47 Fun Facts About Narcos

Which actor plays Pablo Escobar in Narcos?

Wagner Moura spoke no Spanish when he was cast, so he moved to Medellín and went back to college to learn it before filming.

Who plays DEA agent Steve Murphy in Narcos?

Boyd Holbrook plays Murphy, and the real Steve Murphy advised the show and slips into the season two finale as a drinker in a bar.

Pedro Pascal plays which DEA agent in Narcos?

Javier Peña leads the season three hunt on screen, but the real Peña left Colombia soon after Escobar's death and never worked that case.

In Narcos, Escobar's offer of 'plata o plomo' means accept his silver or take what?

Lead stood for bullets, so the choice was a bribe or a killing, and it let Escobar buy off police, judges and politicians alike.

In Narcos season three, what do the Cali bosses announce to their partners?

Quit the cocaine business: the bosses had struck a surrender deal, giving everyone six months to get rich before they walked away as legal businessmen.

Which political office does Escobar win in season one of Narcos before being forced to resign?

A seat in Congress: his Robin Hood image won him the vote, but the justice minister denounced him as a trafficker on the floor and he had to quit.

The Narcos title sequence shows Escobar's private zoo; which of its animals bred in the wild after his death?

Hippos: Escobar smuggled in four in the early 1980s, and after his estate was abandoned their descendants spread along the Magdalena River.

The planned fourth season of Narcos was reset as season one of which new series?

Narcos: Mexico started over with an almost entirely new cast, because the story left Colombia to trace the rise of the Guadalajara cartel.

In Narcos season one, Escobar has a passenger jet bombed in an attempt to kill whom?

A presidential candidate was the target, but Murphy talked him out of boarding, so the bomb killed everyone on the plane and missed him.

Which director of Elite Squad and the 2014 RoboCop remake shot the first two episodes of Narcos?

José Padilha began in documentaries, and it shows: the drama keeps cutting away to archive footage of the real Escobar.

In Narcos, Escobar pays guerrillas to storm which Bogotá building?

The Palace of Justice siege of 1985 was real, but whether traffickers paid for it is still disputed; the show presents the deal as plain fact.

Which French film studio, founded in 1895, produced Narcos through its American television arm?

Gaumont opened a Los Angeles arm in 2011 to make drama for American buyers, which is how a French studio came to produce a show about Colombia.

In Narcos season two, Escobar flies his family to safety in which country, only for it to send them back?

Germany refused them entry and flew them straight home, where the government kept them under guard in a hotel as leverage over Escobar.

What is the title of the Narcos opening theme?

Tuyo means 'Yours', and its writer imagined it as the bolero Escobar's mother loved when he was a boy, to show the man from the inside.

The running voice-over in Narcos is an open nod by its director to which gangster film?

Goodfellas: the director told critics he loved the film and saw no reason to shy away from borrowing its narrator.

The opening title card of Narcos defines which literary style?

Magical realism, the card says, is a realistic setting invaded by something too strange to believe, which is how the show asks you to take Escobar's story.

In season one of Narcos, what do Escobar's men kill to send newly arrived agent Steve Murphy a warning?

His cat: the Murphys come home to find it strung up in their apartment, proof the cartel already knew where the new agent lived.

Which legal threat does Escobar fight hardest in Narcos, bombing and kidnapping to get it banned?

Extradition meant an American prison he could not buy; the traffickers' motto was that they preferred a grave in Colombia to a cell in the United States.

In Narcos, Escobar's wife María Victoria Henao is known throughout by which nickname?

Tata was 15 when the real Escobar married her, and the show keeps her beside him to the end while his partners and gunmen fall away.

In Narcos, what did Escobar's fiercely loyal mother Hermilda do for a living before his rise?

Teacher: the real Hermilda taught school while her husband farmed, a modest start the show sets against her pride in her son's riches.

In Narcos, the television presenter who becomes Escobar's lover goes by which name?

Valeria Vélez shares her initials with the real Virginia Vallejo but not her fate: the show has her murdered, while Vallejo left for the United States in 2006 to testify.

In Narcos, Colonel Carrillo commands which unit?

Search Bloc was real but Carrillo is not: the show invented him and has Escobar kill him, while the colonel he stands in for lived to finish the hunt.

Which Cali boss in Narcos is nicknamed 'the Chess Player'?

Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela earned the name for planning several moves ahead, so the episode in which he is finally caught is titled 'Checkmate'.

In Narcos, which Cali figure travels to court the Juárez cartel?

Pacho Herrera makes the trip while his partners hide during their surrender talks, and his host soon tempts him with a side venture of their own.

In Narcos season two, the fugitive Escobar slips past police checkpoints hidden in the trunk of what?

A taxi: its driver, Limón, is hired just for these trips, then rises to become one of Escobar's gunmen and the last man at his side.

In Narcos, what does Steve Murphy's wife Connie do for a living?

