Zombies Trivia
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99 free Zombies trivia questions with answers — pop culture quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
50 free zombies trivia questions with answers. This zombies trivia quiz digs through the whole undead canon. It starts with the real thing - the Haitian roots of the word, Clairvius Narcisse, the pufferfish toxin theory and the odd law in Haiti's penal code - then follows the monster to Hollywood: White Zombie, George Romero's Living Dead films, the Italian rip-offs, Return of the Living Dead's brain-eaters, 28 Days Later's sprinting infected, Zombieland, World War Z, Train to Busan and beyond. There is a full spread of TV and games too - The Walking Dead on page and screen, iZombie, Dead Set, Kingdom, Resident Evil, Left 4 Dead, Plants vs. Zombies, Call of Duty Zombies, The Last of Us - plus the Thriller video, the CDC's zombie-preparedness stunt, the largest zombie walk on record and the fungus that really does zombify ants. Around a third of the questions are easy warm-ups; the rest climb toward the detail only a genre completist would know. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia and the primary sources it cites, and each explanation adds one more thing worth knowing.
30 of 99 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Dictionaries trace the English word 'zombie' back to which group of African languages?
Bantu
Dictionaries trace 'zombie' to Bantu languages of West-Central Africa, such as Kikongo zumbi and Kimbundu nzambi; the English word is first recorded in 1819, in Robert Southey's History of Brazil.
Q 02Which 1929 W. B. Seabrook travel book introduced Western readers to the Haitian voodoo zombie?
The Magic Island
William Seabrook's The Magic Island (1929) popularised the Haitian zombie in the West; its account of drugged plantation workers inspired the screenplay of the first Hollywood zombie film three years later.
Q 03Which 1932 Bela Lugosi film is generally considered the first feature-length movie of the genre?
White Zombie
White Zombie (1932), made independently by Victor and Edward Halperin with Lugosi as the sorcerer Murder Legendre, is usually counted as the first feature-length zombie film; the metal band White Zombie took its name.
Q 04Roughly how many years after his 1962 'death' did Clairvius Narcisse reappear at a Haitian market?
18
Narcisse was declared dead in May 1962 and walked up to his sister in a village market in 1980, 18 years later, convincing her with a childhood nickname and family details.
Q 05Wade Davis claimed Haitian 'zombie powder' relied on tetrodotoxin, found in which animal?
Pufferfish
Davis argued the 'coup de poudre' contained tetrodotoxin from pufferfish, whose poison can mimic death; his 1982 Haiti fieldwork became the 1985 book The Serpent and the Rainbow.
Q 06Haiti's Penal Code classes drugging someone into a prolonged lethargic coma without killing them as what?
Attempted murder
Article 246 of Haiti's Penal Code treats drugging someone into a lethargic coma, without killing them, as attempted murder; if the victim is then buried, it counts as murder whatever follows.
Q 07Wes Craven's 1988 film The Serpent and the Rainbow follows an anthropologist sent to Haiti by whom?
A drug company
In Craven's film a Boston pharmaceutical company sends anthropologist Dennis Alan (Bill Pullman) to Haiti to find the zombie drug, hoping to market it as an anaesthetic; it loosely adapts Davis's book.
Q 08What did Romero call his flesh-eaters in Night of the Living Dead (1968)?
Ghouls
Romero's script and the film's radio reports call the creatures 'ghouls'; he saw them as something new, and it was critics and fans who attached the Haitian word zombie.
Q 09Why did Night of the Living Dead fall into the public domain almost immediately?
The distributor omitted the copyright notice
The notice was lost when the distributor changed the title at the last minute, so anyone could sell copies without paying Romero a cent.
Q 10Night of the Living Dead was shot in rural Butler County, about 30 miles north of which city?
Pittsburgh
Butler County lies just north of Pittsburgh, Romero's home base; the Evans City farmhouse and cemetery locations have become pilgrimage sites for horror fans.
Q 11Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1978) was filmed largely inside which real shopping centre?
Monroeville Mall
Dawn of the Dead was shot overnight in Monroeville Mall, east of Pittsburgh, after the stores closed; the mall later embraced its fame with zombie-themed events.
Q 12Which Italian filmmaker co-financed Dawn of the Dead (1978) for its international distribution rights?
Dario Argento
Dario Argento co-produced Dawn of the Dead in return for foreign rights and cut his own version, released in Italy as Zombi, which is why Fulci's unrelated 1979 film was titled Zombi 2.
