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50 free The Sixth Sense trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
The Sixth Sense arrived in August 1999 with a modest budget, a child actor few people had heard of and an ending almost nobody saw coming. It sat at number one for more than a month, earned a clutch of Oscar nominations and turned a three-word whisper into one of the most quoted lines in cinema. These 50 questions cover the people behind it — the stars who nearly played the parts, the crew M. Night Shyamalan kept working with, the studio deal that cost an executive his job — along with the plot beats, the rules the filmmakers set so the twist would hold on a second viewing, and the box-office and awards records that followed. Play it if you have seen the film more than once, host it at a movie night, or use it to settle which friend really does remember how Malcolm Crowe's clothes work.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which future Superbad star auditioned to play Cole Sear in The Sixth Sense?
Michael Cera
Michael Cera auditioned for Cole, and Liam Aiken was offered the role but turned it down; Shyamalan worried Osment's video audition was too sweet and cherubic for a part he saw as dark and brooding.
Q 02Which December 1999 family film, released four months after The Sixth Sense, did M. Night Shyamalan co-write?
Stuart Little
Stuart Little, co-written with Greg Brooker from E. B. White's novel, opened on December 17, 1999 with Michael J. Fox voicing the mouse: a twist-free children's film from the year's master of twists.
Q 03The Sixth Sense opened on August 6, 1999, which was also what milestone for its writer-director?
His 29th birthday
His 29th birthday: Manoj Nelliyattu Shyamalan was born on August 6, 1970, and raised in Penn Valley, Pennsylvania, so the biggest release of his career landed on his own birthday.
Q 04Bruce Willis took The Sixth Sense to repay Disney for the collapse of which unfinished 1997 film?
Broadway Brawler
Broadway Brawler collapsed in 1997 and, rather than sue, Disney signed Willis to three discounted films: Armageddon, The Sixth Sense and The Kid, which he completed in 2000.
Q 05How many Oscars did The Sixth Sense win from its six Academy Award nominations?
Zero
Zero, and its four BAFTA nominations also went unrewarded; its trophies came from the Satellite Awards, for writing and editing, and the Saturn Awards, where Osment won.
Q 06Which Muriel's Wedding breakout plays Cole's mother Lynn Sear in The Sixth Sense?
Toni Collette
Toni Collette earned her first Oscar nomination as Lynn Sear, having feared from the script that the film would turn out to be a formulaic Hollywood action drama.
Q 07Which New Kids on the Block singer plays ex-patient Vincent Grey in The Sixth Sense's opening?
Donnie Wahlberg
Donnie Wahlberg, a founding member of the boy band, plays the intruder who shoots Malcolm in the opening sequence; the part drew notice long before his run as Danny Reagan on Blue Bloods.
Q 08Which future star of The O.C. plays Kyra Collins, the ghost girl who leads Cole to a videotape?
Mischa Barton
Mischa Barton, later Marissa Cooper on The O.C., was attending middle school in New York while The Sixth Sense was in cinemas, and appeared in Notting Hill the same year.
Q 09According to Cole, what happens to a room when the dead who visit him get angry?
It gets cold
'It gets cold' when they get mad, Cole says, after describing the prickly feeling on the back of your neck and the hairs on your arms standing up as the sign that they are near.
Q 10Which two-word answer does Cole relay from his grandmother when Lynn asks if she makes her proud?
Every day
'Every day' is the reply, delivered with the proof that the grandmother secretly watched Lynn's childhood dance recital from the back, which finally makes Lynn believe her son.
Q 11Which film beat The Sixth Sense to Best Picture at the Academy Awards ceremony held in March 2000?
American Beauty
American Beauty swept Picture, Director, Actor and Original Screenplay, leaving The Sixth Sense empty-handed despite being the highest earner among the five Best Picture nominees.
Q 12Haley Joel Osment's Golden Globe nomination lost to which actor's self-help guru in Magnolia?
Tom Cruise
Tom Cruise won for playing Frank T.J. Mackey in Magnolia; Osment's season still brought Oscar and SAG nominations, the Critics' Choice prize for Best Child Performer and a Saturn Award for Best Performance by a Younger Actor.
Q 13Lynn Sear's actress lost the Best Supporting Actress Oscar to which star of Girl, Interrupted?
Q 21On Malcolm Crowe's old tape of a session with Vincent Grey, a pleading voice speaks which language?
Spanish
Spanish: the voice says 'Yo no quiero morir', meaning 'I don't want to die', in a room where Vincent was supposedly alone, which convinces Malcolm that Vincent shared Cole's ability.
Q 22What childhood nickname does Cole blurt out at his teacher Mr. Cunningham in front of the class?
