Was thinking about this recently, especially after reading something related to this type of "bear story" (ie. hedge-fund driven).
Something I came across, was the "bear raids" in the early 2000s on Fairfax Financial (a Canadian insurance company listed on the NYSE) by well known massive hedge funds like S.A.C Capital. Their bear theories mainly revolved around the fact that FF was using inter-subsidiary re-insurance to hide a $5B insurance provision deficiency that will wipe out the company's equity. Another massive insurer, in the US, named AIG had provisioning issues in the years earlier. So the theory was plausible.
These big hedge funds were worshipped by brokers and financial analysts alike, who were often thrown a bone by guys like Steven Cohen, were encouraged (that's a euphemism) to write broker / sell-side reports after the shorts were loaded up. Turned out that none of this was true. FF actually tried to sue some of these hedge funds years later, but failed, however a lot of the email discourse they uncovered (which heavily points towards manipulation of stock prices, lies etc) is now on the public record.
The stock markets are an interesting place, that's for sure.