50 free Atlantis: the Lost Empire trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Atlantis: The Lost Empire is the Disney film that swapped songs for explosions. Made by the Hunchback of Notre Dame team in 2001, it sends linguist Milo Thatch, a crew of mercenaries and a submarine called the Ulysses after the sunken city, with a look borrowed from Hellboy artist Mike Mignola, a language built by Klingon creator Marc Okrand and a cast that includes Michael J. Fox, James Garner and Leonard Nimoy. It opened against Shrek and Tomb Raider, missed at the box office, and has since been reappraised as a cult classic. This quiz covers the plot, the crew of the Ulysses, the Shepherd's Journal, the Heart of Atlantis and the crystal that merges with Kida, plus the production lore: the Mexican-restaurant lunch where it was conceived, Edgar Cayce's mother-crystal, the crew T-shirts, the scrapped Viking prologue, the 18,000-inch pull-out shot, the champagne-flute sound design, the Nadia plagiarism row and the Team Atlantis series and theme-park rides that never happened. Fifty questions, four options each, with a short explanation after every answer. Play on your phone or print it for a movie night.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In what year was Atlantis: The Lost Empire released?
2001
It opened against Shrek, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and The Fast and the Furious.
Q 02Which directing duo, fresh off The Hunchback of Notre Dame, made the film?
Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise
They had also directed Beauty and the Beast.
Q 03Who voices linguist Milo Thatch?
Michael J. Fox
Fox let his son pick between this and Titan A.E.; the boy chose Atlantis.
Q 04Who voices Commander Lyle Tiberius Rourke?
James Garner
Asked if he wanted the role, he said he'd do it in a heartbeat.
Q 05Who voices Princess Kida?
Cree Summer
Her animator found her so intimidating in person that it shaped how Kida meets Milo.
Q 06Which Star Trek actor voices King Kashekim Nedakh?
Leonard Nimoy
His animator said the crew would sit and watch him record in astonishment.
Q 07Who was first cast as Preston B. Whitmore but died before finishing the film?
Lloyd Bridges
John Mahoney took over, and the millionaire's personality was reworked around his zest.
Q 08The film is dedicated to which voice actor, who died in February 2000?
Jim Varney
He voiced the chuckwagon cook Cookie; Steven Barr recorded supplemental lines.
Q 09In which year is the film set?
1914
The team studied museums and old army installations to get the early-20th-century tech right.
Q 10What is the name of the ancient manuscript that guides the expedition?
The Shepherd's Journal
Writer Tab Murphy invented it because the characters needed a map to follow.
Q 11What is the name of the expedition's submarine?
Ulysses
Greg Aronowitz built a scale model of it as a reference for the 3D version.
Q 12What destroys the submarine at the cave entrance?
A mechanical leviathan
It was one of several sequences that leaned heavily on CGI.
Q 13Roughly how old is Princess Kida despite looking like a young woman?
8,500 years
The Atlanteans' crystals grant longevity and health.
Q 14What skill does Milo have that the Atlanteans themselves have lost?
Q 21What is the profession of Gaetan 'Mole' Molière?
Geologist
A story artist turned him from a professor into a burrowing creature with extending eyeballs.
Q 22Which 19th-century author's adventure novels inspired the film?
Jules Verne
The team wanted to explore Atlantis fully rather than the brief visit in his novel.
Q 23Which comic book artist's style shaped the film's look?
Mike Mignola
He was surprised to be called, and later noticed the characters had his big square hands.
The linguist hired to invent Atlantean had previously created which language?
Reading their written language
Kida asks him to help recover their forgotten history and technology.
Q 15What is the massive crystal that powers the city called?
The Heart of Atlantis
Its chiming sound was made by rubbing a finger along a champagne flute.
Q 16Why did the King say Atlantis was devastated thousands of years earlier?
He tried to weaponize the crystal
The crystal merged with Kida's mother to shield the city as it sank.
Q 17Who did the crystal merge with during the sinking, thousands of years earlier?
The princess's mother
She never returned; the King hid the crystal to stop the same fate befalling Kida.
Q 18Where does Milo work as a linguist and cartographer at the start of the film?
The Smithsonian
Board member Fenton Q. Harcourt dismisses his belief in Atlantis.
Q 19Dr. Joshua Sweet is of African-American and which other heritage?
Arapaho
Phil Morris's rapid delivery was a challenge for his animator to keep in sync.
Q 20Which expedition member is the youngest, a Puerto Rican mechanic?
Audrey Ramirez
Jacqueline Obradors said the role made her feel like a little kid again.
Klingon
He used an Indo-European word stock and changed words that sounded too much like real ones.
Q 25Who devised the Atlantean language?
Marc Okrand
Milo's animator reportedly sketched him as a model for how a linguist looks.
Q 26Written Atlantean alternates direction each line to imitate the flow of what?
Water
The style is called boustrophedon, and the letter A doubles as a map of the city.
Q 27Which writer was first attached to the film but left, saying he had 'not a shred' in it?
Joss Whedon
Tab Murphy completed the screenplay in three to four months.
Q 28Milo was originally written as a descendant of which historical figure?
Blackbeard the pirate
The directors switched him to an explorer's grandson so he could find his own talent for it.
Q 29The scrapped original prologue followed which group to their doom?
A Viking war party
It survives as a DVD extra; the replacement shows the destruction of Atlantis itself.
Q 30What did the crew's T-shirts promise about the film?
Fewer songs, more explosions
Unlike previous Disney features, it was planned as an action-adventure with no songs.