50 Fun Facts About Wallace & Gromit: the Curse of the Were-Rabbit

Which pungent real-life cheese does Gromit use to revive Wallace at the end of The Curse of the Were-Rabbit?

Stinking Bishop saw demand rise by 500 percent after the film, far more than its small Gloucestershire maker could supply; he vowed not to sell the business.

What sight in the night sky turns Wallace into the giant Were-Rabbit in the Wallace & Gromit feature film?

A full moon triggers the change, a werewolf-film rule borrowed for a monster that only menaces vegetable patches.

In The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, the bullets Victor Quartermaine obtains to slay the beast are made of which metal?

Gold replaces the silver bullets of werewolf legend, one of many jokes in a film built as a parody of classic monster movies.

Sales of which cheese, Wallace's favourite, rose by 23 per cent when The Curse of the Were-Rabbit reached cinemas?

Wensleydale had come close to vanishing in the 1990s, when sales fell so low that production in the dale itself was nearly suspended.

Which Academy Award did The Curse of the Were-Rabbit win in 2006, the first stop-motion film to take it?

Best Animated Feature had only ever gone to computer-animated or hand-drawn films; Nick Park's three earlier Oscars were all for shorts.

Which actor voices Victor Quartermaine, the trophy-hunting villain of The Curse of the Were-Rabbit?

Ralph Fiennes was hailed by The Times as inspired casting in his first fully comedic role, playing a gun-toting hunter.

Which actress voices Lady Tottington, the vegetable-loving aristocrat of The Curse of the Were-Rabbit?

Helena Bonham Carter earned an Annie Award nomination for the part, and The Times wrote that she steals the film.

Which Last of the Summer Wine actor voices both Wallace and a rabbit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit?

Peter Sallis had his voice digitally sped up to play the rabbit, and won an Annie Award for his performance as Wallace.

What is the name of the humane pest-control business Wallace and Gromit run in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit?

Anti-Pesto protects the town's prize vegetables ahead of the annual competition, and the firm carried on in a monthly comic after the film.

What disaster hit Aardman's Bristol warehouse days after The Curse of the Were-Rabbit opened in American cinemas?

A fire blamed on an electrical fault destroyed more than 30 years of props, models and sets, though the finished films were stored elsewhere.

In The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, what name is given to the rabbit that starts behaving like Wallace?

Hutch is the first suspect for the monster, and nearly everything he says is a line Wallace has already spoken.

Which giant vegetable does Gromit grow to enter in the Tottington Hall competition in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit?

A marrow is Gromit's pride and joy, yet he gives it up as bait to lure the monster away from danger, and it ends up squashed.

What is the name of Victor Quartermaine's vicious but cowardly hunting dog in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit?

Philip resembles a bull terrier and is too scared to face the monster, so he goes after Gromit instead.

What does the villain Victor Quartermaine wear to cover his bald head in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit?

A toupee tops off Victor, a cruel upper-class bounder whose surname recalls the big-game hunter Allan Quatermain.

Why is Victor Quartermaine really courting Lady Tottington in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit?

For her fortune: once exposed, Victor drops the act and admits he never cared for her and wanted Wallace out of the way.

Which villager is the first to see the monster in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, and later arms the hunter?

The vicar, Reverend Clement Hedges, keeps a whole cupboard of weapons for slaying supernatural beasts; his name is never spoken in the film.

Which Phoenix Nights comedian voices PC Mackintosh, the village policeman, in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit?

Peter Kay returned to the part almost twenty years later, by which time Mackintosh had risen to chief inspector.

Who co-directed The Curse of the Were-Rabbit with Wallace & Gromit creator Nick Park?

Steve Box had animated on two earlier Wallace & Gromit shorts, and directed the Spice Girls' Viva Forever video in 1998.

Which Hollywood studio co-produced The Curse of the Were-Rabbit with Aardman, then split from it in 2007?

DreamWorks sent Nick Park notes he found stressful, including one asking for a cooler, more modern car for Wallace; he refused, saying the old-fashioned look was the point.

Which Tim Burton stop-motion film lost to The Curse of the Were-Rabbit at the 78th Academy Awards?

Corpse Bride and Howl's Moving Castle were the only other nominees, so two of the three films in the running were stop-motion.

Which BAFTA did The Curse of the Were-Rabbit win in 2006, ahead of four live-action nominees?

Best British Film went to the animated comedy over The Constant Gardener and Pride & Prejudice, both of them nominated that night.

Which composer, who scored every earlier Wallace & Gromit short, wrote the music for The Curse of the Were-Rabbit?

Julian Nott won an Annie Award for the score, and is also the composer behind Peppa Pig.

Which Hollywood film composer served as producer of the score for The Curse of the Were-Rabbit?

Hans Zimmer produced the score, with additional music from four colleagues including Lorne Balfe and Rupert Gregson-Williams.

A co-writer of The Curse of the Were-Rabbit co-created the robot dog K9 for which long-running television series?

Doctor Who gained K9 in The Invisible Enemy; the robot dog was meant for a single story, but the BBC made him a recurring character.

What was the Wallace & Gromit feature's subtitle before market research prompted The Curse of the Were-Rabbit?

