14 Shockingly Accurate "Based On A True Story" Movie Scenes Versus 14 That'd Make A Historian's Eye Twitch

When Hollywood makes a movie that's "based on a true story," nobody's expecting that they'll value accuracy over a more exciting (or funny, or emotional, or marketable) story. But some scenes and plotlines are surprisingly accurate, while others are...not.

Fox / giphy.com

Here are 14 movie moments that are pretty close to exactly how things went down in real life, and 14 ones that took a little more creative license.

Not every inaccuracy is in an overall inaccurate movie, and vice versa. And these are just singular scenes and storylines, so they're in no way representative of everything a movie got right or wrong.

1.Apollo 13 took pains to get its story right (and impress their still-living inspirations), and it shows. And one scene that seems too much like a cinematic bad omen to be real — astronaut Jim Lovell's wife, Marilyn, losing her wedding ring in the drain on the morning of the launch — actually happened, according to Lovell himself.

2.But in real life, the famous line wasn't "Houston, we have a problem."

Here's the full scene:

3.In Hidden Figures, astronaut John Glenn personally requests that Katherine Johnson double-check the numbers generated by the IBM computer for his launch. According to chief NASA historian Bill Barry, the real Glenn did the same thing.

4.But the scene where Al Harrison knocks down a "Colored Ladies Room" sign with a crowbar isn't accurate, mostly because Al Harrison wasn't a real person, but a "fictionalized composite of three NASA directors at Langley during the time."

Here's Miriam Mann's granddaughter Duchess Harris speaking about Mann's life and legacy:

5.In Argo, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards hire carpet weavers to piece together shredded documents from the American Embassy. According to the Wired article that inspired the film, that really happened.

6.But that pulse-pounding sequence at the airport, with multiple near misses and Revolutionary Guards chasing after the would-be hostages' departing plane? That's all movie magic, and the real Tony Mendez said that the real escape went "as smooth as silk," excepting a "brief holdup over a mechanical problem with the plane."

Here's the final part of the airport sequence:

7.The story King George VI tells his speech therapist, Lionel Logue, about an abusive nanny in The King's Speech is, unfortunately, true.

Here's the full scene:

8.But there's no way in hell that the recurring plotline of Logue referring to King George as his family pet name "Bertie" could've happened in real life.

9.A Titanic scene in which a wealthy passenger and his valet turn down life jackets in favor of dying "as gentlemen" is based on a real story verified by multiple eyewitnesses.

Here's the full scene, which is deleted in some versions of the film:

10.But even though several witnesses "allege[d] an officer killed himself" as the ship sank, there is no "definitive evidence" pointing to that officer being First Officer William McMaster Murdoch.

Here's the full scene:

11.In Harriet, Harriet Tubman threatens a group of escaped slaves who are too scared to cross a river with a gun. Tubman did in fact carry guns while operating as a conductor on the Underground Railroad, for "both protection and intimidation for slaves who dangerously got cold feet mid-run."

Here's the full scene:

12.But Marie Buchanon, the free Black woman who "teaches [Harriet] how to live as a free woman," is a fictional character.

Here's the full scene:

13.The scene in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood where kids on the subway serenade Mr. Rogers with the theme song from Mister Rogers' Neighborhood is based on a real event depicted in one of Tom Junod's profiles of Rogers. (The character inspired by Junod is named Lloyd Vogel in the film.)

Here's the full scene:

14.But the plotline about Vogel's frayed relationship with his father has very little to do with Junod's real life. Junod wrote that his father was "a boozy philanderer, to be sure...but unlike my character in the script, I had never rejected him or his message."

Here's the full scene:

15.The scene in Lion where Saroo flashes back to his childhood while eating jalebi, an Indian sweet, is based in the experiences of the real Saroo Brierley.

Here's the full scene:

16.But Lucy, Saroo's onscreen girlfriend, isn't a real person, but a "compression" of women in Saroo's life.

Here's the full clip:

17.In The Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort demands that the captain of his yacht sail through a storm, which ultimately results in the boat sinking. This really happened.

Here's the full scene:

18.But the real Mark Hanna didn't do the unnerving chest thumping thing at lunch with Belfort, or any other time, for that matter.

Here's the full scene:

19.In Invictus, a plane bearing the message "Good Luck Bokke" flies low over the stadium before the climactic final rugby match. Amazingly, this isn't an invention of the filmmakers.

Here's the full scene:

20.But Nelson Mandela was not the "lone voice" to argue to the African National Congress that they should restore and support the Springbok rugby team as an "olive branch to white Afrikaners."

Here's the full scene:

21.Alan Turing proposed to Joan Clarke and then ended their engagement, just like he does in The Imitation Game, and Clarke did have a nonchalant response when he told her about his homosexuality.

22.But the scene where Clarke visits Turing following his conviction of "gross indecency" (aka homosexuality) is "invented."

Here's the full scene:

23.Walt Disney tells P.L. Travers that he's determined to adapt her Mary Poppins books into a movie because of a promise he made to his two young daughters 20 years prior in Saving Mr. Banks. This was the real Walt Disney's motivation too.

24.But Disney was not nearly as involved in the development of the script under Travers' watchful eye as he is in the movie.

25.Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon met when she heckled him at one of his comedy shows, just like the characters based on them do in The Big Sick.

Here's the full scene:

26.But the scene where Emily's father asks Kumail his opinion on 9/11 is, thankfully, not something that really happened.

Here's the full scene:

And here's Nanjiani's Colbert interview:

27.The argument Jane has with Stephen's doctor about whether he should be taken off his ventilator in The Theory of Everything is true to life.

28.But unlike in the film, the real Stephen and Jane didn't start dating until after Stephen received a diagnosis of motor neurone disease (aka ALS).