Actual events?

Freddy is also partly Hubbard as Hubbard was a war vet himself and had difficulties to adapt to the civil society after the war. That was part of why he invented all that Dianetics-stuff in the first place, to have some purpose in his life.

Nice little detail by the way: In the film Dodd is at some point convicted of committing financial fraud related to the sale of some yacht. The affair is not elaborated upon further. In real life, Ron Hubbard befriended notable rocket engineer and occultist Jack Parsons (friend of Aleister Crowley's, by the way) and later embezzled him in a similar affair which involved selling yatches.

Other interesting thing: Dodd's ship is named Alethia. Dodd's appearance somewhat reminds me of Martin Heidegger, the greatest philosopher of the 20th century, whose existentialist philosophy was the vogue in the postbellum era and who has been criticized for his obscure writing and alleged mysticism. Now, in Heidegger's philosophy aletheia is Greek word meaning "disclosure" that he uses to describe the way the things-as-such are revealed to us and how they are revealed to be things, instead of just Being.