1982’s First Blood helped make Sylvester Stallone and John Rambo household names.
Based on David Morrell’s debut novel of the same name, First Blood is a heart-wrenching, action-packed story of a tortured Vietnam veteran struggling to reintegrate into civilian life. The character’s legacy and enduring popularity is stunning, even to Morrell himself: “Rambo” made it into the Oxford English Dictionary and was even the acronym given to a cluster of dead stars (the full term being “robust association of massive baryonic objects”).
“He’s so much a part of world culture that when I sign copies of First Blood, I often call myself ‘Rambo’s father,’ ” the author said in an interview on his website. “It’s like he’s a son who grew up and went in unexpected directions.”
Despite Morrell only writing one novel, Rambo’s story carried on through four more films released over the course of nearly four decades: Rambo First Blood: Part II (1985), Rambo III (1988), Rambo (2008) and Rambo: Last Blood (2019), the latter two of which are currently available to stream on Netflix.
But how exactly did the legendary character come to be? Here’s everything to know about the real-life events (and people) that inspired the Rambo franchise — well as a surprising figure who didn’t influence the character at all.
Is the Rambo franchise based on a true story?
The Rambo franchise is a work of fiction, but was somewhat inspired by true events.
In the introduction to the novel First Blood, Morrell reveals that he had several inspirations that came together as an amalgamation in the character John Rambo.
While developing the story for First Blood, Morrell combined the last name of author and poet Arthur Rimbaud, whose work he was reading at the time, and the Rambo apple, which his wife told him about when she got home from grocery shopping.
Rambo himself was loosely based on real-life World War II veteran Audie Murphy, who died just before Morrell began writing First Blood, the author wrote in his 2012 book Rambo and Me.
“What was on my mind when I wrote the novel was Audie Murphy. He had been America’s most decorated soldier in World War II. His citation for the Medal of Honor is extraordinary. It’s superhuman,” Morrell told Flashback Files of Murphy. “Anything Rambo has done in any of the movies pales in comparison.” However, it was Murphy’s openness about post-traumatic stress disorder, even more than his battlefield accomplishments, that fascinated Morrell.
As far as Rambo’s story goes, Morrell wrote that he garnered inspiration from both Vietnam War footage he’d seen on television as well as from footage of riots and National Guard shootings within American cities. He also noted that some of the harassment Rambo faces in the book, including about his long hair, was inspired by his own experiences as well as those of some “hitchhiking hippies” in his town that police “stripped, hosed and shaved.”
“The juxtaposition made me decide to write a novel in which the Vietnam War literally came home to America,” Morrell explained. “There hadn’t been a war on American soil since the Civil War ended in 1865. With America splitting apart because of Vietnam, maybe it was time for a novel that dramatized the philosophical division in our society, that shoved the brutality of war right under our noses.”
Who was Audie Murphy?
Born in Texas, Audie Murphy was one of the United States’ most decorated World War II soldiers. Murphy lied about his age to be able to enlist in the Army when he was 17 years old. He went on to become a staff sergeant, fighting in the invasion of Sicily in 1943, the Battle of Anzio in 1944 and aiding the liberation of France.
Considered one of the best combat soldiers in American History by several accounts, Murphy earned the Medal of Honor in June 1945.
After serving overseas, he returned home where he made a career as an author and actor. Murphy wrote about his experiences in World War II in the book To Hell and Back and starred as himself in the film adaptation.
“In some of the action scenes in his movies, you could see something in his eyes that suggested that maybe he was back in the war,” Morrell said of Murphy.
While Murphy’s experiences weren’t identical to Rambo’s, the aftermath of fighting in war influenced Morrell’s most famous character.
“Turns out [Murphy] lived a miserable life. He suffered from PTSD. He kept a weapon under his pillow. He woke up from nightmares, screaming and shooting. There were bullet holes in the walls that they would cover up by moving pictures around,” Morrell said in part. “He had an unsuccessful civilian life. He once said that he had wanted to write a second book, about adapting to peacetime. So, that was one of the impetuses for writing First Blood: What if someone like Audie Murphy came back from Vietnam, with all the unpopular feelings about the soldiers?”
Murphy died in a small plane crash in 1971. He was 46 years old.
How does John Rambo differ from the book and the film series?
Though there are some differences between First Blood the book and the movie, the overall arc is similar: In both the novel and film adaptation of First Blood, Rambo walks around a small town only for Will Teasle (a sheriff in the movie, played by Brian Dennehy, and a police chief in the book) to chase him out and chastise him. When Rambo defiantly returns to the town and walks around looking for a place to grab a bite to eat, Teasle arrests him and shoves him into a county jail cell.
Being in a small, dreary, wet cell triggers flashbacks of Rambo’s time being tortured in the Vietnam War, setting off a marathon of violence between Teasle, Rambo, local and state police officers and National Guardsmen throughout the town and the nearby wilderness.
The endings of the book and film are different, however: In the book, both Teasle and Rambo die amid their chase, while in the film, Rambo survives and is arrested and taken into custody.
Rambo’s character changes dramatically in the several sequels of the movie.
“When you look at the film adaptation, the character is not bitter or angry, he’s in his own way, at the start of the film sorrowful. He’s a victim,” Morrell told Movies In Focus in 2018. “If you look at the second film, all of a sudden his jingoistic and he’s almost a recruitment poster for the military. The same with the third film. If you look at the fourth film, the character is different again. Sylvester told me when he was making the fourth film, that in retrospect he wasn’t happy with the second and third films because they glorified the violence. He thought the fourth film should go back to the bitterness and anger that my character in the novel had.”
While Morrell appreciated Stallone’s return to form for 2008’s Rambo, he was displeased with the character’s arc in Stallone’s final turn in 2019’s Rambo: Last Blood. He wrote on X that he “hated the film,” opining that it “lacks soul.”
Was there a real soldier named John Rambo who fought in the Vietnam War?
Yes, there was a real soldier with the surname Rambo who fought in Vietnam, though Morrell has never cited him as being the inspiration for First Blood or the John Rambo character overall.
Staff sergeant Arthur John Rambo of Libby, Neb., was born Dec. 16, 1944, and died in combat in Tay Ninh, Vietnam, on Nov. 26, 1969.
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