Ferris Bueller's Day Off Trivia
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97 free Ferris Bueller's Day Off trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 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.
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Q 01Ferris cons his way into the snooty restaurant Chez Quis by claiming to be Abe Froman, the 'King' of what?
Sausage
Sausage: 'Abe Froman, the Sausage King of Chicago' wins him a table for three after some frantic phone trickery, and the title lives on today on T-shirts and in a tribute song.
Q 02What false family news does Ferris's friend phone in to get Sloane excused from school?
Her grandmother has died
Her grandmother has died: Rooney, sure the caller is Ferris, demands to see the body, then has to grovel when Ferris rings in on the other line at that very moment.
Q 03Ferris's girlfriend Sloane is played by which actress?
Mia Sara
Mia Sara: she was only 18, and recalled that Hughes, who wanted an older actress to give Sloane some dignity, almost fell out of his chair when she told him her age.
Q 04Who plays Ferris's resentful sister Jeanie?
Jennifer Grey
Jennifer Grey: she and Matthew Broderick, feuding siblings on screen, quietly became a couple during the shoot.
Q 05Which real-life economist and speechwriter plays the droning economics teacher in Ferris Bueller's Day Off?
Ben Stein
Ben Stein, a former Nixon speechwriter with an economics background, improvised his monotone lecture on the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act; Hughes liked his flat voice and teacherly look.
Q 06Which song does Ferris lip-sync on a parade float before launching into 'Twist and Shout'?
'Danke Schoen'
'Danke Schoen': Broderick had never heard the Wayne Newton hit before the shoot, and practising it for the float is how it ended up in Ferris's shower scene too.
Q 07Who tells Rooney that every clique in the school adores Ferris and thinks he's 'a righteous dude'?
His secretary, Grace
His secretary, Grace: she reels off the sportos, motorheads, geeks and dweebies who love him, and Edie McClurg has said she added 'righteous dude' herself at her audition.
Q 08Made for about $5 million, Ferris Bueller's Day Off grossed roughly how much in US cinemas?
$70 million
$70 million: well over ten times its budget, a hit big enough for NBC to spin it into a sitcom four years later.
Q 09Which John Hughes regular turned down the role of Ferris Bueller?
Anthony Michael Hall
Anthony Michael Hall: after Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club and Weird Science he moved on to other projects, so the part went to an actor new to Hughes's films.
Q 10Which actor turned down Cameron before Alan Ruck was cast?
Emilio Estevez
Emilio Estevez: by Alan Ruck's account he passed to do other things, and Ruck, 29 when he played the teenager, says he wants to kiss him every time they meet.
Q 11Before Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Alan Ruck and Matthew Broderick shared a Broadway stage in which Neil Simon play?
Biloxi Blues
Biloxi Blues ran on Broadway in 1985 with both actors; Cameron's gruff 'Mr. Peterson' phone voice is Ruck's impression of that show's director, Gene Saks.
Q 12What did the Ferris Bueller actor who improvised the droning classroom lecture think the crew's applause meant?
They had learned some economics
They had learned some economics: in fact, as he found out, they were clapping because he was so boring, and the off-the-cuff lecture launched his acting career.
Q 13In Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Cameron's glass house hangs over what?
Q 21Which real broadcaster's voice calls the Cubs game on the pizzeria TV while Rooney searches for Ferris?
Harry Caray
Harry Caray, the Cubs' longtime WGN announcer, calls the game on the pizzeria TV; the broadcast footage is from a June 5, 1985 game, while the stadium scenes were shot that September.
Q 22Which Beatle complained about the brass added to 'Twist and Shout' for Ferris Bueller's Day Off?
Paul McCartney
Paul McCartney objected, saying that if the track had needed brass the Beatles would have added it themselves; Hughes admitted feeling bad about offending him.
Q 23Which band's 'Oh Yeah' became known as 'the Ferris Bueller song'?
