Round 1: cartoon characters almost everyone can name
Open here whatever the age of the room. These are the questions that get people talking to each other rather than staring at the host, and they cover the two cartoons with the widest reach across generations: SpongeBob SquarePants for anyone under forty, The Flintstones for anyone over it.
Read the answer, then the note. A one-line fact after each reveal is what turns a quiz into an evening - and it gives the team that guessed wrong something to say.
Q1.SpongeBob's house in Bikini Bottom is a hollowed-out piece of what fruit?Tap to reveal
Answer: A pineapple
Every home in Bikini Bottom is a joke about its owner: Patrick lives under a rock, Squidward in an Easter Island head, so the cheerful fruit belongs to SpongeBob.
Q2.What is the name of the restaurant where SpongeBob works?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Krusty Krab
Its rival across the road, Plankton's Chum Bucket, has almost no customers, which is the whole reason Plankton has spent decades trying to steal the Krabby Patty formula.
Q3.What kind of animal is Sandy Cheeks?Tap to reveal
Answer: A squirrel
She is the only land mammal in the main cast, which is why she wears a diving helmet outdoors and keeps her treedome full of air rather than water.
Q4.What is the name of SpongeBob's pet snail, who meows like a cat?Tap to reveal
Answer: Gary
Real sea snails make no sound at all, so the meowing is pure invention - and Gary is repeatedly written as the most sensible character on screen.
Q5.Which cranky next-door neighbour of SpongeBob's plays the clarinet?Tap to reveal
Answer: Squidward Tentacles
The name says squid, but Stephen Hillenburg designed him as an octopus for the large head, and drew him with six limbs instead of eight because it was simpler to animate.
Q6.Which two retired superheroes are SpongeBob and Patrick's idols?Tap to reveal
Answer: Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy
They are a Batman-and-Robin parody played as pensioners, and they were voiced by Ernest Borgnine and Tim Conway - two actors who had been comedy stars long before the audience was born.
Q7.In The Flintstones, what is the name of the town where the Flintstones and the Rubbles live?Tap to reveal
Answer: Bedrock
Bedrock runs on animal power - a bird's beak for a record needle, a mammoth's trunk for a shower - and nearly every proper noun in it is a rock pun, which let writers invent a new shop or neighbour in a single word.
Q8.What is the name of Fred and Wilma Flintstone's daughter?Tap to reveal
Answer: Pebbles
Wilma's pregnancy ran as a story arc in the third season and Pebbles was born in The Blessed Event, first broadcast on 22 February 1963 - a cartoon family aging in real time, which was almost unheard of then.
Q9.What is the name of Barney and Betty Rubble's son?Tap to reveal
Answer: Bamm-Bamm
The Rubbles adopt him, and the running gag is his superhuman strength: he swings his club and flattens whatever Fred has just finished building.
Q10.Which live-action sitcom was The Flintstones openly modelled on?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Honeymooners
Fred's bluster, the loyal neighbour and the lodge nights all come from Ralph Kramden's world. The Flintstones was also the first animated series to hold a primetime slot on American television, on ABC from September 1960.
Q11.Who is Fred and Barney's boss at the quarry?Tap to reveal
Answer: Mr. Slate
Slate Rock and Gravel Company is Fred's employer, and Mr. Slate is the boss who fires him roughly once a season and rehires him by the closing credits.
Round 2: Looney Tunes and the golden age
This is the round that rewards the oldest people in the room, and it is worth telling them so before you start - it changes the mood at a family table. The Warner Bros. shorts of the 1930s to 1960s are also the part of cartoon history with the best documented trivia: real release years, real directors, real Oscars.
If the group skews young, read the character's catchphrase or describe the gag before you ask the question. Almost everyone has seen these cartoons; fewer people know the names attached to them.
Q1.Which company supplies all of Wile E. Coyote's rockets, springs and mail-order traps?Tap to reveal
Answer: ACME
Acme was a genuinely common business name - the word means the highest point - and Warner's animators turned it into a catch-all brand for equipment guaranteed to fail at the worst moment.
Q2.In what year did the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote first appear?Tap to reveal
Answer: 1949
Their debut was Fast and Furry-ous, and director Chuck Jones worked to fixed rules with writer Michael Maltese: the Coyote never speaks, never catches the bird, and is always beaten by his own device rather than by the Road Runner.
