Hidden Figures
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50 free Hidden Figures trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Hidden Figures tells the story of three Black women mathematicians at NASA's Langley laboratory whose calculations helped put an American into orbit, at a time when segregation still kept them in a separate office. The 2016 film made household figures of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson, decades after their work was done. This quiz covers the story from every side: the plot and its best-known scenes, the cast and the music, the awards season, and the true history behind the screenplay, including the moments the filmmakers invented. Several questions go back to the bestselling book the film is based on and to the real careers of the three women. It works as a multiple choice comprehension check for a class that has just watched the film, for a book club finishing the book, or for anyone who wants to see how much they remember. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you pick up the real history as you play.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which programming language does Dorothy teach herself from a smuggled library book in Hidden Figures?
Fortran
Fortran is what Dorothy teaches her West Area colleagues so the new mainframe cannot replace them. The real Vaughan became an expert programmer in it at Langley.
Q 02Which Mercury capsule carries John Glenn into orbit at the climax of Hidden Figures?
Friendship 7
Friendship 7 carried its number in honor of the seven original Mercury astronauts. It splashed down in the North Atlantic after three orbits.
Q 03Which Oscar nominee for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button plays Katherine Johnson in Hidden Figures?
Taraji P. Henson
Taraji P. Henson won the approval of the real Johnson, who said the film's three leading ladies "did an excellent job portraying us."
Q 04What does Al Harrison knock down in Hidden Figures after Katherine explains her long absences?
A 'colored' bathroom sign
A 'colored' bathroom sign comes down in the film, but the scene was invented. The real Katherine Johnson said she simply used the white restroom.
Q 05Hidden Figures lost Best Picture to which film, crowned only after La La Land was announced by mistake?
Moonlight
Moonlight was declared the winner minutes after the wrong title was read out. Hidden Figures left without a win from its three nominations.
Q 06Which Soviet cosmonaut's launch in Hidden Figures piles pressure on NASA to get an American into orbit?
Yuri Gagarin
Yuri Gagarin circled Earth in April 1961, ten months before John Glenn matched the feat for the United States.
Q 07Which Virginia Beach-born musician produced Hidden Figures and wrote its original songs?
Pharrell Williams
Pharrell Williams comes from the same corner of Virginia as Langley, where the story is set. His songs for the film draw on 1960s gospel and soul.
Q 08Which actress earned an Oscar nomination for playing Dorothy Vaughan in Hidden Figures?
Octavia Spencer
Octavia Spencer lost on the night to Viola Davis, but became the first Black actress to follow an Oscar win with another nomination.
Q 09Which honor did Barack Obama give Katherine Johnson in 2015, the year before Hidden Figures came out?
Presidential Medal of Freedom
The Presidential Medal of Freedom is America's highest civilian honor, and Johnson received it at age 97. The film's closing titles mention the award.
Q 10Which Big Bang Theory star plays Paul Stafford, the dismissive head engineer in Hidden Figures?
Jim Parsons
Jim Parsons plays a man who never existed: Stafford is a composite invented to stand for the attitudes Katherine's generation faced.
Q 11Before his flight in Hidden Figures, John Glenn tells engineers to get whom to check the computer's numbers?
The girl
"The girl" is how the real Glenn put it too: NASA records him saying that if she said the numbers were good, he was ready to go.
Q 12Which singer plays Mary Jackson in Hidden Figures and also performs two songs on its soundtrack album?
Janelle Monáe
Janelle Monáe was new to acting on screen: her first two live-action films, both released in 2016, ended up competing for the same Best Picture Oscar.
Q 13Which actor plays Al Harrison, the fictional Space Task Group director in Hidden Figures?
Kevin Costner
Q 21In Hidden Figures, Dorothy Vaughan agrees to supervise the new Programming Department only on what condition?
Her co-workers transfer too
Her co-workers transfer too: thirty West Area women follow her into programming. The real Vaughan later joined a racially integrated computing division.
