Warning: The following post contains discussions of domestic violence, mental health crises, sexual assault, and suicide.

Since truth is often stranger than fiction, it's no surprise that writers often rely on the experiences of reality to create their most effective stories. In the case of Elisabeth Finch, though, the fictional elements were posed as part of her life. The Grey's Anatomy writer and producer was famously outed in a 2022 Vanity Fair article for lying her way to the top of the hit medical drama with a series of increasingly staggering false claims about her health, family, and traumatic experiences, many of which inspired memorable and emotional episodes on the show but didn't actually happen to her at all.