Cosplay Trivia
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97 free Cosplay trivia questions with answers — pop culture quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This cosplay trivia quiz is about costume play itself: the hobby, its history, its conventions and its people (for questions on the anime series that cosplayers so often draw from, take our Anime quiz). It covers Forrest J Ackerman and Morojo's 'futuristicostumes' at the first Worldcon in 1939, the Japanese magazine article that coined 'kosupure' in 1983, Comiket's rooftop crowds, the World Cosplay Summit in Nagoya, the maid cafes of Akihabara and the 'no costume is no costume' rule. The easy questions are ones any convention-goer knows: what the word blends, what crossplay is, which city hosts San Diego Comic-Con and what a fursuit is. From there it works through the craft and the culture: wigs, circle lenses, EVA foam and Worbla, prop replicas, contest judging criteria, kigurumi masks, cameko photographers, cosplay models like Yaya Han, Jessica Nigri and Enako, the 501st Legion and Rebel Legion, Dragon Con's parade, New York Comic Con's 'Cosplay Is Not Consent' signs, and the reality shows and documentaries that put the hobby on television. There are questions on neighbouring costume traditions too: Halloween costumes, Renaissance fairs, Lolita fashion, steampunk and the peanut-butter costume that got food banned from Worldcon. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entries for cosplay, its conventions and its notable figures before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Fans may also like our Comic-Con and Manga quizzes.
30 of 97 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The word 'cosplay' is a blend of which two English words?
Costume and play
Costume and play: Japanese clips the front of each borrowed word, kosu and pure, into one new word, just as it made 'anime' out of 'animation'.
Q 02Who coined the term 'cosplay', in a June 1983 magazine article?
Nobuyuki Takahashi
Nobuyuki Takahashi used the word in a June 1983 My Anime piece on costumed fans at Comiket; few people knew it that year, but within a year or two it was in wide use among fans.
Q 03Why did the writer who coined 'cosplay' reject the Japanese word for 'masquerade'?
It implied nobility and sounded old-fashioned
It implied nobility and sounded old-fashioned, he recalled, so he and his friends clipped two English loanwords into one new word, a common Japanese habit.
Q 04The first Worldcon, where convention costuming began in 1939, was timed to coincide with which New York event?
The World's Fair
The World's Fair of 1939, themed 'The World of Tomorrow', drew science-fiction fans to New York that July; Forrest J Ackerman and Morojo arrived in costume, and a tradition began.
Q 05What did fans Forrest J Ackerman and Morojo call their 1939 Worldcon outfits?
Futuristicostumes
Futuristicostumes, with their capes and breeches, were modelled on pulp artist Frank R. Paul's artwork and the film Things to Come; Morojo designed and made both outfits.
Q 06What did Ackerman later admit he had thought about costumes at the 1939 convention?
That everyone was supposed to wear one
That everyone was supposed to wear one was Ackerman's later account; in the event only he and Morojo came in costume, and the next year's Worldcon added an official masquerade.
Q 07The fan nickname Morojo, used by a 1939 costuming pioneer, spells out initials in which language?
Esperanto
Esperanto names each consonant by adding an 'o', so M, R and J became Mo-ro-jo: her own first two initials plus the middle initial of her partner, whom she met in an Esperanto class.
Q 08Which US city has hosted the furry convention Anthrocon since 2006?
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh has hosted Anthrocon since 2006, when the convention left the Philadelphia area; its annual fursuit parade now musters more than 1,000 costumed marchers.
Q 09Anime Expo has been held at which city's convention center since 2008?
Los Angeles
Los Angeles has housed Anime Expo at its convention center since 2008; the show began in Northern California in 1992 as the successor to a fan-run event called AnimeCon.
Q 10Worldcon's first masquerade winner, in 1940, dressed as Ming the Merciless, villain of which comic strip?
Flash Gordon
Flash Gordon's foe Ming the Merciless won the first official Worldcon masquerade, staged after two fans had turned up in costume the year before.
Q 11Who made the mask for Ackerman's 'Hunchbackerman of Notre Dame' costume at the 1941 Worldcon?
Ray Harryhausen
Ray Harryhausen was then an unknown young fan from Ackerman's local club; Ackerman recalled a 'hideous latex mask', made two decades before Harryhausen animated Jason and the Argonauts.
Q 12What rule did Worldcon adopt in response to a wave of nude contestants?
'No Costume is No Costume'
'No Costume is No Costume' ruled out full nudity on stage, though partial nudity stayed allowed, and common, when it was true to the character.
Q 13What did artist Scott Shaw's 1972 Worldcon costume 'The Turd' consist mostly of?
Peanut butter
Q 21At Ashinocon 1978, what was one impromptu Tusken Raider costume made from?
