50 Fun Facts About Mockingjay

Which film overtook Mockingjay – Part 1 as 2014's highest-grossing release in North America?

American Sniper passed it within two months of Part 1 taking the 2014 crown on January 21, 2015, sixty-one days into its run. Part 1 had itself overtaken Guardians of the Galaxy for the title.

Which question does the hijacked Peeta repeat in Mockingjay to sort true memories from false ones?

Real or not real? is Peeta's refrain through the novel, and USA Today's reviewer singled it out as the book's central question. The last exchange ends on Katniss answering with a single word.

At Snow's televised execution in Mockingjay, whom does Katniss shoot with her arrow instead?

President Coin takes the arrow after Snow tells Katniss the rebels, not the Capitol, dropped the bombs that killed the medics. Snow dies in the chaos that follows.

Which New Zealand singer-songwriter curated the soundtrack album for Mockingjay – Part 1?

Lorde curated the album and wrote its lead single, Yellow Flicker Beat, which picked up a Golden Globe nomination for Best Original Song. Critics praised the record's dystopian mood.

How were midnight-release copies of Mockingjay signed, since Suzanne Collins had a hand injury?

With a signature stamp standing in for Collins's autograph, the August 2010 midnight launch parties went ahead, and the publisher's Facebook page for the book drew 22,000 fans in ten days.

Which Mockingjay line was scrawled on an arch in St. Louis during the 2014 Ferguson unrest?

If we burn, you burn with us is Katniss's threat to Snow after the hospital airstrike, and a protester painted it in St. Louis after the shooting of Michael Brown.

Which actress shaved one side of her head to play the rebels' director Cressida in Mockingjay?

Natalie Dormer, then playing Margaery Tyrell on Game of Thrones, shaved the left side of her head for the part. The two Mockingjay films remain her highest-grossing.

Which victor marries Finnick Odair during Mockingjay and gives birth to his son after his death?

Annie Cresta, the traumatised District 4 victor Finnick loves, later votes against a final Hunger Games, saying he would have done the same.

The Capitol's sewer mutts that attack the Star Squad in Mockingjay are modelled on which animals?

Lizards are the template for the muttations that kill Finnick, Castor and Homes in the Capitol's underground, and Katniss only escapes because Finnick holds them off.

Which medic is killed by the second wave of bombs outside Snow's mansion in Mockingjay?

Primrose Everdeen is sent to the front as a casualty nurse and dies in a double bombing that Snow later tells Katniss was the rebels' work, not the Capitol's.

In Mockingjay – Part 1, the captive Peeta suddenly shouts what warning during a Capitol broadcast?

An imminent attack on District 13 is what Peeta blurts out after the rebels cut into his interview with Caesar Flickerman, and the evacuation he triggers saves the bunker.

What does Katniss find left inside her untouched house in District 12's ruins in Mockingjay – Part 1?

White roses from President Snow wait in the one house the firebombing spared, and after the bunker bombing Katniss finds the ground outside 13 littered with them, Snow's signal that each defiance costs Peeta.

In Mockingjay – Part 1, rebels black out the Capitol by destroying what in District 5?

A hydroelectric dam was the Capitol's primary source of electricity, and the District 5 attackers storm it singing The Hanging Tree, the song Katniss had just recorded.

Katniss agrees to be the Mockingjay only if District 13 grants the captured victors what?

Immunity for Peeta and the other victors held by the Capitol is her price, and in the film she also demands the right to execute Snow herself.

Mockingjay's epilogue, set twenty years on, shows Katniss and Peeta married with how many children?

Two children close the story, and the film ends with Katniss soothing the younger one after a nightmare, promising to explain one day how she copes with her own.

After the war in Mockingjay, the abolished Games' old arenas are turned into what?

Memorials replace the arenas once the post-war administration abolishes the Hunger Games, and Katniss, acquitted by reason of insanity, is sent home to District 12.

The Capitol claimed District 13 was wiped out during which past rebellion, a lie Mockingjay exposes?

