Nine Inch Nails
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50 free Nine Inch Nails trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Nine Inch Nails began as one man's studio project in the late 1980s and became one of the most influential names in industrial rock. Trent Reznor turned bleak, abrasive, carefully built albums into platinum sellers, and the live shows became the stuff of legend. This quiz covers the whole story. There are questions on the albums and singles, the videos that got the band into trouble, the musicians who passed through the line-up, the unusual ways the music has been released, and Reznor's second career writing award-winning music for film and television. It is written for long-time fans and for anyone who mostly knows the hits. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will pick up a few stories worth retelling along the way.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which country music legend covered the Nine Inch Nails song Hurt in 2002 for the last album of his lifetime?
Johnny Cash
Johnny Cash made the song so completely his own that Trent Reznor said it no longer felt like his. NME named the video the best of all time in 2011.
Q 02Nine Inch Nails recorded The Downward Spiral in a Los Angeles house where which actress was murdered in 1969?
Sharon Tate
Sharon Tate and four others were killed there by members of a notorious cult. Trent Reznor rented the house in 1992 and built a studio inside, and it was demolished two years later.
Q 03At which rain-soaked festival did Nine Inch Nails wrestle in the mud just before walking on stage to play?
Woodstock '94
Woodstock '94 gave Nine Inch Nails their widest audience, with pay-per-view reaching up to 24 million homes. Trent Reznor still called the set terrible because of technical problems.
Q 04Which record-breaking 2019 number-one single samples the Nine Inch Nails instrumental 34 Ghosts IV?
Old Town Road
Old Town Road earned Trent Reznor a Country Music Association award as a producer. Beatmaker YoungKio found the Nine Inch Nails track in his YouTube suggestions and sold the finished beat for $30.
Q 05Which Pixar film earned Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails his second Academy Award for Best Original Score?
Soul
Soul was the first animated film Trent Reznor ever scored. He shared the Oscar with co-composer Jon Batiste, having won his first a decade earlier.
Q 06Which agency investigated the Nine Inch Nails video Down in It after its balloon camera landed in a cornfield?
The FBI
The FBI wondered whether the footage of Trent Reznor lying apparently dead was a real snuff film. A farmer had handed in the camera after it broke loose during the shoot.
Q 07In which Ohio city did Trent Reznor form Nine Inch Nails in 1988 while working at a recording studio?
Cleveland
Cleveland is where Reznor worked as an assistant engineer and janitor at Right Track Studio, recording the demos that became his first album.
Q 08Nine Inch Nails scored which 1996 first-person shooter, whose nail ammo boxes carry the band's logo?
Quake
Quake came about because Trent Reznor was a devoted Doom player and id Software's designers were Nine Inch Nails fans. Reznor also voiced the game's hero.
Q 09Which punk icon, sampled on the single Closer, inducted Nine Inch Nails into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?
Iggy Pop
Iggy Pop did the honours in 2020. The beat of Closer is built on a heavily altered sample from his 1977 song Nightclubbing.
Q 10Which English rock legend co-headlined a 1995 North American tour with Nine Inch Nails as the opening act?
David Bowie
David Bowie later cast Trent Reznor as his stalker in the video for I'm Afraid of Americans. Reznor has said that touring with him inspired him to stay sober.
Q 11Which 1989 Nine Inch Nails debut album became one of the first independent releases to go platinum?
Pretty Hate Machine
Pretty Hate Machine was written, arranged and performed by Trent Reznor. It grew from demos he taped for free between bookings at the studio where he worked as a janitor.
Q 12Which English musician became the only official member of Nine Inch Nails other than Trent Reznor in 2016?
Atticus Ross
Atticus Ross began with Nine Inch Nails in 2005 as a programmer and producer. He and Reznor also score films together and have won Oscars for it.
Q 13Which director made the Nine Inch Nails video for Closer, which MTV heavily censored as too graphic?
Mark Romanek
Q 21Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails won his first Academy Award for composing the score of which 2010 drama?
The Social Network
The Social Network also won him a Golden Globe. Reznor worried at first that the film had a John Hughes feel, until early musical experiments changed his mind.
