Ask a room full of film fans to finish the line “Play it again…” and every one of them will say “Sam.” Then tell them that nobody in Casablanca ever says it. The best movie quote trivia lives in that gap between what we remember and what was actually on the soundtrack, and some of the most famous lines in cinema turn out to be cleaned-up, shortened or entirely invented versions of the real thing.
This quiz has three rounds. The first asks who said a line, the second asks which film it comes from, and the third is the fun one: famous misquotes, with the words as they were actually spoken. Answers are in bold after each question.
Round one: who said it?
Name the character, and the actor for a bonus point.
- “Here’s looking at you, kid.” Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart), Casablanca
- “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” Rhett Butler (Clark Gable), Gone with the Wind
- “I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.” Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando), The Godfather
- “Rosebud.” Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles), Citizen Kane
- “All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.” Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), Sunset Boulevard
- “Made it, Ma! Top of the world!” Cody Jarrett (James Cagney), White Heat
- “Round up the usual suspects.” Captain Renault (Claude Rains), Casablanca
- “There’s no place like home.” Dorothy (Judy Garland), The Wizard of Oz
- “You talkin’ to me?” Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro), Taxi Driver
- “Well, nobody’s perfect.” Osgood Fielding III (Joe E. Brown), Some Like It Hot
Question 2 hides a nice footnote. In Margaret Mitchell’s novel, Rhett says only “My dear, I don’t give a damn.” The word “Frankly” was added for the screen, and the full line topped the American Film Institute’s 2005 poll of the hundred greatest movie quotes.
Round two: name the film
- “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” Casablanca (1942)
- “Mother of mercy, is this the end of Rico?” Little Caesar (1931)
- “I coulda been a contender.” On the Waterfront (1954)
- “Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.” All About Eve (1950)
- “Shane. Shane. Come back!” Shane (1953)
- “Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room!” Dr. Strangelove (1964)
- “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.” Cool Hand Luke (1967)
- “They call me Mister Tibbs!” In the Heat of the Night (1967)
- “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.” Chinatown (1974)
- “Here’s Johnny!” The Shining (1980)
Round three: movie quote trivia for the pedants
Each of these is how the line is usually quoted. Your job is to say what was actually said, or whether it was said at all. This is the round that ends friendships, so have the answers ready.
- “Play it again, Sam.” (Casablanca) Never said. Ilsa says “Play it, Sam. Play ‘As Time Goes By.'” Later Rick tells Sam, “You played it for her, you can play it for me,” and finally, “If she can stand it, I can. Play it!”
- “Luke, I am your father.” (The Empire Strikes Back) Darth Vader actually says “No, I am your father.”
- “Beam me up, Scotty.” (Star Trek) Never said in those words in the original television series. The closest film line is Kirk’s “Scotty, beam me up” in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986).
- “Mirror, mirror on the wall…” (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs) The Queen says “Magic Mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?”
- “Me Tarzan, you Jane.” (Tarzan the Ape Man, 1932) Never said. Tarzan and Jane trade single words, pointing and repeating “Tarzan” and “Jane,” but the famous sentence is not in the film.
- “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.” (The Wizard of Oz) Dorothy says “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”
- “Hello, Clarice.” (The Silence of the Lambs) Lecter’s greeting is “Good evening, Clarice.”
- “If you build it, they will come.” (Field of Dreams) The voice says “If you build it, he will come.”
- “We’re gonna need a bigger boat.” (Jaws) Brody says “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.”
- “Elementary, my dear Watson.” (Sherlock Holmes) Not in any of Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories. The first known screen use is the 1929 talkie The Return of Sherlock Holmes.
- “We don’t need no stinking badges.” (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre) The bandit Gold Hat says “Badges? We ain’t got no badges. We don’t need no badges! I don’t have to show you any stinkin’ badges!”
- “Come up and see me sometime.” (She Done Him Wrong) Mae West’s line is “Why don’t you come up sometime and see me?”
- “You dirty rat.” (James Cagney) Cagney never said it in a film. The closest is “That dirty, double-crossin’ rat!” in Blonde Crazy (1931).
- “Do you feel lucky, punk?” (Dirty Harry) Harry says “You’ve got to ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do ya, punk?”
- “It’s going to be a bumpy ride.” (All About Eve) Margo Channing says “bumpy night.” She is warning about a party, not a flight.
- “Greed is good.” (Wall Street) Gordon Gekko says “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.”
- “Houston, we have a problem.” (Apollo 13) A trick question: the film does use that line, but the real 1970 transmission was “Houston, we’ve had a problem.”
- “Life is like a box of chocolates.” (Forrest Gump) Forrest says “My mama always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.”
Why the misquotes stick
Most misquotes are not random. They tend to tidy a line up so it works out of context. “Luke, I am your father” adds the name so the sentence makes sense on its own, which is exactly what you need if you are doing an impression at a party. “Play it again, Sam” compresses two separate moments into one punchy request, and Woody Allen’s 1969 play and 1972 film Play It Again, Sam fixed that version in popular memory.
Others shift because the misquote simply sounds better in the way it is now used. “Bumpy ride” fits travel and business slang, so the word “night” quietly slipped away. “If you build it, they will come” became a motto for entrepreneurs and stadium builders, which needs a crowd, not the single ghostly “he” of Field of Dreams.
A few were invented by impressionists and comedians. Cagney himself joked about it at his American Film Institute Life Achievement Award in 1974, saying he never said “you dirty rat,” and the catchphrase spread through nightclub impersonations far more than through his films. Mae West’s line was rearranged into “Come up and see me sometime” in her own next film, I’m No Angel, and the studio used the new wording in advertising, so in her case the misquote has an official pedigree.
Then there are lines that were never in the source at all. Arthur Conan Doyle wrote sixty Sherlock Holmes stories and novels, and Holmes says “Elementary” and “my dear Watson” in them, but never side by side. The phrase had appeared in print before any film used it, yet it was the early sound films that made it inseparable from the character. By the time Basil Rathbone took over the role in 1939, audiences expected to hear it.
The Star Trek case is my favorite because it shows how a catchphrase can be built from parts. Kirk asked to be beamed up many times on television, usually with “Mr. Scott” or “us” in the sentence. The neat four-word version became popular on its own, and James Doohan, who played Scotty, later used it as the title of his autobiography.
Scoring
Rounds one and two score one point per line, plus a bonus for actors. In round three, give a point only for the actual wording, or for correctly saying “never said.” Half points for “close enough” make for long arguments, and in my experience the purists will win them anyway.
If this round went well, try our classic movie trivia on the stories behind these films, or read more about the most quoted film of them all in our piece on Casablanca.
Where to go next
Take on our 100 movie trivia questions from the silents to the 90s, or browse every quiz in Trivia & Quotes.
