 2019, but most historians believe Sheeran's stories to be fabrications.
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_9b9e565c	featureApplicability	1.0
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_9d969ea0	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_9d969ea0	comment	Lakeview Cabin Collection gives one at the beginning of Part IV, the entire episode being a Shout-Out to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_9d969ea0	featureApplicability	1.0
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_9d969ea0	featureConfidence	1.0
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_a27254cb	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_a27254cb	comment	The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain bills itself as being based on a true story. It's actually based on a local legend, which has since been totally discredited. The film even ends with a shot of the modern residents of the village rebuilding the mound that had supposedly been built by their ancestors.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_a6658fee	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_a6658fee	comment	The film adaptation of The Hunt for Red October inverts this by providing a disclaimer at the beginning of the film to the effect that "According to repeated statements by both Soviet and American governments, nothing of what you are about to see ever happened." The audience is quite pointedly left to draw their own conclusions. For the record, it didn't happen.
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_a6658fee	featureApplicability	1.0
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_a6658fee	featureConfidence	1.0
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_a77c0823	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_a77c0823	comment	From Hell: Played with, as the series is based on one of the myriad theories behind the murders of Jack the Ripper — specifically, a variation on the theory that the murders were committed by a high-ranking member of Victorian society, on the orders of Queen Victoria herself, to prevent the victims from revealing the existence of an illegitimate heir to the throne. Alan Moore has publicly acknowledged that he doesn't believe a single word of this particular theory, but it worked for the story he wanted to tell.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_acafd1dc	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_acafd1dc	comment	This led to a different movie getting this treatment — Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter was based on a story that a Japanese woman, who was found dead in the area in 2001, believed the movie was real and was looking for a large sum of money that a character had hidden (and which was lost when he was murdered), but got lost herself and froze to death. In fact, she almost certainly committed suicide, and the treasure-hunter story was likely a misinterpretation of a conversation she had had with a police officer.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_ae4ad177	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_ae4ad177	comment	Cool Runnings purports to be the true story of the 1988 Jamaican Olympic bobsled team. Nothing in the film actually happened, except that pushcart races provided the inspiration for creating a bobsled team, and footage of the real team's runs are shown on television.
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_ae4ad177	featureApplicability	1.0
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Cool Runnings	hasFeature	Based on a Great Big Lie / int_ae4ad177
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_b339fe6a	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_b339fe6a	comment	Abduction of Eden was based on an account of Chong Kim being kidnapped and sold into prostitution but afterwards, it was found to be completely made up.
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_b339fe6a	featureApplicability	1.0
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_b3693c26	comment	Cobb, starring Tommy Lee Jones, is about the last days of controversial baseball legend Ty Cobb. It's based on the account of sportswriter Al Stump, who ghotstwrote Cobb's memoir and later wrote a magazine article about Cobb's final months. As a coup de grace, Stump wrote another, much, much less complimentary biography, titled, Cobb: The Life and Times of the Meanest Man Who Ever Played Baseball. In the years since, Stump's writing about Cobb has been debunked. While Cobb was not a nice person by any means, Stump describes events that never happened. This article outlines some of the falsehoods.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_b6018a9	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_b6018a9	comment	Lorenzo Carcaterra's Sleepers (which was also made into a film) purported to be a nonfiction account of how he and three of his friends were sent to reform school for a year, where they were viciously abused by the guards. A decade later, two of the friends killed one of the guards, but they were acquitted of murder because they were prosecuted by the third friend, who intentionally lost the case with the help of a false alibi provided by a priest. However, there's no evidence the story happened; Carcaterra conveniently claims everything was covered up (like his school records, which show that he was never sent to reform school or absent for any appreciable length of time) or deliberately obscured (responding to claims that there was no case in Manhattan whose details correspond to Carcaterra's by claiming it didn't take place in Manhattan).
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_b611aafc	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_b611aafc	comment	The opening of Ain't No Fun (Waiting 'Round to Be a Millionaire) by AC/DC features the following tongue-in-cheek disclaimer:
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_b7970591	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_b7970591	comment	Anonymous (2011) is centrally about the idea that William Shakespeare did not actually write his plays, and they were instead written by Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford—the overwhelming consensus from Shakespearian scholars is that he did indeed write his plays, there is significant documented evidence that he wrote his plays, and the idea that de Vere wrote them has little evidence beyond simply comparing events in the plays to de Vere's life and assuming them to be autobiographical. Even if one does subscribe to the Oxfordian view and take the film as a Secret History, most of the actual historical details are just flat-out wrong. Most notably, the depiction of Elizabeth I as not only not a virgin, but having carried countless bastard children to term, is baffling even on its face—how would she have hidden the pregnancies?
