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? begins as a game his squad devises so he can test each memory aloud, and Katniss answers his last one, about whether she loves him, with a single word: 'Real.'

At Snow's public 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 was 17 and had only been asked for an end-credits song, Yellow Flicker Beat, when her publisher's recommendation won her the job of choosing every artist on the album.

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

With a signature stamp, since a hand injury kept Collins from signing; at the New York launch she still read the first chapter aloud, in an accent, because Katniss comes from Appalachia.

Which Mockingjay line did a protester paint 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; days earlier, a Bangkok cinema chain had cancelled screenings after protesters adopted the film's three-finger salute.

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

Natalie Dormer, then Margaery Tyrell on Game of Thrones, shaved the left side of her head for the part; in the novel Cressida's whole head is shaved and tattooed with green vines.

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 are President Snow's trademark: he leaves his flower in her house in the Victor's Village, which the bombing spared, and when more follow, Katniss reads them as his threat to Peeta.

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

A hydroelectric dam supplied most of the Capitol's 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; in the novel her written list also demands hunting trips with Gale, the family cat and the right to kill Snow herself.

In Mockingjay's epilogue, Katniss steadies herself on bad days by making a mental list of what?

Good deeds she has seen: Katniss calls the list a game, a little tedious after more than twenty years, and closes the novel by saying there are much worse games to play.

After the war in Mockingjay, what replaces the abolished Games' old arenas?

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.

Critics of the first Mockingjay film took issue with 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 raised the first printing before release and still had to go back to press within days, after first-week sales that its trade president said had exceeded all expectations.

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

Paylor led the rebel troops Katniss filmed beside, and after the Capitol falls it is she who orders the guards to let Katniss in to see the captive Snow.

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

Berlin hosted the world premiere of a film that Studio Babelsberg co-produced and that shot scenes in the city; later that month the Los Angeles premiere dropped its red-carpet interviews after the Paris attacks.

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 and the writer of HBO's Game Change, had to finish his Part 1 script before Lionsgate took up its option for him to write Part 2.

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

Tempelhof closed to air traffic in 2008, which left its huge terminal and apron free for film crews; in 1948 and 1949 it had been the centre of the airlift that beat a Soviet blockade.

Which Terry Gilliam film was shot at the same Paris-area housing estate as a Capitol battle in Mockingjay – Part 2?

Brazil used Les Espaces d'Abraxas at Noisy-le-Grand as a dystopian backdrop in 1985; three decades later its sunken plaza became the Capitol courtyard that fills with black tar.

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; Part 1 beat it yet still opened lower than both earlier Hunger Games films, each of which had passed $150 million.

Whose thriller did Mockingjay's e-book knock off the top of Amazon's Kindle bestseller list in August 2010?

Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo had led the Kindle chart since April; Mockingjay displaced it in release week and pulled the first two Hunger Games books into the top ten.

In Mockingjay – Part 1, what finally persuades Katniss to become the rebels' Mockingjay?

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 loses both legs to a booby trap in a Capitol street; before he dies he passes his command to Katniss and tells her not to trust 'them', without saying who.

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

451 is the squad's number; Plutarch hand-picks it as the 'Star Squad', the on-screen faces of the invasion, with orders to stay well behind the real 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 picks its way between them with a handheld map.

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

Tigris, her face surgically altered into a semi-feline mask, hides the survivors in her shop's cellar; the prequel reveals she is President Snow's own cousin and was once his closest confidante.

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 a bullet fired as she pleads with District 2's survivors and the rebels to stop killing each other.

Finnick's broadcast in Mockingjay reveals what as the cause of Snow's bloody mouth sores?

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, a servant whose tongue the Capitol cut out, and his years of forced labour in its tunnels later let him guide the squad through the sewers.

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

Greek myth, in its best-known telling, makes Castor mortal and Pollux immortal, and the novel follows suit, killing Castor in the Capitol and sparing his brother.

Which victor backs a final Games in Mockingjay, saying 'Let them have a taste of 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 takes which government 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, is where she helps start a new hospital after the war, because District 12 now holds too much grief for her to go home.

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

Geese keep the hard-drinking mentor busy, and the prequel Sunrise on the Reaping reveals that Katniss and Peeta gave him the first eggs in memory of the girl he loved and lost.

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 survived the firebombing that killed most of District 12, and after the war she comes to cook for Katniss, bringing the granddaughter who used to wander the Hob.