My Cousin Vinny Trivia
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49 free My Cousin Vinny trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
38 free My Cousin Vinny trivia questions with answers. My Cousin Vinny turned a fish-out-of-water courtroom comedy into a film that real lawyers screen for their students. This quiz covers all of it: the New York attorney out of his depth in Alabama, his sharp-tongued fiancee whose car knowledge wins the case, the judge in his final screen role, the grits, the two "yutes", and the surprise Oscar that people still argue about. Expect the cast and their characters, the famous scenes, the automotive testimony that cracks the case, the Georgia filming locations that stood in for Alabama, and the film's remarkable reputation in the legal profession. It suits movie-trivia nights, law students and anyone who can quote the tuna-can scene from memory. Every answer is checked against Wikipedia's articles on the film and its cast, and the source sentence appears under each question, so you can settle any argument about positraction on the spot.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In My Cousin Vinny, which word in Vinny's thick accent baffles Judge Haller?
Youths
Youths: Vinny's 'two yutes' has the judge asking what a yute is, an exchange the director says he wrote in after Joe Pesci said it to him at one of their first meetings.
Q 02After Vinny's one-line opening statement in My Cousin Vinny, what does Judge Haller leave on the record?
Only 'thank you'
Only 'thank you': woken up to follow the prosecutor's speech, Vinny tells the jury that everything they just heard is nonsense, and the rest is struck out as argument.
Q 03Who plays Vinny's fiancée, Mona Lisa Vito, in My Cousin Vinny?
Marisa Tomei
Marisa Tomei was a little-known name at the bottom of the screenwriter's own casting list, and the studio pressed for someone more famous.
Q 04Playing Mona Lisa Vito in My Cousin Vinny won which award?
An Oscar
An Oscar for Best Supporting Actress; the win later bred a false rumour that presenter Jack Palance had read out the wrong name.
Q 05Which actor plays Judge Chamberlain Haller in My Cousin Vinny, his final film role?
Fred Gwynne
Fred Gwynne plays Haller as a stickler rather than a villain: one leading critic praised his dour reactions and noted that the judge is a civilised man who isn't out to railroad anybody.
Q 06The actor who plays the judge in My Cousin Vinny was famous as which 1960s sitcom character?
Herman Munster
Herman Munster's actor traded the monster make-up for a gavel: his judge is the film's straight man, threatening Vinny with two counts of contempt before a plea is even entered.
Q 07Which former teen star plays Bill Gambini, the cousin Vinny comes to Alabama to defend?
Ralph Macchio
Ralph Macchio, still best known as the Karate Kid, shares top billing, though one leading critic complained that the film uses him as little more than a foil.
Q 08Who plays prosecutor Jim Trotter in My Cousin Vinny, later TV's Perry White?
Lane Smith
Lane Smith's Trotter was modelled on a real prosecutor in Butler, Alabama, whose door screenwriter Dale Launer knocked on during a research trip through the South.
Q 09In My Cousin Vinny, Austin Pendleton plays public defender John Gibbons, whose courtroom problem is what?
A severe stutter
A severe stutter, and one the actor knew at first hand: Pendleton had stuttered since childhood, almost turned the part down and says he came to regret taking it.
Q 10Which prop does Vinny use to discredit the elderly eyewitness Mrs. Riley in My Cousin Vinny?
A tape measure
A tape measure: he runs it out to half the distance she claimed and holds up two fingers; she counts four, then says she is thinking of getting thicker glasses.
Q 11My Cousin Vinny is set in Alabama, but in which state was it actually filmed?
Georgia
Georgia: the director says Alabama had no film crews or equipment in place at the time, so he toured small Georgia towns and settled on the square in Monticello.
Q 12In My Cousin Vinny, how does Mona Lisa win the $200 that Vinny later has to collect from a local?
A game of pool
A game of pool: the loser, J.T., refuses to pay, so Vinny negotiates like a lawyer, weighing each threat of a beating as a counteroffer before agreeing to fight for the money.
Q 13In My Cousin Vinny, Vinny discredits a witness's timeline using the cooking time of which food?
Grits
Q 21Joe Pesci won an Academy Award during the My Cousin Vinny shoot for his role in which film?
Goodfellas
Goodfellas: his castmates gathered round a television to watch him win, and the screenwriter, sure of the result, had offered to bet him on it.
Q 22Which film topped the ABA Journal's 2008 list of the greatest legal movies, two places above My Cousin Vinny?
