Sci-Fi Movie Trivia
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109 free Sci-Fi Movie trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
53 free Sci-Fi Movie trivia questions with answers. Science fiction is the genre where cinema shows off, so this quiz runs from Fritz Lang's Metropolis and the theremin-scored 1950s through 2001, Alien, Blade Runner and The Terminator, then on to The Matrix, WALL-E, District 9, Interstellar, Arrival, Blade Runner 2049 and both halves of Villeneuve's Dune. Japanese and European sci-fi get their due too: Godzilla, Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Solaris and The Fifth Element. The easy questions ask which candy replaced M&M's in E.T. and what the Nostromo is. The hard ones want the original name of HAL 9000, where the missing Metropolis reels turned up, how many cats played Jones in Alien, and which London church houses the organ that Hans Zimmer built Interstellar around. Written for movie nights and pub quizzes where at least one person owns a Blade Runner poster. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's article on each film, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
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Q 01Who directed Metropolis (1927), the first sci-fi film on UNESCO's Memory of the World register?
Fritz Lang
Fritz Lang directed Metropolis; its budget ballooned to about 5.3 million Reichsmarks, several times what was planned, and nearly bankrupted the UFA studio.
Q 02A near-complete 16 mm print of Metropolis, restoring lost footage, was found in 2008 in which country?
Argentina
The print turned up in Argentina, at the Museo del Cine in Buenos Aires; the 16 mm reduction negative let restorers put back roughly 25 minutes of the original cut.
Q 03What is the giant robot accompanying Klaatu in The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) called?
Gort
The robot is Gort; the phrase Helen Benson must say to it, 'Klaatu barada nikto', was famously quoted by Ash in Sam Raimi's Army of Darkness.
Q 04Bernard Herrmann's score for The Day the Earth Stood Still featured two of which electronic instrument?
Theremin
The instrument is the Theremin: Herrmann used two of them, paired with electric violin, cello and bass, and the wail became shorthand for flying saucers for a generation.
Q 05Which 1956 film set on Altair IV was the first movie with an entirely electronic score?
Forbidden Planet
Forbidden Planet's score was built by Bebe and Louis Barron from circuits they made themselves; the musicians' union kept them from a composing credit, so it was billed as 'electronic tonalities'.
Q 06Before it became HAL 9000, the computer in 2001 was named after which Greek goddess?
Athena
Early drafts named the computer Athena, after the Greek goddess, before it became HAL 9000; the finished HAL was voiced by Canadian actor Douglas Rain.
Q 07In 2001: A Space Odyssey, the spacecraft Discovery One is bound for which planet?
Jupiter
In the film Discovery One is bound for Jupiter (Clarke's novel sends it to Saturn); Kubrick had a 30-ton rotating centrifuge built by Vickers-Armstrong for the ship's interiors, costing about $750,000.
Q 08Which Soviet director's 1972 film Solaris won the Grand Prix Spécial du Jury at Cannes?
Andrei Tarkovsky
Andrei Tarkovsky's 166-minute Solaris adapts Stanisław Lem's novel and won the Grand Prix Spécial du Jury at Cannes in 1972; Steven Soderbergh remade it in 2002 with George Clooney.
Q 09In Alien (1979), what is the name of the commercial space tug?
Nostromo
The tug is the Nostromo, named after a Joseph Conrad novel; the sequel's warship, the Sulaco, takes its name from a town in that same book.
Q 10Which artist designed the creature and alien environments for Alien (1979)?
H. R. Giger
H. R. Giger, from Chur in Switzerland, shared the visual-effects Oscar for his designs; the full-grown creature was played by Bolaji Badejo, a 6-foot-10 Nigerian design student spotted in a London pub.
Q 11In Alien, which numbered Special Order declares the ship's crew expendable?
Special Order 937
Special Order 937 instructs the science officer to bring the organism back, 'crew expendable'; Ripley reads it when she interrogates the ship's computer, Mother.
Q 12Blade Runner (1982) is an adaptation of which 1968 Philip K. Dick novel?
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? supplied the plot; the film's synthetic humans are called replicants, a word that never appears in the novel, which calls them androids.
Q 13In Blade Runner, which corporation bio-engineers the replicants?
Tyrell
Q 21In RoboCop (1987), which mega-corporation is granted control of the Detroit Police Department?
Omni Consumer Products
Omni Consumer Products (OCP) runs the privatized Detroit police; its executive Dick Jones unveils the ED-209 enforcement robot, which memorably malfunctions in a boardroom demonstration.
