50 Fun Facts About ALF

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

Willie Tanner hands out the ALF nickname in the pilot; the alien had been going by his birth name for a couple of centuries before that.

The name ALF is an acronym. What does it stand for?

Willie coins the nickname because he has no idea what else to call the creature that has just crashed into his home.

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

He followed a shortwave signal from the house to Earth, and spends the rest of the series hiding from the Alien Task Force.

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

ALF eventually comes to respect the cat, and when he later adopts a new one to eat, he ends up letting the Tanners keep it.

What is Willie Tanner's job?

Willie is the kind but perpetually overwhelmed head of the household, and ALF spends four seasons wrecking his attempts at order.

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

Patchett also wrote and directed episodes, and his other credits include The Great Muppet Caper and The Muppets Take Manhattan.

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

Wright disliked playing second fiddle to a puppet that got the best lines, though he later conceded that the show brought people a lot of joy.

Who played Kate Tanner, the mother of the household?

Schedeen later described the set as a technical nightmare where a 30-minute show could take 20 to 25 hours to shoot.

Which actress played teenage daughter Lynn Tanner?

Elson had previously starred in the CBS series Whiz Kids and later married the show's stage manager, Scott Hopper.

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

Gregory left acting after voicing a mole in Once Upon a Forest and later served in the U.S. Navy as an aerographer's mate.

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

Their nephew Jake later moves in with them and becomes one of the few outsiders who knows about ALF.

What is the name of ALF's home planet?

The 1980s animated prequel was set entirely there, before the planet blew up.

How was ALF's home planet destroyed?

The fear that Earth could go the same way drives ALF to try to phone the President in the season one episode 'Pennsylvania 6-5000'.

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

In the animated prequel, his girlfriend and his two best pals are members of the same outfit.

In a season one episode ALF gives his age, which later episodes stick to. How old is he?

Paul Fusco once defended the alien drinking beer in the pilot by declaring him 285 years old, but the on-screen figure settled lower.

In the season two episode 'Something's Wrong With Me', how many stomachs does ALF claim to have?

He adds that they make up roughly 80 percent of his species' primary organs.

In what year was ALF born, according to the show's lore?

That makes him about 230 by the time he lands in suburban California, and older than the United States.

In 'Wild Thing', ALF says his species undergoes a cat-craving transformation how often?

The change gave him flawless voice imitation and enough strength to steal a tiger from the zoo.

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

The pregnancy was written in because the actress playing Kate was expecting in real life.

ALF starts out sleeping in the laundry room. Where does he later move?

He and Willie convert the space into a makeshift 'apartment'.

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

Dorothy marries jazz musician Whizzer Deaver, played by Paul Dooley, in season two.

Who played Willie's younger brother Neal, who moves in after his wife leaves him?

Neal ends up in his own apartment working as the building's handyman, and is often even more baffled by ALF than Willie is.

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

Through touch she knows only that her new pal is short and hairy.

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

Fusco's brief performance won him over, and he formed Alien Productions with Fusco and Patchett.

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

The Hungarian-born circus performer had been billed as 'the smallest man in the world' with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey.

Why was the full-body ALF costume dropped after the first season?

The costume was uncomfortable and the actor inside had no lines, so upper-body puppet shots took over entirely.

The ALF set was built on a raised platform full of trap doors. How high off the ground was it?

Fusco worked ALF from underneath, and the unoccupied holes made the stage genuinely treacherous for the human cast.

Fusco initially based ALF's voice on which Muppet before it strained his vocal cords?

The gruff early take can still be heard in the first few episodes before the lighter voice took over.

What was the nickname of the crude stand-in puppet used in rehearsals to spare the real ALF?

Fusco disliked rehearsing so much that he often just used his bare hand instead.

ALF peaked in season two. What was its best Nielsen ranking?

It held steady at 15th in season three before collapsing to 39th in the final year.

What is the title of the cliffhanger episode that unexpectedly became the series finale?

NBC had given a verbal commitment for a fifth season, then withdrew it, leaving ALF captured by the Alien Task Force for six years.

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

It aired on February 17, 1996, and was also intended as a backdoor pilot for a new series that never happened.

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

They are said to be in the Witness Protection Program, and their absence is often blamed for the movie's poor reception.

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

Only two performers from the sitcom appeared in the movie, and Fusco also co-wrote and co-executive produced it.

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

She is secretly an accomplished pilot, and the live-action show has a season one episode named after her.

In ALF: The Animated Series, the Shumway family lives in which suburb?

Dad Bob works at a mayonnaise factory, and the family pets are a dog-like vespa named Neep and a bird-like Harry.

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

The 'Cinderella' episode was staged like an Elvis Presley film.

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

The TV Land show lasted seven episodes and is regularly listed among the worst talk shows in history.

Which fast-food chain ran the 1988 'Many Faces of ALF' promotion, with puppets and cardboard records?

The records featured original songs performed by ALF, including 'Melmac Rock' and 'Take Me, ALF, to the Ballgame'.

Which toy company made the 22-inch ALF plush doll that sold $85 million worth in 1987?

Total ALF merchandise sales that year topped $250 million.

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

He recorded two albums and four singles as ALF between 1988 and 1991, including a duet with Rhonda's German voice.

ALF appeared in a sitcom-parody dream sequence in season two of which hacker drama?

The episode 'eps2.4 m4ster-s1ave.aes' spent most of its running time as a fake 1980s-style sitcom.

What replaced the bathtub electric mixer in the re-edited ALF episode 'Try to Remember'?

ALF's amnesia was rewritten as a bump on the head from slipping in the shower, and the censored cut is the only version aired ever since.

Which NBC executive later told Fusco that cancelling ALF had been 'a big mistake'?

Tartikoff had commissioned the show in the first place after Fusco and Patchett pitched it to him.

In the early 2000s ALF became the 'spokesalien' for what?

The commercials teamed him with Terry Bradshaw, Hulk Hogan, Mike Piazza, Emmitt Smith and Toby Keith.

Which U.S. president told Fusco that ALF was his favourite show at a 1987 White House Christmas party?

ALF had been invited to the party by First Lady Nancy Reagan.

What hobby of Willie's produced the signal that drew ALF to Earth?

Willie's other pastime is collecting scale model train sets.

In what year did ALF premiere on NBC?

It ran four seasons, ending in March 1990 with a cliffhanger.

In which season four episode does the Tanners' cat die?

ALF, who once tried to eat the cat, accepts the loss with unexpected grace, and the family gets a successor.

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

Published under the Star Comics banner, it once had ALF lift the Tanner house off its foundations with Hulk-level strength.