Argo Movie Trivia
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49 free Argo Movie trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Argo trivia quiz covers Ben Affleck's 2012 Best Picture winner and the real Canadian Caper it dramatises. It follows the story from the storming of the US embassy in Tehran to the Swissair flight out: the six diplomats hiding with Ambassador Ken Taylor, Tony Mendez's Planet of the Apes brainwave, the fake production company Studio Six, the bazaar scouting trip, the cancelled-then-uncancelled mission and the phone that rings just in time. Behind the scenes it covers Chris Terrio's screenplay and the Wired article it grew from, the first actor cast, the CIA lobby that was really the CIA, the anachronistic Rolling Stones song, the Lord of Light script the real CIA borrowed, and the 26 screenplays that kept arriving at Studio Six after it closed. A separate round covers what the film got wrong, from the British and New Zealand embassies to the runway chase that never happened, and the 85th Academy Awards, where Argo won without its director being nominated. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries before publishing.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who directed and starred in Argo?
Ben Affleck
Ben Affleck won the Golden Globe and BAFTA for directing it, yet the Academy left him off its Best Director shortlist in the year his film took Best Picture.
Q 02Who announced Argo's Best Picture win by live video link from the White House?
Michelle Obama
Michelle Obama appeared from the Diplomatic Room as Jack Nicholson's co-presenter, so a film about a White House-approved secret mission got its prize from the White House.
Q 03The real rescue dramatised in Argo is known by what nickname?
The Canadian Caper
The Canadian Caper was credited to Canada alone in 1980; Washington hid the CIA's part for years, at first for fear of reprisals against the hostages still held.
Q 04Argo, the title the CIA gave its fake film, is also the name of which Greek hero's ship?
Jason
Jason sailed the Argo after the Golden Fleece, but Mendez wrote that the word first came from a colleague's profane knock-knock joke, which his disguise team used as a battle cry.
Q 05Which film gives Argo's Mendez the idea for the cover story?
Battle for the Planet of the Apes
Battle for the Planet of the Apes inspires him as he watches it in the film; the real Mendez wrote that he and Chambers chose science fiction because space epics had just become big business.
Q 06Argo opens with the US embassy stormed after America admitted which exiled Iranian for medical treatment?
Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi
Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi had been toppled by the revolution months earlier, and the students who seized the embassy demanded that Washington send him back to Iran.
Q 07Who plays Chambers, the Hollywood make-up artist behind the fake film in Argo?
John Goodman
John Goodman's Chambers was a real Oscar-winning make-up artist who had been quietly helping the CIA with disguises long before the Tehran job.
Q 08The real CIA team behind Argo advertised its fake film in The Hollywood Reporter and which other trade paper?
Variety
Variety and its rival both ran news items on the ad, and the phones at the fake studio began ringing with people looking for work on a film that would never be shot.
Q 09Which major Argo character is essentially fictional?
Lester Siegel
Lester Siegel stands in for Bob Sidell, a make-up man Chambers brought in; a trade-paper headline of the day credited the new sci-fi film to two make-up artists.
Q 10In Argo, Mendez enters Iran posing as the fake film's what?
Producer
Producer was his cover: he arrives as Kevin Harkins of the fake studio, then gives each of the six escapees a film-crew role of their own to play.
Q 11In Argo, how do the revolutionaries realise some embassy staff are missing?
They reassemble shredded photographs
They reassemble shredded photographs strip by strip in the film; the real militants did hire carpet weavers to piece embassy papers together, but nobody spotted the six in time.
Q 12In Argo, where does the group's location-scouting trip go wrong?
The bazaar
The bazaar outing is meant to make the cover story look real, but a shopkeeper turns on the group and their Iranian guide has to hustle them away from an angry crowd.
Q 13Why is Argo's mission called off at the last minute?
Q 21The CIA's fake Argo studio moved into offices just vacated by which star, fresh from producing The China Syndrome?
