Evil Dead Trivia
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60 free Evil Dead trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Evil Dead trivia quiz covers the whole franchise Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell and Rob Tapert built out of a $1,600 Super 8 prototype called Within the Woods. It runs from the freezing Tennessee cabin shoot of The Evil Dead (1981) through the splatstick of Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness, the 2013 reboot with Jane Levy, the three seasons of Ash vs Evil Dead on Starz, Evil Dead Rise, Evil Dead Burn, the video games and the off-Broadway musical. Expect questions on the Necronomicon and its Sumerian passages, the chainsaw hand and the boomstick, the Oldsmobile Delta 88, S-Mart, the Fake Shemps, Stephen King's rave at Cannes, the video-nasty ban in Britain, and the behind-the-scenes stories of who got hurt making these films. Roughly a third of the questions are easy for anyone who has seen the trilogy, a third are medium, and the rest are for people who have listened to every commentary track. Every answer has been checked against an encyclopaedic source and each question links to the page that confirms it.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In Army of Darkness, what kind of weapon does Ash brandish as his 'boomstick'?
A shotgun
A shotgun: Ash fires it to silence a hostile crowd, then pitches it like a salesman as a twelve-gauge, double-barrelled Remington from the sporting goods department.
Q 02What is Ash Williams's full first name?
Ashley
Ashley is the full name behind the nickname, and the wisecracking hero's middle name is no tougher: he is Ashley Joanna Williams.
Q 03What short film did Raimi and Campbell make as a prototype to win investors for The Evil Dead?
Within the Woods
Within the Woods was shot for about $1,600 on a farm in spring 1979; its one cinema booking put it on ahead of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, where the cult crowd took to it.
Q 04In which state did The Evil Dead's crew shoot in a remote cabin that had no running water?
Tennessee
Tennessee: the cabin stood near Morristown, where filming began in November 1979; a shoot planned for six weeks stretched towards twelve, and most of the cast and crew had left before the end.
Q 05Which horror novelist saw The Evil Dead at Cannes in 1982 and wrote a rave that helped it find a US distributor?
Stephen King
Stephen King saw it at the festival and raved in print; his quote went onto the posters, and critics who might have ignored a cheap shocker took notice.
Q 06What was The Evil Dead's working title, dropped when sales agent Irvin Shapiro asked for a change?
Book of the Dead
Book of the Dead, a title that grew out of Raimi's reading of H. P. Lovecraft, lasted through the shoot; Shapiro, the agent who sold the film abroad, had it renamed The Evil Dead.
Q 07Which university do Ash and his friends attend in The Evil Dead?
Michigan State University
Michigan State University was Raimi's own campus: he was studying literature there with Rob Tapert when the two began planning a horror feature.
Q 08In The Evil Dead, which two companions are Ash's girlfriend and his sister, in that order?
Linda and Cheryl
Linda and Cheryl: Ash's sister Cheryl is possessed first, after the woods attack her, and promptly stabs his girlfriend Linda in the ankle with a pencil.
Q 09In Evil Dead II, what does Annie Knowby bring back to the cabin from the dig?
The book's missing pages
The book's missing pages return from the dig with Annie; they hold the ritual she recites with her dying breath to open the vortex and banish the demon.
Q 10What nickname, inspired by Raimi's Three Stooges fandom, was given to stand-ins replacing unavailable actors?
Fake Shemps
Fake Shemps honoured the Three Stooges, whose producers hid doubles after Shemp Howard died in 1955; The Evil Dead's credits list several cast members as Fake Shemps.
Q 11Which future Oscar-winning director worked as an assistant editor on The Evil Dead?
Joel Coen
Joel Coen, later an Oscar winner for Fargo and No Country for Old Men, was an assistant editor; he borrowed the prototype-trailer trick to raise money for Blood Simple.
Q 12In the UK, The Evil Dead was famously branded and banned as what kind of release in the 1980s?
A video nasty
A video nasty was the press label for tapes blamed for corrupting viewers; The Evil Dead's video was banned once the 1984 Video Recordings Act arrived, and the censors passed it uncut only in 2000.
Q 13What did the Evil Dead crew call the camera-on-a-plank rig that two runners carried in place of a Steadicam?
The shaky cam
Q 21To dodge an X rating, Evil Dead II reached US cinemas unrated through a shell company with what name?
Rosebud Releasing Corporation
Rosebud Releasing Corporation was a shell set up so the producer's own company, bound by ratings-board rules, never had to submit the film; Raimi himself designed its blooming-rose logo.
