Raiders of the Lost Ark
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99 free Raiders of the Lost Ark trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
48 free Raiders of the Lost Ark trivia questions with answers. This Raiders of the Lost Ark trivia quiz digs through the 1981 film from the Peruvian temple to the government warehouse: the plot and characters, how George Lucas and Steven Spielberg cooked it up on a Hawaiian beach, the casting near-misses (Tom Selleck, Danny DeVito, Klaus Kinski), the shoot in France, Tunisia and Hawaii, the stunts and effects behind the boulder, the truck chase and Toht's melting face, John Williams's march, the box office and the Oscars, and the kids in Mississippi who remade the whole thing shot for shot. It opens with questions anyone who has seen the film can answer and builds to production details for people who own the making-of documentary. There is a short tail of questions on the wider Indiana Jones series, but the film itself is the subject. Every answer has been checked against a reference source, and each question shows its explanation and citation once you have answered. Play the full set for a shareable score, then see how a friend does.
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Q 01How is Marion Ravenwood introduced in Raiders of the Lost Ark?
Winning a drinking contest
Winning a drinking contest: Marion out-drinks a man twice her size for cash in her own bar, and Karen Allen later pushed for her to try the same trick on her captor in the desert tent.
Q 02What does Indiana Jones grab from the booby-trapped temple in the opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark?
A golden idol
A golden idol sits on a weighted pedestal, and Indy's swap with a bag of similar weight fails: taking it brings the temple down around him and sets a giant boulder rolling after him.
Q 03In Raiders of the Lost Ark, the booby-trapped temple of the opening sequence is in which country?
Peru
Peru is only where the story puts it: the temple interior, boulder run included, was a life-sized set built on a soundstage at Elstree Studios in England.
Q 04Which rival archaeologist robs Indy outside the temple and later opens the Ark for the Nazis?
René Belloq
René Belloq, the film's French villain, was played by an Englishman, Paul Freeman; French singer Jacques Dutronc was among those considered for the part.
Q 05The Nazis are excavating for the Ark of the Covenant at which ancient Egyptian city?
Tanis
Tanis is a real ruined city in the Nile delta, once Egypt's capital; in 1939, three years after the film is set, intact royal tombs holding silver coffins were dug up there.
Q 06In which country does Indy find Marion Ravenwood running a bar?
Nepal
Nepal is where Marion runs the tavern her late father left her, until a gun battle with Toht's hired thugs leaves it in flames and she sets off with Indy to get paid.
Q 07What does the Gestapo agent Toht end up with burned into the palm of his hand?
The medallion's image
The medallion's image is seared into Toht's palm when he grabs the red-hot headpiece, but the burn shows only one face, so the Nazis miss the correction on the back and dig in the wrong place.
Q 08In Raiders of the Lost Ark, the snake-filled chamber where the Ark lies buried is called what?
The Well of Souls
The Well of Souls looked too bare to Spielberg with the snakes first brought in, so filming paused while thousands more were rounded up.
Q 09What do the Nazis find inside the Ark when they open it on the island?
Only sand
Only sand is inside, and the Nazis' disappointment lasts a few seconds, until sparks fly and spirits pour out of the chest to wipe out the whole ceremony.
Q 10How do Indy and Marion survive the opening of the Ark?
They keep their eyes shut
They keep their eyes shut while the Ark's spirits kill everyone watching; a 2013 Big Bang Theory episode argued this makes Indy irrelevant, since the Nazis would have died opening it anyway.
Q 11At the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, the Army Intelligence agents say the Ark is being studied by whom?
Top men
Top men is all Indy gets out of them: the last shot shows the Ark nailed into a plain crate and wheeled into a vast warehouse stacked with thousands just like it.
Q 12Raiders of the Lost Ark was conceived as a throwback to which kind of old-time entertainment?
Saturday matinee serials
Saturday matinee serials of the 1930s and 1940s were George Lucas's boyhood favourites, and he shelved this tribute to them to make another one first, set in a galaxy far, far away.
Q 13Who wrote the screenplay for Raiders of the Lost Ark?
Lawrence Kasdan
Q 21Which Taxi star was the first choice to play Sallah in Raiders of the Lost Ark?
Danny DeVito
Danny DeVito was the first choice, but between his Taxi schedule and his agent's price the part went to John Rhys-Davies, whom Steven Spielberg had seen in the miniseries Shogun.
Q 22Which notoriously volatile German actor turned down Toht in Raiders of the Lost Ark for a better-paying horror film?
