The Strain
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50 free The Strain trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Strain turned the vampire story into a disease outbreak. A plane lands in New York with almost everyone aboard dead, a doctor is sent to find out why, and within days the city is fighting creatures that spread like a virus. Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan created the series from their own trilogy of novels, and it ran for four seasons. This quiz covers the whole story: Eph Goodweather and his team, the old vampire hunter Abraham Setrakian and his decades-long feud with Thomas Eichhorst, the billionaire Eldritch Palmer, and the Master himself. There are questions on the plot from the first landing to the final episode, on the actors and where you have seen them before, and on how the show was written, cast and filmed. It suits fans planning a rewatch, a horror trivia night, or anyone who wants to see how much of the outbreak has stuck. The questions start easy and get harder, and every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01When Guillermo del Toro first pitched The Strain to Fox as a TV series, the network president asked for what?
A comedy
A comedy was the request, so the talks broke down and del Toro walked away. An agent then suggested telling the story as a series of books instead.
Q 02The Strain opens with a silent jet full of dead passengers on the tarmac at which New York-area airport?
Kennedy
Kennedy, or JFK, is where the jet goes dark with all but one window shade drawn. Four people, the pilot among them, are later found alive on board.
Q 03Which Harry Potter actor, the caretaker Argus Filch, plays the vampire hunter Abraham Setrakian in The Strain?
David Bradley
David Bradley plays the Holocaust survivor who has spent decades hunting the Master. He is also the villainous Walder Frey in Game of Thrones.
Q 04Which Lord of the Rings actor plays Jim Kent, the colleague who betrays Eph Goodweather's team in The Strain?
Sean Astin
Sean Astin was cast because the producers liked the idea of the most famous sidekick of all turning betrayer. He played Samwise Gamgee in the film trilogy.
Q 05Which Canadian city doubled for New York during filming of the vampire series The Strain?
Toronto
Toronto hosted the shoot, and its own international airport played the New York one in the opening scenes. Filming of the pilot began there in September 2013.
Q 06Billboards for The Strain were replaced after complaints about artwork of a worm burrowing into what?
An eye
An eye with a worm boring through it was the show's original key art. The worm matters to the story: it is how the vampire virus passes from body to body.
Q 07In The Strain's first season, what lets the vampires hunt New Yorkers in the middle of the day?
A solar eclipse
A solar eclipse darkens the city, and the vampires use the cover to feed and infect in the daytime. Eph slips away from two FBI agents in the chaos.
Q 08Which Game of Thrones composer scored The Strain after working with Guillermo del Toro on the film Pacific Rim?
Ramin Djawadi
Ramin Djawadi had already scored del Toro's monster film when he took on The Strain. He went on to win two Emmys for Game of Thrones.
Q 09Chuck Hogan, co-author of The Strain, wrote the novel Prince of Thieves, which Ben Affleck filmed as what?
The Town
The Town, which Affleck directed and starred in, was nominated for an Academy Award. Hogan's novel had already won the Hammett Prize.
Q 10The Strain, the vampire drama created by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan, aired on which US cable network?
FX
FX won the rights because it wanted to follow the books closely and liked a story with a planned ending. The authors had talked to every cable network that showed interest.
Q 11Dr. Ephraim Goodweather of The Strain leads the Canary Project, a rapid-response team at which US federal agency?
The CDC
The CDC sends his team aboard the dead plane because the Canary Project handles biological threats. He soon ends up a fugitive from the authorities himself.
Q 12Abraham Setrakian, the elderly vampire hunter of The Strain, runs what kind of shop in Harlem?
A pawnshop
A pawnshop is where the heroes shelter until Eichhorst and his vampire army storm it late in the first season. They get out through a secret passage.
Q 13Vasiliy Fet joins the vampire hunt in The Strain after seeing New York's rats act strangely in which city job?
Exterminator
Q 21In The Strain's flashbacks, which trade do young Setrakian and his brother claim, earning work for the Third Reich?
Carpenters
Carpenters were useful, so the brothers were put to woodworking. Eichhorst then noticed the young man's carving and ordered an ornate box from him.
Q 22Jusef Sardu, the Polish nobleman whose body the Master wears in The Strain, was afflicted with which condition?
