Hollywood is in the business of selling entertainment, not education, so it’s always wise to take any film labeled as “based on a true story” with a grain of salt, if not a whole shaker-full. In order to make the most compelling, and therefore profitable, film with a real life subject matter, filmmakers often ignore real-life events or invent their own for the sake of the story.

Generally there’s little wrong with bending the truth to create art, especially when it can inspire viewers to seek out the whole story for themselves, but a few beloved films take their embellishing too far. These six films are particularly egregious for totally remixing historical fact for their own purposes.

The Revenant

Last year’s most grueling critical hit, The Revenant, finds Leonardo DiCaprio playing Hugh Glass, a 19^th century fur trapper who was left for dead by his companions after being brutally mauled by a grizzly bear but managed to survive thanks to pure strength of will.

All of that is true, but the filmmakers invented other major details that turned Glass’ story into a frontier-set revenge tale. There’s no indication that Glass ever had a half-Pawnee son and only speculation that he may have had a relationship with a Pawnee woman. Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) therefore couldn’t have murdered Glass’ son (who, again, didn’t exist) in real life, a pivotal act which motivates Glass to survive and seek revenge in the film. Without this, Glass would have no reason to beat Fitzgerald to death as he does in the film’s climax.

Most of The Revenant’s other inaccuracies are fabrications to make Glass’ survival seem all the more miraculous, including scenes where Glass is tracked by the Arikara and must cut open a dead horse for warmth.

They Died With Their Boots On

Most old Hollywood westerns are more about mythmaking than historical accuracy, but 1941’s They Died With Their Boots On, which ostensibly tells the story of Civil War General George Custer, may be the most absurd of them all.

The film exaggerates his war record by depicting him leading charges and earning decorations while he was actually working as a Union messenger. It also invents a romance with the higher-class Elizabeth Bacon, whom he can (of course) only marry after acquiring the rank of general.

His real life promotion to general was earned but is shown to be an administrative mistake in the film. He later turns to alcohol to cope with his shift to civilian life in 1865, whereas the real Custer swore off drink years earlier. Crazy Horse and other Native American characters are portrayed as typically one-dimensional savages and Custer as sympathetic to their cause, entering battle with the intent of sacrificing himself and his cavalry for the noble savages. Do I even need to clarify that all of that is pure bologna?

Braveheart

There’s almost nothing in Mel Gibson’s beloved telling of the story of Scottish warrior William Wallace that isn’t heavily fictionalized. Even the title is bogus, since Braveheart was a nickname applied not to Wallace but to Robert the Bruce, a traitor in the film who was actually never present at the Falkirk battle and never outright betrayed Wallace or his cause.

The married Isabella of France serves as Wallace’s forbidden love interest, though she was actually unmarried and only two years old when the rebellion took place. This depiction of Wallace ignores an awful lot in order to make him seem an unassailable hero, rather than the aristocratic leader who resorted to conscription and hanging those who refused to serve that he actually was.

The film’s climactic battle, the Battle of Stirling Bridge, was even missing the titular narrow bridge, an obstacle that directly contributed to the Scottish victory. The filmmakers also dressed the film’s 13^th century characters in that most Scottish of all garments, kilts, which weren’t introduced to the area until the 16^th century.

The Patriot

The British Redcoats were transformed into bloodthirsty marauders and sadists for the sake of this piece of pure historical fiction directed by Roland Emmerich and starring Mel Gibson.

At one point, the colonists’ adversaries from overseas are seen locking civilians inside a church and burning it the ground — a deed that was actually carried out but by Nazi soldiers in France during World War II.

Gibson’s protagonist Benjamin Martin is a composite of several real-life American militia leaders, namely Francis “Swamp Fox” Marion, who took great pleasure in killing Cherokees and raping his female slaves. In fact, the entire institution of slavery is another uncomfortable fact the film wholly ignores for the sake of making the American Revolution into a simplified conflict of good Americans versus evil Brits.

JFK

With JFK, director Oliver Stone delighted in giving false credence to the many conspiracy theories surrounding the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Kevin Costner plays a glorified version of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, who was actually often self-aggrandizing and unreliable, and obtained key testimonies using drugs and hypnosis.

The film strongly endorses a fringe theory about the assassination that insists it was a covered-up coup d’etat with direct involvement from Lyndon B. Johnson, the FBI and the CIA. Witness David Ferrie is even shown confessing to his part in the conspiracy, while in reality he denied any involvement and offered to take a polygraph test to prove it. Another key scene was pure invention, showing a mysterious Deep Throat-type named “X” who articulates Stone’s preferred version of events, one that’s been condemned by most historians and even by those actually involved with the Warren Commission.

U-571

The World War II-set U-571 was based on the real Operation Primrose, but took so many liberties that Britain’s then-Prime Minister Tony Blair denounced it as “an affront to the real sailors.”

Americans play a prominent role in the film, though the mission to capture the German’s Enigma cipher machine (which was aboard the U-110, not the U-571 as the title suggests) was a British endeavor that took place before the US had even entered the war. After capturing the coveted machine, the Americans are seen cracking the Nazi’s encrypted code, a feat that was actually accomplished by a group of British and Polish mathematicians.

The film also inaccurately demonizes the German sailors aboard the captured U-boat, showing them killing Allied crewmen after their ship has sunk in compliance with German naval policy. In reality, the policy of not rescuing survivors of enemy ships was similar to the Allied policy, and there is only one known case of a U-boat crew purposely attacking survivors, and guess what? They weren’t Americans either, but Greeks.