Is Black Jack Randall A Real Person

Action movie heroes are meant to be larger than life and cooler than cool, but sometimes the real story is just as insane as what we see in the movies. Here are ten action heroes based on real people.

• Mother Hildegarde and Lord Lovat are other notable mentions of real people from history that were featured in this tale. But one character that definitely was not based on a real person was Jonathan Wolverton Randall a.k.a. We suppose that is a good thing because he would have been one twisted man if he had actually existed back then.
• The only downside to Black Jack Randall dying on Outlander is the loss of Tobias Menzies being able to so skillfully portray this twisted character. Yet, Menzies time on Outlander isn't over yet.

1. James Bond (Roald Dahl)

I think Jack Twist is just as much of a real person as Tony Swofford from ‘Jarhead’. I approached both in the same way. They’re aspects of every person, everybody’s personality, particularly with something like Jack Twist. Buffalo Soldiers originally were members of the 10th Cavalry Regiment of the United States Army, formed on September 21, 1866, at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.This nickname was given to the Black Cavalry by Native American tribes who fought in the Indian Wars. The majority of scenes in the past (with Jack, Rebecca and the Big Three as they grew up) take place in Pittsburgh, but in the present timeline, Kate lives in Los Angeles, Randall lives in New Jersey (and later Philadelphia) and Kevin lives in Los Angeles and New York City.

James Bond author Ian Fleming once admitted the character was an amalgamation of several people that he met while serving in the British Navy in World War II including Conrad O’Brien-ffrench, Patrick Dalzel-Job, Ian Fleming’s own brother, Peter (who served behind enemy lines) and Bill “Biffy” Dunderdale the station head of MI6 in Paris who wore Cartier cufflinks and handmade suits and was chauffeured around Paris in an armor plated Rolls-Royce.

However, another possible inspiration for James Bond was children’s author Roald Dahl. Dahl served as a spy in World War II and was a close personal friend of Fleming. It’s hard to imagine the guy who wrote James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as a womanizing double-0 agent, but according to friend Antoinette Haskell, Dahl had a “whole stable” of women to attend to his needs. “He was very arrogant with his women, but he got away with it. The uniform didn’t hurt one bit – and he was an ace [pilot],” Haskell added, “I think he slept with everybody on the east and west coasts that had more than $50,000 a year.”

2. Indiana Jones (Hiram Bingham III)

While Steven Spielberg and George Lucas have never confirmed any historical figure as the basis for Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford), Hiram Bingham III is a possible inspiration for the famous archaeologist. Bingham was a Yale professor, explorer, and United States Senator who lead the expedition to rediscover the lost Inca city of Machu Picchu in 1911. And what about fighting the Germans? Well Bingham’s son has got that covered. Hiram Bingham IV served as a Vice Consul in Paris during World War II and helped more that 2,500 Jews flee Nazi occupied France. After the war, Bingham IV traveled to Argentina where he helped track down Nazi war criminals in South America, which makes him a much cooler son than Shia LaBeouf.

3. Zorro (Joaquin Murrieta)

Depending on your point of view, Joaquin Murrieta was either an infamous bandit or a Mexican patriot. Called the “Robin Hood of El Dorado,” Murrieta was a famous figure in California during the 1850s Gold Rush and served as the inspiration for the pulp comic character Zorro.

“So many tales have grown up around Murrieta that it is hard to disentangle the fabulous from the factual,” historian Susan Lee Johnson once wrote, “There seems to be a consensus that Anglos drove him from a rich mining claim, and that, in rapid succession, his wife was raped, his half-brother lynched, and Murrieta himself horse-whipped. He may have worked as a monte dealer for a time; then, according to whichever version one accepts, he became either a horse trader and occasional horse thief, or a bandit.”

4. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Randall “Duke” Cunningham)

Former Top Gun instructor pilot and Congressman Randall “Duke” Cunningham claims to have been the inspiration for Top Gun’s Maverick (Tom Cruise), but the film’s producers have said that the character was based on the general stereotype of naval aviators, rather than a specific pilot.

Duke was one of the most decorated pilots during the Vietnam War and was awarded the Navy Cross, the Silver Star (twice), the Air Medal (15 times), and the Purple Heart. After the war, Duke became an instructor at Top Gun where he developed a reputation for cockiness, entitlement, and self-promotion. From 1991 to 2005, Duke was a Republican member of the House of Representatives, but resigned his position after pleading guilty to accepting over $2.4 million in bribes, which would make a rather disappointing sequel.

5. Nacho (Sergio Gutierrez Benitez)

Like the character Nacho (Jack Black) from the movie Nacho Libre, Sergio Gutierrez Benitez was a Mexican priest who supported an orphanage for 23 years by performing as the lucha libre wrestler, Fray Tormenta (Friar Storm). Benitez retired from wrestling in 2011, but he still wears his red and yellow lucha mask while carrying out his day to day priest duties.