Q 13Lucio Fulci's Zombi 2 (1979) is notorious for an underwater scene in which a zombie fights what?
A shark
Q 21Which author wrote both The Zombie Survival Guide (2003) and the novel World War Z (2006)?
Max Brooks
Max Brooks is the son of Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft, and has since lectured to the US military on preparedness.
Q 22Which Star Wars actor was in the cast of the Audie-winning World War Z audiobook?
Mark Hamill
Mark Hamill voiced one of the survivors in the multi-cast World War Z audiobook, alongside Alan Alda and John Turturro; the 2013 'complete edition' added Martin Scorsese and Simon Pegg.
Q 23In the 2013 film World War Z, zombies pile onto one another to scale a giant wall protecting which city?
Jerusalem
Jerusalem's towering wall is breached when the undead swarm up each other, drawn by noise; the Brad Pitt film grossed over $540 million worldwide.
The underwater zombie-versus-shark fight was staged by a second unit with shark trainer Ramón Bravo as the zombie and a real, well-fed shark; Fulci himself was not on set.
Q 14What chemical reanimates the dead in The Return of the Living Dead (1985)?
2-4-5 Trioxin
2-4-5 Trioxin, a gas said to have been developed by the Darrow Chemical Company for the army, reanimates the corpses; the film also introduced zombies' hunger for brains.
Q 15Whose 1992 splatter comedy Braindead (Dead Alive in the US) is regarded as one of the goriest films ever?
Peter Jackson
Peter Jackson directed Braindead in his native New Zealand; a reputed 300 litres of fake blood went into the climactic lawnmower massacre, nearly a decade before The Lord of the Rings.
Q 16What is the name of the highly contagious, aggression-inducing virus in 28 Days Later (2002)?
Rage
Rage spreads within seconds of exposure; director Danny Boyle never considered it a zombie film at all, yet it is credited with reviving the whole genre.
Q 17In 28 Days Later, Jim wakes from a coma in which deserted London hospital?
St Thomas'
Jim wakes in St Thomas' Hospital, which faces the Houses of Parliament across the Thames, making his walk over an empty Westminster Bridge all the eerier.
Q 18In Zombieland (2009), what snack does Tallahassee spend most of the film searching for?
A Twinkie
Tallahassee hunts for one last Twinkie all film, fretting that the snack's shelf life is running out; he finally gets one in the closing scene.
Q 19What is Rule #1 on Columbus's list of survival rules in Zombieland?
Cardio
Rule #1 is 'Cardio', because the fat ones were the first to go; Rule #2 is 'Double tap', and the rules pop up on screen as characters follow or break them.
Q 20Which celebrity plays himself hiding in his mansion disguised as a zombie in Zombieland?
Bill Murray
Bill Murray, playing himself, wears zombie make-up so he can wander Beverly Hills and play golf; Columbus shoots him, mistaking him for a real zombie.
Q 24Train to Busan (2016) unfolds mostly aboard what kind of railway?
A KTX high-speed service
The film premiered in the Midnight Screenings section at Cannes and was the first Korean film of 2016 to pass 10 million admissions.
Q 25In the film Warm Bodies (2013), what are the skeletal zombies who have shed their flesh called?
Boneys
The fleshless skeletal zombies are the Boneys, past any hope of recovery; the film riffs on Romeo and Juliet, with R (Nicholas Hoult) falling for Julie after eating her boyfriend's brain.
Q 26Roughly what share of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2009) is Jane Austen's original text?
85%
Seth Grahame-Smith kept about 85% of Austen's original text, splicing in zombie mayhem; the mash-up hit number three on the New York Times bestseller list within weeks.
Q 27In Shaun of the Dead (2004), what is the name of the pub where Shaun plans to wait out the crisis?
The Winchester
The Winchester is the refuge in the first of Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg's Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy, followed by Hot Fuzz and The World's End.
Q 28The Walking Dead premiered on AMC on which date in 2010?
Halloween
The pilot aired on Halloween, 31 October 2010; the series ran eleven seasons and 177 episodes before ending in November 2022.
Q 29Which English actor played sheriff's deputy Rick Grimes on The Walking Dead?
Andrew Lincoln
Andrew Lincoln left in season nine, and the zombies he spent all those years fighting are only ever called 'walkers'.
Q 30Which fan-favourite Walking Dead character was created for the TV show and never appeared in the comic?
Daryl Dixon
Daryl Dixon was invented for the show after Norman Reedus auditioned for his brother Merle; the crossbow-wielding survivor never existed in Robert Kirkman's comic.