A hotel's roll of toilet paper
A hotel's roll of toilet paper mummified one of fan Yasuhiro Takeda's friends; Takeda recalled cutting the cardboard tube in half and taping the halves over his eyes.
Q 22Future scream queen Brinke Stevens won Comic-Con's first Masquerade in 1974 dressed as which comic-book heroine?
Vampirella
Vampirella, co-created by Forrest J Ackerman, won her first place; Stevens went on to help run the Comic-Con masquerade for years afterward.
Q 23Fans began dressing as characters from which 1975 film about a year after its release?
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
Scott Shaw coated himself in peanut butter for 'The Turd' at the 1972 Worldcon; it went rancid under the stage lights and food was banned from costumes afterward.
Q 14Disney's parks normally bar adults from wearing costumes, so fans go 'Disneybounding' instead, which means dressing how?
In a character's colours
In a character's colours: the parks bar adult costumes so no guest is mistaken for an official character. The name comes from Leslie Kay's 2011 blog, begun when she was literally Disney-bound for a holiday.
Q 15Which costume style, a convention favourite, mixes nineteenth-century fashion with brass goggles, gears and clockwork gadgets?
Steampunk
Steampunk got its name from novelist K. W. Jeter, who suggested it in a 1987 letter to Locus magazine as a joke on 'cyberpunk' for the nineteenth-century fantasies he and two friends were writing.
Q 16Mr. Skygack, a comic-strip visitor fans dressed as in 1908 in arguably the first cosplay, came from which planet?
Mars
Mars sent Mr. Skygack to take notes on earthlings in A. D. Condo's newspaper strip; a Cincinnati couple wore Skygack and Miss Dillpickles outfits to a skating-rink masquerade in 1908.
Q 17Which French novelist threw an 1877 costume ball where guests came dressed as characters from his books?
Jules Verne
Jules Verne gave the ball in Amiens; his friend the photographer Nadar, the model for the hero of From the Earth to the Moon, came dressed as that very character.
Q 18Which London venue hosted the 1891 Vril-Ya Bazaar, where visitors were urged to dress as characters from a popular novel?
Royal Albert Hall
Royal Albert Hall was decked out as the world of Bulwer-Lytton's The Coming Race, with winged mannequins overhead; the public stayed away and the venture bankrupted its organiser.
Q 19What was fan costuming called in Japan in the 1970s, before 'cosplay' caught on?
Kaso
Kaso, the everyday Japanese word for a costume or disguise, was what fans called it in the 1970s; the man who coined 'cosplay' felt the old word missed the spirit of the hobby.
Q 20Friends who dressed up at a 1978 Japanese fan convention later founded which anime studio?
Gainax
Gainax, later the maker of Neon Genesis Evangelion, grew out of the Kansai fan group that costumed at Ashinocon in 1978; critic Mari Kotani, also in costume, recalled almost everyone else at the party in ordinary clothes.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show flopped and was shelved, then found its crowd at midnight screenings from April 1976, where regulars began talking back to the screen and dressing as its characters.
Q 24US federal rules approve a muzzle plug of which colour to mark toy and imitation guns, staples of costume props?
Blaze orange
Blaze orange plugs are only one marking the federal rule approves: a toy gun needs no plug at all if it is transparent, or coloured all over in a bright shade such as pink or green.
Q 25At Comiket, where thousands of cosplayers gather, what are they expected to do before travelling home?
Change out of costume
Change out of costume: Comiket tells cosplayers to arrive and leave in plain clothes, so they register on site and dress in its changing rooms, and changing in the toilets is banned too.
Q 26Which European country won the first World Cosplay Championship in 2005?
Italy
Italy won overall in 2005, with Giorgia Vecchini taking the individual prize; it was the first year cosplayers had to qualify through playoffs at home, where earlier summits had simply invited a handful of guests.
Q 27'Cosplay' was clipped together like 'rimokon', the Japanese word for which household gadget?
Remote control
Remote control becomes 'rimokon' by keeping the front of each English word, the same clipping that turns 'personal computer' into 'pasokon'.
Q 28At Japan's maid cafés, what do the costumed waitresses use to draw pictures on a customer's omelette rice?
Ketchup
Ketchup is the maid's drawing ink: she decorates the omelette rice at the table, often with a picture or word the customer has asked for.
Q 29Comiket, the Tokyo fair where thousands of cosplayers gather twice a year, exists mainly to sell what?
Fan-made comics
Fan-made comics, or doujinshi, are the point of Comic Market, which fans launched in 1975 as a place to sell self-published work; Japan's cosplay scene grew up around it.
Q 30How many people attended the first Comiket in December 1975?
About 700
About 700 people came to the first Comiket in December 1975; by 2019 its turnstile attendance had reached an estimated 750,000.