50 Fun Facts About Gargoyles

In Disney's Gargoyles, a wizard's curse keeps the clan asleep as statues until Castle Wyvern does what?

Rises above the clouds sounded impossible in 994, but a billionaire met the condition a thousand years later by rebuilding the castle on top of a Manhattan skyscraper.

Which actor, later Disney's Dr. Facilier in The Princess and the Frog, voiced Goliath in Gargoyles?

Keith David has named Goliath one of his three favorite voice roles, alongside Spawn and the villain Dr. Facilier.

Which actor, famous as Commander Riker, voiced scheming billionaire David Xanatos in Gargoyles?

Jonathan Frakes inspired the role as well as voicing it: Xanatos was modeled on his Riker. Fans later named a trope after the character, for a plan in which every outcome is a win.

What job does Elisa Maza, the first human friend of the awakened clan in Gargoyles, hold in New York?

Police detective Elisa Maza finds the clan while investigating a battle at the castle, and by the end of season two she and Goliath are a couple.

Which Star Wars villain's head sits among the gargoyles and carved monsters of Washington National Cathedral?

Darth Vader got there through a 1980s children's design contest, in which a boy's drawing of him placed third. He sits so high that binoculars are needed to spot him.

On a Gothic cathedral such as Notre-Dame, what practical job is a true gargoyle carved to do?

To spout rainwater off the roof, a trough is cut along the creature's back and the flow leaves through its open mouth. The longer the neck, the farther from the wall it lands.

Which Shakespearean king is bound to Demona in Gargoyles by a spell that only one killing the other can end?

Macbeth here is based on the real historical ruler as well as the stage one. In the 1990s he hides behind the alias Lennox Macduff, borrowed from two characters in the play.

Which horror filmmaker pitched Disney his own Gargoyles film in 2018, only for the studio not to pick it up?

Jordan Peele made his pitch in June 2018. Disney had toyed with a Gargoyles film since the show first aired, at one point hiring Rick Baker to create concept art.

Which real-life news event, broadcast live through 1995, drew viewers away from the second season of Gargoyles?

The O. J. Simpson trial often knocked the show off the air entirely. By the time it ended, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers had grown into the stronger brand.

Which Rocky Horror Picture Show star voiced the gleefully mad geneticist Anton Sevarius in Gargoyles?

Tim Curry played him as a hammy send-up of the mad scientist, a hired gun whose experiments create the winged Mutates and a whole clan of clones.

Which Lou Grant star, later Carl in Pixar's Up, voiced the elder gargoyle Hudson in Gargoyles?

Ed Asner played the clan's former leader, who chose his own name from the river after Elisa explained that almost everything in the modern world has one.

Which actress, best known as Counselor Deanna Troi, voiced the vengeful gargoyle Demona in Gargoyles?

Marina Sirtis also voiced the yuppie Margot Yale, one of the unlucky New Yorkers who keep running into the clan.

Which trickster is revealed to be the true form of Owen Burnett, the stiff personal assistant in Gargoyles?

Puck took the dull disguise for the novelty of playing the straight man. He offered his boss a choice of immortality or a lifetime of service, and Xanatos chose the service.

Which gargoyle accidentally shoots Elisa Maza with her own gun in the Gargoyles episode Deadly Force?

Broadway had just watched a western and was playing with the weapon. The guilt leaves him with a lasting dislike of guns.

Which New York borough gives its name to the dog-like gargoyle beast kept by the clan in Gargoyles?

The Bronx lends its name to the clan's four-legged companion, whose growls were performed by Frank Welker. He also supplied the sounds of the gargoyle beast Boudicca.

Which gargoyle, who joins the clan midway through season two of Gargoyles, is the daughter of Goliath and Demona?

Angela hatched from one of the rescued castle eggs and was raised by humans, far from her parents. That upbringing leaves her much quicker to trust people than her mother is.

On which legendary island are the rescued Castle Wyvern eggs hatched and raised in Gargoyles?

Avalon belongs to the fairy lord Oberon, who had exiled his own subjects from it for a thousand years. That left the island free for a princess, a wizard and a clutch of eggs.

