50 Fun Facts About Frodo Baggins

How did Frodo's parents, Drogo and Primula, die?

A boating accident. Both drowned on a river outing, and village gossip split on why: some blamed Drogo's weight for sinking the boat, others whispered that Primula pushed him in and he pulled her after him.

Frodo calls Bilbo his uncle, but how are the two actually related?

Cousins. Bilbo was Frodo's first cousin once removed through his mother and second cousin once removed through his father; 'uncle' was a fond name for a relative 78 years older.

Frodo and Bilbo share a birthday, 22 September, which Tolkien fans now celebrate as what?

Hobbit Day. The American Tolkien Society proclaimed it in 1978, and some fans mark it by throwing hobbit-style parties or simply going barefoot.

Which family, his mother's kin, took in the orphaned Frodo before Bilbo adopted him?

The Brandybucks. Frodo grew up in their crowded ancestral hall, and the future Ring-bearer spent his boyhood there sneaking off to steal mushrooms from Farmer Maggot's fields.

How does Gandalf finally prove to Frodo that Bilbo's old ring is the One Ring?

Tosses it into the hearth. Heat brings out a fiery inscription that Gandalf knew of only from Isildur's old account, and it ends the 17 years in which Frodo had kept the Ring hidden.

On Gandalf's advice, Frodo leaves the Shire using which false name?

Mr. Underhill. The alias backfired at the inn in Bree, where a real Underhill family from nearby Staddle heard it and took the stranger for long-lost kin.

Who rescues the hobbits from Old Man Willow in the Old Forest?

Tom Bombadil. He sings the tree to sleep, and at his house the Ring proves powerless over him: he slips it on without vanishing and can still see Frodo when Frodo wears it.

What creature traps Frodo and his friends under a spell in the fog on the downs?

A barrow-wight. Frodo wakes inside its burial mound to find his three friends laid out in white with a sword across their necks, and he hacks off the creature's hand to save them.

By what name do the people of Bree know Aragorn when Frodo first meets him?

Strider. Aragorn later took the Bree-folk's nickname, turned into Elvish as Telcontar, as the name of his royal house.

Who stabs Frodo with a Morgul blade on Weathertop?

The Witch-king of Angmar. His knife was made to break off in the wound, leaving a splinter that crept toward Frodo's heart and would have turned him into a wraith under the Nazgul's control.

The films give the ride to Arwen, but in the book whose horse carries the wounded Frodo to Rivendell?

Glorfindel. The Elf-lord sets Frodo on his white horse Asfaloth and sends it on ahead, and the horse outruns the pursuit to carry him alone across the ford.

Who heals Frodo's Weathertop wound?

Elrond. He found and removed the splinter of the blade, but the wound never fully healed: Frodo's shoulder still pained him years later, back home in the Shire.

The size of the Fellowship was fixed so that it would match the number of which group?

The Ringwraiths. Nine walkers were set against the nine riders, and the last two places went only reluctantly to Merry and Pippin, who had been due to be sent home.

What sword does Bilbo give Frodo in Rivendell?

Sting. Bilbo gave the Elvish blade its name after using it to fight off the giant spiders of Mirkwood, and it glows blue whenever orcs are close.

What saves Frodo when an orc spears him in Moria?

His mithril shirt. The priceless mail had sat on loan in the Mathom-house, the Shire's museum for things no hobbit had a use for, until Bilbo reclaimed it and passed it on.

Whose light does the phial Galadriel gives Frodo carry?

Earendil's. Galadriel's fountain had caught the light of his star, the jewel he sails across the night sky, and she bottled that water as 'a light to you in dark places, when all other lights go out'.

Who tries to take the Ring from Frodo by force at Parth Galen?

Boromir. He repents almost at once, and soon afterwards is mortally wounded by orc arrows while defending Merry and Pippin, a last stand that redeems him.

Above which impassable falls does the Fellowship break?

