'Based On A True Story' Movies That Aren't True At All

The entertainment industry has long been criticized for their creative license when it comes to retelling history or anything "based on a true story."

Going back to the silent film era and D.W. Griffith's ridiculously inaccurate White supremacist propaganda Birth Of A Nation to Mel Gibson's Braveheart to Disney's Pocahontas, some films go way beyond creative license and careen into total malarkey.

Reddit user Xxxbigfootisreal_ asked:

"What 'based on a true story' movie is not a true story at all?"

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story

"Well, I know for sure that Weird: The Al Yankovic Story is 100% accurate."

~ awe2D2

"This one is like Fargo and Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story in that it's poking fun at the 'based on a true story'/biopic genre. Except with Weird, the person is real."

"I love Weird Al—been a fan since his Dr. Demento debut—and loved that this was the direction they went with this movie. All the exaggerated, parody versions of the 80s stars in it are great fun."

"Well, all exaggerated except Madonna. That's totally what Al's ex-girlfriend Madonna was like in the 80s."

~ MMohawMais

www.youtube.com

The Warrens Paranormal Investigations

"ANYTHING that has to do with Ed and Lorraine Warren, from the Amityville Horror to Annabelle, it was just a moneymaking scheme between them and the lawyers."

~ ChaoticMutant

"I’m from Connecticut, and they used to bring them to our middle school around Halloween time. They’d talk about all that sh*t, and it was played off as being very real.

"There was never a wink, nudge, nor teacher who ever said otherwise."

"It’s wild how much of a career they made for themselves pushing this stuff."

~ EWAINS25

"Best line in one of the movies, 'Ed Warren never met a house he didn't think was haunted'."

"I do absolutely love those movies, though."

~ KilD3vil

www.youtube.com

Braveheart

"Braveheart is the most egregious by far."

~ JustRollinOn86

"The title annoys me the most, William Wallace was not 'the brave heart', that was Robert the Bruce, because after he died he wanted his heart taken in a box in crusade, thus the brave heart."

"Mel Gibson just used it for Wallace because it sounded cool with no respect to history whatsoever."

~ Driadus

"Gibson on set, probably: 'OK, lets set up for the Battle of Stirling Field'."

"Every Scot on set: 'Don't you mean Stirling Bridge?'."

"'We don't have the budget for a small wooden bridge'."

"I love hearing the anecdote of a Scottish extra asking Mel about why there was no bridge on the set for Stirling Bridge. Mel said that they found that the bridge would be too difficult to work with."

"The extra's alleged response? 'The English said the same thing'."

~ AthasDuneWalker

"'...with no respect to history whatsoever' is a pretty apt description for anything remotely historical Gibson is associated with."

~ MohawMais

www.youtube.com

Wolf of Wall Street

"But Martin Scorsese did a really good job at immediately showing Jordan Belfort was an unreliable narrator right at the beginning of the movie."

~ RANDY_MAR5H

"I read Belfort's book Wolf of Wall Street. It was disappointing after coming from the movie."

"I think it's the one time in my life the movie was better than the book."

~ standardguy

www.youtube.com

A Million Little Pieces

"I worked in a bookstore when the 'memoir' A Million Little Pieces came out and I picked it up, read the first several pages. I thought that it felt very inauthentic."

"I didn’t think about it again until the whole scandal about James Frey—the author—making it all up broke."

"Then a decade later they made it into a movie. WTF‽‽"

"What a loser that dude is. I’m blown away by the fact he got more book deals."

~ HoaryPuffleg

"Like... the book starts with him waking up on a plane, no idea where he might be headed, missing teeth and covered in inexplicable injuries."

"The flight attendant tells him that a doctor and another man carried him onboard, unconscious, and told the crew to just let him rest. And they were just like, 'okay, cool,no problem, happens all the time'."

"And people who read it were like, 'yeah this sounds like a thing that would definitely happen, let's make a movie'‽‽"

~ SneezyMcBeezy

www.youtube.com

Flamin' Hot

"It was a story about a janitor who invented Hot Cheetos and worked his way up the Frito Lay corporate ladder. The story has been disputed as not being true."

~ ElectricShades

"Damn, I knew parts of the movie had to be BS, but the whole entire story being made up is disappointing."

~ Raktoner

* According to the Los Angeles Times, "Richard Montañez didn’t invent Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, according to interviews with more than a dozen former Frito-Lay employees, the archival record, and Frito-Lay itself."

"Flamin’ Hots were created by a team of hotshot snack food professionals starting in 1989, in the corporate offices of Frito-Lay’s headquarters in Plano, Texas. "

"The new product was designed to compete with spicy snacks sold in the inner-city mini-marts of the Midwest. A junior employee with a freshly minted MBA named Lynne Greenfeld got the assignment to develop the brand—she came up with the Flamin’ Hot name and shepherded the line into existence."

Montañez—who earns money for motivational speaking—started telling the story to audiences in the 2000s. According to him, he created Hot Cheetos on his own time at his home in California. The movie is based on the story he has told, but his story has never been corroborated.

www.youtube.com

American Sniper

"It is insane that this man got away with his tall tales for so long."

"American Sniper is so bad that the Wikipedia article on the book the movie is based on has a whole section dedicated to how full of sh*t that guy was."

~ LeGrandLucifer

"Chris Kyle was a god damn psychopath, the movie tries to paint him as some sad, traumatized war hero, but that racist, misogynist motherf*cker openly said that Iraqis were animals to him and he enjoyed killing them, truly f*ck that guy."