Which sleeping hero of legend does Elisa Maza wake in Gargoyles to help defeat the sorcerer known as the Archmage?

King Arthur wakes with no sword, no wizard and no knights, yet still wins a duel against an immortal swordsman. He then sets off to explore the modern world on his own.

Which team of TV action heroes, secretly mercenaries assembled by David Xanatos, stalks the clan in Gargoyles?

The Pack starred in a hit show of their own before turning to real hunts. Most of the members later had themselves rebuilt with cybernetic or genetic upgrades.

In Gargoyles, Demona names the clan's clones after places in which city, spoofing the heroes' New York names?

Los Angeles supplies Malibu, Brentwood, Hollywood and Burbank, four doubles artificially aged into their twenties to give them a physical edge.

What is the proper name for a carved cathedral monster that is purely decorative, unlike a working gargoyle?

A grotesque is what most of the famous brooding figures on Notre-Dame in Paris really are. They are not medieval either: they date from a 19th-century restoration.

A gargoyle added to Scotland's Paisley Abbey in the 1990s resembles the monster from which science-fiction film?

Alien got its stone tribute when an Edinburgh stonemason replaced twelve crumbling gargoyles during a restoration. A photo of the carving went viral in 2013.

The 1972 TV horror film Gargoyles won an Emmy for the first screen make-up by which future effects legend?

Stan Winston shared the 1973 Emmy for the film's creature make-up, then went on to the Terminator films and the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park.

Gargoyles the Movie: The Heroes Awaken, a 1995 home video, was edited together from which episodes?

The five-part pilot, a story called Awakening, was trimmed to about 92 minutes for the tape. That meant cutting scenes, reordering others and changing some dialogue.

Which network aired the third and final season of Gargoyles on Saturday mornings, after two seasons in syndication?

ABC retitled the show The Goliath Chronicles, cut the order to thirteen episodes and held it to stricter broadcast standards. The season was produced with Canada's Nelvana.

Which producer, later behind Young Justice and The Spectacular Spider-Man, calls himself a co-creator of Gargoyles?

Greg Weisman first pitched the show as a comedy before it turned dark. Since 1997 he has answered fans' questions about it online, and he keeps a timeline hundreds of pages long.

Gargoyles' first-season writers Michael Reaves and Brynne Chandler Reaves had just written for which superhero cartoon?

Batman: The Animated Series had won Michael Reaves an Emmy, and the pair brought its darker tone with them, writing twelve of the first thirteen Gargoyles episodes.

Which Disney crossover video game series considered, then scrapped, a world based on Gargoyles?

Kingdom Hearts never got its Manhattan rooftops. The clan did reach other games: Goliath and Demona are playable in the mobile title Disney Heroes: Battle Mode.

Which Gargoyles villain is a clone of Goliath, grown in a lab and schooled to think like David Xanatos?

Thailog is nearly the hero's name spelled backwards. He fakes his own kidnapping, pockets the 20 million dollar ransom and stages his death to escape his makers.

Which cyborg gargoyle, voiced by Michael Dorn, do Demona and David Xanatos raise from the dead in Gargoyles?

Coldstone was built by mixing science and sorcery, from the shattered remains of three gargoyles smashed in the Viking raid. All three minds wake up inside the one body.

Which former TV action star and mercenary marries billionaire David Xanatos in the second season of Gargoyles?

Fox was born Janine Renard, and renard is simply the French word for the animal. Her father runs Cyberbiotics, the great rival of her husband's company.

Which magical artifact carries Goliath back to the Battle of Britain in the Gargoyles episode M.I.A.?

The Phoenix Gate can drop its user anywhere in time. Goliath finally hurls it away with no one to guide it, which later sends Brooklyn on a forty-year journey through history.

Which landmark is home to the clan in Gargoyles until the Hunters destroy it in the season two finale Hunter's Moon?

A clock tower was their refuge after they left the castle. Once it is destroyed, Xanatos ends the old feud and lets the clan return to their ancestral home.

What name does David Xanatos give the robots he builds in the likeness of Goliath in Gargoyles?

