18 Times When Fictional Works Were a Little Too Accurate

The highest honor a filmmaker can get is a visit from the FBI.

Published 4 months ago in Wow

Hollywood is notoriously terrible at realism. The coffee cup in Game of Thrones. Jeans and t-shirts popping up in Gladiator. The entirety of Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor. But not every creative work is defined by glaring gaffes and questionable plot twists. Some are so realistic that the creators found themselves stoking viewers, experts, and even various federal agencies with their shocking accuracy.

From The Hunt for Red October's intel leaks to Interstellar's scientific impact, here are 18 movies, books and television shows that were too accurate for their own good.

1
“Dr. Strangelove was originally conceived as a drama about the nature of nuclear warfare, but as Kubrick was writing the screenplay, he felt many of the accurate depictions of nuclear warfare policy were too unbelievable for audiences to take seriously, and so it was turned into a comedy.”

2
“During the heyday of ‘The Sopranos,' FBI wiretaps of the real mafia revealed that the show was so realistic the real mobsters thought there was a connected guy feeding story lines for the show.”

3
“The prop money made for ‘Rush Hour 2’ was so realistic some crew members attempted to spend it. The money - which, if real, would be about $1 trillion - was then confiscated and destroyed by the FBI.”
4
“In 1991, actor Charlie Sheen contacted the FBI after watching Japanese Horror Film [Guinea Pig 2: Flower of Flesh and Blood] convinced that the movie depicted footage of an actual murder. After an investigation, the filmmakers were forced to prove that the gore shown in the movie had all been created using special effects.”

5
“To create an accurate depiction of a black hole in the movie Interstellar, Kip Thorne, a theoretical physicist, wrote pages of theoretical equations to help the VFX team. The resulting visual effects provided Thorne with new insights, resulting in the publication of three scientific papers.”
6
“The BBC ran a paranormal investigation show called Ghostwatch on Halloween in 1992. The fictional program was filmed to appear as real as possible, using a BBC broadcaster as the host. It only aired once due to the uproar of a frightened public.”
7
“The writer for ‘Die Hard with a Vengeance’ was investigated by the FBI after they revealed that his story's plan of robbing the Federal Reserve through a breached subway wall would have worked.”

8
“Fritz Lang's film ‘Rocket to the Moon’ (1929) was banned by the Nazis for depicting rocket technology too accurately.” 
9
“On May 26, 1947, the Federal Bureau of Investigation issued a memo on the film ‘It's a Wonderful Life’. The memo stated that the film represented rather obvious attempts to malign bankers and the upper class with the character of Mr. Potter, and accused the film of promoting communism.”
10
“The bomber cockpit in Dr. Strangelove was based on a B-29 cockpit because the real B-52 bombers were off limit to the film crew. It turned out to be so accurate that Stanley Kubrick feared that his research team had done their job illegally and that they would be investigated by the FBI.”

11
"'Saving Private Ryan' depicted combat so realistically that veterans left theaters during the opening scene, stating that it was the the most realistic depiction of combat they had ever seen.
12
“In the 1996 movie ‘Bound,’ which was the Wachowskis' directorial debut, the lesbian s-x scenes were choreographed by feminist writer and s-x educator Susie Bright. The MPAA threatened an NC-17 rating on the first cut because a s-x scene appeared too realistic due to ‘hand s-x.’”
13
"The comedy film 'My Cousin Vinny' is often praised by lawyers due to its accurate depiction of courtroom procedure, something very rare in films which portray trials. It is even used as a textbook example by law professors to demonstrate voir dire and cross examination."

14
“Tom Clancy's stories were so detailed, many assumed he was ex-military. In fact he never served. He wrote most of his stories in his spare time whilst working as an insurance salesman.”
15
“Throughout the film ‘Good Night, And Good Luck’, Joseph McCarthy was portrayed using real life clips, but a common complaint was that ‘the actor portraying him was too over-the-top.’”
16
“TIL of spy novels that were so accurate that politicians read them to learn about the real world. Real spies told Gérard de Villiers—creator of the popular French ‘SAS’ series—of their secret acts, then enjoyed reading about them in fictionalized form.”