The Dark Days rebellion supposedly ended with District 13's destruction, but after a standoff with the Capitol its residents went underground to rebuild their strength.

In Mockingjay – Part 2, Snow invites Capitol citizens into his mansion to serve as what?

A human shield of Capitol citizens, children among them, is Snow's last defence, and Katniss and Gale slip into the crowd in disguise to reach him.

Reviewers of both Mockingjay films most often criticised which decision by Lionsgate?

Splitting it into two parts drew complaints about Part 1's pacing, and director Francis Lawrence later admitted he understood the 'wrath of fans' at the cliffhanger.

Which publisher released Mockingjay in hardcover and audiobook on August 24, 2010?

Scholastic put the ebook on sale ahead of the hardcover, then bumped the first printing from 750,000 copies as orders climbed.

Which rebel officer Katniss met while filming under air raid is voted president of Panem in Mockingjay?

Commander Paylor led the rebel troops Katniss filmed alongside before the airstrike, and she takes office after the rebel president is shot dead at the execution.

In which European capital did Mockingjay – Part 2 hold its world premiere on November 4, 2015?

Berlin's Sony Center hosted the premiere sixteen days before the US release, in the same city where the two films had wrapped shooting in June 2014.

Which Game of Thrones actress replaced Lily Rabe as Commander Lyme in Mockingjay – Part 2?

Gwendoline Christie stepped in after Rabe left for a 2014 Shakespeare in the Park production of Much Ado About Nothing; Lyme is a past victor commanding District 2's rebels.

Philip Seymour Hoffman's death turned Plutarch's last scene with Katniss in Mockingjay – Part 2 into what?

A letter read by Haymitch replaced the detention-cell conversation, after early reports that Hoffman would be digitally recreated for the unshot scene.

Which Buffy the Vampire Slayer actor co-wrote both Mockingjay screenplays with Peter Craig?

Danny Strong, Buffy's Jonathan Levinson, had already written HBO's Recount and Game Change and the film The Butler before taking on the two-part finale.

Mockingjay – Part 2 shot its District 2 battle scenes at which German airport in May 2014?

Tempelhof's vast apron hosted the District 2 scenes during a European leg that also took the crew to an old cement factory in Rüdersdorf for another district's ruins.

Which Paris-area housing estate, used 30 years earlier for Brazil, hosted Mockingjay – Part 2 in May 2014?

Les Espaces d'Abraxas in Noisy-le-Grand had framed Terry Gilliam's Brazil in 1985, and the production moved there after wrapping in Atlanta in mid-April 2014.

Mockingjay – Part 1's $121.9 million debut broke which film's 2014 opening-weekend record?

Transformers: Age of Extinction had held 2014's record at $100 million, and Part 1 gave the Hunger Games its third straight $100 million opening, a first for any franchise.

The publisher raised Mockingjay's first printing from 750,000 copies to what figure before release?

1,200,000 copies went out in the first printing, and another 400,000 were printed after the launch week, taking the run to 1.6 million.

In Mockingjay – Part 1, what finally persuades Katniss to take on the Mockingjay role for the rebels?

Seeing Peeta on state television, plainly being used to quell the rebellion, is what moves her, right after she has walked the ruins of District 12.

In Mockingjay, Katniss's first convincing rebel film is shot at a bombed hospital in which numbered district?

8 is the textile district, and its hospital is where she stops performing and starts fighting, disobeying orders to join the defence and delivering the speech that finally works on camera.

In Mockingjay, what does the rebellion call the short films of Katniss that Cressida's crew shoots?

Propos are the rebels' answer to Capitol TV, beamed over the Capitol's own broadcasts once its signal is cracked; the first ones, shot in a studio, flop badly.

Who hacks into the Capitol's broadcast signal to air the rebels' films in Mockingjay?

Beetee, the District 3 electronics genius, also cracks the Capitol's defence system to slip Finnick's testimony onto the air during the rescue of the captured victors.

