Forrest Gump Goes To Space With An Ape Called Sue In The Original Novel

Robert Zemeckis' 1994 film Forrest Gump spun a strange tale of a man who achieves great things despite a low IQ, but the events of the film can't compare to the Forrest's wild life in the book it's based on. Written by Winston Groom, the novel version of Forrest Gump also sees Forrest become a pro-wrestler, a chess champion, a Hollywood stuntman and - in his craziest adventure - recruited by NASA to fly into space with a male ape called Sue.

Like in the movie, the book version of Forrest Gump accidentally becomes involved in an anti-war protest, but the consequences for him are a little more dire. Forrest gets sent to a mental hospital for psychiatric observation, whereupon it's discovered that he's an idiot savant with a brain like a computer. This attracts interest from NASA, who make him a deal: if he will fly into space on an experimental mission for them and serve as a backup in case the ship's computer fails, they will make sure he is spared from a prison sentence.

Related: Forrest Gump: 10 Differences Between The Book & The Film

Forrest reluctantly agrees and joins the space program, where he meets his two fellow astronauts. One is a very grumpy woman called Major Janet Fritch, who will be the first woman to go to space. However, the most experienced crew member is a female orangutan called Sue, who has already been on two previous space flights. The launch takes place after a couple of false starts, but as the countdown begins Forrest realizes that the wrong ape has been loaded into the spaceship. Instead of Sue, who was chosen because female apes are less aggressive, a male ape has been put in the cage.

The ground control crew dismisses Major Fritch's concerns about the male ape and continues with the lift-off. Forrest and Major Fritch are sent into space with the male, whom Forrest decides to continue calling Sue and tries to calm by playing music to him. However, after an altercation involving Major Fritch being hit in the face with a weightless blob of ape pee and Sue throwing a tantrum and ripping wires out of the ship's control panels, the space flight comes to an end and the ship crashes in New Guinea.

Needless to say, none of this made it into Zemeckis' film, which unfortunately means that no scene of Tom Hanks trying to wrangle ape pee in space ever made it to the big screen. Groom's novel is a great deal more absurdist than the film, which has comedic elements and conveniently places Forrest in the middle of a number of major historical events, but doesn't go quite as far as making him an astronaut.

The film also wisely avoids the portion of the novel that comes after the space flight, in which Forrest and his companions encounter tribes in the jungles of New Guinea and things get overtly racist very quickly. In the end, Major Fritch falls in love with a cannibal called Grurck and decides to stay in the jungle with him, and Sue also stays behind in the jungle - after saying an emotional goodbye to Forrest.

More: Forrest Gump Is Getting A Bollywood Remake

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