14 'Based On Real Life' Movies That Left Out Some Truly Riveting IRL Details

Turns out Alan Turing was friendlier than we thought!

If, like me, you're a fan of 'based on real life' movies, you'll know that the films sometimes alter or leave out the facts of their stories to create more cohesive stories.

CBC

After all, we can't expect 90-minute movies to show every single detail of people's lives!

So, we asked members of the BuzzFeed Community which interesting IRL facts 'based on real life' movies left out! Here are some of the most truly riveting facts they came up with:

1. The 1988 Jamaican bobsled team that Cool Runnings is based on were actually formed by the military.

Walt Disney / Toshio Sakai via Getty Images

"Dudley 'Tal' Stokes (a founding member of the team) said 'I got into bobsledding because I was told to go. I was in the army at the time. The colonel made the suggestion to me and because I was a captain, you do as you're told and obey orders.' Two American businessmen, George Fitch and William Maloney, were bobsledding enthusiasts and thought that the pushcart derbies they saw in Jamaica resembled the sport. George and William tried to get athletes to bobsled, but nobody was interested – so they asked the army (!!!) to find participants. Oh, and once the team actually reached the Olympics, they were so popular that they couldn't go anywhere for fear of being mobbed. All sounds pretty intense, right?"

—Amy Glover

2. Estée Lauder attempted to pay off the real-life Lee Isreal (from Can You Ever Forgive Me?) when the author began writing a biography about her.

Fox Searchlight Pictures / Ron Galella via Getty Images

"The entrepreneur was so displeased by Lee Isreal's account of her life that she wrote her own memoirs first to overshadow Isreal's biography release. The author was forced to rush her own book in response, leading to poor critical reviews and a serious career lull – a lull which would lead to her committing the kinds of crimes we see in the movie!"

—Isabel Daly

3. The real-life mafia members portrayed in Goodfellas were involved in a Boston College basketball point-shaving scandal in the late seventies.

Warner Bros.

"The gang members had worked out a deal with the college basketball team which encouraged the players to win or lose games according to how the mafia had placed their bets. However, the scheme backfired sometimes!"

—loulabelson

4. Despite what we see in Bohemian Rhapsody, real-life Jim Hutton had absolutely no idea who Freddie Mercury was the first time they met.

20th Century Fox / Phil Dent via Getty Images

"Bohemian Rhapsody showed Freddie Mercury meeting Jim Hutton when he was working as a server at one of Freddie's parties. In real life though, they met at a bar when Mercury approached HIM."

—chiaraf1

"Jim didn't have a clue who Freddie was, and it took a year and a half after their initial meeting for the two to get together!"

—Jasmin Nahar

5. The real robbers that Masterminds was based on actually got locked out of their getaway van and spent twenty minutes trying to unlock it.

Relativity Media / Todd Williamson via Getty Images

"Pretty much every plot point is correct, but the film didn't show that after the real robbers stole the money, they locked themselves out of their getaway van. The ring the key was on had over 100 keys on it, so it took them almost twenty minutes to find the correct key and leave! The writers left it out of the movie because it would seem unrealistic to audiences to include it."

—blairc7

6. The Favourite didn't mention the fact that Sarah Churchill wrote homophobic propaganda poems against Queen Anne.

Fox Searchlight Pictures / Print Collector via Getty Images

"While the Queen was certainly *very* close to her female friends, there's no concrete evidence to prove that she slept with either Sarah Churchill or Abigail Hill – her romantic letters to both weren't uncommon for platonic friendships at the time, so we might never know how she interacted with her 'ladies of the bedchamber'. What we DO know is that Sarah Churchill wrote multiple poems that were meant to shame Queen Anne's closeness to her new BFF, feeding into the homophobia of the court by alluding to 'dark deeds at night'."

—Jasmin Nahar

7. The King's Speech didn't tell us that Lionel Logue and the king actually hit it off from the first time they met.

Momentum Pictures / Paramount Pictures / Underwood Archives via Getty Images

"Despite the tension we see between the two in the film, it looks like the IRL pair got very chummy as soon as they met! Lionel wrote in his diary that King George was 'brimming with confidence' after their first meeting, and unlike in the movie, the king actively sought Lionel's help."

