George Carlin Trivia
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48 free George Carlin trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This George Carlin trivia quiz covers the whole arc of the comedian's life: the Morningside Heights kid from 'White Harlem' who was thrown out of Cardinal Hayes at 15, the Air Force radar man court-martialled three times, the DJ who teamed up with Jack Burns, the suit-and-tie Tonight Show regular who reinvented himself in 1970 with long hair and FM & AM, and the counterculture star whose 'seven dirty words' got him arrested in Milwaukee and landed a radio station in front of the Supreme Court. It also asks about hosting the first Saturday Night Live, the 14 HBO specials from USC in 1977 to It's Bad for Ya in 2008, the five Grammys, Rufus in Bill & Ted, Mr. Conductor and Thomas the Tank Engine, Fillmore in Cars, the Fox sitcom he was glad to see cancelled, the Las Vegas firing, the wives, the heart attacks, the Mark Twain Prize, George Carlin Way, and the internet hoaxes he spent his last years debunking. Every answer is checked against Wikipedia's article on Carlin, and each explanation adds one further fact. Good for comedy nerds, free-speech classes and pub quizzes.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which New York neighbourhood did George Carlin grow up, calling it 'White Harlem'?
Morningside Heights
Morningside Heights. He and his friends coined the nickname because it sounded tough; the real place was a small Irish enclave beside Columbia University, just up the hill from Harlem.
Q 02What role does Carlin play in Kevin Smith's 1999 religious satire Dogma?
A cardinal
A cardinal. The comic who spent decades mocking organised religion plays Cardinal Glick, who tries to brighten the Church's image by retiring the crucifix for a winking, thumbs-up 'Buddy Christ'.
Q 03Which entertainer did the young Carlin idolise and dream of emulating as a comedic actor?
Danny Kaye
Danny Kaye. Carlin's boyhood plan had three steps: radio, then stand-up, then the movies like Kaye; he later said he dropped the last one on finding he was a better comedian than he had thought.
Q 04In which branch of the US military did Carlin serve, training as a radar technician?
Air Force
Air Force. Carlin called himself a behaviour problem who would not take arbitrary orders, yet the posting launched him: while still in uniform he landed his first job as a radio disc jockey.
Q 05With which radio colleague did Carlin form his first comedy team in Fort Worth in 1959?
Jack Burns
Jack Burns. The pair quit radio in June 1960 to play nightclubs as a double act and split two years later to go solo; when Carlin died, Burns called him a genius he would miss dearly.
Q 06What was the title of Carlin's 1967 debut solo album?
Take-Offs and Put-Ons
Take-Offs and Put-Ons. It caught the clean suit-and-tie act that had made him a television regular; within three years he found that material bland and safe and walked away from it.
Q 07At whose arrest in a Chicago club in 1962 was Carlin also arrested, after refusing to show ID?
Lenny Bruce
Lenny Bruce. By Carlin's own account, police were checking the Gate of Horn audience for anyone underage, and as he was hustled down the stairs he yelled into the bar, where his wife was, that he was going to jail.
Q 08On which late-night host's show did Carlin make more than 100 appearances across three decades?
Johnny Carson
Johnny Carson. Carlin first reached The Tonight Show under Jack Paar as half of a double act, then kept returning to Carson's couch long after he had swapped the suit and tie for a beard and jeans.
Q 09Carlin's most famous routine lists seven words you can never say where?
On television
On television. He argued there are no bad words, only bad thoughts and bad intentions, and the routine made him what he proudly called a footnote in legal history.
Q 10Which comedian co-owned Little David Records, the label that signed Carlin away from RCA?
Flip Wilson
Flip Wilson. His own hit comedy albums launched the label in 1970, and its recordings of Carlin's new counterculture act then brought four gold records in a row.
Q 11Which 1972 album marked Carlin's shift to counterculture comedy and won his first Grammy?
FM & AM
FM & AM. One side kept his old clean television parodies while the other tried out new material on drugs and birth control, and the gamble paid off with a gold record.
Q 12On which album did Carlin first record his 'seven dirty words' routine?
Class Clown
Class Clown. He taped it in Santa Monica in May 1972, but it was a follow-up version on his next album, not this one, that a radio station aired and the Supreme Court ended up judging.
Q 13At which festival was Carlin arrested after performing his seven words routine in July 1972?
Milwaukee's Summerfest
Q 21Which 1987 comedy starring Bette Midler and Shelley Long cast Carlin as Frank Madras?
