Tactics

It is important to remember that reality sounds pretty made up most of the time.

You need a logical chain of events, preferably tied to a misunderstanding of a phrase or, at a push a name. English villages can give you likely sounding locations. Extra points for tying a bad pun to it (for example, the marquis of Queensbuy's rules about hitting below the belt was implemented due to the famously ungentlemanly tactics of the villagers from Nether Wallop)

Corruption of language is a good avenue too. Correct the phrase - it was initially Bowl in a china shop.

Dates, use weird years. 1740 is less believable than 1739.

Nobles are notoriously batshit and fickle so they're a good hangar for a tale, as are scientists and explorers. Don't use big names, start from the pun and work back..

A strong image can help, it's why things stick around.

So then the layers