Q 22The North Carolina farmhouse that housed Evil Dead II's production office had just appeared in which film?
The Color Purple
The Color Purple had used the farmhouse near Wadesboro; Raimi's team based itself there, three hours from its producer's studio, to keep him at arm's length.
Q 23At the end of Evil Dead II, Ash and his car are sucked through a vortex to which period?
The shaky cam was a camera fixed to the middle of a plank with a runner on each end, skimming low over the ground for the demon's point of view when a real Steadicam proved too costly.
Q 14Which company released The Evil Dead in American theaters in April 1983?
New Line Cinema
New Line Cinema picked it up after festival praise and a strong British run raised the film's profile at home, and opened it in New York on April 15, 1983.
Q 15Evil Dead II carried which subtitle on its 1987 posters and publicity?
Dead by Dawn
Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn was the full title on its 1987 posters; the opening recap rewrites the first film so only Ash and his girlfriend visit the cabin.
Q 16Which Italian producer funded Evil Dead II after the novelist who championed the first film phoned him?
Dino De Laurentiis
Dino De Laurentiis, then producing Maximum Overdrive with the novelist, put up the sequel's roughly $3.6 million budget and kept the story in the cabin.
Q 17In Evil Dead II, what does Ash attach to the stump of his right arm after cutting off his possessed hand?
A chainsaw
A chainsaw: the effects crew swapped the real saw's petrol engine for a small electric motor so Campbell's hand could fit inside the casing, and filed down the teeth for safety.
Q 18In Evil Dead II, which Hemingway novel tops the books Ash piles on his severed hand?
A Farewell to Arms
A Farewell to Arms tops the pile, one of the sight gags co-writer Scott Spiegel pushed for after arguing that the sequel should play less as straight horror.
Q 19Which horror villain's signature weapon hangs in the tool shed in Evil Dead II, a nod to a rival film?
Freddy Krueger
Freddy Krueger's bladed glove hangs in the shed, a reply to A Nightmare on Elm Street, where Nancy fights off sleep with The Evil Dead playing on her television.
Q 20Who played the possessed Henrietta in Evil Dead II, inside a full-body latex suit?
Ted Raimi
Ted Raimi, the director's younger brother, wore the suit in sweltering heat that Lou Hancock, who plays Henrietta before her possession, was spared.
The Middle Ages
The Middle Ages, around 1300 AD: Raimi had wanted that whole story for the sequel, but his backer asked for another cabin film, so the idea waited for the third one.
Q 24What model of car does Ash own throughout the original Evil Dead trilogy?
Oldsmobile Delta 88
Oldsmobile Delta 88: the 1973 sedan began as the Raimi family car, and the director has slipped it into nearly every film since; in Army of Darkness it becomes the steam-powered Deathcoaster.
Q 25Ash's incantation for taking the Necronomicon in Army of Darkness is borrowed from which 1951 science-fiction film?
The Day the Earth Stood Still
The Day the Earth Stood Still supplied the alien command the film borrows; Ash forgets its last word, coughs his way through it, and so wakes the army of the dead.
Q 26In Army of Darkness, Ash works at which department store?
S-Mart
Ash is a housewares clerk at S-Mart, the store whose slogan he recites; by Ash vs Evil Dead, three decades on, he is stocking shelves at Value Stop instead.
Q 27Which line does Ash deliver after killing the Deadite in the store at the end of Army of Darkness?
Hail to the king, baby
Ash blasts the Deadite and says 'Hail to the king, baby' in the upbeat store ending, reshot after Universal rejected Raimi's bleaker original finale.
Q 28In Raimi's original, rejected ending for Army of Darkness, Ash oversleeps and wakes up where?
A post-apocalyptic London
A post-apocalyptic London greets Ash after he swallows too much of the sleeping potion and wakes centuries late; Universal found that ending too bleak, so a happier one was shot.
Q 29What was Army of Darkness's working title?
Medieval Dead
Medieval Dead was the working title Raimi preferred; the final name went back to sales agent Irvin Shapiro, who had advertised a sequel called Evil Dead and the Army of Darkness years earlier.
Q 30Which actress played Ash's love interest Sheila in Army of Darkness?
Embeth Davidtz
Embeth Davidtz, later Miss Honey in Matilda, plays Sheila, who is carried off by a flying Deadite and turned against Ash by his evil double; Bridget Fonda appears too, but only in the opening recap.