Liberties taken with the actual events' history become especially apparent if one has read the book that it is supposedly based on. To wit:
- The famine depicted in the introduction had actually ended a year prior to the events of the battle. By 1993 90% of aid shipments were getting to where they were going, and Aidid's militia never fired on civilians getting food from aid stations, nor did they have any particular reason to want to do so either (those aids often helped their own manpower). The UN also never impeded American efforts to protect aid convoys.
- None of the back story is explained at all, which can give a different impression of what was all about. The civil war and aforementioned famine had actually been caused by the policies of Siad Barre, the dictator who with American aid given due to Cold War geopoliticsnote , held total control of Somalia from 1969 to 1991. The "international aid mission" was viewed by many as a convenient cover story for America to attempt to go back in with a force of 30,000 ground troops and reassert control after Barre was driven into exile.
- The actual reason the Somalis hated the Americans so much, which is not even mentioned in the movie or attributed to anything other than generic villainous ardor, was due to the conduct of that "humanitarian aid" force prior to the events of the battle. In reality, the task force often harassed and terrified the population, sometimes even firing mortars into populated areas, and in one particularly notorious incident, in response to an attack on a Pakistani convoy that killed 24 soldiers, they bombed a meeting of clan elders who were discussing plans for making a peace to end the civil war. Thousands of civilians are believed to have been killed in general. It should be noted that most of these things were done not solely by the Americans, but by the entire multi-national UN force, which contained forces from countries where military and/or humanitarian culture left much more to be desired, but the Americans were the public face of the effort and thus bore the brunt of the resentment.
- Local Somalians, in particular, disliked the Black Hawks because pilots would often fly over the streets and use the rotor wash to harass the population. The updraft from a Black Hawk was strong enough to destroy weak buildings, throw marketplaces into chaos, and tear off the robes from women and babies from their mother's arms. Many of the interviewed Rangers compared doing this to riding a roller coaster.
- The film gives the impression the Habr-Gedir clan was the only and/or supreme hostile faction against the international foce. In reality, there were many clans who weren't allied to it, and the Habr-Gedir clan under Aidid was often just as brutal to them (although that's actually pretty normal in Somalia). Habr-Gedir only were the designated "bad guys" in international relations because they happened to be on top of the heap in 1993. Even with Aidid dead and other clans in power, things in Somalia are only maybe slightly better today.
- In relation to the previous, the films errs by showing Somali fighters being intensely motivated and hateful. In reality, although they were forced to obey their clan leader, many Habr-Gedir clan soldiers had no particular desire to fight the Americans and didn't even like Mohammad Farrah Aidid to begin with. In fact, many in Habr-Gedir felt that the American mission against Aidid was the result of a personal grudge between Aidid and UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, whom Aidid believed was supporting the rival Darod clan, so they ultimately regarded the US soldiers as unwitting pawns.
- Osman Atto didn't resemble the chain-smoking, earring-wearing dandy character seen in the film. In fact, while his film version behaves worldly and ridicules his captors, the real life person was instead terrified because he believed they had come with orders to execute him on the spot. His capture wasn't anywhere near as smooth as portrayed in the film, although there's a pretty neat point that was not shown either, namely a homing device hidden on a cane that a mole had presented to Atto as an innocent gift.
- The briefing before the raid gives the impression that the military had asked for AC-130 gunships and been turned down by Washington politicians. In fact, as related by National Security Council veteran Richard Clarke, former 4-star Admiral Howe, the commander of the UN mission, requested and got AC-130s following the killing of the 24 Pakistanis, and they blew up some of Aidid's arms warehouses. They were withdrawn by the Pentagon itself before the Rangers and Delta arrived. Clarke gives a heavy implication that the military overall disliked the Clinton administration, who inherited the situation in Somalia, and were not inclined to do much to help Clinton succeed where preceding President George H. W. Bush had failed.
- Even were armor and gunships available, the raid on Bakara Market was exactly the wrong sort of mission to use them. Tank and armored vehicle crews absolutely hate urban warfare, with good reason; narrow streets mean no room to maneuver, while enemy infantry have plenty of cover and the ability to circle around and hit the vehicles from their weak points, and a city like Mogadishu, jam-packed with RPGs, is a big shooting gallery for armor. Meanwhile, gunships which are able to rain 105mm artillery and 20mm Gatling fire from thousands of feet overhead are also notably indiscriminate in how close they can target their weapons in an urban environment. Rather than the thousand or so Somalis killed that day, hundreds more would likely have been killed by American support fire had there been aerial gunships on the scene, without much changing the outcome for the Americans on the ground.
- In general, the depiction of the Rangers as an elite force of experienced, consummate professionals is incorrect. The average age of the Rangers in Mogadishu was 19 and the majority had never been under fire before, though there is no doubt they certainly were well trained. Somewhat mitigated by the implication that few of the Rangers have killed enemy combatants before, and that this is a sort of baptism under fire situation.note
- This is not even getting into the fact that being dropped unto rooftops in the middle of an enemy-held urban environment is not something the Rangers, or line troops in any military for that matter, receive the training for. This is because it is actually an exceptionally stupid thing to do: it opens up the force to being surrounded on all sides in a dense, intensely hostile 3D environment, and being cut off from any supporting forces on the ground, which it should be noted is in fact exactly what occurs in the movie. Those points are less artistic license than just what happened in reality, though; many retrospective analyses of the battle have come to the conclusion that the entire operation was a suicide mission from the start, though technically on paper it was successful, as their intended targets were captured and evacuated from the city.
