Time Travel Trivia
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50 free Time Travel trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Time travel is the one impossible thing everybody has an opinion about, and this quiz covers it from both ends. Forty-one questions take in the fiction: H.G. Wells's Time Machine and the year 802,701, Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee, Billy Pilgrim coming unstuck, the DeLorean and its 1.21 gigawatts, the TARDIS, the Terminator, 12 Monkeys and La Jetée, Bill and Ted's phone booth, Groundhog Day, Outlander, Kindred, Primer, Somewhere in Time and the Avengers' time heist. The science gets equal time: closed timelike curves, Gödel's rotating universe, the grandfather paradox and Novikov's answer to it, Hawking's chronology protection conjecture, wormholes and Einstein-Rosen bridges, the twin paradox, and cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev, who really is 0.02 seconds younger than he should be. Easy questions ask what speed the DeLorean needs; hard ones want the 1733 book of letters from 1997 and the 1887 Spanish novel with the first time vessel. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the works, ideas and people, and each question carries the sentence that supports it.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which author's 1895 novella popularised the idea of travelling through the years by mechanical means?
H. G. Wells
H. G. Wells. His title gave English the phrase 'time machine', and he had already tried the idea out in a college-magazine story, 'The Chronic Argonauts'.
Q 02In the 1895 novel The Time Machine, the gentle Eloi are preyed on by which underground race?
Morlocks
Morlocks. The Time Traveller decides they descend from workers once banished underground, who by the year 802,701 are farming the idle rich for meat.
Q 03In Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry and Hermione use a Time-Turner to save Sirius Black and which creature?
Buckbeak
Buckbeak. The hippogriff has been sentenced to death, so the pair lead him away just before the execution, and Sirius Black then escapes on his back.
Q 04In Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, the crew journey to 1986 San Francisco to collect which animals?
Humpback whales
Humpback whales. An alien probe is wrecking 23rd-century Earth while calling to the long-extinct species, so Kirk's crew fetch a pair to answer it.
Q 05In Washington Irving's 1819 tale, Rip Van Winkle sleeps through which war?
The American Revolution
The American Revolution. He dozes off a loyal subject of King George III and wakes 20 years later to find the inn sign repainted as General Washington.
Q 06In Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, how is Hank Morgan sent back to Camelot?
A severe blow to the head
A severe blow to the head. A workmate fells Hank with a crowbar; in Camelot he escapes the stake by 'commanding' a solar eclipse he remembers from history.
Q 07In Slaughterhouse-Five, Billy Pilgrim is abducted by aliens from which planet?
Tralfamadore
Tralfamadore. Its aliens see every moment of time at once, which is why they greet each death with a shrug: 'So it goes.'
Q 08In Back to the Future, what speed must the DeLorean reach to travel through time?
88 miles per hour
88 miles per hour. Marty first hits it by accident, flooring the DeLorean to escape the Libyan gunmen who have just shot Doc.
Q 09In Back to the Future, how much power does the DeLorean need to travel through time?
1.21 gigawatts
1.21 gigawatts. In 1955 the only thing that can supply that much power is a bolt of lightning, so Doc wires the car to the town's clock tower.
Q 10In early drafts of Back to the Future, the time machine was built into which household appliance?
A refrigerator
A refrigerator. The film-makers dropped it for fear that children would copy Marty, climb into a fridge and get trapped, so the DeLorean got the job.
Q 11Which actor was originally cast as Marty McFly and replaced by Michael J. Fox after filming began?
Eric Stoltz
Eric Stoltz. He filmed for weeks before the makers decided he was playing a comedy far too seriously and reshot his scenes with Michael J. Fox.
Q 12In Back to the Future, what happened on November 5, 1955, the destination date Doc enters?
He conceived his invention
He conceived his invention. Doc slipped while hanging a clock in his bathroom, knocked himself out and came round with a vision of the flux capacitor.
Q 13What does TARDIS stand for in Doctor Who?
Q 21In Groundhog Day, Phil Connors relives which date over and over?