Q3.Which Wile E. Coyote look-alike spends his shorts trying to get past Sam Sheepdog?Tap to reveal
Answer: Ralph Wolf
Ralph is essentially the same drawing with a red nose, and the joke is that he and Sam clock in and out of a shift together: losing is Ralph's day job.
Q4.What is Sylvester the Cat's full name?Tap to reveal
Answer: Sylvester J. Pussycat, Sr.
The 'Sr.' exists because of Sylvester Jr., the son who spends the Hippety Hopper shorts quietly mortified by his father's failures.
Q5.Is Tweety male or female?Tap to reveal
Answer: Male
The baby-bird design and Mel Blanc's falsetto confused audiences for decades, but the shorts consistently refer to Tweety as 'he'.
Q6.What was Porky Pig's first cartoon?Tap to reveal
Answer: I Haven't Got a Hat
Friz Freleng directed it in 1935, which makes Porky the oldest Warner Bros. star still in use - Daffy arrived in 1937 and Bugs later still.
Q7.Foghorn Leghorn is named after a Leghorn. What is that?Tap to reveal
Answer: A breed of chicken
The breed came from the Italian port of Livorno, which English speakers mangled into 'Leghorn'. The 'Foghorn' half of the name covers the volume.
Q8.What is the name of the hen Foghorn Leghorn is forever trying to impress?Tap to reveal
Answer: Miss Prissy
His route to her affections is babysitting her bookish son, Egghead Jr., who never says a word and out-thinks Foghorn in every single short.
Q9.Why does Marvin the Martian keep trying to destroy the Earth?Tap to reveal
Answer: It obstructs his view of Venus
The line is delivered completely deadpan, which is the joke, and his weapon is named with the same fake precision: the Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator.
Q10.Which Bugs Bunny adversary did Friz Freleng create in 1945 because Elmer Fudd was too easy to talk out of things?Tap to reveal
Answer: Yosemite Sam
Friz Freleng introduced him in Hare Trigger in 1945. Elmer can be talked out of almost anything; Sam simply reloads, which gave the writers a different kind of scene.
Q11.Which Bugs Bunny short won the Academy Award for animated short?Tap to reveal
Answer: Knighty Knight Bugs
Released in 1958 and awarded the following year, it is the only Bugs Bunny cartoon ever to win the Oscar, and the last Warner Bros. short to win at all.
Q12.In the 1950s Warner Bros. shorts, which cat is Speedy Gonzales's opponent?Tap to reveal
Answer: Sylvester
Sylvester is the cheese-factory guard Speedy outruns in the 1955 short Speedy Gonzales, which won that year's Academy Award for animated short.
Q13.Which Looney Tunes director made the 1966 television version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas?Tap to reveal
Answer: Chuck Jones
Jones cast Boris Karloff as both narrator and the Grinch, while 'You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch' was sung by Thurl Ravenscroft, who went uncredited on air.
Q14.What was Mighty Mouse originally called?Tap to reveal
Answer: Super Mouse
Terrytoons renamed him early in the 1940s to avoid a clash with another publisher's Supermouse, but kept the cape, the flight and the rescue in the last five seconds.
Round 3: the Saturday-morning and cable-cartoon years
This round belongs to anyone who was a child between roughly 1987 and 2010, and it is usually the loudest of the five. It is also where a host can get the pacing wrong: the answers are short, so read the notes and let people argue.
The 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles questions are the bridge between rounds - the parents in the room watched that series too, because it ran in syndication for years.
Q1.Which Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle wears the purple mask?Tap to reveal
Answer: Donatello
In the original 1984 comics all four turtles wore red bandanas. The 1987 cartoon colour-coded them - blue, purple, red, orange - so viewers and toy buyers could tell them apart instantly.
Q2.In the 1987 cartoon, which weapon does Michelangelo fight with?Tap to reveal
Answer: Nunchaku (nunchucks)
Broadcasters objected to the nunchaku so strongly in some countries that the series aired there as Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles and Michelangelo was switched to a grappling hook.
Q3.In the 1987 series, what is Master Splinter's real name?Tap to reveal
Answer: Hamato Yoshi
That cartoon made Splinter a human ninja master who was mutated into a rat. The comics had done it the other way round: Splinter was Yoshi's pet rat, who learned from watching him.
Q4.What is the name of Shredder and Krang's mobile headquarters?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Technodrome
It is a rolling fortress with an eye for a front door, and its constant breakdowns were a writers' device: while it is out of power, the villains have to stay underground and the plot can go somewhere else.
