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60 free Baywatch trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Baywatch was cancelled by a major network after one season, came back from the dead and ended up in Guinness World Records as the most-watched TV show on Earth. This Baywatch trivia quiz covers all of it: the 1989 pilot and the flop first season, the theme songs, the slow-motion beach running, and the parade of lifeguards who ran across the sand over eleven seasons. Expect questions on David Hasselhoff's Mitch Buchannon and how he was written out, on Pamela Anderson, Erika Eleniak, Yasmine Bleeth, Carmen Electra, Nicole Eggert and Alexandra Paul, on the strange deaths the writers dreamed up, and on the spin-offs and sequels: Baywatch Nights, Baywatch: Hawaii, the 2003 reunion movie, the 2017 Dwayne Johnson film, the 2024 documentary and the Fox reboot. Easy questions come first, then the ones only a real fan will get. Every question was checked against Wikipedia and the cast members' own biographies, and each one shows its source, so if an answer surprises you the evidence is one click away.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which network originally aired Baywatch in 1989, only to cancel it after a single season?
NBC
It finished 73rd out of 103 shows that season, and its studio went out of business, which looked like the end until the cast and creators bought it back.
Q 02After its network cancellation, how did Baywatch return to television in 1991?
Through first-run syndication
Selling episodes station by station, rather than to one network, is what turned a flop into a global juggernaut.
Q 03What title was David Hasselhoff given as a reward for his work bringing Baywatch back from cancellation?
Executive producer
That credit gave him a real financial stake in the show, which is why the ownership dispute over its profits ran for years.
Q 04Guinness listed Baywatch as the world's most-watched TV series with a weekly audience of roughly how many?
Over 1.1 billion
The number counted viewers across every country the show was sold to, from Germany to the Philippines, and has never been matched by a scripted drama.
Q 05Gregory J. Bonann got the idea for Baywatch while working which job?
Los Angeles County lifeguard
The children's father worked for MTM Enterprises, which gave Bonann his first pitch meeting, and it still took him the best part of a decade to sell the show.
Q 06Which LA County shoreline, site of Bonann's real 1977 rescue, was the original series' main filming location?
Will Rogers State Beach
The lifeguard headquarters seen on screen was a real county building there, and Bonann had worked that stretch of sand since 1975.
Q 07Baywatch's creator built his early reputation making documentary films about which event?
The Olympic Games
He shot official films for the U.S. Olympic Committee covering the 1980, 1984 and 1988 Games, then directed 75 Baywatch episodes and cut some 400 music montages.
Q 08Why did the producers move production to Hawaii in 1999 for the show's final two seasons?
Rising costs in Los Angeles and a shrinking syndication market
Hawaii sweetened the deal with large financial incentives, and the show was retitled Baywatch: Hawaii for the 1999 to 2001 run.
Q 09Who performed "Save Me", the theme song used during Baywatch's original network season?
Peter Cetera
The former Chicago frontman's song lasted only one season before the syndicated era brought in a new theme that became the one everybody remembers.
Q 10Who sang 'I'm Always Here', the theme used from the second season onward?
Jimi Jamison
He co-wrote the song as well as singing it, and it stayed on the show for the rest of its run.
Q 11The singer of Baywatch's famous theme was best known as the frontman of which rock band?
Survivor
That band also gave the world "Burning Heart" from Rocky IV and "The Moment of Truth" from The Karate Kid, so he had form with iconic 80s themes.
Q 12How many episodes of Baywatch were made across its 11 seasons, including the pilot?
241
That works out to nearly 200 hours of slow-motion beach running, spread across 12 years and two coastlines.
Q 13What was the title of the two-hour TV movie that served as the Baywatch pilot in April 1989?
Panic at Malibu Pier
The pilot ran five months before the series proper began on September 22, 1989.
Q 21Which character did Pamela Anderson play from 1992 to 1997?
