Romancing the Stone Trivia
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50 free Romancing the Stone trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Romancing the Stone trivia quiz covers the 1984 adventure that turned Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner and Danny DeVito into a team and gave Robert Zemeckis the hit that let him make Back to the Future. It follows Joan Wilder from her New York apartment and her cat Romeo to Cartagena, the jungle, El Corazon and the crocodile that ate Zolo's hand, and it covers the story behind the film: the Malibu waitress who wrote it, the stars who turned down Jack Colton, the negative pick-up deal, the Mexico shoot, the Golden Globes and the sequels that were never made. The Jewel of the Nile gets its own section, from Omar and Al-Julhara to the F-16 built on a car chassis, the script fight Turner won and Billy Ocean's chart-topping single. About a third of the questions are easy for anyone who has seen the films, a third need a closer memory of the plot and cast, and the rest reward the fans who know the production stories. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the two films and on screenwriter Diane Thomas before publishing, and each question carries the sentence that establishes it. If you think one is wrong, use the report button and we will look again.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Taxi star plays Ralph, the hapless crook who trails Joan through Colombia in Romancing the Stone?
Danny DeVito
Danny DeVito was working for an old roommate: he and Michael Douglas, the film's producer, met as young actors at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center and shared a New York apartment in the 1960s.
Q 02In Romancing the Stone, what is the cargo of the crashed plane where Jack and Joan shelter from the rain?
Marijuana
Marijuana, in bales: Jack burns some of it as firewood, and the pair spend a mellow night by the blaze sharing a dead pilot's tequila.
Q 03What is the name of Joan's cat in Romancing the Stone?
Romeo
Romeo is the only male in her life when the film begins: she finishes a love story in tears and celebrates by opening him a can of tuna.
Q 04To which Colombian city is Joan told to bring the treasure map as a ransom in Romancing the Stone?
Cartagena
Cartagena should have been one bus ride from the airport, but the villain steers her onto the wrong one, and its crash deep in the jungle is what throws her together with Jack.
Q 05What does Jack T. Colton deal in for a living when Joan meets him in Romancing the Stone?
Exotic birds
Exotic birds: he loses his whole catch when Joan's bus ploughs into his parked jeep, which is why he is in no mood to guide her out of the jungle for free.
Q 06In Romancing the Stone, in what form does Joan pay the $375 Jack charges to lead her to a telephone?
Traveller's cheques
Traveller's cheques, $375 of them: she pays up as promised when they reach a town, and instead of walking away with the money Jack asks her to dinner.
Q 07Why does the drug runner Juan help Jack and Joan escape instead of turning them away at gunpoint?
He loves her novels
He loves her novels and reads them aloud to his men, so once he learns who is at his gate the gun comes down and he helps the pair outrun Zolo's soldiers.
Q 08What treasure does the map lead to in Romancing the Stone?
An enormous emerald
An enormous emerald, El Corazón, turns up inside a cheap porcelain figurine, and Joan knows to smash it because she hid a treasure inside a statue in her own first book.
Q 09What happens to Zolo's hand at the climax of Romancing the Stone?
A crocodile bites it off
A crocodile bites it off and swallows the emerald along with it; Jack later turns up in New York wearing the animal as a new pair of boots.
Q 10How does Jack make Joan's expensive pumps fit for a jungle trek in Romancing the Stone?
He chops off the heels
He chops off the heels with his machete, having already flung her suitcase into a ravine. 'Is nothing I own sacred to you?' she asks.
Q 11What does Jack buy with his share of the treasure at the end of Romancing the Stone?
A sailboat
A sailboat, the one he had been saving for: he hauls it on a trailer to Joan's street in New York, and has named it Angelina after the heroine of her books.
Q 12Which first-time screenwriter wrote Romancing the Stone, the only script of hers ever filmed?
Diane Thomas
Diane Thomas sold it for $250,000 and was hired by Steven Spielberg on the strength of it, but she died in a car crash in October 1985, a year and a half after the film opened.
Q 13What job was the writer of Romancing the Stone doing when she sold the script for $250,000?
Cocktail waitress
Q 21Which singer recorded a title song for Romancing the Stone that the film barely used?
Eddy Grant
Eddy Grant, of 'Electric Avenue' fame, wrote 'Romancing the Stone' as the film's theme. Only an instrumental snatch survived the edit, yet the single still reached No. 26 in the US.
