Top Gun: Maverick Trivia
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39 free Top Gun: Maverick trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Top Gun: Maverick arrived 36 years after the original and became the biggest film of Tom Cruise's career, and this quiz covers all of it: the Mach 10 Darkstar run, Maverick's assignment back to North Island, the beach football game, Iceman's last scene, the canyon run against the uranium plant, and the stolen F-14 that gets Maverick and Rooster home. Early questions are for anyone who has seen it: who plays Rooster, what Penny Benjamin's bar is called, who arrives to save the day at the end. Later ones dig into how it was made and released: the director who died with the sequel in development, the two ideas Joseph Kosinski pitched to Cruise in Paris, what the Navy charged per flight hour, where the museum Tomcat came from, why the flags on Maverick's jacket vanished and reappeared, how many times the release date moved, and which Oscar it finally won. Every answer has been checked against production reporting and the film's own record, and each question links to its source. For the 1986 original, see our Top Gun trivia; this page is all about Maverick.
30 of 39 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who directed Top Gun: Maverick?
Joseph Kosinski
Joseph Kosinski directed it; he had made Oblivion (2013) with Cruise and pitched the sequel with a lookbook, poster and title while Cruise was shooting Mission: Impossible – Fallout in Paris.
Q 02Whose memory is Top Gun: Maverick dedicated to?
Tony Scott
Tony Scott, who directed the 1986 original, died in August 2012; only days earlier he and Cruise had toured a naval air station together to research a sequel.
Q 03What is the name of the hypersonic test aircraft Maverick pushes past Mach 10 in the opening?
Darkstar
Darkstar was designed with engineers from Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works, and a full-scale mockup was built so that its ground scenes could be filmed for real at China Lake.
Q 04Which real Navy rank does Maverick hold at the start of the film, having never made flag rank?
Captain
Maverick is a Captain, the Navy's highest non-flag rank; Admiral Cain notes that after thirty-plus years he should be a two-star admiral, but insubordination has kept him a test pilot.
Q 05Which old rival, now Pacific Fleet commander, saves Maverick's career by sending him to Top Gun?
Iceman
Iceman, now Admiral Tom Kazansky commanding the Pacific Fleet, has Maverick ordered to Top Gun as an instructor, which stops another admiral from grounding him for good.
Q 06What is the target of the mission Maverick must train his pilots to fly?
An unsanctioned uranium enrichment plant
An unsanctioned uranium enrichment plant, dug into a bunker at the end of a canyon, has to be destroyed before it becomes operational; the film never names the country that built it.
Q 07In Top Gun: Maverick, why can't stealthy F-35s be used for the canyon strike?
GPS jamming rules them out
GPS jamming rules them out, so Maverick builds the raid around two pairs of Super Hornets carrying laser-guided bombs on a low-level run through the canyon.
Q 08Who plays Bradley 'Rooster' Bradshaw, Goose's son?
Miles Teller
Miles Teller won the part in July 2018 after chemistry tests at Tom Cruise's Florida home, then grew a moustache to echo his on-screen father, Goose.
Q 09Why does Rooster resent Maverick?
He blocked his Academy application
He blocked his Academy application, costing Rooster four years; Maverick was keeping a promise to Rooster's dying mother that her son would never fly, which Rooster knows nothing about.
Q 10Which Top Gun: Maverick actor lost Rooster's role, then played a cocky rival pilot?
Glen Powell
Glen Powell thought the role had no payoff, calling the character a 'Navy Draco Malfoy', until Cruise and the producers let him reshape it; in the script he first read, the call sign was Slayer.
Q 11Which actress plays Penny Benjamin, the bar owner and Maverick's old flame, in Top Gun: Maverick?
Jennifer Connelly
Jennifer Connelly plays a character who is only a name in the 1986 film: Penny Benjamin is the admiral's daughter his commander brings up while dressing Maverick down.
Q 12In Top Gun: Maverick, the dying admiral's advice to Maverick about Rooster is which line?
'It's time to let go'
'It's time to let go' appears on a screen: the admiral's illness has left him barely able to speak, so he types his side of the conversation with Maverick.
Q 13In Top Gun: Maverick, what is flown over the late admiral's funeral in his honour?
Q 21Which country is the only one besides the United States ever to fly the jet Maverick flew in the 1986 film?
Iran
Iran is the only other country that ever acquired the jet, which is why the US scrapped or disabled its own retired fleet: to stop spare parts reaching Tehran.
Q 22Since 1996, where has the Top Gun school been based, despite the film's San Diego setting?
