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In the 1990/2000s the 'sub prime' housing market allowed house buying loans to customers who otherwise would not have received them due to their bad credit rating, the idea being to put them on the 'housing ladder' and help them out of poverty. Wall Street investment banks bought parcels of this debt knowing they would reap a profit once the buyers paid off their loans with interest and packaged them with other investments. However once the economy slowed and house prices no longer increased (partly due to the surplus created by the sub prime market) record numbers of buyers began to default setting off a catastrophic chain reaction which filtered upwards through the financial markets, bankrupting some of the biggest names on Wall Street and beyond.

The (literally) billion-dollar question. Mortgage brokers and high street banks were criticized for recklessly selling mortgages to people who stood little or no chance of paying them back in order to gain commission from each sale. In their defence they in turn pointed out that they were simply complying with a flawed system not of their making, they never actually broke any laws or rules. The big Wall Street banks were also criticized for investing so heavily in such a risky venture but pointed out that despite the obvious problems with the sub-prime market their investments never lost their official triple-A rating, the legal regulators continually assured them their purchases were sound. Why the regulators did not downgrade the sub-prime stock is open to debate, whether this was corruption or simply a case human nature, with no one willing to rock the boat whilst everyone was getting rich.

Christian Bale, Brad Pitt, Steve Carell and Ryan Gosling all play characters inspired by real people, but Bale's Michael Burry is the only character who retains the real person's name. The other characters have had their names and certain details of characterization changed. Carell's Mark Baum is based on Steve Eisman. Read more about the four real-life inspirations for the characters here.