Random Unbelievable Scenes From Historical Movies That Actually Happened (13 items)

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  (#1) Pearl Harbor

  • Kate Beckinsale, Jennifer Garner, Ben Affleck, Alec Baldwin, Dan Aykroyd, Cuba Gooding Jr., Jon Voight, Jaime King, Josh Hartnett, Michael Shannon, Tom Sizemore, Eric Christian Olsen, Sara Rue, William Fichtner, Sean Faris, Matthew Davis, Tony Curran, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Colm Feore, Kim Coates, Ted McGinley, Ian Bohen, Mako Iwamatsu, Beth Grant, Ewen Bremner, Scott Wilson, Jesse James, Peter Firth, John Diehl, Leland Orser, Guy Torry, John Pyper-Ferguson, Sung Kang, David Kaufman, Glenn Morshower, William Lee Scott, Brian Haley, Daniel Mays, Andrew Bryniarski, Jaymee Ong, Tomas Arana, Nicholas Farrell, Yuji Okumoto, Lin Oeding, Raphael Sbarge, Madison Mason, Tom Everett, Scott Levy, Graham Beckel, David Hornsby, Michael Milhoan, Catherine Kellner, Pat Healy, Vic Chao, Tim Choate, Bret Roberts, Sean Gunn, Reiley McClendon, John Fujioka, Geoffrey Gould, Ron Harper, Frederick Koehler, William Joseph Hill, Randy Oglesby, Marty Belafsky, James Saito, Michael Shamus Wiles, Ford Austin, Takayuki Kubota, Nicholas Downs, Max Thayer, Paul Francis, Garret T. Sato, Robert Jayne, Manu Intiraymi, Lindsey Ginter, Ben Easter, Steve Rankin, Seth Sakai, Toshi Toda, Josh Ackerman, Jeremy Denzlinger, Tanya Dempsey, Clyde Tull, Ping Wu, Wally Burr, Abe Sylvia, Greg Zola, Bryan Ryan, Jill Meyers, Beau Lotterman, Hank Harris, Jack Truman, Thomas Wilson Brown, Scott Wiper, Jeff Wadlow, David de Vos, Barbara Scolaro, Kinsey McLean, Joseph Patrick Kelly, Chad Morgan, Peter James Smith, Camille Carida, Larry Wegger, Eiji Inoue, Will Gill Jr., Blaine Pate, Matt Cable, Douglas Blakeslee, Mark Weiler, Jeremy Gilbreath, David Rountree, Precious Chong, J Michael Briggs, Josh Green, Andrew Chen, Naoko Niya, Howard Mungo, Rod Biermann, Benjamin Farry, Matthew Saxe, Cory Tucker, Francis Maikai, Sherwin Lau, Christopher Allison, Melissa Anne Young, Patrick A. Horton, Will Bowden, Andrew Baley, Brett Pedigo, Ken Goth, Greg Baine, Curtis Andersen, Stan Cahill, Pete Romano, Frieda Jane, Cherisse Lamoureux, Kathleen Mullan, Toru Tanaka Jr., Angel Sing, Noriaki Kamata, Michael Gradilone, Matt Casper, Jeff Yaworski, Estevan Gonzalo, Joshua Aaron Gulledge, Brandon Lozano, Kevin Wensing, Lisa Ross, Brian D. Falk, Rob McCabe, Robert C. Nelson, Mark Noon, John Howry, Rodney Bursiel, Seiki Moriguchi, Matt Moore, Elizabeth Leaff, Christopher Stroop, John Padget, Mark Panasuk, Marco Gould, Vincent J. Inghilterra, Patrice Martinez, Jason Liggett, Ross Stasik, Rufus Dorsey

  Michael Bay's 2001 film Pearl Harbor has caught plenty of criticism over the years, for everything from sanitizing the racism common to the US military in the 1940s to just being a bad movie. But the film does accurately depict one of its biggest moments, when Cuba Gooding Jr.'s Doris Miller commandeers an unattended machine gun to shoot down several enemy planes. 

