Reservoir Dogs Trivia
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48 free Reservoir Dogs trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Why don't they tip? Who was supposed to play Mr. Pink? And why was the warehouse full of embalming fluid? This Reservoir Dogs trivia quiz has 48 free questions with answers about Quentin Tarantino's 1992 debut: the six color-coded thieves and the Cabots, the heist you never see, the ear scene set to Stealers Wheel, the Sundance premiere, the casting near-misses and the film's long afterlife in remakes, video games and Empire's greatest-independent-film list. It starts with the questions any fan can field, who played whom and what the aliases were, then moves into production history, influences from City on Fire to The Killing, and the stories behind Lawrence Tierney's firing and Kirk Baltz's ad-lib. It suits a movie night warm-up, a pub quiz round or a settle-the-argument session about the ending. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the film, its song and its cast, and each question links to the page and sentence that supports it.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the crew's target in the Reservoir Dogs heist?
A jewelry store
A jewelry store holding a shipment of diamonds is the target, yet the robbery never appears on screen. Tarantino said that began partly as a budget saving, and he kept it because he liked the idea of never seeing the heist.
Q 02Which color alias belongs to the undercover police officer in Reservoir Dogs?
Mr. Orange
Mr. Orange is shot in the gut by a woman whose car he and Mr. White take during the getaway. He bleeds on the warehouse floor for most of the film and confesses to White that he is a cop only at the very end.
Q 03Who played Mr. White in Reservoir Dogs?
Harvey Keitel
Harvey Keitel liked the script so much that he signed on as co-producer, which helped the film find its money, and he paid for Tarantino and Lawrence Bender to fly to New York and audition actors there.
Q 04Tarantino has said Mr. Blonde of Reservoir Dogs is the brother of which Pulp Fiction character?
Vincent Vega
Vincent Vega shares a surname with Mr. Blonde, whose real name is Vic Vega. Tarantino talked of filming the pair as 'The Vega Brothers', a prequel because both men die on screen, but it never came to fruition.
Q 05The opening diner scene of Reservoir Dogs features a crude theory about which Madonna song?
Like a Virgin
Like a Virgin is the song the crew argue over before the heist. Madonna later told Tarantino his script had it wrong and signed an album for him with the message that the song is about love.
Q 06Which member of the Reservoir Dogs film crew plays the woman shot in the getaway?
The dialect coach
The dialect coach, hired to give Englishman Tim Roth an American accent, plays the driver who shoots his character in the gut and is shot in return when her car is taken.
Q 07Which character does Quentin Tarantino himself play in Reservoir Dogs?
Mr. Brown
Mr. Brown is the crew's getaway driver, and Tarantino gives himself an early exit: Brown is shot dead in the car as the robbery falls apart, before the warehouse story really begins.
Q 08In the opening diner scene of Reservoir Dogs, what does one of the crew refuse to do on principle?
Tip the waitress
Tip the waitress: one crook says he never does, until Joe Cabot makes him throw in his dollar. Tarantino said the speech was his own credo for years, from when he earned minimum wage in a job nobody tipped.
Q 09What is the nickname of Joe Cabot's son, played by Chris Penn in Reservoir Dogs?
Nice Guy Eddie
Nice Guy Eddie draws on Mr. White to protect his father in the final three-way standoff, and all three go down firing. Chris Penn, Sean Penn's younger brother, died in 2006 at 40.
Q 10Mr. Blue is played by which real-life ex-convict turned novelist?
Edward Bunker
Edward Bunker was San Quentin's youngest inmate at 17 and learned to write behind bars. He was still in prison when his first novel came out, after five that went unpublished.
Q 11Which song plays on the radio while Mr. Blonde tortures the captive policeman in Reservoir Dogs?
Stuck in the Middle with You
Stuck in the Middle with You was picked as a cheerful counterpoint. Tarantino said viewers tap a toe to the song and enjoy the dance, so that by the time the blade comes out they feel like co-conspirators.
Q 12What is the name of the kidnapped police officer who loses an ear in Reservoir Dogs?
Marvin Nash
Marvin Nash has met one of the robbers before and knows he is an undercover cop, yet he never gives him away, even while losing an ear.
Q 13Which band recorded the song heard during the ear-cutting scene in Reservoir Dogs?
Stealers Wheel
Q 21Which Monty Python member coached Tarantino at a directors' lab weeks before he shot Reservoir Dogs?
Terry Gilliam
Terry Gilliam calmed Tarantino's fear that he knew too little about the craft: a director, he said, need not light the shot or pick the fabrics himself, only hire the right people and tell them what is in his head.
