Top Gun: The True Story Behind The Film's Real-Life Inspiration Explained

The action movie genre used to simply have two choices: Westerns or military-inspired films. Eventually, cop movies and martial arts flicks started gaining popularity, and the fads began changing. But that didn't stop the '80s from pumping out some tremendous military-inspired films that still hold up to this day. "Platoon," "Hamburger Hill," and "Full Metal Jacket" all quenched the thirst for military action. But none of them put a mark on our cultural collective psyche the way "Top Gun" did. And what makes it even more intriguing still today is that there is an element of truth behind the film.

Now, we're not saying that Tom Cruise portrayed a real-life fighter pilot with the kind of ego that writes checks his body can't cash, but there is an actual school at Naval Air Station Miramar in San Diego County dedicated to pumping out the best of the best the Navy has to offer in the skies. So even if Pete "Maverick" Mitchell (Cruise), Nick "Goose" Bradshaw (Anthony Edwards), and Tom "Iceman" Kazansky (Val Kilmer) unfortunately aren't real people, we can take solace in knowing that they are placeholders for the real-life fighter pilots that are gunning for the top spot in the Navy.

A 1983 California Magazine article (via Top Gun Bio) took a deep dive into the life and times of two crewmembers living the life Maverick and Goose did on screen. The piece, titled "Top Guns," gives a real-life glimpse into the daily routine and the mindset of two men who inspired the characters from the movie and possess an honest-to-God need for speed. 

California Magazine's article describes a crew from F-14 training at Top Gun consisting of Lieutenants Alex ("Yogi") Hnarakis, the pilot or stick man up front, and Dave ("Possum") Cully, the navigator and radar intercept officer who sits behind him. The author describes Yogi as a handsome, John Travolta-like man in his mid-20s with black hair and a broad smile, while he describes Possum as a much more average everyday man with brown hair and mustache. It is hard not to read the story of these two pilots going out on a "hop" or exercise that feels pulled straight from the movie and not see Maverick and Goose in your mind's eye.

The article goes on to describe the maneuvers they are learning and how they can keep themselves alive when school is out and they are called to the unfriendly skies. Any "Top Gun" fan will stop scrolling near the bottom when they land on a photo of two fighter planes flying together, one inverted over the other. The image seems to have been pulled straight from the page to the screen when Maverick and Goose were "'keeping up foreign relations,' you know, the finger?" Even though the movie may have been written with fictitious characters, the school and the things that happen there are not so unreal.

One other aspect of the film that is not real is the trophy. According to Tim "Ain't" Myers (covered by Task & Purpose), the real-life opposite of "Jester" (Michael Ironside), the school doesn't have a trophy and never will. It isn't about standing out; it's about working together.

One of the more dramatized aspects of "Top Gun" is Maverick's steamy affair with instructor Charlotte "Charlie" Blackwood (Kelly McGillis). While the romance never took place in the hallways of Fightertown, USA, the character of Charlie took inspiration from a real-life woman — Christine Fox, or "Legs" as she was known to the fighter pilots at Miramar.

According to a People Magazine article in 1985, Fox was dispatched to work in the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA) to develop tactics for the defense of aircraft carriers. She began working at Top Gun and became known for both her brains and other attributes, as evidenced by her nickname. "They always know when I'm coming," she said, "because I'm one of the few people around here whose heels click." To hear her tell it, the fictional romance was unlikely, as she had very little contact with the pilots.

Fox dispelled the rumors right away about how the character she inspired is portrayed on-screen. "My actual job has much more to do with the guy in the back seat of the plane, the radar-intercept operator, than the guy in the front, the pilot," she said. "I don't know anything about flying airplanes, but I know a lot about the guy in the back seat—his mission, his radar, and his missiles." We may have been huge fans of the relationship between Charlie and Mav, but it sounds like it was always hands-off for Fox.