  When the real Doris Miller joined the US Navy as a 19-year-old in 1939, Navy policy prevented Black men from receiving promotions - only allowing them to serve in the "messman" branch. One of Miller's fellow messmen described the job as “seagoing bellhops, chambermaids, and dishwashers.” Miller's battle station was below deck, where his duty was to pass ammunition up to the ship's gunners. 

  On the morning of December 7, 1941, Miller was doing laundry for one of the ship's officers when the Japanese surprise attack occurred. Miller reported to his battle station to find it flooded, then went above deck to assist in the counter-attack. He carried his mortally wounded captain to safety. After that, he helped an officer load and fire one of the ship's unattended anti-aircraft guns.

  Then, without orders and without even any training, Miller commandeered a second gun and shot down multiple Japanese Zeros. Once his gun ran out of ammunition, Miller returned below deck and pulled several sailors out of the burning water. He was one of the last three sailors to abandon ship, swimming through 400 yards of water and burning oil to shore.

  Miller became the first Black sailor to receive the Navy Cross. However, his actions weren't deemed worthy of a Medal of Honor, unlike 16 white servicemen who received one for their actions that day. 

  Although some Americans, including Ronald Reagan, believed that Miller's heroics single-handedly ended armed forces discrimination, it still took several more years for the US military to officially desegregate. Today, Miller is remembered as both a war hero and a trailblazer, and in 2020 the Navy named an aircraft carrier after him.
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  (#2) Titanic

  • Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Kathy Bates, James Cameron, Bill Paxton, Ioan Gruffudd, Billy Zane, Victor Garber, David Warner, Frances Fisher, Gloria Stuart, Bernard Hill, Eric Braeden, Suzy Amis, Jonathan Hyde, Jenette Goldstein, Bernard Fox, Danny Nucci, Ewan Stewart, Nicholas Cascone, Jonathan Phillips, Jason Barry, Lewis Abernathy

  One way humans try to understand tragic events is to personalize them. The thought of hundreds or thousands of people perishing at once can seem incomprehensible. Instead, we try to process the event through the eyes of one person or a small group. 

  Audiences wept during Titanic when they saw the elderly couple holding each other in bed while the ship sank, having given up their seats on a lifeboat so others could live. It feels like a metaphor: the Titanic sinking was a chaotic and senseless tragedy, but some passengers were still brave enough to make the ultimate sacrifice so others could live. 

  But a version of this scene really did happen. The elderly couple weren't invented characters but based on real-life couple Isidor and Ida Straus. Isidor, 67, was the co-owner of Macy's department store and a former US Congressman, and he and Ida, age 63, were first-class passengers on the fateful voyage. According to their great-grandson Paul A. Kurtzman, Ida boarded a lifeboat and a ship's officer offered Isidor the chance to join her. Seeing that some women and children wouldn't get a seat on a lifeboat, Isidor declined.

  Then, instead of abandoning her husband of 40 years, Ida stepped off the lifeboat to remain with him as the ship went down. James Cameron actually filmed this moment, but didn't include it in the final cut. It's unknown if Ida and Isidor returned to their bed like the movie suggests, but everything else is accurate.
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  (#3) Saving Private Ryan

