50 free Ferris Bueller's Day Off trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
49 free Ferris Bueller's Day Off trivia questions with answers. Ferris Bueller's Day Off is the rare teen comedy that adults still quote every week, and this quiz treats it accordingly. Fifty questions run from the plot everyone remembers (nine sick days, the odometer, the kitchen kick) into how the film was actually made: the week-long screenplay, the 29-year-old playing a 17-year-old, the replica Ferraris the crew hated, and the economics lecture nobody scripted. It starts gently and gets harder, ending with the kind of detail only obsessives know: the licence plate, the deleted pancreas scene, the 2025 Lewis Hamilton short. It works as a solo test or as a ready-made 1980s movie round for a trivia night. Every answer has been checked against the film's Wikipedia and Wikiquote entries, the AFI catalog and the pages on the people involved, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which actor plays Ferris Bueller?
Matthew Broderick
Hughes said he had Broderick in mind while writing and that Jimmy Stewart could have played Ferris at 15; Broderick was 23 when he took the part.
Q 02What is the name of Ferris's hypochondriac best friend?
Cameron Frye
Hughes based him on a high-school friend who felt relaxed only when genuinely ill, because inventing diseases was tiring.
Q 03Ferris's girlfriend Sloane is played by which actress?
Mia Sara
Sara was 18; Hughes had wanted an older actress to give the 17-year-old character dignity and nearly fell out of his chair when she told him her age.
Q 04Who plays Ferris's resentful sister Jeanie?
Jennifer Grey
Grey and Broderick quietly became a couple during filming, and she went on to Dirty Dancing the following year.
Q 05Which real-life economist and speechwriter plays the droning economics teacher?
Ben Stein
Stein said Nixon introduced him to Bill Safire, who led through two more people to Hughes, who liked that he had a flat voice and looked like a teacher.
Q 06Which songs does Ferris lip-sync from a parade float?
'Danke Schoen' and 'Twist and Shout'
Ferris also sings the Wayne Newton number in the shower, an idea Broderick came up with while rehearsing for the parade.
Q 07Which studio released the film, on June 11, 1986?
Paramount
It opened at number two and went on to become the tenth-highest-grossing film of 1986 in the United States.
Q 08Roughly how much did the film gross in the US on its $5M budget?
$70 million
On opening day it took about $1.2 million on 1,296 screens, out-earning Top Gun per screen that day.
Q 09How long did John Hughes take to write the screenplay?
Less than a week
He pitched the storyline to Paramount chief Ned Tanen the day after developing it, with a Writers Guild strike hours away.
Q 10Which actor, a Hughes regular from three earlier films, turned down the role of Ferris?
Anthony Michael Hall
Others considered included Jim Carrey, John Cusack, Johnny Depp, George Clooney and Tom Cruise.
Q 11How old was Alan Ruck when he played 17-year-old Cameron?
29
He was only six years younger than Hughes himself, and said that at 18 he had looked about 12.
Q 12Ruck and Broderick had already acted together in the Broadway production of which Neil Simon play?
Biloxi Blues
Cameron's gruff 'Mr. Peterson' phone voice was an in-joke imitation of their director on that show, Gene Saks.
Q 13Ben Stein's Smoot-Hawley Tariff lecture was improvised. What did Stein think the crew's applause meant?
That they had learned some economics
They were actually applauding because they found him so boring; Stein still called it the best day of his life.
Q 21Who choreographed Broderick's parade dance moves?
Kenny Ortega
Most of the choreography was scrapped after Broderick hurt his knee running through backyards, so Hughes told him to make it a mess.
Q 22Cameron's jersey honours Hughes's childhood hero. Which team is it?
Detroit Red Wings
Gordie Howe sent the number 9 jersey himself; Ruck said Cameron's grandfather in Detroit had taken him to games, a backstory never explained on screen.
Q 23Which real broadcaster's voice calls the Cubs game on the pizzeria TV while Rooney searches for Ferris?
Harry Caray
The televised game is the Braves at Wrigley on June 5, 1985, while the stadium scenes were shot at an Expos game that September.
Q 14Cameron's modernist glass house, where the Ferrari meets its end, is in which Illinois suburb?
Highland Park
Known as the Ben Rose House, it was designed by A. James Speyer, a student of Mies van der Rohe, with a car pavilion added in 1974.
Q 15Which Northbrook school, Hughes's own alma mater, doubled as the fictional Shermer High?
Glenbrook North
Many of the school scenes were shot in Northbrook; the AFI catalog notes Hughes had attended the school himself.
Q 16The exterior of Ferris's own house is not in Illinois at all. In which state was it filmed?
California
It stands at 4160 Country Club Drive in Long Beach and was the childhood home of a future Oklahoma judge.
Q 17What was the real 1961 250 GT Spyder worth at the time of filming?
$350,000
One example sold in 2015 for over 14 million euros, making it one of the most expensive cars ever auctioned.
Q 18What does the vanity plate on the Ferrari spell?
NRVOUS
The other plates in the film are homages to Hughes's earlier work: VCTN, TBC and MMOM for Vacation, The Breakfast Club and Mr. Mom.
Q 19Which painting does Cameron stare into at the Art Institute?
A Sunday on La Grande Jatte
The museum had never allowed a film shoot before; Hughes called it his place of refuge as a teenager.
Q 20The museum sequence is scored with an instrumental cover of a song by which band?
The Smiths
The Dream Academy's version of 'Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want' replaced music that had tested poorly.
Q 24Which Beatle complained about the brass added to 'Twist and Shout' for the film?
Paul McCartney
He said if it had needed brass they would have put it on themselves; Hughes felt bad about offending a Beatle.
Q 25Which Swiss band's 'Oh Yeah' became known as 'the Ferris Bueller song'?
Yello
Yello were unknown in the US at the time; Dieter Meier used the licensing fees to start an investment fortune.
Q 26Charlie Sheen's unnamed delinquent in the police station had a name in the script. What was it?
Garth Volbeck
Cut scenes explained he was an old middle-school friend of Ferris whose life had gone wrong, a warning of what Cameron might become.
Q 27Which US president watched the film at Camp David ten days after its release?
Ronald Reagan
Barbara Bush later quoted Ferris in her 1990 Wellesley commencement speech and joked the crowd clapped more for him than for George.
Q 28What honor did the Library of Congress bestow on the picture in 2014?
Selection for the National Film Registry
It was deemed culturally, historically or aesthetically significant, alongside the usual company of Oscar winners.
Q 29Broderick's only major award nomination for the role was a 1987 Golden Globe in which category?
Best Actor – Musical or Comedy
Essayist Steve Almond argued that Ruck, not Broderick, deserved an Oscar for the film.
Q 30The 1990 NBC television series Ferris Bueller cast which future Friends star as Jeannie?
Jennifer Aniston
The show moved the family to Santa Monica and had Ferris chainsaw a cardboard cutout of Matthew Broderick in its first episode.