Which District 13 colonel hands command of the Star Squad to Katniss as he dies in Mockingjay?

Boggs, the rebel president's right-hand man, hands Katniss the Holo as he dies and warns her not to trust the leadership; earlier he had told her Coin never expected her to come back from the Capitol alive.

What number does the Star Squad that Katniss, Gale and Finnick join in Mockingjay carry?

451 is the squad's designation, and its official job is to be a camera unit kept away from the front lines, which is why its members are issued suicide pills and told to stay clear of the fighting.

Which device explodes when Katniss says 'Nightlock' three times into it in Mockingjay?

The Holo is the handheld holographic map of the Capitol's traps that the dying squad leader entrusts to Katniss; blowing it up kills the sewer mutts and spares Finnick a slower death.

What does the Capitol call the booby traps its Gamemakers planted along the streets in Mockingjay?

Pods turn the Capitol's streets into one last arena, each trap designed by the same Gamemakers who built the Games, and the squad reads them off a holographic map.

Which former Games stylist, now selling fur-trimmed underwear, shelters Katniss's squad in Mockingjay?

Tigris, whose face has been surgically altered into a semi-feline mask, takes in the survivors after the sewer mutts, and the 2023 prequel cast Hunter Schafer as her younger self.

Torture has left which rescued victor so afraid of water that she fails Mockingjay's combat training?

Johanna Mason was soaked and electrocuted in Capitol custody, and she panics during training and is left out of the mission into the Capitol.

Shot while speaking in District 2 in Mockingjay – Part 2, Katniss survives thanks to what?

Cinna's bulletproof suit, the Mockingjay costume he designed before his death, stops the bullet; Snow, watching the broadcast, believes her dead.

Finnick's broadcast in Mockingjay reveals Snow's bloody mouth sores come from what habit?

Drinking his own poisons alongside his victims, then taking the antidote, let Snow deflect suspicion as he killed his way to power, and the sores never healed.

Why must Castor interpret for his brother Pollux on Cressida's camera crew in Mockingjay?

He is a former Avox who escaped servitude in the Capitol, and Pollux alone of the brothers survives the war to film its ruins with Cressida.

Mockingjay's camera-crew brothers Castor and Pollux are named for twins in which mythology?

Greek myth has Castor die while Pollux lives on, and the novel follows suit, killing Castor in the Capitol and sparing his brother.

Which victor backs a final Games in Mockingjay, saying the Capitol should 'taste their own medicine'?

Enobaria ends the war as the only surviving non-rebel victor, and her yes vote joins Katniss's in carrying the proposal before the assassination makes it moot.

After the war in Mockingjay, former Gamemaker Plutarch Heavensbee is elected to which post?

Secretary of Communications suits the man who ran the rebels' broadcasts as their 'rebel filmmaker'; he also helps get Katniss acquitted after the assassination.

After the war in Mockingjay, Katniss's mother stays on to work in a hospital in which numbered district?

4, the fishing district that produced Finnick, keeps her coping with grief in its hospital, while Katniss goes home to 12 with Peeta and her mentor.

By the end of Mockingjay, Katniss's old mentor is mentioned to be raising which animals?

Geese occupy the mentor who spent two decades drunk, and the prequel Sunrise on the Reaping reveals the birds were a gift in memory of his first love.

Which District 13 doctor sleeps through Katniss's therapy sessions in Mockingjay?

Dr. Aurelius heads the study of Peeta's hijacking and later testifies to Katniss's mental state, helping get her acquitted after the assassination.

Which friend of Peeta's, absent from the films, is brought in as a 'balm' for his memories in Mockingjay?

Delly Cartwright, 'the friendliest person on the planet' by Katniss's account, stirs Peeta's childhood memories; the films hand her role to Katniss's sister.

Which Hob soup-seller is among the few hundred people who return to District 12 after Mockingjay's war?

Greasy Sae and her granddaughter survived the firebombing that killed most of District 12, and she is among the first back when Katniss returns from her trial.