Gilligan's Island Trivia
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128 free Gilligan's Island trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
77 free Gilligan's Island trivia questions with answers. Gilligan's Island ran for only three seasons, yet decades of afternoon reruns turned seven castaways into some of the most recognisable characters on American television. This quiz covers the whole story: the 1963 pilot shot in Hawaii on the weekend President Kennedy was killed, the theme song that originally dismissed two of the leads as "the rest", the boat named as a jab at an FCC chairman, the dream episodes, the parade of guest stars who somehow reached an uncharted island and left without helping, and the three reunion films that finally got everyone home. It starts with questions any casual viewer can answer (Gilligan's shirt colour, where the tour left from, the Skipper's nickname for his first mate) and builds to the details only devoted fans know: which future All in the Family star auditioned for the Skipper, how many boats played the Minnow, and what Natalie Schafer wrote into her contract. Use it for a family quiz night, a classic-TV trivia round, or just to settle an argument about the Professor's real name. Every answer was checked against the show's Wikipedia entries and the cast members' own pages, and the source is shown under each question, so if you think we've got the Howells wrong, you can check.
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Q 01Who created and produced Gilligan's Island?
Sherwood Schwartz
Sherwood Schwartz. He also co-wrote the theme song with George Wyle, and sang the unaired pilot's calypso version himself.
Q 02What is Gilligan's job aboard the castaways' charter boat?
First mate
First mate. The radio bulletin in the opening episode gives every other castaway a full name, but he is only "a young first mate named Gilligan".
Q 03What is the name of the charter boat the castaways set out on?
S.S. Minnow
S.S. Minnow. Four boats played it: one was rented for the opening credits, one was towed to a beach to be the wreck, and one was built at the studio for season two.
Q 04According to the Gilligan's Island theme song, how long was the tour meant to last?
Three hours
Three hours. The unaired pilot had a different calypso theme, which called the trip "a six-hour ride" instead.
Q 05From which port did the castaways' fateful trip depart?
Honolulu
Honolulu. The production also rented the boat seen leaving harbour in the opening credits there.
Q 06The unaired Gilligan's Island pilot resurfaced as flashbacks in an episode marking which holiday?
Christmas
Christmas. Three roles had been recast, so the pilot could not air whole; pieces of it became flashbacks, and the full film went unbroadcast until 1992.
Q 07Gilligan's Island's second season was its first made in what?
Colour
Colour. The first year had been a Saturday hit in black and white, and the network moved it to Thursdays for the second.
Q 08The castaways' boat was named as a jab at a man in which job?
FCC chairman
FCC chairman Newton Minow had attacked the quality of American television in 1961, so the show's creator put his name on a doomed little boat.
Q 09The 1961 speech that inspired the name of the castaways' boat famously called television a what?
Vast wasteland
Vast wasteland. The speaker dared broadcasters to watch their own stations for a whole day with no book, newspaper or ratings sheet to distract them.
Q 10What is the Skipper's real name?
Jonas Grumby
Jonas Grumby. A radio bulletin about the missing boat gives the name early on, and after that it is hardly spoken again; to everyone on the island he is just Skipper.
Q 11What is the Professor's real name?
Roy Hinkley
Roy Hinkley. When he once reeled off his string of university degrees, Mr. Howell replied that it sounded like a recipe for alphabet soup.
Q 12Mary Ann Summers is a farm girl from which state?
Kansas
Kansas. A radio bulletin in the first episode fills in the rest: before the trip she worked at the general store in the town of Winfield.
Q 13How did Mary Ann come to be aboard the castaways' boat tour?
She won the trip as a prize
She won the trip as a prize, a lottery in some accounts and a radio contest in others. On the island she posts bottled letters to a sweetheart back home, and when news comes that he has married she admits the romance was only for show.
Q 21Which actor was offered the role of Gilligan first and turned it down?
