Boardwalk Empire Trivia
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130 free Boardwalk Empire trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Boardwalk Empire trivia quiz covers all five seasons of HBO's Prohibition-era drama, from the $18 million Martin Scorsese pilot in January 1920 to Nucky Thompson's final walk on the boardwalk in 1931. The easy questions are the ones any viewer will know: who plays Nucky, which city the show is set in, what Richard Harrow wears over his face and which Chicago gangster starts out as Johnny Torrio's driver. From there it digs into the season-by-season plot: the D'Alessio brothers, the Commodore's stroke, Emily's polio, the Irish whiskey deal, Gyp Rosetti's blockade at Tabor Heights, the Onyx Club, Agent Knox's real name, the Cuba rum scheme and the flashbacks to 1884 and 1897. There are production questions too, on the 300-foot boardwalk built in Brooklyn, the Brian Jonestown Massacre theme, the Grammy-winning soundtrack, the Emmys, and the real Enoch "Nucky" Johnson, the Atlantic City boss who inspired the character. Fans of period crime dramas may also like our Sopranos and Peaky Blinders quizzes. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entries for the series, its seasons, its characters and its historical figures before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question.
30 of 130 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which actor plays Nucky Thompson in Boardwalk Empire?
Steve Buscemi
Steve Buscemi looks nothing like the burly real boss; the show's creator said casting for likeness would have meant James Gandolfini, so he simply went after the best actor.
Q 02As Boardwalk Empire begins, what job does Jimmy Darmody do for Nucky Thompson?
His driver
His driver is all Jimmy is when the series opens; offered nothing better than a clerk's job under a ward boss, he hijacks a liquor shipment to prove he deserves more.
Q 03Which Sopranos writer created Boardwalk Empire?
Terence Winter
Terence Winter never pitched the show: the network handed him a history of Atlantic City, told him to find a series in it, and he chose the Prohibition years.
Q 04Which famous film director directed the pilot episode of Boardwalk Empire?
Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese directed only the pilot, yet it fixed the style the whole series followed; he stayed on as an executive producer and never directed another episode.
Q 05In Boardwalk Empire's pilot, Jimmy Darmody warns Nucky that he can no longer be what?
Half a gangster
Half a gangster is Jimmy's phrase as he hands Nucky a cut of the hijacking money; two seasons later Nucky proves him right by shooting Jimmy himself.
Q 06Boardwalk Empire's episode "Family Limitation" is named after a birth-control pamphlet by which activist?
Margaret Sanger
Margaret Sanger wrote Family Limitation in 1914; in the episode an older friend hands Margaret a copy as she weighs whether to move in with Nucky.
Q 07When Boardwalk Empire opens, what is Nucky Thompson's official post in Atlantic County?
Treasurer
Treasurer is only his title: Nucky really controls the county as its political boss, leading a double life as a politician and a gangster.
Q 08What is Nucky Thompson's real first name in Boardwalk Empire?
Enoch
Enoch is the name behind the nickname; when Margaret offers to name her baby after him in the pilot, Nucky replies that she couldn't possibly be so cruel.
Q 09Whose 2002 non-fiction book inspired Boardwalk Empire?
Nelson Johnson
Nelson Johnson was a lawyer for Atlantic City's planning board who went to the library to learn why City Hall was so dysfunctional, and the research grew into the book.
Q 10In Boardwalk Empire's first season, whom does Van Alden force to inject a dying witness with cocaine?
A dentist
A dentist is where Van Alden stops on the road to New York once the man starts to fade; the drug rouses him just long enough to name Jimmy, who then has to flee town.
Q 11In season one of Boardwalk Empire, who does Lucky Luciano wrongly take Gillian Darmody to be?
Jimmy's wife
Jimmy's wife is who Luciano thinks he has seduced while hunting Jimmy for Rothstein; it is Rothstein who tells him that Gillian is in fact Jimmy's mother.
Q 12Which act of Congress, enforcing Prohibition, takes effect at midnight in Boardwalk Empire's pilot?
The Volstead Act
The Volstead Act takes force as the clock strikes twelve, and Nucky's guests toast the death of alcohol and the bootlegging fortunes a dry country will bring them.
Q 13Which band performs "Straight Up and Down", the opening theme of Boardwalk Empire?
The Brian Jonestown Massacre
Q 21Which English actor plays the young Al Capone in Boardwalk Empire?
