ER Trivia
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This ER trivia quiz has 95 free questions with answers and covers all fifteen seasons of NBC's medical drama, from Michael Crichton's 1974 script and the 1994 pilot to the 2009 finale that finally showed the outside of County General. Questions take in the original cast and their arcs, the live episode 'Ambush', 'Love's Labor Lost', Lucy Knight and Carter's stabbing, Mark Greene's last days in Hawaii, Robert Romano's helicopters, Clooney's secret return, the ratings peaks, the record 124 Emmy nominations and the Third Watch crossover. It is written for anyone who watched Thursday nights in the 1990s and 2000s or has since binged the show on streaming: easy questions on the cast, harder ones on episode details and production history. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries before publishing.
30 of 95 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which best-selling author created ER, based on a script he had written in 1974?
Michael Crichton
Michael Crichton, a Harvard-trained doctor, wrote the ER pilot script in 1974 drawing on his own training; it sat unproduced for twenty years before NBC picked it up.
Q 02Which film director developed ER as a movie before co-producing it as a television series?
Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg. He started developing the script as a feature film, was sidetracked by another project, and left it on the shelf for years.
Q 03Which long-running NBC sitcom premiered three days after ER in 1994?
Friends
Friends. George Clooney and Noah Wyle guest-starred on it in 1995 as two doctors who date Monica and Rachel, though not as their ER characters.
Q 04Which ER character was played by William H. Macy?
Dr. David Morgenstern
Dr. David Morgenstern. In the pilot he tells Greene, 'You set the tone', and in season 8 a dying Greene hands the same words on to Carter.
Q 05ER is set in the emergency room of which fictional Chicago hospital?
County General
County General. It was modelled on Chicago's real Cook County Hospital, yet most scenes were shot on a soundstage in Burbank, with cast and crew flying in about four times a year.
Q 06Which actor played Dr. Mark Greene, the lead of ER's first eight seasons?
Anthony Edwards
Anthony Edwards played Dr. Mark Greene, the steady centre of the show's first eight seasons, and left in 2002 when Greene died of a brain tumour.
Q 07George Clooney's character Doug Ross was a doctor in which specialty?
Paediatrics
Paediatrics. Ross bent the rules for young patients once too often: he resigned after showing a mother how to override the pump dosing painkiller to her terminally ill son.
Q 08After leaving Chicago, George Clooney's Doug Ross turns up in which city in ER's sixth and final seasons?
Seattle
Seattle. In 2009's 'Old Times' Ross and his wife secure a donor kidney there without ever learning that it is flown to Chicago for their old colleague Carter.
Q 09Which ER nurse did Julianna Margulies play?
Carol Hathaway
Carol Hathaway. Her overdose in the pilot was written to kill her off, but the producers changed course and brought her back as a regular.
Q 10Noah Wyle's John Carter starts ER as what?
A third-year medical student
A third-year medical student. The finale closes the circle: Carter, now the veteran, waves Mark Greene's daughter Rachel into a trauma with 'Dr. Greene, you coming?'
Q 11On which holiday does a patient stab Carter and medical student Lucy Knight in ER's sixth season?
Valentine's Day
Valentine's Day. The patient, a law student with schizophrenia, grabs the knife meant for the staff's holiday cake; Carter survives, but Lucy dies after surgery in the next episode.
Q 12Which actress played the ill-fated medical student Lucy Knight?
Kellie Martin
Kellie Martin. She has said her sister died of lupus a week before she started, so working on a hospital set was hard and being written out came as a relief.
Q 13In ER, which country did Carter travel to for relief work, where he met Kem Likasu?
The Congo
Q 21How does Mekhi Phifer's Dr. Greg Pratt die in ER's season 15 premiere?
Injuries from an ambulance explosion
Injuries from an ambulance explosion. The blast ended season 14 as a cliffhanger with either Pratt or nurse Sam Taggart aboard, and the premiere reveals that it was Pratt.
Q 22Laura Innes played which crutch-using ER chief who appeared from season 2 to season 13?
Kerry Weaver
Kerry Weaver. Her limp went unexplained for a decade, until a season 11 episode in which she meets her birth mother revealed a hip defect she had been born with.
