Fun fact that they left out of this movie

I was having fun reading a list of stuff they left out of movies, stuff that the film-makers left out on purpose because it was a case of, "Reality is unrealistic," or too crazy to believe, despite historical evidence to back up the insane true stories listed.

For this movie, I'm just gonna focus on something they deliberately left out of it, simply because it would blow your minds.

I'm going to first ask all of you, how often have you seen athletes promoting products on tv? A lot, right? You've seen them promote everything from sports products, to food, to clothes, to even Carnival Cruises (Shaq will do anything for money these days, hehe).

Well here's the thing: it's not a new idea. Turns out, that ancient Greeks and ancient Romans did the exact same thing! In the case of ancient Rome, some gladiators became really popular with the masses, and their managers (these were often their owners too if the gladiator was one of their athletic slaves) would sign them on to different vendors (through a contract, of course) to sell items with their faces and names associated with the products to get people to buy more, and the gladiator or his manager would get a cut of the profits. Vendors in ancient Rome would set up shop outside the arenas, selling things like food, figurines, clothing, drinks, all with the face and/or name of the gladiator they were promoting.

So in relation to this movie, they had to cut out a scene where vendors were promoting Maximus on their wares, because the scene would have looked too "modern" to the audience, and when asked, the producer said it was a case of, "They would never believe us" when it came to doing that in ancient Rome.