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50 free Ferris Bueller's Day Off trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
49 free Ferris Bueller's Day Off trivia questions with answers. Ferris Bueller's Day Off is the rare teen comedy that adults still quote every week, and this quiz treats it accordingly. Fifty questions run from the plot everyone remembers (nine sick days, the odometer, the kitchen kick) into how the film was actually made: the week-long screenplay, the 29-year-old playing a 17-year-old, the replica Ferraris the crew hated, and the economics lecture nobody scripted. It starts gently and gets harder, ending with the kind of detail only obsessives know: the licence plate, the deleted pancreas scene, the 2025 Lewis Hamilton short. It works as a solo test or as a ready-made 1980s movie round for a trivia night. Every answer has been checked against the film's Wikipedia and Wikiquote entries, the AFI catalog and the pages on the people involved, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which actor plays Ferris Bueller?
Matthew Broderick
Matthew Broderick plays Ferris; Hughes wrote the part with him in mind, and Broderick was 23 when filming began in September 1985.
Q 02What is the name of Ferris's hypochondriac best friend?
Cameron Frye
Cameron Frye is the hypochondriac best friend; Hughes based him on a high-school friend who felt relaxed only when genuinely ill, since inventing diseases was tiring.
Q 03Ferris's girlfriend Sloane is played by which actress?
Mia Sara
Mia Sara plays Sloane Peterson; she was 18 during filming, and Hughes, who had wanted an older actress for the part, was startled when she told him her age.
Q 04Who plays Ferris's resentful sister Jeanie?
Jennifer Grey
Jennifer Grey plays Jeanie Bueller; she went on to star opposite Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing the following year, 1987.
Q 05Which real-life economist and speechwriter plays the droning economics teacher?
Ben Stein
Ben Stein, a former Nixon speechwriter with an economics background, improvised his monotone lecture on the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act; Hughes liked his flat voice and teacherly look.
Q 06Which songs does Ferris lip-sync from a parade float?
'Danke Schoen' and 'Twist and Shout'
Ferris mimes 'Danke Schoen' and 'Twist and Shout' on the float; he also sings the Wayne Newton number in the shower, an idea that came up during parade rehearsals.
Q 07Which studio released the film, on June 11, 1986?
Paramount
Paramount Pictures released it on June 11, 1986; it opened at number two and finished as the tenth-highest-grossing US film of 1986.
Q 08Roughly how much did the film gross in the US on its $5M budget?
$70 million
On opening day it took about $1.2 million on 1,296 screens, out-earning Top Gun per screen that day.
Q 09How long did John Hughes take to write the screenplay?
Less than a week
Less than a week was all Hughes needed: he wrote the screenplay in February 1985, finishing ahead of the Writers Guild strike that began that March.
Q 10Which Hughes regular turned down the role of Ferris Bueller?
Anthony Michael Hall
Anthony Michael Hall, star of Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club and Weird Science, declined the part to avoid typecasting; Jim Carrey, Johnny Depp and Tom Cruise were also considered.
Q 11How old was Alan Ruck when he played 17-year-old Cameron?
29
Alan Ruck was 29 during the 1985 shoot, only six years younger than Hughes himself; he said that at 18 he had looked about 12.
Q 12Ruck and Broderick had already acted together in the Broadway production of which Neil Simon play?
Biloxi Blues
Biloxi Blues ran on Broadway in 1985 with both actors; Cameron's gruff 'Mr. Peterson' phone voice is Ruck's impression of that show's director, Gene Saks.
Q 13What did the economics teacher's actor think the crew's applause for his improvised lecture meant?
That they had learned some economics
Q 21Who choreographed Broderick's parade dance moves?
Kenny Ortega
Kenny Ortega, later the choreographer of Dirty Dancing and director of High School Musical, staged the parade dance; a knee injury from the backyard chase limited what the star could do.
Q 22Which team's jersey, honouring Hughes's childhood hero, does Cameron wear?
