| In the Book |
In the Movie |
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Forrest is a huge man. He is 6'5" and 242 pounds. |
He is average size. |
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As a child Forrest's legs are perfectly healthy. |
He has a crooked spine and requires leg braces.
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Forrest becomes and astronaut and goes to outer space. He meets an ape there named Sue. They crash in the jungle and are taken hostage by cannibals. |
This doesn't happen. |
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Forrest becomes a world class chess player. |
He never plays chess.
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Forrest and his Ape grow shrimp in shallow pools. |
He has a shrimp boat and catches the shrimp in the open water. Lt. Dan works with him. |
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Forrest curses a lot. |
He doesn't swear.
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Forrest has a low IQ, but he proves himself to have savant like ability when it comes to physics. |
He has a low IQ. |
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Bubba is with Forrest at University. |
They meet while in the army together.
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Jenny leaves Forrest and gets married to another man. She raises Forest Jr. with that man. She lives. |
Jenny marries Forrest and dies. |
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Forrest leaves the Shrimp business to travel around with his Ape and Lt. Dan as a one man band. |
Forrest leaves the Shrimp business to Lt. Dan and goes home to cut the grass for free.
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Forrest attends school with Jenny for the first grade, but is then put in a special class because of his low IQ. He then sees Jenny again when he is in High School and a star on the football team. |
Forrest's mother has sex with the school principal so that he can attend the same classes as the normal students. He is with Jenny all the way through school. |
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Forrest joins the football team as a 14 year old. He is very good. He goes to the principals office where he meets Bear Bryant from the University of Alabama. He asks him if he wants to play football in College. |
Bear Bryant is at Forrest's school watching the team play. Forrest is not on the team. He is being chased by bullies in a truck and turns onto the football field. He passes the quarterback just as he releases the ball and reaches the wide receiver as the ball arrives. Bear Bryant is amazed by his speed and asks who he is.
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He gets fed up with the kids bullying him and punches one of them in the face, then runs off. |
He runs away from his bullies, his callipers break, and he doesn't need them anymore. (he doesn't punch any of them) |
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Forrest says "Being an idiot is no box of chocolates." |
Forrest says that his mother always told him, "Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're going to get."
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Forrest runs for the U.S. Senate. After a speech he is asked a very tough question, and his reply is, "I got to pee." |
He never runs for the Senate. |
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Forrest is an All State Football player in High School and attends a banquet in a little town caled Flomaton. He is on the bus for a long time and drinks two slurpees. He can't get his fly down when he gets the chance to pee. He is given his award and someone asks him if he has anything to say. He says, "I got to pee." |
He is an All American in College and gets to go to the White House to meet President Kennedy. He drinks seven Dr. Peppers. He meets the President who asks him how he feels to be an All American. He replies, "I got to pee." The President smiles and says, "I believe he said he's got to go pee."
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Bubba is white. |
Bubba is black. |
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Forrest flunked out of college. |
Forrest graduated.
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Jenny does NOT go to an 'all girls college' |
Jenny goes to an all-girls college |
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Forrest grows up dirt poor and in a shack / hovel. |
Forrest grows up in a historical family mansion
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Forrest meets president Johnson |
Forrest meets president Kennedy |
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Forrest meets the President as a military hero returned from Viet Nam |
Forrest meets the President because he's a college football 'all star' (an utterly stupid, banal, asinine change to the story)
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Forrest meets Bubba (white guy) on the college (University of Alabama) football team |
Forrest meets Bubba (black guy) in Army Basic Training |
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Jenny was not a striper |
she becomes a striper
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Forrest has sex with Jenny on several different occasions and never impregnates her, although she does end up pregnant with her husband's child, who gets sent off to Forrest as a teenager when both she and her husband mysteriously die (at the start of the second book). |
Forrest has sex with Jenny just once, and as a result Jenny gives birth to Little Forrest, whom he first sees shortly before Jenny's impending death, and later raises by himself from about Kindergarten age. |
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Forrest's mother doesn't die until the beginning of the second book, probably only to keep continuity with the movie (Winston Groom mostly wrote the second book as a Take That to the filmmakers who had wronged him with "Hollywood accounting" and mangling of the source text, which also explains why Groom hasn't allowed a second movie). |
Forrest's mother dies.
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