Zombies Trivia
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99 free Zombies trivia questions with answers — pop culture quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
50 free zombies trivia questions with answers. This zombies trivia quiz digs through the whole undead canon. It starts with the real thing - the Haitian roots of the word, Clairvius Narcisse, the pufferfish toxin theory and the odd law in Haiti's penal code - then follows the monster to Hollywood: White Zombie, George Romero's Living Dead films, the Italian rip-offs, Return of the Living Dead's brain-eaters, 28 Days Later's sprinting infected, Zombieland, World War Z, Train to Busan and beyond. There is a full spread of TV and games too - The Walking Dead on page and screen, iZombie, Dead Set, Kingdom, Resident Evil, Left 4 Dead, Plants vs. Zombies, Call of Duty Zombies, The Last of Us - plus the Thriller video, the CDC's zombie-preparedness stunt, the largest zombie walk on record and the fungus that really does zombify ants. Around a third of the questions are easy warm-ups; the rest climb toward the detail only a genre completist would know. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia and the primary sources it cites, and each explanation adds one more thing worth knowing.
30 of 99 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Dictionaries trace the English word 'zombie' back to which group of African languages?
Bantu
Bantu: dictionaries link the word to Kimbundu nzúmbi, 'ghost', and Kongo nzambi, 'god', and say it reached English by way of Haitian and Louisiana Creole zonbi.
Q 02Which 1929 W. B. Seabrook travel book introduced Western readers to the Haitian voodoo zombie?
The Magic Island
The Magic Island sold so well that it inspired a 1932 New York stage play called Zombie, and Time magazine later credited the book with introducing 'zombi' into American speech.
Q 03Which 1932 Bela Lugosi film is generally considered the first feature-length zombie film?
White Zombie
White Zombie (1932), made independently by the Halperin brothers with Lugosi as a Haitian voodoo master, is usually counted as the first feature-length zombie film; Rob Zombie later named his metal band after it.
Q 04Clairvius Narcisse, buried in Haiti in 1962, said he was dug up to work where?
Sugar plantation
Sugar plantation: Narcisse said a sorcerer kept him there with other captives for two years; in 1980 he approached his sister and proved who he was with childhood details only he could know.
Q 05Wade Davis claimed Haitian 'zombie powder' relied on tetrodotoxin, found in which animal?
Pufferfish
Pufferfish carry tetrodotoxin, which can leave a victim paralysed yet conscious; when chemists tested Davis's powder samples in 1986 they found only traces of it, and his theory is still disputed.
Q 06Haiti's Penal Code classes drugging someone into a prolonged lethargic coma without killing them as what?
Attempted murder
Attempted murder, and if the drugged victim is then buried the code calls it murder whatever follows; William Seabrook quoted the law in 1929 as proof that Haiti took zombies seriously.
Q 07Wes Craven's 1988 film The Serpent and the Rainbow follows an anthropologist sent to Haiti by whom?
A drug company
A drug company: in Craven's film a Boston pharmaceutical firm pays anthropologist Dennis Alan to go to Haiti and bring back the zombie powder, hoping to sell it as a 'super anaesthetic'.
Q 08What did Romero call his flesh-eaters in Night of the Living Dead (1968)?
Ghouls
Ghouls is the word in Romero's script and the film's radio and TV bulletins; to him zombies were the voodoo slaves of Haitian lore, and it was film critics who pinned that name on his flesh-eaters.
Q 09Why did Night of the Living Dead enter the public domain almost immediately?
The distributor omitted the copyright notice
The distributor omitted the copyright notice when it swapped the title Night of the Flesh Eaters for the final one, and under the law of the day that let anyone copy and sell the film freely.
Q 10Night of the Living Dead was shot in rural Butler County, about 30 miles north of which city?
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh was where Romero made TV commercials before he tried horror; the opening scene's Evans City Cemetery became a landmark for fans, but the farmhouse was a condemned building rented to be wrecked.
Q 11Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1978) was filmed largely inside which real shopping centre?
Monroeville Mall
Monroeville Mall stayed open for business, so the crew filmed from 11 pm to 7 am and stopped for three weeks in December rather than take down the Christmas decorations every night.
Q 12Which Italian filmmaker co-financed Dawn of the Dead (1978) for its international distribution rights?
Dario Argento
Dario Argento co-produced Dawn of the Dead in return for foreign rights and cut his own version, released in Italy as Zombi, which is why Fulci's unrelated 1979 film was titled Zombi 2.
Q 13Lucio Fulci's Zombi 2 (1979) is notorious for an underwater scene in which a zombie fights what?
A shark
Q 21Which author wrote both The Zombie Survival Guide (2003) and the novel World War Z (2006)?
