The Shining Trivia
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100 free The Shining trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
40 free The Shining trivia questions with answers. The Shining is the horror film people study frame by frame, and this quiz rewards that. Forty questions cover Kubrick's 1980 film (Room 237, the Grady girls, the Steadicam corridors, the 127-take staircase, the July 4, 1921 photograph), Stephen King's 1977 novel and how it differs (roque mallets, exploding boilers, topiary animals), the real Stanley Hotel that inspired it all, and the 2019 sequel Doctor Sleep. Easy questions are for anyone who has heard "Here's Johnny." Harder ones ask why 217 became 237, whose face Nicholson's was pasted over in the photo, which scene Kubrick cut a week after release, and what King's abandoned first attempt at the story was called. Good for a horror night, a film-club round or settling the maze-versus-boiler argument. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the film, the novel, the Stanley Hotel and Doctor Sleep, and each question carries its source.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who plays Wendy Torrance in Kubrick's 1980 film of The Shining?
Shelley Duvall
Shelley Duvall called Wendy the most difficult role she ever played and said the strain left her in and out of ill health. The same year she was Olive Oyl in Popeye.
Q 02Who plays the caretaker, Mr. Torrance, in the 1980 film of The Shining?
Jack Nicholson
Jack Nicholson had trained as a firefighter in the Air National Guard, and he tore through the prop bathroom door so fast that Kubrick had to replace it with a real one.
Q 03In which state's Rocky Mountains does the fictional Overlook Hotel stand?
Colorado
Colorado: King had just moved his family from Maine to Boulder, wanting a different background for his next novel, and he set the book in the mountains above his new home.
Q 04According to the hotel manager in Kubrick's The Shining, on what was the Overlook built?
An Indian burial ground
An Indian burial ground: he adds that the builders had to fend off attacks while they worked. The remark is brief, but the cursed graveyard went on to become a staple of 1980s horror.
Q 05In Kubrick's film of The Shining, which room does Hallorann warn Danny to avoid?
237
237: the hotel used for the exterior shots asked for a number it did not have, afraid that guests would shun a real room after seeing the film. King's novel uses a different number.
Q 06Where does Wendy lock Jack up after knocking him out in The Shining?
The kitchen pantry
The kitchen pantry holds him only until the ghost of an earlier caretaker, having made him promise to 'correct' his wife and son, slides back the bolt from outside.
Q 07In The Shining, what sentence fills every page of the caretaker's manuscript?
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy fills the pages only in English. For foreign releases Kubrick refilmed them with a local proverb in each language; the Italian one means 'the morning has gold in its mouth'.
Q 08Which animated series spoofed The Shining as 'The Shinning' in a Halloween episode?
The Simpsons
The Simpsons sent the family to mind their boss's mountain lodge, where Homer, cut off from television and beer, goes berserk. The show's creator admitted he had never seen the film.
Q 09The Overlook Hotel's exteriors in Kubrick's film were shot at which real building?
Timberline, on Mount Hood, Oregon
Timberline, on Mount Hood, Oregon, lent the film only its outside. Its owners, afraid that guests would refuse to sleep in the haunted room from King's novel, had Kubrick change that room's number.
Q 10Where was almost all of Kubrick's film of The Shining actually shot?
Elstree Studios in England
Elstree Studios in England: Kubrick had lived nearby since the 1960s, so rather than travel he built the whole hotel there, down to a full-size copy of its exterior.
Q 11Which then-new camera rig gave The Shining its gliding corridor shots, with its inventor working on set?
The Steadicam
The Steadicam had been tried on only a handful of films, and its inventor, Garrett Brown, came to operate it himself; he later said this was the first picture to use its full potential.
Q 12What does Danny ride through the corridors of the Overlook Hotel?
A Big Wheel tricycle
A Big Wheel tricycle: to chase it Kubrick wanted the lens barely above the floor, which forced the camera operator to invent a new, low-slung way of carrying his rig.
Q 13Identical siblings played the Grady girls, but what does The Shining's script say about the characters?
Q 21In King's novel Jack attacks with a roque mallet; which weapon replaced it in Kubrick's film?
An axe
An axe. In the book the mallet comes from roque, a hard-court cousin of croquet, and in the final confrontation the possessed Jack turns it on his own face.
