On the other hand, we do have eccentric dictators today/last century, reasonable to assume that there were some nutjob dictators thousands of years ago.
Not only it is possibile, it is very much plausible.
The anti Nero propaganda is one of those things that are forever stuck in our collective imaginary, even though most of it has been proven false by scholars.
Nero was notoriously "not loved", to use an euphemism, by his contemporary ruling class.
Sometimes for good reasons, most of the times just because he wasn't on their side.
I've been to a few off-Broadway productions which made me want to feign death to get out of them too. Granted Suetonius wasn't exactly a fan, but I'm guessing Nero's narcissism and fecklessness was pretty well developed without anyone needing to propagandize it.
I'm pretty sure that even 2000 years later I can detect some "embellishment" of the story; even back then I think exceptionally pregnant and almost in labor women would just skip the theater.
He was many decades after Nero, so the motivation wasn't there. More likely to be just exaggeration for the purposes of entertainment (or just repeating an oft told tale that gets bigger with time).
