TV & Movies Trivia
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100 free TV & Movies trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
A good TV and film round is the one everybody at the table thinks they can win. Someone has seen every Bond, someone else can quote every sitcom, and the person who claims never to watch anything still knows who shot J.R. These fifty questions span nine decades of screens on both sides of the Atlantic: the first silent Best Picture winner and the latest seven-Oscar biopic, British sitcoms that made a dozen episodes and American soaps that ran a dozen years, theme tunes that topped the charts, lines the actors made up on the spot, and the remakes, spin-offs and record-breaking finales in between. It suits a pub quiz, a film-night warm-up or a rainy Sunday on the sofa. Every answer is sourced and explained, so the arguments end quickly.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which 1975 thriller's faulty mechanical shark, nicknamed Bruce, had to stay mostly offscreen?
Jaws
Jaws became the prototype summer blockbuster partly because the unreliable shark pushed Steven Spielberg to hint at it rather than reveal it, leaving John Williams's two-note theme to do the frightening.
Q 02Which Star Wars film gave Darth Vader actor David Prowse a decoy line to keep its twist secret?
The Empire Strikes Back
The Empire Strikes Back hid 'I am your father' so well that only the director, the producers and Mark Hamill knew it on set; James Earl Jones dubbed the real line in later.
Q 03Which 1942 Humphrey Bogart film began as an unproduced play called Everybody Comes to Rick's?
Casablanca
Casablanca had its premiere rushed forward to November 1942 because Allied troops had just landed in North Africa and captured the city itself.
Q 04Which 1972 film won Marlon Brando a Best Actor Oscar that Sacheen Littlefeather declined for him?
The Godfather
The Godfather's Brando boycotted the 1973 ceremony in protest at Hollywood's portrayal of Native Americans and the siege at Wounded Knee, so Littlefeather raised a hand to refuse the statuette.
Q 05Which Malcolm in the Middle dad went on to play chemistry teacher Walter White in Breaking Bad?
Bryan Cranston
Bryan Cranston got the part because creator Vince Gilligan remembered him from a 1998 X-Files episode, 'Drive'; AMC executives, who knew him as a sitcom dad, had hesitated.
Q 06Which film was the first ever to gross $1 billion worldwide?
Titanic
Titanic was tipped to sink: at $200 million it was the most expensive film yet made, and critics predicted a flop before it out-grossed every film before it.
Q 07Which Ricky Gervais mockumentary about a Slough paper firm was remade in America with Steve Carell?
The Office
The Office drew low ratings when it first aired on BBC Two in 2001, yet it has since been sold to broadcasters in more than 80 countries.
Q 08Which animated sitcom started out as shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show in 1987?
The Simpsons
The Simpsons were sketched in producer James L. Brooks's lobby before a pitch: Matt Groening would not sign away his Life in Hell strip, so he invented a family and named it after his own.
Q 09Which 1939 MGM musical recoloured Dorothy's silver shoes red to flaunt three-strip Technicolor?
The Wizard of Oz
The Wizard of Oz's slippers were Silver Shoes in L. Frank Baum's novel; they became so prized that one surviving pair was stolen from a museum in 2005 and recovered only in 2018.
Q 10In Doctor Who, a broken chameleon circuit leaves the TARDIS shaped like what 1960s London object?
Police box
A police box was an everyday sight in Britain when the series began in 1963, and the Doctor later admits he stopped repairing the circuit because he grew attached to the shape.
Q 11Which 1960 horror film set at the Bates Motel broke a taboo by showing a toilet flush on screen?
Psycho
Psycho broke a second habit on release: cinemas were told to admit nobody once the film had started, a 'no late admission' rule that was unusual for the time.
Q 12Which BBC sitcom about Peckham trader Del Boy Trotter featured a three-wheeled Reliant Regal van?
Only Fools and Horses
Only Fools and Horses began slowly, its first series drawing mediocre ratings; in 1996 'Time on Our Hands' drew 24.3 million viewers, a UK sitcom record.
Q 13Which John Cleese hotel sitcom made just 12 episodes yet topped the BFI's 2000 list of British TV?
Fawlty Towers
Q 21Which military sitcom's 1983 finale drew 106 million US viewers, a record for scripted TV?
M*A*S*H
M*A*S*H ran for 11 seasons, far longer than the three-year Korean War it depicted, and its finale stayed America's most-watched broadcast of any kind until 2010.
