Armageddon Trivia
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49 free Armageddon trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Armageddon was the highest-grossing film of 1998, a Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck blockbuster about oil drillers sent to nuke a Texas-sized asteroid, and it has been argued about ever since, from Roger Ebert's one-star review to the Criterion Collection release. This quiz covers the movie inside and out: the plot and the drilling crew, the casting stories, the writers, the Aerosmith theme song, the rivalry with Deep Impact, the box office, the awards and the physics students who worked out how big the bomb would really need to be. It also covers the word itself: where Armageddon appears in the Bible, the hill of Megiddo it is named after and how the term came to mean any end-of-the-world scenario. Easy questions ask who plays Harry Stamper and which band sang the theme. Harder ones dig into who was first considered for Willis's role, who auditioned for A.J., which city's destruction was added late for the ads, and how the set ended up on Home Improvement. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia's articles on the film, its cast, its music and the biblical term, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who plays Harry Stamper, the oil driller who leads the mission to the asteroid?
Bruce Willis
Bruce Willis took the part for about $3 million, far below his usual fee, as the first of three films he owed the studio after an earlier production of his collapsed; The Sixth Sense was the second.
Q 02In Armageddon, the asteroid heading for Earth is said to be the size of which US state?
Texas
Texas is the size NASA gives its asteroid; the largest potentially hazardous asteroid yet found, 1999 JM8, is only about 7 kilometres across.
Q 03Michael Bay directed Armageddon for which producer, his partner on Bad Boys and The Rock?
Jerry Bruckheimer
Jerry Bruckheimer had produced Bay's Bad Boys and The Rock, and on Armageddon he hired the succession of writers who rewrote and polished the script.
Q 04Which real space shuttle is destroyed by the meteor shower that opens Armageddon?
Atlantis
Atlantis is torn apart in orbit by the first meteors, which go on to hit New York; NASA then works out that the asteroid behind them will arrive in 18 days.
Q 05In Armageddon, what are the two shuttles that carry the drillers to the asteroid called?
Freedom and Independence
Freedom and Independence launch together, but Independence is wrecked by debris on the approach and crashes, leaving Freedom to land 26 miles from the drill site.
Q 06What is the mobile drilling vehicle carried by each shuttle in Armageddon called?
Armadillo
Armadillo is the name of both rovers: one is blown into space by a missed gas pocket, taking the driller Max with it, and A.J. arrives in the second to finish the hole.
Q 07In Armageddon, what does NASA call the deadline after which splitting the asteroid can no longer save Earth?
Zero Barrier
Zero Barrier is the point past which both halves would still hit Earth; when drilling falls behind, the president tries to set the bomb off from the ground, which would have wrecked the mission.
Q 08In Armageddon, how do the crew choose who stays behind to detonate the bomb by hand?
They draw straws
They draw straws and A.J. gets the short one, but Harry pulls out his air hose, forces him back into the airlock and takes his place, calling him the son he never had.
Q 09Which actor plays A.J. Frost, the young driller dating Harry's daughter?
Ben Affleck
Ben Affleck was cast before Good Will Hunting had even been released, so he was still little known when he landed the romantic lead in what became 1998's biggest film.
Q 10What did Armageddon's makers require of the actor playing A.J. Frost before filming began?
Get his teeth capped
Get his teeth capped: the producer said the young actor had 'baby teeth' and had them fixed, and a gym regime, a tan and a haircut were ordered too.
Q 11Which future star of The Hangover auditioned for the role of A.J. Frost in Armageddon?
Bradley Cooper
Bradley Cooper was still in graduate school and taped his own audition on a camcorder, reading the other character's lines himself and leaving gaps for his own.
Q 12Which veteran actor was originally considered for the role of Harry Stamper in Armageddon?
Sean Connery
Sean Connery was the original idea for Harry Stamper, but the director decided on a younger lead after spending time with real oil drillers.
Q 13Who plays Grace Stamper, Harry's daughter, in Armageddon?
Liv Tyler
Liv Tyler's Grace makes her father promise to come home safe with her fiance; he keeps only half of it, and the wedding in the credits has his portrait among the guests.
Q 21Which critic named Armageddon the worst film of 1998, 'an assault on the eyes, the ears, the brain, common sense'?
Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert gave it one star and named it the worst film of 1998, though he had weighed Spice World for the title; his co-host Gene Siskel gave it a thumbs up.
