Dan Aykroyd
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
50 free Dan Aykroyd trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Dan Aykroyd is one of the few comedians who built his own worlds. As an original Saturday Night Live cast member he invented pitchmen, aliens and a soul revue that outgrew the show, then co-wrote two of the best-loved comedies of the 1980s. This quiz covers the whole career: the sketch characters, The Blues Brothers and Ghostbusters, the buddy comedies, his serious screen roles and voice work, plus the family history, business ventures and unusual hobbies behind the scenes. It is for anyone who grew up on his films, with easy openers for casual fans and a few deep cuts for people who know their late-night history.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which actress was Dan Aykroyd briefly engaged to after proposing to her on the set of The Blues Brothers?
Carrie Fisher
Carrie Fisher, who plays Jake's jilted girlfriend in the film, ended the engagement when she reconciled with musician Paul Simon.
Q 02Which TV chef did Dan Aykroyd parody on Saturday Night Live in a famously blood-soaked cooking sketch?
Julia Child
Julia Child reportedly loved the gory parody so much that she kept a videocassette of it and showed it to friends at parties.
Q 03Which spirit does Dan Aykroyd sell in a skull-shaped glass bottle under his Crystal Head brand?
Vodka
Vodka from Crystal Head gets its final filtering through Herkimer diamonds, which are really quartz crystals, and artist John Alexander designed the bottle.
Q 04Dan Aykroyd wrote Ghostbusters' Peter Venkman for John Belushi, but which actor ended up playing the role?
Bill Murray
Bill Murray got the rewritten part after Belushi died in March 1982, when the far-future, space-hopping story was brought down to New York City.
Q 05In Trading Places, Dan Aykroyd's Louis Winthorpe ruins the Duke brothers by trading futures in which commodity?
Orange juice
Orange juice, in frozen concentrate form, was chosen because the writers thought audiences would never expect something so mundane to be traded.
Q 06A museum in Alberta named its theatre after Dan Aykroyd's family because he raised funds for the study of what?
Dinosaurs
Dinosaurs fascinate him so much that he organised a two-day celebrity fossil dig, a ball and an auction to help get the museum built.
Q 07Which instrument did Dan Aykroyd carry on stage in a case handcuffed to his wrist as a Blues Brother?
Harmonica
Harmonica in a handcuffed briefcase became the act's trademark, and the duo's 1978 debut album was called Briefcase Full of Blues.
Q 08Dan Aykroyd sang in the chorus of which 1985 all-star charity single, alongside Bette Midler and Smokey Robinson?
We Are the World
We Are the World topped the Hot 100, which makes the comic actor an unlikely number-one recording artist among the session's pop and soul stars.
Q 09Which gluttonous green Ghostbusters ghost has been described as the ghost of Dan Aykroyd's late friend John Belushi?
Slimer
Slimer was likened by the film-makers to Bluto, Belushi's Animal House character, and only got that name later, in the cartoon The Real Ghostbusters.
Q 10In The Blues Brothers, what kind of used vehicle does Dan Aykroyd's character buy at auction as the Bluesmobile?
A police car
A police car was his own pick as co-writer: he considered the Dodge Monaco the hottest patrol car of the 1970s.
Q 11Which paranormal investigator did Dan Aykroyd play in the 1984 hit Ghostbusters, which he also co-wrote?
Ray Stantz
Ray Stantz is the one who accidentally summons the giant Stay Puft Marshmallow Man by thinking of a mascot he loved in his boyhood.
Q 12What is the first name of the Blues Brother Dan Aykroyd played opposite John Belushi's Jake?
Elwood
Elwood was modelled partly on Donnie Walsh of the blues band Downchild, whose songs the duo covered on their first album.
Q 13Which fellow Saturday Night Live alumnus plays the street hustler who swaps lives with Dan Aykroyd in Trading Places?
Eddie Murphy
Eddie Murphy stepped into a film first developed for Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder, with Aykroyd taking the part meant for Wilder.
Q 21Dan Aykroyd was born on July 1 in which city, where he later studied at Carleton University?
