History Film / HiddenFigures

** Dorothy is depicted as being promoted to supervisor only after John Glenn's flight. In reality she was promoted in 1949. What's more is that the segregated computing facilities had been abolished at the end of the 50s, so the department was integrated at that point.
** Katherine is shown having to run across the lot so she can use the segregated bathrooms - when this was Mary in real life. Katherine just started using the white bathroom, unaware that there was a problem. It was years before someone complained, and Katherine simply ignored it (and the issue was dropped).

** Katherine knows the absolute fastest way from the Colored Computers room to Mission Control from all the times she had to run to the bathroom, which comes in handy when she has to get her calculations for John Glenn's flight over there.

** Other than the women themselves all NASA personnel are fictionalized, as the film shows the size and infrastructure of NASA was insane in the 60's, so they created new characters representing different areas. Al Harrison is a mishmash of three different NASA directors. Same with Vivian Mitchell and Paul Stafford: both intended to be more of a metaphor for white complacency.

* EasilyImpressed: An initially hostile police officer ends up giving the three women a police escort to work after they imply that they know astronauts.

* GenreSavvy: Dorothy realizes early on that the new IBM computer is going to replace human computers - and that electronic computers in general are going to be the wave of the future - and teaches herself and her staff FORTRAN programming. [[spoiler:They're all hired on en masse into the computer group and form the nucleus of the new IT department.]]

** Similarly, Vivian does seem to ''like'' Dorothy, given her line about having "Nothing against y'all" (with "y'all" referring to African-Americans in general). As Dorothy's response indicates--"I know...that you believe that"--the bigotry is more systemic and therefore "innocent" than blatant, which arguably makes it worse.

* LosingAShoeInTheStruggle: During a test of the model Mercury orbiter's heat shield, it starts when Mary still inside the test tunnel. When one of her high heels is caught in a vent, Mary struggles to get it free before the test starts, but can't get it loose and ends up ditching her shoes.

* PottyEmergency: Katherine, constantly, because she has to run across Langley campus and back to use a segregated women's bathroom. As such, what could be a basic five minute trip to the ladies room down the hallway becomes a forty minute sprint she has to do several times a day, to the point that she even takes the paperwork she's assigned with her to the restroom so that she can keep working on it.
* PowerWalk: Dorothy leading her black computers across campus to the IBM lab, backed by triumphant music.

* RealityEnsues: PlayedForDrama and subverted. During the movie's climax, when Katherine has just performed the math to calculate John Glenn's return trajectory, she rushes with the Mission Control rep to bring the figures to the group...and before she can enter, the door is slammed in her face. The soundtrack goes dead as Katherine stands alone in the hallway, stunned. [[spoiler: It's a massive relief when the scientists open the door for her and allow her to come inside.]]

-->'''Mary''': We go from being our father's daughters, to our husband's wives, to our babies' mothers.

* InnocentBigot: When Jim first meets Katherine he can’t hide his surprise that women are contributing to the space program.

* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Stafford. He's not going to let a little thing like Jim Crow get in the way of ''beating the Russians,'' and he's very loyal to his group, including Katherine.
** It should be noted in the interest of historical accuracy that none of the four different men upon whom the fictionalized Paul Stafford is based ever really had a problem with Katherine being ''black''. Their problem was primarily that she was a ''woman'' and at the time there just were no women in engineering to speak of (Mary Jackson was not only one of the first women of color to work at NASA as an engineer, she was one of the first women '''''period''''' to do so). And in the case of one of the men Stafford is based on, aeronautical engineer Ted Skopinski, his problem was that ''he'' was an engineer and ''she'' was merely a mathematician, and therefore he felt she had no business checking his work for mistakes. He soon learned to get over himself as Katherine proved invaluable to the Space Tasks Group.

* StayInTheKitchen: Touched upon. When the main characters aren't being challenged because of their race, it's for their gender.

* RealityEnsues: Played for ''very'' powerful drama. During the movie's climax, when Katherine has just performed the math to calculate John Glenn's return trajectory, she rushes with the Mission Control rep to bring the figures to the group...and before she can enter, the door is slammed in her face. The soundtrack goes dead as Katherine stands alone in the hallway, stunned. [[spoiler: It's a massive relief when the scientists open the door for her and allow her to come inside.]]

* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: Well, not anyone individually; more "The Reason NASA Sucks." As noted in RageBreakingPoint above, Katherine delivers an ''epic'' roasting of the segregated policies, both blatant (segregated bathrooms) and subtle (everyone refusing to use the coffee pot after Katherine touches it on her first day, and a separate pot marked "colored" appearing on her second), of the program.

