The Breakfast Club Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
48 free The Breakfast Club trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
43 free The Breakfast Club trivia questions with answers. Five strangers, one Saturday detention, and a thousand-word essay nobody wanted to write. The Breakfast Club cost a million dollars, was shot in a closed-down Illinois high school, and became the film that defined the Brat Pack. This quiz covers the story and the making of it: why each student is in detention, what Vernon threatens Bender with, who was almost cast as Bender and Allison, the Annie Leibovitz poster, and how Simple Minds came to record a song they had turned down twice. The first questions are easy for anyone who has seen the film once; the later ones reward people who know it by heart and have read up on the production, from the original title to the lost director's cut. Every answer has been checked against the film's published production history and carries a linked source, so you can settle any argument about who kissed whom in the storage closet on the spot.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01John Hughes wrote The Breakfast Club first, but which film became his directing debut instead?
Sixteen Candles
Sixteen Candles: Hughes feared opening his directing career with so sparse a drama, so he dashed off the comedy in a couple of days and it jumped the queue.
Q 02On which day of the week do the five students serve detention in The Breakfast Club?
Saturday
Saturday: at 7:06 in the morning Vernon tells the five they have exactly 8 hours and 54 minutes to think about why they are there.
Q 03In which fictional Illinois suburb, used across John Hughes's films, is The Breakfast Club set?
Shermer
Shermer: Hughes borrowed the name from Shermerville, which is what Northbrook, the suburb where he went to high school, was called until 1923.
Q 04In The Breakfast Club, which singer's wardrobe does Bender accuse Vernon of raiding?
Barry Manilow
Barry Manilow: invited to ask questions, Bender wonders aloud whether the singer knows Vernon raids his wardrobe, and the joke costs him another detention.
Q 05In The Breakfast Club, Vernon's essay must describe what?
Who they think they are
Who they think they are: Vernon wants at least a thousand words from each of them, and gets one letter for all five telling him he already sees them as he wants to.
Q 06In The Breakfast Club's closing letter, which label fits the loner Allison?
A basket case
A basket case: the letter lists a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal, then turns on Vernon by saying each of the five is all of those at once.
Q 07In The Breakfast Club, what does Allison shake onto her drawing to make it snow?
Her own dandruff
Her own dandruff: Allison scratches it from her hair over the winter scene she has drawn, though what fell on set was a kitchen stand-in, most often said to be Parmesan cheese.
Q 08Who plays the rebellious John Bender in The Breakfast Club?
Judd Nelson
Judd Nelson stayed in character off camera and needled the actress playing Claire so hard that Hughes nearly fired him, until the rest of the cast talked the director round.
Q 09Which actor tried out for Bender in The Breakfast Club but ended up in another role?
Emilio Estevez
Emilio Estevez had just played the young punk in Repo Man; one account has Hughes seeing the athlete in him, another has him simply short of anyone else to play Andrew.
Q 10In The Breakfast Club, what does Bender remove so the library door will not stay open?
A screw
A screw: without it the heavy door swings shut on Vernon's view of them, and Bender shrugs that screws fall out all the time because the world is an imperfect place.
Q 11Which comic actor was dropped as The Breakfast Club's janitor after playing him as an over-the-top Russian?
Rick Moranis
Rick Moranis turned up with gold teeth and a thick Russian accent, a broad sketch-show turn the serious film had no room for, and John Kapelos took over as Carl.
Q 12In The Breakfast Club, how does Bender stop Vernon catching the others outside the library?
He runs off singing loudly
He runs off singing loudly: Bender belts out an army marching chant to draw Vernon to the gym, and takes the punishment alone, locked in a supply closet for it.
Q 13Which agency moved into the closed high school where The Breakfast Club was filmed?
Q 21In The Breakfast Club, why does Allison say she came to detention?
She had nothing better to do
She had nothing better to do: Allison only says so after the others have confessed what they did, and the whole group, Allison included, ends up helpless with laughter.
