Reel vs. Real History: How Accurate Are Your Favorite Movies?

Estimated Completion Time
1 min
Reel vs. Real History: How Accurate Are Your Favorite Movies?
Image: Universal/Getty Images

About This Quiz

Everyone knows that Hollywood dramas are no substitute for a good history teacher. We're looking at what 10 "based on a true story" movies got wrong - or right. It's not always what you think!
"Gladiator" (2000) ends with the Roman Emperor Commodus dying in the city's famed Coliseum. Where was he actually killed?
on a Roman street
in his bathtub
at a popular brothel
True or False: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard University, as shown in 2010's "The Social Network"
true
false
A jealous Antonio Salieri persuades Mozart to write his epic Requiem in "Amadeus" (1984). Who actually commissioned this piece?
Franz Xaver Süssmayr
Joseph Eybler
Count Franz von Walsegg

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Forget the Disney version. How old was the real Pocahontas when she met English explorer John Smith in 1607?
12 (or younger)
29
45
Did America's 16th president speak with a high-pitched, reedy voice - as he does in the Daniel Day-Lewis biopic drama "Lincoln" (2012)?
yes
no
Nobody knows for sure.
Which of these biopics got the title character's name wrong?
"Snowden" (2016)
"The Elephant Man" (1980)
"Spartacus" (1960)

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"Cool Runnings" (1993) incorporated actual footage from which part of the Jamaican national bobsled team's 1988 Olympic debut?
their practice regiment
their arrival in Calgary
their third run bobsled crash
Did the Austrian Von Trapp family - whose lives inspired "The Sound of Music" (1965) - really escape the Nazis by crossing the Alps?
yes
no
kind of
"Titanic" (1997) made up a few of its major characters. (We're looking at you, Jack and Rose.) Which of these figures depicted in the film was a real person who actually boarded the ship?
Margaret "Molly" Brown (Kathy Bates)
Fabrizio (Danny Nucci)
Caledon Hockley (Billy Zane)

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True or False: Johnny Cash proposed to his second wife, June Carter, onstage - a scene later dramatized in the 2005 biopic "Walk the Line."
true
false