Rauros. Hours after the company scatters, the survivors lay a fallen comrade in an Elven boat and set it adrift toward the same falls as his funeral.

Which swamp does the captured Gollum lead Frodo across on the way to the Black Gate?

The Dead Marshes. Pale faces of warriors who fell in a battle some three thousand years earlier still show in its pools, which is how the swamp got its name.

Frodo insists on calling Gollum by which older name, hoping to reach the creature he once was?

Smeagol. It was his name before he murdered Deagol for the Ring centuries earlier, and Frodo's kindness draws that gentler self back out for a while.

Frodo and Sam climb the Straight Stair and the Winding Stair to reach which pass into Mordor?

Cirith Ungol. Gollum leads them up its two cliff stairways because the Black Gate is shut and guarded; the Endless Stair is a different climb, inside Moria.

Which creature poisons Frodo senseless at the top of the pass into Mordor?

Shelob. Her venom has only paralysed him, so the orcs who carry Frodo off know he is alive, something his rescuer learns only after leaving him for dead and taking the Ring.

What do Frodo and Sam wear for the final trek across Mordor?

Scavenged Orc-armour. There was plenty lying about: Frodo's captors in the tower had fallen to fighting each other over his belongings, and Sam dressed him from what the dead left behind.

What does Frodo do when he reaches the Cracks of Doom?

Claims the Ring for himself. Gollum then bites off his finger to seize it and, dancing with joy, topples into the fire, so the Ring is destroyed by an accident and not by anyone's will.

Who carries Frodo and Sam away from the erupting Mount Doom?

Great Eagles. Gandalf rides to the rescue on Gwaihir, the Windlord who had already plucked the wizard off a mountain peak, and two more eagles lift the hobbits out of the lava.

Who has taken over and industrialised the Shire when the hobbits return?

Saruman. Going by the name Sharkey, he has his ruffians cut down the trees and pull down old houses, with nothing left of his own powers but a persuasive voice.

Who kills the Shire's defeated usurper on the doorstep of Bag End, moments after Frodo spares his life?

Grima Wormtongue. Frodo had just offered him food, shelter and forgiveness, but one last kick from his master made the cringing servant snap and cut the old man's throat.

From which harbour does Frodo finally sail into the West, two years after the Ring is destroyed?

Grey Havens. He boards an Elven ship there with Bilbo and Gandalf, granted passage as a Ring-bearer in the hope of healing hurts that would not mend at home.

What does Frodo's name mean, from the Old English Froda?

Wise by experience. By the end Frodo takes no part in the fighting to free the Shire, and spends the battle stopping hobbits from killing ruffians who throw down their weapons.

What was Frodo's name in Tolkien's early drafts of the first chapter?

Bingo. He began as Bilbo's son and then became Bingo Bolger-Baggins, in drafts where Aragorn was still a hobbit ranger in wooden shoes, nicknamed Trotter.

Who forgets for months to send on Gandalf's letter urging Frodo to leave the Shire?

Barliman Butterbur. The innkeeper of the Prancing Pony only remembered it when Frodo walked into his inn months later, so the hobbit had set out late and with Black Riders already on his trail.

What is Frodo's name in Westron, the language the books purport to translate?

Maura Labingi. Tolkien posed as the translator of a hobbit manuscript, so even his hero's name is an English stand-in: Labingi became Baggins, and Bilbo was 'really' Bilba Labingi.

Frodo writes most of which hobbit chronicle, then leaves its last pages for Sam to finish?

The Red Book of Westmarch. Bilbo began it as his diary, and Tolkien posed as the mere translator of a surviving copy: the found-manuscript conceit behind both of his hobbit novels.

Which Tolkien poem, about a voyager who comes home an outcast, carries the subtitle 'Frodos Dreme'?

The Sea-Bell. Tolkien first published it in 1934 as 'Looney', before Frodo existed, and only tied it to the hobbit's despairing dreams when he revised it for a 1962 verse collection.