—Xavier Singh

8. While the actual Chris McCandless from Into The Wild DID die of poisoning, it could well have been a plant that was considered safe at the time that killed him, rather than the outright dangerous species we see in the movie.

Paramount / Michel Viard via Getty Images

"If the world had known that neither one of the near-identical plants were safe, he could possibly have lived longer."

—katiebear

"It was widely speculated that he accidentally ate dangerous grass pea seeds, but Chris's own notes revealed that he knew how to identify the dangerous seeds, and believed that potato seeds were to blame for his frailty. Scientists thought that Chris must have mistaken the two species, because the potato seeds seemed harmless at first glance – in 2007, one doctor even wrote "There were no toxins. No alkaloids. I’d eat it myself'. On closer inspection of the potato seed though, it seems like Chris could have been right about what was making him sick. The seed was found to contain high levels of paralysing toxins in 2013."

—Amy Glover

9. The Imitation Game portrayed Alan Turing as the sole inventor of the code-breaking machine that helped Britain win WW2, but it had actually been partly invented by the time he started working on it.

Heritage Images / Getty Images

"Polish mathematicians has cracked early versions of the machine in 1932, and the film didn't show Gordon Welchman who co-invented the machine alongside Alan Turing. Oh, and Alan was actually much more charming and friendly in reality!"

—yinnonc

10. Queen Mary most likely wouldn't have spoken like her character did in the movie Mary Queen of Scots.

Focus Features, Universal Features / Fine Art via Getty Images

"Mary was sent to live at the French royal court at the age of five and returned to Scotland 13 years later, so her accent probably would've been French. Also, Mary and Elizabeth I never met in person."

—wafflebears198

11. John Nash (the inspiration for A Beautiful Mind) did have hallucinations, but they were nothing like what was shown in the movie.

Universal Pictures, DreamWorks Pictures / VCG via Getty Images

"The movie shows him having highly detailed hallucinations of being recruited by the FBI and then running from Russian spies, but in reality, his hallucinations were entirely auditory. He also stopped taking medication in 1970, and his continued instability led to his not being allowed to make a full acceptance speech for his Nobel prize."

—damianthomas15

12. Captain Miller in Saving Private Ryan is actually based on a priest who served in WWII.

DreamWorks Pictures, Paramount Pictures / PhotoQuest via Getty Images

"Father Francis L. Sampson was nicknamed the 'paratrooper padre' and was a complete badass. Francis was the one who told the army about Fritz Nihland (the real inspiration for Private Ryan) and initiated the attempt to save him. My dad knew him growing up and said he was the most humble man he’d ever met and never told anyone about his actions."

—nonny101

13. The real-life Michael Oher (as seen in The Blind Side) was already a highly-skilled football player when he joined the Tuohy family, thank you very much.

Warner Bros. Pictures / Joe Robbins via Getty Images

"In fact, Michael Oher felt that the film left out so many important details that he wrote a book to set the record straight. He was particularly careful to point out that, unlike in the film, he'd actually been perfecting his football skills for years before becoming part of his adoptive family (despite a very difficult home life)."

—Valeza Bakolli

14. Extemely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile didn't tell us how early on Ted Bundy's girlfriend began to suspect her boyfriend, or that he'd tried to kill her.

Netflix

"The real-life Elizabeth first began to suspect Ted when noticed that a suspect composite for a mass abductor looked a lot like her bf and drove the same car as him. After realising that he ALSO had the same crutches as the suspected kidnapper, she rung the police but lost her nerve before anyone picked up the call. Later, when the news reported another string of abductions in Utah, she rung the police again and got through. However, the police had already screened and cleared Ted at this time, so her concerns about things like his crowbar and hatchet weren't acted on. Ted also tried to suffocate Elizabeth by blocking her chimney as she slept, eventually telling her the attempted murder on the phone."

—Hanifah Rahman

Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.

Do you think we missed out on some fascinating IRL details, or reckon the movies were better without these added facts? Sound off in the comments below! And if you want to be featured in future posts like this, make sure to follow the BuzzFeed Community on Facebook and Twitter.