  • Tom Hanks, Matt Damon, Vin Diesel, Paul Giamatti, Bryan Cranston, Nathan Fillion, Ted Danson, Tom Sizemore, Giovanni Ribisi, Andrew Scott, Edward Burns, Adam Goldberg, Barry Pepper, Jeremy Davies, Dennis Farina, Ryan Hurst, Max Martini, John de Lancie, Harve Presnell, Leland Orser, Dale Dye, Kathleen Byron, Corey Johnson, Dylan Bruno, Demetri Goritsas, Nina Muschallik, David Wohl, Laird Macintosh, Vincent Ventresca, Rolf Saxon, Harrison Young, John Sharian, Erich Redman, Nigel Whitmey, James Embree, Amanda Boxer, Ian Porter, Joerg Stadler, Martin McDougall, Grahame Wood, Eric Loren, Adam Shaw, Raffaello Degruttola, Matthew Sharp, Stéphane Cornicard, Rob Freeman, Neil Finnighan, Julian Spencer, Paul Sacks, Stephan Grothgar, Peter Miles, Shane Johnson, Victor Burke, Vincent Walsh, Anna Maguire, Daniel Cerqueira, Marc Cass, Paschal Friel, Steve Griffin, William Marsh, Martin Hub, Mac Steinmeier, Loclann Aiken, David Vegh, Tilo Keiner, Brian Maynard, Sam Ellis, Dorothy Grumbar, Michelle Evans, Sam Scudder, Taylor Murphy, Michael Mantas, Glenn Wrage, Paul Hickey, Gary Sefton, Maclean Burke, Nick Brooks, Crofton Hardester, John Walters, Declan Geraghty, Ronald Longridge, John Barnett, Martin Beaton, Shane Hagan, Aiden Condron, Paul Garcia, Mark Phillips, Markus Napier, Lee Aaron Rosen, James Innes-Smith, Valerie Colgan, Seamus McQuade, Thomas Gizbert, Abbe Muschallik

  The 1998 WWII film Saving Private Ryan isn't based on a true story. Its main characters, Captain John Miller (Tom Hanks) and Private James Ryan (Matt Damon) weren't real people, and the US Military didn't order a squad of soldiers to venture behind enemy lines and rescue a serviceman whose three brothers had perished in combat. However, it's definitely inspired by real events and real people.

  In 1942, five brothers from the same family, the Sullivans, all lost their lives during the Battle of Guadalcanal. In response, the US Department of War instituted a "sole survivor" policy, which stated that family members of service people who perished in combat wouldn't have to serve. The policy was put into action in 1944, when the US Army brought Sergeant Fritz Niland home after his three brothers were KIA. Niland's story was the direct inspiration for the movie. (Although, unlike Private Ryan, Niland was easily located and didn't require a search party.)

  At the beginning of Saving Private Ryan, General George Marshall (a real person) and his staff are debating whether they should, like the title suggests, save Private Ryan. They mention the Sullivan brothers, but the deciding factor is when General Marshall reads "the Bixby Letter."

  According to the movie, this is a letter President Lincoln wrote to grieving mother Lydia Bixby, who supposedly lost five sons in the Civil War. Determined not to allow Mrs. Ryan to share the same fate as Lydia Bixby, General Marshall agrees to rescue Private Ryan. 

  It might sound farfetched that General Marshall conveniently had a letter from the 1860s that  addressed his "sole survivor" problem in 1944, but the Bixby Letter is very much real. Many of the details about the document are uncertain - there's doubt as to whether Mrs. Bixby really lost five sons, as well as whether she might have been a Confederate sympathizer. It's also possible that it wasn't Lincoln who wrote the letter, but his secretary John Hay. But regardless of the doubts, the Bixby Letter has stood the test of time as one of the most evocative writings about the human cost of war.
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  (#4) Bruno Gaido Really Did Take Down A Bomber And Get Promoted Like He Did In 'Midway'

  One scene from 2019's Midway, which depicts the 1942 raid on the Marshall Islands by Japanese bombers, seems totally unbelievable. In the film, anti-aircraft fire heavily damages a Japanese plane and it careens towards the USS Enterprise aircraft carrier. Nick Jonas, playing real sailor Bruno Gaido, sees that his ship and crewmates are in imminent danger, and runs across the deck. He jumps into a parked bomber and fires its machine gun at the enemy aircraft.

  The Japanese bomber barely misses the Enterprise, but does clip Gaido's bomber. Even more incredibly, Gaido gets promoted on the spot. The moment would appear to be the same exaggerated heroics you'd expect from other Roland Emmerich movies, but according to Gaido's nephew Mike Bortolotti, it really did happen that way.