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_b81d3754	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_b81d3754	comment	Blaze of Glory: The miniseries has an In-Universe variant, with the dime novels based on the fictional gunfighters of the story, which look suspiciously like the covers of comic books published by Marvel Comics. Reno Jones of the Gunhawks spends a few panels Retconning them out of existence.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_b9bb181b	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_b9bb181b	comment	The 1927 documentary Chang takes a similar approach, with the Lao of northern Thailand acting out a story crafted by the filmmakers. Incidents like the tiger attack and the herd of elephants trampling the village were staged for the cameras — the elephants were even tamed and had to be coaxed into trampling the natives' huts.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_b9e26f05	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_b9e26f05	comment	Fargo has gone all over the place: The film explicitly claims in a blurb at the beginning that it's based on a true story. It isn't. The Coen Brothers (after changing their story a couple of times) eventually tried to weasel their way out of it by saying that everything in the movie was meant to be interpreted as fiction — including the blurb that claimed it was based on a true story. On the DVD extras, the Coens also claimed that they were afraid nobody would believe the crazy plot unless they said it was a true story. The Coens' most repeated lie was that the film was based on a 1987 news story about a businessman who planned on having his wife fake-kidnapped for ransom money, but the police caught him before he could bring his plan to fruition, and the Coens got curious and asked themselves, "what if he had succeeded?" This led to a different movie getting this treatment — Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter was based on a story that a Japanese woman, who was found dead in the area in 2001, believed the movie was real and was looking for a large sum of money that a character had hidden (and which was lost when he was murdered), but got lost herself and froze to death. In fact, she almost certainly committed suicide, and the treasure-hunter story was likely a misinterpretation of a conversation she had had with a police officer.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_ba23ce1f	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_ba23ce1f	comment	The 1977 film Julia, supposedly "based on a true story," was based on Lillian Hellman's memoir Pentimento, which was, to put it kindly, Very Loosely Based on a True Story in which Hellman didn't actually play a part. In 1979, Mary McCarthy, long Hellman's adversary, said of Hellman that "every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'."
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_bcadd7cb	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_bcadd7cb	comment	Warhammer40000 Meta Invoked by Games Workshop. Every piece of officially published media is canon, but canon doesn't necessarily mean true. This means that it doesn't matter if novels contradict each other as the stories could just as well have been "Imperial Propaganda" or been told by unreliable narrators. In-Universe; anything that involves Alpharius/Omegon is this trope by default. His/their backstory as an example has been told three times and everyone has later been stated to have been false. The modern day Imperium itself is based on an absolutely colossal lie. Namely, the deification of their Founder of the Kingdom, the God-Emperor Of Mankind. The same Emperor who, when he was still healthy and ambulatory, enforced state atheism very strictly indeed and would react about the same way to the modern day Imperial cult that he did with anyone else trying to worship him: ordering them to stop and stamping them out by force if they didn't. That said, given how the Warp works and the 10,000 years of constant worship that's been directed the Emperor's way, it's likely not a lie anymore.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_be9ad0b7	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_be9ad0b7	comment	Australian novelist Joan Lindsay suggests in the prologue that her 1970 novel Picnic at Hanging Rock (best known outside of Australia for the Peter Weir-directed film version) was based on actual police reports of a mysterious disappearance from 1900. But Valentine's Day that year was a Wednesday, not a Saturday, and no one has been able to find any evidence of the events depicted, or even that the girls' school in the story existed (it may have been based on Lindsay's real school). Some people have recalled the disappearances at Hanging Rock being part of the local folklore (true or otherwise), but researchers have been unable to find anything printed about it before 1970. In this case, it's not only the author claiming the book is based on true reports, it's also the audience cooking up urban legends about it being true.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_c102dd35	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_c102dd35	comment	Nanook of the North, Robert Flaherty's 1922 portrait of life among the Inuit of the northern Hudson Bay, is considered the first documentary film. However, virtually everything that happens in the film was staged in accordance with a story Flaherty drew up himself. "Nanook" was really named Allakariallak, the two women shown in the movie were not really his wives, and he died of tuberculosis rather than starvation. The film portrayed an Eskimo Land life in which the Inuit wore parkas and hunted with spears, when the real Inuit had been wearing Western clothing and hunting with firearms for many years. And the famous scene of Nanook fighting a seal through a hole in the ice was totally staged — other Inuit were pulling on the fishing line off-screen, and they had a dead seal on hand for the last shot in the scene.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_c57a2155	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_c57a2155	comment	The British TV series The Only Way Is Essex (think the English Jersey Shore) at least is honest and describes the show as "real people in modified situations, saying unscripted lines but in a structured way". In other words they admit that what they're actually showing is amateur improv.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_c67be877	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_c67be877	comment	The Flashman books are all supposedly based on rediscovered memoirs written by the title character. This device (coupled with the impressive amount of research George MacDonald Fraser put into every volume) led more than one critic to believe they were the real deal. The first book in particular fooled American reviewers, who were totally unfamiliar with Fraser and the Victorian novel Flashman was based on (Tom Brown's School Days).
