49 Fun Facts About Corpse Bride

Who voices Victor Van Dort in Corpse Bride?

Johnny Depp. Burton sprang the first recording session on him with almost no warning, and Depp, who admitted he arrived 'ill prepared', had about fifteen minutes to work out how Victor should sound.

Who voices Emily, the Corpse Bride?

Helena Bonham Carter. Burton, her partner at the time, first offered her Victoria; she asked for the title role instead, and he made her audition for it, the only cast member who had to.

In Corpse Bride, who voices Victoria Everglot, Victor's living fiancee?

Emily Watson. She never shared a studio with her leading man: the two recorded alone in separate booths, so the shy courtship of Victor and Victoria was stitched together from solo sessions.

Who shares the directing credit on Corpse Bride with Tim Burton?

Mike Johnson. Burton was busy shooting another film across town, so Johnson ran the puppet stages day to day, saying his job was to get each shot as close as he could to what Burton wanted.

In Corpse Bride, what trade made Victor's social-climbing parents rich?

Fish merchants. The Van Dorts have money but no standing, and the snobbish Everglots have a title but are secretly broke, so each family needs the wedding for what the other has.

In Corpse Bride, how does Victor accidentally marry Emily?

Reciting vows at her grave. Alone in the woods he finally gets them word-perfect and slips the ring onto a root that is really her bony finger, so she rises to accept.

In Corpse Bride, what does Victor set on fire during the wedding rehearsal?

Lady Everglot's dress. The pastor calls off the wedding until Victor learns his vows, and practising alone he glumly gets as far as 'With this candle, I will set your mother on fire.'

In Corpse Bride, which long-dead pet dog is Victor reunited with in the Land of the Dead?

Scraps. Emily presents the skeleton dog to Victor as a wedding present, and he still knows his tricks, though Victor has to apologise after telling him to play dead.

In Corpse Bride, whose spell returns Victor to the living?

Elder Gutknecht. The rickety old skeleton asks why anyone would go up 'when people are dying to get down here', then digs out a Ukrainian haunting spell, 'just the thing for these quick trips'.

In Corpse Bride, who turns out to be Emily's murderer?

Lord Barkis Bittern. Years earlier he arranged to elope with Emily, then killed her for the jewels and gold she brought, and he has come back to marry Victoria for her money too.

In Corpse Bride, who voices the newcomer courting Victoria?

Richard E. Grant. His silky lord turns up uninvited at the rehearsal and, with the groom missing, persuades Victoria's parents to hand her over, though he turns out to be as broke as they are.

In Corpse Bride, which poison must Victor drink if he is to marry Emily for good?

The Wine of Ages. Wedding vows bind only until death parts the couple, so to marry a dead bride Victor must say his above ground and then stop his own heart; Emily halts him before he drinks.

What does Emily turn into at the end of Corpse Bride?

A swarm of butterflies. Refusing to steal another bride's dreams as hers were stolen, she gives Victor back his ring, steps into the moonlight and dissolves, free at last.

Which horror legend voices the bad-tempered Pastor Galswells in Corpse Bride?

Christopher Lee. When the dead march on his church the pastor bars the door, thundering 'Back to the void from whence you came!', only for a skeleton to tell him to keep it down, they're in a church.

Who voices Bonejangles, the one-eyed skeleton who leads the band in Corpse Bride?

Danny Elfman. The film's composer wrote the skeleton's showstopper as a salute to 1930s jazz, which he called his favourite musical era, then stepped up to the microphone and sang it himself.

Which Absolutely Fabulous star voices Corpse Bride's Lady Everglot?

Joanna Lumley. She gets to sing as well: the film opens with the hard-up Everglots and the pushy Van Dorts trading verses about the wedding that each family is counting on.

Which comedian voices both Victor's mother Nell Van Dort and the maid Hildegarde in Corpse Bride?