Q 23Which diagnosis did ER's Jeanie Boulet, played by Gloria Reuben, at first hide from her bosses?
HIV
The Congo. Carter first went to work beside Luka Kovac, then flew back when Kovac was reported killed, only to find him alive in a refugee camp, half-dead from malaria.
Q 14ER's live season 4 premiere, 'Ambush', was framed as what?
A PBS documentary crew filming the ER
A PBS documentary crew filming the ER. The cast performed the whole episode live twice in one night, once for the East Coast and again three hours later for the West.
Q 15Which five-Emmy ER episode from season 1 sees Greene lose a mother during an emergency delivery?
Love's Labor Lost
Love's Labor Lost. With no obstetrician free, Greene tries to deliver the baby himself; the loss sends him into a depression and before a medical review of his own misdiagnosis.
Q 16Which condition did Greene miss in the pregnant patient in ER's Emmy-winning season 1 delivery episode?
Eclampsia
Greene treated Jodi O'Brien for a urinary tract infection and missed her pre-eclampsia; she seized with eclampsia, and an emergency caesarean could not save her.
Q 17How did ER's Robert Romano lose his arm in season 9's premiere?
A helicopter rotor severed it
A helicopter rotor severed it as Romano bent to grab a chart blown across the rooftop helipad in 'Chaos Theory'; a year later, in 'Freefall', a falling helicopter killed him.
Q 18Which actor played ER's abrasive Dr. Robert Romano?
Paul McCrane
Paul McCrane. He came in for a guest spot that grew, to his surprise, into a regular role, and he went on to direct episodes of the show as well.
Q 19Eriq La Salle played which ambitious ER surgeon, who left in season 8?
Peter Benton
Peter Benton. A custody fight over his deaf son Reese turned on his long hours, so he quit for a job with a fixed schedule, and he came back in season 15 to watch over Carter's transplant.
Q 20Which Croatian actor played ER's Dr. Luka Kovac, whose family was killed in the Balkan war?
Goran Visnjic
Goran Visnjic. He had played Hamlet on the Croatian stage for years, and the show later let Kovac recite 'To be, or not to be' in Croatian.
HIV. Her unfaithful husband Al passed it on, and she kept it from the hospital at first; she left in season 6 after adopting a baby boy who was also HIV-positive.
Q 24Which Full House star joined ER in its later seasons as paramedic-turned-doctor Tony Gates?
John Stamos
John Stamos. He first turned up in 2005 as a paramedic who was quietly finishing medical school, and came back the next season as one of the hospital's new interns.
Q 25Which drama passed ER's record 124 Emmy nominations in 2018?
Game of Thrones
Game of Thrones. It sat out the 2017 Emmys because its seventh season aired too late to qualify, then returned with 22 nominations to pass a total ER had built over fifteen seasons.
Q 26Which actress played ER's Dr. Jing-Mei 'Deb' Chen?
Ming-Na Wen
Ming-Na Wen. She left after season 1, voiced Disney's Mulan while she was away, and returned to the hospital in season 6 as a resident.
Q 27Which actor played desk clerk Jerry Markovic?
Abraham Benrubi
Abraham Benrubi. Jerry's mishaps ran for years: in season 4 he is sent on leave after accidentally firing a weapon in the ER, and in season 13 he survives a bullet that nicks his heart.
Q 28What was the title of ER's two-hour series finale on 2 April 2009?
And in the End...
And in the End... Rod Holcomb, who directed the 1994 pilot, came back to direct it, and its last shot pulls back to show the whole hospital for the first and only time.
Q 29Which Hollywood veteran earned an Emmy nomination for playing a dying woman's husband in the ER finale?
Ernest Borgnine
Ernest Borgnine. His character, Paul Manning, cannot bring himself to let his dying wife go until Dr. Gates gently helps him accept that it is time.
Q 30Which fellow John Wells series crossed over with ER in a 2002 storyline about Susan Lewis's missing niece?
Third Watch
Third Watch. Lewis turns to two of its cops, Bosco and Yokas, who help her track down her drug-addicted sister and the missing girl; the story starts on one show and ends on the other.