180 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 180 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who created Saturday Night Live?
Lorne Michaels
He has run the show for most of its history; it has been broadcast from Studio 8H at 30 Rockefeller Plaza since 1975.
Q 02Which comedian hosted the very first episode of SNL on October 11, 1975?
George Carlin
Billy Preston and Janis Ian were the musical guests that night, and the show was still billed as NBC's Saturday Night.
Q 03What nickname was given to SNL's original cast?
The Not Ready for Prime-Time Players
That first troupe included John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner and Chevy Chase.
Q 04Who became SNL's longest-tenured cast member in 2017, having joined the show in 2003?
Kenan Thompson
He was already a sketch veteran, 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 is the youngest person ever to receive the Mark Twain Prize, at age 40 in 2010?
Tina Fey
Ferrell got the prize the following year; Ellen received it in 2012.
Q 07Which comedian became the first woman to host a late-night network talk show, on Fox in 1986?
Joan Rivers
She had been Johnny Carson's first permanent guest host, and the move to a rival show ended their friendship.
Q 08Which SNL alum earned an Academy Award nomination for the 2006 film Dreamgirls?
Eddie Murphy
His 1987 concert film Raw got a wide theatrical release and grossed $50 million.
Q 09Which comedian quit his hit sketch show in 2005, walking away from an eight-figure Comedy Central deal?
Dave Chappelle
He retreated to a farm near Yellow Springs, Ohio, 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
Filming on 35mm rather than live kinescope is also why the episodes still look sharp and could be rerun forever.
Q 11In 'Job Switching', Lucy and Ethel fall hopelessly behind a factory conveyor belt carrying what?
Chocolates
The pair stuff their mouths, hats and blouses with the candies 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
The reveal came in the episode 'The Switch', six seasons after the character first burst through Jerry's door.
Q 13Which sitcom's writers worked under the rule 'no hugging, no learning'?
Seinfeld
The show was often described as being 'about nothing', and its finale drew an estimated 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?
Abbott and Costello's routine hinges on players named Who, What and I Don't Know.
Q 22Commedia dell'arte, with its masked stock characters like Harlequin, originated in which country?
Italy
Its 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
The slats clapped loudly on impact, so a stage beating sounded painful without hurting anyone.
Q 14In Friends, what is the name of the coffee house where the group spends most of its time?
Central Perk
Rachel's first job on the show is waitressing there, badly.
Q 15About how many US viewers watched the Friends finale in May 2004?
52.5 million
It was 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
Greg Daniels adapted the show for NBC, and it ran for nine seasons and 201 episodes.
Q 17The original British version of The Office follows the Slough branch of which fictional paper company?
Wernham Hogg
Ricky Gervais played branch manager David Brent, and the show became the first British comedy ever to win a Golden Globe.
Q 18Fawlty Towers is set in a dysfunctional hotel in which English seaside town?
Torquay
Basil Fawlty was inspired by Donald Sinclair, the eccentric owner of the 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 Arthur Stanley Jefferson in Ulverston, England?
Stan Laurel
His partner was born Norvell Hardy in Harlem, Georgia, and their theme was 'The Dance of the Cuckoos'.
Q 24The word 'vaudeville' is often said to derive from a French phrase meaning what?
Voice of the city
The variety circuit ruled American entertainment from the 1870s until the early 1930s, when radio and talkies killed it.
Q 25Which silent film comedian's stoic expression earned him the nickname 'The Great Stone Face'?
Buster Keaton
In Steamboat Bill, Jr. he stood still while a two-storey building front fell on him, saved only by an open window.
Q 26In 1919, Charlie Chaplin co-founded which film distribution company to control his own movies?
United Artists
His partners were Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D. W. Griffith; his first sound film, The Great Dictator, satirised Hitler.
Q 27The 'Borscht Belt' resort circuit that launched generations of comedians was located in which mountains?
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
The club opened in 1972, and Mitzi Shore took it over in 1973 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 series was not flattering, and the troupe founded in 1959 embraced the insult.
Q 30In improv comedy, accepting a partner's idea and building on it is summed up by which phrase?
Yes, and
Rejecting an offer is called blocking, and it is the fastest way to strand a scene.