History WebVideo / HistoryBuffs

** One film that pisses him off the most is ''Film/{{Braveheart}}'', since not only is the film historically inaccurate and lies to the audience by claiming the story is true, but it also uses HollywoodTactics like how the Scots defeated the English with no armor, a bad romance plot between Wallace and Queen Isabella (see ImprobableAge below), the director taking jabs at the English every chance he got, and the film disrespecting both the English and the Scots by ruining Wallace's character (this is because while Nick is English, he is also Scottish from his father's side of the family via Clan Robertson, hence why he makes a big deal out of this movie). You can tell how much he hated this movie by the constang anger displayed throughout the review.

* YouAreWhatYouHate: In ''Film/{{Timeline}}'' Nick points out that the English villain Lord Oliver's negative reaction to the French character François is pretty hypocritical, since because Lord Oliver is an English noble during UsefulNotes/TheHundredYearsWar, he is arguably French himself.

** One film that pisses him off the most is ''Film/{{Braveheart}}'', since not only is the film historically inaccurate and lies to the audience by claiming the story is true, but it also uses HollywoodTactics like how the Scots defeated the English with no armor, a bad romance plot between Wallace and Queen Isabella (see ImprobableAge below), the director taking jabs at the English every chance he got, and the film disrespecting both the English and the Scots by ruining Wallace's character (this is because while Nick is English, he is also Scottish from his father's side of the family via Clan Robertson, hence why he makes a big deal out of this movie). You can tell how much he hated this movie by the ClusterFBomb he gives.

** ''Film/{{Casino}}'' portrayed Lester Diamond as a sleazeball pimp. In reality, he was Lenny Marmor, who was Geri's high school sweetheart who entered her in beauty contests. He was also the father of Geri's first daughter (''not'' Lefty, who had two additional children with Geri, who removed from the adaptation.)

* AbledInTheAdaptation: In his ''Film/{{Goodfellas}}'' review, he points out that Henry Hill had serious learning disabilities. Since he went to school in the 1950s, he didn't have the supports available today, and so he disliked school and had trouble academically. The movie makes no mention of this, giving the impression that young Henry was just a troublemaker and a delinquent. (Then again, it wasn't til ''Goodfellas'' was released that Henry Hill was the target of interviews and he was able to relate the ValuesDissonance of TheFifties and the modern era.)

* AbledInTheAdaptation: In his ''Film/{{Goodfellas}}'' review, he points out that Henry Hill had serious learning disabilities. Since he went to school in the 1950s, he didn't have the supports available today, and so he disliked school and had trouble academically. The movie makes no mention of this, giving the impression that young Henry was just a troublemaker and a delinquent.

** Elizabeth gets this treatment again in ''Elizabeth: The Golden Age'':

** He also points out an inversion; the real-life counterpart to Tommy [=DeVito=], Tommy [=DeSimone=], was a tall, well-built, ruggedly handsome man. Creator/JoePesci, on the other hand, is not.

* NotEvenBotheringWithTheAccent: He applauded ''Film/TheDeathOfStalin'' for having the actors use their own accents for the film, instead of them attempting to mimic Russian accents. For one, it would have detracted from the film, and for another, more importantly, he noted that Russian had a multitude of accents anyway, and was bemused that Stalin was given a Cockney accent, because Stalin himself had the Russian equivalent of one.

* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot: Nick wistfully noted that while ''Series/TheTerror'' was true to the book and kept a GiantSpace FleaFromNowhere as the threat, he wished they'd just gone with the very real, ''very'' dangerous foe of a large polar bear, which would have been just as scary and hewn closer to reality. [[invoked]]

** In ''Film/{{Braveheart}}'', Nick point out that 11th Century Scots are wearing kilts, which would not have been invented until the 16th Century.

* BerserkButton: Abusing the ArtisticLicenseHistory trope and putting in idiot plotlines. Creator/MelGibson is deemed the most guilty of this.

* StoolPigeon: In his ''Film/{{Casino}}'' role, Nick is inclined to agree with all the evidence that came out after Lefty Rosenthal's death that suggested he was a secret FBI informant, as it explains why Lefty never had to worry about jail time or his assets being seized by the federal government.

