Escape from Alcatraz
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
40 free Escape From Alcatraz trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
On a June night in 1962, three men slipped out of America's most feared prison and were never seen again. Seventeen years later, Clint Eastwood turned their story into one of the great prison films, shot inside the real cell house. This quiz covers both the movie and the history behind it: the plot and its unforgettable inmates, the cast and crew, how the production came together, and the tricks and unanswered questions of the real breakout. It suits fans of the film, true-crime readers and anyone who has taken the ferry out to the island and wondered whether the escapees made it.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In Escape from Alcatraz, which real gangster does Litmus claim to be when he meets a new inmate?
Al Capone
Al Capone is the name Litmus gives the newcomer Charley Butts, who is not sharp enough to doubt it. The real mob boss spent years as a prisoner on the island.
Q 02In Escape from Alcatraz, which mess-hall utensils do the inmates use to dig through cell walls?
Spoons
Spoons from the dining hall did the digging in the real 1962 breakout too, helped by discarded saw blades found on the prison grounds.
Q 03What do the escapees in Escape from Alcatraz glue together to build their raft and life preservers?
Raincoats
Raincoats were the real material too: the 1962 escapees gathered more than fifty of them and stitched the seams of their six-by-fourteen-foot raft by hand.
Q 04Escape from Alcatraz reunited Clint Eastwood with the director of which 1971 police thriller?
Dirty Harry
Dirty Harry was the fourth film the pair made together. The prison thriller eight years later was their fifth and last.
Q 05Which future Lethal Weapon star made his film debut as an inmate in Escape from Alcatraz?
Danny Glover
Danny Glover is credited simply as an inmate. Eight years later he became Sergeant Murtaugh opposite Mel Gibson.
Q 06Which TV show tested the 1962 Alcatraz escape in 2003 by paddling a homemade raft across the bay?
MythBusters
MythBusters hosts Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage reached the Marin Headlands on their replica raft and ruled the breakout possible.
Q 07The Anglin brothers of Alcatraz fame claimed the one weapon they ever used in a heist was what?
A toy gun
A toy gun was all they admitted to carrying. Convicted of a 1958 bank raid in Columbia, Alabama, the brothers landed on the island after trying to break out of other prisons.
Q 08Where did the 1962 Alcatraz escapees get the real hair for the dummy heads left in their bunks?
The barbershop floor
The barbershop floor supplied the clippings, and paint from the maintenance shop made the heads lifelike enough that nobody noticed the men were gone until 7 a.m.
Q 09In Escape from Alcatraz, what kind of pet does the dessert-loving inmate Litmus keep?
A mouse
A mouse is his companion. Litmus, played by Frank Ronzio, is among the first prisoners Frank Morris gets to know in the dining hall.
Q 10Which US Attorney General ordered Alcatraz closed in 1963, less than a year after the famous escape?
Robert F. Kennedy
Robert F. Kennedy shut the prison because salt water had eroded its buildings and each inmate cost about three times as much to hold there as in Atlanta.
Q 11In Escape from Alcatraz, which flower does the inmate painter Doc treat as a symbol of freedom?
Chrysanthemum
Chrysanthemum blooms appear in the portraits Doc paints. The flower motif was invented for the film, including the one the warden finds after the breakout.
Q 12In Escape from Alcatraz, which tool does the painter Doc use to cut off his own fingers?
A hatchet
A hatchet in the workshop does it after the warden takes away his painting privileges. The scene echoes inmate Rufe Persful, who cut off four fingers in 1937 hoping for a transfer.
Q 13Where is Frank Morris sent in Escape from Alcatraz after his yard fight with the bully Wolf?
Solitary confinement
Q 21In Escape from Alcatraz, where do the three escapees aim their raft after leaving the prison shore?
Angel Island
Angel Island lay about two miles to the north, and the real escapees planned to land there before heading to the mainland to steal clothes and a car.
Q 22Which actor plays the painter Doc in Escape from Alcatraz and Old Man Marley in Home Alone?