6. Jack Sparrow (Calico Jack)

Johnny Depp based his performance of Captain Jack Sparrow on The Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, “I was reading about the 18th century pirates and thought they were kind of like rock stars. So, when I thought, ‘Who is the greatest rock ‘n’ roll star of all time?'” However, the pirate Calico Jack was the original Jack Sparrow. He’s remembered as much for his drinking and flamboyant nature as his actual pirating abilities. In 1720, Jack was arrested by the Spanish after he celebrated a particularly large haul and was “too drunk to command and even defend himself.”

7. Harry Callahan (Dave Toschi)

Dirty Harry screenwriters Harry Julian Fink and Rita M. Fink admitted to modeling Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) after Dave Toschi,a former inspector in the San Francisco Police Department who was the chief investigator in the Zodiac Killer case. Even the film’s villain, “The Scorpio Killer,” was based on the Zodiac Killer. Dirty Harry wasn’t the only Hollywood film inspired by Toschi though. Mark Ruffalo played the detective in David Fincher‘s Zodiac and actor Steve McQueen copied Toschi’s distinctive quick-draw shoulder-holster by wearing his shoulder-holster upside down for the 1968 movie Bullitt.

8. Lara Croft (Sue Hendrickson)

Tomb Raider‘s Lara Croft (Angelina Jolie) isn’t officially based on one person, but archaeologist and paleontologist Sue Hendrickson is basically the real deal. In 1963, Hendrickson took up a job salvaging materials from a sunken cargo freighter. After she got bored exploring sunken ships, Hendrickson worked in an amber mine in the Dominican Republic where she discovered three perfectly preserved 23-million-year-old butterflies (half of the world’s collection) and on August 12, 1990, while examining a cliff-side in South Dakota, Hendrickson discovered the largest, most complete, and best preserved Tyrannosaurus rex specimen ever found.

9. Rocky Balboa (Chuck Wepner)

Sylvester Stallone developed the idea for Rocky after watching a 1975 title fight between Muhammad Ali and Chucker Wepner. Even though Wepner lost the fight, “The Bayonne Bleeder” was able to go 15 rounds with the world heavyweight champ, earning him a reputation as a fighter. “I’ve been a survivor my whole life,” Wepner told a reporter, “If I survived the Marines, I can survive Ali.” Stallone later denied that Wepner provided any inspiration for the movie, but in 2003 Wepner filed a lawsuit and the parties settled out of court with for an undisclosed amount. In 2002, Wepner was arrested by the FBI for running a counterfeiting scheme where he and a partnered forged Ali’s autograph on a variety of merchandise.

10. Quint (Frank Mundus)

Frank Mundus was a shark hunter from Montauk, New York who reportedly served as the inspiration for Quint (Robert Shaw) in Jaws. Mundus earned criticism for his questionably ethical techniques, which included killing whales for chum and harpooning sharks (which sounds cool, but is super illegal today). In 1986, he set the world record for the largest fish ever caught when he snagged a 3,427 pound great white shark. He also unofficially harpooned a 4,500 pound white shark which is made more impressive by the fact Mundus didn’t believe in harpoon guns and preferred hand-held harpoons. That’s right, he preferred to fight sharks using hand-to-hand combat.

Is Black Jack Randall A Real Person

Mundus was as well known for his catches as he was his eccentric personality and trademark look which included red and green painted big toenails, a hoop earring, an Australian slouch hat, and a shark tooth necklace. “He always said the charter business was 90 percent show and 10 percent go,” said Montauk resident Chris Miller. In his later years, Mundus became bored with shark fighting and turned his attention to conservationism where he campaigned for shark fishermen to catch and release their prey.

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What was meant to be a 90-minute mission became a 15-hour battle as two American Black Hawk helicopters were shot out of the sky, leaving the stranded soldiers surrounded.

Wikimedia CommonsMichael Durant’s crew a month before the Battle of Mogadishu.

The Battle Of Mogadishu is more than an underdog story. A small contingent of America’s various elite special forces was sent to collect two henchmen of the violent Somalian warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid — and the warlord himself if they could manage. The experience has been recorded in both a book and a blockbuster film, but the true story behind Black Hawk Down is almost more unbelievable than the Hollywood version.

Somalia Wins Its Independence At A Bloody Cost

The country of Somalia is roughly the size of the state of Texas with a stifling arid climate. Despite its lack of arable land, Somalia possesses a strategic location on the Eastern coast of Africa which has historically made it a tempting target for European colonizers well into the 20th century.

ALEXANDER JOE/AFP/Getty ImagesA group of U.S. Army Rangers sit in the door of a Black Hawk helicopter at Mogadishu airport on August 28, 1993.

But when Somalia earned its independence from European conquerors in 1960, the power vacuum that remained was filled by a ruthless military dictator: Muhammad Siad Barre.

After Barre seized control of the government in a coup, he forced the Somalian people to undergo an experiment of “scientific socialism.” But the results were only the devastation of an already-poor economy and the mass starvation of the people.

Barre was finally forced out of office due to civil unrest in 1991, but this once again left a power vacuum at the head of the Somalian government. This time, however, it was filled not by a single dictator but by fighting clans of violent warlords, including the Soviet-trained strongman Mohamed Farrah Aidid.