  Gaido actually did leave his duty station and take down the enemy plane - something he wasn't even trained for. Gaido's commanding officer, Admiral William Halsey, witnessed Gaido's heroism, summoned him to the bridge, and promoted him two ranks to Aviation Machinists' Mate First Class. Journalists even interviewed Gaido's mother Clementa about it shortly after it happened. 

  Bortolotti's only complaint? Nick Jonas's decision to use a Brooklyn accent. The real Bruno Gaido grew up in Milwaukee.
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  (#5) The Revenant

  • Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Domhnall Gleeson, Will Poulter

  The harrowing bear attack in The Revenant is riveting cinema, but the idea of an adult male managing to fend off a 500 lb mother grizzly and then taking it out with a hunting knife seems farfetched. Yet a version of the scene really did happen to frontier woodsman Hugh Glass. 

  In 1823, Glass was part of an expedition to establish trade with the Crow Indians in present-day South Dakota. In August, Glass was alone searching for game when he came upon a mother grizzly and two cubs. Just like in the movie, the bear charged Glass and mauled him.

  The movie version of the attack didn't play out exactly how it did in real life. In the movie, the bear charges and mauls Glass, then he plays possum and shoots the bear with a rifle, which leads to another round of fighting. Glass finally defeats the bear by pulling out a hunting knife and finishing it off. In reality, accounts differ on whether Glass took out the bear himself, or whether the other members of his party heard his screams and saved him.

  Whatever the case, Glass did end up severely injured, sustaining a broken leg, a ripped scalp, a punctured throat, and many gashes. After his fellow trappers abandoned him, Glass crawled between 200 and 300 miles to safety.

  The movie did take other liberties with Glass's story, however. He never had a son and he never tracked down John Fitzgerald for revenge. But overall the movie does do justice to Hugh Glass's feat of survival.
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  (#6) American Sniper

  • Bradley Cooper, Sienna Miller, Jonathan Groff, Kyle Gallner, Leonard Roberts, Marnette Patterson, Jake McDorman, Billy Miller, Sammy Sheik, Keir O'Donnell, Cory Hardrict, Tim Griffin, Brando Eaton, Luke Grimes, James Ryen, Eric Ladin, Reynaldo Gallegos, Benjamin Mathes, Ben Reed, Luis Jose Lopez, Evan Gamble, Jason Hall, Brandon Salgado Telis, Troy Vincent, John Kawalski, Elise Robertson

  The real-life Chris Kyle is known to have exaggerated his military record in his autobiography American Sniper, and Clint Eastwood's movie based on his book does change and exaggerate real events for storytelling purposes. But the Navy SEAL sniper really did manage to take out an enemy from more than a mile away.

  In the movie version, the enemy in question is a sniper and former Syrian Olympic sharpshooter named Mustafa, who menaces coalition troops and Iraqi police officers across Iraq. Mustafa has already slain one of Kyle's friends, Ryan "Biggles" Job. Toward the end of the movie, Kyle finally gets revenge by shooting Mustafa from a distance of 2,100 yards.

  Though Mustafa was a real person, he didn't take out Biggles, and his sniping career wasn't cut short by Kyle. Instead of a legendary enemy sniper, Kyle shot an enemy insurgent who was aiming a rocket launcher at American troops. This is when Kyle's 2,100-yard shot actually happened, in August 2008.

  The shot was Kyle's longest confirmed kill, but not the longest ever recorded. At the time, that would have been Rob Furlong's March 2002 shot from 2,657 yards. That record has since been broken by a Canadian sniper, who in 2017 took out an ISIS militant from 3,871 yards.
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  (#7) Casino