Detroit Red Wings
The Detroit Red Wings sweater is Gordie Howe's number 9; Hughes, who spent his early childhood in Michigan, idolised Howe.
Q 23Which real broadcaster's voice calls the Cubs game on the pizzeria TV while Rooney searches for Ferris?
Harry Caray
His first guess was 'That they had learned some economics'; the crew was really applauding because he was so boring, and he later called the shoot the best day of his life.
Q 14Cameron's modernist glass house, where the Ferrari meets its end, is in which Illinois suburb?
Highland Park
The Ben Rose House in Highland Park was designed by A. James Speyer, a student of Mies van der Rohe; its glass car pavilion, by David Haid, was added in 1974.
Q 15Which high school, Hughes's own alma mater, doubled as the fictional Shermer High?
Glenbrook North
Glenbrook North High School in Northbrook stood in for Shermer High; Hughes graduated from the school in 1968.
Q 16In which state was the exterior of Ferris's own house filmed?
California
California: the Bueller family house exterior stands at 4160 Country Club Drive in Long Beach, far from the film's Chicago-area setting.
Q 17What was the real 1961 250 GT Spyder worth at the time of filming?
$350,000
A genuine 1961 250 GT Spyder was worth about $350,000 in 1985, so the film used fiberglass replicas; one real example sold at auction in 2015 for over 14 million euros.
Q 18What does the vanity plate on the Ferrari spell?
NRVOUS
The Ferrari's plate reads NRVOUS; the other plates are homages to Hughes's earlier films, with VCTN, TBC and MMOM for Vacation, The Breakfast Club and Mr. Mom.
Q 19Which painting does Cameron stare into at the Art Institute?
A Sunday on La Grande Jatte
Cameron fixates on Georges Seurat's pointillist A Sunday on La Grande Jatte; Hughes said the Art Institute had been his refuge as a teenager.
Q 20The museum sequence is scored with an instrumental cover of a song by which band?
The Smiths
The Smiths wrote 'Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want'; the Dream Academy's instrumental cover of it plays over the Art Institute sequence.
Harry Caray, the Cubs' longtime WGN announcer, calls the game on the pizzeria TV; the broadcast footage is from a June 5, 1985 game, while the stadium scenes were shot that September.
Q 24Which Beatle complained about the brass added to 'Twist and Shout' for the film?
Paul McCartney
Paul McCartney objected, saying that if the track had needed brass the Beatles would have added it themselves; Hughes admitted feeling bad about offending him.
Q 25Which band's 'Oh Yeah' became known as 'the Ferris Bueller song'?
Yello
Yello, the Swiss duo of Dieter Meier and Boris Blank, released 'Oh Yeah' on their 1985 album Stella; the film turned it into a soundtrack staple.
Q 26What was the script's name for Charlie Sheen's delinquent in the police station?
Garth Volbeck
Garth Volbeck is the script's name for Sheen's character, credited on screen only as 'Boy in Police Station'; Sheen said he stayed awake for two days to look the part.
Q 27Which US president watched the film at Camp David ten days after its release?
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan watched the film at Camp David in June 1986; Barbara Bush later quoted Ferris's 'life moves pretty fast' line in her 1990 Wellesley commencement speech.
Q 28What honor did the Library of Congress bestow on the picture in 2014?
Selection for the National Film Registry
Selection for the National Film Registry came in December 2014, when the Library of Congress deemed the film culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.
Q 29Broderick's only major award nomination for the role was a 1987 Golden Globe in which category?
Best Actor – Musical or Comedy
Best Actor – Musical or Comedy was the category at the January 1987 Golden Globes; the award went to Paul Hogan for Crocodile Dundee.
Q 30The 1990 NBC television series Ferris Bueller cast which future Friends star as Jeannie?
Jennifer Aniston
Jennifer Aniston played Jeannie in the short-lived NBC sitcom, which relocated the Buellers to Santa Monica and was cancelled after 13 episodes.