Comedy Trivia
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178 free Comedy trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
51 free Comedy trivia questions with answers. Comedy is a much bigger world than movie night, and this quiz roams all of it. Fifty questions cover stand-up pioneers from Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor to Dave Chappelle, half a century of Saturday Night Live, sitcoms from I Love Lucy to The Office, British classics like Fawlty Towers and Monty Python, comedy duos, late-night TV, improv theatre, vaudeville and the Borscht Belt, and the slang comedians use backstage. The easy questions ask who created SNL and what a straight man is; the hard ones want the nightclub The Comedy Store replaced, the etymology of vaudeville, and who invented the improv form called the Harold. It suits anyone who quotes sitcoms in group chats, hosts a pub quiz, or has ever bombed at an open mic. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia and other primary reference pages, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
30 of 178 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who created Saturday Night Live?
Lorne Michaels
Lorne Michaels created Saturday Night Live, which premiered on NBC on October 11, 1975, broadcast from Studio 8H at 30 Rockefeller Plaza.
Q 02Which comedian hosted the very first episode of SNL on October 11, 1975?
George Carlin
George Carlin hosted the October 11, 1975 premiere, then billed as NBC's Saturday Night; Billy Preston and Janis Ian were the musical guests.
Q 03What nickname was given to SNL's original cast?
The Not Ready for Prime-Time Players
The original cast was billed as The Not Ready for Prime-Time Players, a troupe that included John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner and Chevy Chase.
Q 04Which cast member, who joined in 2003, became the longest-serving in SNL history?
Kenan Thompson
Kenan Thompson was already a sketch veteran when he joined in 2003, having been an original cast member of Nickelodeon's All That in the 1990s.
Q 05Who was the first recipient of the Kennedy Center's Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, in 1998?
Richard Pryor
He grew up in Peoria, Illinois, and won the Grammy for Best Comedy Album five times.
Q 06Who received the Mark Twain Prize in 2010 at age 40, then its youngest honoree?
Tina Fey
Tina Fey was 40 when she accepted the 2010 Mark Twain Prize; Will Ferrell followed in 2011 and Ellen DeGeneres in 2012.
Q 07Which comedian became the first woman to host a late-night network talk show, on Fox in 1986?
Joan Rivers
Joan Rivers launched The Late Show on Fox in October 1986; she had been Johnny Carson's permanent guest host, and the move ended their friendship.
Q 08Which SNL alum earned an Academy Award nomination for the 2006 film Dreamgirls?
Eddie Murphy
Eddie Murphy earned a Best Supporting Actor nomination as James 'Thunder' Early in Dreamgirls; his 1987 concert film Raw grossed about $50 million.
Q 09Which comedian walked away from a $50 million Comedy Central contract when he quit his own sketch show in 2005?
Dave Chappelle
Dave Chappelle retreated to a farm near Yellow Springs, Ohio, after quitting, and later won the Mark Twain Prize in 2019.
Q 10Which 1950s sitcom pioneered the three-camera setup filmed on 35mm in front of a studio audience?
I Love Lucy
I Love Lucy (1951) shot with three 35mm film cameras before a live audience; the film prints, unlike kinescopes, kept the episodes sharp for endless reruns.
Q 11In 'Job Switching', Lucy and Ethel fall hopelessly behind a factory conveyor belt carrying what?
Chocolates
The belt carries chocolates; Lucy and Ethel stuff the candies into their mouths, hats and blouses to hide their failure from the supervisor.
Q 12On a 1990s NBC sitcom, which character's mother Babs revealed that his first name was Cosmo?
Kramer
Kramer's mother Babs revealed the name Cosmo in 'The Switch', a sixth-season Seinfeld episode that aired in January 1995.
Q 13Which sitcom's writers worked under the rule 'no hugging, no learning'?
Seinfeld
Seinfeld's writers banned sentiment under the rule 'no hugging, no learning'; the show 'about nothing' ended in 1998 with a finale seen by about 76.3 million viewers.