  • Sharon Stone, Robert De Niro, James Woods, Joe Pesci, Don Rickles, Kevin Pollak, Steve Allen, Frankie Avalon, Alan King, Frank Vincent, Jerry Vale, Richard Riehle, Steve Schirripa, Dick Smothers, Jayne Meadows, Paul Herman, L. Q. Jones, Catherine Scorsese, Charles Scorsese, Bob Pepper, Oscar Goodman, Carl Ciarfalio, Tommy DeVito, Vinny Vella, Frank Adonis, Phillip V. Caruso, Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, Joe Bob Briggs, Clem Caserta, Nobu Matsuhisa, Anthony Russell, Frankie J. Allison, Pasquale Cajano, Roy Conrad, Joseph Rigano, Stuart Nisbet, Jed Mills, Brian Reddy, Cameron Milzer, Cathy Scorsese, Tyde Kierney, Jeff Corbin, Craig Vincent, Walter Ludwig, Joseph P. Reidy, Joseph Bono, Randy Sutton, Nick Mazzola, Gene Ruffini, Philip Suriano, Joey de Pinto, Sly Smith, Loren Stevens, Jack Orend, Andrea Nittoli, Sonny D'Angelo, Melissa Prophet, Joe La Due, Ruth Gillis, Ronald Maccone, David Varriale, Millicent Sheridan, Claudia Haro, Greg Anderson, Mitch Kolpan, Dave Courvoisier, Linda Perri, David Rose, Bill Allison, Andy Jarrell, Frank Washko Jr., Daniel P. Conte, Brian Le Baron, Erika von Tagen, John Manca, Dean Casper, Toru Nagai, Joe Lacoco, Christian A. Azzinaro, Rudy Guerrero, Darla House, Steve Vignari, Haven Earle Haley, Alfred Nittoli, Constance Tillotson, Richard T. Smith, Eric Randall, Delynn Gardner, Charlene Hunter, Joe Anastasi, Joe Molinaro, Carol Krolick, Karyn Amalfitano, Frank Regich, Jed L. Hansen, Robert C. Tetzlaff, Gino Bertin, Salvatore Petrillo, Patti James, Jim Morgan Williams, Jeff Burbank, Richard F. Strafella, Ali Pirouzkar, Mortiki Yerushalmi, Sasha Semenoff, Leain Vashon, Carrie Cipollini, Carol Wilson, Mike Weatherford, Larry E. Nadler, Robert B. Sidell, Paige Novodor, Mufid M. Khoury, Peter Conti, Rick Crachy, Earl Chaney, Mike Maines, Michael Paskevich, Mike Bradley, Dominick Grieco, Ffolliott Le Coque, George W. Allf, Carol Cardwell, Shellee Renee, Casper Molee, Khosrow Abrishami, Buck Stephens, Richard Wagner, Jennifer M. Abbott, F. Marcus Casper, Janet Denti, Max Raven, Heidi Keller, C.C. Carr, George Comando, Jeffery Azzinaro, Csaba Maczala, Fred Smith, Dom Angelo, David Leavitt, David Arcerio, Peter Sugden, Richard Amalfitano, Gary C. Rainey, Michael McKensie Pratt, Jonathan Kraft, Paul Dottore, Nan Brennan, J. Charles Thompson, Bobby Hitt, Michael Toney, Bobbie Paulson, Gwen Castaldi, Jeff Scott Anderson, Gil Dova, Herb Schwartz, Sam Wilson

  Here's one that most of us hope is fictional, but did actually happen. 

  Like Goodfellas, Martin Scorsese's 1995 mobster classic Casino is based on a book by Nicholas Pileggi (Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas), and Scorsese again based his characters on real people with changed names. Like Goodfellas, some of the events of Casino are fictional while others are real.

  In the movie, Joe Pesci plays Nicky Santoro, a violent mob enforcer whose full brutality is revealed when he has to interrogate a hitman named Tony Dogs. Tony Dogs has recently shot up a Vegas mob bar and slain three people, including a cocktail server. Santoro wants to know if Tony Dogs worked alone, and when Tony Dogs insults him, Santoro puts his head in a vise. Tony Dogs still refuses to confess as the vise tightens, and finally his eyeball pops out. 

  Although the circumstances were different, a version of the infamous "head in a vise" scene really did happen in real life. Nicky Santoro is based on real-life mobster Anthony John “Ant” Spilotro. 

