There’s a popular saying that sometimes truth is stranger than fiction which can be very true. But “stranger” is not the only adjective you can safely use in that sentence. The truth can also horrify sometimes and used to inspire fictional events and characters. We all hope and believe that the average horror story is just the product of a writer’s imagination but inspiration for even the darkest ideas sometimes comes from real life.
10. Game of Thrones’ Red Wedding was Inspired By Two Real Massacres
HBO’s Game of Thrones was one of TV’s most popular shows and millions of viewers tuned in over its eight seasons to watch. The last book was released in 2011 and even in 2023 people are still eagerly awaiting the day George. R. R. Martin finishes it to continue his epic tale.
Most of the story is clearly fictional but there are some bits of pieces of real life mixed in, if only as inspiration. One of the most noteworthy relates to the Red Wedding.
On the show, the Red Wedding referred to the events of Robb Stark’s wedding when their historical allies the Freys turn against the Starks and murder Robb, his wife and his mother along with all of his bannermen. The scene was incredibly brutal and shocking and is a standout for many fans.
Martin has explained that he took inspiration for this event from two real life incidents. One event, known as the Black Dinner, happened in 1440. The 16-year-old Earl of Douglas and his younger brother had been invited to dinner with 10-year-old King James II. The evening was going well until a black bull’s head was dropped on the table and the Douglas brothers were taken outside and executed for treason by the Chancellor of Scotland who feared the Douglas’ power.
Another event, the 1691 Massacre of Glencoe, was also an inspiration. All clans were ordered to renounce their deposed king and swear fealty to King William of Orange. The clans needed to send a signed oath affirming this but Clan MacDonald wanted to hear from King James himself. They ended up waiting too long and their oath was rejected.
Because they hadn’t officially sworn fealty, soldiers were dispatched. They claimed to need shelter and were welcomed by the MacDonald’s at Glencoe where they stayed and enjoyed the clan’s hospitality for two weeks. They then received orders to kill everyone, so they ate dinner with the clan, waited for them all to fall asleep, and then murdered 38 of them. The women and children who escaped died of exposure in the cold winter.
9. Skeletor Was Inspired By a Real Corpse
He-Man and the Masters of the Universe has been accused more than once of only existing to sell action figures. But that didn’t mean the show had no creativity behind it. Someone had to create the universe and the people in it and that required inspiration.
The character of Skeletor, who is just an evil wizard with a skull for a head, seems like he might be straightforward and obviously fictional, but that’s not the case. Artist Mark Taylor created Skeletor based on his own experience as a child when he saw a real skeleton at a carnival.
Taylor was at a funhouse called Laff in the Dark that featured a mummified old cowboy that smelled terrible. He was convinced it was real but people assured him it was just a fake prop like any other. But it turned out Taylor was right. The corpse he had seen was the actual body of outlaw Elmer McCurdy.
McCurdy had been shot to death after a robbery and no one claimed his body. The mortician embalmed him and put him on display, charging money to see the corpse. The corpse was stolen by a carny and, in time, people forgot it was ever a real body. But Taylor had a feeling, and it inspired the character Skeletor.
8. Wes Craven Had Several real Life Inspirations For Freddy Krueger
Freddy Krueger of the Nightmare on Elm Street film series has become a horror icon. Created by director Wes Craven for his 1984 film and played by Robert Englund, he’s one of the most recognizable characters in horror history. And though he’s a supernatural being in the films, Craven was inspired to create him by real world events.
Craven once told the story about how an article in the LA Times inspired Nightmare. It was an article about Cambodian refugees, and how the son was afraid to sleep because he thought his nightmares would kill him if he did. Eventually he went to sleep and died one night.
On the commentary track for the film, Craven also explained that part of the inspiration came from a man he saw out of his window as a child who scared him and made him wonder why an adult would do something like that to a kid.
7. Jeepers Creepers’ Opening Was Based on Actual Events
Jeepers Creepers was a popular horror franchise for a time, though lesser known than ones like Halloween or Hellraiser. The writer/director of the original movie was outed as a convicted child molester which seemed to end the franchise for a time, though someone else tried to resurrect it in 2022.
In the original movie, one of the more memorable scenes, before audiences even know who or what the villain is, involves the Creeper dumping bodies down a pipe and then chasing witnesses. This was inspired by real life killer Dennis DePue.
In 1990, a couple out for a country drive were playing a license plate game where they tried to make words out of the letters on plates. A truck rushed up behind them and they made a joke about the letters. The truck passed but later the couple saw it again parked at an abandoned schoolhouse. They also saw the driver carrying a bloody sheet over what looked like a body.
