While filming the movie Titanic, director James Cameron shot a scene where the crew of The Californian turned off their radios and went to sleep.
This was supposed to duplicate the real life event where The Californian despite being close to the Titanic when it was sinking, didn’t respond to SOS calls and did not initiate a rescue operation.
But as filming went on and on, Cameron realized that this one scene was less important in the broader context of the film.
“But I took it out. It was a clean-cut, because it focuses you back onto that world. If Titanic is powerful as a metaphor, as a microcosm, for the end of the world in a sense, then that world must be self-contained.”
Basically, that particular scene was too much of a deviation of what Titanic was supposed to represent, a love story in a disaster setting.
This detail that may have been a big reason that 1,500 people died in the real accident, but it just didn’t really fit in the movie. This happens to be one of the biggest historical facts that was omitted in the film.