** The movie skips over the Earps' failed attempt to run a stagecoach business before they rejoined law enforcement.
** The Cowboys' retaliatory attacks on Wyatt Earp's brothers, which result in Virgil being critically wounded and Morgan being killed, are depicted as happening on the same night, when in reality they were actually three and a half months apart (Virgil on December 28, 1881; Morgan on March 18, 1882).

* ShoutOut: In his review of ''Film/ToraToraTora'', he cites WebVideo/TheNostalgiaCritic for providing a basic and accurate summation of his feelings for ''Film/PearlHarbor''

* InkSuitActor: His ''Film/{{Casino}}'' review points out that the casting of Creator/JoePesci as Nicky Santoro wasn't just a creative decision by Martin Scorcese to work with actors he'd previously worked with on ''Film/GoodFellas'', but also because Pesci was a dead ringer for Tony Spilotro, the mafioso Santoro was based on. This is especially noticeable given Pesci's short stature works out perfectly when Spilotro was also [[TheNapoleon short in stature]] as well to the point that many nicknamed him "the Ant".

* AbledInTheAdaptation: In his ''Film/{{Goodfellas}}'' review, he points out that the real Henry Hill had serious learning disabilities. Since he went to school in the 1950s, he didn't have the supports available today, and so he disliked school and had trouble academically. The movie makes no mention of this, giving the impression that young Henry was just a troublemaker and a delinquent.

** ''Film/{{Tombstone}}'': The movie never explains Ike Clanton's animosity with Wyatt Earp. The real reason was because Ike had previously sold out an outlaw gang to Wyatt in exchange for reward money, something Wyatt hoped would allow him to beat Johnny Behan in the election for Sheriff. Even though the wanted men were killed in another state, Ike became paranoid after fearing that Wyatt would reveal Ike's betrayal to the Cowboys, explaining his hatred for Wyatt in the film.
** ''Film/{{Elizabeth}}'' killed off the character of John Ballard (played by Creator/DanielCraig), which means that in ''Film/ElizabethTheGoldenAge'', a SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute has to perform Ballard's role in the Babington Plot.

* TheMafia: Calls out the trope as a whole for overly romanticizing "honor-bound" Italian-American gangsters -- especially as applied in ''Film/TheGodfather'' -- while ''GoodFellas'' depicts their true colors: psychotic scumbags who terrorized everyone and routinely turned on each other.

** In ''Film/TheLastSamurai'', Moritsugu Katsumoto is portrayed as an honorable warrior who refuses to use guns and rebels against the Japanese government out of noble intentions as he feared his country was losing its traditions as a result of the government's modernization programs. In reality, the man Katsumoto was based on, Saigo Takamori, had no problems in using guns and was an early supporter of the government's modernization programs. His reason for rebelling were more selfish as he opposed the government's plans to end the special laws and privileges the samurai used to enjoyed, like the right to kill peasants with impunity.

** In ''Film/GoodFellas'', Paul Cicero is depicted as an intimidating but AffablyEvil [[EvilMentor Mentor]] to Henry Hill who doesn't commit any violent acts onscreen. In reality, Paul Vario (the basis for Cicero) was just as vicious as Jimmy Burke/Conway and Tommy [=DeSimone=]/[=DeVito=], and we see a documentary clip of the real Hill recalling Vario's assault of a barmaid with a baseball bat. Also, while the film doesn't give this treatment to [=DeSimone=]/[=DeVito=] in the slightest, Nick does mention his attempted rape of Henry's wife Karen, which the film omitted. The rest of the film is largely an aversion, however, and its realistic portrayal of UsefulNotes/TheMafia is why Nick favors it over ''Film/TheGodfather''.

** He also criticized ''Film/FromHell'' for its negative portrayals of Chief Inspector Frederick Abberline and Sir Charles Warren during the Jack the Ripper murders. In the film, Abberline is shown to be an opium addict and has an affair with Mary Jane Kelly, Jack's last victim, even though the RealLife Abberline was never a drug addict and was devoted to his wife. Warren gets it worse, being portrayed as an arrogant aristocrat who looks down on the lower class, an ObstructiveBureaucrat who constantly tries to stop Abberline's investigation, and a racist who is fine with scapegoating London's Jews for the murders (neglecting to point out that his command to destroy the graffito blaming Jews for the killings was to prevent anti-Semitic riots) which is nothing like the RealLife Warren.

