10 Disturbing Backstories Behind Your Favourite Movie Characters

7. Red Murdered Three People (The Shawshank Redemption)

How can you not love Red (Morgan Freeman) from The Shawshank Redemption?

The kindly prisoner who befriends Shawshank's newest inmate Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) is the epitome of wisdom and weathered charm, even accepting the fact he straight-up admits he's in prison for murder and freely confesses he's "the only guilty man in Shawshank."

But in Stephen King's original 1982 novella, the full extent of Red's actions are explained: he's actually serving three life sentences for murdering his wife, his neighbour's wife and also his neighbour's son.

As a "young, stupid kid", as he puts it, Red cut the brakes of his wife's car in order to claim the insurance money upon her death, but didn't count on her picking up extra passengers on the way home. Oops.

It's easy to appreciate why the movie opted to omit the specifics of Red's detainment, because let's face it, it'd be a whole lot tougher to sympathise with the guy knowing what he actually did. Instead, let's just pretend it was a drunken bar fight or something, yeah?