As the couple discussed what to do, the truck rushed up behind them and chased them for miles. All of this plays out almost exactly in the movie. In real life, it was DePue in the truck and the body had been his wife’s. He’d murdered her and was trying to dispose of the remains.
6. Dragonball Villain Frieza Was Based on Real Estate Agents
Trying to apply much real world science or reason to Dragonball is not an easy task. The story involves some hugely fantastic elements and is never presented as realistic. Despite that, there is still real world inspiration to be found, especially in the character of Frieza.
Series creator Akira Toriyama explained that the alien Frieza, who takes over whole planets and then sells them, was based on what he called “the worst kind of people:” real estate speculators.
The villain dates back about 30 years at this point and was the first major villain in the show. Back when Toriyama thought him up, he was inspired by the proliferation of predatory real estate speculators in Japan in the ’80s, who preyed on homeowners to turn a profit during the housing bubble.
5. Moby Dick Was Inspired By a Real Whale Attack
Nearly everyone knows the story of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. It’s a tale of being consumed by revenge and the use of the white whale sometimes seems like it shows just how lost Ahab is, by focusing so much on an animal which clearly couldn’t have had malicious intent when it first wounded him. But you can forgive Melville for taking this tack since whales had a history of causing some serious mayhem.
Melville was inspired by the true tale of the Essex, a whaling ship that was rammed by a sperm whale. The crew had to abandon ship thousands of miles from shore and few survived the 92 days at sea. Those that did had resorted to cannibalism.
4 Chucky From Child’s Play was Inspired by A Real Doll
Horror fans know that the doll Annabelle is inspired by a real doll once owned by Ed and Lorraine Warren. Less well known is that the foul-mouthed killer doll Chucky from the Child’s Play franchise is also inspired by a real doll named Robert.
As the story goes, Robert the doll was once owned by a painter named Robert Eugene Otto. A woman who worked for the family as a servant in 1903 hand made the doll for the painter when he was a child. She was said to have practiced voodoo, something that relates to Chucky’s creation in the movies, and the doll got revenge for the family’s mistreatment of her.
Like Chucky, Robert was said to secretly cause mayhem that the real boy was then blamed for. Later stories said that Robert could blink, move and even talk. After Otto died, a woman bought his estate and claimed Robert the doll was just as alive as ever. She did what anyone would do when confronted by a cursed doll and donated it to a museum. You can still find him there today.
3. Pearl Jam’s Jeremy Was About a Real Suicide
Jeremy was one of Pearl Jam’s biggest hits and the lyrics make it clear the song is about a school shooting. It’s also based on a real life incident in which a boy committed suicide in his school in front of his classmates.
Singer Eddie Vedder had read an article about Jeremy Wade Delle being sent to get a late slip and returning with a gun in the paper and was inspired to write the song. Though it became a hit for the band, and Vedder wanted to sing it to spread some awareness, at least one student who had been in the room at the time was upset that the band even wrote it.
2. The Movie Orphan Was Inspired By Real Case of a Woman Pretending to Be a Child
The horror movie Orphan is an underrated movie about an adult murderer who pretends to be an orphaned child because she looks like a young girl, and then continues her murderous ways when she’s newly adopted in America.
The movie has been accused of having an absurd premise, and that may be true. It’s also true it’s based on a real incident.
The true story is decidedly different from the film, but still involved a woman in her 30s named Barbora Skrlova pretending to be a 13-year-old boy. Skrlova had taken up residence with a pair of sisters who had young children and convinced the adults that the children needed to be punished for bad acts they never committed. This ultimately lead to some severe child abuse before Skrlova was forced to flee the police.
1. Adam Sandler’s 50 First Dates Was Inspired By a Real Case of Amnesia
Most of what we’ve seen on this list has been horror, but how about a comedy? Adam Sandler’s 50 First Dates came out in 2004 and featured Drew Barrymore as a woman who lost her memory every day thanks to an accident. It’s played for laughs on film but it was inspired by a real person.
Michele Philpots had lived the same day of her life for 29 years. She had been involved in two different traffic accidents several years apart, one in 1985 and one in 1990 suffering head trauma each time. By 1994 she was having seizures and memory issues. She was fired from her job after photocopying the same document over and over, forgetting she’d done it.
Her memory failed completely in 1994. Not only is she not aware of the passage of time, sometimes she can’t even remember a full day and will forget everything within minutes. She’s constantly having to have what happened explained and deal with the fact she and everyone she knows is getting older and older which, to her, will always be a shock.