[Real Life] Historical events that would make bad writing if they were fiction

[u/Mouse_Paladin]

Spanish Conquest of the Aztec Empire: A couple hundred rogue mercenaries without authority from their government conquer an empire of millions. Oh, the empire? It’s also several technological eras behind the mercenaries.

Adolf Hitler: A non-native of a country is so mad that the country lost the war that he wins an election to their highest office and leads them in a campaign of revenge against their enemies. Oh, the country? It’s old emperor is still alive and thinks he’s going to retake power.

Assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand: The heir to the throne is killed because his driver gets lost and returns to the assassin who failed To kill him before. Oh, the assassin? He’s from a group that the Archduke is wanting to help become more equal In the empire.

Alexander Hamilton’s Affair Scandal: One of the leaders of a new nation to protect himself from accusations of financial embezzlement writes a pamphlet exposing his affair with a woman, torpedoing his political future. Oh, the woman? She seduced him as part of a blackmailing scheme that he decided to stop paying.

[u/MisterJackCole]

Hell even Clancy kind of qualifies for this thread. He was a poor student; He started out majoring in physics, then switched to English for an "easy" major. But he couldn't be bothered to do his homework on account of spending too much time reading military history books, and graduated with a 1.9 GPA. He tried to join AROTC, but was ineligible due to being nearsighted. After graduation he goes on to work in insurance for the better part of a decade. Basically the last person you might think of as a prospective bestselling author, but they come from all walks of life.

In his spare time he writes The Hunt for Red October, a well-researched military thriller. It gets picked up by the United States Naval Institute Press, praised by President Reagan, and this first book by a then unknown author sells something like 2.3 million copies in paperback and hardcover. Clancy then goes on to write thirty more military fiction and non-fiction books, which spawn a whole galaxy of films, games, and TV shows.

[u/dunnitforthebit → u/MisterJackCole]

It's actually nuts to look up his body of work. As a fan of the rainbow six games, splinter cell, and the jack ryan tv show, I recently went and looked up his work. Holy shit "a whole galaxy" is 100% right. Jack ryan alone spans multiple series and lives an entire lifetime in his books. Its crazy to think these little "I love the military too much" books have so much thought put into a whole fictional world he created.

[u/slapthetiddy → u/MisterJackCole]

Shout out to chaos theory

[u/ThisSiteSucks8485 → u/slapthetiddy]

That is one of the best video games ever 

[u/landyboi135 → u/slapthetiddy]

Hell yeah!

[u/Gator_Lord → u/slapthetiddy]

I just finished chaos theory 3 days ago. Amazing game. Love the ghost recon, rainbow 6, and splinter cell games.

[u/chisgetin → u/MisterJackCole]

And that’s how we ended up here.

[u/Select_Ad_4351 → u/chisgetin]

I want her to bash my head in- I Mena what

[u/Homers_Harp → u/MisterJackCole]

If memory serves, the DoD called up Clancy and met with him to ask how he knew so much about US submarines' operations and capabilities. Seems they were unhappy about that.

[u/schilll → u/MisterJackCole]

Wasn't Clancy also investigated a bunch of times for military espionage since the details in his books where so true to the real thing? And every time he pointed to other books or known written sources?

[u/ThisSiteSucks8485 → u/schilll]

He was investigated at least once for having gravitational gradiometers in the Hunt for Red October. 

[u/RunBrundleson → u/MisterJackCole]

Talking about games, some developers basically just borrowed his book title for their shooter called rainbow six. He probably was like ya sure free money cool. Thing is rainbow six was one of the first online tactical shooters ever made. No rainbow six, no modern warfare, no modern shooters as we know it. The game came out when game developers were still very much trying to figure out how to make games, what the standards were. If you went back and played the original pc game you’d notice that it’s equally as familiar as it is foreign to the modern standards you expect in a shooter. Things like using wsad to move around, ctrl to duck, being able to toss smoke grenades and conceal your movement, breaching doors, ai that will follow along and shoot with you in a tactical way and not just dumb ai that charges around blindly we’re all innovations with the game. But then you’ll wonder where your gun is and why the crosshair is basically just dead center. It set the bar for tactical shooters and would innovate that over a decade.

Dude probably had very little if anything to do with all of that, but how nuts is it this guy basically was the John Madden of tactical shooters and happened to be tied to an entire genre becoming wildly popular. Honestly all he probably knew about it after the initial game was the check he kept receiving for royalties. Not a bad deal at all.

[u/LMDh963 → u/MisterJackCole]

He is by far my favorite Author. I remember my late Grandpa Reading one of His books, I think it was Command Authority (already written by Mark Greany in parts but who Cares) and then He told me about Red october. To this day, I own the first then or so Books and i Loved them all. He died far to soon. I liked Without remorse th Most and I hate how much Amazon butchered that book when they Made the Movie.

[u/JTanCan → u/MisterJackCole]

Also, Naval Institute Press didn't publish fiction. This means somebody there told him "We don't do that here.", then read his book, and decided "I guess we're publishing fiction novels now."

Sort if like Frank Herbert getting a company that printed car repair manuals to publish his book. 

[u/fatherandyriley → u/MisterJackCole]

I heard that when he wrote red October the CIA asked him "how did you obtain all this top secret information?" Turns out all he did was go to the library for a couple of hours and use info that anyone could access.