The Great Vegetable Plot was first announced with a November 2004 release date, before both the title and the schedule changed.

In which city, far from its northern English setting, did The Curse of the Were-Rabbit have its world premiere?

Sydney hosted the premiere on 4 September 2005, a month before the film reached cinemas in the United States and Britain.

Penguins from which animated franchise starred in the short film shown with The Curse of the Were-Rabbit in cinemas?

Madagascar's penguins got a 12-minute Christmas spin-off in which the youngest, Private, slips out of the zoo to find a gift for a lonely polar bear.

Which prison-break comedy was Aardman's first feature film, released five years before The Curse of the Were-Rabbit?

Chicken Run was co-directed by Nick Park and Peter Lord, who drew their inspiration from prison escape films such as The Great Escape.

Wallace's battered van in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit is an A35 model from which classic British carmaker?

Austin's A35 was chosen, Nick Park said, because it is such an unlikely heroic car: the film's ironic take on the Batmobile.

Lady Tottington's first name in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Campanula, is the scientific name of which flower?

Bellflower is the common name: campanula is Latin for little bell, after the shape of the blooms.

Victor Quartermaine of The Curse of the Were-Rabbit echoes Allan Quatermain, the hunter hero of which adventure novel?

King Solomon's Mines, H. Rider Haggard's 1885 adventure, introduced Quatermain as a professional big-game hunter with unmatched marksmanship.

Gromit's graduation photo in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit shows a university whose name puns on which fictional school?

Hogwarts becomes Dogwarts, where Gromit earned a double first in Engineering for Dogs.

Gromit, the silent hero of The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, is officially which breed of dog?

Beagle is the breed, though Nick Park's earliest sketches made Gromit a cat before he decided a dog would be easier to animate.

At the end of The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, what does Lady Tottington turn the grounds of her estate into?

A nature reserve gives every captured rabbit a home, so the town's pest problem ends without a single bunny being harmed.

Where do Wallace and Gromit keep the rabbits they capture in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit?

In their basement: the business is humane, so every rabbit caught ends up living beneath 62 West Wallaby Street.

In The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Gromit and Victor's dog duel in the air using planes taken from what?

A fairground ride supplies the planes, and Gromit later uses his to deflect the shot Victor aims at Wallace.

Why does Wallace wire himself up to the Mind Manipulation-O-Matic as well in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit?

To lose weight, Wallace hoped to pick up a taste for vegetables while putting the rabbits off them; instead his brain fused with a rabbit's.

The directors of The Curse of the Were-Rabbit often described it as the world's first horror film of what kind?

Vegetarian was their word for it: the monster in this parody of classic creature features attacks nothing but garden produce.

The A–Z street atlas seen on Wallace's van in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit covers which northern English town?

Wigan also appears on a letter addressed to 62 West Wallaby Street in The Wrong Trousers, though Wallace's accent is from West Yorkshire.

Which modelling material are Wallace, Gromit and the cast of The Curse of the Were-Rabbit sculpted from?

Plasticine models are nudged a fraction at a time and shot frame by frame, with an animator typically finishing about 30 frames a day.

The Curse of the Were-Rabbit was the last film from its Hollywood co-producer to be released on which format?

VHS copies went on sale in February 2006 alongside a two-disc DVD that included the Cracking Contraptions shorts.

Which 2024 film was the next feature-length Wallace & Gromit adventure after The Curse of the Were-Rabbit?

Vengeance Most Fowl brought back Feathers McGraw, the penguin villain of The Wrong Trousers, who hijacks a robotic garden gnome.

After pest control in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, which trade do Wallace and Gromit take up in their next film?

Baking is the business in A Matter of Loaf and Death, the 2008 short in which Wallace falls for a serial killer of bakers.

Which Oscar-winning short was the last Wallace & Gromit film before The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, a decade later?

A Close Shave introduced Shaun the Sheep in 1995; the feature that followed was the fourth film in the series and the first of full length.

Which actor, heard as a minor villager in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, later became the voice of Wallace?

Ben Whitehead voiced Mr Leaching in the film, then worked as Wallace's voice double before taking over the role for good.

Geraldine McEwan, a voice in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, was then playing which Agatha Christie sleuth on TV?

Miss Marple was McEwan's role from 2004 to 2009; her fretful villager Miss Thripp returned in A Matter of Loaf and Death.

When his bullets run out in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, what does Victor Quartermaine load into his gun instead?

The contest trophy becomes his last shot; after the chaos it is presented to Gromit, for his bravery as well as his vegetable.

What did effects artists add to the computer-animated bunnies in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit to match the clay ones?

Fingerprints and other imperfections were added by MPC, which studied the sets for three months and supplied more than 700 effects.

Liz Smith, who voices Mrs Mulch in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, played Nana in which British sitcom?

The Royle Family cast Liz Smith as Nana from 1998; in the year of the film she also played Grandma Georgina in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Nicholas Smith, a voice in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, played Mr Rumbold in which long-running British sitcom?

Are You Being Served? cast Smith as the store manager from its 1972 pilot; his performance in the film brought him an Annie nomination.