50 free Twilight Zone trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
44 free Twilight Zone trivia questions with answers. This Twilight Zone trivia quiz travels through the original 1959-1964 CBS series and everything it spawned. It covers Rod Serling — his war service, his fights with sponsors, the pilot that got the show made and the share he sold to CBS — and the classic episodes everyone half-remembers: Henry Bemis and his broken glasses, the Kanamits' cookbook, William Shatner's gremlin, Talky Tina, Anthony Fremont's cornfield, Maple Street's monsters and the bandaged face in Eye of the Beholder. It also reaches the 1983 movie and its on-set tragedy, the 1985, 2002 and Jordan Peele revivals, and Disney's Tower of Terror. Early questions suit anyone who has caught a New Year's marathon; later ones reward fans who know which composer wrote the famous guitar theme and which season was stretched to an hour. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries before publishing.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Roughly how many of the original series' 156 episodes did Rod Serling write or co-write himself?
Around 90
He wrote or co-wrote 92, while also serving as executive producer, host and narrator.
Q 02On which network did The Twilight Zone originally air from 1959 to 1964?
CBS
CBS had wanted a rating of at least 21; early numbers were so poor the network considered replacing Serling with Orson Welles.
Q 03How many seasons did the original series run?
Five
The final two seasons were marketed simply as Twilight Zone, without the 'The'.
Q 04How many episodes of the original series were made?
156
Serling, Charles Beaumont and Richard Matheson between them wrote 127 of them.
Q 05In 'Time Enough at Last', what happens to Henry Bemis as he settles down to read?
His glasses shatter
Burgess Meredith's bank teller had survived the H-bomb in a vault, surrounded at last by all the books he could want.
Q 06Which actor plays the book-loving Henry Bemis in 'Time Enough at Last'?
Burgess Meredith
He returned to the series in 'The Obsolete Man' as a librarian sentenced to death by the state.
Q 07In 'To Serve Man', what does the alien book of that title turn out to be?
A cookbook
The nine-foot Kanamits had promised to end hunger and war on Earth, and technically they were fattening everyone up.
Q 08What is the name of the towering alien race in 'To Serve Man'?
Kanamits
Richard Kiel, later Jaws in the Bond films, played the visiting alien.
Q 09In 'Nightmare at 20,000 Feet', William Shatner's character sees a creature doing what?
Sabotaging the plane's wing
Richard Matheson wrote the story; Richard Donner directed, the first of six episodes he made for the show.
Q 10Which future Superman director directed 'Nightmare at 20,000 Feet'?
Richard Donner
It was the first of six Twilight Zone episodes he directed, all in the fifth season.
Q 11In 'Living Doll', what is the name of the talking doll that torments Telly Savalas's character?
Talky Tina
June Foray, the voice of Rocky the Flying Squirrel and the real Chatty Cathy doll, voiced her.
Q 12In 'It's a Good Life', where does six-year-old Anthony Fremont send people who displease him?
The cornfield
Billy Mumy played Anthony; the town has been cut off from the rest of the world by his powers.
Q 13In 'It's a Good Life', in which fictional town has the rest of the world disappeared?
Peaksville, Ohio
The story came from a 1953 short story by Jerome Bixby; Serling adapted it.
Q 21In 'The Midnight Sun', what is happening to the Earth?
It is falling into the Sun
The twist reveals the sweltering scenes as a fever dream — the planet is really drifting away from the Sun and freezing.
Q 22Who directed 'The Masks', the only woman to direct an episode of the original series?
Ida Lupino
She had also acted in the season-one episode 'The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine', making her the only person to both act in and direct the show.
Q 23What was the title of the very first episode, broadcast on October 2, 1959?
Where Is Everybody?
Q 14In 'Eye of the Beholder', what do the doctors and nurses look like when they are finally revealed?
Pig-snouted, twisted humanoids
Janet Tyler, the 'ugly' patient under the bandages, is beautiful by our standards; two actresses played her, one bandaged, one unmasked.
Q 15In 'The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street', what first triggers the neighbours' paranoia?
A power outage
The twist reveals aliens on a hill watching, having simply flicked the lights to let the humans destroy themselves.
Q 16In the episode about Nan Adams' cross-country drive, what does she finally realise about herself?
She has been dead since the accident
The hitchhiker who keeps reappearing along her cross-country drive is Death, waiting patiently for her to catch on.
Q 17In 'The Invaders', the tiny spacemen menacing Agnes Moorehead's farm woman turn out to be from where?
Earth
Moorehead never speaks; the only dialogue is the astronaut's frantic warning about a planet of giants.
Q 18In 'Nick of Time', William Shatner becomes obsessed with what in a small-town diner?
A penny fortune-telling machine
The 'Mystic Seer' answers yes-or-no questions; a shot of it appears in the 2019 revival episode 'Replay'.
Q 19In 'A Stop at Willoughby', where does the exhausted commuter find himself when his train stops?
A deserted 19th-century railway car
Serling named it his favourite story of the first season.
Q 20In 'Kick the Can', residents of which retirement home discover the secret of youth?
Sunnyvale Rest
Steven Spielberg remade the story as his segment of the 1983 movie.
Season two opened with 'King Nine Will Not Return', which Serling wrote as a fresh take on the same idea.
Q 24Which composer wrote the famous dissonant guitar-and-bongo theme introduced in season two?
Marius Constant
He was a French avant-garde composer, and the cues were commissioned by CBS as work-for-hire library music.
Q 25Which composer wrote the original season-one theme, later replaced?
Bernard Herrmann
Herrmann, of Psycho and Vertigo fame, also scored seven episodes including the pilot.
Q 26What was the plot of the 1957 pilot pitch 'The Time Element'?
A man trying to warn Honolulu of Pearl Harbor
CBS shelved it until it aired on Desilu Playhouse in 1958; its success got The Twilight Zone made.
Q 27Which legendary filmmaker did CBS reportedly offer the hosting job to when the show struggled in season one?
Orson Welles
He turned it down, and the network reversed course and expanded Serling's on-camera role instead.
Q 28Which run of the show was expanded to hour-long episodes?
The fourth
CBS had dropped the show for a sitcom called Fair Exchange, then brought it back mid-season to fill that hour slot.
Q 29What did the show's creator do with his 40% share after it ended?
Sold it to CBS
He did not foresee syndication, and missed out on the royalties that followed.
Q 30What was the creator's later anthology series, which debuted in 1969?
Night Gallery
He had vowed to leave the supernatural behind after The Twilight Zone, but returned to it within five years.