ALF Trivia
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47 free ALF trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
50 free ALF trivia questions with answers. ALF was the furry alien who ate the 1980s alive: four seasons on NBC, a Saturday-morning cartoon, a Marvel comic, a Burger King record deal and $250 million in merchandise in a single year. This quiz covers all of it. Fifty questions run from the basics (his real name, his home planet, the cat he keeps trying to eat) through the Tanner family and their neighbours, the miserable trapdoor set that Max Wright fled without a goodbye, the censored bathtub scene, the cliffhanger that NBC never resolved, and the 1996 movie Project: ALF that finally did. Easy questions ask where ALF crash-landed and what the acronym stands for; the hard ones want his birth year, how many stomachs he claims, which Muppet inspired his voice and which German pop singer dubbed him. It's built for anyone who grew up with a Coleco ALF doll on the bed. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the series, the character, the spin-offs and the cast, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
30 of 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is ALF's real name back on his home planet?
Gordon Shumway
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.
Q 02What does the acronym ALF stand for?
Alien Life Form
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.
Q 03ALF crash-lands into which part of the Tanner family's property?
The garage
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.
Q 04What is the name of the Tanner family cat that ALF keeps trying to eat?
Lucky
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.
Q 05What is Willie Tanner's job?
Social worker
Willie Tanner is a social worker, a kind but perpetually overwhelmed head of the household whose attempts at order ALF wrecks for four seasons.
Q 06Puppeteer Paul Fusco co-created ALF with which writer-producer?
Tom Patchett
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.
Q 07Which actor played Willie Tanner and later admitted he was 'hugely eager to have it over with'?
Max Wright
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'.
Q 08Who played Kate Tanner, the mother of the household?
Anne Schedeen
Anne Schedeen later called the hit sitcom's set 'a technical nightmare', saying a 30-minute show took 20 to 25 hours to shoot.
Q 09Which actress played teenage daughter Lynn Tanner?
Andrea Elson
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.
Q 10Who played Brian Tanner, the young son who becomes ALF's sidekick?
Benji Gregory
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.
Q 11What is the surname of the Tanners' nosy neighbours, Trevor and Raquel?
Ochmonek
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.
Q 12What is the name of ALF's home planet?
Melmac
ALF's home planet is Melmac; the 1987 cartoon ALF: The Animated Series is a prequel set there, before the planet was destroyed.
Q 13In the show's usual telling, what destroyed ALF's home planet?
Nuclear war
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.
Q 21Which actress played Kate's mother Dorothy, ALF's closest thing to an enemy on the show?
Anne Meara
Anne Meara, half of the comedy duo Stiller and Meara, played Kate's mother Dorothy, who later marries Whizzer Deaver, played by Paul Dooley.
Q 22Who played Willie's younger brother Neal, who moves in with the Tanners in season four?
Jim J. Bullock
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.
Q 23What is the name of the blind woman ALF befriends, who never learns he is an alien?
Jody
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.
Q 14ALF survived the destruction of his planet because he was away serving in what?
The Orbit Guard
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.
Q 15Which cable channel aired ALF's Hit Talk Show in 2004?
TV Land
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.
Q 16ALF claims that his species has eight of which organ?
Stomachs
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.
Q 17Which 1960s sitcom's real stars appear when ALF dreams himself into the reruns he can't stop watching?
Gilligan's Island
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.
Q 18ALF drinks a beer in the pilot, so why did the writers soon drop the habit?
NBC worried about young viewers
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.
Q 19What is the name of the baby born to Kate and Willie in season three?
Eric
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.
Q 20Where does ALF move after first sleeping in the Tanners' laundry room?
The attic
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.
Q 24Which producer, Jim Henson's longtime manager, was at first uninterested in Fusco's puppet?
Bernie Brillstein
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.
Q 25Which 2-foot-9 actor wore the full-body ALF costume for walking and running shots?
Michu Meszaros
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.
Q 26On ALF's raised set, what had to be reset, sometimes mid-scene, so the puppet could cross a room?
Trap doors in the floor
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.
Q 27In which city's suburbs does the Tanner family live?
Los Angeles
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.
Q 28What was the nickname of the crude stand-in puppet that spared the real ALF?
RALF
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.
Q 29ALF's ratings peaked in season two, tying for tenth place with which brand-new show?
The Wonder Years
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.
Q 30Which cliffhanger episode unexpectedly became the last ALF ever aired on NBC?
Consider Me Gone
'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.