History Main / FreakierThanFiction

* [[SerialKiller BTK]] Dennis Rader, of Wichita, Kansas, has probably been the basis for several fictional serial killers. He would have gotten away scot-free, right under everyone's nose, too, if he hadn't [[ManipulativeBastard decided to get himself caught]] twenty years after the fact by [[StalkerWithACrush stalking]] the local newspaper and the detective who was head of his case way back when. His crimes were horrifying, but his reported beliefs about the afterlife were worse: he thought his victims would be his eternal slaves. [[note]]Another serial killer, the Zodiac, expressed a similar belief in one of his letters. Unlike Rader, [[KarmaHoudini he was never caught]]. [[/note]] His pastor, who sat through the trial up to this point in demonstration of the belief that even killers could achieve salvation if properly repentant, [[MoralEventHorizon stood up and walked out]] (Rader previously was president of their church council). Another major aspect of how he was caught is remarkable -- when he'd started his killings, computerization hadn't taken off. When he resumed [[EvilGloating the taunting letters]], he sent a 1.44 MB floppy disk to the local news network... [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Rader#Arrest without realizing it had metadata from a deleted]] Microsoft Word file on it, which was last modified by "Dennis". [[HoistByHisOwnPetard Had he not sent in that floppy disk, he likely wouldn't have been caught.]] Not only that, but he asked police whether it could be traced, and ''[[WhatAnIdiot believed them when they claimed it couldn't]]''. He even expressed ''betrayal'' over their using this, apparently thinking of them as in a way his friends and not people trying to arrest him.

** The freakiness didn't end after the war was over. Otto Skorzeny, a senior SS officer, not only completely escaped justice, but also went on to work for ''Israel'' of all places. And while he was helping Mossad, he was also running a group that helped fellow SS members escape and founding neo-nazi movements in Argentina and Spain. KarmaHoudini doesn't even begin to describe this man. His funeral is also the stuff of fiction, as it was attended by former SS members who sang Hitler's favorite songs and gave the Nazi salute.

** The freakiness didn't end after the war was over. Otto Skorzeny, a senior SS officer, not only completely escaped justice, but also went on to work for ''Israel'' of all places. And while he was helping Mossad, he was also running a group that helped fellow SS members escape and founding neo-nazi movements in Argentina and Spain. KarmaHoudini doesn't even begin to describe this man.

* In ''Film/SinginInTheRain'', Cosmo says of film star Lina Lamont: "She can't act, she can't sing, she can't dance. A triple threat." Now, who in RealLife would build a musical around a Hollywood star who couldn't sing, dance or act? That would be the producers of a musical revue titled ''Two's Company'', which opened on Broadway the same year ''Singin' in the Rain'' was released. What critics had to write about Bette Davis's leading performance resembled the movie's put-down of its fictional actress. This is also a reference to a Hollywood executive's first impression of Fred Astaire: "Can't act. Can't sing. Balding. Can dance a little."

* Everyone knows the British love a SpotOfTea. What people don't know is that they ''hollowed out a mountain'' in order to build a power station that could respond to sudden spikes in electricity demand caused by everyone putting their electric tea kettles on at once (such as during half-time of the F.A. Cup final). Built in 1974, Dinorwig power station in Wales is the fastest operating power station, able to generate 1,650 MW of electricity in ''seconds'' should the need arise. It is inside the mountain in order to contain the enormous ''explosion'' that will result if it ever fails to cope with demand.

* [[SerialKiller BTK]] Dennis Rader, of Wichita, Kansas, has probably been the basis for several fictional serial killers. He would have gotten away scot-free, right under everyone's nose, too, if he hadn't [[ManipulativeBastard decided to get himself caught]] twenty years after the fact by [[StalkerWithACrush stalking]] the local newspaper and the detective who was head of his case way back when. His crimes were horrifying, but his reported beliefs about the afterlife were worse: he thought his victims would be his eternal slaves. [[note]]Another serial killer, the Zodiac, expressed a similar belief in one of his letters. Unlike Rader, [[KarmaHoudini he was never caught]]. [[/note]] His pastor, who sat through the trial up to this point in demonstration of the belief that even killers could achieve salvation if properly repentant, [[MoralEventHorizon stood up and walked out]] (Rader previously was president of their church council). Another major aspect of how he was caught is remarkable -- when he'd started his killings, computerization hadn't taken off. When he resumed [[EvilGloating the taunting letters]], he sent a 1.44 MB floppy disk to the local news network... [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Rader#Arrest without realizing it had metadata from a deleted]] Microsoft Word file on it, which was last modified by "Dennis". [[HoistByHisOwnPetard Had he not sent in that floppy disk, he likely wouldn't have been caught.]] Not only that, but he asked police whether it could be traced, and ''[[WhatAnIdiot believed them when they claimed it couldn't]]''.

->''"Truth must necessarily be stranger than fiction, for fiction is the creation of the human mind and therefore congenial to it."''
-->-- '''Creator/GKChesterton'''

* Presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died within hours of each other on the same day. This might be seen as just a quirk of timing if it ended there. However, they both died on July 4. July 4, ''1826'', the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence they had both collaborated on writing and getting passed in the Continental Congress. Adams's last words were even "Thomas Jefferson still survives", unaware that Jefferson had died earlier in the day, while Jefferson's own last words were "Is it the 4th?". If this had been fiction, the writer would have been completely mocked for writing hagiographic patriotic schmaltz.