Q 22Which 1987 Hong Kong film was Reservoir Dogs accused of plagiarizing, though Tarantino called it an influence?
City on Fire
City on Fire shares the undercover-cop plot and the closing standoff, and a 1995 short cut the two films together shot by shot to press the charge. Tarantino's reply: a really cool movie, and he 'got some stuff from it'.
Q 23Tarantino called Reservoir Dogs his own take on which early Stanley Kubrick film?
Stealers Wheel had already lost Gerry Rafferty, their co-founder and the song's co-writer, by the time their debut album came out. Once the record was selling well, he was persuaded to return.
Q 14The song in the Reservoir Dogs ear-cutting scene was written as a parody of which singer's style?
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan was the target: Gerry Rafferty wrote the song as little more than a joke, sending up Dylan's paranoia with a sneer at a music-industry party. To his disbelief, the joke sold more than a million copies.
Q 15Who provides the deadpan voice of the K-Billy radio DJ in Reservoir Dogs?
Steven Wright
Steven Wright had a friend in the cutting room: the film's editor, Sally Menke, was married to Dean Parisot, who directed the short film that won Wright an Oscar. The comedian is heard but never seen.
Q 16Where was Quentin Tarantino working when he wrote Reservoir Dogs?
A video rental store
A video rental store, Video Archives in Manhattan Beach, gave him the idea. Tarantino said he filled a display shelf there with heist films, took one home every night and decided the genre was ripe to redo.
Q 17According to Tarantino, the title came from a video store customer mishearing which film's name?
Au revoir les enfants
Louis Malle's 1987 film became 'reservoir dogs' in a patron's ear. Tarantino also liked that the title sounded like something out of a Melville film.
Q 18Which actor's agent turned down a Reservoir Dogs role without telling him?
James Woods
James Woods says the part that went to Steve Buscemi had been written for him, and that he fired the agent when he found out. Jon Cryer, by contrast, backed out of his own audition.
Q 19Where were the warehouse hideout scenes of Reservoir Dogs actually filmed?
An unused mortuary
An unused mortuary in Los Angeles stood in for the warehouse, and the low-budget shoot dressed another room in the same building as one robber's apartment.
Q 20At which festival did Reservoir Dogs premiere in January 1992?
Sundance
Sundance gave it buzz of both kinds, with raves and walkouts at the same screenings. In 2024 a poll of more than 500 filmmakers and critics named it the festival's second-best film ever, behind only Whiplash.
The Killing
The Killing also tells a robbery story through flashbacks, and Tarantino said he thought of his film as 'my Killing, my take on that kind of heist movie'. One big difference: his own heist is never shown.
Q 24Reservoir Dogs took its color-coded criminal aliases from which 1970s thriller?
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three has four hijackers code-named Blue, Green, Grey and Brown seize a New York subway train. Joe Cabot hands out colors for a stated reason: no robber can then give up another's real name.
Q 25Which two horror-industry figures walked out of a Reservoir Dogs screening at the Sitges festival?
Wes Craven and Rick Baker
Wes Craven and Rick Baker were among some fifteen people who left during the torture scene. Tarantino relished it, since Craven had made The Last House on the Left, and Baker later told him to take it as a compliment.
Q 26What plea did Kirk Baltz reportedly ad-lib in the Reservoir Dogs torture scene?
'I've got a little kid at home'
'I've got a little kid at home' was not in the script, and it reportedly left his co-star struggling to finish the scene. Tarantino wanted it to hurt: walkouts at every screening, he said, only meant it worked.
Q 27Roughly how much did Reservoir Dogs take at US cinemas on its first release?
About $2.8 million
About $2.8 million was its whole first run in American cinemas. Its following came later, through midnight showings and the success of Pulp Fiction.
Q 28Which British film magazine named Reservoir Dogs the greatest independent film of all time?
Empire
Empire put it first of fifty, judging each film by how it came to be made, the quality of the result and its mark on the movie world. The magazine admitted that some would call it 'an easy, obvious choice'.
Q 29Why did the British video release of Reservoir Dogs wait until 1995?
The censor delayed its certificate
The censor delayed its certificate for home viewing for two years. BBFC director James Ferman held it back amid the outcry over screen violence that followed the James Bulger murder, then passed it uncut.
Q 30Which critic gave Reservoir Dogs two and a half stars, faulting its screenplay?
Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert wrote that the part needing work 'didn't cost money': having created his characters, Tarantino did little with them 'except to let them talk too much'.