Tracey Ullman. Her Nell gets one of the driest lines: when the town crier announces that Victor has eloped with a corpse, she scoffs, 'What corpse would marry our Victor?'

In Corpse Bride, what kind of creature lives inside Emily's head as her wisecracking conscience?

A maggot. He shoves her eyeball out of its socket whenever he has advice to give, in a wheedling voice that reviewers recognised as an impression of the old horror star Peter Lorre.

In Corpse Bride, what do the dead call the Land of the Living?

Upstairs. The dead say it almost with a shudder, yet when Emily finally goes back up she stops to admire the night sky, saying she had almost forgotten how beautiful moonlight is.

The story behind Corpse Bride is traced to an old tale from which tradition?

Jewish folklore. Though publicity called it a Russian folk tale, the story of a groom who weds a dead bride by mistake appears among old legends of Rabbi Isaac Luria, retold by Howard Schwartz as 'The Finger'.

Corpse Bride is dedicated to which Pixar story artist?

Joe Ranft. The voice of Heimlich the caterpillar in A Bug's Life was an executive producer on the film, and he was killed in a car crash in August 2005, a month before it reached cinemas.

Which live-action Burton film was made at the same time as Corpse Bride?

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Burton shot it on the other side of town, so he kept approval of every storyboard and scene on the puppet film while a co-director ran its stages day to day.

What kind of camera was Corpse Bride shot with, unlike The Nightmare Before Christmas?

Canon digital SLR still cameras. Fitted with Nikon lenses, the off-the-shelf cameras let animators look at a shot the day they made it and refine it at once, which film had never allowed.

Corpse Bride was animated on the stages of 3 Mills Studios, in which city?

London. Burton came back to the same East End stages to shoot Frankenweenie, and the complex has since become a regular home for stop-motion features.

Which animation company co-produced Corpse Bride with Tim Burton Productions?

Laika. The Oregon studio had been Will Vinton's claymation shop until Nike co-founder Phil Knight took control of it, and it was renamed in 2005, just before Corpse Bride came out.

Which studio distributed Corpse Bride?

Warner Bros. The studio took a late gamble on the film, agreeing to a complete change of cameras only two weeks before shooting, when the first set were already loaded and tested.

Deep Roy, the voice of Corpse Bride's tiny skeleton general, played every one of which characters for Tim Burton?

The Oompa-Loompas. Rather than have one take copied by computer, he performed each of the factory workers separately; his Corpse Bride general is a pint-sized Napoleon with a sword still stuck in his chest.

How did Corpse Bride's animators change the expressions on the faces of the lead puppets?

Gears inside the heads. A tiny key slipped through a puppet's ear turned watch-like clockwork that could lift one corner of a smile, sparing animators the boxes of swap-in heads used on earlier films.

Corpse Bride's leading man likened its lively Land of the Dead to which city in the 1920s?

Paris. 'Flappers and craziness' was how he put it, adding that he would love to fall asleep one day and wake up there, though he allowed the afterlife might turn out to be just dirt and worms.

Which film beat Corpse Bride to the Best Animated Feature Oscar?

The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Wallace and Gromit's win capped an odd year for the category: both it and Corpse Bride were stop-motion and the third nominee was hand-drawn, so no computer-animated film was even shortlisted.

Corpse Bride's puppet makers first worked for Tim Burton on which film, before it dropped stop-motion for computer effects?

Mars Attacks! Mackinnon and Saunders had been developing its Martians as puppets when the production switched to computer animation, so Corpse Bride finally put the workshop's creations on screen for Burton.

In Corpse Bride, which instrument does Victor play, charming first Victoria and later Emily?

Piano. Victoria's mother forbids her to touch one, calling music too passionate for a young lady, so his playing wins her over at once, and a duet at the keyboard later makes his peace with Emily.

In Corpse Bride, which song does Bonejangles perform to tell Emily's backstory?

'Remains of the Day'. The skeleton band swings through it like a Cab Calloway revue, and it carries the plot: it is how Victor learns that his new bride was murdered on the night she eloped.