Outrageous Fortune
Outrageous Fortune. It came almost two decades after his film debut had left him feeling 'totally at sea' as an actor and sent him back to stand-up to wait until he was ready.
Q 22What is the name of the time-travelling mentor Carlin plays in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure?
Rufus
Rufus. He turns up in a time-travelling phone booth because a perfect future society will be founded on the two slackers' band, which means their failing history grade endangers the world to come.
Q 23Whom did Carlin replace as narrator of Thomas & Friends and as Mr. Conductor on Shining Time Station?
Ringo Starr
Milwaukee's Summerfest. Freed on $150 bail, he saw the case thrown out that December by a judge who found he had caused no disturbance, and for a while he called the bit the Milwaukee Seven.
Q 14Which Carlin album's liner notes promised that all messages from the Devil were recorded clearly?
Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics
Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics. The title copies the warning sticker record companies had just adopted, and the notes mock the panic over subliminal messages hidden in records.
Q 15Which radio station's 1973 broadcast of Carlin's 'Filthy Words' ended up before the Supreme Court?
WBAI
WBAI. The only complaint came from a father who said he had heard the afternoon broadcast in his car with his young son; the boy was 15, and the father was active in a decency campaign group.
Q 16How did the Supreme Court rule in 1978 on a radio broadcast of Carlin's 'Filthy Words' routine?
Regulators could limit its airtime
Regulators could limit its airtime. By five votes to four the justices let the FCC keep such material off the air at hours when children might be listening, while leaving it legal late at night.
Q 17Which television show did Carlin host on its very first broadcast on October 11, 1975?
Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live. NBC's new late show chose the counterculture's star comic as its first host, and he later admitted he had been 'loaded on cocaine all week long'.
Q 18Which sport does a classic Carlin routine contrast with football, calling it a 19th-century pastoral game?
Baseball
Baseball. It is played 'on a diamond, in a park', he said, while football is played on a gridiron in a stadium 'sometimes called Soldier Field or War Memorial Stadium'.
Q 19On which album can you hear Carlin learn mid-routine that he has just won his first Grammy?
Occupation: Foole
Occupation: Foole. He was booked to play the concert on Grammy night, so the news reached him on stage: handed a note mid-routine, he swears with delight and tells the crowd.
Q 20Which famous venue hosted the 1982-83 HBO special that marked Carlin's return to the stage?
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall. The comeback followed a lean spell and a heart attack, which he turned into a routine for the show, and he later said the HBO specials saved his career.
Ringo Starr. The producers wanted a stand-up, someone used to conjuring magic in a void, yet on day one Carlin missed having an audience so badly that they sat a teddy bear in the booth with him.
Q 24In which 1991 drama does Carlin play Eddie, the hero's witty gay neighbour in New York?
The Prince of Tides
The Prince of Tides. The script called the part flamboyant, and Carlin said the challenge was to play a gay man acting effeminate without turning him into a cartoon or a stereotype.
Q 25Which 1992 HBO special marked Carlin's turn to the darker, angrier material of his later years?
Jammin' in New York
Jammin' in New York. Broadcast live from the Paramount Theater at Madison Square Garden, it set the pattern for his last sixteen years: less whimsy, more fury at war, politics and a me-first culture.
Q 26What job does Carlin's character hold in his Fox sitcom The George Carlin Show?
New York cab driver
New York cab driver. Carlin said he loved the cast and had a great time as George O'Grady, yet he could not wait to get out, because the sitcom kept him from what he called his true work.
Q 27Which co-developer of The Simpsons created The George Carlin Show with its star?
Sam Simon
Sam Simon. Carlin called him very funny, extremely bright and brilliant, but he disliked writing comedy by committee and later wrote that Simon had been hard to be around.
Q 28Which 1997 collection of routines and one-liners became Carlin's first best-selling book?
Brain Droppings
Brain Droppings. Carlin's own reading of it won a Grammy in 2001, and a Boston Globe columnist was suspended after jokes resembling its lines turned up in his column.
Q 29Carlin said paying off which creditor for nearly twenty years made him a better comic by keeping him touring?
The IRS
The IRS. He blamed the arrears on business affairs neglected during his drug years, and said the long slog on the road to clear them cost him a film career but made him a far better writer.
Q 30Which casino hotel fired Carlin in December 2004 after he turned on his audience?
MGM Grand
MGM Grand. After a bleak set about suicide bombings he turned on the crowd and was fired; weeks later he announced he was entering rehab for wine and Vicodin, saying nobody had told him to.