Dictators
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50 free Dictators trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Dictators make for strange trivia. The same rulers who filled prisons also renamed months after their relatives, printed worthless banknotes, crowned themselves in borrowed splendour and hid from their enemies in embassies and holes in the ground. The details are grim, absurd and often hard to believe, which is exactly why they stick. This quiz covers both the real thing and the screen versions. You will meet strongmen from the ancient world to the Cold War across Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America, alongside questions on Charlie Chaplin's 1940 satire The Great Dictator and Sacha Baron Cohen's 2012 comedy The Dictator: the characters, the casts and the true stories behind the jokes. It is written for history buffs, movie fans and pub quiz regulars alike. Every question comes with an explanation, so even a wrong guess leaves you with a story worth repeating.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which facial feature shared by Charlie Chaplin's Tramp and Adolf Hitler helped inspire The Great Dictator?
A toothbrush moustache
A toothbrush moustache was the Tramp's trademark years before Hitler's rise, and the likeness gave Chaplin his plot. The two men were also born four days apart in April 1889.
Q 02Which American magazine named Adolf Hitler its Man of the Year for 1938, months before World War II began?
Time
Time gives the title to whoever most shaped the year's events, for better or for worse, which is why a dictator could take it.
Q 03Forest Whitaker won the Best Actor Oscar for playing which African dictator in The Last King of Scotland?
Idi Amin
Idi Amin ruled Uganda from 1971 to 1979 and claimed to be the uncrowned king of the Scots, which gave the film its title. He also styled himself Conqueror of the British Empire.
Q 04Which country printed a 100-trillion-dollar banknote during the hyperinflation of Robert Mugabe's long rule?
Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe saw the note become so worthless that it could not pay for a bus fare. In April 2009 the country stopped printing its own money and switched to foreign currencies.
Q 05Which famous small car did Adolf Hitler commission from engineer Ferdinand Porsche in the 1930s?
Volkswagen Beetle
Volkswagen Beetle development began after Hitler demanded a cheap family car for Germany's new motorways. It outlived the regime by decades, with 21.5 million built worldwide.
Q 06Which Cuban leader survived a string of CIA assassination plots, reportedly including an exploding cigar?
Fidel Castro
Fidel Castro was the target of 638 schemes by his own security chief's count, among them a contaminated diving suit and a booby-trapped seashell. He outlived them all and died in 2016, aged 90.
Q 07In The Great Dictator's most famous scene, Charlie Chaplin's tyrant dances a ballet with which inflatable object?
A globe
A globe, in fact a balloon, becomes the tyrant's dance partner as he daydreams of owning the world. Chaplin chose the opera prelude that plays under the wordless scene himself.
Q 08Which Central American strongman surrendered in 1990 after US troops blasted loud music at his Vatican embassy refuge?
Manuel Noriega
Manuel Noriega held out for ten days in Panama City while loudspeakers played AC/DC, Guns N' Roses and Van Halen, whose song Panama was on the playlist.
Q 09Sacha Baron Cohen's 2012 comedy The Dictator opens with a mock dedication to which real leader?
Kim Jong Il
Kim Jong Il died months before the release, and the opening credits salute him. Before taking power, the North Korean heir had a South Korean director kidnapped to improve his country's movies.
Q 10Adolf Hitler ruled Germany but was born across the border in which country, in the town of Braunau am Inn?
Austria
Austria was part of Austria-Hungary when Hitler was born there in 1889. He moved to Germany in 1913, gave up his original citizenship in 1925 and spent almost seven years stateless.
Q 11Which ranting dictator, a parody of Adolf Hitler, does Charlie Chaplin play in The Great Dictator?
Adenoid Hynkel
Adenoid Hynkel holds the title of Phooey, Chaplin's jab at the German word Führer. His henchmen get the same treatment, with names like Herring and Garbitsch.
Q 12Benzino Napaloni, the dictator of Bacteria in The Great Dictator, is a parody of which real leader?
Benito Mussolini
Benito Mussolini is the target, and the character's surname adds a dig at Napoleon Bonaparte. His official title in the film is the Diggaditchie of Bacteria.
Q 13Besides the dictator, Charlie Chaplin plays which Jewish tradesman in The Great Dictator, his exact double?
A barber
Q 21Which Scary Movie star plays Zoey, the activist who gives Aladeen a job, in The Dictator (2012)?
Anna Faris
Anna Faris won a role that Kristen Wiig had also been considered for. Her character runs an alternative-lifestyle co-operative in New York and hires the tyrant without knowing who he is.
