Big Trouble in Little China Trivia
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50 free Big Trouble in Little China trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Big Trouble in Little China bombed in 1986 and then spent four decades becoming everybody's favourite John Carpenter movie. This quiz has forty questions for the people who can quote Jack Burton's CB monologues from memory. It covers the plot from the Pork Chop Express to the Wild-Man stowaway, the Three Storms, Lo Pan's curse, Egg Shen's potion, the Chang Sing and Wing Kong, and the green-eyed girls at the centre of it all. The production story is just as good: the original script was a Western set in the 1880s, the studio rushed it out to beat Eddie Murphy's The Golden Child, Carpenter wanted Clint Eastwood, and Kurt Russell built Jack Burton out of John Wayne. There are questions on the effects, the score, the box office, the reviews and the comics, board games and Dwayne Johnson sequel talk that followed. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's article on the film, and each question carries the sentence that supports it.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In Big Trouble in Little China, how does Jack Burton finish his motto, 'It's all in the…'?
Reflexes
Reflexes: he says it after grabbing the bottle Wang fails to slice in a double-or-nothing bet, and the unpaid debt is why Jack tags along to the airport.
Q 02In which city's Chinatown is Big Trouble in Little China set?
San Francisco
San Francisco is also where protesters leafleted a location shoot in 1985, complaining that the film was about a 'smart-aleck' trucker and his Chinese 'yes' man.
Q 03Jack Burton's actor first worked with director John Carpenter playing which singer in a 1979 TV film?
Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley: that TV biopic began a partnership, and this was their fourth film together, yet the director admitted he 'didn't see' his old friend as Jack Burton at first.
Q 04What is the nickname of Jack Burton's semi-trailer truck in Big Trouble in Little China?
The Pork Chop Express
The Pork Chop Express lives up to its name: Jack is hauling a load of pigs to market when the story starts, narrating his own legend over the CB radio as he drives.
Q 05Who plays Jack Burton in Big Trouble in Little China?
Kurt Russell
Kurt Russell wasn't sure how to play the part until he saw the joke: a hero, he said, 'who has so many faults' and 'falls on his ass as much as he comes through'.
Q 06Which two stars did John Carpenter first want to lead Big Trouble in Little China?
Clint Eastwood or Jack Nicholson
Clint Eastwood or Jack Nicholson were his hope for a marquee name to compete with Eddie Murphy's rival fantasy, but both were busy, so the studio got the up-and-coming actor it wanted.
Q 07The star of Big Trouble in Little China modelled Jack Burton's bravado on which older Hollywood actor?
John Wayne
John Wayne's swagger is turned up until it is comic: Jack talks like the man in charge while his friend Wang does most of the skilled fighting.
Q 08Who plays Wang Chi, the friend whose fiancée is kidnapped, in Big Trouble in Little China?
Dennis Dun
Dennis Dun got the part only days before shooting began; it was his second film, and he trained every day to pass as the expert swordsman of the pair.
Q 09Which actress plays lawyer Gracie Law in Big Trouble in Little China?
Kim Cattrall
Kim Cattrall won the part although the studio pressed the director to cast a rock star, and she played Gracie, in her words, as the brains to Jack's brawn.
Q 10Which actor plays the sorcerer David Lo Pan in Big Trouble in Little China?
James Hong
James Hong came back to the role in all but name in 2014, voicing Ho Chan, a renamed Lo Pan, in a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles episode that borrows from the film.
Q 11In Big Trouble in Little China, Lo Pan must marry a woman with what feature to lift his curse?
Green eyes
Green eyes are what the sorcerer needs in a bride to become flesh again, and when a second green-eyed woman falls into his hands he decides to marry both and sacrifice one.
Q 12In Big Trouble in Little China, which emperor cursed Lo Pan to live without flesh some 2,000 years ago?
Qin Shi Huang
Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China, beat him in battle and cursed him to exist as a ghost, able to borrow only a frail old body until the right bride restores his flesh.
Q 13What is the name of Wang Chi's kidnapped fiancée in Big Trouble in Little China?
Miao Yin
Q 21In the final scene of Big Trouble in Little China, what has stowed away on Jack Burton's truck?
The Wild-Man
The Wild-Man, the shaggy beast that earlier carried off Gracie, is riding on the back of the rig as Jack, who has just turned down her offer to come along, drives off alone.
Q 22The first script for Big Trouble in Little China, later rewritten for the present day, belonged to which genre?
