Is Robocop based on a real person?

When looking up some Zodiac stuff on the ethergut, I came across Chasing the Frog a pretty detailed movie site that specialises in comparing the fact and fiction of movies based on real-life cases, like Hollywoodland. Well they do stretch it a bit by including The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Their 300 section has some inadvertant laughs:


Was the Persian King Xerxes really bald and 9-feet-tall?

No. The real Persian King Xerxes had a beard and was much shorter. He never went to the front line at the Battle of Thermopylae as his character does in the movie 300. Actor Rodrigo Santoro portrays the 9-foot-tall Xerxes in the film. Rodrigo, who stars on ABC's Lost, is around 6'2". His height and voice were both altered for the role of the Persian King. Director Zack Snyder talked about Xerxes' exaggerated features in an interview, "...because we scaled him as we did, when his normal voice played, it was even stranger to me. He was out of scale of his voice, not that it wasn't commanding." The actor's actual voice is heard in the film, only with the pitch scaled down.down.

phew, at least that's settled.

P.S. looking up zodiac stuff is a foolhardy enterprise, see the real TV phone-in thing the Brian Cox bit is based on, now Robert Graysmith's scrupulously researched investigation is open to the ramblings of the random yahoos that comment on youtube videos.