Q 22Which oil-family soap left the world asking 'Who shot J.R.?' through the summer of 1980?
Dallas
Dallas's cliffhanger was a CBS advertising catchphrase, and the answer, Kristin Shepard, J.R.'s scheming sister-in-law and mistress, was watched by an estimated 83 million people.
Q 23Which David Hasselhoff drama was axed by NBC after one season, then revived in syndication?
Baywatch
Fawlty Towers was inspired by the Gleneagles Hotel in Torquay, where Cleese stayed in 1970, and the BFI's industry poll in 2000 named it the best British television series of all time.
Q 14Which badge-awarding BBC children's programme has run since 1958, longer than any other worldwide?
Blue Peter
Blue Peter is named after the flag a ship flies when it is about to leave port, chosen to promise young viewers a voyage of adventure.
Q 15Which Netflix drama recast Elizabeth II every two seasons, passing from Claire Foy to Olivia Colman?
The Crown
The Crown later gave the Queen to Imelda Staunton, and its producers admitted that Claire Foy had been paid less than Matt Smith, who played her husband, for the first two seasons.
Q 16Which 1995 film was the first entirely computer-animated feature?
Toy Story
Toy Story nearly died in 1993: a story reel made its hero Woody such a jerk that Disney halted production until the script was rewritten.
Q 17Which Die Hard villain went on to play Severus Snape in all eight Harry Potter films?
Alan Rickman
Alan Rickman played Snape with inside knowledge: J. K. Rowling had told him where the character's loyalties lay, and he told puzzled directors only that he knew something they didn't.
Q 18Which former star of The Saint played James Bond in seven Eon films, more than any other actor?
Roger Moore
Roger Moore bowed out with A View to a Kill in 1985, later saying he was mortified to learn he was older than his female co-star's mother.
Q 19Which HBO mob drama ended by cutting to black mid-scene as Journey's 'Don't Stop Believin'' played?
The Sopranos
The Sopranos ended on a cut so abrupt, followed by seconds of silence, that many viewers first thought their cable had failed; Tony's fate was left to argument.
Q 20Which Lucille Ball sitcom was the first scripted series shot on 35mm film before a studio audience?
I Love Lucy
I Love Lucy was filmed in Hollywood although its sponsor wanted it made in New York, where most shows went out live; the film prints let Ball and Desi Arnaz pioneer the syndicated rerun.
Baywatch came back in 1991 with Hasselhoff's own money behind it and went on to be listed as the world's most-watched series, with over 1.1 billion weekly viewers.
Q 24Which 1994 Tom Hanks film opens with a feather and the line 'Life was like a box of chocolates'?
Forrest Gump
Forrest Gump made Tom Hanks tens of millions through his share of its gross receipts, even as the studio's accounts showed the hit film running at a loss.
Q 25In which 1980 Stanley Kubrick film did Jack Nicholson improvise the line 'Here's Johnny!'?
The Shining
The Shining's line borrows Ed McMahon's introduction on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, and Kubrick, long resident in England, missed the reference and nearly used another take.
Q 26Which 1994 Quentin Tarantino crime film, told out of sequence, won the Palme d'Or at Cannes?
Pulp Fiction
Pulp Fiction did more than win at Cannes: its success reinvigorated the career of John Travolta, who earned a Best Actor nomination as hitman Vincent Vega.
Q 27Which 1999 Keanu Reeves sci-fi film popularised the slow-motion 'bullet time' effect?
The Matrix
The Matrix shot the effect with an arc of still cameras fired in sequence around the actor, so the action crawls while the viewpoint sweeps past it.
Q 28For which 2008 Batman film did Heath Ledger win a posthumous Oscar as the Joker?
The Dark Knight
The Dark Knight missed a Best Picture nomination, and the backlash led the Academy to raise the limit from five nominees to ten at the next ceremony.
Q 29Which 1939 epic remains the highest-grossing film ever when adjusted for inflation?
Gone with the Wind
Gone with the Wind made Hattie McDaniel the first African American to win an Oscar, yet at the ceremony she was seated at a segregated table, apart from her co-stars.
Q 30Which 2019 Bong Joon-ho thriller was the first non-English-language film to win Best Picture?
Parasite
Parasite's subtitler Darcy Paquet, working with Bong, coined 'ram-don' for the instant-noodle dish jjapaguri, and the invented name stuck in English.