February 2
February 2. Phil escapes Punxsutawney's endless Groundhog Day only after he stops exploiting the loop and spends the day helping the townspeople.
Q 22In Hot Tub Time Machine, what do the friends spill on the tub's controls?
Energy drink
Energy drink. The spill sends them back to 1986, and they have to get the can of illegal Russian 'Chernobly' back from a ski-patrol bully before the tub can take them home.
Q 23In Somewhere in Time, Christopher Reeve's character travels to 1912 by what method?
Self-hypnosis
Self-hypnosis. The spell holds until he finds a penny dated 1979 in his pocket, which drags him back to the present and leaves him unable to return.
Time And Relative Dimension In Space
Time And Relative Dimension In Space. In the first episode the Doctor's granddaughter Susan claims she made the name up herself, yet other Time Lords use it too.
Q 14The Doctor's TARDIS is stuck in the shape of what obsolete British object?
A police box
A police box. Its chameleon circuit is meant to disguise the ship wherever it lands, but the circuit jammed in 1960s London and no repair has lasted.
Q 15Doctor Who's first episode aired the day after which event?
JFK's assassination
JFK's assassination. The news so overshadowed the launch that the BBC showed the first episode again a week later, just before the second.
Q 16In The Terminator, which machine intelligence sends a cyborg back to 1984?
Skynet
Skynet. By 2029 it is losing its war with the human resistance, so it sends a Terminator to kill the leader's mother, Sarah Connor, before he is born.
Q 17James Cameron got the idea for The Terminator from what?
A fever dream
A fever dream. Sick in Rome, Cameron had a nightmare of a metal skeleton dragging itself out of a fire, and built the whole film around that image.
Q 18Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys is based on which French short film?
La Jetée
La Jetée. Chris Marker told it almost entirely in still photographs; its only moving footage is a few seconds of a woman waking and opening her eyes.
Q 19In 12 Monkeys, James Cole is sent back from 2035 to trace the source of what?
Deadly virus
Deadly virus. Cole is not sent to stop the outbreak, only to gather information on the original strain so that the future can develop a cure.
Q 20In Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, what shape is the time machine?
A phone booth
A phone booth. The script first used a 1969 Chevrolet van, dropped for being too much like the DeLorean in Back to the Future.
Q 24In Outlander, time-travelling nurse Claire Randall tries to head off which battle, Bonnie Prince Charlie's final defeat?
Culloden
Culloden. Claire knows from her own century how the Jacobite rising ends, so she and Jamie go to Paris to choke off its funding, and fail.
Q 25Which author's 1979 novel Kindred sends a Black writer back to a slave plantation?
Octavia Butler
Octavia Butler. Her heroine Dana is dragged from 1976 Los Angeles to Maryland whenever her slave-owning ancestor Rufus is in danger, and must keep him alive so that she will one day be born.
Q 26In The Time Traveler's Wife, Henry DeTamble's involuntary time travel is caused by what?
A genetic disorder
A genetic disorder. Henry can take nothing with him when he vanishes, so he arrives naked every time and has taught himself to pick locks and steal clothes.
Q 27Shane Carruth's cult time-travel film Primer was made for roughly how much?
$7,000
$7,000. Carruth, a former engineer, wrote, directed, edited, scored and starred in it himself, and the result still won Sundance's Grand Jury Prize.
Q 28In Avengers: Endgame, the heroes reach the past through what?
The Quantum Realm
The Quantum Realm. Scott Lang emerges from it having lived five hours while five years passed outside, which gives the Avengers the idea for their 'time heist'.
Q 29Which action star plays a time-travelling federal agent in the 1994 film Timecop?
Jean-Claude Van Damme
Jean-Claude Van Damme. His agent Max Walker uncovers a senator who is sending men into the past to get rich, all to bankroll a run for president.
Q 30In physics, what are spacetime paths that would let an object return to its own past called?
Closed timelike curves
Closed timelike curves. General relativity allows them on paper, which is why physicists have gone looking for a deeper law that rules them out; none has been proved.