Video of Brandon Lee's death

The footage was destroyed just weeks after the incident.

What I always heard when I was younger was that somehow a real bullet got put in with a bunch of blanks during a movie scene.

Is that actually true?

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What I always heard when I was younger was that somehow a real bullet got put in with a bunch of blanks during a movie scene.

Is that actually true?

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Sort of. Basically there were dummy rounds loaded into it and one got stuck in the barrel, and then later when it was supposed to fire blanks, it shot out the lodged dummy bullet. So it wasn't a real bullet that killed him, but might as well have been:

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In the scene in which Lee was accidentally shot, Lee’s character walks into his apartment and discovers his fiancée being beaten and raped by thugs. Actor Michael Massee's character fires a .44 Magnum revolver at Lee as he walks into the room.[7] A previous scene using the same gun had called for inert dummy cartridges fitted with bullets (but no powder or percussion primer) to be loaded in the revolver for a close-up scene; for film scenes which utilize a revolver (where the bullets are visible from the front) and do not require the gun to actually be fired, dummy cartridges provide the realistic appearance of actual rounds. Instead of purchasing commercial dummy cartridges, the film's prop crew created their own by pulling the bullets from live rounds, dumping the powder charge then reinserting the bullets. However, they unknowingly or unintentionally left the live percussion primer in place at the rear of the cartridge. At some point during filming the revolver was apparently discharged with one of these improperly-deactivated cartridges in the chamber, setting off the primer with enough force to drive the bullet partway into the barrel, where it became stuck (a condition known as a squib load). The prop crew either failed to notice this or failed to recognize the significance of this issue.

In the fatal scene, which called for the revolver to be actually fired at Lee from a distance of 3.6 - 4.5 meters (12–15 feet), the dummy cartridges were exchanged with blank rounds, which feature a live powder charge and primer, but no bullet, thus allowing the gun to be fired without the risk of an actual projectile. But since the bullet from the dummy round was already trapped in the barrel, this caused the .44 Magnum bullet to be fired out of the barrel with virtually the same force as if the gun had been loaded with a live round, and it struck Lee in the abdomen, mortally wounding him.[8] He was rushed to the New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington, North Carolina where he underwent 6 hours of surgery. However, attempts to save him were unsuccessful, and Lee was pronounced dead at 1:03 p.m. EST on March 31, 1993, at the age of 28. The shooting was ruled an accident.

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Yup. Basically it was lazy prop people not being thorough.

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Yup. Basically it was lazy prop people not being thorough.

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It was a whole bunch of bad things happening in the right sequence.

There was a Legends special on Unsolved Mysteries and this was in it.