Jaws
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94 free Jaws trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
25 free Jaws trivia questions with answers. Jaws was supposed to take 55 days to shoot. It took 159, the mechanical shark kept sinking, and the film ended up inventing the summer blockbuster anyway. This quiz runs 94 questions on the cast, the characters, the score, the Oscars, the Martha's Vineyard locations and the real wartime disaster behind Quint's best scene. Every answer is tied to a cited source. You're gonna need a bigger score.
30 of 94 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who directed Jaws?
Steven Spielberg
Jaws was only Spielberg's second theatrical feature, and its success made him one of the most powerful directors in Hollywood.
Q 02The film was adapted from a 1974 novel by which author?
Peter Benchley
Benchley's novel was a bestseller before the film existed. He later regretted how it shaped public fear of sharks.
Q 03What is the name of the fictional New England beach town terrorised in the film?
Amity Island
Amity Island is the fictional resort town of Benchley's novel and the film; the mayor's line is that Amity, as you know, means friendship.
Q 04What is the name of the police chief played by Roy Scheider?
Martin Brody
Brody is a transplanted city cop who is afraid of the water — a detail that pays off in the final act.
Q 05What does Richard Dreyfuss's character Matt Hooper do for a living?
Marine biologist
Hooper is a marine biologist from the Oceanographic Institute, a wealthy young specialist whose modern equipment puts him at odds with Quint's old-school methods.
Q 06What is the name of the boat the three men take out to hunt the shark?
Orca
The Orca is Quint's own vessel, named after the one animal a great white genuinely fears.
Q 07What nickname did the Jaws crew give the three malfunctioning mechanical sharks?
Bruce
Bruce: three full-size pneumatic props were built, and all of them broke down in salt water, forcing Spielberg to keep the shark off screen, which made the film scarier.
Q 08Amity's officials refuse to close the beaches ahead of which holiday weekend?
The Fourth of July
The Fourth of July weekend is Amity's make-or-break payday, so the mayor keeps the beaches open for it, and the shark strikes the crowded holiday beach.
Q 09What is the surname of the mayor who insists on keeping the beaches open?
Vaughn
Mayor Larry Vaughn, played by Murray Hamilton, spends the film in an anchor-print blazer denying there is a problem.
Q 10What is the name of the young woman killed in the film's opening scene?
Chrissie Watkins
Susan Backlinie played Chrissie, whose night swim opens the film. Alex Kintner is the boy killed on the beach soon after.
Q 11Jaws won three Academy Awards: Best Sound, Best Original Score and which other?
Best Film Editing
Verna Fields took the editing award. Her cutting is a large part of why the unseen shark works.
Q 12Which film beat Jaws to Best Picture at the 1976 Academy Awards?
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest swept the 'Big Five' at the 48th Academy Awards in March 1976: Picture, Director (Milos Forman), Actor, Actress and Adapted Screenplay.
Q 13Who composed the film's score, including its two-note shark motif?
John Williams
Q 21In Quint's monologue, how many men does he say came out of the water?
316
Quint says 316 men came out of the water, the real survivor count, after telling Brody and Hooper that eleven hundred went in and the sharks took the rest.
Q 22The novel's author turns up on screen in the film playing what?
A news reporter on the beach
Benchley's cameo is as the television news reporter delivering a beach report to camera in the middle of the holiday media scrum on Amity's sand.
Q 23What is the scientific name of the shark species the film depicts?
Carcharodon carcharias
Carcharodon carcharias is the great white shark. The film and novel turned it into cinema's most feared animal, which Benchley spent his later years trying to undo.
John Williams won the Oscar, a Golden Globe and a Grammy for it; Spielberg reportedly laughed when he first heard the theme.
Q 14The film's shark motif is an ostinato alternating between which two notes?
E and F
The motif alternates E and F, a semitone apart, played low in the basses and speeding up as the shark closes in.
Q 15Jaws was the highest-grossing film in history until which 1977 release passed it?
Star Wars
Star Wars overtook Jaws in 1977 after roughly two years at the top; between them the two films taught studios the summer wide-release model.
Q 16Principal photography was scheduled for 55 days. How many days did it actually run?
159
Shooting at sea nearly tripled the schedule and the budget, and the crew took to calling the production 'Flaws'.
Q 17Which Massachusetts island stood in for the film's fictional setting?
Martha's Vineyard
Martha's Vineyard's shallow, sandy-bottomed sound made the shark rigging just about possible; onlookers watched filming in Edgartown in 1974.
Q 18Which publishing house commissioned Benchley to write the novel back in 1971?
Doubleday
Doubleday commissioned the book while Benchley was freelancing as a journalist. Bantam later paid $575,000 for the paperback rights.
Q 19Quint's big monologue reveals he survived the wartime sinking of which US Navy ship?
USS Indianapolis
Quint says he survived the USS Indianapolis, torpedoed by a Japanese submarine in July 1945 after delivering parts of the Hiroshima bomb, leaving the crew adrift among sharks for days.
Q 20The real cruiser behind Quint's monologue was torpedoed in July 1945 by which Japanese submarine?
I-58
Submarine I-58, under Mochitsura Hashimoto, fired two torpedoes just after midnight on 30 July 1945; the cruiser sank in about twelve minutes.
Q 24In which year was Jaws selected for the United States National Film Registry?
2001
Jaws entered the National Film Registry in 2001, the Library of Congress's list of films judged culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.
Q 25The mechanical sharks were nicknamed after which person in the director's life?
His lawyer
Bruce Ramer was the director's lawyer, and the name stuck to every prop shark that followed.
Q 26Which song do Quint, Hooper and Brody sing together aboard Quint's boat?
Show Me the Way to Go Home
All three sing 'Show Me the Way to Go Home' in the cabin after comparing scars, the last calm moment before the shark rams the hull.
Q 27What does Quint do when Brody tries to radio the Coast Guard for help?
Smashes the radio with a bat
Quint smashes the radio with a bat to stop Brody calling the Coast Guard, refusing outside help and leaving the three men alone with the shark.
Q 28Producer David Brown put the budget at $4 million, so what did Jaws actually cost?
$9M
$9M in the end, about $3 million of it on the troublesome effects alone.
Q 29What was stirred into a swimming pool to make its water look like murky sea?
Powdered milk
Powdered milk was stirred into a backyard swimming pool to cloud the water for the reshoot of the wrecked-boat scene, and a tarpaulin kept the light out.
Q 30What does Quint scrape down a chalkboard to silence the Amity town meeting?
His fingernails
Quint drags his fingernails down the chalkboard to silence the town meeting, then offers to catch the shark for a fee.