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_ca08598f	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_ca08598f	comment	Used in-universe in season five The Wire: Scott Templeton, junior journalist at the Baltimore Sun, is prone to embellishing his claims just enough to avoid detection, partly to avoid layoffs and partly to earn a better job at a bigger paper. Only his editor really suspects him, but nobody believes him. Then Scott goes big and pretends he has been contacted by a serial killer who has been targeting homeless men in the city, making him nationally famous and the darling of upper management. The twist, however, is that the killer himself doesn't exist, and even Scott doesn't know that — he was made up by rogue homicide detective Jimmy McNulty, who's trying to fabricate a lurid story to secure funding for the chronically broke police department. McNulty, pleasantly surprised by this turn of events, happily calls Scott pretending to be the killer and plants more information (seriously freaking him out in the process), knowing Scott can't call him on it because his earlier lie would be exposed as well. In the end, Scott angles for a Pulitzer prize, and Gus airs his suspicions to the paper's management, which loses him his job.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_cb2ee5b1	comment	The Men Who Stare at Goats begins with an assurance that "more of the film is true than we would believe." Which part? Sure, there was a remote viewing project in the U.S. military around the late '70s and early '80s, but it didn't work. The founder of the New Earth Army was also responsible for the Army's slogan "Be all that you can be." The movie is actually a fictionalization of a fairly well-documented journalistic book. The assurance is probably a joke, given that it is immediately followed by a very straight-laced military man calmly and deliberately stepping away from his desk and running head-on into a wall for no apparent reason.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_cc458088	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_cc458088	comment	Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County was billed as being based on actual events, against the wishes of director Dean Alioto, thanks to a strange turn of events and the Executive Meddling that followed. It's Alioto's remake of his little-seen 1989 horror film called UFO Abduction — little-seen because the master copy of the film, along with most VHS tapes and promotional materials, were destroyed in a warehouse fire. The few VHS tapes were circulated to small video stores across the U.S., and in the early 1990s, they resurfaced in ufologist circles (with the beginning and end credits removed) purporting to be an account of an actual Alien Abduction that came to be called "the McPherson Tape". Programs like Unsolved Mysteries and Encounters started to contact Alioto, trying to get him to admit to being part of the cover-up; the executives essentially wanted to capitalize on this publicity and told Alioto to say in the remake that the abduction was real.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_cc4bfb29	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_cc4bfb29	comment	Many Caso Cerrado cases are unrealistic. One episode involves a woman whose daughter caught a STD from a Rainbow Party. "Rainbow Parties" are an urban legend.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_cc8fd137	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_cc8fd137	comment	The Last Samurai is based on an odd amalgamation of the historical Satsuma Rebellion and the part played in the earlier Boshin War by French officer Jules Brunet. It also borrows heavily from other fictional works, such as Dances with Wolves and James Clavell's Shogun. The "guns vs. swords" plot is particularly ironic, considering that even the real "last samurai" of the Satsuma Rebellion openly embraced modern weaponry for the tactical advantages it offered.note For a period of time prior to the unification of Japan, samurai (and the peasant soldiers serving under their command) used guns more prolifically than any other group on Earth. Any reluctance to use guns was simply to reserve them for serious crises. The decline of the samurai class in real life came about in a much slower and less dramatic fashion and there were certainly no embittered American Civil War heroes involved.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_ce8dc8bb	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_ce8dc8bb	comment	The Amityville Horror (1979) is supposedly based on a true story documented in the book The Amityville Horror. However, the book's author admitted that it was at least somewhat exaggerated. Debate still rages as to which parts of the book really happened.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_cecc425c	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_cecc425c	comment	Go Ask Alice, which addresses the evils of drugs, offers the compelling tale of a young suburban girl who is sucked into the world of drugs and eventually ends up dead. It's quoted so often that it had to be debunked by Snopes.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_d063ec3b	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_d063ec3b	comment	The Blair Witch Project did this with its marketing campaign, claiming that the three actors were all killed by the eponymous Blair Witch, and that the footage detailed their final days. It helped that the actors use their real names in the movie, as if they're filming a real documentary on the subject. However, no such Blair Witch has ever existed, and all three actors were perfectly fine. The actors were told to deliberately not attend screenings or events related to the movie to make it seem like they were dead. It worked for a while, until the film became a massive success — it made its minimal budget back almost ten thousand times over, and it still holds the world record for the highest cost-to-profit margin in movie history. After that, the actors couldn't resist the temptation to start appearing on late-night talk shows.