It has been claimed that the concept for Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's bizarre laugh was taken from "references in letters written about him by two women who met him", that describe him as laughing in "an infectious giddy" which sounds "like metal scraping glass". No citations have ever been provided for these letters, however. There is no indication as to who wrote them, to whom or when. And in the absence of further citations, these claims of historical evidence for Mozart's laugh should be regarded as dubious at best. Robert L. Marshall, writing in "Film as Musicology: Amadeus" (The Musical Quarterly, Vol.18/2, 1997, p.177) says that there is "absolutely no historical evidence for this idiosyncrasy. We simply have no contemporary testimony at all as to how Mozart sounded when he laughed." Marshall goes on to explain that the laugh is a dramatic device, representing the mocking laughter of the gods, as Salieri states in the script.

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