Fall Movie Trivia
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58 free Fall Movie trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
56 free Fall Movie trivia questions with answers. Some films just belong to autumn: New York in falling leaves, prep-school sweaters, Thanksgiving road trips, small-town Halloweens. This quiz covers the ones people rewatch every fall, from When Harry Met Sally and You've Got Mail to Dead Poets Society, Good Will Hunting, Rushmore, Knives Out, Fantastic Mr. Fox and Coraline, plus the Halloween shelf: Hocus Pocus, Practical Magic, Beetlejuice, Casper, Halloweentown, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Halloween and Scream. Questions range from easy (which candy is in E.T.) to genuinely tricky (which university stood in for Georgetown, which company made the Ghostface mask). It works for a movie night warm-up, a fall party round or a pub quiz in October or November. Every answer has been checked against each film's Wikipedia entry, and the source appears once you have answered.
30 of 58 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who directed the 1989 autumn romance 'When Harry Met Sally...'?
Rob Reiner
Rob Reiner directed from Nora Ephron's script, and he cast his own mother, Estelle, as the deli customer who delivers the film's most quoted line.
Q 02At which Manhattan deli was the 'I'll have what she's having' scene in 'When Harry Met Sally...' filmed?
Katz's Delicatessen
Katz's Delicatessen on East Houston Street hosted the scene; the deli hung a sign over the table reading 'Where Harry met Sally... hope you have what she had!'
Q 03'Dead Poets Society' is set in 1959 at which fictional boarding school?
Welton Academy
Welton Academy. Its screenwriter modelled the Vermont school on the one he attended, Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville, and the film was shot at St. Andrew's School in Delaware.
Q 04Which poet do the students quote when they salute Keating as 'O Captain, my Captain' in 'Dead Poets Society'?
Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman wrote the poem in 1865 to mourn the assassinated Abraham Lincoln, and in the film's finale his students climb onto their desks to say it as their teacher leaves.
Q 05What Latin phrase does John Keating teach his students in 'Dead Poets Society'?
Carpe diem
Carpe diem. Keating gives it as 'seize the day', but Horace's Latin literally says 'pluck the day', and the poet's line goes on to advise trusting tomorrow as little as possible.
Q 06In 'Good Will Hunting', Will works as a janitor at which institution?
MIT
Will mops floors at MIT, where Professor Gerald Lambeau spots his genius after he anonymously solves a problem left on a hallway blackboard.
Q 07Which two friends wrote 'Good Will Hunting' and won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for it?
Ben Affleck and Matt Damon
Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. Damon began it as a Harvard playwriting assignment, handing his professor some 40 pages of a film in place of the one-act play he had been set.
Q 08Who directed 'Good Will Hunting'?
Gus Van Sant
Gus Van Sant. Kevin Smith was asked first but said he wouldn't dare direct it; he helped take the script to Miramax instead, and Van Sant got the job.
Q 09In which Massachusetts town is 'Hocus Pocus' set?
Salem
Salem. The 1693 opening was filmed at Pioneer Village, the city's replica of its colonial self, and fans of the film now flood the place every autumn.
Q 10Which director of 'Hocus Pocus' later made the 'High School Musical' films?
Kenny Ortega
Kenny Ortega. His witch comedy tanked in cinemas in the summer of 1993, then found its audience through yearly October airings on cable television.
Q 11What object must be lit by a virgin to bring the Sanderson sisters back in 'Hocus Pocus'?
The Black Flame Candle
The Black Flame Candle. Max, who thinks the legend is 'hocus pocus', lights it anyway, and the witches hanged 300 years earlier get one night to take the souls of the town's children.
Q 12'Hocus Pocus 2' arrived in 2022 on which streaming service?
Disney+
Disney+. Bette Midler had been telling fans since 2014 to 'inundate' the studio with requests for a sequel, and it finally arrived 29 years after the original.
Q 13'You've Got Mail' takes its title from the greeting used by which online service?
AOL
AOL. The cheery voice belongs to Elwood Edwards, who recorded the greeting at home in 1989, on a cassette deck in his living room.
Q 21In 'Planes, Trains and Automobiles', Neal Page is trying to get home to which city for Thanksgiving?
