Edward Scissorhands Trivia
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110 free Edward Scissorhands trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Edward Scissorhands trivia quiz is devoted to Tim Burton's 1990 Gothic fairy tale (for questions across Burton's whole career, from Beetlejuice to Wednesday, take our Tim Burton quiz). It covers the story of the unfinished man with scissor blades for hands, the Avon lady who brings him down from the mansion, the pastel cul-de-sac, the topiary and the hairdressing, Jim's break-in, the ice angel and the snow that never fell on the town before. The easy questions are ones any fan knows: who plays Edward and Kim, who the Inventor is, what Peg sells and how the film ends. From there it works through the making of it: the teenage drawing that started it, Caroline Thompson's 'love poem' screenplay, why Warner Bros. let it go to Fox, Tom Cruise's request for a happier ending, the other actors considered, Stan Winston's scissor hands and Bo Welch's four house colours, the Florida town of Lutz, Danny Elfman's 79-piece orchestra and the three Tom Jones songs. There are questions on its awards, its box office, its critics, the Matthew Bourne dance version, the IDW comics sequel, the Super Bowl ad with Timothee Chalamet and the Cambrian fossil named after Depp's claws. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entries for the film, its cast and its crew before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Fans may also like our Beetlejuice and Nightmare Before Christmas quizzes.
30 of 110 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who plays Edward?
Johnny Depp
Johnny Depp plays Edward. Edward Scissorhands (1990) was the first of his many collaborations with director Tim Burton.
Q 02Who plays Kim Boggs, the teenage daughter Edward falls for?
Winona Ryder
Winona Ryder plays Kim Boggs. She had already worked with Tim Burton as Lydia Deetz in Beetlejuice (1988).
Q 03Who wrote the screenplay, from a story by her and Burton?
Caroline Thompson
Caroline Thompson wrote the screenplay from a story she developed with Tim Burton. She later wrote The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) and co-wrote Corpse Bride (2005).
Q 04What is Peg Boggs's job when she discovers Edward?
Door-to-door Avon saleswoman
Peg is a door-to-door Avon saleswoman. After a fruitless day on her rounds she drives up to the mansion on the hill and finds Edward alone in the attic.
Q 05Who plays Peg Boggs?
Dianne Wiest
Dianne Wiest was the first actor to sign on, and Burton said her approval got the rest of the cast interested. She already had an Oscar, for Hannah and Her Sisters.
Q 06Who plays the Inventor, Edward's creator?
Vincent Price
Vincent Price had narrated Burton's 1982 short Vincent, a tribute to him, and eight years later played Edward's creator. The director's childhood idol became the father of his hero.
Q 07Why was Edward left with scissors instead of hands?
The Inventor died before finishing him
The Inventor died before finishing him, of a heart attack, at the very moment he was about to fit Edward with real hands. Edward was left alone in the mansion, unfinished and ageless.
Q 08Who plays Kim's jealous boyfriend Jim?
Anthony Michael Hall
A change of pace from his John Hughes geek roles.
Q 09Who plays Bill Boggs, Kim's father?
Alan Arkin
Alan Arkin plays Bill Boggs, Kim's deadpan father. Arkin had already been Oscar-nominated twice in the 1960s, for The Russians Are Coming and The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.
Q 10Who plays Joyce, the neighbour who tries to seduce Edward?
Kathy Baker
Kathy Baker plays Joyce Monroe, the bored housewife who corners Edward in the back room of her salon. Baker had come to films from the stage after an Obie for Fool for Love.
Q 11What is the name of the religious fanatic neighbour who distrusts Edward?
Esmeralda
Esmeralda, played by O-Lan Jones, is the Bible-quoting neighbour who denounces Edward as a demon sent from hell and warns the others against him.
Q 12How does Edward first repay the neighbourhood's kindness?
By trimming hedges into topiaries
By trimming hedges into topiaries, starting with a dinosaur on Peg's hedge. His jobs then climb from plants to pets to people: the neighbourhood dogs, then the women's hair.
Q 13What business does Joyce offer to help Edward open?
A hair salon
Q 21How does Jim die?
Edward stabs him and pushes him from a window
Only after Jim strikes Kim.
Q 22What does Kim tell the gathering neighbours after Jim's death?
That Jim and Edward killed each other
Kim tells them that Jim and Edward killed each other, holding up a spare scissor hand from the Inventor's workshop as proof, so Edward is left alone in the mansion.
Q 23Who is the elderly woman telling the story to her granddaughter?
Kim
Kim, who never saw Edward again after the night the town chased him back up the hill. She stayed away so he would remember her as she was in her youth.
A hair salon, the natural next step once Edward has moved from hedges to dogs to the neighbourhood women's hair. The bank refuses him a loan.
Q 14What lie does Joyce tell the neighbourhood women about Edward?
That he raped her
It reduces their trust in him.
Q 15Why does Jim get Edward to pick the lock on his parents' house?
To steal his father's electronics to buy a van
Jim plans to steal his father's electronics to buy a van, so he has Edward pick the lock of the locked room. A burglar alarm traps Edward inside while the others flee.
Q 16Why do the police decide Edward cannot be criminally charged for the break-in?
Isolation left him without any morality
A police psychologist concludes that Edward's years of isolation left him without any sense of reality or morality, so he is released into the Boggses' custody rather than charged.
Q 17What does Edward carve at Christmas, causing 'snow' in the town?
An ice sculpture modelled on Kim
An angel ice sculpture modelled on Kim. The ice shavings swirl down like snow and Kim dances in them, the moment the film's framing story gives as the origin of the town's snowfall.
Q 18How does Kim get injured during the ice-carving scene?
Jim startles Edward, who cuts her hand
Kim then breaks up with Jim.
Q 19What does Kim ask Edward to do when he returns to the house?
Hold her
Kim asks Edward to hold her. He answers 'I can't', so she steps into his arms and arranges the blades herself so they can embrace.
Q 20Whom does Edward save from a drunk driver, inadvertently cutting him?
Kevin
Edward pushes Kevin, Kim's little brother, out of the path of a van driven by Jim's drunk friend, cutting the boy's face as he does. Onlookers think he attacked him.
Q 24Why does the elderly narrator believe Edward is still alive?
Because it would not be snowing without him
Because it would not be snowing without him. The town had never seen snow before Edward carved ice, so to Kim every flake since is proof that he is still up there.
Q 25What inspired the character, according to Burton?
A drawing he made as a teenager in Burbank
A drawing Burton made as a teenager growing up in Burbank. He said the figure with blades for hands reflected his own isolation and inability to communicate.
Q 26During pre-production of which Burton film was the screenwriter hired to write Scissorhands?
Beetlejuice
Beetlejuice. During that film's pre-production Burton hired Caroline Thompson, then a young novelist, to write Edward Scissorhands as a spec script.
Q 27Which novel by the Scissorhands screenwriter, about an abortion that came back to life, impressed Burton?
First Born
First Born, Thompson's 1983 debut novel about an aborted fetus that comes back to life. Burton felt it shared the psychological elements he wanted for Edward.
Q 28The screenwriter described her Scissorhands script as what to Burton?
A 'love poem'
A 'love poem'. Thompson said she wrote the script as a love poem to Burton: 'Every detail was so important to Tim because it was so personal.'
Q 29Which studio sold the film rights to 20th Century Fox within months?
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. held the project first but sold the rights to 20th Century Fox within months. Fox then gave Burton complete creative control over the film.
Q 30What was the film's budget originally projected to be?
$8–9 million
The final budget was $20 million.