  As far as we know, Spilotro didn't torture anyone named Tony Dogs in Vegas in the 1970s, but he did use a vise on a mobster a decade earlier in Chicago. In 1962, a mobster named Billy McCarthy took out two mob-affiliated brothers, Ron and Phil Scalvo, and Spilotro and some associates interrogated him. How Spilotro dealt with McCarthy is arguably even more brutal than what happened in Casino.

  Without going into too much detail, suffice it to say McCarthy also lost an eye, as well as his life.
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  (#8) Walk the Line

  • Reese Witherspoon, Joaquin Phoenix, Ginnifer Goodwin, Robert Patrick, Shelby Lynne, Lucas Till, Shooter Jennings, Kerris Dorsey, Dallas Roberts, Waylon Payne, Larry Bagby, Tyler Hilton, Ridge Canipe, Hailey Anne Nelson, Sandra Ellis Lafferty, Johnathan Rice, Dan John Miller, Johnny Holiday, Dan Beene, Clay Steakley, Delaney Keefe, Victoria Hester, McGhee Monteith, Brittany Shaw

  Walk the Line tells the life story of country star Johnny Cash and his relationship with his wife and longtime singing partner, June Carter Cash. The movie definitely has its inaccuracies, but when it came to the moment when Johnny proposed to June, it didn't have to exaggerate. 

  In the movie, Johnny and June are onstage performing their hit duet "Jackson" (for which they had just won a Grammy), when Johnny stops mid-song and pops the question. June tries to get him to continue singing, and so Johnny pours his heart out about how much he loves her and how much he wants to be a better partner. She says yes. 

  It definitely seems like a Hollywood invention, but Johnny really did propose to June onstage on February 22, 1968, in London, Ontario, Canada. Just like in the movie, June tried to keep singing before she said "yes." They were married a week later in Franklin, Kentucky.
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  (#9) Braveheart

  • Mel Gibson, Sophie Marceau, Brendan Gleeson, Brian Cox, Catherine McCormack, Patrick McGoohan, Tommy Flanagan, 피터 뮬란, James Cosmo, Angus Macfadyen, Alun Armstrong, Gerard McSorley, Alex Norton, David O'Hara, Ian Bannen, Michael Byrne, Rupert Vansittart, Bernard Horsfall, Rana Morrison, John Kavanagh, Sean Lawlor, David McKay, Seán McGinley, Stephen Billington, Niall O'Brien, Tam White, Julie Austin, Ralph Riach, Malcolm Tierney, Donal Gibson, Barry McGovern, Richard Leaf, Peter Hanly, Gerda Stevenson, Jer O'Leary, William Scott-Masson, James Robinson, David Gant, Jimmy Keogh, Liam Carney, Jimmy Chisholm, Derek Pykett, John Murtagh, Greg Jeloudov, Martin Dunne, Mal Whyte, Joe Savino, Paul Tucker, Bill Murdoch, Declan Geraghty, Alan Tall, Martin Murphy, Robert Paterson, Andrew Weir, Mhairi Calvey, Sandy Nelson, Daniel Coll, John Burns, Dean Lopata, Martin Dempsey, Jeanne Marine, Joanne Bett, Phil Kelly, Fred Chiverton

  Braveheart is so full of inaccuracies that calling it a "historical film" is generous. The depiction of William Wallace's execution also wasn't entirely faithful to the details, but mostly because it was even more grisly than the movie suggests. 

  In Braveheart, William Wallace is sentenced to public execution unless he admits to treason against the king. The film doesn't specify what his exact punishment is going to be, probably to build suspense, but the real William Wallace was sentenced to be hanged, disemboweled, beheaded, and quartered, and that is indeed what happened. 