By 1992, the famine in Somalia had killed an estimated 100,000 people in just five months. The United Nation’s attempts to deliver food in a humanitarian aid effort were thwarted by the chaos reigning in the country. The U.N. finally voted to send in around 13,000 troops from several different countries to curb the violence and ensure delivery of aid. They were desperate to prevent what was estimated to be over 2 million Somalians from starving to death.

But General Aidid was less than grateful. “We don’t need outsiders,” he said, and threatened the peacekeepers that he would “send them home in body bags.”

The violence had not ceased a year later. After Aidid’s men ambushed and killed two dozen members of a peacekeeping force in June of 1993, the mission of the U.N. troops changed from keeping the peace to taking out Aidid and his cronies. But they had not anticipated a battle in the heart of Somalia’s biggest city, Mogadishu.

YouTubeMichael Durant in his Black Hawk before the Battle Of Mogadishu.

The Battle Of Mogadishu

On Oct. 3, 1993, 160 U.S. soldiers led Operation Gothic Serpent into Mogadishu, the Somalian capital, on a mission to capture Aidid and his top lieutenants. The troops consisted mostly of Army Rangers and Delta Force Operators: some of the most elite battle units and special forces in the entire world, but also Pakistani and Malaysian task forces too.

The mission was meant to take no more than 90-minutes, but as the small band of soldiers approached from their Black Hawk helicopters, the troops inside saw a city that “had been ravaged by some fatal urban disease”, with its buildings turned to rubble and streets brimming with trash and refugees.

Then, one of the soldiers exiting a helicopter missed the rope and fell 70 feet to the street below. He sustained severe injuries, but would later recover.

Crowds soon gathered on the street to watch what was unfolding and the scene quickly descended into chaos.

Then the unthinkable happened: Somalian militiamen launched grenade-propelled rockets and downed two of their copters. The soldiers on the ground “followed the smoke trail of the grenade” in horror and watched as it connected with Black Hawk Super Six One. Then, “they all heard the thunderclap.”

The battle of Mogadishu had begun.

The True Story Of Black Hawk Down

Helicopter Super Six One’s pilot and co-pilot were killed instantly. Although a rescue force helped save the injured survivors, another man would later die of his wounds. Chief Warrant Officer Mike Durant was piloting a second Black Hawk when his chopper too took a hit from a grenade launcher. Suffering a broken back and unable to move, Durant could hear the approaching crowd moving towards him and thought to himself “they are on their way and they are going to kill me.”

Scott Peterson/LiaisonThe wreckage of an American black hawk helicopter on October 14, 1993 in Mogadishu, Somalia.

But Master Sgt. Gary Gordon and Sgt. 1st Class Randy Shughart volunteered to jump into the fray in an attempt to save their comrade. “The volume of gunfire was unbelievable,” Durant recalled as his rescuers attempted to hold back the enemy in an epic last stand.

The Americans could not compete with the sheer volume of Somalis: Gordan and Shughart were soon killed and Durant was taken captive and held for 11 days, tied up with a dog chain until he was released back to U.S. forces.

The mission consequently turned into a 15-hour battle.

When the 10th Mountain Division did come to relieve the trapped soldiers, they were accompanied by Malaysian and Pakistani U.N. forces. But the mission had not planned nor coordinated with U.N. forces in the event of a disaster like this, and consequently, the recovery of the surrounded American troops became difficult and delayed.

Is Captain Black Jack Randall A Real Person

The operation cost two Black Hawk helicopters and 18 American lives as well as 73 injuries. This does not include the deaths from Pakistani and Malaysian forces. Bodies of the U.N. soldiers were also dragged through the streets of Mogadishu.

Although most Americans recall the Battle of Mogadishu as a complete fiasco, the Special Forces did actually succeed in their mission of capturing the two Aidid lieutenants.

As one veteran of the mission who later served as an adviser on the movie Black Hawk Down recalled, “We kicked their butt, but that was at a tactical level. At the strategic and political level, when you have some casualties, it looks like there was a problem.”

STR/AFP/GettyImagesSomalis look at the wreckage of a Black Hawk helicopter after it was shot down.

The mission was also portrayed as a complete disaster in the press.

Then-President Clinton later declared the events in Somalia to be one of the “darkest hours” of his presidency. Michael Durant would later be awarded high honors the Purple Heart, Distinguished Flying Cross, and the Distinguished Service Medal. He would also serve as an advisor on the film to make the true story of Black Hawk Down more realistic.

Scott Peterson/LiaisonChildren play on the black hawk helicopter wreckage Dec. 9, 1993 in Mogadishu, Somalia.

Is Black Jack Randall A Real Person

The U.N. withdrew from the country in 1995 and Aidid was dead a year later. Though the brave efforts of those few men at the Battle of Mogadishu will be memorialized by the movie as well as the book, Somalia remains an unstable place.

Is Black Jack Randall A Real Person In History Book

After this look at the Battle of Mogadishu and the true story of Black Hawk Down, check out the true story behind Napalm Girl. Then, experience the true horrors of war with these Vietnam War facts.