Artistic License History / Elcano & Magellan: The First Voyage Around the World

• By all accounts, Magellan, Pigafetta and the chieftain of Cebú weren't as round fat as pictured by their cartoonish character designs in the movie.
• In the movie, Magellan replies to Da Costa that "the sea has no owner" when the former accuses him of being a threat to the Portuguese monopoly on routes. Although it's possible that he said this entirely to piss Da Costa off, it must be noted to be untrue: in real life, both Spain and Portugal had signed in 1494 the Treaty of Tordesillas, a pact that divided the world in two zones (west of Cape Verde for Spain, east for Portugal) and each side promised not to enter the other's - which was Magellan's reason to seek for a Spanish-controlled western route to the Pacific in the first place. While the film doesn't try to hide that Elcano was technically breaking the treaty by circumnavigating the world, it instead makes it look like the Portuguese were too unreasonable about it and deserved it anyway for trying to sabotage the expedition.
• The Portuguese did deploy ships to try to destroy the Magellan expedition (through their entire empire, in fact, from Cape Verde to the Portuguese India), but none of them were personally commanded by Alvaro da Costa, who was mostly a diplomat and likely had little military experience. Moreover, those measures failed, as Magellan and Elcano managed to evade all of them by a mix of skill and sheer luck without ever engaging in battle.
• Ironically, in the movie, Da Costa and company actually honor the unmentioned Treaty of Tordesillas and adhere to their own route to reach Magellan in the Moluccas (if only out of pragmatism, as he believes Magellan's route to be an impossibility), while in real life a Portuguese fleet from Cape Verde broke the treaty black ops-stye and chased the expedition down to modern day Argentina.
• The movie conflates the sinking of the Santiago and the mutiny of the San Antonio as if they had happened at the same time, which in real life were separated by a whole year.
• The chieftain of Cebú is a Big Fun here, when in real life (where he was named Humabón), justifiedly or not, he betrayed the expeditioners and killed a lot of them by treason.
• This version of Enrique de Malaca continues the travel along with the rest of survivors up to Tidore, while in real life, he went missing in action in the aforementioned Cebuan ambush, and it's believed he actually engineered it himself by slandering the expeditioners to Humabón, as a revenge for the captains' refusal to honor Magellan's promise to free him.
• Samar is an entirely fictional character, whose name, by the way, comes from one of the Philippine islands.
• In real life, Humabón's own forces accompanied those of Magellan to Mactán; it's just that Magellan, seeking to impress them, asked them to withdraw and Pass the Popcorn, another awful decision that led to the defeat. In the movie, the Spaniards go there alone, with only Samar appearing by herself to perform a Big Damn Heroes moment. Speaking of which, the real battle didn't spread to the sea as in the movie.
• The real Battle of Mactan wasn't an ambush provoked by a Portuguese spy as seen in the film. While he was certainly a great navigator, Magellan was frankly a General Failure, and the loss was due mainly to him ordering an utterly suicide attack after a grueling march through the beach, with all of their ammunition exhausted, in an obscene numeric disadvantage, and against an easily defensible position in which their ships couldn't support them (not to mention the whole mission was a literally a Wacky Wayside Tribe kind of risk the expedition had absolutely no real reason to take).
• The Iberian soldiers from the movie all carry swords, arquebuses and the rare pistol. In real life, firearms weren't so popular, as gunpowder was limited and their maintentance difficult; they also used crossbows, axes and lances.
• Conversely, the tribes of Mactán are portrayed with only tribal spears and shields, when in real life they already had some influence from the nearby Muslim Moros and had light armors and scimitars, as well as a kind of native sword called kampilan. In general, the tribes shown in the movie have a remarkably Polynesian/Maori kind of imagery that is very difficult to reconcile with real life Filipinos of the period.
• In the movie, the Concepción is lost by enemy damage during the Battle of Mactan (basically, because a tribesman with apparent Super-Strength rips off part of the hull), while in real life it was abandoned and burnt due to lack of enough men to man it.
• In real life, Magellan wasn't immediately succeeded by Elcano. Their next captain was Duarte Barbosa, who died in the aforementioned ambush in Cebú, and then Juan López de Carvalho, who was demoted for being a jerk. Only then Elcano and Gonzalo de Espinosa were appointed captains.
• In the movie, the Victoria is forced to leave the damaged Trinidad behind in Tidore when Da Costa's ship reaches them, with King Almanzor promising to take care of the crew for Spain. In real life, the Portuguese never discovered them, and the Trinidad could sail off undisturbed. It was later, however, that the ship got lost in the Pacific and sailed unto a Portuguese fleet that was out for the Magellan expedition, and this time nothing saved them from being captured and spending the rest of their lives in prison (although a handful of them, like its captain Espinosa, were later freed).
• The naval battle in Cape Verde never happened. The Portuguese saw through Elcano's deception and tried to arrest him, but he realized in time to sail off before being caught (albeit he was forced to leave behind 13 crewmen that could not get onboard in time). Indeed, sinking a Portuguese diplomatic vessel as in the movie would have caused quite of a political ruckus had it happened in real life.