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50 free Big Trouble in Little China trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Big Trouble in Little China bombed in 1986 and then spent four decades becoming everybody's favourite John Carpenter movie. This quiz has forty questions for the people who can quote Jack Burton's CB monologues from memory. It covers the plot from the Pork Chop Express to the Wild-Man stowaway, the Three Storms, Lo Pan's curse, Egg Shen's potion, the Chang Sing and Wing Kong, and the green-eyed girls at the centre of it all. The production story is just as good: the original script was a Western set in the 1880s, the studio rushed it out to beat Eddie Murphy's The Golden Child, Carpenter wanted Clint Eastwood, and Kurt Russell built Jack Burton out of John Wayne. There are questions on the effects, the score, the box office, the reviews and the comics, board games and Dwayne Johnson sequel talk that followed. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's article on the film, and each question carries the sentence that supports it.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who directed Big Trouble in Little China?
John Carpenter
It fulfilled his long-standing wish to make a martial arts film after falling for Hong Kong cinema in film school.
Q 02In which year was Big Trouble in Little China released?
1986
It opened on July 2, in 1,053 theaters, sixteen days before Aliens arrived to swallow the summer.
Q 03What is Jack Burton's job?
Truck driver
He narrates his own legend over the CB radio while hauling freight.
Q 04What is the nickname of Jack Burton's semi-trailer truck?
The Pork Chop Express
Carpenter's title theme shares the name and was partly inspired by ZZ Top's 'Just Got Paid'.
Q 05Who plays Jack Burton?
Kurt Russell
He had already made Elvis, Escape from New York and The Thing with Carpenter.
Q 06Which two stars did Carpenter want for the lead before the studio pushed its rising star?
Clint Eastwood or Jack Nicholson
Neither was available, and the studio needed a name to compete with Eddie Murphy in The Golden Child.
Q 07The star modelled Jack Burton's bravado on the screen persona of which older actor?
John Wayne
Reviewers noticed: the Toronto Star called it 'a great John Wayne imitation' with a satiric edge.
Q 08Who plays Wang Chi, Jack's friend whose fiancée is kidnapped?
Dennis Dun
He was cast only days before shooting and had performed in Chinese opera as an adult.
Q 09Which actress plays lawyer Gracie Law?
Kim Cattrall
She insisted the character was 'the brains' to Jack's brawn and not a damsel in distress.
Q 10Which actor plays the sorcerer David Lo Pan?
James Hong
He also played the eye maker Chew in Blade Runner and received a Hollywood Walk of Fame star in 2022.
Q 11Lo Pan needs to marry a woman with what feature to lift his curse?
Green eyes
Both Miao Yin and Gracie Law qualify, so he plans to marry one and sacrifice the other.
Q 12Which emperor defeated Lo Pan centuries ago and cursed him with incorporeality?
Qin Shi Huang
Lo Pan can borrow a decrepit body by supplicating the gods, but only the wedding sacrifice frees him fully.
Q 13What is Wang Chi's fiancée called?
Miao Yin
The Lords of Death gang snatch her at the airport for her green eyes.
What are the names of the Three Storms, Lo Pan's supernatural warriors?
Q 21In the final scene, what is revealed to have stowed away on Jack's truck?
The Wild-Man
Jack has just turned down Gracie's offer to ride along, saying he eventually rubs everyone the wrong way.
Q 22The original screenplay by Gary Goldman and David Z. Weinstein was set in what period?
The 1880s
It was a Weird West story titled 'Lotus' with a cowboy hero named Wiley Prescott.
Q 23Which screenwriter rewrote Big Trouble in Little China, turning the cowboy hero into a blowhard trucker?
W. D. Richter
He got only an 'adaptation by' credit after the Writers Guild protected the original writers.
Thunder, Rain and Lightning
A 2012 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles episode borrowed the concept but swapped Rain for Wind.
Q 15The street battle Jack and Wang stumble into is between which two ancient warrior societies?
Chang Sing and Wing Kong
It erupts out of a funeral procession, and Jack's truck is stolen in the chaos.
Q 16How do Jack and Wang first get into Lo Pan's front business?
Posing as telephone repairmen
Rain subdues them almost immediately, and they end up tied up meeting the elderly David Lo Pan.
Q 17Which magician pours Jack and Wang a courage potion before the final battle in Big Trouble in Little China?
Egg Shen
He also opens the film reassuring a lawyer that 'Jack Burton is a man of courage', a prologue the studio demanded.
Q 18What does Jack do at the start of the climactic wedding fight?
Knocks himself out
Carpenter described the movie as being about a sidekick who thinks he is the leading man.
Q 19How does Jack finally kill Lo Pan?
Catches a thrown knife and returns it to his forehead
Jack's first throw misses; it is Lo Pan's return throw that he catches. 'It's all in the reflexes.'
Q 20What happens to Thunder when he finds Lo Pan dead?
He swells up with rage and explodes
Lightning is later crushed when Egg Shen drops a stone statue on him.
Q 24The rewrite man was offered the director's chair because of his previous film. Which one?
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai
He turned it down, preferring smaller movies; Dennis Dun took the Wang role partly because he loved Buckaroo Banzai.
Q 25The studio rushed the film into production to beat which similarly themed Eddie Murphy movie to theaters?
The Golden Child
Carpenter had been offered that film too, and came to see the two as 'basically the same'.
Q 26How many weeks of preproduction did Carpenter get?
10 to 12
Fox hired him specifically because of his reputation for working fast.
Q 27Where was most of the film shot?
Sets on the Fox lot in Los Angeles
Production designer John Lloyd rebuilt Chinatown with three-storey buildings, streetlights and sewers.
Q 28Who was the film's martial arts choreographer, who also appears as a Chang Sing warrior?
James Lew
Carpenter said the fights used 'every cheap gag — trampolines, wires, reverse movements and upside-down sets'.
Q 29Which company handled the visual effects?
Boss Film Studios
Its head Richard Edlund called it the company's favourite film after Ghostbusters.
Q 30The 'Guardian', Lo Pan's floating scout, is a creature covered in what?
Eyeballs
Designed by Screaming Mad George, it took about 60 artists and cost over $100,000.