This passage really struck me from Fernand Braudel's book "The Structures of Everday Life": "A lapse in vigilance, an economic setback, a rough winter, and they multiplied, In 1420, packs entered Paris througha breach in the ramparts or the unguarded gates. They were there again in September 1438, attacking people this time outside the town... in 1640, wolves entered besancon by crossing the Doubs near the mills of the town and 'ate children along the roads." (...) in 1765, again in the Gevaudan 'where the ravages of wolves made people believe in the existence of an unnatural monster.'"
TL:DR - Wolves were a common problem/threat, probably even to a greater extent than shown in fiction. Fiction generally doesn't portray wolves coming into a city like Paris (admittedly, that was the exception even there - but it did happen.) Google Books Source Link
If you lived in the country in Europe or Asia in the middle ages, wolves were a real threat. Rabid wolves were particularly dangerous. Women and children (smaller, slower, more likely to be out wandering alone picking berries or playing) were especially vulnerable.
But how shall we answer your question? ("How likely ... compared to what is shown in fiction?") Fiction has always shown the exciting bits of life and not the dull bits. Fiction shows people meeting and falling in love, not living normal boring lives together all the rest of the time. And fiction would focus on the relatively rare wolf attacks, not on all the time no one in the village was being attacked. Fiction always overstates the case.
Based on the existing documentation, the risk of actually being killed by a wolf was probably something like the risk of being killed by lightning. If you look at that Wikipedia page, for example, 7,600 fatal attacks were documented from 1200 to 1920 in France. That's about 11 fatalities per year for the entire country. Assuming the numbers are skewed because the wolf population in France was severely reduced for the latter part of that period, it still doesn't leave a huge number of fatalities per year when wolves were more populous.
But "How likely was a pre-industrial non-city/town resident likely to have to worry about wolf attacks [...]"? Wolves might not have been eating villagers every night, but they (and other predators) would have been stealing your livestock frequently if you weren't guarding your livestock and scaring off or killing the predators, and the wolves could easily have turned on you if you weren't careful. Everyone out in the country, especially if you kept animals that wolves like to eat, would have to worry about wolf attack.
The fear of wolves: a review of wolf attacks on humans
Edit: Now all the details to the question have been removed, leaving just "How dangerous were wolves historically compared to how they are often portrayed in fiction?" Well, what fiction are you talking about? Little Red Riding Hood? The Three Little Pigs? Do you need to know how dangerous an individual wolf is in fiction versus in fact? How often wolves attacked in fiction versus in fact? There are lots of specific fictional wolves and there are many more mentions of nonspecific wolves.
There are many records in Japan of wolf attacks. Hiraiwa Yonekichi has recorded many of them, though I'm not sure if there's an English translation. There are also stories in 北越雪譜, a encyclopedia of life in Northern Japan, published in the Edo period. Wolves definitely did cause deaths occasionally, and were given a certain amount of fear. However, at the same time there were many places that worshipped wolves as gods. In many agrarian communities wolves helped keep down the population of deer and other herbivores that ate human crops and could cause a famine if unchecked. So the ancient Japanese were aware of the role wolves played in the food chain and gave them a certain respect as well.
Thanks for the responses everyone, insightful and interesting.
Although it appears this topic has been removed from askhistorians for some reason.