Jaws
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143 free Jaws trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 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 143 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.
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Q 01Which line does Chief Brody say after first seeing the shark up close?
You're gonna need a bigger boat
"You're gonna need a bigger boat" was ad-libbed by Roy Scheider; test audiences screamed so loudly at the shark that the line had to be made louder in the edit.
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 do two boys use to cause a false shark alarm at the crowded Amity beach?
A cardboard fin
A cardboard fin: the two boys' snorkel prank empties the water in a panic, and while everyone is watching them the real shark slips into the nearby estuary.
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
Orca is Quint's own boat, named after the one sea predator known to hunt great white sharks, a fitting choice for a skipper obsessed with killing them.
Q 07What nickname did the Jaws crew give the three malfunctioning mechanical sharks?
Bruce
Bruce: three full-size pneumatic props were built, and salt water kept breaking them, so Spielberg mostly hinted at the shark with a fin and music instead of showing it.
Q 08Amity's officials refuse to close the beaches ahead of which holiday weekend?
The Fourth of July
The Fourth of July is Amity's biggest payday, so the mayor keeps the beaches open, and on the holiday itself the shark swims into the estuary beside the packed beach.
Q 09What is the surname of the mayor who insists on keeping the beaches open?
Vaughn
Vaughn, the mayor in the anchor-print blazer, plays down each attack until the shark nearly reaches Brody's son; shaken, he then signs the paper hiring Quint.
Q 10What is the name of the young woman killed in the opening scene of Jaws?
Chrissie Watkins
Chrissie Watkins is dragged under during a night swim; stuntwoman Susan Backlinie was strapped into a harness and yanked about by cables to fake the attack.
Q 11Jaws won three Academy Awards: Best Sound, Best Original Score and which other?
Best Film Editing
Best Film Editing went to the film's editor, and within a year Universal had made her a vice-president, one of the first women to reach that level at a major studio.
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 took all five top Oscars in 1976, so Jaws, the year's biggest hit, went home with three craft awards and no Best Picture.
Q 13Who composed the score for Jaws, including its two-note shark motif?
John Williams
Q 21In his monologue, Quint says he will never again put on what?
A life jacket
A life jacket: Quint says the moment he was most frightened was waiting his turn to be picked up by the rescue seaplane.
Q 22Jaws author Peter Benchley turns up on screen in the film playing what?
A news reporter on the beach
A news reporter on the beach: Benchley, once a Washington Post reporter, filmed the cameo while his own script drafts were being rewritten by others day by day.
Q 23What does Hooper pull from the stomach of the shark the Amity fishermen caught?
A Louisiana licence plate
John Williams won an Oscar for the score; when he first played the two notes on a piano, Spielberg laughed, thinking it was a joke.
Q 14Which camera trick shows Brody's shock on the beach as the Kintner boy is attacked?
A dolly zoom
A dolly zoom: the camera tracks in while the lens zooms out, so the beach seems to rush away behind Brody, a trick first used in Hitchcock's Vertigo.
Q 15Jaws was the highest-grossing film in history until which 1977 release passed it?
Star Wars
Star Wars overtook Jaws in 1977 after about two years at the top, but Spielberg took the record back in 1983 with E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.
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 Amity in the filming of Jaws?
Martha's Vineyard
Martha's Vineyard won out partly because the sea stays shallow far from shore, so the mechanical sharks could work on the seabed out of sight of land.
Q 18Peter Benchley, who wrote the novel Jaws, spent his later years campaigning for what?
Shark conservation
Shark conservation: Benchley said he could not in good conscience write Jaws today, and he became a full-time ocean conservationist, writing and speaking up for sharks.
Q 19Quint's big monologue reveals he survived the wartime sinking of which US Navy ship?
USS Indianapolis
USS Indianapolis: the real cruiser was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine in July 1945, and her survivors drifted for days among sharks before a patrol plane happened to spot them.
Q 20In Jaws, Quint says his warship had just delivered what?
The Hiroshima bomb
The Hiroshima bomb: the real cruiser had carried parts of the weapon to Tinian only days before she was sunk, and Quint ends his story with a flat 'Anyway, we delivered the bomb.'
A Louisiana licence plate turns up with some fish and a tin can but no human remains, so Hooper knows the killer is still at large, and Brody asks whether it ate a car.
Q 24Universal began shooting Jaws in May 1974 in the hope of finishing before what?
An actors' strike
An actors' strike: the union's contract with the studios ran out at the end of June, but the troubled shoot ran on for months past that deadline anyway.
Q 25The mechanical sharks in Jaws were nicknamed after which person in Steven Spielberg's life?
His lawyer
His lawyer: Spielberg's attorney lent his first name to all three props, which broke down so often that the shark is not seen in full until over an hour into the film.
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, then burns out the engine racing for the shallows, which leaves the sinking boat with no way to call for help.
Q 28Before taking the police chief's job in Amity, where did Martin Brody work as a cop?
New York
New York: Brody tells Hooper he left because of the crime, saying that in Amity one man can make a difference, and then finds the town will not let him close its beaches.
Q 29What did the Jaws crew pour into a swimming pool so its water looked like murky sea?
Milk
Milk clouded the clear, chlorinated pool so that a reshot scare with a sunken boat would match the murky water filmed at sea months earlier.
Q 30How does Quint silence the noisy Amity town meeting in Jaws?
Scrapes a blackboard
Scrapes a blackboard: Quint drags his fingernails down it, names his price for killing the shark, and is told only that the town will take his offer under advisement.