47 Fun Facts About ALF

What is ALF's real name back on his home planet?

ALF's real name is Gordon Shumway; Willie Tanner coins the nickname in the pilot, and the alien's family in the animated prequel are the Shumways.

What does the acronym ALF stand for?

Alien Life Form is the nickname Willie Tanner gives the furry visitor in the pilot, and the Tanners go on calling him ALF for the rest of the run.

ALF crash-lands into which part of the Tanner family's property?

The garage is where ALF's ship comes down in the pilot; the Tanners take him into the house and hide him from the Alien Task Force, a military unit that tracks aliens.

What is the name of the Tanner family cat that ALF keeps trying to eat?

The Tanners' cat is named Lucky; ALF, whose species regards cats as food, spends the series trying and failing to make a meal of him.

What is Willie Tanner's job?

Willie Tanner is a social worker, a kind but perpetually overwhelmed head of the household whose attempts at order ALF wrecks for four seasons.

Puppeteer Paul Fusco co-created ALF with which writer-producer?

Tom Patchett, who had worked on two Muppet movies, wrote and directed the ALF pilot; Fusco sought him out because he admired Patchett's sitcom Buffalo Bill.

Which actor played Willie Tanner and later admitted he was 'hugely eager to have it over with'?

Max Wright despised supporting a puppet that hogged most of the good lines, though by 2000 he conceded that ALF 'brought people a lot of joy'.

Who played Kate Tanner, the mother of the household?

Anne Schedeen later called the hit sitcom's set 'a technical nightmare', saying a 30-minute show took 20 to 25 hours to shoot.

Which actress played teenage daughter Lynn Tanner?

Andrea Elson came to ALF from the CBS adventure series Whiz Kids and met her future husband, Scott Hopper, while he was working on the ALF crew.

Who played Brian Tanner, the young son who becomes ALF's sidekick?

Benji Gregory left Hollywood behind and enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 2003, becoming an aerographer's mate who forecast weather for ships and aircraft.

What is the surname of the Tanners' nosy neighbours, Trevor and Raquel?

The neighbours are Trevor and Raquel Ochmonek; their nephew Jake moves in with them in season two and becomes one of the few outsiders who knows about ALF.

What is the name of ALF's home planet?

ALF's home planet is Melmac; the 1987 cartoon ALF: The Animated Series is a prequel set there, before the planet was destroyed.

In the show's usual telling, what destroyed ALF's home planet?

Nuclear war is the cause the show usually gives, and fear of it drives ALF to phone the President in 'Pennsylvania 6-5000', where he also jokes that everyone plugged in their hair dryers at once.

ALF survived the destruction of his planet because he was away serving in what?

The Orbit Guard had ALF off-world on duty when the end came; his friend Skip, a fellow Guard member in the cartoon prequel, got away too.

Which cable channel aired ALF's Hit Talk Show in 2004?

TV Land, a channel built on classic reruns, launched the spoof in July 2004 as a lead-in to a marathon of the original sitcom, and it ran to seven episodes.

ALF claims that his species has eight of which organ?

Stomachs: ALF claims to have eight of them in the season two episode 'Something's Wrong With Me', which goes some way to explaining his bottomless appetite.

Which 1960s sitcom's real stars appear when ALF dreams himself into the reruns he can't stop watching?

Gilligan's Island: Bob Denver, Alan Hale Jr., Russell Johnson and Dawn Wells play the castaways, who turn out bored and bickering after 23 years and hooked on a TV show about the Tanners.

ALF drinks a beer in the pilot, so why did the writers soon drop the habit?

NBC worried about young viewers once the sitcom caught on with children; Fusco argued that an alien over 200 was old enough to drink, but the habit was written out around the end of season one.

What is the name of the baby born to Kate and Willie in season three?

The baby is Eric Tanner, born in season three; the pregnancy was written into the show because the actress playing Kate was expecting in real life.

Where does ALF move after first sleeping in the Tanners' laundry room?

ALF moves into the attic, which he and Willie convert into a makeshift apartment so the alien has a room of his own away from the family.

Which actress played Kate's mother Dorothy, ALF's closest thing to an enemy on the show?

Anne Meara, half of the comedy duo Stiller and Meara, played Kate's mother Dorothy, who later marries Whizzer Deaver, played by Paul Dooley.

Who played Willie's younger brother Neal, who moves in with the Tanners in season four?

Jim J. Bullock played Neal Tanner, who stays with the family after his marriage ends, then gets his own apartment and a job as the building's handyman.

What is the name of the blind woman ALF befriends, who never learns he is an alien?

Jody is a lonely blind woman ALF first hears calling a radio talk show in the season one episode 'For Your Eyes Only', and she becomes a rare friend of his outside the Tanner family.

Which producer, Jim Henson's longtime manager, was at first uninterested in Fusco's puppet?

Bernie Brillstein managed Jim Henson and wanted no rival puppet around, but watching Fusco perform as ALF changed his mind, and he became an executive producer of the sitcom.

Which 2-foot-9 actor wore the full-body ALF costume for walking and running shots?

Michu Meszaros, billed by the Ringling Bros. circus as 'the smallest man in the world', wore the suit in only a handful of episodes; in nearly every other scene ALF was Fusco's puppet.