Q 22Which Sacha Baron Cohen comedy was directed by Larry Charles, who also made The Dictator?
Borat
Borat and The Dictator were both directed by Larry Charles, a former Seinfeld staff writer. The later film dropped the mockumentary style for a fully scripted story.
Q 23Which Soviet leader trained for the priesthood at a seminary in Tiflis before turning to revolution?
Joseph Stalin
A barber who lost his memory fighting in World War I is the film's hero. In the finale he is mistaken for the tyrant and handed the microphone at a victory rally.
Q 14Which format did Charlie Chaplin, Hollywood's last great holdout, finally embrace in full with The Great Dictator?
Sound film
Sound film had ruled Hollywood for a decade while Chaplin, alone among major directors, kept making silent pictures. The Great Dictator was his first true talkie.
Q 15Which actress, Charlie Chaplin's partner and Modern Times co-star, plays Hannah in The Great Dictator?
Paulette Goddard
Paulette Goddard was introduced by Chaplin as his wife at the film's 1940 premiere, a rare public word from either of them about their marriage.
Q 16In The Great Dictator, the scheming minister Garbitsch is a parody of which member of Hitler's inner circle?
Joseph Goebbels
Joseph Goebbels ran Nazi propaganda, and Garbitsch holds the same post in the film. Henry Daniell plays him as the stoic schemer at the tyrant's side.
Q 17Charlie Chaplin later wrote that he could not have made The Great Dictator had he known the extent of what?
The Holocaust
The Holocaust lay ahead when filming began in 1939, though Nazi persecution of Jews already drove the plot. In his 1964 autobiography Chaplin said he could not have made fun of the Nazis had he known of the camps.
Q 18In The Great Dictator, Charlie Chaplin's tyrant rules which fictional country, a stand-in for Nazi Germany?
Tomainia
Tomainia loses World War I in the opening scenes and has become a dictatorship twenty years later. Its neighbours get joke names too, including Bacteria.
Q 19Sacha Baron Cohen's Admiral General Aladeen rules which fictional oil-rich nation in the 2012 comedy The Dictator?
Wadiya
Wadiya is placed on the Horn of Africa, where Eritrea lies in real life. Its ruler was modelled on real strongmen with personality cults, from Gaddafi to Mobutu.
Q 20Dressed as The Dictator's Aladeen, Sacha Baron Cohen spilled fake ashes over which host at the 2012 Oscars?
Ryan Seacrest
Ryan Seacrest was interviewing arrivals for cable television when the urn was tipped over him. The ashes were later reported to be pancake mix.
Joseph Stalin enrolled on a scholarship in 1894 and left five years later, having swapped scripture for secret workers' meetings.
Q 24Which Khmer Rouge leader emptied Cambodia's cities and declared a fresh start for society called Year Zero?
Pol Pot
Pol Pot, born Saloth Sâr, ruled for under four years. His forces marched over two million people out of Phnom Penh, falsely promising they could return in three days.
Q 25Which European country returned to monarchy when the dictator Francisco Franco died in 1975?
Spain
Spain got King Juan Carlos, the successor Franco had picked himself. Instead of carrying on the dictatorship, the new king led the country's transition to democracy.
Q 26Which deposed dictator did US troops find hiding in a spider hole near Tikrit in December 2003?
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein gave up without a fight on a remote farm. Three years earlier a romance novel credited to him, Zabibah and the King, had been published anonymously in Iraq.
Q 27Which North African country did Muammar Gaddafi rule from a 1969 coup until rebels overthrew him in 2011?
Libya
Libya was a monarchy until the young army officer deposed King Idris in a bloodless coup. He later dropped formal offices and styled himself the Brotherly Leader.
Q 28Which country's dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu was overthrown in December 1989, then tried and shot on Christmas Day?
Romania
Romania tried him and his wife Elena before a court convened in a small room and had them shot the same day, ending 42 years of Communist rule.
Q 29Which general seized power in Chile in 1973 by overthrowing the elected president Salvador Allende?
Augusto Pinochet
Augusto Pinochet had been made army chief by Allende himself less than three weeks before the coup. In 1998 he was arrested in London on an international warrant.
Q 30Mobutu Sese Seko gave the Congo which new name in 1971, a name scrapped when rebels ousted him?
Zaire
Zaire lasted until 1997, when rebels drove out the ruler in the leopard-skin hat. He had renamed himself too, taking a string of names that boasted of endless conquest.