7

A Homicide Detective Once Investigated A Murder He Himself Committed

Paramount Pictures

The Movie:

***SORT-OF-SPOILER ALERT***

In Shutter Island, Leonardo DiCaprio doesn't win an Oscar for portraying a law enforcement officer who investigates a disappearance only to discover that the victim is dead, and that he himself committed the crime before his sick brain blocked out that cheerful memory.

The Reality:

In the late 19th century, Parisian detective Robert Ledru was called in to investigate the 1887 fatal shooting of beachgoer Andre Monet. Fortunately for Ledru, he had a mountain of evidence to work with: shell casings, sock prints showing that the killer was missing a big toe, and ... some of Ledru's personal police files lying around the scene?

Paramount Pictures
Even stranger was this note they found inside.

The detective realized that he also owned the same type of gun used in the murder, had no big toe, and woke up that morning with wet and sandy socks. The facts quickly started to add up to a giant arrow with "Le Culprit" written on it and pointing straight at Ledru, despite him having no memory of committing the crime. But as he thought more about it, the more sense it started to make.

Paramount Pictures
Which is the main difference between his story and Shutter Island.

6

Deranged Nazi Scientists Successfully Bioengineered A Murderous Super-Species

Marvel Studios

The Movie:

If you need some unholy scientific experiment gone wrong in your movie, blame Nazi scientists. That's where Captain America's nemesis Hydra came from, as well as the horrors in a whole bunch of B movies.

Sci Fi Channel
This was followed by Doomtrooper II: Reich Back At Ya!

In video games you can gun down genetically engineered Nazi monstrosities in Wolfenstein. Holy crap, the real Nazis weren't bad enough, so we had to invent this whole ridiculous "genetic mad science" program for them?

The Reality:

Two German brothers, Heinz and Lutz Heck, were such big fans of European bovine history that they wanted to de-extinct aurochs, the granddaddies of modern domestic cows. The Hecks' plan was to use selective breeding to backwards-evolve modern cattle until they got a designer breed of auroch doppelgangers.

Martainn MacDhomhnaill via IB Times
Hold on, does this mean we could de-evolve an ostrich into a T. rex?

5

American Pioneers Faced Off Against An Apocalyptic Insect Swarm

TriStar Pictures

The Movie:

Another common staple of terrible horror/sci-fi movies is an unstoppable insect swarm that appears out of nowhere and fucks shit up. Of course, in most cases (from Starship Troopers to Eight Legged Freaks) the creepy crawlies have to be made huge because what kind of damage can regular-sized bugs do, even if there are a lot of them?

The Reality:

Between 1874 and 1875, a swarm of Rocky Mountain locusts attacked huge areas of the United States with a force of trillions of flying grasshoppers that covered an area of nearly 200,000 square miles.

Christiaan Kooyman/Wiki Commons
That's a million million of these bastards. You may want to go change your underwear right now.

4

Huang Yu Jumped Out Of An Out-Of-Control Airplane After A Midair Shootout

Warner Bros. Pictures

The Movie:

In Passenger 57, skycop Wesley Snipes gets into a shootout with some terrorists aboard an airplane, but finding himself outnumbered, he jumps out of the craft just before it lands. Of course, in typical Hollywood fashion, he then regroups, defeats the bad guys, and goes on to commit tax evasion.

The Reality:

In 1948, the Miss Macao flying boat crashed in the South China Sea, killing its entire staff and passengers, save for one: a Chinese fellow named Huang Yu, who was found floating in the water, seemingly without any memory of what happened.

South China Morning Post
Man, even The Bourne Identity ripped this off?

3

"Lawn Chair Larry" Flew With A Bunch Of Balloons Strapped To Himself 27 Years Before Up

Pixar

The Movie:

In Pixar's Up, an old man ties thousands of balloons to his house and flies off to South America because, dammit, after that heart-wrenching opening, the last thing we needed was more reality.

Pixar
"We also have talking dogs and giant birds coming right up, so stick around!"

The Reality:

OK, you'll never actually get enough balloons to lift a whole house into the atmosphere. If you want to pull a stunt like this in the real world, you need to think smaller ... even if that actually involves way more danger.

2

Corkey Fornof's Insane Emergency Landing Was Directly Copied By A Bond Movie

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

1

A Meteor Infects An Entire Town With A Mysterious Andromeda Strain-Like Illness

Universal Pictures

The Movie:

In the 1971 sci-fi classic The Andromeda Strain, a micrometeorite carrying an alien organism travels down to Earth on one of our satellites, where it immediately infects and kills a town full of people.

Universal Pictures
"Clearly, we need to build a giant wall around Earth" -- President Trump.

The Reality:

The residents of a small Peruvian town near Lake Titicaca (which we are not ashamed to admit still sounds just as hilarious as when we were 12) were stunned when a goddamn meteor crashed nearby causing a massive explosion. The locals decided to walk on over to the mystery blast to check it out, which is basically how every sci-fi horror movie starts, and that's pretty much what happened next as everyone who visited the crater started complaining of strange headaches and nausea.

Miguel Carrasco/Reuters
Meanwhile, Hollywood was already working on The Andromeda Strain II -- This Time It's Peru-sonal.

In any movie, around now is when the real threat would emerge. The sick die and then come back to life! The virus was in reality just an advance attack by a UFO invasion's landing party! The meteor contained a blob! You probably know that's not how it played out, or else you'd have probably heard about it on the news by now.

A bunch of smart guys were called in to investigate and discovered that, in reality, the meteor had just hit a natural deposit of arsenic, throwing a bunch of vaporized death-dirt into the air, which was how everyone got sick. Or in other words: The illness was coming from inside our planet!

Zachary Frey is a freshman at Cornell University. You can (and should) read some of his other awesome articles here. Also, his nerdy friend named Peter Russell asked him to plug this awesome website.

Sometimes it's hard to tell what's real and what's Hollywood. For instance, fact or fiction: Someone actually managed to steal the Mona Lisa from the Louvre. Spoiler alert: fact. See that and more in 7 Real World Heists That Put 'Ocean's 11' To Shame. And check out 6 Impossible Escapes Using Impossibler Methods, because real life is way more awesome than the movies.

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