Stephen Graham
Stephen Graham plays Al Capone from low-level Chicago hood to mob boss, ending the series on his way into court to answer for what his seized ledgers show.
Q 22Which actor plays Albert "Chalky" White?
Michael Kenneth Williams
Michael Kenneth Williams plays Chalky White, who repackages and distributes Nucky's whiskey and, just as usefully, delivers the Black voters that Nucky's machine depends on.
Q 23What is the name of Nucky's loyal German butler?
Eddie Kessler
Eddie Kessler seems the gentlest man on the show, but season four reveals why he left Germany: he ran out on his wife and children, a shame federal agents use against him.
The Brian Jonestown Massacre recorded it in 1996; the show's creator wanted the unexpected, so psych rock rather than a Charleston plays over the 1920s title sequence.
Q 14In Boardwalk Empire, which actor plays Jimmy Darmody, Nucky's protégé who returns from World War I?
Michael Pitt
Michael Pitt lasted two seasons: once Jimmy backs a failed attempt on Nucky's life, Nucky shoots him himself, an ending the writers settled on early in season two.
Q 15Which university did Jimmy Darmody leave to serve in the war?
Princeton
Princeton is where Jimmy studied until he beat up a professor who had made a pass at his mother; he left for the Army straight afterwards.
Q 16Who plays Margaret, the Irish immigrant who becomes Nucky's mistress and later wife, in Boardwalk Empire?
Kelly Macdonald
Kelly Macdonald's Margaret first appears as a pregnant housewife asking Nucky to find her husband a job; within a season she is living with the county's leading bootlegger.
Q 17Which actor plays Prohibition agent Nelson Van Alden?
Michael Shannon
Michael Shannon's Van Alden begins as a straight-arrow Prohibition agent hunting Nucky and ends the series as hired muscle for Al Capone, the kind of man he once chased.
Q 18What alias does Nelson Van Alden adopt while living as a fugitive in Chicago?
George Mueller
George Mueller is the name Van Alden lives under after killing his partner and fleeing Atlantic City; he keeps it to the end, even as a Chicago gangster's enforcer.
Q 19In Boardwalk Empire, which condition does Al Capone's young son Sonny have?
Deafness
Deafness: when Sonny is bullied at school in season three, Capone tries to teach the boy to fight, pushes him too hard, and ends up singing to a son who cannot hear him.
Q 20Which actor plays the gambler Arnold Rothstein in Boardwalk Empire?
Michael Stuhlbarg
Michael Stuhlbarg's Rothstein is a feared card shark until season four, when a losing night at poker shows Nucky a man with a gambling problem and costs him a Florida deal.
Q 24What does Richard Harrow wear to cover the war wound to his face?
A tin mask
A tin mask, painted to mirror the intact side of his face, hides the wound; the sculptor Anna Coleman Ladd made such masks for disfigured soldiers in wartime France.
Q 25Who plays the disfigured war veteran Richard Harrow?
Jack Huston
Jack Huston's Harrow is a contract killer, yet after Jimmy's death he becomes the caretaker of Jimmy's orphaned young son.
Q 26What was Richard Harrow's role in the US Army during World War I?
Sharpshooter
Richard Harrow served as a sharpshooter, a skill he keeps using as a hitman; the war cost him his left eye, upper jaw and most of his left cheekbone.
Q 27In which state is Richard Harrow's home town of Plover, where his twin sister lives?
Wisconsin
Wisconsin is where Richard's twin sister Emma nursed him after the war; he left as soon as he could look after himself and only goes home to her in season four.
Q 28Who plays Gillian Darmody, Jimmy's mother?
Gretchen Mol
Gretchen Mol's Gillian starts the series as a showgirl and by season three is a madam, running an upscale brothel out of the Commodore's old mansion.
Q 29Which mentor of Nucky's, called the Commodore, is played by Dabney Coleman?
Louis Kaestner
Louis Kaestner built the city's machine and put Nucky in charge of it; in season two the Commodore allies with Jimmy and Eli to take Atlantic City back from him.
Q 30Owen Sleater, who has an affair with Margaret, arrives in Atlantic City as a member of which organization?
The Irish Republican Army
The Irish Republican Army brings Owen to America as bodyguard to one of its fundraisers; when the man sails home, Owen stays behind and goes to work for Nucky.