American Sniper: 9 Things The Film Lied About

5. "The Butcher" Never Actually Existed

One of American Sniper's more dramatic plot lines is that of Kyle's mission to stop an insurgent nicknamed "The Butcher". Wearing a sinister black coat and dispensing of his victims with the aid of power tools, he's about as close to a cliched movie bad guy as you're likely to find, and seems almost too sinister to be real. Which of course he isn't. It's likely that the filmmakers have based him on the infamous Iraqi warlord Abu Derra who, taking credit for thousands of deaths in the Iraq War, bears a number of strikingly similar characteristics with "The Butcher", but he and Kyle had no interaction during the conflict whatsoever. In fact he's still alive today. Chris Kyle was good, but not even he could have tracked down and killed a man who doesn't even exist. There's no mention of any event like this anywhere in Kyle's writings and the whole arc in the story was added simply to give a more acceptably evil face to the enemy.