Naval Air Station Fallon, Nevada
Naval Air Station Fallon, Nevada, took in the school in 1996, as Miramar was being turned over to the Marine Corps; the film shot aerial footage at Fallon but kept its story in San Diego.
Q 23Top Gun: Maverick's snowy low-level mountain flying was filmed over which range, flown from NAS Whidbey Island?
A missing man formation
A missing man formation of Navy jets passes over the funeral; in the salute one aircraft pulls up and away from the rest, its empty place standing for the aviator who is gone.
Q 14How does Maverick prove his canyon attack run can be flown inside the time limit?
He flies it himself, unauthorised
He flies it himself, unauthorised, while Cyclone is relaxing the mission's limits, and beats the time he had set the trainees; Cyclone then reluctantly makes him team leader.
Q 15Which two aviators fly the buddy-lasing F/A-18F alongside Maverick's lead jet?
Phoenix and Bob
Phoenix and Bob fly the two-seat F/A-18F that lases the target for Maverick's bombs; earlier in training, a bird strike had set their jet on fire and forced the pair to eject.
Q 16In Top Gun: Maverick, after both are shot down, which aircraft do Maverick and Rooster steal from the enemy air base?
An F-14 Tomcat
They steal an F-14 Tomcat, the jet Maverick flew in the 1986 film, and down two Su-57s with it before a third catches them out of ammunition.
Q 17In Top Gun: Maverick, who unexpectedly arrives to shoot down the last Su-57 when Maverick and Rooster are out of ammunition?
Hangman
Hangman had been sidelined as the mission's emergency action pilot, waiting on the carrier deck in his Super Hornet.
Q 18What vintage aircraft does Maverick own and fly off in with Penny at the end?
A P-51 Mustang
A P-51 Mustang, and it is Tom Cruise's own: the actor owns the Second World War fighter and flew it from Florida to California himself for the shoot.
Q 19Top Gun: Maverick shot as much footage as which entire film trilogy?
The Lord of the Rings
The Lord of the Rings: the director said the shoot's 800 hours matched all three films combined, because a whole day of flying, twelve hours or more, might yield only moments worth keeping.
Q 20Which Jerry Lee Lewis hit does Rooster hammer out on the bar piano, just as his father Goose did in 1986?
Great Balls of Fire
Great Balls of Fire was performed live on set; in the edit the director added footage of Goose singing it in 1986, to show why the sight shakes Maverick.
The Cascades
The Cascades: the aerial unit flew out of NAS Whidbey Island to film the jets racing past iced-over cliffs, after scouting every route by helicopter.
Q 24Which Formula One champion turned down a fighter-pilot role in Top Gun: Maverick offered through his friendship with Tom Cruise?
Lewis Hamilton
Lewis Hamilton had told Cruise 'I will even be a janitor, just let me be in it', then had to refuse a pilot's role because the shoot fell in the final months of his 2018 title fight.
Q 25Which Chinese company signed on as a co-financier of Top Gun: Maverick, then pulled out in 2019?
Tencent
Tencent Pictures withdrew its backing, reportedly worried that a film celebrating the US military would anger Beijing; the film was never released in mainland China.
Q 26Which two flags vanished from Maverick's jacket in the first trailer, then returned in the film?
Taiwan and Japan
The Taiwan and Japan flag patches on Maverick's jacket gave way to look-alike symbols in the 2019 trailer, which fans read as a bow to Chinese censors; the finished film restored both flags.
Q 27Why was Top Gun: Maverick delayed from 2019 to 2020?
Complex flight sequences
Complex flight sequences needed another year to work out; when the pandemic then kept the film from cinemas until 2022, Cruise said he would never let it debut on streaming.
Q 28In Top Gun: Maverick, what destroys the enemy air base as the strike team flies in?
Tomahawk cruise missiles
Tomahawk cruise missiles wreck the enemy air base as the raid begins; the same ruined base is where Maverick and Rooster, both shot down, later find the jet they escape in.
Q 29At which film festival did fighter jets trail coloured smoke over Top Gun: Maverick's red-carpet premiere?
Cannes
Cannes: eight jets streaked over the premiere trailing smoke in the colours of the French flag, and the festival surprised Cruise with an honorary Palme d'Or before the film began.
Q 30Which holiday weekend saw Top Gun: Maverick return to number one at the US box office?
Labor Day
Labor Day: the film retook first place in its fifteenth weekend, as National Cinema Day's $3 tickets drew crowds back to cinemas.