Smallville Trivia
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This Smallville trivia quiz has 99 free questions with answers and spans all ten seasons of the WB and CW series, from the 2001 pilot that broke ratings records to the 2011 finale where Clark finally put on the suit. It covers the cast and their characters, the 'no tights, no flights' rule, the meteor freaks and kryptonite colours, the Luthors, Chloe Sullivan and her Wall of Weird, Lois Lane's arrival, the Justice League and Legion episodes, the guest stars from earlier Superman screen history, and the Season 11 comic that carried the story on. It is written for fans who lived through the Thursday-night years and for newcomers streaming it now: easy questions on the main cast, harder ones on episode details, writers and production trivia. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries before publishing.
30 of 99 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which two writer-producers developed Smallville?
Alfred Gough and Miles Millar
Alfred Gough and Miles Millar expected Fox to be their only taker: they pitched it and The WB on the same day, and to their surprise it was The WB that bought the show.
Q 02Smallville's famous production rule about Clark Kent was 'no tights, no' what?
Flights
Flights, like the suit, were banned from the start so the show stayed about a teenager working out who he is; its lead actor had dreaded a series that put him in tights.
Q 03Which actor played Clark Kent on Smallville?
Tom Welling
Tom Welling was found after a search by casting directors in ten cities; the creators liked that he was a real Midwesterner who looked the way people expect Superman to look.
Q 04Michael Rosenbaum played which character on Smallville?
Lex Luthor
Lex Luthor meant a daily head shave and, at first, two and a half hours in make-up, because the actor's hair kept growing back during the day and the hairline had to be painted out.
Q 05Why is Smallville's Lex bald?
The 1989 meteor shower
The 1989 meteor shower was the show's own invention, a change to Superman lore that its creators say they could make only because nobody much cared about the character on television in 2000.
Q 06How do Clark and Lex first meet in Smallville's pilot?
Clark pulls Lex from a sunken car
Clark pulls Lex from a sunken car after Lex's Porsche hits him and goes into the water; the rescue was filmed in a 12-foot tank and, after two panic attacks for the actor playing Lex, done in one take.
Q 07Which main Smallville character was invented for the series rather than taken from the comics?
Chloe Sullivan
Chloe Sullivan was written in as the outsider who would notice the town's strange events, and she outgrew the show: in 2010 DC added her to its mainstream comics.
Q 08On Smallville, what does the school paper's editor call her collage of clippings about odd local events?
The Wall of Weird
The Wall of Weird 'started out as a scrapbook', its maker says, and grew because she was the one person in town tracing every freak event back to the meteor shower.
Q 09On Smallville, which codename does Chloe adopt when running support for the Justice League?
Watchtower
Watchtower began as her call sign on the team's first joint mission and ended up as the name of its headquarters, a Metropolis loft that she owns and runs.
Q 10Erica Durance joined Smallville in its fourth season as which character?
Lois Lane
Lois Lane was written as a guest role for one season and became a regular the next; the actress says she had been ready to quit the business when the call to audition came.
Q 11Which city stood in for Kansas throughout Smallville's production?
Vancouver
Vancouver and its suburbs supplied the Kent farm, the high school and Main Street, and cameras there kept rolling on September 11, 2001, when production across the United States stopped.
Q 12Which band performed Smallville's theme song 'Save Me'?
Remy Zero
Remy Zero also turn up on screen: the band plays the school's spring formal in the first-season finale, as the storm that ends the season closes in on the town.
Q 13Christopher Reeve guest-starred on Smallville as which character, who teaches Clark about Krypton?
Dr. Virgil Swann
Dr. Virgil Swann's scenes were filmed in New York because Reeve could not travel to the set; booked for half a day, he chose to stay and work for eight or nine hours.
Q 21Justin Hartley played which archer superhero on Smallville?
Green Arrow
Green Arrow arrives in season six as Oliver Queen, an old classmate of Lex's who starts courting Lois, and he proved popular enough that a series of his own was discussed.
Q 22In the Smallville episode 'Justice', which three heroes join Oliver Queen against LuthorCorp's Level 33.1?
