Scream
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
8correct to beat the crowd
113 free Scream trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
82 free Scream trivia questions with answers. How well do you know the Scream franchise? This quiz goes deep on Wes Craven's 1996 original, from Kevin Williamson's Scary Movie script and the Gainesville Ripper headlines that inspired it, through the casting fights, the Fun World mask, the Santa Rosa shoot and the NC-17 battle, to the Saturn Awards and the box-office record it held for 22 years. Then it widens out to the sequels, the Stab films-within-films, the 2022 relaunch and Ghostface's many faces. The early questions are for anyone who has seen the first film; the later ones are for people who can name the killers in every sequel and know which actor the studio wanted for Billy. Every answer has been verified against a primary source, so use it for a Halloween party round or a horror-night rematch and settle the argument for good.
30 of 113 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which hit sitcom was Courteney Cox starring in when she was cast as Gale Weathers in Scream?
Friends
Friends had typecast Courteney Cox as the likeable Monica, so she lobbied hard for the part of ruthless Gale to prove she could play against type.
Q 02Who has voiced the Ghostface caller in every *Scream* film?
Roger L. Jackson
Roger L. Jackson has voiced the Ghostface caller since the 1996 original; he performs the calls live on set by phone rather than dubbing them in afterward.
Q 03What is Casey Becker making on the stove when the killer calls in Scream's opening scene?
Popcorn
Popcorn: the caller asks what the noise is, and when Casey says she is getting ready to watch a video, he steers the chat to her favorite horror films.
Q 04What was the working title for the original 1996 *Scream* film?
Scary Movie
Scary Movie was the working title until late in production, when the Weinsteins renamed the film Scream; their studio, Dimension, then reused the discarded title for its 2000 slasher spoof.
Q 05Which actress played Casey Becker, the teenager killed in the opening scene of Scream?
Drew Barrymore
Drew Barrymore was first signed to play Sidney but took the smaller part of Casey instead, and the filmmakers embraced it: killing their best-known star so early would show that nobody was safe.
Q 06What is Gale Weathers' profession in the Scream films, which keeps putting her in Ghostface's path?
Investigative journalist
Investigative journalist is the job; Courteney Cox's Gale is so ruthless about getting the story that she wrote a book about Sidney's mother's murder.
Q 07Where does horror-film expert Randy Meeks work in the original Scream?
A video store
A video store: while reshelving tapes, Randy insists the police would crack the case faster if they watched Prom Night, because the genre follows a formula.
Q 08Which character was revealed as one of the Ghostface killers in the original 1996 Scream?
Stu Macher
Stu Macher is unmasked alongside Sidney's boyfriend at his own house party; asked for his motive, all he offers is 'peer pressure'.
Q 09In Scream 2, Randy's first rule of horror sequels is that what is always bigger?
The body count
The body count is always bigger, Randy explains; rule two demands more elaborate death scenes, and he is interrupted before he can finish the third.
Q 10Which actor plays Dewey Riley, deputy and later sheriff, in the Scream films?
David Arquette
David Arquette was called in to read for the boyfriend, Billy, but asked to play Dewey instead and got his wish.
Q 11Who played Tatum Riley, Sidney's best friend and Dewey's sister, in the first Scream film?
Rose McGowan
Rose McGowan dyed her dark hair blonde to play Tatum, so that the film would not have two dark-haired female leads.
Q 12The first Scream's director cameos as a school janitor dressed as which horror villain?
Freddy Krueger
Freddy Krueger: the director created him for A Nightmare on Elm Street, so he turns up as Fred the janitor in Freddy's striped sweater and hat.
Q 13How does Ghostface kill Tatum Riley at the house party in the first Scream?
Crushes her in a garage door
Q 21To whose cellular phone do police trace the killer's calls in the first Scream?
Sidney's father Neil
Sidney's father Neil was the killers' chosen scapegoat: they had kidnapped him and planned to pin every murder on him while posing as the wounded survivors.
Q 22Whose murder was added to Scream's script after Bob Weinstein felt too long passed without a death?
