Ghostbusters Trivia
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116 free Ghostbusters trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
62 free Ghostbusters trivia questions with answers. Forty years after four Columbia parapsychologists set up shop in a Tribeca firehouse, Ghostbusters is still one of the most quoted comedies ever made. This quiz runs the whole franchise: the 1984 original, Ghostbusters II, the 2016 reboot, Afterlife and Frozen Empire, plus The Real Ghostbusters cartoon and Ray Parker Jr.'s theme song. The questions start friendly (who directed the first film, what the creature in Dana's fridge says) and get progressively nastier: what the Ecto-1 siren was recorded from, which household gadget became the PKE meter, and how much Columbia paid just to use the word Ghostbusters. There is plenty of behind-the-scenes lore for the kind of fan who owns a proton pack. Every answer has been checked against the film's production history and the published record and carries a linked source, so if your friends dispute a result you can settle it on the spot. Perfect for a Halloween movie night, a pub quiz round, or proving once and for all that you should not have crossed the streams.
30 of 116 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who directed the original 1984 Ghostbusters?
Ivan Reitman
Ivan Reitman had already directed Bill Murray in Meatballs and Stripes, and Aykroyd called him the logical choice; he also voiced several of the film's ghosts himself.
Q 02Dan Aykroyd originally wrote Ghostbusters as a vehicle for himself and which Saturday Night Live castmate?
John Belushi
John Belushi died in March 1982 while the script was still being written; the phone call came as Aykroyd typed one of his friend's lines, and Bill Murray later took the part.
Q 03Which real New York City firehouse served as the exterior of the Ghostbusters' headquarters?
Hook & Ladder Company 8
Hook & Ladder Company 8 in Tribeca was a working fire station, so only the exterior was used; the interiors were shot in a decommissioned firehouse in downtown Los Angeles.
Q 04The Ecto-1 is a converted 1959 Miller-Meteor built on a chassis from which carmaker?
Cadillac
Cadillac built the chassis; early scripts had the car painted black with purple strobes, until the cinematographer pointed out that a dark car would vanish in the night scenes.
Q 05What did the crew nickname the Sedgewick Hotel's gluttonous green ghost during filming?
Onionhead
Onionhead is the name in the closing credits, where his sculptor is listed; the ghost is never named on screen, and the name Slimer only arrived with the 1986 cartoon.
Q 06Who wrote and performed the Ghostbusters theme song?
Ray Parker Jr.
Ray Parker Jr. had only days and had to get the title into the lyrics; a cheap late-night TV commercial gave him the idea of framing the song as an ad with a crowd shouting the name back.
Q 07Which musician sued over the Ghostbusters theme, claiming it copied one of his hits?
Huey Lewis
Huey Lewis said it copied I Want a New Drug; he had turned down the offer to write the theme himself, and the filmmakers had cut a montage to his song as a temp track.
Q 08The Ghostbusters theme lost the Best Original Song Academy Award to which Stevie Wonder hit?
I Just Called to Say I Love You
I Just Called to Say I Love You, from The Woman in Red, beat it at the Golden Globes too, although the Ghostbusters theme turned the tables at the BAFTAs.
Q 09Which Prince hit did the Ghostbusters theme knock off No. 1 in 1984?
When Doves Cry
When Doves Cry topped the chart with no bass line at all: Prince had recorded one, then took it out to get a less conventional sound.
Q 10Who composed the orchestral score for the original 1984 Ghostbusters?
Elmer Bernstein
Elmer Bernstein had already scored the director's Meatballs and Stripes, and his son Peter helped orchestrate this one; what he never liked was the pop song Magic being used in the film.
Q 11Which unusual electronic instrument gives the 1984 score its eerie wail?
Ondes Martenot
Ondes Martenot players were so scarce that one had to be brought over from England; Cynthia Millar played it on the 1984 score and came back for Afterlife in 2021.
Q 12When the Marshmallow Man explodes, what was the goo that rains down on the crowd really made of?
Shaving cream
Shaving cream: the actor due to stand under the full load asked for a test, it flattened a stuntman, and the amount was cut; after hours of takes it still left some of the cast with rashes.
Q 13What became of many of the foam Marshmallow Man suits built for the 1984 Ghostbusters shoot?
Burned on camera
Q 21Who plays Janine Melnitz, the Ghostbusters' deadpan secretary?
Annie Potts
Annie Potts had only dropped by the set when the director put her straight into a scene, so she took the thick prescription glasses off a wardrobe dresser's face and was stuck with them for the rest of the shoot.
Q 22Gozer was originally written as a business-suited architect to be played by which comic actor?
Paul Reubens
Paul Reubens passed, and the kindly man in a suit became a woman instead, played by Yugoslav model Slavitza Jovan with another actress dubbing over her strong accent.
Q 23Columbia boss Frank Price says which rival studio blocked the title 'Ghostbusters', until he left to run it himself?
Universal
Burned on camera: the suits cost tens of thousands of dollars each and went up in flames with a stuntman inside, and because the foam was toxic the wearer breathed from a separate air supply.
Q 14Whose childhood memory of a marshmallow mascot gives Gozer its giant final form?
Ray Stantz
Ray Stantz, told to choose the form of the destructor, tries to think of the most harmless thing he loved as a child, and a towering marshmallow sailor duly arrives to flatten the city.
Q 15What single word does the creature in Dana's refrigerator utter?
Zuul
Zuul is a demigod who serves Gozer as Gatekeeper; once it takes over Dana's body, Venkman asks to speak to her and is told there is no Dana, only Zuul.
Q 16After his possession, Louis Tully insists he is which entity?
Vinz Clortho, the Keymaster
Vinz Clortho, the Keymaster, first mistakes a Central Park carriage horse for the Gatekeeper; police then deliver him to Egon, who tries to keep him away from the possessed Dana.
Q 17Who plays Dana's nerdy neighbour Louis Tully?
Rick Moranis
Rick Moranis jumped at the role as soon as the first choice dropped out, then came up with the idea of making Louis an accountant and improvised much of his party-scene patter.
Q 18Which comedian was first offered Louis Tully and pitched playing him with a German accent and dogs in tow?
John Candy
John Candy never warmed to the part, and the filmmakers felt the film had quite enough dogs already; the early storyboards had even been drawn to look like him.
Q 19Which actor plays the EPA inspector who shuts down the Ghostbusters' containment unit?
William Atherton
William Atherton played Walter Peck without a wink and paid for it: for years strangers shouted the film's insult at him in the street, once from busloads of children on Seventh Avenue.
Q 20Sigourney Weaver changed Dana Barrett's profession from a model to what?
A cellist
A cellist, because Weaver felt Dana could be uptight and a bit strict but plainly had a soul if she played the cello; at her audition she had growled, barked and gnawed the director's sofa cushions.
Universal, by Price's account, controlled the title and let it go once he arrived as its new chief; until then the crew had been filming 300 extras chanting a name they did not own.
Q 24Why did Columbia's promised 1% for the Ghostbusters title never pay out?
No profit on paper
No profit on paper: the title cost Columbia $500,000 plus 1%, but Hollywood accounting meant one of the biggest hits of 1984 never officially had any profits to share.
Q 25Which film ended Ghostbusters' seven-week run at No. 1?
Purple Rain
Purple Rain opened in late July and knocked it off the top, but Ghostbusters won the spot back within a fortnight and was still in the top two a month later.
Q 26Which December release narrowly edged Ghostbusters as the highest-grossing film of 1984 in North America?
Beverly Hills Cop
Beverly Hills Cop arrived that December and finished just ahead, until the August 1985 reissue carried Ghostbusters back past it as the decade's biggest comedy.
Q 27Prop makers gutted a handheld shoe polisher and packed it with lights to create which Ghostbusters gadget?
The PKE meter
The PKE meter began life as an Iona SP-1 shoe polisher, gutted and refitted with lights and electronics; the team's gear was meant to look home-made and off-the-shelf rather than sleek.
Q 28The look of the Ghostbusters' proton packs was based on which piece of military equipment?
A flamethrower
A flamethrower remembered from military magazines was designer Stephen Dane's starting point; the finished fibreglass packs sat on army surplus frames and strained the actors' backs, so lighter ones were made for action scenes.
Q 29Which Swedish screen legend provided the dubbed voice of Vigo the Carpathian in Ghostbusters II?
Max von Sydow
Max von Sydow recorded every one of Vigo's lines in a single day, and his voice replaced that of Wilhelm von Homburg, the German actor who plays the tyrant on screen.
Q 30In Ghostbusters II, the villain Vigo is imprisoned inside what?
A painting
A painting sent for restoration at the museum where Dana works holds the 16th-century tyrant, who needs a child to possess so that he can step out of it and rule again.