* InkSuitActor: His ''Film/{{Casino}}'' review points out that the casting of Creator/JoePesci as Nicky Santoro wasn't just a creative decision by Martin Scorcese to work with actors he'd previously worked with on ''Film/GoodFellas'', but also because Pesci was a dead ringer for Tony Spilotro, the mafioso Santoro was based on.

** As Nick notes, the real ''Maersk Alabama'' hijacking involved three separate attempts to attack the ship (the last of which succeeded), but the movie ''Film/CaptainPhillips'' reduced the number to two.

** In ''Film/{{Elizabeth}}'', the newly crowned Queen Elizabeth I is portrayed as a naive woman who is unaware that her longtime lover, Robert Dudley, is already married, and puts on heavy white makeup to become her Virgin Queen persona in order to give up her personal happiness for the sake of her country. In reality, Elizabeth wasn't naïve, was aware that Dudley was married, and continued their affair regardless. Even if she could marry Dudley after his wife died in mysterious circumstances, she didn't due to his family being involved in a plot against the Monarchy in the past. While Dudley himself was found innocent, he still carried the stigma of his family's treason, which would have undermined Elizabeth's rule if the two married. Furthermore, Elizabeth put on heavy white makeup to hide her smallpox scars and used the Virgin Queen persona to explain the makeup to her people.
** Elizabeth gets this treatment again in ''Elizabeth: The Golden Age'' when she releases Sir Walter Raleigh and Bess Throckmorton from the Tower of London. The film suggests that Elizabeth did this as a magnanimous gesture of forgiveness. In reality, Elizabeth only (reluctantly) released Raleigh when his men found out he was imprisoned and threatened to withhold the queen's share of the spoils from the Battle of Flores, and released Bess out of guilt over the fact that the baby she conceived with Raleigh died of plague while she was in the Tower. ([[InfantImmortality The baby stays alive]] [[SparedByTheAdaptation in the film.]]) The film also omits how, after the defeat of the Spanish Armada, Elizabeth kept typhus/dysentery-afflicted English sailors sequestered on their ships because she was too cheap to pay for their medical care.

** ''Film/{{Tombstone}}'', along with other films about Wyatt Earp and his posse, have always portrayed them as good lawmen fighting the Cowboys to protect the town of Tombstone. In truth, Wyatt and his posse were really just seen as the good guys because they had badges, and the Earp Vendetta Ride was them breaking the law to ruthlessly kill Cowboys as revenge for the maiming of Virgil and the death of Morgan.

* MoneyDearBoy: In ''Film/{{Tombstone}}'', the reality of the Earps' return to law enforcement was that it paid better. Their attempts to run a stagecoach business hadn't panned out. This extends to the death of Tombstone's marshal, Fred White, at the hands of Curly Bill Brocious. The movie treats White's death as the motivation for the Earps to rejoin law enforcement, when in reality, Virgil and Wyatt had already done so by that point, and only Morgan became a lawman after White's murder.

* BaseBreakingCharacter: InUniverse, Nick points out how in ''Tombstone'', the Earps are depicted as heroes and the Cowboys as a menace, but the reality was not so simple. He demonstrates this by pointing out that the gunfight at the OK Corral only served to divide the public in Tombstone, with some people seeing the Earps as heroes and others seeing them as cold blooded murderers. A lot of this, he points out, could be boiled down to simple politics: rural farmers and ranchers, who leaned towards the Democrats, despised the influx of Republican businessmen, miners and merchants who'd moved into Tombstone, and were thus inclined to view the Earps as government lackeys who backed big business at their expense; meanwhile, the Republicans were intent on taming the Wild West and viewed the Earps as guardians of law and order. This division can even be seen when comparing the newspaper coverage of the gunfight by the Republican-leaning ''Tombstone Epitapth'' with the coverage from the Democratic-leaning ''Tombstone Daily Nugget''.