* In 1991, a man picked up a hitchhiker one night, only for said hitchhiker to attack him. He managed to get the man out of his car and even took a different path home to ensure he wasn't followed. Despite this, the man arrived at home to see the hitchhiker lurking around his house. He called the police, and upon entering the house, they discovered the man's mother, [[https://unsolvedmysteries.fandom.com/wiki/Dorothy_Donovan Dorothy Donovan]], murdered. The police were very skeptical of the man's story, but eventually DNA evidence led them to hitchhiker, who said that he'd picked the house at random to find a place to sleep for the night.

* Presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died within hours of each other on the same day. This might be seen as just a quirk of timing if it ended there. However, they both died on July 4. July 4, ''1826'', the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence they had both collaborated on writing and getting passed in the Continental Congress. If this had been fiction, the writer would have been completely mocked for writing hagiographic patriotic schmaltz.

* Anyone watching ''Film/TheWayWayBack'' might wonder who in their right mind would name a [[SouvenirLand water park]] "Water Wizz". [[http://www.waterwizz.com/ They did.]]

** If any real person could be said to have Joker Immunity, it was Adolf Hitler. The man survived dozens of assassination attempts and only died when he took his own life when it became clear Germany was doomed.

* ''FutilityOrTheWreckOfTheTitan'' does this ''retroactively''. The story concerns the largest ship afloat, the ''Titan'' which ignores iceberg warnings, and as a result, hits one 400 nautical miles off the coast of Newfoundland one night and sinks, killing most of its passengers. 14 years later, the RMS ''Titanic'' would manage to almost perfectly recreate the ''Titan'''s fate in even stranger conditions: it was on her maiden voyage instead of her third, on a clear night instead of dense fog, they got distress signals out but the closest ship couldn't hear them (their only radio operator was asleep) and the ship managed to survive several hours after her own designer thought she would go down.

** The Atomic Bomb must have felt like a DeusExMachina of the worst sort to the Japanese. While there had been some foreshadowing over in the European theater with failed Nazi atomic programs, the Manhattan Project was a well-kept secret and Japan only learned about the new type of weapon by [[UsefulNotes/AtomicBombingsOfHiroshimaAndNagasaki
direct demonstration]].

** The Atomic Bomb must have felt like a DeusExMachina of the worst sort to the Japanese. While there had been some foreshadowing over in the European theater with failed Nazi atomic programs, the Manhattan Project was a well-kept secret and Japan only learned about the new type of weapon by [[UsefulNotes/TheAtomicBombingsOfHiroshimaAndNagasaki

* ''Webcomic/SaturdayMorningBreakfastCereal'' [[https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2009-11-28 goes out of its way to disprove this]], using a variant on the proof that there is no greatest positive integer. Basically, take the strangest thing that exists in reality, then add a [[EverythingsBetterWithMonkeys monkey]] dressed as Hitler to it to get something even stranger, yet fictional.

* At the end of 2016 Creator/CarrieFisher passed away from cardiac arrest. Her own mother died the very next day, and her last words were [[TogetherInDeath "I just want to be with Carrie"]] -- and several people commented that if something like that happened in fiction, no one would buy it.

* The character of Amon Goeth from ''Film/SchindlersList'' was actually ''[[HistoricalVillainDowngrade nicer]]'' [[HistoricalVillainDowngrade than his real-life basis]]. Despite already being portrayed as a sadistic monster who can't feel empathy, tortures and kills prisoners just ForTheEvulz, and shoots children, Spielberg deliberately toned down his inhumanity because he thought audiences wouldn't believe just how ridiculously monstrous Goeth really was (he had a torture dungeon underneath his house, fed ''live'' inmates to his dogs, would randomly shoot people from his window every day just for the hell of it, singled out crowds of children to be executed en masse, and is believed to have personally killed over five-hundred people and sent thousands more to their deaths).[[note]]And even then, some critics ''still'' thought that his pointlessly horrific villainy was "[[RealityIsUnrealistic unrealistic]]".[[/note]].

* WWII hero Audie Murphy played himself in the movie ''Film/ToHellAndBack'', based on his autobiography. During the adaptation, he requested that certain parts of his exploits (like the time he had malaria and leapt on top of a burning, half-destroyed tank-destroyer to use its pintle-mounted machine gun and single-handedly hold off an entire company of German mechanized infantry for half an hour) be watered down a little since nobody would believe the real thing.

* UsefulNotes/WorldWarII ''in general'' would make a terribly, terribly [[http://squid314.livejournal.com/275614.html implausible TV show]]. Just in general, the fact that leader of Nazi Germany was once a homeless Austrian who failed as a painter and the leader of the Soviet Union was an ex bank-robbing Georgian makes it look like our timeline was written by a whack Alternate History writer.

* Presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died within hours of each other on the same day. This might be seen as just a quirk of timing if it ended there. However, they both died on July 4. July 4, ''1826'', the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence they had both collaborated on writing and getting passed in the Continental Congress. If this had been fiction, the writer would have been completely mocked for writing hagiographic patriotic scmaltz.

The Trump administration seems like an exaggerated parody but it all happened.

* The world's most proficient sniper, UsefulNotes/SimoHayha; a.k.a. "The White Death", has over 700 confirmed kills. Yes, seven hundred. All achieved in about ''three months'' in far less than optimal conditions, which includes the lack of a scope (he never used one, as the light glinting off of a scope can reveal a sniper's position). Wiki/TheOtherWiki has more information on the guy, but needless to say, if he was fictional, this would be considered ridiculous if it was played for anything other than [[PlayedForLaughs laughs]]. His SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome is either the time he was hit in the face with a round meant to be used against ''tanks'', got back up, and killed the one who fired it, or the time he shot ''eight'' enemy soldiers with ''one'' bullet, sending all the others [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere running for their lives]] thinking a whole squad was targeting them.