Q 22Armageddon lost the Oscar for Best Visual Effects to which Robin Williams film?
What Dreams May Come
What Dreams May Come beat Armageddon and Mighty Joe Young to the award; Armageddon, the top-grossing film of 1998, went home with nothing from its four Oscar nominations.
Q 23Which fast-food chain partnered with the studio for Armageddon's tie-in promotion?
McDonald's
Q 14Which band recorded Armageddon's theme, 'I Don't Want to Miss a Thing'?
Aerosmith
Aerosmith, together since 1970, had never had a US number one until this ballad entered the Hot 100 at the top and stayed there for four weeks.
Q 15Who wrote 'I Don't Want to Miss a Thing'?
Diane Warren
Diane Warren wrote the title down while watching Barbara Walters interview James Brolin, who said he missed Barbra Streisand even when they were asleep; she pictured a singer like Celine Dion performing it.
Q 16Which screen legend narrates Armageddon's opening account of the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs?
Charlton Heston
Charlton Heston's distinctive voice won him late-career work as a narrator: he opens Armageddon with the impact that ended the dinosaurs, a year after opening Disney's Hercules.
Q 17Armageddon's theme lost the Best Original Song Oscar to a song from which film?
The Prince of Egypt
The Prince of Egypt won with 'When You Believe'; the Armageddon ballad had a second life when Mark Chesnutt's cover topped the country chart in early 1999.
Q 18Which other 1998 film about an object hurtling toward Earth reached cinemas two months before Armageddon?
Deep Impact
Deep Impact came first; its writer Bruce Joel Rubin said a Disney executive took notes on his script over lunch and then launched Armageddon as a counter-film.
Q 19Which city's destruction was added to Armageddon two months before release, to set its ads apart from a rival film?
Paris
Paris was added in May 1998, when studio chairman Joe Roth put $3 million more into effects shots so the television campaign would not look like the rival's.
Q 20Which arthouse-focused label surprisingly released a director's cut of Armageddon on DVD and LaserDisc?
The Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection issued it with an essay by Jeanine Basinger, Bay's old professor at Wesleyan, who called it 'a work of art by a cutting-edge artist'.
McDonald's ran the tie-in; the film was also advertised during Super Bowl XXXII for $2.6 million, and its all-too-real billboards set off a scare in Los Angeles.
Q 24Which theme park hosted an Armageddon special-effects attraction from its opening in 2002 until 2019?
Walt Disney Studios, Paris
Walt Disney Studios, Paris put guests inside the film's Russian space station as it broke apart; the show closed in March 2019 and a Spider-Man ride took its place.
Q 25Which actor plays Bear, one of Harry Stamper's drillers, in Armageddon?
Michael Clarke Duncan
Michael Clarke Duncan befriended the film's star on set, and that friendship helped win him the role of John Coffey in The Green Mile and an Oscar nomination.
Q 26Which Fargo and Reservoir Dogs actor plays the geologist Rockhound in Armageddon?
Steve Buscemi
Steve Buscemi, known for independent films, became a blockbuster character actor with two parts in a row: the killer Garland Greene in Con Air, then Rockhound.
Q 27Which Swedish actor plays the Russian cosmonaut Lev Andropov in Armageddon?
Peter Stormare
Peter Stormare's Lev escapes his exploding space station with A.J., survives the shuttle crash and rides the rover to the drill site; the Swede has also played a German, an Italian and a Frenchman.
Q 28Which actor plays Dan Truman, the NASA chief who recruits Harry Stamper in Armageddon?
Billy Bob Thornton
Billy Bob Thornton came to the year's biggest blockbuster from Sling Blade, the small independent film he wrote, directed and starred in, which had won him a screenwriting Oscar.
Q 29Which future Frat Pack comedian plays the geologist Oscar Choice in Armageddon?
Owen Wilson
Owen Wilson made Armageddon the same year as the indie drama Permanent Midnight, and his Oscar is among those killed when their shuttle crashes on the asteroid.
Q 30Which Oscar-winning script doctor polished Armageddon's script without credit?
Robert Towne
Robert Towne, the writer of Chinatown, was one of four uncredited writers, with Paul Attanasio, Ann Biderman and Scott Rosenberg, whom the producer hired in turn for rewrites and polishes after the script was green-lit.