The 'Burbs Trivia
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49 free The 'Burbs trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This The 'Burbs trivia quiz covers Joe Dante's 1989 dark comedy from Ray Peterson's first night of strange noises to the ambulance crashing into Art's house. There are questions on the plot (the femur, Walter's toupee, the crematorium in the basement, the gas line and the pickaxe), the neighbours of Mayfield Place (Tom Hanks, Bruce Dern, Carrie Fisher, Rick Ducommun, Corey Feldman) and the Klopeks themselves, played by Henry Gibson, Brother Theodore and Courtney Gains. The harder questions dig into how the film was made: Dana Olsen's original script title, the ending in which the hero died, the Universal back-lot street borrowed from Leave It to Beaver, Jerry Goldsmith's score, the three endings shot during the writers' strike, the reviews it got in 1989, and the Peacock series that revived it in 2026 with Keke Palmer. Easy questions suit anyone who has seen it once on cable; the expert ones are for people who own the Arrow Blu-ray. Every answer was checked against the film's Wikipedia article and its cited sources before publishing.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Before The 'Burbs, its director had a huge hit with which 1984 creature comedy?
Gremlins
Gremlins. Its success briefly made Joe Dante an A-list name: he was even offered a Batman film, though he said he had always been a B-movie director at heart.
Q 02When Werner Klopek comes upstairs wiping red from his hands in The 'Burbs, what does he say it is?
Paint
Paint. Werner apologises that he was only touching up one of his pictures, because painting relaxes him, and the neighbours who came expecting a killer can find nothing to object to.
Q 03Which Hanks film was up for Oscars when The 'Burbs opened?
Big
Big. It had just earned Hanks his first Oscar nomination, announced two days before The 'Burbs opened, and one Los Angeles critic suspected the studio had picked the date hoping for exactly that boost.
Q 04On the welcome visit in The 'Burbs, what do the Klopeks offer their guests along with pretzels?
Sardines
Sardines, offered amid an awkward hush. The 2026 TV series restaged the moment, pretzels included, and its showrunner called the original 'such an iconic scene'.
Q 05Who plays Carol, Ray's wife, in The 'Burbs?
Carrie Fisher
Carrie Fisher plays Carol Peterson, the voice of reason who finally drags the men over for a proper welcome visit to the Klopeks.
Q 06Which actor plays the teenage neighbour Ricky Butler in The 'Burbs?
Corey Feldman
Corey Feldman plays Ricky Butler, the teenager who treats the cul-de-sac like a TV show and invites his friends round to watch the neighbours' antics.
Q 07Who plays Mark Rumsfield, the neighbour with a military past, in The 'Burbs?
Bruce Dern
Bruce Dern plays Mark Rumsfield, who keeps lookout from Ray's roof with a rifle until a sudden roar from the Klopeks' cellar startles him: he falls off and shoots out a car window.
Q 08In which war did Mark Rumsfield of The 'Burbs serve?
Vietnam
Vietnam. He still talks like a man on patrol: collaring a fleeing Klopek at the end, he warns that he spent '18 months in the bush' and can snap a neck in a heartbeat.
Q 09Who plays Art Weingartner, Ray's nosy neighbour, in The 'Burbs?
Rick Ducommun
Rick Ducommun plays Art Weingartner, who decides to 'goose' the Klopeks by slipping an unsigned note under their door: 'I know what you've done.'
Q 10In The 'Burbs, what is the name of Ray and Carol's son?
Dave
Dave Peterson, played by Cory Danziger, is sent off with Carol to her sister's so Ray can search the Klopeks' yard in peace.
Q 11In The 'Burbs, what is the name of Walter's dog?
Queenie
Queenie. She opens the film by fouling Rumsfield's lawn, and he duly steps in it; later, finding her loose and Walter nowhere in sight is what starts the panic.
Q 12In The 'Burbs, what is the name of Ray's dog, which digs up a bone by the Klopeks' fence?
Vince
Vince. Ray works out where the bone came from, 'He dug it up from underneath the fence', and that is enough to convince him and Art that Walter has been murdered.
Q 13In The 'Burbs, which bone does Ray's dog dig up?
A femur
A femur. Art names it from 'Biology 101' and insists it is human, and he turns out to be right: Werner later tells Ray, 'I let you keep the femur.'
Q 21In The 'Burbs, what does Ray hit with his pickaxe in the Klopeks' basement?