Q 22Hidden Figures puts Mercury mission control at Langley, but where was John Glenn's flight really directed from?
Cape Canaveral
Cape Canaveral in Florida housed the Mercury Control Center. The film's control room also displays a six-orbit flight plan that was not flown until months later.
Q 23Katherine Johnson did the trajectory analysis for which Mercury astronaut's flight in May 1961?
Kevin Costner's character never existed: Harrison was written to simplify the layers of managers above the real Katherine Johnson.
Q 14Which everyday item labeled 'colored' appears in Katherine's Space Task Group office in Hidden Figures?
A coffee pot
A coffee pot marked 'colored' turns up after Katherine pours a cup from the office's shared one. She later tells Harrison she lives on coffee from a pot nobody there wants her to touch.
Q 15In Hidden Figures, what does Paul Stafford order Katherine to take off the reports she has worked on?
Her name
Her name comes off because Stafford insists computers cannot author reports. In 1960 the real Johnson became the first woman in her division credited on one.
Q 16Which newly installed machine threatens to make Langley's human computers obsolete in Hidden Figures?
IBM 7090
The IBM 7090 is shown as Langley's first electronic computer, though earlier machines were already there. Dorothy is the one who gets it running.
Q 17In Hidden Figures, why does Mary Jackson plead her case before a local judge?
To attend a white school
To attend a white school for the night classes an engineer needed, Mary petitions the court on screen. The real Jackson only had to ask the city for permission.
Q 18Which author, the daughter of a Langley research scientist, wrote the book that Hidden Figures is based on?
Margot Lee Shetterly
Margot Lee Shetterly grew up among NASA families, and her father had worked alongside many of the women she went on to write about.
Q 19Langley Research Center, the workplace of the women in Hidden Figures, lies in which Virginia city?
Hampton
Hampton was also Mary Jackson's hometown, so the future engineer grew up in the same city as the laboratory that would one day hire her.
Q 20In Hidden Figures, Paul Stafford tells Katherine there is 'no protocol for women attending' which events?
Space program briefings
Space program briefings were closed to the real Katherine too, until she asked whether there was a law against her going and her boss said to let her in.
Alan Shepard
Alan Shepard became the first American in space on that 15-minute flight, nine months before John Glenn reached orbit.
Q 24Before joining Langley, the three real women of Hidden Figures had all worked in which profession?
Teaching
Teaching in segregated schools came first for all three: Vaughan for 14 years, Jackson for one, and Johnson both before and after starting her family.
Q 25Which toy maker's 2017 Women of NASA set dropped the Katherine Johnson figure included in the original proposal?
Lego
Lego needed sign-off from every woman depicted, and Johnson declined to have her likeness used, so the set shipped with four figures instead of five.
Q 26Which NASA building was renamed in 2021 for Mary Jackson, the agency's first Black female engineer?
Its Washington headquarters
Its Washington headquarters became the Mary W. Jackson NASA Headquarters in a ceremony held online in February 2021, sixteen years after her death.
Q 27Which actor, later Hangman in Top Gun: Maverick, plays the first American to orbit Earth in Hidden Figures?
Glen Powell
Glen Powell made the astronaut look about a decade younger than he was: the real Glenn was 40 when he flew.
Q 28Katherine Johnson, the math prodigy of Hidden Figures, was born in White Sulphur Springs in which state?
West Virginia
West Virginia later chose her as one of three Black students, and the only woman, to integrate its graduate schools.
Q 29Which president's wartime anti-discrimination order opened Langley's doors to Black women like Dorothy Vaughan?
Franklin Roosevelt
Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8802 in 1941, and two years later Langley began hiring Black women to process its flood of wartime research data.
Q 30Which actor plays Katherine's suitor Jim Johnson in Hidden Figures and won an Oscar that same awards season?
Mahershala Ali
Mahershala Ali collected Best Supporting Actor that February for a different film. The real Jim Johnson was an Army officer who stayed married to Katherine for 60 years.