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_d24c730	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_d24c730	comment	The epilogue of The Toolbox Murders states the film was based on a true story, though near the end of the credits the usual "this was fiction, all resemblance to anything real is just coincidental" disclaimer is shown.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_d3b72b58	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_d3b72b58	comment	Enemy at the Gates presents an interesting example: Jude Law's sniper character was a real person, and, surprisingly, so was the Love Interest played by Rachel Weisz. But the same can't be said of the German sniper and the main plot. Soviet officials insisted the story was true, but recent reappraisals of the available evidence have led historians to strongly suspect that the whole thing was just a load of made-up wartime propaganda. The villain of the piece is a Bavarian aristocrat sniper named Erwin Konig; in reality, no conclusive evidence has been found that Konig ever even existed, let alone that he fought a sniper duel in Stalingrad.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_d60cbd5a	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_d60cbd5a	comment	Amadeus was based on an apocryphal tale claiming Salieri, a contemporary of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, went mad late in his life and confessed to killing Mozart. It is a matter of historical record that Mozart died during a long period of illness. The film accepts both of these stories as true; Salieri is painted as a jealous competitor to Mozart who hated the man but adored his genius, and he "kills" him by encouraging a naive Mozart suffering from illness to make more music. The filmmakers did this intentionally, finding it great fodder for a story. However, the film is forced to stretch the truth to reach this result; Mozart and Salieri may have been professional rivals, but they respected each other's skills, and even collaborated to produce a cantata in 1785. The film shows Salieri working on the Requiem Mass with Mozart, when there is no evidence that he did so (it is unknown how much of the piece Mozart wrote, but it was finished by Franz Xavier SÃ¼ssmayer); it also implies that Salieri was the anonymous patron who commissioned the Requiem Mass, when we now know that it was Count Franz von Walsegg.note Interestingly, the real-life scenario is also plausible in the film; it never shows Salieri as the patron or even that he set it up. All it shows is that Salieri was not above exploiting the situation to ensure that the Requiem Mass was written. In any event, the writers were willing to do the research on everything else in the movie.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_d8adbd6b	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_d8adbd6b	comment	The Conjuring Universe makes heroes out of Ed and Lorraine Warren, a pair of self-described "demonologists" with Lorraine claiming to be a full-on psychic who can sense ghosts. While the Warrens were real and most of the films are based on real cases of supposed hauntings that the Warrens were (to various degrees) involved in, most of the actual plot points are completely fictional, including the Warrens being the primary investigators of the Enfield Poltergeist (They were turned away by the family) and especially the historical facts involving the Annabelle doll and its origins. In fact, aside from the fact that the Warrens were real people who really did investigate hauntings, and the cases in the films are all at least based on actual claims (and the families' names are kept the same), practically everything else is made up. But, as you'll see below with A Haunting in Connecticut, the Warrens were not above making things up.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_dbb31d3c	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_dbb31d3c	comment	Tex Avery MGM Cartoons: The short Drag-Along Droopy begins with the disclaimer: "This is an absolutely authentic account of the grazing land battles of the sheep and cattle wars of the early West. We know this story to be true. It was told to us by — ''A TEXAN''!" "Who Killed Who?" opens with a live-action presenter describing the following film as a true crime story "condensed from authentic criminal records." Considering the cartoon itself consists of the usual outlandish sight gags and fourth-wall-breaking humor of Avery's other films, no one would have taken this seriously.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_e214a513	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_e214a513	comment	Anastasia: Historically, the Imperial family of Tsarist Russia was executed in 1918 during the Russian Revolution. However, a persistent urban legend lived on that the youngest daughter, Grand Duchess Anastasia, somehow escaped, and several women came forward claiming to be Anastasia. The plot of the movie follows a scoundrel named Dimitri trying to train a young woman (known to the audience but not herself to be the real Anastasia) how to act like royalty and return her to her surviving grandmother for a reward. In the years since the film, improved technology has verified that yes, Anastasia died with the rest of her family. Notably, they took great care to market the film in Russia as a "historical Fairy Tale".
