Gattaca
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50 free Gattaca trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Gattaca imagines a near future where a blood test at birth decides what a person may become, and one man refuses to accept the verdict. The film was not a box-office success in 1997, yet its questions about genetic screening have only grown sharper, and it is still watched and argued over today. This quiz covers the whole film: the plot and its twists, the characters and the actors who play them, the director, the locations and design, the score and the famous piano recital, the awards it was up for, and the science hidden in the title. It suits fans rewatching the film, students working through it in class, and quiz hosts who want a ready-made round. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which actor plays Vincent Freeman, the man who fakes his genetic identity, in Gattaca?
Ethan Hawke
Ethan Hawke called the Gattaca script one of the more interesting he had read in years. He later made two more films with its writer-director.
Q 02In Gattaca, Vincent Freeman spends years faking his identity to join a crewed mission to which moon?
Titan
Titan is the largest moon of Saturn, and the flight there gives the film its deadline: a murder at Vincent's workplace comes one week before launch.
Q 03Gattaca's title uses the initials of four DNA bases: guanine, thymine, cytosine and which other?
Adenine
Adenine supplies the title's three A's: the name is spelled only with G, A, T and C, the letters used to write out a genetic sequence.
Q 04Gattaca's headquarters was filmed at a Marin County civic center designed by which architect?
Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright's building was leaking and neglected by the mid-1990s, and the Gattaca crew cleaned up parts of it while filming there in 1996.
Q 05Which US senator's 2013 speech lifted lines nearly verbatim from Wikipedia's Gattaca plot summary?
Rand Paul
Rand Paul gave the speech at Liberty University while backing a candidate for Virginia governor, using the film to warn against genetic selection.
Q 06Which actress plays Irene, the Gattaca co-worker Vincent Freeman falls in love with?
Uma Thurman
Uma Thurman met her future husband on the Gattaca set. The film itself fell flat in cinemas, then found its audience on home video.
Q 07Which English actor plays Jerome Morrow, the paralysed former swimming star, in Gattaca?
Jude Law
Jude Law reached cinemas in Gattaca the same year as Wilde, the biopic that won him a Most Promising Newcomer award in Britain.
Q 08Which engineered trait sets apart the concert pianist Vincent and Irene watch in Gattaca?
Twelve fingers
Twelve fingers let the pianist perform a classical impromptu in a new arrangement written by the film's own composer.
Q 09Which actor, far better known for comedy roles, was a producer of Gattaca through his own company?
Danny DeVito
Danny DeVito's company was Jersey Films, which also produced Pulp Fiction, Get Shorty and Erin Brockovich.
Q 10Gattaca's writer-director earned an Oscar nomination for writing which film released a year later?
The Truman Show
The Truman Show also won him the BAFTA for original screenplay, though Peter Weir directed it rather than the man who wrote it.
Q 11In Gattaca, what do Vincent and Anton Freeman call their boyhood contest of swimming far out to sea?
Chicken
Chicken has one rule: whoever turns back to shore first loses. The genetically favoured Anton wins every time, until the day he doesn't.
Q 12In Gattaca, which Olympic result leaves the engineered swimmer Jerome Morrow feeling like a failure?
A silver medal
A silver medal was not enough for a man designed to be the best, and Jerome puts it on one last time in the film's final scene.
Q 13In Gattaca, which stray trace of Vincent Freeman do police find near the murder scene?
An eyelash
An eyelash is enough to tell the police that an unregistered, naturally conceived person has been inside the building, which starts the manhunt.
Q 21In Gattaca, who turns out to have murdered the administrator found dead a week before launch?
Director Josef
Director Josef is unmasked only after the police spend most of the film chasing Vincent, an innocent man with a secret of his own.
Q 22Which Gattaca character alters Vincent Freeman's final genetic test so he can board the rocket?
Lamar
Lamar, the company doctor, reveals he already knows the truth, and that his own son looks up to Vincent.
Q 23In Gattaca, what does Vincent Freeman find inside the envelope Jerome tells him to open in flight?
A lock of hair
A lock of hair is Jerome's parting gift. He has also stored enough samples to keep Vincent's disguise going for two lifetimes.
Q 14How was the former swimming star Jerome Morrow left paralysed before the events of Gattaca?
Hit by a car
Hit by a car, yes, but not by accident: Jerome later admits to Vincent that he stepped in front of it on purpose.
Q 15Gattaca's leading lady played which Batman villain in another film released the same year?
Poison Ivy
Poison Ivy was her role in Batman & Robin, a big-budget sequel often ranked among the worst films ever made.
Q 16Loudspeaker announcements at Gattaca's headquarters are in English and which constructed language?
Esperanto
Esperanto lines were handled by a member of the Esperanto League of North America, who went to the recording studio for the job.
Q 17The genetically enhanced pianist in Gattaca plays an arrangement of an impromptu by which composer?
Franz Schubert
Franz Schubert wrote it as the third of his Opus 90 impromptus, in G-flat major. The film's own composer made the new arrangement heard on screen.
Q 18In Gattaca, a raised risk of failure in which organ bars Irene from deep-space missions?
Heart
Heart trouble marks Irene as second-class even though she was genetically selected, and Vincent is secretly hiding the same kind of flaw.
Q 19Which crew position is Vincent Freeman assigned for the space mission he trains for in Gattaca?
Navigator
Navigator is the post he wins using another man's blood and urine samples, after his own genes had shut him out of professional work.
Q 20Which New Zealand-born filmmaker wrote and directed Gattaca as his first feature film?
Andrew Niccol
Andrew Niccol won the Special Jury Prize at France's Gérardmer film festival for his debut, even though it was not a box office success.
Q 24What label does Gattaca's society give to people conceived naturally, without genetic selection?
In-valids
In-valids are protected from discrimination on paper, yet routine gene profiling steers them into menial jobs.
Q 25In Gattaca, what is the slang for a person passing as genetically elite on donated samples?
Borrowed ladder
Borrowed ladder describes Vincent, who scrubs away his own skin cells each morning and carries a donor's blood and urine to beat the daily tests.
Q 26How does Vincent Freeman explain finally outswimming his genetically superior brother in Gattaca?
He saved nothing for the return
He saved nothing for the return swim, he tells Anton during a final night-time race between the two as adults.
Q 27Before he poses as an elite employee, what job does Vincent Freeman hold at the Gattaca building?
Cleaner
Cleaner is as close as his genes are meant to let him get: he tidies the offices of the aerospace firm he dreams of flying for.
Q 28Why is a Gattaca administrator murdered a week before the launch?
He planned to cancel the mission
He planned to cancel the mission, and the police inquiry into his death is what puts Vincent's assumed identity in danger.
Q 29In Gattaca, Irene shares her surname with which Italian-born astronomer of the 1600s?
Cassini
Cassini is also the name of the space probe launched in October 1997, the same month Gattaca opened in American cinemas.
Q 30Jerome Morrow's middle name in Gattaca comes from the Greek for 'well-born'; what is it?
Eugene
Eugene suits a man engineered to be flawless: the Greek word behind it joins the roots for 'well' and 'kin'.