  Showing every last detail of these events would probably have meant an NC-17 rating for the film. Braveheart may not be 100% historically accurate, but the ending definitely gets the point across that Wallace met a terrible fate.
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  (#10) The Aviator

  • Kate Beckinsale, Leonardo DiCaprio, Gwen Stefani, Cate Blanchett, Alec Baldwin, Jude Law, Willem Dafoe, Martin Scorsese, Josie Maran, Alan Alda, John C. Reilly, Ian Holm, Frances Conroy, Brent Spiner, Kelli Garner, Adam Scott, Edward Herrmann, Danny Huston, Matt Ross, Stanley DeSantis

  It might seem ridiculous that Howard Hughes would have crashed an experimental military aircraft on its maiden flight over one of the most heavily populated cities in the world, but the crash scene in 2004's The Aviator is pretty close to what happened. 

  In both the movie and in real life, the Hughes Aircraft Company received two contracts during the 1940s to design new planes for use in WWII. The conflict ended before the planes were completed and the contracts were canceled, but Hughes still completed development of his XF-11 spy plane. 

  On July 7, 1946, Hughes took the XF-11 on its first test flight. The flight was only supposed to last 20 minutes, but Hughes decided on a longer flight around the Los Angeles Basin to show off his new creation. (The movie suggests the original plan was to fly for an hour and 45 minutes, and Hughes does stick to that after a little pushback.) 

  During the return to his company's Culver City airfield, Hughes discovered an oil leak in the right engine. The engine quickly lost power and the plane began to plummet. The movie shows Hughes attempting to land on a golf course, just as he tried to do in real life. Instead, Hughes crash landed in Beverly Hills, smashing into three homes and destroying one. The incident left Hughes with a crushed collarbone, six broken ribs, third-degree burns on his hands, and lung damage from smoke inhalation.
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  (#11) Goodfellas

  • Robert De Niro, Samuel L. Jackson, Joe Pesci, Ray Liotta, Paul Sorvino, Vincent Gallo, Lorraine Bracco, Al Jolson, Tobin Bell, Illeana Douglas, Debi Mazar, Frank Vincent, Vincent Pastore, Henny Youngman, Tony Sirico, Jerry Vale, Kevin Corrigan, Mike Starr, Michael Imperioli, Frank Sivero, Paul Herman, Beau Starr, Catherine Scorsese, Tony Darrow, Vito Picone, Isiah Whitlock, Jr., Charles Scorsese, Nick Vallelonga, Tony Lip, Jamie deRoy, Bob Golub, Peter Onorati, Suzanne Shepherd, Frank Pellegrino, Marianne Leone Cooper, Janis Corsair, Elaine Kagan, Margaret Smith, James Quattrochi, Frank Adonis, Billy L. Sullivan, Berlinda Tolbert, Anibal O. Lleras, Clem Caserta, Welker White, Chuck Low, Gene Canfield, Garry Pastore, Richard Goteri, Eddie Hayes, Angela Pietropinto, Victor Colicchio, John Di Benedetto, Frank DiLeo, Johnny Williams, John Ciarcia, Nancy Cassaro, Joe D'Onofrio, Margo Winkler, Vito Antuofermo, Ed Deacy, Nicole Burdette, Bo Dietl, Louis Eppolito, Joseph Bono, Peter Fain, Gina Mastrogiacomo, Stella Keitel, Dino Laudicina, Elizabeth Whitcraft, Linda Carola, George Gerard, Philip Suriano, Tony Ellis, Gaetano LoGiudice, Frank Aquilino, Gaetano Lisi, Melissa Prophet, Julie Garfield, Larry Silvestri, Frank Stellato, Ronald Maccone, Jeffrey Rollins, Katherine Wallach, Christopher Serrone, Robert Vinton, Daniela Barbosa, Susan Varon, Anthony Alessandro, Barry Squitieri, Mark Evan Jacobs, Tony Caso, Peter Hock, H. Clay Dear, Daniel P. Conte, John Manca, Steve Baker, Richard Dioguardi, Matthew T. Gitkin, Joe Gioco, Lawrence Sacco, Frank Albanese, Paul Mougey, Margaux Guerard, Spencer Bradley, Dominique DeVito, Joanna Bennett, Luke Walter, Paul McIsaac, Michael Citriniti, Manny Alfaro, Lisa Dapolito, Violet Gaynor, Gina Mattia, Joel Calandrillo, Andrew Scudiero, Irving Welzer, Steve Forleo, Debbee Hinchcliffe, Thomas E. Camuti, Alyson Jones, Russell Halley, Joel Blake, Nadine Kay, Peter Cicale, Jesse Kirtzman, Richard Mullally, Norman Barbera, Lo Nardo, Anthony Polemeni, Gayle Lewis, Michaelangelo Graziano, Thomas Lowry, Tony Conforti, Anthony Valentin, Mikey Black, Michael Calandrino, Ruby Gaynor, Fran McGee, Bob Altman, Thomas Hewson, Paula Kcira, Vito Balsamo, Mike Contessa, Edward McDonald, Adam Wandt, Erasmus C. Alfano, Edward D. Murphy, Marie Michaels, Drew Stanley, Anthony Powers