The Steel Clan were built to replace the living gargoyles and ended up as a private army. Xanatos even wears a battle suit modeled on them.

Elisa Maza's brother Derek is mutated in Gargoyles into which panther-like leader of the winged Mutates?

Talon and his fellow Mutates carry the genes of big cats, bats and electric eels, so they can fly and throw electricity. They settle underground, guarding New York's homeless.

Elisa Maza of Gargoyles has a Nigerian American mother and a father descended from which Native American people?

Hopi roots take the story to Arizona, where Elisa's father Peter, a retired New York officer, meets the trickster Coyote wearing his own younger face.

Which metal is the one fatal weakness of Oberon's Children, the shapeshifting Third Race in Gargoyles?

Iron harms them even from nearby. Their ruler also forbids them to meddle in human affairs, though the craftier ones learn that the law can be bent without being broken.

Which secret society does conspiracy-minded cop Matt Bluestone chase, and eventually join, in Gargoyles?

The Illuminati are so impressed by his persistence that they make him a member. His old FBI partner turns out to have belonged all along, with orders to steer him off the trail.

What skill does author Jeffrey Robbins, a Vietnam veteran, teach the elder gargoyle Hudson in Gargoyles?

Reading opens up for Hudson when he befriends the novelist, who goes on to write a book of his own called The Sword and the Staff.

On its original 1995 release, which console was the only home of the Gargoyles platform game starring Goliath?

Sega Genesis owners got it alone, and only in North America: a Super NES version planned for Christmas 1995 was cancelled. A remaster for modern consoles followed in 2023.

Which Viking leader smashes most of the sleeping Castle Wyvern clan in the opening story of Gargoyles?

Hakon dies in a fall soon after, but his ghost haunts the ruins for a thousand years, and his bloodline survives in the mercenary Wolf.

What does hapless Vinnie finally fire from his huge bazooka into Goliath's face in the Gargoyles episode Vendettas?

A banana cream pie is his whole revenge for a string of bad luck he blames on the clan. The gag salutes an earlier Disney cartoon comedy that one of the producers had worked on.

The Mayan Clan of Gargoyles, whose magic amulets spare them from stone sleep, guards a rainforest in which country?

Guatemala's four surviving gargoyles are named for gemstones in Spanish: Zafiro, Jade, Turquesa and Obsidiana. Each wears a matching amulet tied to a Mayan sun talisman.

Which rebooted Disney cartoon paid tribute to Gargoyles in its finale by turning a headless man-horse to stone?

DuckTales scored the scene with a snatch of the Gargoyles theme and gave the creature the voice of the actor who had played Goliath.

In French legend, Saint Romanus rid which city of the dragon La Gargouille, whose head ended up on the cathedral?

Rouen's dragon would not burn at the head and neck, the tale says, so those were mounted on the church to ward off evil. The city's archbishops later held the right to free a prisoner on the saint's procession day.

Which architect's 19th-century restoration gave Notre-Dame de Paris its famous chimeras and new gargoyles?

Eugène Viollet-le-Duc set up a workshop where sculptors carved the new monsters from his drawings. On the rebuilt spire, the statue of Saint Thomas was given a face much like his own.

Which toy company released the 1995 Gargoyles action figures, a line of 22 with two vehicles and a castle playset?

Kenner sold them amid a merchandise wave that also brought a Parker Brothers card game. Strong toy sales helped persuade Disney to order 52 more episodes.

Which animal does Lexington of Gargoyles glide like, thanks to wings unlike those of his clan mates?

A flying squirrel is the model for the smallest of the clan, whose wings are membranes rather than separate limbs. He is also the group's gadget expert.

Gargoyles in ancient Egyptian architecture, and on many Greek temples, usually took the form of which animal's head?

A lion was the standard design in ancient Egypt, and Greek temples repeated it in marble and terracotta. Medieval carvers made it their most common animal too.

The word gargoyle comes from an Old French word, sharing a root with gargle, that meant what?

Throat is the meaning of gargouille, a word that imitates a gurgling sound. Spanish kept the same root in garganta, its everyday word for the same thing.