Yes. The Bohemian Rhapsody true story reveals that he was born Farrokh Bulsara on September 5, 1946 in Stone Town, Sultanate of Zanzibar (now Tanzania) in eastern Africa. He started going by "Freddie" while attending St. Peter's School, a British-style boarding school near Bombay (now Mumbai). It wasn't until he formed the band Queen in the spring of 1970 that he decided to also change his surname, switching it from "Bulsara" to "Mercury". On Freddie's birth certificate, his parents listed their nationality as "British Indian" and under race they put "Parsi", an ethnic group rooted in Persia.

Though he had been in a band called The Hectics while in primary school, his first performance in front of a paying audience was on August 23, 1969 as a vocalist for the band Ibex, who had been looking for a singer. Freddie sung Elvis Presley's "Jailhouse Rock". Future Queen band members Brian May and Roger Taylor were then part of a band named Smile. They knew Freddie and traveled to Liverpool to see him perform with Ibex, even joining Ibex on stage. This marked the first steps toward the birth of Queen. Freddie convinced the other members in Ibex to change the band name to Wreckage. Not long after, the band began to fall apart due to outside obligations by the members, including college, day jobs, and the drummer relocating to America. -Bio Channel

No. The Bohemian Rhapsody movie has Freddie meeting his future girlfriend Mary Austin just before his first run-in with Brian May and Roger Taylor, at which point he becomes a member of the band. This is a departure from the true story. In reality, Brian May had briefly dated Mary Austin. Freddie didn't become interested in her until after he was already the lead singer of the band. -RollingStone

Fact-checking Bohemian Rhapsody confirms that Freddie Mercury was known for having an eye for detail and being a perfectionist. By May 1970, his desire to create the perfect band had contributed to the demise of the first two groups he was in. It was around this time that Brian May and Roger Taylor's band Smile had lost member Tim Staffell, who left to join the band Humpy Bong. Freddie came on board and persuaded the remaining members to change the band's name to Queen. They did recruit John Deacon to play bass, but not until 1971. He wasn't the band's original bassist like in the movie, nor did he play at the first Queen concert in 1970. He was actually the fourth bassist they tried.

Yes. "It had a lot of visual potential and was open to all sorts of interpretations," Mercury said when asked about the inception of the name. "I was certainly aware of the gay connotations, but that was just one facet of it." -SGN.org

Yes. This is true and is why his front teeth protruded, a characteristic that fueled a lifetime of insecurity. He didn't want to have the extra teeth removed because he feared that it would change the resonance of his voice, believing that the extra teeth stretched his palate and helped give him his sound. During the 1970s and 1980s, Freddie led Queen to a slew of hit songs, many of which he composed, including 10 of the 17 on their Greatest Hits album. This includes their biggest hit, "Bohemian Rhapsody", after which the movie is named. -Bio Channel

Yes. During the several years that Freddie and Mary lived together in the 1970s, he proposed to Mary and they were at one point engaged to be married. -Time

Yes. In the movie, Rami Malek's Freddie comes out to Mary (Lucy Boynton) and tells her that he's bisexual. She responds by telling him that he is gay. This is fairly accurate to real life, except for the fact that the movie never challenges Mary's assertion. In reality, Freddie refused to ever label himself and continued to have both male and female lovers. German actress Barbara Valentin was one such prominent female lover of Freddie's.

Yes. The film is accurate in its depiction of Mercury's adoration for cats. According to the memoir of his personal assistant, Peter Freestone, he would even talk to them on the phone when he was away, which is shown in the movie. Mercury owned a number of cats throughout his life.

Yes. The Bohemian Rhapsody true story supports that Freddie met Mary Austin when he was a starving musician. They moved in together and she supported him for a time. She was the one person he trusted. They remained friends even after they broke up in 1976 when he was coming to terms with his sexuality. During a 1985 interview, Freddie said of Mary, "All my lovers asked me why they couldn't replace Mary, but it's simply impossible. The only friend I've got is Mary, and I don't want anybody else. To me, she was my common-law wife. To me, it was a marriage. We believe in each other, that's enough for me." She was the one person he trusted most throughout his career.