C.J. Parker
She was written in as an old friend of Mitch's, and the red-swimsuit image she left behind is still the first thing most people picture when they hear the show's name.
Q 22Before Baywatch, Pamela Anderson was spotted on a jumbotron in a beer-company shirt at a game in which sport?
Canadian football
The BC Lions crowd's reaction got her a Labatt's spokesmodel job, which led to Playboy and then Hollywood.
Q 23On which sitcom did Pamela Anderson play the original "Tool Time girl" before Baywatch?
Home Improvement
Q 14Erika Eleniak, rookie Shauni McClain in the first two seasons, had appeared as a child in which 1982 blockbuster?
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
She was the girl Elliott kisses in the classroom frog-liberation scene, aged 12.
Q 15How does veteran lifeguard Jill Riley die in the show's first season?
A great white shark
Killing off the most experienced female lifeguard in season one set the tone for a show that was far deadlier for its cast than the beach ever is in real life.
Q 16Shawn Weatherly, who played Jill Riley, had won which title in 1980?
Miss Universe
She won Miss USA and Miss Universe in the same year and later played Cadet Karen Adams in Police Academy 3.
Q 17Season-one lifeguard Eddie Kramer, played by Billy Warlock, was written as a street kid from which city?
Philadelphia
Warlock, whose father Dick was Michael Myers' stunt double in Halloween II, was engaged for a time to co-star Erika Eleniak, his on-screen love interest.
Q 18Craig Pomeroy, one of the original 1989 lifeguards, has what unusual side profession?
Lawyer
Stevenson, TV's Frank Hardy from The Hardy Boys, was married to Kirstie Alley for the whole of the character's first stint on the show.
Q 19Mitch Buchannon is a lieutenant for most of the series. To what rank is he promoted in season 8?
Captain
The promotion opened up his old job, filled by Angelica Bridges' Taylor Walsh, a lieutenant who never quite won the crew over.
Q 20Who played Mitch's son Hobie for the show's first season, before Jeremy Jackson took over the role?
Brandon Call
Jackson then held the part for 159 episodes, making him the second-longest-serving cast member after his on-screen father.
She left Tim Allen's show in 1993 once the lifeguard role took off, and Debbe Dunning replaced her on Tool Time.
Q 24How is Alexandra Paul's character Stephanie Holden killed off in season 7?
Crushed by a sailboat mast in a storm
It happened on her honeymoon, which was cruel even by Baywatch standards, and Paul had spent five seasons on the show by then.
Q 25Alexandra Paul's first major film role was in which 1983 John Carpenter car-horror film?
Christine
Off screen she is a serious endurance athlete who raced the Hawaii Ironman in 1997, the year she left the show.
Q 26How is Yasmine Bleeth's character Caroline related to Stephanie Holden?
Her younger sister
Bleeth came to the show from daytime soaps and went straight from it into Nash Bridges as Inspector Caitlin Cross.
Q 27Yasmine Bleeth's first screen appearance came at the age of 10 months, in a commercial for what?
Baby shampoo
It was a Johnson & Johnson's No More Tears spot in 1969, so she had a 20-year career before her first lifeguard tower.
Q 28Matt Brody, played by David Charvet, was written as a lifeguard from a wealthy family in which country?
France
That was not a stretch: Charvet was born and raised in Lyon, and after leaving acting he sold more than 2.5 million albums as a singer in France.
Q 29Nicole Eggert, who played Summer Quinn, was already famous as Jamie Powell on which 1980s sitcom?
Charles in Charge
Her character was written as a star athlete from Pittsburgh, and Eggert had been a child pageant winner and a Baywatch: Hawaiian Wedding returnee by the time she was 30.
Q 30Gena Lee Nolin, who played Neely Capshaw, came to Baywatch straight from modelling on which game show?
The Price Is Right
Neely was written as the black sheep of the team but ends up reformed and married to Mitch, and Nolin went on to star as Sheena.