American Psycho
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50 free American Psycho trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
American Psycho has had two lives. Bret Easton Ellis's novel arrived in 1991 to protests, a cancelled contract and bans, and its narrator, the immaculate Wall Street banker Patrick Bateman, became one of the most argued-over characters in modern fiction. Nine years later Mary Harron's film, with Christian Bale in the lead, turned the same story into a pitch-black comedy that a younger generation knows by heart. This quiz covers both. Expect questions on the plot and its famous set pieces, the colleagues, rivals and victims who drift through Bateman's days, the pop music he cannot stop analysing, and the puzzle of how much of it really happens. There are questions too on the author and his other books, the battle over who would direct and star, the tricks of the shoot, the reviews, the sequel and the stage musical. It suits readers who have finished the novel, film fans who can recite the monologues, and book clubs or quiz hosts looking for a ready-made round. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you leave knowing more than when you started.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which American Psycho restaurant can Patrick Bateman never book, though Paul Allen gets in with ease?
Dorsia
Dorsia is the table Bateman cannot land, and Paul Allen's easy access to it feeds his envy. In the stage musical his secretary names it when he offers her dinner anywhere she likes.
Q 02Which status symbols do Patrick Bateman and his colleagues compare at a meeting in American Psycho?
Business cards
Business cards are passed around until the look of Paul Allen's leaves Bateman enraged. The stage musical turned the showdown into a song titled Cards.
Q 03Which Huey Lewis and the News hit does Patrick Bateman lecture Paul Allen about in American Psycho?
Hip to Be Square
Hip to Be Square reached number three in the US, with San Francisco 49ers players singing backup. It was later pulled from the film's soundtrack album, which the band's manager said had used it without permission.
Q 04Which star is Patrick Bateman's neighbour in the novel American Psycho and inspired Christian Bale's portrayal?
Tom Cruise
Tom Cruise lives in the penthouse of Bateman's building in the novel. Bale watched him on a talk show and borrowed the manner he saw: intense friendliness that seemed to have little behind it.
Q 05Which star's casting as Patrick Bateman in 1998 got director Mary Harron fired from American Psycho?
Leonardo DiCaprio
Leonardo DiCaprio was the studio's pick, and Harron was replaced by Oliver Stone when she refused to drop Christian Bale. DiCaprio soon left to make The Beach, and both Harron and Bale were brought back.
Q 06Which Canadian city stood in for Manhattan during the American Psycho shoot, despite local protests?
Toronto
Toronto hosted most of the filming, with only some outdoor scenes captured in the real New York. To dodge protesters, the crew kept the film's title off its daily call sheets and permits.
Q 07Which chore can leave American Psycho's Patrick Bateman near tears, as can a failed dinner reservation?
Returning videotapes
Returning videotapes is the errand Bateman frets over, a relic of the rental-store era. He claims to feel nothing at all, yet small hassles like this one bring on rage, panic or grief.
Q 08Which dance move, at first disliked by Bret Easton Ellis, did Christian Bale improvise in American Psycho?
The moonwalk
The moonwalk was Bale's own idea on set and appears nowhere in the novel. Ellis disliked the addition when he first saw it but grew to appreciate it over time.
Q 09Which actor plays Donald Kimball, the detective hunting for Paul Allen, in the film American Psycho?
Willem Dafoe
Willem Dafoe played each interview three ways: sure that Bateman was guilty, merely suspicious, and suspecting nothing. The takes were then blended so that viewers can never read the detective.
Q 10Which actress led the sequel American Psycho 2, a film she later said embarrassed her?
Mila Kunis
Mila Kunis plays a criminology student who murders her rivals for a teaching post. The script began as an unrelated thriller and was only tied to Patrick Bateman once production had begun.
Q 11Which actress plays Evelyn Williams, the fiancée Patrick Bateman despises, in American Psycho?
Reese Witherspoon
Reese Witherspoon got the part, although Mary Harron and Christian Bale also tried to persuade Winona Ryder to play it. The studio wanted recognisable faces around its little-known lead.
Q 12Which actor, kept out of a rehearsal so his shock would be real, plays Paul Allen in American Psycho?
Jared Leto
Jared Leto was shut out of rehearsals for his character's death scene, so his startled look when Christian Bale ran at him was genuine. The stage blood involved meant only a few takes were possible.
Q 13Which weapon does Patrick Bateman use on a drunken Paul Allen in the film American Psycho?
An axe
Q 21A faked answering machine message in American Psycho says the missing Paul Allen has gone to which city?