Yello
A wooded ravine
A wooded ravine: the steel-and-glass house in Highland Park, Illinois, is cantilevered over the drop, and when it came up for sale in 2009 the listing led with its Ferris Bueller fame.
Q 14Which high school, Hughes's own alma mater, doubled as the fictional Shermer High?
Glenbrook North
Glenbrook North: its address is Shermer Road, Northbrook, and Shermer is the name Hughes gave both this film's high school and the fictional town of his other teen comedies.
Q 15In which state was the exterior of Ferris's own house filmed?
California
California: the Bueller house is in Long Beach, not the Chicago suburb the film pretends, and the boy who grew up in it, Thad Balkman, later presided over a landmark opioid trial.
Q 16In Ferris Bueller's Day Off, what does the vanity plate on the Ferrari spell?
NRVOUS
NRVOUS: the plate suited a car the crew came to hate, since it refused to start on cue and one simple scene needed take after take.
Q 17Which Art Institute painting does Ferris Bueller's friend Cameron stare into?
A Sunday on La Grande Jatte
Cameron fixates on Georges Seurat's pointillist A Sunday on La Grande Jatte; Hughes said the Art Institute had been his refuge as a teenager.
Q 18The museum sequence in Ferris Bueller's Day Off uses an instrumental cover of a song by which band?
The Smiths
The Smiths: the Dream Academy's wordless cover of 'Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want' plays there, yet the film had no soundtrack album for 30 years, because Hughes felt its songs made no sense together.
Q 19Who choreographed Matthew Broderick's parade dance in Ferris Bueller's Day Off?
Kenny Ortega
Kenny Ortega, later the choreographer of Dirty Dancing and director of High School Musical, staged the parade dance; a knee injury from the backyard chase limited what the star could do.
Q 20Which team's jersey does Ferris Bueller's friend Cameron wear, honouring John Hughes's childhood hero?
Detroit Red Wings
The Detroit Red Wings sweater is Gordie Howe's number 9; Hughes, who spent his early childhood in Michigan, idolised Howe.
Yello: once the film had played it over the Ferrari, the two-word Swiss novelty became an inescapable audio cue, reused on screen whenever something had to look irresistible.
Q 24Which actor plays the leather-jacketed delinquent who chats to Jeanie at the police station?
Charlie Sheen
Charlie Sheen: the script gave his nameless burnout a history as Garth Volbeck, a childhood friend Ferris had tried and failed to rescue, but the scenes explaining it were cut.
Q 25Which First Lady quoted Ferris's 'Life moves pretty fast' line in a commencement speech at Wellesley College?
Barbara Bush
Barbara Bush: when the graduates cheered the line, she added that she wasn't going to tell George they had clapped more for Ferris than for him.
Q 26During the parade number in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, what did John Hughes yell at Matthew Broderick through a megaphone?
Make something up
Make something up: Broderick had rehearsed a routine for weeks, then hurt his knee filming the backyard chase, so Hughes threw out the steps and yelled for a total mess instead.
Q 27What did Cindy Pickett and Lyman Ward, who play Ferris's parents, go on to do after the film?
Marry each other
Marry each other: the screen couple became a real one after the shoot and had two children together before they later divorced.
Q 28The 1990 NBC television series Ferris Bueller cast which future sitcom star as Ferris's sister Jeannie?
Jennifer Aniston
Jennifer Aniston: five years later the actress who had played the sister in the film guest-starred opposite her on Friends, so the two Jeanies ended up sharing a scene.
Q 29Which instrument does Ferris squawk on at home before boasting to the camera, 'Never had one lesson'?
Clarinet
Clarinet: Broderick picked it up on set simply because it was there, and Hughes liked the dreadful noise so much that he refused to dub in a better player.
Q 30For which car brand did Matthew Broderick restage Ferris's day off in a 2012 Super Bowl ad?
Honda
Honda: its spot for the CR-V had Broderick calling in sick to a film shoot, after a cryptic teaser left fans hoping, wrongly, that a real sequel was on the way.