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 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is ALF's real name back on his home planet?
Gordon Shumway
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.
Q 02The name ALF is an acronym. What does it stand for?
Alien Life Form
Willie coins the nickname because he has no idea what else to call the creature that has just crashed into his home.
Q 03ALF crash-lands into which part of the Tanner family's property?
The garage
He followed a shortwave signal from the house to Earth, and spends the rest of the series hiding from the Alien Task Force.
Q 04What is the name of the Tanner family cat that ALF keeps trying to eat?
Lucky
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.
Q 05What is Willie Tanner's job?
Social worker
Willie is the kind but perpetually overwhelmed head of the household, and ALF spends four seasons wrecking his attempts at order.
Q 06Puppeteer Paul Fusco co-created ALF with which writer-producer?
Tom Patchett
Patchett also wrote and directed episodes, and his other credits include The Great Muppet Caper and The Muppets Take Manhattan.
Q 07Which actor played Willie Tanner and later admitted he was 'hugely eager to have ALF over with'?
Max Wright
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.
Q 08Who played Kate Tanner, the mother of the household?
Anne Schedeen
Schedeen later described the set as a technical nightmare where a 30-minute show could take 20 to 25 hours to shoot.
Q 09Which actress played teenage daughter Lynn Tanner?
Andrea Elson
Elson had previously starred in the CBS series Whiz Kids and later married the show's stage manager, Scott Hopper.
Q 10Who played Brian Tanner, the young son who becomes ALF's sidekick?
Benji Gregory
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.
Q 11What is the surname of the Tanners' nosy neighbours, Trevor and Raquel?
Ochmonek
Their nephew Jake later moves in with them and becomes one of the few outsiders who knows about ALF.
Q 12What is the name of ALF's home planet?
Melmac
The 1980s animated prequel was set entirely there, before the planet blew up.
Q 13How was ALF's home planet destroyed?
Nuclear war
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?
Q 21Which actress played Kate's mother Dorothy, ALF's closest thing to an enemy on the show?
Anne Meara
Dorothy marries jazz musician Whizzer Deaver, played by Paul Dooley, in season two.
Q 22Who played Willie's younger brother Neal, who moves in after his wife leaves him?
Jim J. Bullock
Neal ends up in his own apartment working as the building's handyman, and is often even more baffled by ALF than Willie is.
Q 23What is the name of the blind woman ALF befriends, who never learns he is an alien?
Jody
Through touch she knows only that her new pal is short and hairy.
The Orbit Guard
In the animated prequel, his girlfriend and his two best pals are members of the same outfit.
Q 15In a season one episode ALF gives his age, which later episodes stick to. How old is he?
227
Paul Fusco once defended the alien drinking beer in the pilot by declaring him 285 years old, but the on-screen figure settled lower.
Q 16In the season two episode 'Something's Wrong With Me', how many stomachs does ALF claim to have?
Eight
He adds that they make up roughly 80 percent of his species' primary organs.
Q 17In what year was ALF born, according to the show's lore?
1756
That makes him about 230 by the time he lands in suburban California, and older than the United States.
Q 18In 'Wild Thing', ALF says his species undergoes a cat-craving transformation how often?
Every 75 years
The change gave him flawless voice imitation and enough strength to steal a tiger from the zoo.
Q 19What is the name of the baby born to Kate and Willie in season three?
Eric
The pregnancy was written in because the actress playing Kate was expecting in real life.
Q 20ALF starts out sleeping in the laundry room. Where does he later move?
The attic
He and Willie convert the space into a makeshift 'apartment'.
Q 24Which producer, Jim Henson's longtime manager, was at first uninterested in Fusco's puppet?
Bernie Brillstein
Fusco's brief performance won him over, and he formed Alien Productions with Fusco and Patchett.
Q 25Which 2-foot-9 actor wore the full-body ALF costume for walking and running shots?
Michu Meszaros
The Hungarian-born circus performer had been billed as 'the smallest man in the world' with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey.
Q 26Why was the full-body ALF costume dropped after the first season?
It was too costly and time-consuming
The costume was uncomfortable and the actor inside had no lines, so upper-body puppet shots took over entirely.
Q 27The ALF set was built on a raised platform full of trap doors. How high off the ground was it?
Four feet
Fusco worked ALF from underneath, and the unoccupied holes made the stage genuinely treacherous for the human cast.
Q 28Fusco initially based ALF's voice on which Muppet before it strained his vocal cords?
Rowlf the Dog
The gruff early take can still be heard in the first few episodes before the lighter voice took over.
Q 29What was the nickname of the crude stand-in puppet used in rehearsals to spare the real ALF?
RALF
Fusco disliked rehearsing so much that he often just used his bare hand instead.
Q 30ALF peaked in season two. What was its best Nielsen ranking?
10th
It held steady at 15th in season three before collapsing to 39th in the final year.