Mafia
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94 free Mafia trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
45 free Mafia trivia questions with answers. How well do you really know the mob? This Mafia trivia quiz runs from the origins of Cosa Nostra in Sicily to the Five Families of New York, the Chicago Outfit, the Las Vegas years and the informants and RICO prosecutions that broke the old bosses. Capone, Luciano, Lansky, Siegel, Gotti and Whitey Bulger all get their turn, and so do the films and shows the mob inspired, from The Godfather and Goodfellas to The Sopranos. It works as mob trivia for a quiz night, a warm-up before a rewatch, or a test of whether you can tell the real history from the Hollywood version. Difficulty ratings are shown so you can pick easy openers or the genuine stumpers. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia and its cited sources, and each question carries its citation.
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Q 01What is the traditional code of silence that is a fundamental part of Mafia honor?
Omertà
Omertà bars members from telling outsiders anything about the organisation; Joseph Valachi broke it in 1963, when he described the American Mafia's inner workings to a Senate committee.
Q 02What charge finally sent Al Capone to prison in the 1930s?
Tax evasion
Tax evasion. Capone was convicted in October 1931 on five counts of federal income-tax evasion and sentenced to 11 years, a case built by Treasury agents rather than on his bootlegging or killings.
Q 03Which two New York Mafia bosses fought the early-1930s Castellammarese War?
Joe Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano
Joe Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano fought the 1930–31 Castellammarese War; Masseria was shot dead in a Coney Island restaurant in April 1931 and Maranzano was murdered that September.
Q 04What 1970 U.S. federal law was a significant tool for prosecuting organized crime figures?
RICO Act
The RICO Act punishes a pattern of crimes run through an enterprise, and in 1986 one trial under it convicted some of the highest-ranking men in New York's Five Families; G. Robert Blakey drafted it for the Senate.
Q 05In the traditional Mafia initiation rite, what is set alight in the recruit's hands as he swears his oath?
A picture of a saint
A picture of a saint, dabbed with blood from the recruit's pricked finger, burns as he passes it from hand to hand and swears that he will burn the same way if he betrays the family.
Q 06What was the Gambino crime organisation originally called when the Five Families were set up in 1931?
Mangano
Mangano: Vincent Mangano ran the family from 1931 until he vanished in 1951, a killing laid to his underboss Albert Anastasia, whose own murder in 1957 handed the family to Carlo Gambino.
Q 07Which director created The Godfather trilogy?
Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola first turned the job down, calling Mario Puzo's novel 'pretty cheap stuff', and took it because his own studio, American Zoetrope, owed Warner Bros. more than $400,000.
Q 08In American Mafia slang, what does it mean to be a 'made man'?
He is a sworn full member
He is a sworn full member, ranking as a soldier; the rule that members be of Italian descent is why Henry Hill of Goodfellas, whose father was Irish, could never be made.
Q 09The 1980s 'Pizza Connection' case exposed a Sicilian Mafia ring that used American pizzerias to distribute what?
Heroin
Heroin, refined in Sicily from Turkish morphine and valued at $1.65 billion, was sold through pizza parlours in the US Northeast and Midwest; the trial that followed lasted about 17 months.
Q 10Joseph Valachi's 1963 Senate testimony first publicly acknowledged which organization?
La Cosa Nostra
La Cosa Nostra was the name Valachi gave the Senate's McClellan Committee; he talked because he believed his own boss had marked him for death, and he had already killed a fellow inmate he took for the assassin.
Q 11Which Murder, Inc. hitman turned informer, then fell to his death from a guarded Coney Island hotel window in 1941?
Abe 'Kid Twist' Reles
Abe 'Kid Twist' Reles, 'the canary who could sing but couldn't fly', as the papers put it. His testimony sent several members to the electric chair; the group is believed to have carried out 400 to 1,000 killings.
Q 12Jimmy Hoffa, who vanished in 1975, had led which labor union?
The Teamsters
The Teamsters. Jailed in 1967, Hoffa was freed by Richard Nixon in 1971 on condition he stay out of union office until 1980, and he was fighting to get his presidency back when he disappeared.
Q 13Angelo Bruno, murdered in 1980 after 21 peaceful years as boss, ran which East Coast city?
Q 21Which famous American lawman insisted into the 1950s that no national Mafia existed?
J. Edgar Hoover
J. Edgar Hoover held that crime gangs worked locally and that the rackets were a job for local police; a 1957 police raid on a summit of bosses from across the country proved otherwise.
Q 22Which nickname did John Gotti earn as prosecutors failed to convict him in three trials?