Gigantism
Gigantism afflicted the kind-hearted Sardu, and his relatives took him hunting for a wolf whose blood might cure him. The creature they met in a cave took his body instead.
Q 23Which ancient book, said to reveal how to kill the Master, do Setrakian and Palmer both chase in The Strain?
Occido Lumen
Exterminator Fet follows the rats into the sewers and finds vampires living below the streets. The part was first written with Ron Perlman in mind.
Q 14What does Abraham Setrakian call the vampires of The Strain, using a word from Romanian folklore?
Strigoi
Strigoi, in Romanian folklore, are troubled spirits said to rise from the grave and gain vitality from blood. The show's version feeds through a stinger in the throat.
Q 15Abraham Setrakian of The Strain carries an ancient sword made of which metal that burns vampires on contact?
Silver
Silver burns the vampires of The Strain, so the old man also loads his gun with bullets made of it. Even the cover of an ancient book scorches one who grabs it.
Q 16Billionaire Eldritch Palmer helps the Master reach New York in The Strain in return for a promise of what?
Immortality
Immortality is the one thing his fortune cannot buy, so the frail tycoon bargains with a vampire for it. He is furious when the Master only restores his health.
Q 17Jonathan Hyde, Eldritch Palmer in The Strain, played a relentless big-game hunter in which Robin Williams film?
Jumanji
Jumanji gave Hyde two parts in one film: the hero's father and the hunter who chases him. He was also the shipping boss J. Bruce Ismay in Titanic.
Q 18Richard Sammel, The Strain's Thomas Eichhorst, appeared in which Quentin Tarantino film?
Inglourious Basterds
Inglourious Basterds cast Sammel as Sergeant Werner Rachtman, years before he played a Nazi turned vampire. The Strain role earned him a Saturn Award nomination.
Q 19At the end of The Strain's third season, Eichhorst plants a nuclear bomb inside which New York landmark?
Statue of Liberty
The Statue of Liberty blast frees the Master from a sealed sarcophagus, and its fallout blots out the sun so vampires can walk by day.
Q 20In The Strain's wartime flashbacks, Setrakian is a prisoner and Eichhorst a commander at which Nazi camp?
Treblinka
Treblinka is where the young prisoner first sees the Master, feeding on sleeping inmates at night. His attempt to kill the creature there leaves his fingers crushed.
Occido Lumen was thought destroyed by the mother superior of an Austrian nunnery. It resurfaces in New York, and its hidden text shows how the Master can be trapped.
Q 24Which half-human, half-vampire hunter, once a gladiator in ancient Rome, vows to kill the Master in The Strain?
Quinlan
Quinlan, known as the Born, was infected in the womb, which left him half human. He believes that killing the Master will end his own life too.
Q 25Which hacker does Eldritch Palmer hire to knock out New York's internet and phone networks in The Strain?
Dutch Velders
Dutch Velders takes the job, then joins the fight when she sees what she has helped unleash. By the final episode she is rebuilding the internet she broke.
Q 26Which rock star, one of four survivors of the doomed flight, later becomes the Master's new body in The Strain?
Gabriel Bolivar
Gabriel Bolivar turns in his penthouse, killing the doctor sent to treat him, and serves the Master as an acolyte before becoming his host.
Q 27Which character, infected in a subway tunnel, ends her own life on the electrified third rail in The Strain?
Nora Martinez
Nora Martinez touches her sword to the rail after a turned Kelly attacks her at the end of season 2. After her death, Eph drinks more heavily than ever.
Q 28Who sets off the bomb that finally destroys the Master in The Strain's last episode, dying in the blast?
Zach Goodweather
Zach Goodweather triggers it after refusing the Master's order to kill his own father. Fet had planned to be the one who died setting it off.
Q 29In The Strain, what does Abraham Setrakian cut from his infected wife Miriam and keep for decades as a memento?
Her heart
Her heart, still beating and full of worms, stays in his shop until he is forced to abandon it. Palmer later keeps the same grim keepsake of his assistant.
Q 30Which House of Cards actor, known as Congressman Peter Russo, stars as Dr. Eph Goodweather in The Strain?
Corey Stoll
Corey Stoll won the lead on the strength of playing Ernest Hemingway in Midnight in Paris. His House of Cards role had earned him a Golden Globe nomination.