Michael Douglas
Michael Douglas had just moved out of the suite at Sunset Gower Studios, which let a company invented in four days sit at a real studio address with ringing phones.
Q 22Which famous director sent a script to the CIA's fake Argo studio?
Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg's was one of 26 scripts that reached Studio Six, Mendez wrote; the trade-paper ads made the sham company look so real that Hollywood kept pitching to it.
Q 23Which Los Angeles landmark looks derelict in Argo, though it had been rebuilt before the events shown?
The Hollywood Sign
A military rescue of the hostages is planned instead
A military rescue of the hostages is planned instead, in the film's telling; in reality nothing was called off, and the Canadians had bought the plane tickets well in advance.
Q 14Who plays Jack O'Donnell, Mendez's CIA boss, in Argo?
Bryan Cranston
Bryan Cranston's O'Donnell calls Mendez in at the start and, once Mendez defies the order to stand down, scrambles to get the mission approved again and the tickets rebooked.
Q 15In Argo, which airline flies the escaping group out of Tehran?
Swissair
Swissair's bar opened once the jet had left Iranian airspace, and the real escapees and their CIA escort marked the moment by ordering Bloody Marys.
Q 16Which decoration is Mendez secretly given as Argo ends?
The Intelligence Star
The Intelligence Star went to the real Mendez in 1980, but the mission was secret, so the film has it awarded behind closed doors and returned to him only once the files are opened.
Q 17How many days were the remaining embassy hostages held, according to Argo's epilogue?
444
444 days of captivity dominated the 1980 election campaign and shook American confidence before the 52 remaining captives finally came home.
Q 18Who wrote Argo's Oscar-winning screenplay?
Chris Terrio
Chris Terrio's script invents the runway chase for suspense: no jeep or police cars pursued the real plane as it took off.
Q 19Argo's script drew on a 2007 article in which magazine?
Wired
Wired ran Joshuah Bearman's story after a producer tipped him off, hoping a published yarn might kick-start a movie, which is exactly what happened.
Q 20Which 1999 memoir by the real Tony Mendez did Argo also draw on?
The Master of Disguise
The Master of Disguise could only be written once the CIA's part in the escape was declassified; until then Canada had taken all the credit and his role stayed secret.
The Hollywood Sign had crumbled through the 1970s until donors such as Alice Cooper and Gene Autry each paid for a letter of its 1978 steel replacement, so the wreck seen in the film is an anachronism.
Q 24What did Canada specially authorise so that the six Americans in Argo's true story could fly out of Iran?
Real passports with false names
Real passports with false names took a special exception to Canadian law, and Mendez then stamped them with forged Iranian visas at the embassy in Tehran.
Q 25Argo shows Mendez flying into Tehran alone; who really travelled in with him?
A second CIA officer
A second CIA officer, a documents specialist called 'Julio' in Mendez's account, posed as the representative of the film's supposed South American backers, making the party eight.
Q 26Which vintage studio logo opens Argo?
The 1972-84 Warner 'Big W' by Saul Bass
The 1972-84 Warner 'Big W' by Saul Bass was revived so the film would look like a product of its own era, and the studio even repainted its water tower with the lot's 1970s name.
Q 27Who plays Lester Siegel, the fake film's Hollywood frontman, in Argo?
Alan Arkin
Alan Arkin's Siegel options a sci-fi script and puts out press releases about it, so that a film nobody means to shoot looks like the real thing.
Q 28Which critic named Argo the best film of 2012, the last such pick before his death?
Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert wrote that it took first place 'because it is above all else a movie', praising its classic thriller values; he died in 2013.
Q 29Which craft Oscar did Argo win?
Film Editing
Film Editing went to William Goldenberg, who was up against himself that night: he was also nominated for cutting Zero Dark Thirty.
Q 30Argo was the first Best Picture winner without a Best Director nomination since which film?
Driving Miss Daisy
Driving Miss Daisy had done it 23 years earlier, and only Wings and Grand Hotel before that; Argo's director, passed over himself, still went up to accept the night's top prize.