To Kill a Mockingbird
To Kill a Mockingbird came first and 12 Angry Men second; third place put a comedy about a novice lawyer ahead of Anatomy of a Murder and everything else on the list.
Q 23A federal judge wrote that My Cousin Vinny anticipated a Supreme Court ruling on which topic?
Expert-witness testimony
Grits take twenty minutes, Vinny points out, so the witness cannot have cooked breakfast in the five he swore passed between the boys arriving and the gunshot.
Q 14In My Cousin Vinny, Mona Lisa's testimony proves the tire tracks were left by which car?
A 1963 Pontiac Tempest
A 1963 Pontiac Tempest matched the boys' car in size, shape and even its mint-green paint, which is how three eyewitnesses came to identify the wrong vehicle.
Q 15In My Cousin Vinny, which two features does Mona Lisa say the getaway car had?
Independent rear suspension and Positraction
Independent rear suspension and Positraction: she reads both off one photograph, from two tyre marks of equal length that stay flat and even as the car mounts the kerb.
Q 16Which car are Bill and Stan driving when they are arrested in My Cousin Vinny?
A 1964 Buick Skylark
A 1964 Buick Skylark convertible in faded metallic green; Vinny gets the FBI's analyst to concede that its tyres are the best-selling model and size in the country.
Q 17Why does Vinny have to change his courtroom alias from Jerry Gallo to Jerry Callo in My Cousin Vinny?
Gallo is dead
Gallo is dead, as the judge learns when he checks with New York; Vinny bluffs that his name is Callo with a C, and Lisa quietly has a judge back home vouch for the new one.
Q 18For what does Judge Haller repeatedly hold Vinny in contempt in My Cousin Vinny?
His clothes and conduct
His clothes and conduct: Vinny turns up in black leather, answers 'I'm wearing clothes' when asked what he has on, and is jailed more than once before the lesson sinks in.
Q 19What legally correct process does Mona Lisa remind Vinny he can use to obtain the prosecution's evidence?
Discovery
Discovery: Vinny thinks he has charmed the prosecutor out of his files until Lisa points out that the law obliges him to hand them over, calling it 'disclosure'.
Q 20Jonathan Lynn, the Cambridge law graduate who directed My Cousin Vinny, earlier wrote and directed which cult comedy?
Clue
Clue came first; on Vinny his law degree showed, and he says he made sure every legal point in the script was correct.
Expert-witness testimony: the 1999 ruling, Kumho Tire v. Carmichael, turned on a tyre expert's evidence, seven years after Mona Lisa took the stand to read tyre marks.
Q 24How does Mona Lisa handle the prosecutor's test question about a 1955 Chevrolet in My Cousin Vinny?
She spots the trick
She spots the trick: no 1955 Bel Air had the engine he names, which she says arrived in 1962, and she then answers for the first year it was offered.
Q 25Which critic wrote that My Cousin Vinny was 'the kind of movie home video was invented for'?
Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert meant it as faint praise, advising readers to skip the cinema and rent it; the film took about $64 million worldwide, then found its biggest audience on video and cable.
Q 26Mona Lisa Vito knows cars from her family's garage, but what does she tell the court her own job is?
Out-of-work hairdresser
Out-of-work hairdresser: asked how that makes her a car expert, she says it doesn't, then lists the mechanics in her family, from her father and grandfathers to three brothers.
Q 27What is the murder victim's job in My Cousin Vinny?
Store clerk
Store clerk: he is robbed and shot at the Sack O' Suds minutes after serving the two students, who are pulled over and arrested soon afterwards.
Q 28Vinny's middle name in My Cousin Vinny is also the name of which New York airport?
LaGuardia
LaGuardia: he gives his name in full as Vincent LaGuardia Gambini, and Joe Pesci reused all three names for his 1998 comedy album, Vincent LaGuardia Gambini Sings Just for You.
Q 29The actress who plays Mona Lisa Vito in My Cousin Vinny was born in which New York borough?
Brooklyn
Brooklyn, home of the film's Vinny too: the screenwriter first noticed her on stage in New York, acting with the Naked Angels theatre company she had helped to found.
Q 30In My Cousin Vinny, Bill confesses by mistake because he thinks he has been arrested for what?
Shoplifting a can of tuna
Shoplifting a can of tuna: as Vinny tells the judge, his clients were caught completely by surprise, and that was the only crime Bill thought he was owning up to.