Stuttering Stanley
'Stuttering Stanley' is a taunt Cole could only have learned from the dead, and it breaks the teacher's composure; the part is played by Bruce Norris, who later won a Pulitzer Prize for his play Clybourne Park.
Q 23Cole tells Mr. Cunningham their school, once a courthouse, was used for what grim purpose?
Hangings
Angelina Jolie
Angelina Jolie won for playing Lisa Rowe in Girl, Interrupted; The Sixth Sense's nominations that night ran from Best Picture to film editing, and it went home with nothing.
Q 14Andrew Mondshein's Best Film Editing nomination for The Sixth Sense lost to which other 1999 film?
The Matrix
The Matrix took Best Film Editing for Zach Staenberg, the same night it won Best Visual Effects; Mondshein's consolation was the Satellite Award for his cut.
Q 15Which science-fiction writers' prize voted The Sixth Sense the Best Script of 1999?
Nebula Award
The Nebula Award for Best Script was voted by members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, with Brad Bird's The Iron Giant among the scripts it beat.
Q 16Which composer wrote The Sixth Sense's score, the first of eight straight Shyamalan films he scored?
James Newton Howard
James Newton Howard got the job after the producers replaced another composer; the score, released by Varèse Sarabande, earned him an ASCAP award, and he scored every Shyamalan film through After Earth in 2013.
Q 17Which Jonathan Demme regular, who also shot Badlands, was The Sixth Sense's cinematographer?
Tak Fujimoto
Tak Fujimoto shot 11 films with Demme, including The Silence of the Lambs, and returned for Shyamalan's Signs and The Happening.
Q 18Which Sixth Sense producer, sharing its Best Picture nomination, went on to run Lucasfilm from 2012?
Kathleen Kennedy
Kathleen Kennedy produced it with Frank Marshall and Barry Mendel through the Kennedy/Marshall Company, which later made Signs and Seabiscuit; she ran Lucasfilm from 2012 to 2026.
Q 19Which 2000 Shyamalan film has Bruce Willis as a security guard who survives a train crash unhurt?
Unbreakable
Unbreakable cast Willis as David Dunn opposite Samuel L. Jackson's Elijah Price; Shyamalan built it to parallel a comic book's traditional three-part story structure.
Q 20Haley Joel Osment's first film role, five years before The Sixth Sense, was as whose son?
Forrest Gump
Forrest Gump's son, Forrest Jr., won Osment a Young Artist Award; he later voiced Sora in the Kingdom Hearts games and won a second Saturn Award for A.I. Artificial Intelligence.
Hangings: Cole insists 'they used to hang people here', to the teacher's horror, after a lesson about Philadelphia being one of America's oldest cities.
Q 24Malcolm Crowe describes which exercise to Cole as putting pencil to paper and starting to write?
Free association writing
Free association writing, Malcolm explains, means taking a pencil to paper and writing whatever comes, one of the textbook tools he tries before accepting that Cole's problem is not in his head.
Q 25In The Sixth Sense's finale, what makes Malcolm Crowe realise he never survived Vincent's attack?
The ring dropping from Anna's hand
The ring dropping from Anna's hand shows Malcolm his own finger is bare; remembering Cole's words that the dead see only what they want to see, he finds the gunshot wound and understands.
Q 26How does Cole suggest Malcolm Crowe finally get through to his distant wife Anna?
Speak to her as she sleeps
Speak to her as she sleeps, Cole suggests, so Anna can hear Malcolm's thoughts and feelings; Malcolm finds her dozing by their wedding video, murmuring 'Why did you leave me?'.
Q 27What does the videotape Kyra Collins leaves for her father reveal at her funeral reception?
Her mother had been poisoning her
Her mother had been poisoning her food, which explains the 'long illness' and saves Kyra's younger sister; Cole had worked out who the ghost was after finding her being sick one night.
Q 28When Cole lands the lead in his school play, who does The Sixth Sense show coaching him?
A ghostly director
A ghostly director coaches him, with Malcolm watching from the audience, a sign that Cole has stopped fearing the dead and started listening to them as Malcolm advised.
Q 29At a birthday party, where do bullies lock Cole after noticing that it frightens him?
A cupboard
A cupboard: when he is let out he faints with marks on his body that Lynn blames on the boys, and soon afterwards he tells Malcolm his secret.
Q 30Which British actress, fresh from Rushmore, plays Malcolm Crowe's wife Anna in The Sixth Sense?
Olivia Williams
Olivia Williams plays Anna, the wife who seems to freeze Malcolm out; she trained for two years at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and spent three with the Royal Shakespeare Company.