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_e4e48895	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_e4e48895	comment	Deborah Feldman's memoir Unorthodox, basis for the Netflix series of the same name, has a webpage devoted to debunking it, and a former friend of Feldman's gives her own take on things here.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_e9887932	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_e9887932	comment	Cannibal Holocaust: Predating The Blair Witch Project, its early days advertised it as "real footage". This time, though, people were so outraged that the director was arrested and charged with murder. He had to admit in court that it was all a great big lie. In order to prove this, he had to get the actors to show up in court to prove that they were alive and well; this was a difficult task because the actors' contracts with the studio required them to keep away from the public eye for a full year to fuel the illusion that they were dead. Much legal wrangling ensued. Within the film itself, the documentary crew were a particularly brutal case of this. They would often report on the violence of the natives they were filming to give the image of them being savages... by performing violent actions on the natives and then claiming they did it (up to and including rape and murder). This leads to Bullying a Dragon.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_ea2a312c	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_ea2a312c	comment	4Closed claimed to be based on a story of someone living in a hidden room of a foreclosed house, but no such scenario is known to have happened.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_effb1af9	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_effb1af9	comment	Lucian's True History is a very old example of this. Lucian was annoyed at how many contemporary historians would report just about anything as fact, so he wrote a "true" story that was as ludicrous as he could imagine. The clue to it not being what it says it is is the fact that it is the earliest known story about a trip to the moon. It ends with a promise that the protagonist's further adventures will be described in a sequel, which is also a lie.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_f0aae232	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_f0aae232	comment	Ruggero Leoncavallo's opera Pagliacci is probably based on a lie. Leoncavallo said it was based on a court case that his father, who was a judge, presided over, and further claimed that he had the documentation to prove it. However, no such document, or indeed any corroborating evidence, has ever been found. It is now generally believed that Leoncavallo played the "true story" card to evade the charge of plagiarism.
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Based on a Great Big Lie / int_f0aae232	featureConfidence	1.0
Pagliacci (Theatre)	hasFeature	Based on a Great Big Lie / int_f0aae232
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_f77df22a	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_f77df22a	comment	Picnic at Hanging Rock is an adaptation of a novel that tried its very best to pretend it was true.
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_f77df22a	featureApplicability	1.0
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_f77df22a	featureConfidence	1.0
Picnic at Hanging Rock	hasFeature	Based on a Great Big Lie / int_f77df22a
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_f7e3fb2d	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_f7e3fb2d	comment	Tengai Makyou is purportedly based on a book about Japan named Far East of Eden, by a European author named P. H. Chada. He and his writings never existed, although they are genuinely inspired by the largely- to entirely-fictitious accounts of life in Japan that used to be popular in the West. This one is very tongue-in-cheek and not at all intended to be taken seriously, though.
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_f7e3fb2d	featureApplicability	1.0
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_f7e3fb2d	featureConfidence	1.0
Tengai Makyou (Video Game)	hasFeature	Based on a Great Big Lie / int_f7e3fb2d
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_fba4aca0	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_fba4aca0	comment	The Last Podcast on the Left brings up to trope in regards to The Iceman in their series on Richard Kuklinski. Marcus Parks is particularly incensed, as he feels the movie portrays Kuklinski as a far more sympathetic figure than the man was in real life, going so far as to compare it to a hypothetical movie about John Wayne Gacy focusing exclusively on his party clown hobby.
