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50 free The Hurt Locker trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This The Hurt Locker trivia quiz covers Kathryn Bigelow's 2009 Iraq War thriller, the lowest-grossing film ever to win Best Picture. It follows Bravo Company's bomb disposal team through the film: Thompson's death by cell-phone trigger, William James pulling on the suit and pulling off his headset, the desert sniper duel with the British contractors, the body bomb James thinks is Beckham, the man in the locked vest, and the cereal aisle that sends James back for another tour. Behind the scenes it covers Mark Boal's two weeks embedded with a real EOD team and the Playboy article that started it, why the studios passed, the script's original title, the 44-day shoot in Jordan a few miles from the Iraqi border, the food poisoning and falling two-by-fours, the four Super 16 cameras and 200 hours of footage, and the Master Sergeant who sued. A final round covers the 82nd Academy Awards, where Bigelow beat ex-husband James Cameron and Avatar, became the first woman to win Best Director, and a producer was banned from the ceremony for an email. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries before publishing.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who directed The Hurt Locker?
Kathryn Bigelow
She became the first woman to win the Best Director Oscar.
Q 02Who plays Sergeant First Class William James?
Jeremy Renner
It earned him a Best Actor nomination, the year before his Supporting nod for The Town.
Q 03What kind of unit does the film follow?
An Army bomb disposal team
The characters belong to an Explosive Ordnance Disposal team with Bravo Company.
Q 04How is Staff Sergeant Thompson killed in the opening sequence?
An insurgent detonates the IED with a cell phone
Specialist Eldridge blames himself for not shooting the man with the phone.
Q 05Who plays Thompson, the team leader killed at the start?
Guy Pearce
Fiennes plays the British contractor leader and Morse a colonel; Camargo is the psychiatrist.
Q 06Who plays Sergeant J. T. Sanborn?
Anthony Mackie
He described the shoot as so hot the cast were easily agitated, but 'like doing a play'.
Q 07What does James do to Sanborn while disarming the car bomb?
Takes off his headset and flips him off
Sanborn is so rattled he later floats the idea of fragging James.
Q 08How does James hide his approach to an IED from Sanborn?
With smoke grenades
He defuses it moments before an insurgent tries to trigger it with a 9-volt battery.
Q 09The armed men by the SUV with a flat tyre turn out to be what?
British private military contractors
Three of them are killed by a sniper before James and Sanborn take over.
Q 10What is Beckham's trade around the base?
Selling DVDs
James later thinks a body bomb in a warehouse is the boy.
Q 11Who is killed by an explosion during the warehouse evacuation?
Lieutenant Colonel Cambridge, the psychiatrist
He had been Eldridge's counselor, deepening the young soldier's trauma.
Q 12Where does James end up when he sneaks off base to find Beckham's home?
At the house of an unrelated Iraqi professor
He flees, and Beckham turns up alive the next morning.
Q 13How is Eldridge wounded?
Q 21What was the script's original title?
The Something Jacket
'Hurt locker' is a decades-old colloquialism for being injured.
Q 22Which earlier Bigelow flop made studios wary of the project?
K-19: The Widowmaker
Iraq War films also had a reputation for losing money.
Q 23Which film convinced Bigelow to cast Renner?
Dahmer
He played the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer in it.
Q 24Where did the cast train for a week before shooting?
Shot in the leg during his rescue from insurgents
Before being airlifted, he angrily blames James for the wound.
Q 14Who plays Specialist Owen Eldridge?
Brian Geraghty
He had already played a Marine in Jarhead.
Q 15Why can't James save the man in the bomb vest?
He can't cut the locks off before the timer runs out
The man was strapped into the vest against his will; Iraqi refugee actor Suhail Dabbach plays him.
Q 16What does Sanborn say he wants to leave the army to do?
Have a son
He laments that only his parents would have mourned him.
Q 17What does James do at the end of the film?
Starts another year-long tour with Delta Company
He tells his infant son there is only one thing he knows he loves.
Q 18Who wrote the screenplay?
Mark Boal
He won Oscars for both Original Screenplay and Best Picture as a producer.
Q 19How long was Boal embedded with a bomb squad in Iraq?
Two weeks
He went out with the team 10 to 15 times a day.
Q 20In which magazine did Boal's article 'The Man in the Bomb Suit' appear?
Playboy
Bigelow had already adapted another of his Playboy pieces as the TV series The Inside.
Fort Irwin in the Mojave Desert
They learned to use C4, render IEDs safe and wear a bomb suit.
Q 25In which country was the film shot?
Jordan
Some locations were less than three miles from the Iraqi border.
Q 26Why did the filmmakers reject Morocco as a location?
Bigelow felt it didn't look enough like Iraq
Boal's CIA contacts suggested the eventual location because its capital resembles Baghdad.
Q 27What was the final budget after Jordanian help?
$15 million
Voltage had originally greenlit it at $30 million.
Q 28Roughly what temperature did the 44-day shoot average?
120°F
The actors were housed in a tent with dirt floors and encouraged to method act.
Q 29How much weight did Renner say he lost to food poisoning in three days?
15 lbs
The bomb suit he wore all day weighed 80 to 100 pounds on top of that.
Q 30What did the special effects artist use for gunpowder because of import restrictions?
Chinese fireworks
They blew up in his face during assembly; he was back at work two days later.