Thunderbirds Trivia
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45 free Thunderbirds trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Thunderbirds landed on ITV in 1965 and never really left. Gerry Anderson's marionette rescue drama gave children of several generations a countdown to shout along with, a hidden island base to dream about and a fleet of craft whose launch sequences are still copied by blockbusters today. This quiz covers the whole 60-year story: how the Tracy family's rescue organisation launches from its island, the people and voices behind Lady Penelope, Brains and the Hood, the best-loved episodes, the two 1960s feature films, the 2004 live-action movie and the CGI remake that ran from 2015. It suits pub quizzers who grew up on the BBC2 repeats, fans who can name every pod vehicle, and anyone who has ever muttered 'Thunderbirds are go'. Each answer comes with a short explanation, so you will leave knowing more than you arrived with.
30 of 45 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Jeff Tracy's sons all take their first names from which group of real 1960s Americans?
The Mercury Seven astronauts
The Mercury Seven astronauts lent their names, and Jeff, an early lunar astronaut himself, raised all five boys with Grandma's help after his wife Lucille died.
Q 02What slides aside at the foot of the Tracy Island villa so Thunderbird 1 can launch vertically?
A swimming pool
A swimming pool hides the hangar, a design Den of Geek found alarming given the risk of 'a great big rocket ship appearing out the bottom' of it. It still ranked the island the seventh-best secret base in film and TV.
Q 03What lining Tracy Island's runway swings outward to clear Thunderbird 2's wingspan at launch?
Palm trees
Palm trees tilt back as the transporter taxis out, then the craft tips up a ramp to launch, which the series says beats its VTOL thrusters for fuel efficiency.
Q 04Which marque lent its name and a real £100 grille to Lady Penelope's pink six-wheeled FAB 1?
Rolls-Royce
Rolls-Royce sent a genuine radiator grille, Spirit of Ecstasy included, reasoning the show might 'inspire a child to own one, one day'. Its designer put two axles at the front purely for looks.
Q 05Which reply by Penelope's chauffeur in Thunderbirds became the title of a co-creator's 1991 memoir?
Yes, M'Lady
'Yes, M'Lady' titled that autobiography, and the co-creator devised the chauffeur's aristocratic employer to appeal to Americans, who she said saw Brits as Cockneys or manor-house ladies.
Q 06Which Star Trek: The Next Generation actor directed the 2004 live-action Thunderbirds film?
Jonathan Frakes
Jonathan Frakes blamed the flop on opening against Shrek 2 and Spider-Man 2 and on poor reviews.
Q 07In Terror in New York City, which landmark collapses while being moved on rails to a new site?
The Empire State Building
The Empire State Building was being shifted for a Midtown regeneration, and its fall traps reporter Ned Cook in an underground river. Gerry Anderson based it on a real store that was jacked up and moved inch by inch.
Q 08Which British pop-punk band took the 2004 Thunderbirds film's theme song to UK number one?
Busted
Busted's 'Thunderbirds Are Go' reached number one, but Gerry Anderson called the film it promoted 'the biggest load of crap I have ever seen'.
Q 09Which BBC children's show showed viewers how to build their own Tracy Island when the toy sold out?
Blue Peter
Blue Peter's Anthea Turner built one from household waste, and so many viewers wanted the instructions that the BBC stopped sending them and released her demonstration on video.
Q 10The giant reptiles of Attack of the Alligators!, APF's first use of live animals, were really what?
Juvenile crocodiles
Juvenile crocodiles from a private zoo in northern England stood in, and an anonymous tip-off brought an RSPCA inspector to the studio, who took no action. One got loose mid-shoot and sent the effects director sprinting from the tank.
Q 11Gerry Anderson coined 'Supermarionation' during which series, APF's first for Lew Grade's ITC?
Supercar
Supercar was in production when the name was minted as a promotional tool, Anderson admitted, to set APF apart from Muffin the Mule and Flower Pot Men; it never described a real process.
Q 12Why were the Thunderbirds puppets' heads noticeably too large for their bodies?
The lip-sync solenoid
The lip-sync solenoid sat inside each head, and when Captain Scarlet moved it into the chest, the heads shrank to realistic size.
Q 13Which feature did Thunderbird 2's designer add purely so it would stand out beside real aircraft?
Forward-swept wings
Q 21David Graham voiced Brains and Gordon, plus which regular he reprised in the 2015 remake?
