John Hughes Trivia
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49 free John Hughes trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
This John Hughes trivia quiz covers the filmmaker who defined the 1980s teen movie and then wrote the biggest live-action family comedy of all time. It runs from his days selling jokes to Rodney Dangerfield and writing for National Lampoon, through the run of Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Weird Science, Pretty in Pink and Ferris Bueller's Day Off, to Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Uncle Buck, Christmas Vacation and Home Alone, and on to the pseudonymous scripts he wrote after leaving Hollywood for Chicago. Expect questions on the Shermer detention essay, the Ferrari that was not supposed to leave the garage, the test audience that changed Pretty in Pink, the Gordie Howe jersey, the nine-day Home Alone draft, the Edmond Dantes credit and the New York magazine article that gave the Brat Pack its name. About a third of the questions are easy for anyone who grew up on these films, a third need a good memory for casts and dates, and the rest reward the completists who know his last directing credit and his first. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Hughes and his films before publishing, and each question carries the sentence that establishes it. If you think one is wrong, use the report button and we will look again.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which 1984 film was John Hughes's directorial debut?
Sixteen Candles
Sixteen Candles jumped the line: Hughes wrote it in a two-day burst while preparing The Breakfast Club, a script he had finished first.
Q 02In which Chicago suburb did John Hughes spend his teenage years?
Northbrook
Northbrook is where the family settled after Hughes's father found work there selling roofing materials.
Q 03Before films, Hughes sold jokes to which comedian, among others?
Rodney Dangerfield
Rodney Dangerfield was one of the comics Hughes pestered with typed-up gags, and the jokes helped him land an advertising job in Chicago.
Q 04Which gangster film does Kevin McCallister watch while home alone, scaring off a delivery man?
Angels with Filthy Souls
Angels with Filthy Souls never existed: the one-minute black-and-white noir was shot for Home Alone in a single day, before filming proper began.
Q 05In which country has Home Alone on TV become a Christmas tradition?
Poland
Poland's Polsat left Home Alone out of its 2010 Christmas schedule, then put it back after tens of thousands of fans protested on Facebook.
Q 06Which actor starred as the stay-at-home dad in Mr. Mom, written by Hughes in 1983?
Michael Keaton
Michael Keaton's Mr. Mom was a 1983 hit, but Hughes had not enjoyed making it and came away eager to direct his own scripts.
Q 07In his 1984 debut film, Hughes's heroine Samantha Baker has a crush on which high school senior?
Jake Ryan
Jake Ryan is the senior Sam pines for on the 16th birthday her whole family forgets in the rush of her sister's wedding.
Q 08What does Vernon order The Breakfast Club students to write?
A 1,000-word essay on who they think they are
A 1,000-word essay on who they think they are is the task, but by day's end the five have confessed secrets and found common ground.
Q 09The Breakfast Club is set in which fictional Illinois town that recurs across Hughes's films?
Shermer
Shermer, Illinois, was Hughes's homage to the Chicago suburbs where he grew up, and he filmed its scenes at real schools there.
Q 10Which Scottish band recorded "Don't You (Forget About Me)" for The Breakfast Club?
Simple Minds
Simple Minds turned the song down at first and only agreed after other acts passed, and it became the band's only US No. 1.
Q 11Which new wave band wrote and performed the title song of Weird Science?
Oingo Boingo
Oingo Boingo's frontman Danny Elfman wrote the song in his car while driving home, right after John Hughes called asking for one.
Q 12Ferris borrows which prized car belonging to Cameron's father?
A 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder
A 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder was the star car, but the wide shots used replicas, and one went flying out the window.
Q 13Which two songs does Ferris lip-sync on a parade float in Chicago?
Danke Schoen and Twist and Shout
Q 21Which Breakfast Club star did the 1985 magazine story that named the 'Brat Pack' call its unofficial president?
Emilio Estevez
Emilio Estevez was also dubbed the group's unofficial treasurer, because he usually picked up the check when they went out.
Q 22Which two actors star as the mismatched travellers in Planes, Trains and Automobiles?
Steve Martin and John Candy
Steve Martin and John Candy starred in the film where Hughes, famous for teen comedies, told a story about grown-ups for a change.
Q 23Neal Page in Planes, Trains and Automobiles is trying to get home to Chicago in time for which holiday?
Thanksgiving
Danke Schoen and Twist and Shout were filmed during a real Chicago parade one weekend, with the close-ups shot the following weekend.
Q 14Cameron's Red Wings jersey in Ferris Bueller's Day Off had belonged to which player, a hero of Hughes?
Gordie Howe
Gordie Howe was the Red Wings hero of Hughes's Michigan boyhood, which is why Chicago kid Cameron wears his jersey.
Q 15Alan Ruck was cast as Cameron after Hughes remembered his audition for which Breakfast Club role?
Bender
Bender went to Judd Nelson, but Hughes remembered Ruck and cast him, at 29, as the 17-year-old Cameron.
Q 16Ben Stein's monotone lecture in Ferris Bueller's Day Off concerns which piece of legislation?
The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act
The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act lecture was largely Ben Stein's ad-lib: Hughes told him to teach economics off the cuff, and Stein drew on his own training.
Q 17Pretty in Pink takes its title from a song by which band?
The Psychedelic Furs
The Psychedelic Furs song was played for Hughes by his leading lady, and he wrote the screenplay around it.
Q 18Why was Pretty in Pink reshot so that Andie does not end up with Duckie?
Test audiences booed the original ending
Test audiences booed the original ending, so Hughes had a girl at the prom show interest in Duckie, to protect his character.
Q 19Who directed Some Kind of Wonderful and Pretty in Pink, both written by Hughes?
Howard Deutch
Howard Deutch fell for Lea Thompson, the star of Some Kind of Wonderful, and they later married.
Q 20Which actress became a 1980s teen idol through three John Hughes films?
Molly Ringwald
Molly Ringwald later turned down Hughes's Some Kind of Wonderful, feeling it was too much like the films she had already made with him.
Thanksgiving travel chaos was personal: a disastrous holiday trip Hughes took as an advertising man inspired the film.
Q 24Which 1988 Hughes-directed film stars Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth McGovern as newlyweds?
She's Having a Baby
She's Having a Baby's birth scene plays This Woman's Work, a song Kate Bush wrote specially for that sequence of the film.
Q 25Which future Oscar nominee debuted on film in The Great Outdoors (1988)?
Annette Bening
Annette Bening later co-starred with Warren Beatty in Bugsy, and the two married in 1992.
Q 26In Hughes's 1989 comedy, the bachelor Buck is called in to look after whose children?
His brother's
His brother's three kids land with Buck after their grandfather has a heart attack and their parents rush away.
Q 27Hughes suggested Macaulay Culkin for Home Alone because of his work on which earlier Hughes film?
Uncle Buck
Uncle Buck showed Hughes what young Culkin could do, and Hughes wrote Home Alone's lead role specifically for him.
Q 28Which actor played burglar Harry, one of the two Wet Bandits in Home Alone?
Joe Pesci
Joe Pesci, best known for tough-guy roles, kept slipping into swearing on set, a problem with young Macaulay Culkin around.
Q 29Where is the McCallister family headed when they leave Kevin behind in Home Alone?
Paris
Paris was only a name on screen: the family's scenes at Paris Orly Airport were filmed at Chicago's O'Hare.
Q 30Who directed Christmas Vacation (1989), the third Griswold film, which Hughes wrote and produced?
Jeremiah Chechik
Jeremiah Chechik, a director of moody TV commercials, made his feature debut after Chris Columbus quit over clashes with Chevy Chase.