8 Infamous Movie Myths You Won't Believe Are Actually True

4. The Deer Hunter Inspired Real-Life Russian Roulette Suicides

The most famous scene in Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter is the one involving that infamous game of Russian roulette, in which Robert De Niro and Christopher Walken's characters are forced to play when they're captured as POWs during the Vietnam war. The scenes are harrowing and realistic, despite the fact that there's no evidence to support the fact that such things ever took place in real life.

Russian roulette - a game of luck - is played by loading a revolver with a single bullet, by which a prisoner must put it to their head and pull the trigger. In the aftermath of the movie's release, there was something of an outcry regarding these sequences, especially from citizens in Vietnam, who insisted such events never took place during the war, and served only to make them look barbaric.

The myth associated this movie, though, states that The Deer Hunter inspired a new trend in people playing this game for real, one which seemed hyperbolic at the time. And yet, it turned out to be true - over the past few decades, around 35 people have died imitating the scenes in this movie, including teenagers.