Planes, Trains and Automobiles Trivia
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48 free Planes, Trains and Automobiles trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
40 free Planes, Trains and Automobiles trivia questions with answers. Planes, Trains and Automobiles is a ninety-minute film that was once nearly four hours long. This quiz covers both versions, and everything around them. There are plot questions - the swapped credit cards, the diverted flight, the broken locomotive, the punched nose in St. Louis - and production questions that fans rarely know: the eighty-five day shoot in upstate New York, the folk song threaded through the score, the closing song Hughes wanted and could not have, and the seventy-five minutes of lost footage that turned up in his archive in 2022. Every answer is written against a sourced account of the film with the sentence that establishes it attached, and difficulty runs from easy to expert. Ideal for a Thanksgiving-week quiz, a film club, or anyone who quotes the motel scene every November.
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Q 01Before Planes, Trains and Automobiles, writer-director John Hughes was best known for which kind of film?
Teen comedies
Teen comedies. After Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller's Day Off, he said half the reviews of this story about two grown men began, 'Well... he grew up!'
Q 02What is Neal Page's job in Planes, Trains and Automobiles?
Advertising executive
Advertising executive. John Hughes had worked in advertising himself, and based the story on a trip home from New York that went as badly wrong as Neal's.
Q 03What does John Candy's character, Del Griffith, sell for a living in Planes, Trains and Automobiles?
Shower curtain rings
Shower curtain rings, 'the best in the world', he says. Neal throws the job back at him in their motel-room row, imagining strangers who hear Del's name and sigh, 'The shower curtain ring guy.'
Q 04In Planes, Trains and Automobiles, which holiday is Neal Page trying to get home for?
Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving. Paramount opened the film on the day before the holiday in 1987, and with so few other films set around it, it found a second life through television showings each year.
Q 05What does Del do on the freeway at night that nearly gets him and Neal killed?
Drives the wrong way
Drives the wrong way. When a motorist across the divide shouts a warning, Del decides the man is drunk ('How would he know where we're going?') and ends up threading the car between two oncoming trucks.
Q 06Where is Neal and Del's flight diverted in Planes, Trains and Automobiles?
Wichita, Kansas
Wichita, Kansas. John Hughes took the detour from life: he said that on a flight home from New York of his own he was delayed five days and ended up in Phoenix by way of Wichita.
Q 07After a mix-up at their first motel, which of Neal's belongings ends up with Del?
His credit card
His credit card. Del finds Neal's Diners Club card among his own, rents a car with it once the two have split up, and slips it back into Neal's wallet just before the car is wrecked.
Q 08What happens to Neal and Del's cash during their first night in a motel?
It is stolen by a thief
It is stolen by a thief. Scenes cut from the film explain him: he is the pizza delivery boy Del short-changed on the tip, back for his money, and Neal's first thought is that Del took the $700.
Q 09What happens to Neal and Del's train?
It breaks down
It breaks down, in the middle of a field. The passengers are told to walk a mile to the highway, where trucks are waiting to carry them on to Jefferson City, Missouri.
Q 10When Neal's choice of song falls flat on the bus, which TV theme does Del get everyone singing?
The Flintstones
The Flintstones. Neal starts 'Three Coins in the Fountain' and gets blank stares; Del rescues him with a cartoon theme that the whole bus, Neal excepted, knows by heart.
Q 11In Planes, Trains and Automobiles, what happens when Neal insults a taxi dispatcher in St. Louis?
He is punched in the face
He is punched in the face. Neal has just trudged back from an empty parking bay to rage at the car-hire desk, and as he hits the ground Del pulls up in a car of his own.
Q 12What earned Planes, Trains and Automobiles its R rating in the United States?
Swearing in a single scene
Swearing in a single scene. Left with keys to a car that is not there, Neal walks back to the hire desk and delivers a tirade in which one four-letter word precedes nearly every noun.
Q 13In a subplot cut from Planes, Trains and Automobiles, what does Neal's wife suspect?
Q 21Which actor plays the state trooper who impounds the burnt-out car in Planes, Trains and Automobiles?
Michael McKean
Michael McKean. He recalled shooting the roadside scene twice: snow fell overnight after the first day, nothing matched any more, and the unit had to begin again.
Q 22Which actress plays the chirpy agent at the Marathon car hire desk in Planes, Trains and Automobiles?