Q 22How is the Overlook Hotel destroyed at the end of King's novel?
Its neglected boiler explodes
Its neglected boiler explodes: Danny reminds the thing wearing his father's face that the pressure has gone unchecked for days, and it reaches the cellar too late.
Q 23In Stephen King's novel, what is Jack Torrance hoping to finish writing at the Overlook?
A stage play
They are sisters, not twins
They are sisters, not twins: the hotel manager puts their ages at about eight and ten, yet Kubrick cast identical twins and dressed them alike, and the pair have been the Grady twins ever since.
Q 14How does Jack Torrance die in Kubrick's film?
He freezes to death in the hedge maze
He freezes to death in the hedge maze after Danny walks backwards in his own footprints and hides, leaving his father to lose the trail in the snow.
Q 15The Shining's final photograph shows Jack at a hotel party dated to which day?
July 4, 1921
July 4, 1921 is only what the caption claims: a researcher showed in 2025 that the picture Kubrick doctored was really taken months earlier, at a Valentine's Day dance in a London hotel.
Q 16Which member of Kubrick's family, then aged 17, shot the behind-the-scenes documentary on The Shining?
His daughter Vivian
His daughter Vivian made the 35-minute film for the BBC and can be glimpsed on screen as a guest in the ballroom. Her father had some of her footage removed.
Q 17With what does Wendy knock Jack unconscious on the staircase in The Shining?
A baseball bat
A baseball bat: she backs up the stairs swinging it while he taunts her, then lands the blow that sends him tumbling down. In King's novel she does the job with a bottle instead.
Q 18What did Stephen King say was wrong with Jack Torrance in Kubrick's film?
He seems crazy from the start
He seems crazy from the start: King had written an ordinary man slowly destroyed, and said that if the guy is nuts to begin with, 'the entire tragedy of his downfall is wasted'.
Q 19The Shining was Kubrick's only film nominated for which awards?
The Razzies
The Razzies, then in their first year, nominated Kubrick as Worst Director and his leading lady as Worst Actress. The second nomination was withdrawn in 2022 over the way she had been treated on set.
Q 20Which scene did Kubrick cut from The Shining a week into its release?
A hospital epilogue
A hospital epilogue: the hotel manager visits Wendy to say that searchers have not found her husband's body. Projectionists were told to cut it out of prints already showing in cinemas.
A stage play: he never finishes it, because a scrapbook of the hotel's old scandals that he finds in the basement draws him into its past instead.
Q 24At which hotel did Stephen King's one-night stay in 1974 plant the seed for The Shining?
The Stanley Hotel
The Stanley Hotel was closing for the winter the next day, so King and his wife were its only guests, eating alone in a dining room where every other table had its chairs stacked on top.
Q 25Before he becomes the Overlook's caretaker in The Shining, Jack Torrance has just lost a job as what?
A schoolteacher
A schoolteacher: in the novel he is sacked from a prep school for attacking a student who let the air out of his tyres, an outburst that brings his wife close to divorcing him.
Q 26Which 1994 comedy filmed scenes at the real hotel that inspired The Shining?
Dumb and Dumber
Dumb and Dumber dressed the hotel as the Danbury, the smart ski resort where its two heroes arrive with a briefcase of ransom money; the bar and staircase scenes were shot there.
Q 27Stephen King later said that Jack Torrance, the drinker afraid of harming his family, was really what?
A self-portrait
A self-portrait: King was drinking heavily when he wrote the book and feared he might hurt his own family. He came to call the novel a kind of self-psychoanalysis.
Q 28What is the name of Danny Torrance's imaginary friend in The Shining?
Tony
Tony turns out, in the novel, to be Danny himself: an older version of the boy, come back to warn him, whose name is short for Danny's own middle name.
Q 29Who declined the role of Dick Hallorann in The Shining because of his Dr. Strangelove experience with Kubrick?
Slim Pickens
Slim Pickens, worn down by Kubrick's endless retakes on their earlier film, said he would sign only if his scenes took fewer than 100 takes. Kubrick would not promise, and the part went elsewhere.
Q 30How did Kubrick shield the six-year-old who played Danny in The Shining?
He was told it was a drama
He was told it was a drama and believed it throughout the shoot. He gave up acting two years after the film came out, returning only for a cameo as a spectator in the 2019 sequel.