- The grim realities of war and many of the morally reprehensible things the Rangers did during the actual battle are also glossed over or not depicted at all. One of the crashed helicopters crushed a building with a child inside, while in the film both of them land more safely onto the sand, and there was also an incident where a group of Rangers took a family hostage, which is similarly not in the movie. General Garrison himself and many of the Rangers interviewed also admitted to firing into crowds and at anything that moved towards the end of the battle, although it should be noted it was hard to distinguish civilians from the militia in the intense city fighting (as one soldier was quoted as saying in the book, "Anyone coming to this party by now ain't bringing flowers").
- The Rangers and Delta members stranded in the city were ultimately rescued by a Pakistani and Malaysian armored brigade, which the Americans had almost nothing to do with. In the film, their presence is mentioned, but barely and in passing. There might be some justification to this decision, though, as their real contribution to the battle is actually disputed: they apparently drove off and left most of the Americans on foot without support. Also, it seems their overall conduct in Somalia was less than stellar, participating in many of the abuses described above.
- The APCs in the UN convoy are said to be Pakistani, when in real life they were part of the Malaysian military, who are mentioned but do not appear in the film. The Pakistani contribution to the convoy was four tanks. Both the Malaysians and the Pakistanis lost a soldier, and one of the two members of the 10th Mountain division that die died of wounds sustained while recovering a severely wounded Malaysian soldier. The APCs shown appear to be M113s and the six-wheeled WZ-551. The actual APCs were the four-wheeled Condors
, and the WZ-551 was still in development by the Chinese, and would only be completed in 1995. A 2023 film about the Malaysian rescue force, MALBATT: Misi Bakara, was made to address this misconception and honor their role (Black Hawk Down directly inspired it). - It is implied that the Pakistani General purposefully delayed organizing the convoy out of spite, when in reality they hadn't been told about the mission nor had a contingency been planned, and General Garrison himself wanted the convoy to role out in force. This meant that a convoy of over a hundred vehicles had to be organized at the last minute.
- The UN convoy is shown leaving with no difficulty, when in reality at least one APC was hit by an RPG (resulting in the one Malaysian death), two 10th Mountain soldiers were killed, and a number of Peacekeepers were wounded.
- A lot of the indigenous fighters who attacked the crash sites were from other clans opposed to Aidid's Habr-Gedir, and thus at least nominally on the same side as the Americans. What happened is that they heard only that American helicopters were attacking the city, so they went to join the fight and made an already bad situation worse for everybody in a case of Poor Communication Kills. This is somewhat referenced in the film when a Habr-Gedir captain has to actively scare away a mob in order to get to Durant, but the backstory of this point is still not given.
- Blackburn's fall from the helicopter is shown to be the result of the pilot maneuvering to avoid an incoming RPG at exactly the wrong moment. While the book and other accounts of the actual battle haven't definitively established why Blackburn was unable to hold on, it wasn't due to incoming fire, and certainly not a rocket. This gets even referenced later on when McKnight asks what happened; the Ranger he questions says simply that Blackburn "missed the rope," and shrugs when asked "How'd he do that?"
- Stebbins' name was changed to Grimes at the request of the US Army, due to Stebbins being court-martialed for raping his own daughter in 1999.
- Master Sergeant Gordon's sniper team was actually three men: himself, Sergeant First Class Shughart, and Sergeant First Class Brad Hallings. Hallings was originally supposed to accompany the former two to the crash site, but had to take control of one of the miniguns aboard Super 62 when a crew chief's leg got blown off by a rocket. It is also shown in the movie that Super 62 is able to land on the deck and insert the two snipers with little difficulty: in reality they were under intense fire and Gordon and Shughart had to jump from the helicopter onto the ground. The film also shows that Durant was the only member of Super 64's flight crew to survive the crash. In reality, all of them survived the crash. While Durant was saved from being torn apart by a mob by Aidad's militia, the other three men were not as lucky.
- Several weapons, equipment, and other background details are present in the film that didn't exist in 1993, such as Hoot wearing Oakley Juliet sunglasses (introduced 1999), some rubber stunt prop weapons are M4 carbines (adopted 1994), and even some of the period-accurate Model 727s for shooting scenes have Aimpoint M68 CCOs (standardized 1995) attached. Also, Days of the New's "Die Born" is used, a song not recorded until 2001 from a band that formed in 1995, and a paperback copy of The Client appears at one point, a year before it was available in paperback form.
- One Ranger in the film (Joyce) is killed by a shot to the back after refusing to wear a back plate in his vest. While the real Sgt. Joyce died from a shot to the back during the actual battle, it wasn't due to neglect; the vest did not support the addition of a back plate at the time. Support for a back plate was added to the vest one year after the battle in 1994, exactly because of this fatality.
- Two other helicopters were also hit by RPGs on the day of the battle: Super 68, who inserted a group of rescuers at crash site 1, and Super 62, who inserted the Delta snipers at crash site 2. Both managed to return to safety and neither RPG hit was shown in the film.
- The Mogadishu Mile is dramatized compared to real life; in the film, the soldiers are shown having to run all the way back to the UN-garrisoned stadium, whereas in real life, they walked towards a rendezvous point inside the city where another armored UN convoy was waiting to take them back to the stadium. As well, it only shows Rangers and Delta Force operators taking part, when in real life several soldiers from 10th Mountain also took part.