Q 22Fox rushed Romancing the Stone's release to get ahead of which 1984 rival?
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was the fear: Fox thought the Raiders sequel would bury its jungle romp. Time called the film 'a distaff Raiders rip-off' anyway, though its script was older than Raiders.
Q 23Which film's producers fired Robert Zemeckis as director after seeing a rough cut of Romancing the Stone?
Cocktail waitress, at a Mexican cantina on the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu. She wrote in every spare hour for a year, then hated being called Hollywood's 'Cinderella screenwriter'.
Q 14Before producing Romancing the Stone, Michael Douglas had won a Best Picture Oscar as producer of which film?
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest had made him a producer studios listened to, which is why Columbia bought this unknown writer's script the day after he read it.
Q 15The writer of Romancing the Stone had drafted which sequel, set in a haunted mansion, when she died in 1985?
A third Indiana Jones
A third Indiana Jones was her assignment, with Indy in a haunted house. Spielberg decided it sat too close to his own Poltergeist, and the series went looking for the Holy Grail instead.
Q 16When Joan asks what the T in 'Jack T. Colton' stands for, what does he tell her?
Trustworthy
'Trustworthy', he says with a straight face, throwing back her own complaint that a real man would be exactly that. The film never reveals his actual middle name.
Q 17Which two stars turned down Jack Colton in Romancing the Stone before Michael Douglas cast himself?
Burt Reynolds and Clint Eastwood
Burt Reynolds and Clint Eastwood both said no, and the first studio lost interest. Other actors disliked playing second fiddle to the heroine, so the producer ended up hiring himself.
Q 18Which actress was the first choice to play Joan in Romancing the Stone, but turned the part down?
Debra Winger
Debra Winger was courted on the set of Terms of Endearment and said no, so the mousy heroine went to Kathleen Turner, until then known for playing a femme fatale.
Q 19In Romancing the Stone, what do Jack and Joan hurtle down together soon after they meet?
A mudslide
A mudslide sweeps them down the hillside and lands Jack face-first in Joan's lap, from where he cheerfully welcomes her to Colombia.
Q 20Although set in Colombia, Romancing the Stone was filmed mostly in which country?
Mexico
Mexico stood in for Colombia, around Veracruz and Xalapa. Shooting through its rainy season brought storm after storm, and the film fell behind schedule.
Cocoon
Cocoon went to Ron Howard instead. Its producers had taken the rough cut for a flop in the making; within weeks of release the finished film was one of the surprise hits of 1984.
Q 24Which film did Robert Zemeckis say the success of Romancing the Stone allowed him to make?
Back to the Future
Back to the Future had been turned down some forty times before he had a hit to his name. Made at last, it became the highest-grossing film of 1985.
Q 25Which 2022 comedy about a romance novelist stranded in the jungle borrowed its premise from Romancing the Stone?
The Lost City
The Lost City sent Sandra Bullock's novelist into the jungle with her cover model. Kathleen Turner was unmoved: an imitation, she said, is 'never going to be as enticing as the original'.
Q 26Which two Golden Globes did Romancing the Stone win?
Best Musical or Comedy and Best Actress for Turner
Best Musical or Comedy and Best Actress for Turner both went to a film that its own studio had expected to flop.
Q 27Who composed the score for Romancing the Stone, beginning a long partnership with Zemeckis?
Alan Silvestri
Alan Silvestri was a television composer, best known for CHiPs, when he got the job. He has scored every Zemeckis film since.
Q 28What did Kathleen Turner sue the makers of Romancing the Stone to pay for after filming?
Plastic surgery for on-set injuries
Plastic surgery for on-set injuries: a fall during the rain-soaked shoot scraped her leg badly enough that she took the producers to court over the bill.
Q 29In Romancing the Stone, an old magazine brings Jack the unwelcome news that which band has broken up?
The Doobie Brothers
The Doobie Brothers had split in 1982, so Jack's dismay tells Joan how out of touch he is: asked how long he has been down there, he can only answer 'Forever.'
Q 30Where did President Reagan watch Romancing the Stone in May 1984?
Camp David
Camp David was the Reagans' weekend cinema. Their viewing log has this film there on May 11, 1984, and the sequel, The Jewel of the Nile, on the same screen in January 1986.