Jerry Van Dyke
Jerry Van Dyke. Dick Van Dyke's younger brother landed a sitcom of his own a year later instead, and it was cancelled after a single season.
Q 22The actor who passed on Gilligan chose to star in which notoriously bad sitcom instead?
My Mother the Car
My Mother the Car. Its hero is a lawyer whose late mother is reincarnated as an antique car, a premise that lasted a single season.
Q 23Which future 1970s sitcom star auditioned to play the Skipper on Gilligan's Island but lost out?
Carroll O'Connor
Carroll O'Connor. The future Archie Bunker was passed over for Alan Hale Jr., who hitchhiked off a Western film set in Utah to catch a flight to the studio.
Q 14Mrs. Howell is always called Lovey, but what is her actual first name?
Eunice
Eunice. Her husband never calls her anything but Lovey, and almost everyone else says Mrs. Howell, so the real name barely registers.
Q 15What was Mrs. Howell's maiden name?
Wentworth
Wentworth. She takes the name back in a season-two episode, after the radio reports that the minister who married the Howells was a fraud.
Q 16What is the surname of Ginger, the Hollywood actress among the castaways?
Grant
Grant. The first radio bulletin explains her wardrobe: Ginger boarded straight from a nightclub singing engagement, still in the evening dress from her last performance.
Q 17What colour is the shirt Gilligan wears in nearly every episode?
Red
Red. The rugby shirt is a hand-me-down of sorts: in one episode Gilligan says it first belonged to his brother.
Q 18What does the Skipper habitually call Gilligan?
Little Buddy
Little Buddy. Alan Hale Jr. had used it on screen before: in a 1962 Andy Griffith Show episode his character gives the same nickname to Barney Fife.
Q 19The slapstick between the Skipper and Gilligan was modelled on which comedy duo?
Laurel and Hardy
Laurel and Hardy. Alan Hale Jr.'s exasperated looks straight into the camera were borrowed from Oliver Hardy, who gave the audience the same look.
Q 20Before Gilligan's Island, its star was famous for playing which beatnik character?
Maynard G. Krebs
Maynard G. Krebs. The show's creator nearly passed on the actor: he wrote that he could not connect the bearded beatnik of Dobie Gillis with his image of Gilligan.
Q 24In which service did Skipper actor Alan Hale Jr. serve during World War II?
The Coast Guard
The Coast Guard. His father, of the same name, was a busy character actor, and he dropped the Junior from his own name after his father died in 1950.
Q 25What was the name of the Los Angeles seafood restaurant that Alan Hale Jr. co-owned in the 1970s?
The Lobster Barrel
The Lobster Barrel. It stood on La Cienega Boulevard, and Hale often worked the room himself, greeting diners in his skipper's cap.
Q 26Which Gilligan's Island actor was shot down in a bomber over the Philippines during World War II?
Russell Johnson
Russell Johnson. The future Professor was a B-25 bombardier who earned a Purple Heart when his plane went down in 1945, and the GI Bill then paid for his acting school.
Q 27Which anthology series had already cast the future Professor of Gilligan's Island as a professor with a time machine?
The Twilight Zone
The Twilight Zone. His professor's time machine plucks a murderer from an 1880 hanging, and in a second episode his character goes back to try to stop Lincoln's assassination.
Q 28Which state pageant title did the actress who played Mary Ann hold before she was cast?
Miss Nevada
Miss Nevada. The Reno native took time off from college to win the crown, then went to Atlantic City to compete for Miss America.
Q 29Which future star was among the competition for the part of Mary Ann?
Raquel Welch
Raquel Welch. She lost the wholesome farm-girl part, and two years later a poster for One Million Years B.C. made her an international sex symbol.
Q 30What did the actress who played Ginger walk away from in 1964 to join Gilligan's Island?
A Broadway musical
A Broadway musical. She left Fade Out - Fade In, a new show starring Carol Burnett, and called the television offer too good to pass up.