Q5.In The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, what town do Jimmy and his friends live in?Tap to reveal
Answer: Retroville
The name matches the art: the town is drawn in 1950s space-age curves. The series was also fully computer-animated, which was still unusual for a Nickelodeon cartoon when it launched in 2002.
Q6.Who are Jimmy Neutron's two best friends?Tap to reveal
Answer: Carl and Sheen
Carl is the llama-obsessed worrier and Sheen the UltraLord fanatic. Sheen was popular enough that Nickelodeon eventually gave him his own series, Planet Sheen.
Q7.What is the name of Jimmy Neutron's robot dog?Tap to reveal
Answer: Goddard
He is named after Robert H. Goddard, the American physicist who launched the first liquid-fuelled rocket - one of several science in-jokes the show buried in its character names.
Q8.In Phineas and Ferb, what is the name of Candace's crush?Tap to reveal
Answer: Jeremy
Candace has exactly two drives - busting her brothers and impressing Jeremy - and the writers used the second one to keep her away from the invention until the last possible moment.
Q9.In Phineas and Ferb, who is Perry the Platypus's arch-enemy?Tap to reveal
Answer: Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz
The show runs two plots at once - the boys' invention and Perry's secret-agent mission - and they collide at the end, where Doofenshmirtz's own machine usually destroys the evidence before the sister can prove anything.
Q10.Who created Johnny Bravo?Tap to reveal
Answer: Van Partible
It grew out of his senior thesis film at Loyola Marymount University, a short about an Elvis impersonator, which he developed into a pitch for Hanna-Barbera.
Q11.Which music legend's voice and swagger is Johnny Bravo built on?Tap to reveal
Answer: Elvis Presley
The hair, the hip-swivel and the drawl are all Presley, with a little James Dean in the attitude. Jeff Bennett performed the voice for the whole run.
Q12.Who is Penny's father in The Proud Family?Tap to reveal
Answer: Oscar Proud
Oscar's own snack company, Proud Snacks, is a running joke: he is an enthusiastic entrepreneur whose products nobody in the family will eat.
Q13.Who recorded the theme song for The Proud Family?Tap to reveal
Answer: Solange Knowles, with Destiny's Child (accept either name)
It is one of the few children's cartoon themes that arrived as a full R&B production, and it is the part of the show people still quote first.
Q14.Who created The Proud Family?Tap to reveal
Answer: Bruce W. Smith
Smith created and executive-produced the series, which premiered on Disney Channel in September 2001; two decades later the same cast returned for a revival, The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder.
Round 4: The Simpsons round
The Simpsons deserves its own round because it will otherwise swallow the whole quiz: it has more trivia attached to it than every other cartoon here combined, and one superfan can turn the evening into a private conversation. Ten questions is the right dose.
These are chosen from the early seasons and the show's own origin story rather than deep episode minutiae, so a casual viewer can still score. If your room is full of experts, keep the answers and ask for the episode title as a bonus point.
Q1.What street do the Simpsons live on?Tap to reveal
Answer: Evergreen Terrace
The full address is 742 Evergreen Terrace. Several Springfield names - Flanders, Lovejoy, Terwilliger, Quimby, Van Houten - are streets in Matt Groening's home city of Portland, Oregon.
Q2.What is Marge Simpson's maiden name?Tap to reveal
Answer: Bouvier
It is a nod to Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, and the show doubled down by naming Marge's mother Jacqueline.
Q3.What is the name of the Simpsons' dog?Tap to reveal
Answer: Santa's Little Helper
He joins the family in the first full episode, Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire: a greyhound thrown out by his owner on Christmas Eve after finishing last.
Q4.What is Homer Simpson's middle name?Tap to reveal
Answer: Jay
Groening has said the J is a tribute to Bullwinkle J. Moose, from Jay Ward's cartoons - the same source as the deliberately silly middle initial.
Q5.What were Bart's first words as a baby?Tap to reveal
Answer: Ay caramba!
Bart's catchphrases were so heavily merchandised in 1990 that some American schools banned the T-shirts, which did nothing at all to slow the sales.
Q6.What was Lisa's first word?Tap to reveal
Answer: Bart
In the 1992 episode Lisa's First Word she says her brother's name, to his delight.
Q7.What was Maggie's first word, and which Hollywood star recorded it?Tap to reveal
Answer: Daddy, spoken by Elizabeth Taylor
The episode ends with Maggie speaking too, but only after Homer has left the room. Taylor came in to record a single word for the closing seconds of Lisa's First Word, which is still one of the most efficient guest appearances in television.
