Fringe Trivia
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106 free Fringe trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Fringe trivia quiz covers all five seasons and 100 episodes of the Fox science-fiction series created by J. J. Abrams, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, which ran from 2008 to 2013. The easy questions are the ones any viewer will know: who plays Olivia, Walter and Peter, the name of the company run by Nina Sharp, the drug Walter tested on children, and what the bald men in fedoras are called. From there it digs into the mythology: the Pattern and Reiden Lake, ZFT and David Robert Jones, the shapeshifters and their mercury blood, the amber, Walternate and Fauxlivia, the Machine, the First People, the alternate timeline of season four and the Observer occupation of 2036. There are episode questions on the pilot, "Peter", "White Tulip", "Brown Betty" and the finale, and behind-the-scenes questions on the $10 million pilot, the glyph code, the Friday night death slot, the move from New York to Vancouver, Leonard Nimoy's William Bell and the show's awards. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entries for the series, its mythology, its seasons, its characters and its cast before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our X-Files and Lost quizzes next.
30 of 106 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which three people created Fringe?
J. J. Abrams, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci
J. J. Abrams, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci dreamed up Fringe while making the 2009 Star Trek film, which Abrams directed from a script by the other two.
Q 02What is the name of the cow Walter keeps in his Harvard lab?
Gene
Gene is the cow Walter demands for his reopened lab in the pilot; Peter explains that cows are close enough to humans genetically to stand in as test subjects.
Q 03Which FBI colleague of Olivia's is killed and impersonated by a shapeshifter in Fringe's second-season premiere?
Charlie Francis
Charlie Francis is murdered by a shapeshifter that takes his form and burns the body in a hospital furnace; a few episodes later Olivia has to kill the impostor wearing her friend's face.
Q 04Fringe's Observers can barely taste anything, so what do they smother their food in?
Hot sauce and peppers
Hot sauce and peppers: in his first big scene an Observer orders a raw roast beef sandwich with eleven jalapeños, then drowns it in Tabasco and black pepper.
Q 05What style of hat do the bald, pale men in dark suits wear throughout Fringe?
Fedoras
Fedoras top the Observers' uniform, and the show hid one of these watchers somewhere in every episode, often as a blink-and-miss cameo in the background.
Q 06Who plays Peter Bishop?
Joshua Jackson
Joshua Jackson had auditioned for Captain Kirk in Abrams' Star Trek film; he missed out, but believed that audition helped win him the part of Peter.
Q 07In which city is the prime universe's Fringe Division based?
Boston
Boston is where it all starts: an airliner full of dead passengers lands itself at the city's Logan Airport, and Olivia joins the task force sent to find out why.
Q 08What is the name of the biotechnology giant founded by Walter's former partner?
Massive Dynamic
Massive Dynamic grew into a giant worth billions under William Bell; when he dies, his will hands the whole company to Walter, his old lab partner.
Q 09Who plays Nina Sharp, the executive who runs Bell's company?
Blair Brown
Blair Brown plays Nina Sharp, whose past changes when season four rewrites the timeline: in the new version she adopted Olivia and her sister as children.
Q 10Which Star Trek legend plays Walter's former lab partner?
Leonard Nimoy
Leonard Nimoy, Star Trek's Spock, plays William Bell, who dies at the end of season two by turning his own body into the fuel that sends Walter and Peter home.
Q 11What is the name of Olivia Dunham's sister in Fringe?
Rachel
Rachel comes to stay with Olivia during season one after her marriage breaks down, bringing her young daughter Ella with her.
Q 12What pet name does Walter use for his old lab partner?
Belly
Belly is Walter's name for William Bell, who returns in season three, after his death, by taking over Olivia's body, giving Walter one more chance to work beside him.
Q 13Who plays Astrid Farnsworth?
Jasika Nicole
Jasika Nicole plays Astrid Farnsworth, the junior FBI agent whose name Walter mangles into Asterix, Aspirin and Ostrich.
Q 21What nickname does Walter give the parallel universe's Olivia?
Fauxlivia
Fauxlivia is what Walter and the team call the other Olivia after she spends weeks posing as ours; the show borrowed the name from fans, while its writers called her Bolivia.
Q 22What is the name of Peter's son with the parallel Olivia?
Henry
Henry is born in the other universe, where his grandfather uses a sample of the baby's blood to switch on the Machine; once the timeline is rewritten, the boy never existed.
Q 23What does Peter use the Machine to create at the end of season three?
A bridge between the two universes
Peter uses the Machine to open a bridge between the two universes so both sides can work together; he then vanishes from the timeline.
Q 14Which nootropic drug did Walter test on Olivia as a child?
Cortexiphan
Cortexiphan was the drug Walter and his partner gave to children in a daycare trial; in Olivia it leaves a latent ability to cross between universes.
Q 15Which body of water in New York state is the geographic center of the Pattern?
Reiden Lake
Reiden Lake is where Walter opened his door to the other universe in 1985, and the weak spot he tore there is what the Pattern's strange cases radiate from.
Q 16What does the German acronym ZFT stand for in English?
Destruction through Advancement of Technology
ZFT is Zerstörung durch Fortschritte der Technologie, Destruction through Advancement of Technology; Walter traces its manifesto to a typewriter in his own lab and to his old partner.
Q 17Who plays ZFT leader David Robert Jones?
Jared Harris
Jared Harris plays Jones, who is cut in half crossing between universes in the season-one finale yet returns alive in season four's altered timeline.
Q 18Why did Walter cross to the parallel universe in 1985?
To cure the other side's Peter
Walter crossed to cure the other side's Peter after his own son died of the same illness; he then brought the boy back with him.
Q 19What nickname do the prime-universe characters give Walter's parallel counterpart?
Walternate
Walternate is Walter's own coinage for his double, a harder man bent on getting back the son our Walter took from him.
Q 20What government post does Walter's counterpart hold?
U.S. Secretary of Defense
U.S. Secretary of Defense is the other Walter's post, and it puts that universe's more militant Fringe Division under his direct command.
Q 24Which agent, played by Seth Gabel, is part of the season-four Fringe team?
Lincoln Lee
Lincoln Lee, played by Seth Gabel in both universes, joins the prime team in season four after a shapeshifter kills his FBI partner.
Q 25In which country is David Robert Jones imprisoned when Olivia first visits him?
Germany
Jones is held incommunicado in a prison in Frankfurt, Germany, when Olivia first questions him in season one; he later escapes it by teleporting out.
Q 26How does Walter stop Bell's plan in Fringe's season-four finale?
He shoots Olivia
Walter shoots Olivia to stop her powers fuelling the collapse of the two universes; the drug still in her body heals the wound.
Q 27What is the title of Fringe's season-three finale?
The Day We Died
The Day We Died closed season three in May 2011, with Peter living through a doomed future inside the Machine before coming back to change it.
Q 28What name is given to the Observers' 2015 massacre of humans as they seize control in Fringe?
The Purge
The Purge wiped out much of humanity in 2015, when the Observers stopped merely watching history and took it over, leaving the survivors under their rule.
Q 29What becomes of Peter and Olivia's grown daughter partway through Fringe's final season?
She is killed by an Observer
She is killed by an Observer soon after freeing her parents; enraged, Peter puts Observer technology into his own head to hunt her killer.
Q 30Before sealing his team in amber, how did Walter record his plan to defeat the Observers in Fringe?
On Betamax videotapes
On Betamax videotapes: Walter sealed the tapes in amber too, so the freed team has to dig them out of his old lab one by one to learn each next step of the plan.