On ALF's raised set, what had to be reset, sometimes mid-scene, so the puppet could cross a room?

Trap doors in the floor: Fusco worked ALF from beneath a set raised four feet, so the doors were opened and closed again whenever the puppet changed position, sometimes in the middle of a scene.

In which city's suburbs does the Tanner family live?

Los Angeles: the Tanners live in the San Fernando Valley and keep ALF indoors because the military's Alien Task Force hunts extraterrestrials and would take him away.

What was the nickname of the crude stand-in puppet that spared the real ALF?

RALF was the crew's name for a tattered rehearsal puppet, the R explained as Rehearsal or, by some of them, Repulsive; it took the wear and tear so the camera-ready ALF stayed fresh.

ALF's ratings peaked in season two, tying for tenth place with which brand-new show?

The Wonder Years tied ALF for tenth in the 1987-88 Nielsen rankings, the puppet sitcom's peak; two seasons later NBC moved ALF to Saturdays, its ratings sank, and it was cancelled.

Which cliffhanger episode unexpectedly became the last ALF ever aired on NBC?

'Consider Me Gone' ends with ALF seized by the military; Fusco had planned a fifth season with him as a Bilko-style schemer on the base, but NBC cancelled the sitcom and the ending hung for six years.

Which network finally resolved the cliffhanger with the 1996 TV movie Project: ALF?

ABC stepped in after NBC never delivered the wrap-up movie it had promised Paul Fusco, and the 1996 film used his unmade fifth-season idea of ALF held on a military base.

In Project: ALF, where have the Tanners moved, explaining their absence from the film?

Iceland is where an Air Force officer says the government has resettled the Tanners under witness protection; none of the actors who played the family appears in the film.

Which actor co-starred in Project: ALF as an Air Force officer?

Martin Sheen played the Air Force colonel who wants ALF destroyed; Paul Fusco voiced the alien and co-wrote the television movie.

In the animated prequel series, what is the name of ALF's girlfriend?

Rhonda escaped her planet's destruction aboard his friend Skip's ship, and in the live-action finale the two radio ALF to say they have bought a new planet and want him to join them.

The second animated spin-off recast the cartoon characters as figures from what kind of stories?

Fairy tales were spoofed rather than retold straight: ALF Tales ran the cartoon's cast like a theatre troupe through stories such as Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, bending each one for laughs.

Who served as ALF's sidekick and announcer on the 2004 cable series ALF's Hit Talk Show?

Ed McMahon, Johnny Carson's longtime Tonight Show announcer, opened the show by parodying his own famous call: 'And now... Heeeere's ALF!'

Which fast-food chain gave away ALF puppets and cardboard records in 1988?

Burger King's 1988 promotion gave away ALF hand puppets and cardboard records of original songs performed by ALF, including 'Take Me, ALF, to the Ballgame'.

Which toy company made the ALF plush doll sold in the late 1980s?

Coleco bet on the sitcom early, paying for a billboard on Sunset Boulevard to promote the show so that its plush ALF would have a hit to sell.

Who voiced ALF for the German broadcast and even hit the German pop charts?

Tommi Piper's distinctive dubbing voice gets much of the credit for making ALF a hit in Germany, and a 1989 single he sang in character spent twelve weeks on the German chart.

ALF turned up in a sitcom-parody dream sequence in a 2016 episode of which tech-world series?

Mr. Robot opens a 2016 episode inside a laugh-tracked family sitcom that Elliot retreats into after a beating, where ALF turns up and runs down a policeman with a car.

In the original cut of 'Try to Remember', what does ALF take into the bathtub to make a Jacuzzi?

An electric mixer: the shock gave ALF amnesia, but after word that children were copying him the opening was reshot with a hand-cranked egg beater and a knock on the head instead.

Which NBC programming chief green-lit ALF, then left for Paramount before its promised wrap-up movie was made?

Brandon Tartikoff, the executive behind NBC's 1980s revival, had promised Fusco a wrap-up movie, but he left to run Paramount Pictures and his successor Warren Littlefield never honoured the promise.

After his sitcom ended, ALF returned to television as a commercial pitchman for what?

The 10-10-220 phone service, a cut-price way to dial long distance, put ALF in its commercials alongside pitchmen such as Terry Bradshaw and Hulk Hogan, years after his sitcom had ended.

What hobby of Willie's accidentally drew ALF's spaceship to the Tanner house?

Amateur radio is Willie's pastime: in the pilot he is at his shortwave set when it picks up ALF's ship, which promptly comes crashing through the roof.

Which sitting president does ALF reach by shortwave radio in season one, landing Willie in jail?

Ronald Reagan was in the White House when ALF began in 1986, and in 'Pennsylvania 6-5000' ALF radios Air Force One to tell him to ease up on the arms race; the call is taken as a threat and Willie is jailed.

In which ALF episode does the Tanners' cat pass away?

Live and Let Die opens with the family cat found dead; ALF then gathers a houseful of free kittens for a feast, only to go soft on them, and the Tanners keep one.

Which comic-book publisher ran an ALF series for 50 issues starting in 1988?

Marvel Comics kept ALF going for 50 issues, from 1988 to early 1992, so the comic outlived the sitcom that inspired it by almost two years.