Parker
Parker, a former cat burglar and safe-cracker, got the same voice 50 years on; Lady Penelope had rescued him from crime by recruiting him into her spy work.
Q 22Under which alias does Brains build the Skythrust airliner, a name the 2015 remake later made real?
Hiram K. Hackenbacker
Hiram K. Hackenbacker is one of several covers: the board behind Skyship One knows him only as 'Mr X', and the 2004 film went with Ray Hackenbacker instead.
Q 23Which Tracy Island resident, daughter of Jeff's manservant, is youngest brother Alan's girlfriend?
Tin-Tin
Forward-swept wings were pure aesthetics: 'All aircraft have swept-back wings, so I thought I'd sweep mine forward,' the designer said. Graeme Shimmin rates it the best aircraft in fiction.
Q 14Which composer wrote 'The Thunderbirds March' for Gerry Anderson's puppet series?
Barry Gray
Barry Gray's brass-heavy march was recorded at London's Olympic Studios in 1964, and a variation of it replaced a planned closing song, 'Flying High'.
Q 15What colour is Thunderbird 4, the rescue submersible piloted by aquanaut Gordon Tracy?
Yellow
Yellow Thunderbird 4 is the slowest of the Thunderbirds, so it usually rides to the danger zone aboard Thunderbird 2.
Q 16Which pod vehicle appears in Pit of Peril, City of Fire and The Duchess Assignment?
The Mole
The Mole is one of the few pod vehicles to appear in more than one episode, and commentator Fred McNamara ranks it fifth among all the Anderson shows' vehicles.
Q 17Which Tracy brother, an off-duty painter and pianist, pilots the heavy transporter Thunderbird 2?
Virgil
Virgil's voice changed between series: David Holliday, the cast's only American, went home after Series One and Jeremy Wilkin took over for Series Two and the films.
Q 18Gordon Tracy won an Olympic title in which stroke before joining International Rescue?
Butterfly
Butterfly was Gordon's Olympic event, and a hydrofoil speedboat crash at over 400 knots later left him in hospital for months.
Q 19Jeff Tracy, the Air Force colonel who founded International Rescue, grew up on a wheat farm where?
Kansas
Kansas wheat-farmer's son Jeff rose to colonel in the US Air Force; his mother, the farmer's widow, later joins the island household as Grandma.
Q 20Whose real voice, heard often by the crew, became the Cockney accent of Lady Penelope's chauffeur?
A pub wine waiter
A pub wine waiter at the Kings Arms in Cookham, Berkshire, supplied the accent, and Gerry Anderson took the chauffeur's voice actor to lunch there to hear him.
Tin-Tin was conceived, a co-creator wrote, to 'redress the balance' of a male-dominated puppet cast, and Jeff paid for her maths and engineering degree in gratitude for her father's service.
Q 24The Hood, International Rescue's masked enemy, plots from a temple in the jungle of which country?
Malaysia
Malaysia's jungle temple holds a statue of his half-brother, before which the Hood stands to make his telepathic calls.
Q 25In the pilot Trapped in the Sky, the Hood bombs which atomic-powered airliner on its maiden flight?
Fireflash
Fireflash cannot land without setting off the Hood's bomb, so International Rescue's Elevator Cars race beneath it and catch it on the runway.
Q 26How was the Series One finale Security Hazard written to recoup money after two episodes overspent?
As a flashback clip show
As a flashback clip show it needed just 17 minutes of new footage, after Attack of the Alligators! and The Cham-Cham had both blown their budgets.
Q 27In final episode Give or Take a Million, a child prize-winner visits Tracy Island for which holiday?
Christmas
Christmas on the island even gets snow: Brains has everyone shut their eyes, then switches on a snow-making machine he built after hearing the odds of a white one were slim.
Q 28Which earlier Anderson series did well enough for Lew Grade to commission Thunderbirds?
Stingray
Stingray's success bought a budget that made Thunderbirds APF's costliest production and one of the most expensive TV series made up to that time.
Q 29Which Thunderbirds effects chief designed its craft, then did effects for James Bond and Superman?
Derek Meddings
Derek Meddings died of cancer in 1995 during post-production on GoldenEye, and the finished Bond film was dedicated to his memory.
Q 30Stanley Kubrick, impressed by Thunderbirds' effects crew, hired several of them for which film?
2001: A Space Odyssey
2001: A Space Odyssey got its effects supervisors from a puppet show whose typical episode carried around 100 effects shots, completed at up to 18 a day.