Q8.Before it became a half-hour show, The Simpsons appeared as shorts on which programme?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Tracey Ullman Show
The shorts began in 1987. Groening named the family after his own - father Homer, mother Marge, sisters Lisa and Maggie - but made the boy Bart, an anagram of 'brat', instead of using his own name.
Q9.What ancient secret society does Homer join in the episode Homer the Great?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Stonecutters
It gave the show one of its best musical numbers, 'We Do', in which a chorus of Springfield men cheerfully admit to running everything from the electric car to the moon landing.
Q10.Which Springfield resident, voiced by Kelsey Grammer, was Krusty the Clown's sidekick?Tap to reveal
Answer: Sideshow Bob
His full name is Robert Underdunk Terwilliger, and the joke is the mismatch: Grammer plays him as a Yale-educated aesthete who cannot get the better of a ten-year-old.
Round 5: primetime animation for grown-ups
Save this round for a room without small children - not because the questions are rude, but because the shows are, and somebody will start quoting. Family Guy and South Park are also the two cartoons where the production history is more interesting than the plots.
Nine questions is enough to finish on. If you need a tie-breaker, ask how many seasons of Family Guy have aired and take the closest guess.
Q1.What is the name of the Griffin family's dog in Family Guy?Tap to reveal
Answer: Brian
Brian talks, drinks martinis and drives the car. Seth MacFarlane voices him close to his own speaking voice, which is why Brian sounds like the only adult in the house.
Q2.Who created Family Guy?Tap to reveal
Answer: Seth MacFarlane
He sold the show to Fox off the back of short films he had made as a student at the Rhode Island School of Design - which is also why the Griffins live in Rhode Island.
Q3.In which US state is Family Guy set?Tap to reveal
Answer: Rhode Island
Quahog is invented, but it is named after the hard-shell clam that is a Rhode Island staple, and the show's geography borrows from Providence.
Q4.When did Family Guy first air?Tap to reveal
Answer: January 31, 1999
Fox premiered it straight after the Super Bowl, then cancelled it twice. Strong DVD sales and constant reruns on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim brought it back in 2005 - one of the first shows revived by home video.
Q5.What is Stewie's full name?Tap to reveal
Answer: Stewart Gilligan Griffin
MacFarlane won a Primetime Emmy in 2000 for voicing him, which is a fair reward for keeping a matinee-villain English accent coming out of a one-year-old for more than twenty-five years.
Q6.What is Butters' real name in South Park?Tap to reveal
Answer: Leopold Stotch
Butters began as a background child in crowd scenes and was promoted to a lead role in the sixth season, when Kenny was written out of the show.
Q7.What is Eric Cartman's favourite snack?Tap to reveal
Answer: Cheesy Poofs
The brand is invented, but it has had its own jingle and commercial inside the show since the first season, and it is the fastest way for the writers to signal a Cartman tantrum.
Q8.In what year, and on which network, did South Park first air?Tap to reveal
Answer: 1997, on Comedy Central
The original short was animated by moving cut paper under a camera by hand. The series moved to computers that imitate the same construction-paper look, which is why it still appears handmade.
Q9.Which country do the residents of South Park loudly claim to hate?Tap to reveal
Answer: Canada
The joke is aimed at the town, not the country: the Canadians are drawn with flapping heads and half-simple faces, and they are usually the most reasonable people in the episode.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many cartoon trivia questions do I need for a quiz night?
Plan 40 to 60 for a full evening, split into rounds of 10 to 15 with a scoring break between them. The 58 here are already grouped into five rounds you can run in order.
What are good cartoon trivia questions for kids?
Stick to character, home and pet questions rather than years and creators. In round one, questions 1 to 5 and 7 to 9 are all answerable by a seven-year-old; skip question 10, on The Honeymooners, which needs a parent.
How do I make a cartoon quiz work for a mixed-age group?
Alternate eras instead of running easiest to hardest. Ask a SpongeBob question, then a Looney Tunes question, so no single generation has a quiet stretch - and put people of different ages on the same team.
Which cartoons come up most often in trivia?
The Simpsons, SpongeBob SquarePants, Looney Tunes, The Flintstones, Family Guy and South Park. The first four cover the widest age range in one round.
Can I use these cartoon trivia questions for free?
Yes. Read them out at a party, a classroom or a pub quiz. Trivio.NET also lets you build your own rounds from a much larger question bank if you want a longer game.