Roberts Blossom
Roberts Blossom was a poet as well as a character actor, with three Obie Awards for his stage work. After retiring he moved to Berkeley, California, to write poetry.
Q 23Which Marvel series revealed that its character Casey is a variant of Alcatraz escapee Frank Morris?
Loki
Solitary confinement in D Block holds both men once the guards break up the fight. Wolf's release from it near the end of the film pushes Morris to bring the breakout forward.
Q 14What title did the future director of Escape from Alcatraz give his 1966 treatment of the story?
The Rock
The Rock, the island's nickname, was the name he gave his version twelve years before filming began. It later titled a 1996 film set there.
Q 15Which craft material do the Escape from Alcatraz inmates sculpt into fake heads for their beds?
Papier-mâché
Papier-mâché heads painted in flesh tones lie on the pillows during the night counts. The film's last shot lingers on the decoy made for Frank Morris.
Q 16Agents who rejected the Escape from Alcatraz script said the story lacked which Hollywood staple?
A love interest
A love interest was one complaint, along with poor dialogue and a belief that the public did not want prison stories. The writer went around them, straight to a filmmaker.
Q 17Why did the Escape from Alcatraz crew shoot most of the real cell-house interiors at night?
To avoid tour groups
To avoid tour groups: the island was already open to visitors, and the production had agreed with park officials not to get in their way.
Q 18What does Frank Morris steal from the warden's desk at their first meeting in Escape from Alcatraz?
A nail clipper
A nail clipper vanishes while the warden boasts that nobody has ever broken out. Morris later uses its file to start chipping at the wall around his cell's air vent.
Q 19Which star of the 1960s TV series The Prisoner plays the warden in Escape from Alcatraz?
Patrick McGoohan
Patrick McGoohan had created that series and played its lead, Number Six. Here he switches sides as a jailer who is never given a name.
Q 20Which director made Escape from Alcatraz, his fifth and final film with Clint Eastwood?
Don Siegel
Don Siegel bought the script himself for $100,000 so the film would be his own production. The move caused a rift with his star, and they never made another picture together.
Loki travels back to the night of the 1962 breakout during the show's time-slipping second season, with the episode's two directors playing the Anglin brothers.
Q 24Which magazine gave Frank Morris the life-vest design used in the 1962 Alcatraz escape?
Popular Mechanics
Popular Mechanics ran the design in its March 1962 issue, three months before the breakout. Morris also read a Sports Illustrated article about channel buoys.
Q 25Which instrument did Frank Morris play to mask the digging noise before the 1962 Alcatraz escape?
An accordion
An accordion did the job during the prison's music hour. A second squeezebox, a concertina taken from another inmate, became the bellows that inflated the raft.
Q 26The 1962 Alcatraz escapees built a makeshift electric drill from the motor of which appliance?
A vacuum cleaner
A vacuum cleaner motor powered the drill, and for months the men hid the widened vents under their sinks behind painted cardboard.
Q 27In Escape from Alcatraz, how does the inmate Litmus die after the warden crushes Doc's flower?
A heart attack
A heart attack strikes Litmus as he lunges at the warden in fury. Frank Morris had placed the bloom on the dining table to honor Doc.
Q 28Which future star of Tremors and The Right Stuff plays John Anglin in Escape from Alcatraz?
Fred Ward
Fred Ward had his first major role here. He went on to play astronaut Gus Grissom and Earl Bassett, the hero of a 1990 monster movie.
Q 29How did Richard Tuggle first see Alcatraz before writing the script for the Clint Eastwood film?
As a tourist
As a tourist in the mid-1970s he became intrigued by the 1962 breakout. After being laid off from a job in health publishing, he spent six months researching and writing the script.
Q 30Which agency took over the hunt for the Alcatraz escapees after the FBI closed its file in 1979?
U.S. Marshals Service
U.S. Marshals Service deputies inherited the evidence in the same year the Clint Eastwood film reached cinemas, after a seventeen-year FBI investigation.