Which Big Fish screenwriter shares the Corpse Bride writing credit with Caroline Thompson and Pamela Pettler?

John August. He turned lyricist on the film as well, supplying extra words for its songs alongside the composer who wrote them.

Besides The Nightmare Before Christmas, which stop-motion film did Tim Burton produce before co-directing Corpse Bride?

James and the Giant Peach. Burton produced the 1996 Roald Dahl adaptation, and its cameraman and several of its animators came back nine years later to make Corpse Bride with him.

In Corpse Bride, what does Victor promise to do 'with this candle'?

Light your way in darkness. The promises run hand, cup, candle, ring, and they return at the end, when Emily falters halfway through them in the church and calls the wedding off, unwilling to take another bride's groom.

Who directed The Nightmare Before Christmas, the film Corpse Bride is most often compared with?

Henry Selick. He and Tim Burton had met as young animators at Disney, and when Burton's story finally went into production Burton was tied up directing Batman Returns, so he produced and Selick directed.

In Corpse Bride, what excuse does Victor give Emily for a trip to the Land of the Living?

Meeting his parents. Emily is delighted and asks where they are buried, only to be told that they are still alive; Victor really wants to slip away to Victoria, and later says sorry for the lie.

Michael Gough, the voice of Corpse Bride's oldest skeleton, played which character in four Batman films?

Alfred Pennyworth. Burton first cast him as the butler in 1989, and he stayed in the part while three different actors played Batman; Burton went on using him, in the end as a voice in his animated films.

Frankenweenie, the stop-motion film Tim Burton directed after Corpse Bride, was shot in what style?

Black and white. Burton was remaking his own 1984 live-action short about a boy who shocks his dead dog back to life, itself in monochrome, and he brought much of the Corpse Bride crew back to do it.

In Corpse Bride, how does the Land of the Living look beside the Land of the Dead?

Grey and drab. The filmmakers drained the living world of colour and saved the bright hues, the jazz and most of the jokes for the underworld, a running gag about which side is really alive.

Corpse Bride's composer first found fame as the frontman of which band?

Oingo Boingo. Burton hired its singer as a film composer in 1985, and for the next ten years he did both jobs, scoring Burton's films while fronting the band until its farewell show on Halloween 1995.

Tim Burton traced his love of the undead to which California suburb?

Burbank. Promoting Corpse Bride, he said the town's bright suburban streets felt like 'Night of the Living Dead' in the daytime; he was born there in 1958 and later worked as an animator at Disney.

What was Burton's directorial debut?

He had earlier apprenticed as an animator at Disney.

In Corpse Bride, which of Victor's family servants dies and brings news of Victoria's wedding?

Mayhew the coachman. His hacking cough finally finishes him off at the reins, and he turns up below announcing that he feels great, with word that Victoria is about to be married to somebody else.

In Corpse Bride, what stops the panic when the dead march into town?

Villagers recognise dead relatives. A small boy greets his skeleton grandpa, couples fall into each other's arms, and one long-dead husband answers his wife's scolding with 'Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn'.

Corpse Bride won the Annie Awards' Ub Iwerks Award, a juried prize for what?

Technical advancement. The prize is named for the animator who first drew Mickey Mouse and then became Disney's resident technical wizard, and the jury gave it to the film itself rather than to any one person.

Critics said the village in Corpse Bride looked like the drawings of which macabre illustrator?

Edward Gorey. Variety wrote that the village 'suggests an Edward Gorey illustration come to life'; the spindly look began as Burton's own loose sketches, which designer Carlos Grangel worked up into puppets.

Which stop-motion pioneer visited the Corpse Bride set, bringing work to a halt as the animators rushed to meet him?

Ray Harryhausen. Burton called the man behind the sword-fighting skeletons of Jason and the Argonauts the reason he loves the medium, and the film's own skeleton dance was made as a salute to that scene.