The Teflon Don
The Teflon Don, because no charge would stick: one case collapsed in 1986 when the victim lost his memory, and juries acquitted Gotti in 1987 and 1990. The coating wore off in 1992, when he was convicted on every count.
Q 23Gambino boss Paul Castellano was shot dead in December 1985 outside which Manhattan restaurant?
Sparks Steak House
Philadelphia
Philadelphia, where Bruno was known as 'the Gentle Don' for keeping the peace, and where his shotgun murder set off a war for succession. The Commission had installed him in 1959.
Q 14Per the OED, the Mafia's code of silence may take its name from a rare Spanish word meaning what?
Manliness
Manliness: the OED points to the rare Spanish 'hombredad', reshaped after the Sicilian 'omu', man. A rival theory derives the word from a southern dialect form of 'umiltà', humility.
Q 15Which Murder, Inc. boss died in Sing Sing's electric chair in 1944?
Lepke Buchalter
Lepke Buchalter was convicted of ordering the 1936 murder of Joseph Rosen after one of his own gunmen turned informer; two of his lieutenants went to the chair minutes before he did.
Q 16Which of New York's Five Families was originally known by the name Gagliano?
Lucchese
Lucchese. Tommy Gagliano ran the family quietly from 1931 until his death in 1951, when his underboss Tommy Lucchese took over and the family was renamed for him.
Q 17Frank Lucas, who inspired 'American Gangster', operated mainly in which New York neighborhood?
Harlem
Harlem, where Frank Lucas sold drugs bought directly in Southeast Asia, cutting out the Mafia's middlemen; his boast that they travelled in dead servicemen's coffins was denied by his own supplier.
Q 18Sociologist Diego Gambetta famously described the Sicilian Mafia as a cartel of what?
Private protection firms
Private protection firms. In The Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private Protection (1993), Gambetta argued that mafiosi sell protection because the state fails to guard property and enforce contracts.
Q 19Which Chicago gang leader retired in 1925 and handed his operation to Al Capone?
Johnny Torrio
Johnny Torrio. After North Side gunmen nearly killed him in January 1925, Torrio retired and handed the Chicago Outfit to his 26-year-old protégé Al Capone.
Q 20A famous 1957 mob summit was raided by police in which small New York town?
Apalachin
Apalachin. On November 14, 1957, state troopers raided Joseph Barbara's estate at 625 McFall Road in Apalachin, and some 60 mafiosi were detained as others fled through the woods in their suits.
Sparks Steak House, where Castellano and underboss Thomas Bilotti were shot as they arrived for a dinner meeting on 16 December 1985; John Gotti, who organised the hit, was named boss within a month.
Q 24Which underboss turned state's evidence in November 1991 and testified against John Gotti?
Sammy Gravano
Sammy 'the Bull' Gravano, Gotti's underboss, admitted nineteen murders in his deal, then walked out of witness protection and moved to Arizona, where he was arrested in 2000 for running an ecstasy ring.
Q 25John Gotti's expensive suits earned the Gambino boss which nickname?
Dapper Don
The Dapper Don ended his days far from the cameras: he died of throat cancer in 2002 in a federal prison hospital in Springfield, Missouri, ten years into a life sentence.
Q 26Al Capone's 'Scarface' nickname came from a knife attack by the brother of whom?
A woman he had insulted
A woman he had insulted: her brother, Frank Galluccio, slashed Capone's left cheek three times at a Coney Island saloon. Capone hated the nickname and passed the scars off as war wounds.
Q 27Two of the 1929 St. Valentine's Day Massacre killers came dressed as what?
Policemen
Policemen. The seven Moran men lined up against the wall as if for a routine raid, and afterwards the uniformed pair marched their plain-clothes partners out at gunpoint like prisoners.
Q 28Capone was moved to which newly opened federal penitentiary in August 1934?
Alcatraz
Alcatraz. Capone was moved there from Atlanta in August 1934, weeks after it opened, amid claims that he was bribing guards for comforts; he left in 1939 with his health already failing.
Q 29Which Las Vegas hotel-casino did Bugsy Siegel open, unfinished, on 26 December 1946?
The Flamingo
The Flamingo. Siegel opened it half-built on 26 December 1946 with costs past $6 million; within minutes of his murder in June 1947, three of Meyer Lansky's associates walked in to announce new management.
Q 30Bugsy Siegel was killed in June 1947 by a sniper firing through the window of a mansion in which city?
Beverly Hills
Beverly Hills. Siegel was shot through the living-room window of the house rented for his girlfriend Virginia Hill, who had left for Paris days earlier, fuelling talk that she had been warned.