* ShownTheirWork: The filmmakers went out of their way to ensure that nearly every key aspect of the original story remained intact, going as far as to spend a fair chunk of time grilling Langley Space Center historian Bill Barry. Of note is John Glenn's request that Katherine recheck the calculations right before launch; it sounds like something popped in for drama, but he actually requested that she do it.

* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: Well, not anyone individually; more "The Reason NASA Sucks." As noted in RageBreakingPoint above, Katherine delivers an ''epic'' roasting of the segregated policies, both blatant (segregated bathrooms) and subtle (everyone refusing to use the coffee pot after Katherine touches it on her first day, and a separate pot marked "colored" appearing on her second), of the program.

The film was a runaway success, ending up as one of the highest-grossing films of 2016.

* VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory: Several of the elements of the story were compressed or embroidered to suit the narrative. The bathroom drama, for example, was very exaggerated for the movie: in the book, it was Mary who had trouble finding a bathroom, in an unfamiliar building where she had been sent to work.

** It should be noted in the interest of historical accuracy that none of the four different men upon whom the fictionalized Jim Stafford is based ever really had a problem with Katherine being ''black''. Their problem was primarily that she was a ''woman'' and at the time there just were no women in engineering to speak of (Mary Jackson was not only one of the first women of color to work at NASA as an engineer, she was one of the first women '''''period''''' to do so). And in the case of one of the men Stafford is based on, aeronautical engineer Ted Skopinski, his problem was that ''he'' was an engineer and ''she'' was merely a mathematician, and therefore he felt she had no business checking his work for mistakes. He soon learned to get over himself as Katherine proved invaluable to the Space Tasks Group.

* ScrewTheRulesIMakeThem: A positive example. After Katherine [[RageBreakingPoint defiantly explains how she has to go half a mile to use the colored bathrooms]], Harrison responds by destroying the “Colored Women’s Bathroom” sign and desegregating the NASA bathrooms.

* RageBreakingPoint: Mr. Harrison realizes that Katherine has been out for forty minutes and asks her where she's been. She's soaking wet, having just run half a mile in a skirt and heels in the pouring rain just to use the bathroom. She snaps, rightfully angry at how she's been treated by him and the other mathematicians.

* WhereDaWhiteWomenAt: Inverted. When the astronauts are shaking the hands of the staff and crew, Mary remarks on how attractive John Glenn is, and when Kathrine and Dorothy rib her for this, Mary immediately states that beauty is color-blind.

** NASA itself is conflated with its predecessor organization, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), which became NASA in 1958. NACA had an official segregation policy but NASA didn't anymore.

* CompositeCharacter: Other than the women themselves all NASA personnel are fictionalized, as the film shows the size and infrastructure of NASA was insane in the 60's, so they created new characters representing different areas. Al Harrison is a mishmash of three different NASA directors. Same with Vivian Mitchell and Paul Stafford: both intended to be more of a metaphor for white complacency.

** Katherine knows the absolute fastest way from the Colored Computers room to Mission Control from all the times she had to run to the bathroom, which comes in handy when she has to get her calculations for John Glen's flight over there.

* ForegoneConclusion: John Glenn's pod has some trouble with the heat shield. If it fails, it will surely kill him. It's PlayedForDrama in the movie, but most people in the audience will be at least somewhat familiar with Senator John Glenn, the former astronaut. At the very least, most audience members will know that he died in December 2016 at the age of ninety-five, long after his orbit.

* ChekhovsSkill: Dorothy is introduced fixing a car and mentions she grew up around machines and more tech savvy than most. She also stole a programming book from the library after hearing talk of NASA bringing in IBM computers that would make her job obsolete. Both made her one of the few at NASA who knew how to operate the IBM.

* HistoricalBeautyUpgrade: [[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/34/Mary_Jackson_working.jpg Mary Jackson]], as played by Music/JanelleMonae.

* NoAntagonist: The level and pervasiveness of institutional racism in the American South of the 1960s is the real antagonist. None of the white characters are actively trying to undermine or attack the leads (even though Stafford is insecure about Katherine's greater mathematical ability), they mostly serve as roadblocks to the leads' success by insisting "That's just how things are."

* ForegoneConclusion: John Glenn's pod has some trouble with the heat shield. If it fails, it will surely kill him. It's PlayedForDrama in the movie, but most people in the audience will be at least somewhat familiar with Senator John Glenn, the former astronaut.

** Triple Meaning, even. Part of the drama comes from the main characters being women... you know, who have ''figures''.

* VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory: A lot of elements of the story were compressed or embroidered to suit the narrative. The bathroom drama, for example, was very exaggerated for the movie: in the book, it was Mary who had trouble finding a bathroom, in an unfamiliar building where she had been sent to work.