Principal Himbry
Principal Himbry's death was added at Bob Weinstein's request to break a long stretch without a kill; it also gave the partygoers a reason to leave Stu's house, rushing off to see the body on the goalpost.
Q 23Scream leads Skeet Ulrich and Neve Campbell had just appeared together in which 1996 film?
The Craft
Crushes her in a garage door: Tatum tries to escape through the pet flap as the door rises, and the actress slipped through it so easily that the crew nailed her shirt to the frame.
Q 14Which 'Happy Days' actor had a cameo as Principal Himbry in the first Scream film?
Henry Winkler
Henry Winkler went uncredited as the foul-mouthed principal because the producers feared audiences would see only the Fonz and be distracted from the young cast.
Q 15Which actress plays the moviegoer stabbed to death during a sneak preview in Scream 2's opening scene?
Jada Pinkett Smith
Jada Pinkett Smith, then billed as Jada Pinkett, plays Maureen Evans, who staggers onto the stage below the screen while the crowd takes her dying for a publicity stunt.
Q 16Kevin Williamson, who wrote Scream, went on to create which teen television drama?
Dawson's Creek
Dawson's Creek grew out of a meeting he took after selling Scream: he pitched his own boyhood by a North Carolina creek, with film-obsessed Dawson as his stand-in.
Q 17Which real-life killings inspired the screenplay for the first Scream film?
The Gainesville Ripper murders
The Gainesville Ripper murders: Danny Rolling killed five Florida college students in August 1990, and a TV documentary on the case so unsettled the house-sitting writer that he started the script.
Q 18In Scream's opening scene, Casey Becker gets a trivia question wrong about which horror film, costing Steve his life?
Friday the 13th
Friday the 13th trips her up: she names Jason as the killer, but in the first film it was his mother, Mrs. Voorhees.
Q 19Which man was convicted of murdering Sidney's mother a year before the events of the first Scream?
Cotton Weary
Cotton Weary was sent to death row on Sidney's testimony; Gale Weathers' book argued he was innocent, and the real killers finally admit they framed him.
Q 20In Scream's climax, Billy quotes the line 'We all go a little mad sometimes' from which film?
Psycho
Psycho: Billy credits the line aloud to Anthony Perkins, and his own surname points the same way, since Sam Loomis is Marion Crane's lover in the Hitchcock film.
The Craft cast Campbell as teenage witch Bonnie and Ulrich as Chris, the jock a vengeful Nancy throws from a window; it reached cinemas in May 1996, while Scream was still shooting.
Q 24In which California wine-country county was most of the first Scream filmed?
Sonoma
Sonoma County won out after North Carolina and other sites were rejected for lacking suitable houses, so the shoot settled in and around Santa Rosa.
Q 25Scream's end credits offer 'no thanks whatsoever' to which group that turned the production away?
A local school board
A local school board: Santa Rosa's refused to let its high school play Woodsboro High, so the scenes moved to a community centre at extra cost and the credits took revenge.
Q 26The Ghostface mask was an existing shop-bought costume mask made by which novelty company?
Fun World
Fun World had been selling the mask as a cheap costume novelty since the early 1990s when the filmmakers spotted one in a house they were scouting as a location.
Q 27Which Scream sequence took 21 nights to film?
The party finale
The party finale runs over 40 minutes and is set entirely at night, so filming at the hilltop house had to stop at each daybreak, stretching the work across three weeks.
Q 28Which rating did the MPAA first hand Scream?
NC-17
NC-17 was the MPAA's first verdict; after cut upon cut, an R came only once the studio persuaded the board that the film was a satire of slashers rather than a straight one.
Q 29Which then-unknown composer won the job of scoring the first Scream with a test cue for its opening?
Marco Beltrami
Marco Beltrami had never scored a horror film, so he treated Scream partly as a western, giving Deputy Dewey a twanging guitar theme in the style of Ennio Morricone.
Q 30Scream took its final title from a 1995 hit single by which pop superstar?
Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson's 1995 duet with his sister Janet, 'Scream', prompted the Weinsteins to drop the working title; Sony then sued, saying the name was too close to its film Screamers, and settled out of court.