A gas line
A gas line. The house blows up seconds later; Ray staggers out of the wreck singed and smoking, only to be arrested for destroying his neighbours' home.
Q 22In The 'Burbs, where had the missing Walter been all along?
In hospital
In hospital. Walter's family took him there after a bout of heart palpitations; he had asked the Klopeks to collect his mail, which is why they had been in and out of his house.
Q 23Whose murder does Werner finally confess to Ray in The 'Burbs?
The house's previous owners
Q 14In The 'Burbs, what item of Walter's turns up while he is missing, convincing the men something is wrong?
His toupee
His toupee. Ray posts it back through Walter's mail slot, then finds it again inside the Klopeks' house, which is all the proof he needs that they have been next door.
Q 15Who plays Dr. Werner Klopek in The 'Burbs?
Henry Gibson
Henry Gibson plays Werner Klopek, the perfect host while the neighbours are visiting; one critic called him 'a Bela Lugosi-like doctor', and the good manners last only until he is alone with Ray.
Q 16In The 'Burbs, how does Hans Klopek get a bag of garbage from the garage to the curb?
By car
By car: Hans drives the bag from the garage to the curb, then pounds it into the can with a stick. Ray says he has never seen anybody drive their garbage to the street and beat the hell out of it.
Q 17Which cult performer plays Uncle Reuben Klopek in The 'Burbs?
Brother Theodore
Brother Theodore plays Uncle Reuben Klopek, who meets Rumsfield's attempt at small talk, 'Klopek. What is that, Slavic?', with a single barked 'No!'
Q 18Who plays Walter Seznick, the elderly neighbour whose disappearance alarms the street in The 'Burbs?
Gale Gordon
Gale Gordon, for decades Lucille Ball's comic foil on television, plays Walter Seznick, who comes home alive and well and takes Ray's helpful note about his dog for a ransom demand.
Q 19What is the name of the cul-de-sac in The 'Burbs?
Mayfield Place
Mayfield Place. The film opens by plunging from the studio's globe logo all the way down to the cul-de-sac, an effects shot by Industrial Light & Magic, and ends by pulling back out again.
Q 20What do Ray and Art find when they break into the Klopeks' basement in The 'Burbs?
A giant furnace
A giant furnace. The pair decide it is a crematorium where the Klopeks burned Walter, and start digging up the dirt floor in search of his bones.
The house's previous owners, the Knapps. 'We took the house from them', Werner says, adding that he did offer to buy it first, 'but you know how old people are'.
Q 24How does Werner try to kill Ray at the end of The 'Burbs?
With a lethal injection
With a lethal injection. In the script he succeeds and the ambulance carries Ray away for good; that ending was dropped once Tom Hanks was cast, on the grounds that 'you can't kill Tom Hanks'.
Q 25In The 'Burbs, whose house does the runaway ambulance crash into?
Art's
Art's. Fitting, since he started the whole witch-hunt: a closing gag has the neighbours calling out that his wife is home and his house is on fire.
Q 26Where does Ricky find the human remains that finally incriminate the Klopeks in The 'Burbs?
In the trunk of their car
In the trunk of their car. The runaway gurney slams into the Klopeks' car and pops the lid, Ricky lifts out a skull, and the police take the family away.
Q 27Who wrote the screenplay for The 'Burbs?
Dana Olsen
Dana Olsen based it on his own 'ultranormal' childhood in a town that, he said, had its share of psychos, a legendary hatchet murder included; he also appears on screen as one of the policemen.
Q 28What was the script's title before it became The 'Burbs?
Bay Window
Bay Window. Under that title the script was taken for a spoof of Hitchcock's Rear Window, another tale of a man at home who suspects a neighbour of murder.
Q 29Despite its skulls and serial killers, what rating did the MPAA give The 'Burbs?
PG
PG. One Los Angeles critic, noting the rating, complained that its message, that it is fine to torment odd neighbours because they may turn out guilty, was aimed at an 'impressionable young audience'.
Q 30Which Joe Dante regular plays Vic, one of the garbagemen in The 'Burbs?
Dick Miller
Dick Miller, a fixture of Joe Dante's films, plays Vic. Art and Rumsfield drag the Klopeks' rubbish back out of his truck and strew it across the road, leaving Vic to grumble, 'I hate cul-de-sacs.'