Q 21A gold record of which comedy routine was placed in the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1956?
Who's on First?
Who's on First?, Abbott and Costello's routine about players named Who, What and I Don't Know, was honored with a gold record in the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1956.
Q 22Commedia dell'arte, the early professional theatre with masked stock characters like Harlequin, originated in which country?
Italy
Italy's commedia dell'arte troupes toured Europe from the 16th to the 18th centuries, performing outdoors with masks and improvised dialogue.
Q 23The word 'slapstick' comes from the batacchio, a club-like stage prop made of what?
Two wooden slats
Q 14In Friends, what is the name of the coffee house where the group spends most of its time?
Central Perk
Central Perk is the Greenwich Village coffee house where Rachel takes her first job on the show, waitressing badly.
Q 15About how many US viewers watched the Friends finale in May 2004?
52.5 million
About 52.5 million US viewers watched the May 6, 2004 finale, the most-watched entertainment telecast since the Seinfeld finale six years earlier.
Q 16The US version of The Office is set at a paper company branch in which Pennsylvania city?
Scranton
Dunder Mifflin's Scranton branch is the setting; Greg Daniels adapted the show for NBC, where it ran nine seasons and 201 episodes.
Q 17The original British version of The Office follows the Slough branch of which fictional paper company?
Wernham Hogg
Wernham Hogg is the paper merchant whose Slough branch Ricky Gervais's David Brent manages; the show won the 2004 Golden Globe for best comedy series.
Q 18Fawlty Towers is set in a dysfunctional hotel in which English seaside town?
Torquay
Fawlty Towers is set in Torquay; Basil was inspired by Donald Sinclair, owner of Torquay's Gleneagles Hotel, where the Monty Python team stayed in 1970.
Q 19How many episodes of Fawlty Towers were made in total?
12
Two series of six, written by John Cleese and Connie Booth, and that was it.
Q 20Which half of a famous comedy duo was born in Ulverston, England, in 1890?
Stan Laurel
Stan Laurel was born Arthur Stanley Jefferson in Ulverston in 1890; his partner Oliver Hardy was born Norvell Hardy in Harlem, Georgia.
The slats clapped loudly on impact, so a stage beating sounded painful without hurting anyone.
Q 24The word 'vaudeville' is often said to derive from a French phrase meaning what?
Voice of the city
A popular etymology traces vaudeville to 'voix de ville', French for 'voice of the city'; the circuit ruled American variety entertainment from the 1870s to the early 1930s.
Q 25Which silent film comedian's stoic expression earned him the nickname 'The Great Stone Face'?
Buster Keaton
Buster Keaton's deadpan earned the nickname; in Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928) he stood still as a two-storey house front fell around him, saved by an open window.
Q 26In 1919, Charlie Chaplin co-founded which film distribution company to control his own movies?
United Artists
United Artists was founded in 1919 by Chaplin with Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D. W. Griffith so the stars could control their own films.
Q 27The 'Borscht Belt' resort circuit that launched generations of comedians was located in which mountains?
The Catskills
The Catskills resorts like Grossinger's and the Concord catered to Jewish vacationers from New York City and gave comics a summer-long stage.
Q 28The Comedy Store on the Sunset Strip occupies a building that was once which famous Hollywood nightclub?
Ciro's
Ciro's, the celebrity nightclub at 8433 Sunset Boulevard from 1940 to 1957, became The Comedy Store in 1972; Mitzi Shore took over the club after divorcing co-founder Sammy Shore.
Q 29The Second City improv theatre took its self-mocking name from New Yorker articles about which city?
Chicago
A. J. Liebling's 1952 New Yorker pieces belittled Chicago as 'the second city'; the troupe founded there in 1959 embraced the insult.
Q 30In improv comedy, which two-word phrase is the cardinal rule for responding to a partner's offer?
Yes, and
'Yes, and' means accepting the offer and adding to it; rejecting an offer is called blocking, the fastest way to strand a scene.