Há definitivamente algumas mudanças de nome que acontecem.
Greg Lippmann tornou-se Jared Vennett ( interpretado por Ryan Gosling). Steve Eisman tornou-se Mark Baum (interpretado por Steve Carrell). Michael Burry , interpretado por Christian Bale não tem seu nome alterado. Caso contrário, os vários artigos vinculados mostram muito material de entrevista que mostra que os vários personagens são bastante semelhantes aos seus colegas da vida real. Por exemplo, Michael Lewis, o autor do livro, disse o seguinte em uma entrevista com o Vulture : The hair. The hair is their hair. I was shocked by how close,
especially the principals, captured the actual people. Christian Bale
was so much like Michael Burry that I thought it was creepy — he did a
very, very good job. He was wearing Michael Burry’s clothes. That
T-shirt and shorts. I asked Adam: How did he even know he was wearing
that when I went to see him? The answer is he didn’t. That’s what
Michael Burry was wearing when Christian Bale went to see him, and
Christian was like, “Can I have your clothes?” I guess he has had to
get new clothes now. McKay, o diretor e co-escritor, comentou : “The real people have been the biggest challenge,” says McKay, who had
the duller job of fielding individual complaints: Why do I have to be
talking about my balls? Does he have to refer to me as a dick? McKay
had made some concessions: He’d changed Lippmann’s name — the
character is now called Jared Vennett (“I pronounce it Ven-AY,” said
Gosling) — and the last names of three attention-shy traders from
Cornwall Capital. The biggest change was Steve Eisman’s character: In
the book, Lewis reveals that Eisman lost a young child, which gives
his character a necessary pathos, but Eisman didn’t want it in the
film, so McKay replaced it with something else, and the character
became “Mark Baum.” This didn’t prevent Eisman from coming to the set
and advising Steve Carell on how to be a better him. “It’s, you know …
interesting to have the person you are playing show up the first or
second day you are shooting,” said Carell, who was roaming around the
set in an uncannily Eismanesque hairpiece between takes. “It’s a
little daunting to have the person staring at you. And offering
notes.”
Portanto, parece uma mistura de esconder as pessoas reais em seus pedidos, e esconder partes de suas vidas a seu pedido levou a mudanças de nome (embora, como o artigo afirma, apesar da mudança de nome, Eisman ainda aconselhava Carrell sobre como "jogá-lo".