Q 22Which film director made the computer-generated Nine Inch Nails video for Only, using his own hand and laptop?
David Fincher
David Fincher filled an executive's desk with pin art and a Newton's cradle that move to the music. Five years later he brought Trent Reznor into film scoring.
Q 23Which Nine Inch Nails song from the Broken EP won the 1993 Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance?
Wish
Mark Romanek shot the video on slightly out-of-date film stock. Cards reading Scene Missing stood in for the footage that was cut for broadcast.
Q 14Which former Nirvana member played on much of the 2005 Nine Inch Nails album With Teeth?
Dave Grohl
Dave Grohl later directed the documentary Sound City, for which he, Trent Reznor and Josh Homme wrote and performed the song Mantra.
Q 15Which 1999 Nine Inch Nails double album debuted at number one, then fell to number 16 a week later?
The Fragile
The Fragile arrived five years after The Downward Spiral. Its fall set a record at the time for the biggest drop from number one.
Q 16Which rock frontman was a Trent Reznor protege whose 1994 debut album Reznor produced for his own label?
Marilyn Manson
Marilyn Manson also opened for Nine Inch Nails on tour, and Reznor worked on his 1996 breakthrough Antichrist Superstar. The friendship soured soon afterwards.
Q 17Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails formed which group with his wife, the singer Mariqueen Maandig?
How to Destroy Angels
How to Destroy Angels is named after a 1984 EP by the English experimental group Coil. Reznor and Maandig married in 2009.
Q 18Nine Inch Nails wrote The Perfect Drug for the soundtrack of which 1997 David Lynch film?
Lost Highway
Lost Highway had its whole soundtrack album produced by Trent Reznor. The song was released as a single from that album, not from a Nine Inch Nails record.
Q 19Trent Reznor produced the soundtrack for which Oliver Stone film from a hotel room on tour?
Natural Born Killers
Natural Born Killers had its soundtrack assembled on a portable Pro Tools rig. Reznor pitched it as a collage of sound, with edits and film dialogue between the songs.
Q 20Which Nine Inch Nails album was promoted with an alternate reality game whose clues began on tour merchandise?
Year Zero
Year Zero imagined an Orwellian United States in 2022. The game's makers, 42 Entertainment, won two Webby Awards for the campaign.
Wish also topped Kerrang's 2020 ranking of the greatest Nine Inch Nails songs. A second song from the same EP won the same Grammy in 1996 for a live version.
Q 24Which independent label released the first Nine Inch Nails album before a feud sent Trent Reznor to Interscope?
TVT Records
TVT Records began in a New York apartment with an album of television theme songs. The Nine Inch Nails debut became its triple platinum seller.
Q 25Which 2008 Nine Inch Nails album did Trent Reznor give away as a free download to thank fans for their support?
The Slip
The Slip was offered in several DRM-free formats, some better than CD quality. A limited physical edition followed two months later.
Q 26Nine Inch Nails released the 2008 album Ghosts I–IV under which licence that lets fans share it?
Creative Commons
Creative Commons music had never been nominated for a Grammy until this album earned two nominations. Its 36 untitled tracks were sold in packages priced up to $300.
Q 27Nine Inch Nails releases are numbered in sequence using which word, making the single Closer number nine?
Halo
Halo numbers are given to albums, singles and remix sets alike. Trent Reznor's later label nodded to the system by giving its own releases Null numbers.
Q 28The Nine Inch Nails logo was inspired by the typography on an album cover by which New York band?
Talking Heads
Talking Heads used Tibor Kalman's typography on Remain in Light. Trent Reznor drew the logo with Gary Talpas, who designed the band's packaging until 1997.
Q 29Nine Inch Nails played the song She's Gone Away on screen in the 2017 revival of which TV series?
Twin Peaks
Twin Peaks creator David Lynch turned down the first song the band offered because he wanted something more menacing. The replacement was finished a day later.
Q 30Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails grew up in the small town of Mercer in which US state?
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania is where Reznor was born and where he lived with his maternal grandparents from the age of six, after his parents divorced.