Ottawa
Ottawa's club Le Hibou booked the great bluesmen of the era, and the teenage Aykroyd was a regular in the audience.
Q 22Before dropping out to pursue comedy, Dan Aykroyd studied sociology and which other subject at Carleton University?
Criminology
Criminology stayed with him: he later became a reserve law-enforcement officer in Louisiana and then in Mississippi.
Q 23At 17, Dan Aykroyd joined a short-lived Canadian sketch show starring which future Saturday Night Live producer?
Lorne Michaels
Lorne Michaels fronted The Hart and Lorne Terrific Hour with Hart Pomerantz on CBC, years before he hired Aykroyd again for his NBC show.
Q 14Which actress starred opposite Dan Aykroyd in both Trading Places and the 1991 tearjerker My Girl?
Jamie Lee Curtis
Jamie Lee Curtis won a BAFTA for Trading Places, cast against the studio's wishes when she was known mainly for horror films.
Q 15Which 1989 Best Picture winner earned Dan Aykroyd an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor?
Driving Miss Daisy
Driving Miss Daisy cast the comedian against type as Boolie Werthan, the businessman son who hires a chauffeur for the stubborn Daisy.
Q 16Which future Oscar winner played Dan Aykroyd's laid-back partner Pep Streebek in the 1987 comedy Dragnet?
Tom Hanks
Tom Hanks got the part because first choice Jim Belushi was unavailable; he played foil to Aykroyd's Joe Friday, nephew of the TV original.
Q 17Which Canadian comic played the brother-in-law whose lakeside holiday Dan Aykroyd gatecrashes in The Great Outdoors?
John Candy
John Candy played Chet Ripley in a comedy written and produced by John Hughes, with Annette Bening making her film debut.
Q 18Which original Saturday Night Live castmate joined Dan Aykroyd as a bumbling decoy agent in Spies Like Us?
Chevy Chase
Chevy Chase took a part first meant for John Belushi, in a comedy styled after the Bob Hope and Bing Crosby road movies.
Q 19Dan Aykroyd's alien Coneheads explain their odd habits to neighbours by claiming to come from which country?
France
France was the cover story for a family actually stranded on Earth from the planet Remulak.
Q 20Which Hanna-Barbera cartoon character did Dan Aykroyd voice in a 2010 film mixing live action and computer animation?
Yogi Bear
Yogi Bear was a childhood favourite of his, and pop star Justin Timberlake voiced sidekick Boo-Boo in the same film.
Q 24Which improv comedy troupe did Dan Aykroyd join in 1973, performing with its Toronto company before television fame?
The Second City
The Second City has also been a starting point for John Belushi, Mike Myers and Tina Fey.
Q 25Dan Aykroyd's father, a civil engineer, worked as a policy adviser to which Canadian prime minister?
Pierre Trudeau
Pierre Trudeau's adviser Peter Aykroyd later wrote A History of Ghosts, tracing the family's long involvement in Spiritualism.
Q 26Dan Aykroyd's great-grandfather, a dentist and mystic, exchanged letters about Spiritualism with which famous author?
Arthur Conan Doyle
Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, was a devoted Spiritualist, and Aykroyd proudly calls himself one too.
Q 27Which actress, his co-star in the 1983 comedy Doctor Detroit, did Dan Aykroyd marry that same year?
Donna Dixon
Donna Dixon married him on a friend's rooftop in Martha's Vineyard and went on to appear with him in four more films.
Q 28Which director co-wrote The Blues Brothers with Dan Aykroyd and later directed him in Trading Places?
John Landis
John Landis had to cut Aykroyd's enormous first draft down into a usable screenplay, a job that took him about two weeks.
Q 29Which Ghostbusters co-star, who played the team's bespectacled scientist, helped Dan Aykroyd rewrite the script?
Harold Ramis
Harold Ramis was hired to ground the story in present-day New York, and the pair went on to write the 1989 sequel together.
Q 30Which director cast Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi in the 1979 war comedy 1941?
Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg later turned up on the other side of the camera, playing a county clerk in The Blues Brothers.