London
London is the cover story Bateman records on Allen's own answering machine. It works too well: an acquaintance later insists he has dined with Allen there, leaving Bateman unsure what he really did.
Q 22Which firm employs Patrick Bateman in American Psycho, a name borrowed from The Bonfire of the Vanities?
Pierce & Pierce
Pierce & Pierce is where bond trader Sherman McCoy works in Tom Wolfe's 1987 novel of New York greed. Ellis reused the name for the investment bank where Bateman spends his days.
Q 23Which feminist critic of the novel American Psycho is the stepmother of the film's star, Christian Bale?
Gloria Steinem
An axe is what he swings, back at his own apartment. The shots had to be captured quickly, because the stage blood squirted at Christian Bale's face limited the number of takes.
Q 14Which US president appears in archive television footage in the final scene of the film American Psycho?
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan's 1987 Iran–Contra address plays as Bateman's friends idly discuss the president's persona. The novel's closing scene also puts reruns of his successor's inauguration on the bar's television.
Q 15Online memes hold up American Psycho's Patrick Bateman as the ideal example of which type of man?
Sigma male
Sigma male memes treat Bateman as a role model, largely among Generation Z viewers. That admiration sits oddly with a film many read as a harsh critique of capitalism.
Q 16Which Doctor Who star first played Patrick Bateman when the American Psycho musical opened in 2013?
Matt Smith
Matt Smith led the premiere at the Almeida Theatre, where every ticket sold out. A Broadway version followed in 2016 but closed after only 54 regular performances.
Q 17Which TV serial killer uses the alias Dr. Patrick Bateman, a nod to American Psycho, to obtain drugs?
Dexter Morgan
Dexter Morgan uses the Bateman alias to get hold of M-99, the drug with which he incapacitates his victims. A later sequel series revealed that Ellis's novel had been a formative read for him.
Q 18Before American Psycho, Christian Bale was best known for which Spielberg film, made when he was 13?
Empire of the Sun
Empire of the Sun cast him, from more than 4,000 hopefuls, as a British boy in a wartime internment camp. A decade on he was still so little known that the studio resisted hiring him as Bateman.
Q 19What is Patrick Bateman's specialism in American Psycho, which one listener hears instead of a confession?
Mergers and acquisitions
Mergers and acquisitions is his field at an investment bank. When he admits aloud what he really does, the words are taken for that job title, one of many times nobody truly listens to him.
Q 20Who receives Patrick Bateman's voicemail confession in American Psycho, only to laugh it off as a joke?
His lawyer
His lawyer, Harold Carnes, gets the message, in which Bateman owns up to around 40 murders. Carnes then mistakes him for somebody else and treats the whole thing as a prank.
Gloria Steinem opposed the book over its portrayal of violence toward women. Ellis pointed out the family coincidence himself in a later mock memoir.
Q 24Which singer, whose solo work Patrick Bateman discusses in American Psycho, avoided the novel but enjoyed the film?
Phil Collins
Phil Collins assumed the book simply glorified violence and never read it. When the film came out, he said, he thought it was very funny.
Q 25Which publisher dropped American Psycho just before its 1991 release, citing aesthetic differences?
Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster had been due to publish it in March 1991 before pulling out. Vintage Books bought the rights instead, and Ellis later wrote that people assumed the book would end his career.
Q 26Paul Allen in the film American Psycho has which different surname in Bret Easton Ellis's novel?
Owen
Owen is his name on the page, one of several changes made for the screen. Evelyn Richards became Evelyn Williams, and Timothy Price turned into Timothy Bryce.
Q 27Which colleague of Patrick Bateman in American Psycho mistakes an attempted strangling for a romantic advance?
Luis Carruthers
Luis Carruthers is secretly attracted to Bateman, so he reads the hands at his throat as affection, and a horrified Bateman flees. Bateman is also having an affair with his fiancée, Courtney.
Q 28Which actress plays Jean, the secretary Patrick Bateman cannot bring himself to harm, in American Psycho?
Chloë Sevigny
Chloë Sevigny said she had never seen an actor commit to a role as completely as Christian Bale. He stayed in character for the whole shoot and never socialised with the cast off camera.
Q 29At which film festival did American Psycho have its premiere, dividing its first audiences?
Sundance
Sundance crowds split between those who praised the writing and Christian Bale and those repelled by the violence. The film was touted there as the next Fight Club.
Q 30American Psycho author Bret Easton Ellis grew up in which city, the setting of his debut Less than Zero?
Los Angeles
Los Angeles and its rich, disaffected teenagers filled his first book, published when he was a 21-year-old student. He set American Psycho a continent away, among Manhattan bankers.