Mary was a comfort to Freddie during his final years as well. He left Mary the bulk of his estate (his house and recording royalties worth more than $10 million) when he died from AIDS complications in 1991. He reasoned that if he had kept living as a straight man, they would have married and had a life together. Leaving her the estate was his way of acknowledging that, in addition to the fact that she remained a true friend through thick and thin. Mary Austin still lives in Freddie's home in Kensington, England with her family.

No. A fact-check of the Bohemian Rhapsody movie reveals that Freddie Mercury's partner, Jim Hutton, had been a hairdresser in Ireland before moving to London, where he met Mercury at a nightclub. The movie instead has them fictionally meeting when Hutton is working as a server at a hedonistic party hosted by Mercury. Despite Hutton rejecting him, they talk late into the night. In the movie, they part ways and Mercury tracks Hutton down after looking him up in a phone book years later. In an interview Hutton did with The Times of London, he said that he did reject Mercury after Mercury offered to buy him a drink at the nightclub. He hadn't recognized the superstar. They saw each other again about a year and a half later at, once again, a nightclub. Mercury again offered to buy him a drink, and this time, Hutton accepted.

In reality, Hutton was then working as a hairdresser at London's Savoy Hotel. His seven-year relationship with Mercury had begun by 1985 and they remained together until Mercury's death in November 1991. After revealing to Hutton that he had AIDS, Mercury told him that he'd understand if he wanted to leave. Hutton replied, "I love you, Freddie, I'm not going anywhere." Hutton himself was diagnosed with AIDS in 1990, and it took him a year to break the news to Mercury. Hutton is not featured prominently in the Bohemian Rhapsody movie because the film concludes with Queen's 1985 Live Aid performance, which happened not long after his relationship with Mercury began. -IrishCentral.com

Yes. In real life, Paul Prenter (portrayed by Allen Leech in the movie) worked as Freddie Mercury's personal manager from 1977 to 1986. It is true that the other members of Queen didn't like him, calling him a "bad influence". He was fired by Mercury for selling the singer's personal information to UK newspapers (not for failing to tell Mercury about Live Aid). This included information about their own on and off affair, and the singer's lifestyle as a gay man, noting how Mercury's former lovers were dying of AIDS. Unlike the movie, he never exposed Mercury's private life in a TV interview, only in print. In addition, his firing didn't happen prior to Live Aid. It happened the following year in 1986. Prenter himself died of AIDS-related complications in August 1991, just three months before Mercury passed away from the disease.

Yes. This happened two years after the events chronicled in the movie. After seeing operatic soprano Montserrat Caballé live, he met her and the pair decided to record an album together, 1987's Barcelona. The album was independent of Queen and featured the single "Barcelona", which later appeared on Queen's Greatest Hits III. In October of 1988, Freddie traveled to Spain to perform three songs with Caballé. It was heralded as one of his greatest performances. It would also be his last.

Yes. Queen bandmates Brian May and Roger Taylor spent eight years trying to get the biopic made. "We’re very conscious that we get one shot, and if we don’t do it, someone else will do it badly," May said in an interview with TeamRock. "We will do it without avoiding anything – any aspect of Freddie. But we will try to keep it all in balance. I think if we get it right it will crystallize the way the world understands Freddie."

In 2010, comic actor Sasha Baron Cohen was attached to play Freddie Mercury, but he walked away from the project in 2013 over creative disputes with May and Taylor. Director Bryan Singer was fired in December 2017 over several missed days and a tense relationship with lead actor Rami Malek. Dexter Fletcher (Eddie the Eagle) was brought in to finish the project.

Brian May and Roger Taylor spent time on set, in addition to longtime manager Jim Beach and others. Greg Brooks, the band's official archivist, worked closely with the filmmakers to make the movie as accurate as possible. This included details like the type of socks that John Deacon was wearing.

From Queen's 1985 Live Aid performance to candid Freddie Mercury interviews, the following list of videos will help to broaden your knowledge of the Bohemian Rhapsody true story.