Did You Know?

Bruno Ganz studied Parkinson's disease patients in a Swiss hospital to prepare for his role as Hitler.

After the film's release, Bruno Ganz stated that, at first, he didn't want the role of Adolf Hitler. After viewing the film The Last Ten Days and Albin Skoda's portrayal of Hitler, however, Ganz realized the role could be played with some depth, and accepted the part.

The portrait that Adolf Hitler is staring at in one scene is that of Frederick II of Prussia, also known as Frederick the Great. He reigned from 1740 to 1786.

Based on the books "Der Untergang" by historian Joachim Fest and "Bis zur letzten Stunde" by Traudl Junge, Adolf Hitler's last private secretary from 1942 to 1945.

Of the thirty-seven named real life people featured as characters in the film, Rochus Misch was the only one who was still alive when the film was released. As of 2010, he is the last survivor of the Führerbunker.

Many of Adolf Hitler's lines are historically accurate, based on accounts from Albert Speer and Traudl Junge, most of them however are from earlier dates.

The button that Adolf Hitler removes from his jacket and gives to Magda Goebbels is the Gold Nazi Party badge, awarded to high-ranking party members who had constant membership from 1925. Hitler gave himself Badge No. 1 when he authorized it in 1933, even though he was not the first party member. The Soviets found the badge in the bunker and it was stored in a vault at the Lubyanka, the KGB headquarters. In 1996 the FSB, the Russian Federation successor to the Soviet KGB, revealed that it had the badge and in 2005 put it on display. In November that year, it was stolen in a brazen smash-and-grab raid. The burglar escaped even though he triggered the display alarms. So far, it has not yet been recovered.

Christian Berkel, who portrays Schenck, stated his own background is not too far from his character. His father was also a doctor during the war, arrested by the Russians afterward, then released. His mother's side, however, was Jewish. Almost all of his relatives on her side, save his grandmother and two cousins, were lost in the camps.

Clips from this movie are used in numerous parodies that appear on YouTube in which a scene (usually the one of Adolf Hitler yelling at his subordinates) is re-subtitled to imbue it with unintended comedic meaning. The first such video was "Hitler gets banned from Xbox Live;" other subjects include Nashville's gas crisis of 2008, changes to Epcot at Walt Disney World, the delay of the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, fans' disappointment with the first Avatar trailer, the "Balloon Boy" hoax of October 2009, and Brett Favre signing with the Vikings. Many of the parodies have Hitler yelling at his subordinates about punctuation or spelling errors, in reference to the fact that sticklers for editing are sometimes derided as "Grammar Nazis." In 2010, Constantin Films, which owns the rights to Downfall, started taking down the parodies, arguing that their copyright was being infringed. Shortly thereafter, new parody videos appeared decrying Constantin Films' actions as "Naziesque."

'Justus Von Dohnanyi', who portrays General Wilhelm Burgdorf, is the grandson of Hans Von Dohnanyi, one of the members of the anti-Hitler conspiracy, who was hanged in Sachsenhausen concentration camp in September 1944. Through his grandfather's marriage, he is also the grand-nephew of Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, another anti-Hitler conspirator who was hanged in the Flossenburg concentration camp.