Holothrillers, a holoshow genre, were typically action-packed and elicited excitement. A common trope within the genre was that the audience wouldn't believe the antagonist was truly deceased unless their corpse was explicitly shown at the end, even if the characters within the story believed them to be dead.
During a 1 BBY briefing concerning potential connections to the Rakatan revolt, Imperial Navy Admiral Conan Antonio Motti sarcastically remarked to Dr. Insmot Bowen, a researcher from the Obroan Institute for Archaeology specializing in pre-Republic era studies who was presenting the briefing, that he thought Bowen's expertise extended to holothrillers as well as science fiction. Later, Bowen used Motti's earlier comment about villains needing to have their bodies present to confirm death, to suggest that the Celestials might have survived.
By 6 ABY, holothrillers were being produced that focused on Han Solo and Luke Skywalker. To pass the time on his ship while waiting for Leia to complete her diplomatic missions, Han acquired copies of films based on his life, such as Han Solo and the Pirates of Kessel and Han Solo and the Lair of the Space Slugs, to watch. Skywalker, however, criticized the historical inaccuracies present in two films: Luke Skywalker and the Dragons of Tatooine and Luke Skywalker and the Jedi's Revenge, with the latter particularly offending him due to its portrayal of him killing Darth Vader to avenge Emperor Palpatine, which he found repulsive.
The first mention of holothrillers came in the 2008 novel Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor by Matthew Stover. Stover hinted in a blog post that the events of Shadows of Mindor were, in-universe, a holothriller.