Red Dead Redemption Trivia
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This Red Dead Redemption trivia quiz has 58 free questions with answers and covers the whole series: the 2010 original and John Marston's forced manhunt through New Austin and Mexico, the Undead Nightmare zombie expansion, Red Dead Redemption 2 and the slow collapse of the Van der Linde gang, and the 2004 Red Dead Revolver that started it all under Capcom. Questions range from the ones any player will get (what year the first game is set in, who leads the gang, what the slow-motion aiming system is called) to the ones for people who read the journal and the credits: the ferry heist town, the island the gang wash up on, the alligator, the Aztec goddess, the studio that ported the game to Switch, the record-breaking opening weekend and the 100-hour weeks behind it. Every answer was checked against a reference source before publishing, and each question shows its citation once you have answered, so use it for a game-night round or to find out how much you really absorbed across two hundred hours in the saddle.
30 of 58 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Red Dead Redemption's Mexico chapter echoes which real conflict?
Mexican Revolution
The Mexican Revolution is mirrored in rebel leader Abraham Reyes, whom John helps overthrow the tyrant Colonel Allende before Reyes carries his revolution on toward Mexico's capital.
Q 02Which studio led development of Red Dead Redemption?
Rockstar San Diego
Rockstar San Diego's 180-person core team needed help from other Rockstar studios, yet within two months of the launch Rockstar confirmed it was cutting staff there.
Q 03What is the slow-motion targeting mechanic in the Red Dead games called?
Dead Eye
Dead Eye slows time so you can mark several targets, and Rockstar kept that core shooting from the series' first game while expanding everything else for Redemption.
Q 04What animals maul John Marston in Red Dead Redemption 2's opening?
Wolves
Wolves leave John stranded in the snow, and Arthur Morgan and Javier Escuella have to fight off more of them to carry him back to camp.
Q 05What is the fictional Mexican state John crosses into during Red Dead Redemption?
Nuevo Paraíso
Nuevo Paraíso is reached by raft: the arms smuggler Irish floats John down the San Luis River while gunmen fire from the shore.
Q 06Which rancher nurses John back to health after he is shot at the start of Red Dead Redemption?
Bonnie MacFarlane
Bonnie MacFarlane takes John in after he is shot, and he repays her with jobs around her family's ranch while plotting his attack on Bill Williamson's gang.
Q 07Which stronghold do John and his allies storm to break Bill Williamson's gang in New Austin?
Fort Mercer
Fort Mercer falls to John and his allies, but Bill Williamson has already fled to Mexico to seek help from another former gang member, Javier Escuella.
Q 08Which legendary gunslinger teaches John to shoot better when he arrives in Mexico?
Landon Ricketts
Landon Ricketts, an ageing star gunslinger living in Chuparosa, later rides with John to break the schoolteacher Luisa Fortuna out of the jail where she is held.
Q 09Which Bureau of Investigation agent forces John to work for the government in Red Dead Redemption?
Edgar Ross
Edgar Ross had already hunted the Van der Linde gang as a Pinkerton agent alongside Andrew Milton, years before he took charge at the Bureau.
Q 10How does Dutch van der Linde die at the end of Red Dead Redemption?
Steps backwards off a cliff
Cornered by John, Dutch steps backwards off a cliff after warning him that the government will never leave him in peace and will simply find another enemy.
Q 11How does Jack Marston kill the agent behind his father's death?
In a duel
Jack kills him in a duel and walks away, taking up the very outlaw life his parents always told him to avoid.
Q 12Who composed the original score for Red Dead Redemption?
Bill Elm and Woody Jackson
Bill Elm and Woody Jackson modelled the score on 1960s spaghetti Westerns, because Jackson found there had never been a real Western sound in 1911.
Q 13Which José González song plays as John rides into Mexico for the first time?
Far Away
Far Away was one of four vocal songs recorded for an original soundtrack, because Rockstar felt it couldn't lean on licensed music the way its earlier games had.
Q 21In Undead Nightmare's ending, why does John rise from his grave with his soul intact?
