The Shape of Water Trivia
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47 free The Shape of Water trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This The Shape of Water trivia quiz covers Guillermo del Toro's 2017 Best Picture winner, a Cold War fairy tale set in a Baltimore laboratory. It follows Elisa Esposito from her hard-boiled eggs at the tank to the canal in the rain: Colonel Strickland and his cattle prod, the Soviet spy in the lab coat, Giles's cats and regrowing hair, the escape plan, the calendar note that gives it away and the gills that open at the end. Behind the scenes it covers the breakfast where the idea was born, the Creature from the Black Lagoon romance Universal refused to let del Toro make, the drunken Golden Globes pitch to Sally Hawkins, the silent comedians she studied, Doug Jones's matador movements, the actor Giles was written for, the black-and-white budget Fox Searchlight offered, the Toronto locations, Alexandre Desplat's water-wave melody, the Venice Golden Lion and the plagiarism suit that collapsed. It ends with the 90th Academy Awards, where the film's thirteen nominations became four wins. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries before publishing.
30 of 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is Elisa's job at the secret government laboratory in The Shape of Water?
A cleaner
A cleaner: she and Zelda are mopping blood off the laboratory floor when they find two severed fingers, their first sign of what the 'asset' in the tank can do.
Q 02In The Shape of Water, what food does Elisa bring the creature to win his trust?
Boiled eggs
Boiled eggs: Elisa smuggles hard-boiled eggs into the laboratory, then a record player and jazz records too, and their shared lunches by the tank become a courtship.
Q 03In which American city is The Shape of Water set?
Baltimore
Baltimore, in 1962: del Toro said that 'once upon a time in 1962' turns the story into a fairy tale for troubled times, so that audiences lower their guard and listen.
Q 04Which 1950s monster movie inspired The Shape of Water?
Creature from the Black Lagoon
Creature from the Black Lagoon: as a boy del Toro watched the Gill-man swim beneath Julie Adams and felt, he said, 'an almost existential desire for them to end up together'.
Q 05How does Elisa communicate in The Shape of Water?
Sign language
Sign language: Elisa is mute, with old scars on her neck, and her friends Giles and Zelda speak her signs aloud for everyone else.
Q 06Who plays the Amphibian Man?
Doug Jones
Doug Jones said his first reaction to hearing that the creature was also the romantic lead was 'utter terror'; he then found its walk alone in a mirrored dance studio.
Q 07Who plays Colonel Richard Strickland?
Michael Shannon
Michael Shannon and del Toro agreed that in an old creature feature Strickland, the square-jawed government man, would have been the hero; here he turns out to be the monster.
Q 08Who plays Giles, Elisa's neighbour?
Richard Jenkins
Richard Jenkins was cast without a meeting: del Toro simply emailed him, 'I want you to play Giles. I hope you like it as much as I do,' and Jenkins wrote back that he did.
Q 09What is Giles's profession in The Shape of Water?
Advertising illustrator
Advertising illustrator: Giles paints a beaming family for a gelatin advert, only to hear that the client wants the dessert green and, worse, wants photographs instead of paintings.
Q 10Who plays Zelda, Elisa's talkative workmate, in The Shape of Water?
Octavia Spencer
Octavia Spencer found it telling that the film's two voiceless characters are spoken for by an African American woman and a closeted gay man, people with few rights of their own in 1962.
Q 11Where did Strickland capture the creature in The Shape of Water?
A South American river
A South American river: Strickland boasts that he dragged the creature out of the river muck himself, and sneers that the people living there worshipped it as a god and tossed it offerings.
Q 12Why does Strickland want the creature vivisected?
To gain an advantage in the Space Race
To gain an advantage in the Space Race: the creature can switch between two ways of breathing, and Strickland argues that cutting it open will show how to keep a man alive in orbit.
Q 13In The Shape of Water, the scientist Robert Hoffstetler is secretly what?
Q 21What happens to Elisa's neck scars in the final scene of The Shape of Water?
They open to reveal gills
They open to reveal gills at the creature's touch, so that Elisa revives and can breathe underwater.
Q 22Del Toro hatched The Shape of Water over breakfast with Daniel Kraus, his co-writer on which story?