Q 22In The Breakfast Club, where do all five sneak off to together?
Bender's locker
Bender's locker: he keeps a bag of marijuana there, and once it has gone round back in the library the group finally start telling each other the truth.
Q 23In The Breakfast Club, how does Bender get back to the library after Vernon locks him in a closet?
Through the ceiling
The Illinois State Police
The Illinois State Police: Maine North High School shut in 1981, played the film's school three years later, and the home of cinema's best-known detention now houses a police district office.
Q 14How did Hughes make The Breakfast Club for $1 million?
One main set
One main set: Hughes had never directed when he wrote it, so he built the script around a single room and a handful of actors to keep it cheap enough to get made.
Q 15Which muttered Breakfast Club insult earns Bender his extra detentions?
Eat my shorts
Eat my shorts: Bender mutters it, repeats it loudly when challenged, and keeps answering back until Vernon crows that he has him for the next two months.
Q 16Why is Claire in detention in The Breakfast Club?
She skipped school to go shopping
She skipped school to go shopping: her father shrugs it off as he drops her at the door, telling her it does not make her a defective and promising to make the lost day up to her.
Q 17What did Bender do to earn his detention in The Breakfast Club?
Pulled the fire alarm
Pulled the fire alarm: Bender plays it for laughs all day, until he rolls up his sleeve and shows the others a cigar burn his father gave him.
Q 18In The Breakfast Club, which sport does Andrew, who taped a classmate's buttocks together, compete in?
Wrestling
Wrestling: Andrew admits he humiliated the boy to win the approval of his bullying father, then breaks down wondering how he could ever apologize for it.
Q 19In The Breakfast Club, Brian is in detention because of an incident involving what?
A flare gun in his locker
A flare gun in his locker: it went off by accident, and Brian admits to the others that he had brought it to school to end his life over one failing grade.
Q 20In The Breakfast Club, which class does Brian fail, the first F of his life?
Shop
Shop: Brian took it as an easy way to protect his grade average, then his ceramic elephant lamp refused to light, and Bender, who takes the class himself, was not amused.
Through the ceiling: he crawls along above the tiles telling himself a joke, crashes down before the punchline, and hides under Claire's table while the others cover for him.
Q 24In The Breakfast Club, which two characters are ashamed of being virgins?
Brian and Claire
Brian and Claire: he bluffs to Bender rather than let her find out, and she only blurts it out after Allison goads her with invented stories about her own love life.
Q 25In The Breakfast Club, what does Allison rip off Andrew's letterman jacket as they part?
The state championship patch
The state championship patch: she tears it off to keep straight after they kiss in the parking lot, moments before his father pulls up and stares at them both.
Q 26What does Claire give Bender at the end of The Breakfast Club?
One of her diamond earrings
One of her diamond earrings: hours earlier Bender had sneered at them and asked whether her daddy bought them, and now he puts one in his own ear.
Q 27In The Breakfast Club, what does Carl tell Vernon, who says students keep getting more arrogant?
That he is the one who has changed
That he is the one who has changed: Vernon frets that the kids see him as a joke, and Carl asks what he would have made of a man like himself at sixteen.
Q 28What is the last shot of The Breakfast Club?
Bender raising his fist on the football field
Bender raising his fist on the football field: he crosses it alone as the closing letter is read out, and the picture freezes on his silent cheer.
Q 29In The Breakfast Club, what does Bender say his father gave him for Christmas?
A carton of cigarettes
A carton of cigarettes: his father handed it over with 'Smoke up, Johnny', a memory Bender throws at Claire before telling her to go home and cry to her daddy.
Q 30Which celebrated photographer shot the huddled-cast poster for The Breakfast Club?
Annie Leibovitz
Annie Leibovitz took the group portrait, and the poster sold the five as a brain, a beauty, a jock, a rebel and a recluse, not quite the labels the film itself uses.