  Martin Scorsese based his 1990 classic Goodfellas on Nicholas Pileggi's 1985 mobster tell-all Wiseguy, but it's by no means a direct adaptation. Scorsese specifically changed the names of many of his main characters to acknowledge that he was also changing events and biographical details. 

  But Goodfellas isn't entirely fictional. In one memorable sequence, Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci), who's based on real-life mob enforcer Tommy DeSimone, takes out an underling for almost no reason. In the movie, bartender Michael "Spider" Gianco (Michael Imperioli) forgets to bring Tommy a drink, so Tommy humiliates him by ordering him to dance and shooting him in the foot. A few weeks later, Tommy makes fun of Spider's heavily bandaged foot, but this time Spider stands up for himself. When the rest of the crew laughs, an enraged Tommy whacks Spider. 

  It might seem like this sequence was invented to show just how brutal and merciless someone like Tommy DeSimone was, but mobster Henry Hill - who's the subject of Pileggi's book and the inspiration for Ray Liotta's character - told Howard Stern in a 2002 interview that the event pretty much happened like the movie said it did.

  DeSimone really did antagonize and wound Spider over a forgotten drink, and really did take him out when Spider talked back. (Although DeSimone shot Spider in the thigh, not the foot, and there was no mention of dancing.) According to Hill, it was the Spider incident that made him finally realize DeSimone was a true psychopath.
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  (#12) Citizen Kane

  • Orson Welles, Alan Ladd, Agnes Moorehead, Joseph Cotten, Arthur O'Connell, Ruth Warrick, Everett Sloane, Ray Collins, Herman J. Mankiewicz, Paul Stewart, George Coulouris, Philip Van Zandt, Harry Shannon, Fortunio Bonanova, Walter Sande, William Alland, Dorothy Comingore, Louise Currie, Erskine Sanford, Sonny Bupp, Thomas A. Curran, Charles Bennett, Carl Ekberg, Buddy Swan, Gus Schilling, Georgia Backus

  Charles Foster Kane, the main character of Orson Welles's 1941 masterpiece Citizen Kane, is fictional, but the movie was inspired by real events. Kane was based on real-life newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst - and so closely that the real Hearst actually tried to stop the film from ever being seen. 

  One detail seems like an exaggeration: Charles Foster Kane's wildly ostentatious pleasure palace, Xanadu, where he lives in isolation following the failure of his political career. It's even named after the lavish pleasure palace Kublai Khan completed in 1256. In reality, Hearst had his own pleasure palace that was just as luxurious as his fictional counterpart - and people can still visit it today.

  Hearst spent 28 years building Hearst Castle on what ended up being over 250,000 acres of land near San Simeon, California (Kane's Xanadu was in Florida). The newspaper mogul spared no expense on the 165-room estate, which includes gardens, pools, terraces, walkways, 15th-century painted ceilings imported from Europe, and what was the world's largest private zoo. Today, the descendants of Hearst's zebras can still be seen roaming the grounds.

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