"He definitely lied, there is no corresponding evidence that any of the 'heroic' things he claimed happened actually did, and it’s highly unlikely that nobody else would have noticed him doing them."

~ dragonsfire242

www.youtube.com

Fargo

"Fargo is so good, and is written and told so well that it could be a true story. And a very believable true story."

"Even the TV series, it literally picks up on the movie tone perfectly and just keeps giving us a completely believable untrue 'based on a true' story!"

~ rorykavanagh13

www.youtube.com

Kumiko the Treasure Hunter

"What's extra funny about Fargo is that this fake 'true story' inspired another fake 'true story' movie called Kumiko the Treasure Hunter about a Japanese girl who watched Fargo and then travels to North Dakota to look for the briefcase of money that Steve Buscemi's character hid."

"Just like Fargo, this was also marketed as a true story. It was based on an urban legend about a Japanese girl who actually did die in North Dakota."

~ indorock

www.youtube.com

Cool Runnings

"Cool Runnings took a LOT of liberties."

"The main characters weren’t based on the real bobsledders, nor was John Candy’s team coach character."

~ al2chaosemerald

"Wasn't the only thing based in reality was that 'Jamaica had a bobsleigh team'? The rest was just made up."

~ FlyMyPretty

www.youtube.com

Catch Me If You Can

"The biggest con Frank Abagnale, Jr. pulled was convincing the world he was a successful conman."

~ No-Economics-8239

"He did actually get away with cashing a bunch of bad checks for a while, and he escaped from a jail once."

"But most of the stuff that makes Catch Me If You Can flashy—like jump seating on airplanes and faking his way into courtrooms and hospitals—was made up/is completely unsubstantiated."

"He was only convicted of the equivalent of stealing about $11,000 with check fraud. It wasn't even a major dollar amount."

~ rckid13

youtu.be

The Blind Side

"That movie, The Blind Side, never really passed the sniff test for me."

"There's a scene at some point where Sandra Bullock gets upset that people aren't utilizing Oher correctly because he took a school test where it identified that he had high 'protective instincts' and my first thought was always how they could possibly be testing that in a high school."

"The actual line is that he tested '98% in protective instincts', which makes even less sense."

~ CoolIdeasClub

"I used to love the movie although it always felt exaggerated."

"Since I found out that Michael Oher was already an accomplished athlete before he lived with them, and that the Tuohy were actually horrible people who exploited him for money, I just can't stand to watch it."

"Even my perception about Sandra Bullock changed a bit."

~ LightEven6685

youtu.be

Bohemian Rhapsody

"Bohemian Rhapsody, the Queen movie. The liberties taken with the facts are insane."

~ One-Recognition-1660

"Bohemian Rhapsody a.k.a. the 2 hour Brian May/Roger Taylor are really great guys show."

~ bigbear-08

"You just need to see the scene in the movie where they are like, 'oh, no, Freddie! We don't take drugs! We are going home with our loving wives' to know it's complete bullsh*t."

"Come on, dudes. No one is that gullible."

~ TheFreaky

"They wanted to kill Freddie before even half-way through the film and have it mostly be about how Queen continued after he died."

"Sure, guys, that's what people really want to see in a Queen biopic."

"I guess they're still salty that Freddie was the one everyone knew by name and who everyone remembers."

~ RacerRovr

youtu.be

The Irishman

"The mobster who took credit for killing Jimmy Hoffa and wrote the book that The Irishman movie is based on, just succeeded in convincing folks he did it to sell copies/make money."

"One of the agents who investigated Jimmy Hoffa's murder specifically said there was no way he was the killer."

"And other mobsters said he was a low-level enforcer with big drug problems. There's no way the mafia would have trusted him with such an important hit."

~ Manatee_Soup

youtu.be

Pocahontas

"Pocahontas (real name Matoaka) was kidnapped by English colonizers as a child, forced to be baptized as a Christian and renamed Rebecca, forced to be a teen bride and mother, taken across the Atlantic to be an example of a 'civilized savage', before dying in England at 20/21 of some infectious disease (possibly tuberculosis) she had no immunity to."

"She was originally abducted to be ransomed back to her father, Chief Wahunsenacawh, to force him to accept unreasonable demands by the English. But even after the Powhatan Confederacy met their terms, her English captors didn't hold up their end of the negotiated deal."

"Instead they took her to England without letting her family see her current condition (pregnant). The colonists probably—rightfully—feared the Powhatan's reaction."

"Very different from the Disney movie."

~ Aderyn_Sly

"Plus, even contemporaries viewed John Smith as a fibber who told tall tales."

"For instance, after he fought the Ottoman empire in Hungary, he had published a memoir claiming that he was once captured by Turks, who tried to cut off his head, but he wound up rescued when a 'Turkish Princess' threw herself over him and stopped them."

"Sound familiar?"

"Because that's what many thought when John Smith later published another memoir of his time in Jamestown, and how he got captured by the Natives,and was about to get his skull crushed when an 'Indian Princess' threw herself over him in colonial Virginia."

"He only started mentioning this daring rescue later in his life, after Pocahontas herself became well-known in England."

~ MageLocusta

"I found it weird that someone I went to school with in England said—after we’d watched the Disney movie in class—that she’d seen the real grave of Pocahontas."

"I knew she’d never been to the United States."

"I called BS, only to discover from our teacher the brutal reality."

~ autumn-knight

"I think she was buried somewhere in Kent County, England? She never made it home to her family or homelands again."

~ Aderyn_Sly

youtu.be

What completely untrue, based on a true story film would you add to the list?