Jesus fuck you people are fucking stupid. It’s fiction. Is Jaws a true story? No. Jaws is not a true story. It is based on Peter Benchley's novel of the same name. The Jaws author had a lifelong fascination with sharks and said that he came up with the concept for the novel after reading about a great white shark that had been caught by fisherman Frank Mundus in 1964 (pictured below). Benchley references the incident in the introduction to his book, "...in 1964, I read an item in a newspaper about a fisherman who harpooned a 4,500-pound great white shark off Long Island. I remember thinking at the time, Lord! What would happen if one of those monsters came into a resort community and wouldn't go away? I tucked the item into my wallet and, for the time being, forgot about it." Robert Shaw's character Quint was inspired by Frank Mundus, a shark hunter who became a shark conservationist later in life.