Q 22Which martial-arts star was originally cast as the creature in Predator (1987) before being replaced?
Jean-Claude Van Damme
Jean-Claude Van Damme was the original Predator but left early in production; the 7-foot-2 Kevin Peter Hall took over, fresh from playing the sasquatch in Harry and the Hendersons.
Q 23Although set in a Central American rainforest, most of Predator was shot near which resort city?
The Tyrell Corporation, run by Eldon Tyrell, makes the Nexus-6 replicants; the story is set in a rain-soaked Los Angeles of 2019, and Ridley Scott's Final Cut reached cinemas in 2007.
Q 14Who rewrote the 'tears in rain' monologue in Blade Runner and presented the new words on set?
Rutger Hauer
Rutger Hauer, playing Roy Batty, cut the scripted speech down and added the closing 'tears in rain' line himself the night before shooting.
Q 15Which candy replaced M&M's in E.T. after Mars refused to let its candy appear in the film?
Reese's Pieces
Reese's Pieces got the spot after Mars declined; Hershey said yes, and the candy's sales soared after the film opened in 1982, one of the most famous product placements ever.
Q 16In 1983, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial became the highest-grossing film of all time by passing which movie?
Star Wars
E.T. passed Star Wars in early 1983 to take the record; its Oscars all came in music, sound and effects categories, and Spielberg beat his own mark again with Jurassic Park.
Q 17In which city was James Cameron ill when a fever dream gave him the idea for The Terminator?
Rome
Cameron was sick in Rome, where he had gone for the release of Piranha II: The Spawning; the finished film cost about $6.4 million and grossed over $78 million worldwide.
Q 18Which Guns N' Roses single was tied in to Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)?
You Could Be Mine
'You Could Be Mine' was the lead single from Use Your Illusion II and plays over the film's end credits; Schwarzenegger's T-800 appears in its music video.
Q 19Which actor was first cast as Marty McFly in Back to the Future, then fired weeks into filming?
Eric Stoltz
Eric Stoltz was let go weeks into shooting in January 1985; Michael J. Fox replaced him, shooting the film at night while making Family Ties by day.
Q 20Which director made RoboCop, Total Recall and Starship Troopers?
Paul Verhoeven
Paul Verhoeven threw the RoboCop script away after reading its first page; his wife Martine persuaded him to give it another look, and Total Recall and Starship Troopers followed.
Puerto Vallarta
Filming was based near Puerto Vallarta, in the jungle around Mismaloya on Mexico's Pacific coast, with further scenes shot at Palenque in Chiapas.
Q 24In Total Recall (1990), Douglas Quaid visits which company to have false memories implanted?
Rekall
Quaid goes to Rekall for an implanted memory of a Mars trip; the film adapts Philip K. Dick's 1966 story 'We Can Remember It for You Wholesale' and won a Special Achievement Oscar for visual effects.
Q 25Jurassic Park held the record as highest-grossing film of all time until which movie overtook it?
Titanic
Titanic (1997) took the record from Jurassic Park, whose original run grossed over $900 million worldwide; Jurassic Park won three Oscars for its effects and sound.
Q 26Which 1962 French short, told almost entirely in still photographs, inspired Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys?
La Jetée
Chris Marker's La Jetée, a 28-minute photo-roman, supplied the time-loop premise of 12 Monkeys; Brad Pitt won a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination for playing the twitchy Jeffrey Goines.
Q 27The title of Gattaca (1997) is spelled from the letters that stand for what?
The four DNA nucleobases
The letters stand for the four DNA nucleobases: G, A, T and C are guanine, adenine, thymine and cytosine; the film was writer-director Andrew Niccol's feature debut and grossed only about $12.5 million domestically.
Q 28Which fashion designer created the costumes for Luc Besson's The Fifth Element (1997)?
Jean Paul Gaultier
Jean Paul Gaultier designed more than 900 costumes, including the extras' outfits for the Fhloston Paradise scenes, and checked each one on set every morning.
Q 29Men in Black (1997) won its only Academy Award in which category?
Best Makeup
Best Makeup went to Rick Baker and David LeRoy Anderson for the aliens; the film was adapted from a Malibu Comics series by Lowell Cunningham.
Q 30In Contact (1997), the signal of prime numbers that Ellie Arroway detects comes from which star?
Vega
The signal comes from Vega, about 25 light-years away; the film is based on Carl Sagan's 1985 novel and won the 1998 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation.