While the basic points of Queen and Freddie Mercury's life were fairly accurate to reality, many parts had to be changed in Bohemian Rhapsody for a stronger narrative.
- On Roger Taylor's drum set, a more modern Latin Percussion (LP) cowbell is used, along with an updated cymbal product line from Zildjian and a Premier bass drum pedal.
- In the film, "We Will Rock You" is created in The '80s when Freddie Mercury has short hair and a mustache. The song was actually released for News of the World in 1977, prior to his appearance change.
- In the Film, Freddie is portrayed as working for an airline and having almost no musical experience aside from being a good singer, and is also portrayed as having not met the band before joining. In real life, Freddie was previously part of a band called Ibex — which is how he met Roger and Brian — that fell apart due to the other members' outside commitments, which is Adapted Out. Furthermore, he was already well-acquainted with Tim when Freddie joined the band, and it was actually Tim who introduced Freddie to Brian and Roger.
- The character Ray Foster who refuses to release "Bohemian Rhapsody" as a single is a fictional character, likely based on Roy Featherstone. Furthermore, Featherstone actually loved the song and only criticized the long runtime, and he still decided to give it a shot anyway.
- Queen didn't get to finish their first American tour, due to Brian May coming down with hepatitis, and they wouldn't go back to the States until 1977. Similarly, the montage of this tour has them saying "We love you" to Cleveland, Houston, Atlanta, and Pittsburgh. They were never due to play Houston, while the other three shows were canceled after May came down with hepatitis.
- The Rio concert is a combination of two, much later performances (when Freddie already had the Porn Stache): the one in a São Paulo football stadium in 1981, and 1985's Rock in Rio, where "Love of My Life" was a Crowd Song.
- The song "Fat Bottomed Girls" is depicted as being played on tour between the first album and A Night at the Opera (1973–74), when in fact the song was not released until Jazz in late 1978.
- The film strongly suggests that "Who Wants to Live Forever" was written by Freddie about his impending mortality. In fact, it was written by Brian May and released in 1986 on the album A Kind of Magic, a sort-of soundtrack for the film Highlander, as a lament of the eponymous protagonist's immortality.
- The big finale of the Live Aid concert features several events being moved up so the concert can act as the film's climax.
- Jim Hutton's relationship with Freddie had already begun before the concert, while the film tweaks the timeline around so that the concert is the start of it.
- Freddie finds out he has AIDS and confesses to the band as they are getting ready for the Live Aid performance. While he exhibited symptoms as early as 1982, he wasn't actually diagnosed until 1987 (after Live Aid), and his friends and family didn't get told until a couple of years later.
- Paul Prenter's relationship with Freddie Mercury didn't end until after Live Aid. His big betrayal was a written interview with The Sun, which was published on May 4, 1987 and followed by thematic two-front covers about Mercury's homosexual relations with titles like "All the Queen's Men". These enraged Mercury, in part because he had never come out of the closet "officially". In the movie, this is changed to a TV interview before Live Aid, shown briefly and without much impact on the story or Mercury's character.
- The concert is presented as the first show the band did upon reuniting following Freddie's short-lived solo career. In reality, they had just finished touring in Japan two months prior, and they had controversially performed a series of concerts at the Sun City resort in apartheid South Africa in late 1984. Also, Freddie's second solo project, Barcelona, came out three years after the concert.
- When Freddie and the rest of the band reconcile, John Deacon states that the entire group will get songwriting credits. In real life, the first album released after the "reunion", A Kind of Magic (released in 1986), had individual writing credits — it wasn't until The Miracle in 1989 that their songs would be credited simply to "Queen".
- Furthermore, the band didn't exactly "break up" while Freddie went solo — he was very clear his solo albums were a side project, and they simply took a hiatus from making albums but kept touring. Not only that, the other band members had solo material prior to Freddie's (Roger Taylor had a solo side-gig since 1977, with an album in 1981, and Brian May released a solo EP in 1983). Also, "Radio Ga Ga" was created during the period where they're portrayed to have broken up, yet it's presented at the end without explanation. It is true that tensions within the band were at an all-time high during their tour supporting their 1984 album The Works (which continued until early 1985, a few months before Live Aid)note and that they may have broken up had Live Aid not rekindled their love for live performance, but this is something even the members of the band could only speculate on with the benefit of hindsight.
- John Deacon is portrayed as joining the band by the time of their first performance with Freddie in July 1970. The band went through a few bassists for their first shows before settling on Deacon in February 1971.
- The film also plays up the success of their first album, making it seem like they immediately made it big to serve as buildup for the aforementioned conflict over "Bohemian Rhapsody", as Ray Foster's insistence that Queen play it safe and not go too experimental makes a lot more sense narratively if the band's first album is a big hit. In reality, their first album met only modest mainstream sales, and it was their second album that became the first one to actually chart in the UK. The plot skips over Queen II and Sheer Heart Attack and makes it seem like A Night at the Opera was Queen's second album, though "Seven Seas of Rhye" and "Killer Queen" are briefly mentioned.
- By introducing John Reid as the band's first manager they sign with, the film completely skips over Queen's actual first management contract with Trident Studios. The fallout with their manager Norman Sheffield (which did require the aid of Reid to legally dissolve their contract) was so bad that they created a diss track for it called "Death on Two Legs (Dedicated to...)".
- The film makes it seem like Jim Beach was trying to add Queen to the bill at Live Aid. In reality, Bob Geldof had already named Queen as one of the acts when he first announced the concert in 1985, despite not having asked them beforehand.
- While it's rather minor compared to the other entries on this page, there are a few discrepancies in how the band's hairstyles are portrayed over the years. It's especially odd considering the amount of work put into making John Deacon's hair period accurate.
- Freddie Mercury is depicted as moving directly from his early-to-mid-70s look to the '80s one, with short hair and a mustache. In reality. the shift in look was more gradual, shortening the hair to a bowl cut during the late '70s, pairing that with a horseshoe mustache and a 5 o'clock shadow in 1980 (as seen on the single cover and in the music video for "Play the Game"). The beard was shaved and the mustache was trimmed a few months later before the hair was shortened as well by the time Hot Space released.
- Roger Taylor is portrayed as having long hair for the entire movie. While Taylor did have long hair for most of the 1970s, he'd cut it shorter by the time Jazz was released in 1978, and has kept it fairly short since the 1980s.
- The real Jim Hutton was a hairstylist when he and Freddie first met, not a waiter as presented in the film.
- The film depicts Live Aid as failing to take in significant donations until Queen performs, at which point they reach a million pounds. In reality, they had already raised well over a million pounds by the time Queen came on stage.
- During the recording process of "Another One Bites the Dust", Roger Taylor is shown playing alongside the band as they work out the kinks in the track. In real life, Taylor hated the song so much that he refused to participate in the song's recording process outside of making a short beat loop for the rest of the band to work with.
- In real life, John Reid wasn't fired on spot. In fact, he parted from the band on friendly terms. The contract simply ran out.
- While he did demonstrate symptoms as early as 1982, Freddie wasn't actually officially diagnosed with AIDS until 1987, a full 2 years after the famous Live-Aid performance.