Western
Western: the first draft followed a cowboy, and the rewrite moved it to the present so audiences had only one strange world to swallow, the one under Chinatown.
Q 23Which screenwriter rewrote Big Trouble in Little China, turning its hero into a blowhard trucker?
W. D. Richter
Miao Yin has barely stepped off her flight from China when a street gang snatches her at the airport, dragging Wang and the debt-chasing Jack into the hunt.
Q 14What are the names of Lo Pan's three supernatural warriors in Big Trouble in Little China?
Thunder, Rain and Lightning
Thunder, Rain and Lightning, known together as the Three Storms, appear in the middle of a Chinatown street battle and slaughter one side, the first sign Jack has driven into something supernatural.
Q 15Which two ancient societies fight the street battle Jack Burton blunders into in Chinatown?
Chang Sing and Wing Kong
Chang Sing and Wing Kong clash when a funeral procession turns into a battle; the Chang Sing later fight beside Jack and Wang, while the Wing Kong turn out to serve Lo Pan.
Q 16How do Jack Burton and Wang first get inside Lo Pan's front business in Big Trouble in Little China?
Posing as telephone repairmen
Posing as telephone repairmen gets them through the door, but they are captured within minutes, tied up and hauled before Lo Pan, who now looks like a frail old man in a wheelchair.
Q 17Which sorcerer pours Jack and Wang a magic potion before the final battle in Big Trouble in Little China?
Egg Shen
Egg Shen also opens the film, vouching for Jack to a lawyer in a prologue the studio chief ordered after shooting because he found the hero not heroic enough.
Q 18What does Jack Burton do as the climactic wedding fight begins in Big Trouble in Little China?
Knocks himself out
Knocks himself out: the star, who couldn't do kung fu, suggested gags that kept Jack out of the action, and the director called him a sidekick who thinks he's the leading man.
Q 19How does Jack Burton finally kill Lo Pan?
Returns a knife thrown at him
Returns a knife thrown at him: his own first throw misses, the sorcerer hurls the blade back, and Jack snatches it from the air and buries it in Lo Pan's forehead.
Q 20What happens to one of Lo Pan's warriors when he finds his master dead?
He swells up and explodes
He swells up and explodes: expanding his body is this warrior's power throughout the film, and rage at his master's death inflates him past bursting point.
W. D. Richter rewrote it nearly from scratch, yet a Writers Guild ruling left him with only an 'adaptation by' credit and gave the original pair sole screenplay credit.
Q 24The rewriter of Big Trouble in Little China was also asked to direct it, having made which cult film?
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai had baffled audiences two years earlier, and its director passed on this job, saying he wanted something smaller than another big action-adventure.
Q 25The studio rushed Big Trouble in Little China into production to reach cinemas before which Eddie Murphy film?
The Golden Child
The Golden Child also sends a Californian everyman into a plot of Eastern mysticism; Carpenter, who had turned down the chance to direct it, came to call it 'basically the same movie'.
Q 26Which fighting game series, launched in arcades in 1992, counts Big Trouble in Little China among its inspirations?
Mortal Kombat
Mortal Kombat co-creator John Tobias has said Lo Pan had a 'superficial influence' on its sorcerer Shang Tsung, both of them drawn from the white-haired mystics of old kung fu films.
Q 27Most of Big Trouble in Little China's Chinatown, sewers included, was built for the cameras where?
The Fox lot in Los Angeles
The Fox lot in Los Angeles held designer John Lloyd's Chinatown of three-storey buildings, streetlights and sewers; the director said such stylised fights and effects were impossible on real streets.
Q 28John Carpenter said shooting the kung fu battles of Big Trouble in Little China was much like photographing what?
A dance
A dance: his choreographer planned every move in advance, and he filled the gaps with what he called 'every cheap gag', from trampolines and wires to reversed film and upside-down sets.
Q 29Which effects house, set up by a Star Wars effects veteran, built the monsters of Big Trouble in Little China?
Boss Film Studios
Boss Film Studios found one of its hardest jobs in Lo Pan's floating spy: the puppet needed several puppeteers, dozens of cables and a matting system built just for it.
Q 30In Big Trouble in Little China, Lo Pan's floating scout, the Guardian, is a creature covered in what?
Eyeballs
Eyeballs cover the leathery, medicine-ball-sized Guardian because it is Lo Pan's remote sight: twice it spots the heroes creeping into his palace and reports back.