Nurse: her clinic job pulls Connie into the case when a guerrilla who can tie Escobar to a massacre turns to her for help, not to the DEA.

In Narcos season three, Jorge Salcedo holds which job for the Cali cartel?

Head of security, and secretly the DEA's informant: the real Salcedo's tips brought the bosses down, and he vanished into American witness protection.

In Narcos season three, the four bosses of the Cali cartel are known as the what of Cali?

Gentlemen was the word even Colombian police used for them, against the 'hoodlums' of Medellín, because the Cali bosses preferred a lawyer or a bribe to a bomb.

Luis Guzmán plays which founding member of the Medellín cartel in Narcos?

Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha was called 'The Mexican' for his love of ranchera music and all things Mexican, and he gave his properties names such as Chihuahua.

In Narcos season one, the smuggler called the Lion opens Escobar's first American market in which city?

Miami: the Lion starts as a lone courier flying in with the powder himself, and once planes take over the smuggling he stays on to run the city for the cartel.

In Narcos season one, which real American pilot flies for Escobar, then secretly photographs him loading cocaine in a sting?

Barry Seal's hidden cameras caught Escobar at a Nicaraguan airstrip, and once the pictures were leaked the cartel had him shot dead in a Baton Rouge car park.

In Narcos, Elisa Álvarez is a commander of which guerrilla group, which steals Simón Bolívar's sword?

M-19 laid down its arms in 1990 and became a political party, and in 2022 one of its former guerrillas, Gustavo Petro, was elected president of Colombia.

In the opening of Narcos, the chemist called Cockroach flees which country after its army starts shooting drug makers?

Chile: the show opens with Pinochet's soldiers executing the country's cocaine makers after the 1973 coup, and the one who survives carries his recipe to Escobar.

Season one of Narcos ends with Escobar walking out of which prison, built to his own design?

La Catedral had a nightclub, a sauna, a waterfall and a soccer field, and its guards were men Escobar had picked from his own payroll.

In Narcos season two, which vigilante group, secretly aided by Peña, hunts down Escobar's men?

Los Pepes stands for 'Perseguidos por Pablo Escobar', those he had persecuted, and declassified American cables later showed the police hunting him had shared intelligence with the death squad.

Raúl Méndez plays which Colombian president in Narcos, in office through Escobar's surrender, escape and death?

Gaviria had been campaign chief to Luis Carlos Galán, and after the cartel's gunmen shot Galán dead it was the dead man's son who named him to carry on.

Which Narcos character turns on Escobar after he has her husband, one of his own lieutenants, murdered?

Judy Moncada seizes cocaine labs of her own and sides with Escobar's rivals in Cali, who use her to get at him, then turn on her, and she leaves Colombia in the CIA's hands.

In Narcos, who fires the shot that finishes Escobar on the rooftop?

A Colombian policeman, Trujillo, fires it while Murphy looks on, and the showrunner built him from three real officers, one of whom later went to jail for corruption.

Which aspect of Narcos drew criticism from Colombian viewers?

The Spanish accents were a hodgepodge, with actors from Mexico, Puerto Rico and Brazil all playing Colombians, and a language academy member faulted the pronunciation too.

In Narcos, Escobar belongs to which regional Colombian identity, the people of Medellín and the hills of Antioquia?

Paisa identity grew up in isolation: Antioquia's mountain valleys stayed cut off from the rest of the country for centuries, and its people still speak with a lilt of their own.

Who plays DEA agent Kiki Camarena in the Narcos spin-off set in the 1980s?

Michael Peña's Camarena is kidnapped, tortured and killed after a raid on a vast marijuana plantation, the real 1985 murder that set off the biggest homicide hunt in DEA history.

In the Narcos spin-off, which trafficker tunnels under the American border?

El Chapo Guzmán made tunnels his trademark: the real trafficker pioneered them at the border, and in 2015 he escaped prison through one dug up into his cell.

In Narcos season three, Cali boss Chepe Santacruz runs the cartel's trade, and its hidden labs, in which city?

New York was Chepe's patch, and when one of his cocaine labs there blows up he is delighted to hear the television news blame a gang he had already wiped out.

In Narcos, where does Escobar hide the cash he earns too fast to launder?

Underground: he buries it in his fields, and there is soon so much of it that he hires an accountant, known as Blackbeard, just to keep track of where it all lies.

The title Narcos comes from 'narco', Spanish shorthand for which word?

Narcotraficante means drug trafficker, while in American slang a 'narc' is the opposite: the narcotics officer chasing him.

In Narcos season two, what does Escobar's father call him when the fugitive hides out on his farm?

A murderer: Pablo answers that he made the family name famous round the world, his father says 'So what?', and he drives back to the city and his death.

In Narcos season three, Arturo Castro plays which son of a Cali boss?

David Rodríguez's actor later got to play Escobar himself, as the villain of the 2022 spoof Weird: The Al Yankovic Story.