Klaus Kinski
Klaus Kinski took the thriller Venom because it paid more, and later wrote that he had found the Raiders script moronic; Ronald Lacey played Toht instead.
Q 23Which future Spider-Man villain first appeared on film as Satipo, Indy's treacherous guide in Raiders of the Lost Ark?
Alfred Molina
Lawrence Kasdan got the job after his Continental Divide script impressed Steven Spielberg, and George Lucas then had him rework The Empire Strikes Back too.
Q 14When George Lucas first pitched him Raiders of the Lost Ark, what did Steven Spielberg say he wanted to direct next?
A James Bond picture
A James Bond picture was Spielberg's wish on that 1977 beach holiday; Lucas replied that he had something better than Bond, a globe-trotting archaeologist.
Q 15George Lucas named the hero of Raiders of the Lost Ark after what?
His dog
His dog Indiana, a big and hairy Alaskan Malamute, gave the archaeologist his first name, and the same pet was also George Lucas's model for Chewbacca.
Q 16What was Indiana's surname in early drafts of Raiders of the Lost Ark, before Steven Spielberg objected to it?
Smith
Smith reminded Spielberg of Nevada Smith, a 1966 Steve McQueen western, so the filmmakers swapped it for another surname just as plain: Jones.
Q 17Which writer-director, credited on the Raiders of the Lost Ark story, suggested the Ark of the Covenant as its goal?
Philip Kaufman
Philip Kaufman had been hooked on the Ark since childhood, when his dentist told him tales of its powers; he left the project early to work on The Outlaw Josey Wales.
Q 18Which actor was originally cast as Indiana Jones but was tied to a TV series?
Tom Selleck
Tom Selleck's Magnum, P.I. pilot had sat unsold until George Lucas and Steven Spielberg asked CBS to release him; the network promptly ordered the series and held him to it.
Q 19Why was George Lucas hesitant to cast Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones?
He had just been in Star Wars
He had just been in Star Wars, and George Lucas feared seeming reliant on one actor, the way Martin Scorsese leaned on Robert De Niro; Ford signed only weeks before filming.
Q 20Steven Spielberg cast Karen Allen as Marion in Raiders of the Lost Ark after seeing her in which 1978 comedy?
Animal House
Animal House showed Spielberg an actress who could play an independent woman, and one of the first things he asked Karen Allen at her audition was how well she could spit.
Alfred Molina's film debut had him covered in tarantulas that would not move because they were all males, until a female was added to stir them up.
Q 24Which actor plays museum curator Marcus Brody, Indy's loyal friend?
Denholm Elliott
Denholm Elliott plays Brody as a dignified scholar here, but the third film turned him into comic relief, a man said to have once got lost in his own museum.
Q 25The Paramount logo that opens Raiders of the Lost Ark dissolves into a real mountain located where?
Kauai, Hawaii
Kauai, Hawaii supplied the peak: the match was a last-minute idea Steven Spielberg sprang on his crew, and a producer had to scramble across the island hunting for a mountain of the right shape.
Q 26Which director's visiting daughter reported Raiders of the Lost Ark to a cruelty-prevention charity over its snake scenes?
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick's daughter Vivian wandered onto the snake-covered set, was upset by what she saw and phoned the RSPCA, which cost the production another day.
Q 27Which country stood in for Egypt during the filming of Raiders of the Lost Ark?
Tunisia
Tunisia gave the film its Cairo in the old city of Kairouan, where a day of shooting was lost while the crew took some 300 television aerials down from the rooftops.
Q 28In Raiders of the Lost Ark, why was the planned whip-versus-sword fight in Cairo cut down to a single gunshot?
Ford had dysentery
Ford had dysentery and was in no state for a long, choreographed duel, so he suggested simply shooting the swordsman, and Spielberg said he had been thinking the same.
Q 29The rolling boulder in Raiders of the Lost Ark is widely seen as a nod to a comic starring which Disney character?
Uncle Scrooge
Uncle Scrooge got there first: Carl Barks's 1954 comic The Seven Cities of Cibola has a booby trap that sets a giant stone rolling, and the filmmakers have cited those comics as an inspiration.
Q 30Sound designer Ben Burtt made the Raiders of the Lost Ark boulder's rumble by recording what?
A Honda Civic on a gravel hill
A Honda Civic on a gravel hill did it: Burtt let his own small car coast slowly over the stones, and the tyres became the roar of the giant rock.