He was buried with holy water
He was buried with holy water, so when the dead rise again after his death, John comes back as a revenant who keeps his soul and can go on fighting the undead.
Q 22Which weapon added in Undead Nightmare fires zombie body parts as ammunition?
The Blunderbuss
The Blunderbuss had been obsolete for decades by John's day, yet con man Nigel West Dickens hands him one, loaded with whatever undead remains he can scavenge.
Q 23Which Japanese film star did the actor behind Arthur Morgan call a huge influence?
Toshiro Mifune
Q 14Why did Red Dead Redemption miss the 2011 BAFTA jury awards?
Never entered
Rockstar never entered it and declined to explain why, while BAFTA said it has no right to enter a game automatically and would rather have had it in the running.
Q 15Which Xbox One feature finally added Red Dead Redemption in July 2016, after fans had long requested it?
Backward compatibility
Backward compatibility brought the Xbox 360 game to Xbox One, and a 2018 Xbox One X update later lifted Red Dead Redemption from 720p to native 4K.
Q 16Who wrote a 2010 open letter accusing Rockstar of overworking Red Dead Redemption's team?
Developers' wives
Developers' wives, writing as 'Rockstar Spouse', said staff were expected to work 12-hour days including Saturdays, while overtime and holiday time were being cut.
Q 17What is Rockstar's proprietary game engine, first used on Table Tennis in 2006?
RAGE
RAGE powered an untitled Western shown as a PlayStation 3 demo at E3 2005, a year before Table Tennis shipped, and that project grew into Red Dead Redemption.
Q 18Rockstar reportedly shelved a Red Dead Redemption remaster after which release was panned?
GTA Trilogy: Definitive Edition
GTA Trilogy: Definitive Edition was so badly received that Rockstar reportedly dropped the remaster, and the 2023 console release was handed to an outside studio as a straight port.
Q 19In Undead Nightmare, what turns out to have started the zombie plague?
A cursed Aztec mask
A cursed Aztec mask stolen from the catacombs by Abraham Reyes starts it, and returning the mask ends the plague until Seth Briars steals it after John's death.
Q 20Which goddess reveals herself to John at the end of Undead Nightmare and gives him a horse of the Apocalypse?
Ayauhteotl
Ayauhteotl had travelled with John disguised as an ordinary woman, and only once the plague is lifted does she reveal herself and thank him.
Toshiro Mifune, Kurosawa's leading man, could be stoic one moment and wildly funny the next, the kind of complexity wanted for a hero players spend hours with.
Q 24The Van der Linde gang's troubles in Red Dead Redemption 2 begin with a botched heist of what?
A ferry
They are forced to abandon their money stash and flee the town where it happened. That stash is what John finally recovers in the 1907 epilogue.
Q 25Which town from the original Red Dead Redemption is still under construction in Red Dead Redemption 2?
Blackwater
Blackwater is still going up in 1899, yet twelve years later it is the most modern city of the first game, where John's story opens.
Q 26Which real city is Saint Denis, the former French colony in Lemoyne, modelled on?
New Orleans
New Orleans is its model, but Rockstar first called the city New Bordeaux and renamed it on learning that Mafia III had already used that name.
Q 27On which island do Dutch, Arthur and the others wash up after their ship sinks?
Guarma
Guarma traps them in a war between a tyrannical sugar plantation owner and the enslaved locals before they can fight their way back to America.
Q 28What disease is Arthur diagnosed with in Red Dead Redemption 2?
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis came from Thomas Downes, the indebted rancher Arthur beat while collecting money, so one violent job ends up costing Arthur his health.
Q 29Who shoots the Pinkerton agent who reveals the gang's informant in Red Dead Redemption 2?
Abigail Roberts
Abigail Roberts had been kidnapped by the agent, yet she breaks free and shoots him just as he is about to kill Arthur.
Q 30How does Arthur's high-honor ending in Red Dead Redemption 2 play out?
He dies of illness watching the sunrise
He dies of illness watching the sunrise after his last fight, while a low-honor Arthur is executed by the traitor instead.