Impulse, Aquaman and Cyborg
Impulse, Aquaman and Cyborg had each met Clark in a solo episode in seasons four and five, so the team-up paid off two years of guest spots and gave the show its first Justice League.
Q 23Which two original Smallville cast members left as regulars after season seven?
Q 14Which actor provided the voice of Clark's father Jor-El on Smallville?
Terence Stamp
Terence Stamp is heard but never seen as Clark's father, a sly reversal: in the Christopher Reeve films he had played Superman's Kryptonian enemy, General Zod.
Q 15Which power does Clark first develop in season two of Smallville?
Heat vision
Heat vision first erupts during a record heatwave, and Clark soon works out that it flares whenever he is attracted to someone, which makes a glamorous new teacher a fire hazard.
Q 16What does red kryptonite do to Clark in Smallville?
Strips away his inhibitions
Strips away his inhibitions: it reaches him by accident, set in the school's new class rings, and turns the town's most dutiful son into a rebel who uses his powers for himself.
Q 17On Smallville, what was Clark's vigilante alter ego in Metropolis called before he became Superman?
The Blur
The Blur owes his name to a photograph: Jimmy Olsen tried to snap a mugger and caught only a smear of red and blue, the stranger who was saving Lois at super-speed.
Q 18Which family tragedy occurs in 'Reckoning', Smallville's 100th episode?
Jonathan Kent dies of a heart attack
Jonathan Kent dies of a heart attack after a fight with Lionel Luthor on the night he wins a state senate seat; the script had him found already dead, but the actor insisted on playing the collapse.
Q 19Which Buffy alumnus played Brainiac, alias Milton Fine, on Smallville from season five?
James Marsters
James Marsters first appears as a professor who wins Clark's trust, and returns in the final season as a reformed Brainiac 5, arriving from the 31st century to help him.
Q 20Smallville's sixth season was the first to air on which newly formed network?
The CW
The CW was formed in 2006 by merging The WB, the show's home for five seasons, with its rival UPN, and it later moved Smallville to Friday nights, television's so-called death slot.
Michael Rosenbaum and Kristin Kreuk
Michael Rosenbaum and Kristin Kreuk both chose to go: he had already stayed a year beyond his six-year contract, and she said she did not want to live in a love triangle forever.
Q 24Which paramedic character in season eight was Smallville's version of Doomsday?
Davis Bloome
Davis Bloome has no idea what he is: the paramedic keeps blacking out during a string of killings, and slowly comes to fear that he is the one committing them.
Q 25Which DC Comics writer scripted the Smallville episodes 'Legion' and 'Absolute Justice'?
Geoff Johns
Geoff Johns brought two classic comics teams to the show: the Legion of Super-Heroes, visiting from the future, and then the Justice Society, in an 84-minute special.
Q 26Callum Blue played which Kryptonian villain in Smallville's ninth season?
Major Zod
Major Zod is a clone made from a scan taken years before Krypton's end, when the future general still held that rank, and he leads a whole army of cloned Kryptonians on Earth.
Q 27Which actress played Checkmate's Amanda Waller in Smallville's ninth season?
Pam Grier
Pam Grier's Waller hires an assassin to hunt down the retired heroes of the Justice Society and then, when he is brought back to her in a cage, kills him herself.
Q 28Who was the main villain of Smallville's tenth and final season?
Darkseid
Darkseid is less a costumed tyrant here than a dark force in search of a human vessel: he works through three prophets and possesses people, a hero among them.
Q 29The suit Clark dons in Smallville's finale was earlier worn by which actor?
Brandon Routh in Superman Returns
Brandon Routh in Superman Returns: the producers borrowed the 2006 film's costume, turning down the Christopher Reeve suit that DC had also offered them.
Q 30Which two DC heroes were introduced in a tenth-season Smallville episode named for one of them?
Booster Gold and Blue Beetle
Booster Gold and Blue Beetle arrive together: a glory-hunting hero from the future steals Clark's headlines, while a teenager is trapped inside the armour of an alien scarab.