Trollhunters
Trollhunters was the book they had met to plan; over breakfast Kraus mentioned an idea he had carried since he was 15, about a woman who breaks a captive creature out of a laboratory.
Q 23Which studio turned down del Toro's pitch for a monster remake in which the monster gets the girl?
Universal
A Soviet spy
A Soviet spy: his handlers order him to kill the creature, but he cannot bring himself to destroy it and ends up helping Elisa smuggle it out of the laboratory alive.
Q 14Who plays Hoffstetler in The Shape of Water?
Michael Stuhlbarg
Michael Stuhlbarg's scientist catches Elisa in the middle of her rescue and, instead of raising the alarm, joins in, telling her how to keep the creature alive once it is out.
Q 15What does Giles keep buying in The Shape of Water just to see the young man at the counter?
Key lime pie
Key lime pie is his excuse to chat; when the counterman proves a bigot and orders him out of his 'family restaurant', Giles goes home and tells Elisa he will help her after all.
Q 16Where does Elisa keep the creature in her apartment?
The bathtub
The bathtub is only a stopgap: Elisa means to free him at a nearby canal once heavy rain opens it to the sea, and while they wait for the weather his health starts to fail.
Q 17After the creature lays a hand on Giles in The Shape of Water, what does he find next morning?
His hair is growing back
His hair is growing back, and the gash the creature left on his arm has closed: the first proof of a healing power that it uses again at the canal.
Q 18What does the creature try to eat while Giles is supposed to be watching him?
One of Giles's cats
One of Giles's cats, Pandora, ends up as his meal, yet Giles forgives him at once: he is a wild creature, he says, and cannot be asked to be anything else.
Q 19How does Strickland learn where the creature is to be released in The Shape of Water?
A calendar note in Elisa's apartment
A calendar note in Elisa's apartment gives the plan away; Zelda's husband has already blurted out who took the creature, leaving her barely time to phone Elisa a warning.
Q 20How does Strickland die?
The creature slashes his throat
The creature slashes his throat seconds after healing its own bullet wounds, and Strickland's last words concede what he had mocked all along: 'You are a god.'
Universal turned him down twice over: he asked to tell the story from the monster's point of view, then to let monster and heroine end up together, and it 'didn't go for' either.
Q 24Sally Hawkins studied Chaplin and Keaton to play Elisa, but which comedian did her director single out?
Stan Laurel
Stan Laurel, del Toro told her, 'can do a state of grace without conveying it verbally'; he gave her a set of silent comedies so that Elisa would move like nobody else in the film.
Q 25Besides 'royal and regal', what did del Toro tell the actor in the creature suit to 'sprinkle in'?
A matador
A matador: bullfighters, the actor explained, are graceful and confident and lead with the hips, which gave the creature a walk that was sensual as well as proud.
Q 26The creature's voice in The Shape of Water blends animal sounds with recordings of the director doing what?
Breathing
Breathing: sound editor Nathan Robitaille 'harvested' del Toro's breaths between takes and layered them with animal noises, giving the director an unseen cameo in his own film.
Q 27Guillermo del Toro's Best Director Oscar followed wins by his fellow Mexicans Alfonso Cuarón and who else?
Alejandro G. Iñárritu
Alejandro G. Iñárritu had won twice running, for Birdman and The Revenant; del Toro opened his own speech, 'I am an immigrant, like Alfonso and Alejandro, my compadres.'
Q 28Fox Searchlight offered del Toro $3 million less if he made The Shape of Water in what form?
In black and white
In black and white the ceiling was $17 million, against $20 million for colour; del Toro feared monochrome would look 'postmodern', and joked that colour got him three million more.
Q 29Where was The Shape of Water filmed?
Toronto and Hamilton, Ontario
Toronto and Hamilton, Ontario: the top-secret laboratory's brutalist exterior is really the humanities wing of the University of Toronto's Scarborough campus.
Q 30What does Hoffstetler tell Elisa to mix into the creature's water to keep him alive?
Table salt
Table salt: the creature needs salted water and a diet of raw protein, instructions the scientist hands over in the middle of the escape.