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_fba4aca0	featureApplicability	1.0
Based on a Great Big Lie / int_fba4aca0	featureConfidence	1.0
The Last Podcast on the Left (Podcast)	hasFeature	Based on a Great Big Lie / int_fba4aca0

The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

Based on a Great Big Lie	processingCategory2	Based on a True Story
Based on a Great Big Lie	processingCategory2	Consistency
Based on a Great Big Lie	processingCategory2	The Shades of Fact
Blaze of Glory (Comic Book) / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
House of M (Comic Book) / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Rebel Dead Revenge (Comic Book) / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
The Five Fists of Science (Comic Book)	seeAlso	Based on a Great Big Lie
The Transformers: Robots in Disguise (Comic Book) / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Wanted (Comic Book) / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
From Hell / Comicbook / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Eugenesis	seeAlso	Based on a Great Big Lie
A Very Scary Thought (Fanfic) / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
The Simpsons: Team L.A.S.H. (Fanfic) / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
A Haunted House / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Abduction of Eden / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Battle of Moscow / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Blood Cult / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Boxcar Bertha / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Cannibal Holocaust / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Carry On Henry / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Carver / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Catch Me If You Can / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Chang / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Cobb / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Confessions of a... Series / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Double Obsession / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Enemy at the Gates / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Fargo / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Flashback (1990) / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Forbidden Passage / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Fort Apache / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
4Closed / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Hands Up! / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Hoodlum / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Julia / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
King Arthur (2004) / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Knute Rockne, All American / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Major Dundee / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Miss Congeniality / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
My Week with Marilyn / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Nanook of the North / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Panfilov's 28 Men / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Panfilov's 28 Men / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Papillon (1973) / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Peel / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Picnic at Hanging Rock / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Pope Joan / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Pumpkinhead	seeAlso	Based on a Great Big Lie
Satanic Panic / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Saturday Night Fever / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Shadow People / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Silent Movie / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Sleepers / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Stonewall (2015) / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Taken / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
The Battleship Potemkin / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
The Celebration / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
The Conjuring Universe / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
The Forest (2016) / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
The Haunting in Connecticut / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
The Hunt for Red October / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
The Iceman / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
The Irishman / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
The Last Exorcism / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
The Philadelphia Experiment / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
The Quiet Ones / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
The Return of the Living Dead / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
The Singing Nun / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
The Toolbox Murders / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
The Wicker Man (1973) / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Their Finest / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Tropic Thunder / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Tusk (2014) / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
12 Feet Deep / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Virginia City / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
War Goddess / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Weird: The Al Yankovic Story / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Yankee Doodle Dandy / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Assassin's Creed (Franchise) / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Cthulhu Mythos (Franchise) / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Sweeney Todd (Franchise) / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
A Child Called "It" / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Alamut / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Angela's Ashes / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Bad Blood / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
CAPOW / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Go Ask Alice / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Let Me Off at the Top! / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Moll Flanders / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Mumbo Jumbo / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Nightfall (1990) / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Northwestward / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Picnic at Hanging Rock / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Poster Girl / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Roots / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Storybros Magically Lewd Adventures / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
The Da Vinci Code / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
The Egyptian Cinderella / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
The Further Adventures of Batman / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
The Pushcart War / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
The Riyria Revelations / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
The Secret of Castle Cant / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don't Touch It / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
True History / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Vendetta! (1886) / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
White Fire / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Awful British Sex Comedy / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
BasedOnAgreatBigLie	sameAs	Based on a Great Big Lie
GLURGE	seeAlso	Based on a Great Big Lie
TheFiveFistsOfScience	seeAlso	Based on a Great Big Lie
Creatures of the Night (Music) / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Dynasty (Music) / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Dynasty (Album) (Music) / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Evita (Music) / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Jasmin Wagner (Music) / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Psycho Circus (Music) / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Unmasked (Music) / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Friends at the Table (Podcast) / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Victoria Falls (Roleplay) / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Adam Ruins Everything / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Doctor Syn ("The Scarecrow") / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Fargo / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Law & Order: Criminal Intent / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Lost Tapes / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Made in Canada / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Man vs. Wild / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
My Crazy Ex / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Scaredy Camp	seeAlso	Based on a Great Big Lie
Scorpion / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Search Party / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Square One TV / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
The Afterparty / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
The Boys (2019) / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Amadeus (Theatre) / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Pagliacci (Theatre) / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
The King and I (Theatre) / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Assassin's Creed III: Liberation (Video Game)	seeAlso	Based on a Great Big Lie
DeathSpank (Video Game) / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Destiny 2 (Video Game) / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Drowned God (Video Game) / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Fallout 1.5: Resurrection (Video Game) / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Fatal Frame (Video Game) / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
I Wanna Be the Guy (Video Game) / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Star Trek: Elite Force (Video Game) / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Vampyr (2018) (Video Game) / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Robotics;Notes (Visual Novel) / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Emperor Tigerstar (Web Animation) / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Chubbyemu (Web Video) / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
History Buffs (Web Video) / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
WatchMojo (Web Video) / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Exiern (Webcomic) / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Sister Claire (Webcomic) / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
America: The Motion Picture / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
The Road to El Dorado / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie
Woody Woodpecker / int_b2e94341	type	Based on a Great Big Lie

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