Real People Who Inspired Movie Crazies

Some things are too good to be true, but that's not the case for these fictional movie characters: BuzzFeed has a list of 10 popular movie icons that you'd never believe were inspired by actual people. A sample:

• Big Lebowski's The Dude: Producer and political activist Jeff Dowd was the archetype for the Coen brothers' interpretation. The Jeffs share their love for White Russians.

• American Psycho's Patrick Bateman: Christian Bale took a cue from Tom Cruise to form his mentally unstable character, but this less-than-flattering comparison isn't a coincidence—even the author had Cruise in mind while writing the book.
• Psycho's Norman Bates, Hannibal series' Buffalo Bill, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre's Leatherface: This nasty host of antagonists all drew inspiration from one real-life serial killer: Ed Gein. Gein had nine masks of human skin, a lampshade made from a human face, and a belt made of female nipples in his home.
• Shrek: Not really a crazy, but the animated ogre was influenced by a real-life French wrestler who suffered from a disease called acromegaly. The pictures don't lie…

Check out the rest of the list on BuzzFeed. (More Shrek stories.)