Max Brooks
Max Brooks, the son of Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft, took zombie-proofing seriously enough to earn a fellowship at the Modern War Institute at West Point.
Q 22Which Star Wars actor was in the cast of the Audie-winning World War Z audiobook?
Mark Hamill
Mark Hamill reads Todd Wainio, a US Army veteran; the novel is written as a string of survivor interviews, so the audiobook gives each one a different actor, Alan Alda and John Turturro among them.
Q 23In the 2013 film World War Z, zombies pile onto one another to scale a giant wall protecting which city?
Jerusalem
A shark: the scene was producer Ugo Tucci's idea and was filmed off Mexico's Isla Mujeres by the make-up chief after Fulci had gone home, with a local shark trainer playing the zombie.
Q 14What military chemical reanimates the dead in The Return of the Living Dead (1985)?
Trioxin
Trioxin, in full 2-4-5 Trioxin, leaks from army drums sent to a Louisville warehouse by mistake; the film is also credited with giving zombies their particular hunger for brains.
Q 15Whose 1992 splatter comedy Braindead (Dead Alive in the US) is regarded as one of the goriest films ever?
Peter Jackson
Peter Jackson shot Braindead in his native New Zealand; its hero finally clears a house of zombies with a lawnmower, nearly a decade before The Lord of the Rings.
Q 16What is the name of the highly contagious, aggression-inducing virus in 28 Days Later (2002)?
Rage
Rage spreads within seconds of exposure; director Danny Boyle never considered it a zombie film at all, yet it is credited with reviving the whole genre.
Q 17In 28 Days Later, Jim wakes from a coma and walks across which deserted London bridge beside Parliament?
Westminster Bridge
Westminster Bridge: Jim leaves St Thomas' Hospital and crosses it towards an empty Parliament; the crew shot just after dawn, with volunteers holding the traffic back for a minute or two at a time.
Q 18In Zombieland (2009), what snack does Tallahassee spend most of the road trip searching for?
A Twinkie
Tallahassee hunts for one last Twinkie all film, fretting that the snack's shelf life is running out; he finally gets one in the closing scene.
Q 19What is Rule #1 on Columbus's list of survival rules in Zombieland?
Cardio
Cardio comes first because, as Columbus's narration puts it, the first to go when the virus struck were the unfit; 'Double tap' is rule two.
Q 20Which celebrity plays himself hiding in his mansion disguised as a zombie in Zombieland?
Bill Murray
Bill Murray, playing himself, wears zombie make-up so he can get about unmolested; when he sneaks up on Columbus as a prank, Columbus takes him for the real thing and shoots him dead.
Jerusalem's wall holds until refugees celebrating inside make enough noise to draw the horde up and over it; the Brad Pitt film went on to gross about $540 million worldwide.
Q 24Train to Busan (2016) unfolds mostly aboard what kind of railway?
A KTX high-speed service
A KTX high-speed service: a father and daughter board KTX 101 at Seoul Station just as the outbreak begins, and the infection spreads from carriage to carriage on the run south to Busan.
Q 25In Warm Bodies (2013), what are the far-gone zombies who have shed their flesh called?
Boneys
Boneys are the skeletal zombies past any hope of recovery; the story riffs on Romeo and Juliet, with R (Nicholas Hoult) falling for Julie after eating her boyfriend's brain.
Q 26Which Jane Austen novel gained a zombie plague in Seth Grahame-Smith's 2009 mash-up?
Pride and Prejudice
Pride and Prejudice: the mash-up starts from Austen's own text, which is why she shares the byline, and within weeks of publication it stood at number three on the New York Times bestseller list.
Q 27In Shaun of the Dead (2004), what is the name of the pub where Shaun plans to wait out the crisis?
The Winchester
The Winchester has a rifle of that name mounted over its bar; Shaun and Ed argue about whether it is real, and when the dead break in it turns out to work.
Q 28The Walking Dead premiered on AMC on which date in 2010?
Halloween
Halloween night, 31 October 2010: the pilot had leaked online almost two weeks earlier, yet 5.35 million people still tuned in, AMC's biggest series premiere to that point.
Q 29Which English actor played sheriff's deputy Rick Grimes on The Walking Dead?
Andrew Lincoln
Andrew Lincoln, a Londoner born Andrew Clutterbuck, led the show as its Georgia lawman until season nine, then came back to the role in the 2024 spin-off The Ones Who Live, which he co-created.
Q 30Which fan-favourite Walking Dead character was created for the TV show and never appeared in the comic?
Daryl Dixon
Daryl Dixon was written for Norman Reedus after he impressed the producers reading Merle's lines at his audition; the crossbow-carrying survivor has no counterpart in Robert Kirkman's comic.