Chicago
Chicago. A blizzard there diverts Neal's flight to Wichita, and the short hop home turns into a two-day ordeal by train, bus and car beside Del Griffith.
Q 22What does John Candy's character Del Griffith sell in 'Planes, Trains and Automobiles'?
Shower curtain rings
Shower curtain rings. When their flight is diverted to Wichita, Del and Neal are left sharing a single room for the night, and its one bed.
Q 23Wes Anderson co-wrote 'Rushmore' with which actor, a friend from his college days in Texas?
Owen Wilson
Owen Wilson. Like Max Fischer, he had been expelled from his own prep school, in tenth grade, and he met Anderson in a playwriting class at the University of Texas.
Q 14In 'You've Got Mail', what is the name of Kathleen Kelly's independent children's bookstore?
The Shop Around the Corner
The Shop Around the Corner is named for the Ernst Lubitsch film the story remakes, itself adapted from Miklós László's Hungarian play Parfumerie.
Q 15Wes Anderson's 'Fantastic Mr. Fox' adapts a 1970 novel by which author?
Roald Dahl
Roald Dahl. To keep the animals' lines spontaneous, Anderson recorded his voice cast on location, in a forest, an attic and a stable, and not in a studio.
Q 16What are the names of the three farmers who hunt the title character in 'Fantastic Mr. Fox'?
Boggis, Bunce and Bean
Boggis, Bunce and Bean. Mr. Fox raids each of their farms in turn, so the three farmers shoot off his tail and tear up his home, driving the animals underground.
Q 17What is the surname of the witch family played by Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman in 'Practical Magic'?
Owens
Owens. An old family curse dooms any man an Owens woman loves, which is why the household in the film is made up entirely of women.
Q 18Which cocktail do the witch sisters and their aunts mix at midnight in 'Practical Magic'?
Margaritas
Margaritas. The four women blend them at midnight and dance to Harry Nilsson, until the dead man's tequila they are pouring starts turning them against each other.
Q 19Which detective does Daniel Craig play in 'Knives Out'?
Benoit Blanc
Benoit Blanc. Daniel Craig built the detective's Southern drawl on the historian Shelby Foote, whose voice he studied in Ken Burns's documentary The Civil War.
Q 20Who plays the crime novelist Harlan Thrombey, whose death sets 'Knives Out' in motion?
Christopher Plummer
Christopher Plummer plays the 85-year-old patriarch found with his throat cut after his birthday party; Ana de Armas is his nurse Marta, who cannot lie without vomiting.
Q 24Who plays the precocious student Max Fischer in 'Rushmore'?
Jason Schwartzman
Jason Schwartzman. His Max runs nearly every club at the school while failing his classes, and he is there on a scholarship, the son of a barber.
Q 25Which animation studio made the stop-motion film 'Coraline' (2009)?
Laika
Laika. Nike co-founder Phil Knight took control of Will Vinton Studios, the claymation house behind the California Raisins, and renamed it after the Soviet dog sent into orbit.
Q 26In 'Coraline', what does the Other Mother want to sew onto Coraline's eyes?
Buttons
Buttons. The doubles in the Other World all have them sewn over their eyes, and the Other Mother will let Coraline stay for ever only if she accepts a pair herself.
Q 27Which Peanuts character waits in the pumpkin patch in 'It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown'?
Linus
Linus. He gives up trick-or-treating to keep watch for the Great Pumpkin; only Sally stays beside him, and her patience runs out long before morning.
Q 28What does Charlie Brown get instead of candy while trick-or-treating in the Great Pumpkin special?
Rocks
Rocks. At house after house he reports 'I got a rock', and for a long time afterwards viewers mailed candy to the show's makers for Charlie Brown.
Q 29Who provides Jack Skellington's singing voice in 'The Nightmare Before Christmas'?
Danny Elfman
Danny Elfman wrote the film's songs and sang Jack's himself, so Chris Sarandon was cast afterwards as a speaking voice that matched Elfman's singing.
Q 30'The Nightmare Before Christmas' lost its only Oscar nomination to 'Jurassic Park' in which category?
Best Visual Effects
Best Visual Effects. Its director, Henry Selick, says the studio put the stop-motion film out under its Touchstone label because executives thought it too dark and frightening for children.