Which creature seizes Frodo by the foot outside the western doors of Moria?

The Watcher in the Water. A pale tentacle from the lake catches Frodo by the foot and starts dragging him in, until Sam slashes at it with a knife and pulls him free.

Which condition have scholars suggested Frodo suffers after returning to the Shire?

Post-traumatic stress disorder. Scholars point to the way he withdraws from Shire life and relives the worst of the quest in mind and body, falling ill on the anniversaries of his wounds.

Which slogan about Tolkien's hero turned up on hippie buttons and subway walls in the 1960s?

Frodo Lives! Hippies wore it on buttons and scrawled it in subway stations beside 'Gandalf for President', once the books had become required reading for the counterculture.

Ralph Bakshi's 1978 animated film, with Christopher Guard voicing Frodo, breaks off after which event?

The Battle of Helm's Deep. Bakshi had scripted the story as two films, but no sequel followed, so his Frodo is left still trudging toward Mordor behind Gollum.

Which office does Frodo hold for a few months after the Shire is set free?

Deputy Mayor. He stood in while old Will Whitfoot recovered from the ruffians' lock-up, and his only official act was to cut the Shirriffs back to their normal numbers and duties.

Which actor from Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films had played Frodo in the BBC's 1981 radio serial?

Ian Holm. Twenty years after voicing the young heir he played the old uncle, as Jackson's Bilbo, and his Sam on the radio was a young Bill Nighy.

Which of the hobbit friends who help Frodo leave the Shire is the youngest, still short of coming of age?

Pippin Took. He is 28 when they set out, and hobbits come of age at 33; Frodo himself has just turned fifty, though the Ring has kept him looking young.

How did Elijah Wood audition for the part of Frodo in Peter Jackson's films?

By sending in a homemade tape. He had himself filmed dressed up as a hobbit, the tape went to Peter Jackson, and he became the first actor cast in the trilogy.

Besides a Ring prop and Frodo's sword, what did Peter Jackson let Elijah Wood keep?

A pair of hobbit feet. The Ring, Wood says, never comes out to play: it sits in a pouch, the pouch sits in a box, and the box stays hidden away.

What did Elijah Wood and his fellow Fellowship actors get to mark the end of the shoot?

Matching tattoos. Each is the Elvish word for nine, one for every walker, except that John Rhys-Davies passed and his stunt double went under the needle in his place.

In which city did the Lord of the Rings stage musical, with James Loye as Frodo, first open in 2006?

Toronto. The show closed there within six months of opening, and it was heavily rewritten and shortened before reaching London's Drury Lane the next year.

A long-lost 1991 television version of Frodo's story, rediscovered online in 2021, was made in which country?

The Soviet Union. Leningrad Television aired Khraniteli just once, months before the country dissolved, and it lay forgotten in the archives until the station's successor put it on YouTube.

On which hill does Frodo, wearing the Ring, sit in an ancient stone seat and see far across Middle-earth?

Amon Hen. From its ruined Seat of Seeing Frodo looks out as far as Minas Tirith and the Dark Tower, yet Aragorn, taking the same seat soon afterwards, can make out almost nothing.

To whom does Frodo offer his service, receiving protection like a vassal from a lord?

Faramir. Unlike his proud brother he will not touch the Ring ('I would not take this thing, if it lay by the highway'), and he sends Frodo on with food and a warning about Gollum.

How does Sam accidentally betray Frodo's presence to the men of Gondor in Ithilien?

Smoke from his cooking fire. Sam had stewed two rabbits that Gollum caught, to the creature's fury at seeing good meat cooked, and the smouldering fire brought four soldiers straight to them.

Which posthumous Tolkien book retells Frodo's whole quest in a few lines near its end?

The Silmarillion. Its closing section squeezes all of The Lord of the Rings into part of its twenty or so pages, where the hero is simply 'Frodo the Halfling', passing through peril 'alone with his servant'.