Edie McClurg
Edie McClurg. She is on the phone, happily planning marshmallows for the holiday ambrosia, when Neal reaches her desk after his long walk back from the empty parking bay.
Q 23Which song plays as Neal brings Del home in the final scene of Planes, Trains and Automobiles?
Everytime You Go Away
An affair
An affair: she takes 'Del' for an invented name, which is why she greets the real one so warmly. The subplot went when a first cut of three and three-quarter hours was trimmed.
Q 14Which NFL team do Neal and Del gruffly discuss after waking up in each other's arms?
The Chicago Bears
The Chicago Bears. Mortified, the two men leap out of bed and reach for the manliest small talk they can find: 'See that Bears game last week?' 'They're gonna go all the way.'
Q 15Which film topped the US box office when Planes, Trains and Automobiles opened?
Three Men and a Baby
Three Men and a Baby. A reissue of Disney's Cinderella came second and the newcomer third, yet it went on to take $49.5 million at American cinemas on a budget of about $15 million.
Q 16Why can't Del tell the state trooper how fast he was driving the burnt-out car?
The speedometer has melted
The speedometer has melted. Told his speed, Del says he can buy that, and insists the charred, mirrorless car is fit for the road: not pretty, he admits, but it will get them where they want to go.
Q 17A snowless Chicago sent the Planes, Trains and Automobiles shoot to which city?
Buffalo
Buffalo. Shooting began there in March 1987, and the crew then chased snow from state to state until the schedule had stretched to 85 days, about double the norm for a two-character comedy.
Q 18Waking up in a shared motel bed, where does Del tell Neal his other hand is?
Between two pillows
Between two pillows. Neal's horrified reply, 'Those aren't pillows!', sends both men out of bed in a hurry; the film's publicist remembered it as a line John Candy came up with on the set.
Q 19What sets fire to the rental car while Del and Neal are stopped at the roadside?
A discarded cigarette
A discarded cigarette. Del flicks it at the window, it lands on the back seat instead, and the two men are still collecting themselves after a near miss when the car goes up in flames behind them.
Q 20Which star has a cameo as the man who races Neal for a taxi in Planes, Trains and Automobiles?
Kevin Bacon
Kevin Bacon. He had just starred in She's Having a Baby for John Hughes and asked to be put in the next film in any capacity; he ended up, in his own words, 'an extra with a trailer'.
Everytime You Go Away. The version heard is not Paul Young's 1985 hit but a cover by the group Blue Room; Daryl Hall of Hall & Oates wrote the song.
Q 24In his motel-room tirade, Neal says an evening with Del is like going on a date with what?
A Chatty Cathy doll
A Chatty Cathy doll, the toy that talks when its string is pulled. Neal pictures a string on Del's chest and adds the cruel twist: nobody else gets to pull it, because Del does it himself.
Q 25According to Del, what is the one thing in the burnt-out car that still works?
The radio
The radio. Del offers it to the state trooper as his clinching argument that the wreck is roadworthy, having just conceded that it has lost its outside mirror.
Q 26Where did the lost scenes of Planes, Trains and Automobiles turn up?
In John Hughes's archive
In John Hughes's archive. Paramount had found a single cut scene in its own vaults; the 75 minutes of extras on the 2022 disc came largely from videotapes of early edits he kept at home and liked to show visitors.
Q 27Which critic called Planes, Trains and Automobiles the one film his family watches as a custom?
Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert. He gave it a good review in 1987 and moved on, but it stayed in his memory, and he later added it to his Great Movies, writing that films that last are arrows 'straight to the heart'.
Q 28Which two stars did Paramount announce in 2020 for a remake of Planes, Trains and Automobiles?
Will Smith and Kevin Hart
Will Smith and Kevin Hart. Their production companies were to make it from a script by Aeysha Carr, but in 2025 she said the project 'fell apart', though the script exists.
Q 29Where does Neal find Del sitting alone at the end of Planes, Trains and Automobiles?
At an 'L' train station
At an 'L' train station. The two say goodbye there, but on the ride home Neal replays Del's odd remarks, senses that something is wrong, and goes back to find him still on the bench.
Q 30What happens to Neal's first-class seat on the flight out of New York?
Reassigned to coach, next to Del
Reassigned to coach, next to Del. Told that first class is full, Neal fumes, 'First you delay me, then you bump me', and at journey's end it is Del who suggests that next time they go first class.