60 free Sci-Fi Movie trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 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.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who directed Metropolis (1927), the first sci-fi film on UNESCO's Memory of the World register?
Fritz Lang
The film's budget ballooned to 5.3 million Reichsmarks, more than three and a half 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 reduction negative had sat in the Museo del Cine in Buenos Aires; its rediscovery 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 phrase Helen must say to stop it, 'Klaatu barada nikto', has been quoted and parodied everywhere from Army of Darkness to Toy Story.
Q 04Bernard Herrmann's score for The Day the Earth Stood Still featured two of which electronic instrument?
Theremin
Herrmann paired the instruments with electric violin, cello and bass, and the sound 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
Bebe and Louis Barron built the circuits 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
The finished HAL was voiced by Canadian actor Douglas Rain, whose calm delivery is much of why the character is so unsettling.
Q 07In 2001: A Space Odyssey, the spacecraft Discovery One is bound for which planet?
Jupiter
Kubrick had a 30-ton rotating centrifuge set built by Vickers-Armstrong for the ship's interiors, at a cost of $750,000.
Q 08Which Soviet director's 1972 film Solaris won the Grand Prix Spécial du Jury at Cannes?
Andrei Tarkovsky
The 166-minute film adapts Stanisław Lem's novel; Steven Soderbergh remade it in 2002 with George Clooney.
Q 09In Alien (1979), what is the name of the commercial space tug?
Nostromo
The name comes from a Joseph Conrad novel; the sequel's warship, the Sulaco, is another Conrad reference.
Q 10Which Swiss artist designed the creature and alien environments for Alien?
H. R. Giger
The full-grown creature was played inside the suit by Bolaji Badejo, a 6-foot-10 Nigerian design student spotted in a London pub.
Q 11How many identical cats were used to play Jones, the ship's cat, in Alien?
Four
The tagline printed in small type on the poster, 'In space no one can hear you scream', became one of the most quoted in film history.
Q 12Blade Runner (1982) is an adaptation of which 1968 Philip K. Dick novel?
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
The film's synthetic humans are called replicants, a word that never appears in the book, which calls them androids.
Q 13In Blade Runner, which corporation bio-engineers the replicants?
Tyrell
The story is set in a rain-soaked Los Angeles of 2019, and Ridley Scott's definitive Final Cut did not arrive in cinemas until 2007.
Q 21In RoboCop (1987), which mega-corporation is granted control of the Detroit Police Department?
Omni Consumer Products
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
The 7-foot-2 Kevin Peter Hall took over, having just played the sasquatch in Harry and the Hendersons.
Q 23Although set in a Central American rainforest, most of Predator was shot near which resort city?
Puerto Vallarta
Q 14Who rewrote the 'tears in rain' monologue in Blade Runner and presented the new words on set?
Rutger Hauer
The actor playing Roy Batty trimmed the scripted speech and added the closing 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
Mars thought the alien would frighten children; Hershey said yes and got 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
Its Oscars all came in the music, sound and effects categories, and Spielberg would later beat his own box-office record with Jurassic Park.
Q 17In which city was James Cameron ill when a fever dream gave him the idea for The Terminator?
Rome
He was there for the release of Piranha II: The Spawning; the finished film cost about $6.4 million and grossed $78.3 million worldwide.
Q 18Which Guns N' Roses single was tied in to Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)?
You Could Be Mine
It was the debut single from Use Your Illusion II, and 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
Robert Zemeckis broke the news on January 10, 1985, and Michael J. Fox shot the film at night while making Family Ties by day.
Q 20Which director made RoboCop, Total Recall and Starship Troopers?
Paul Verhoeven
He rejected the RoboCop script as awful after reading its first page; his wife persuaded him to give it another look.
The score was by Alan Silvestri, fresh off Back to the Future, and Jesse Ventura played Sergeant Blain.
Q 24In Total Recall (1990), Douglas Quaid visits which company to have false memories implanted?
Rekall
The film adapts Philip K. Dick's 1966 story 'We Can Remember It for You Wholesale' and won a Special Achievement Oscar for its visual effects.
Q 25Jurassic Park held the record as highest-grossing film of all time until which movie overtook it?
Titanic
The dinosaurs' voices were mixed from real animal noises, and the film 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
Brad Pitt won a Golden Globe and got 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
G, A, T and C are guanine, adenine, thymine and cytosine; the film was writer-director Andrew Niccol's feature debut and flopped at $12.5 million domestic.
Q 28Which fashion designer created the costumes for Luc Besson's The Fifth Element (1997)?
Jean Paul Gaultier
He designed all 900 extras' outfits for the Fhloston Paradise scenes and checked each one every morning.
Q 29Men in Black (1997) won its only Academy Award in which category?
Best Makeup
Rick Baker and David LeRoy Anderson took the prize; 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 film is based on Carl Sagan's 1985 novel and won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation.