I’m a little skeptical Hollywood is afraid of making fun of McDonald’s, although if they were too oppositional to them they might have run into some form of legal trouble with usage of the McDonald’s name/logo. I had heard the same thing about the severance payment being basically made up. But it was also in like the last 3 minutes of the movie. I think the core story of the movie was how Kroc pushed the brothers out and some of his personal behaviors around that time. The movie wasn’t a documentary, so there needs to be some sort of conflict/tension to make it work. Once Kroc took over his shift to lower quality food, while interesting for a documentary presentation like Supersize Me, wouldn’t make great cinema–there’s no real conflict there. As the unchallenged head of the company it would’ve just been a story of “I’m cutting quality to make more money.” And then later “I’ve made more money.”