Cartoon Trivia
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196 free Cartoon trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
10 free Cartoon trivia questions with answers. Cartoon trivia lives in two places on BrainPickle. This page is the shorter set; the main quiz is Cartoon trivia, with our deepest question pool on the topic and a source behind every answer.
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Q 01What is Homer Simpson's iconic catchphrase?
D'oh!
The script simply called for an 'annoyed grunt'; Dan Castellaneta supplied the sound, and 'd'oh' entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 2001.
Q 02What is the Scooby-Doo gang's brightly painted van called?
The Mystery Machine
The Mystery Machine came second-hand: a later series reveals that the flower-painted van first belonged to a family pop group, the Mystery Kids, whose keyboard player decorated it before quitting the band.
Q 03What is Bugs Bunny's famous line, often delivered while chewing a carrot?
What's up, Doc?
What's up, Doc? was everyday slang in Tex Avery's native Texas, so he thought little of the line when he gave it to Bugs in A Wild Hare; cinema audiences loved it, and it became the rabbit's standard greeting.
Q 04In the animated series, what kind of dwelling does SpongeBob SquarePants live in?
A pineapple
A pineapple from the surface world is SpongeBob's home: the special Truth or Square shows how he found it after it dropped off a passing ship, and he shares it with his pet snail Gary.
Q 05In the Tom and Jerry cartoons, the bulldog who flattens Tom is a doting father to which pup?
Tyke
Tyke arrived in 1949 and changed the act: his father had begun in 1942 as a nameless bulldog who attacked cat and mouse alike, but his devotion to the pup gave Jerry a new weapon against Tom.
Q 06Mickey Mouse officially debuted in which 1928 short, the first of his cartoons released with synchronized sound?
Steamboat Willie
Plane Crazy had only a test screening and The Gallopin' Gaucho was still unreleased when Steamboat Willie, with synchronized sound, gave Mickey his official 1928 debut.
Q 07What is the name of Popeye the Sailor's longtime girlfriend?
Olive Oyl
Olive Oyl had starred in E. C. Segar's newspaper strip for nine years before Popeye turned up in 1929; she soon dropped her long-time boyfriend Ham Gravy for the sailor.
Q 08Which actor provides the voice for the ogre Shrek in the popular animated film series?
Mike Myers
Chris Farley had recorded most of the part before his death; DreamWorks re-cast Mike Myers in 1998, and he insisted on a full script rewrite so no trace of Farley's version remained.
Q 09Which studio's first feature film was 1995's "Toy Story"?
Pixar Animation Studios
Pixar Animation Studios cashed in at once: a week after Toy Story opened in November 1995 it floated on the stock market, in the biggest share offering of the year, outdoing even Netscape's.
Q 10Which bow-wearing, polka-dotted character debuted alongside Mickey in 1928?
Minnie Mouse
Minnie Mouse's squeaks and giggles in the earliest sound shorts came from Walt Disney himself and other studio staff, until Marcellite Garner of the ink-and-paint department took over the part.
Q 11Mickey Mouse was created to replace which earlier Disney character, lost in a contract dispute?
Oswald the Lucky Rabbit
Oswald the Lucky Rabbit was Disney's hit until 1928, when producer Charles Mintz lured away most of his animators and Disney found that the distributor, not he, owned the character; Mickey was his reply.
Q 12According to Disney lore, what was Mickey Mouse almost called before Walt's wife Lillian suggested 'Mickey'?
Mortimer
Mortimer was used after all: the 1936 short Mickey's Rival gave the name to a slick newcomer who tries to win Minnie away from Mickey.
Q 13Which Oscar-winning 1941 Mickey Mouse short has Pluto rescue a kitten he has grown jealous of?
Lend a Paw
Q 21What was the 1980s educational comic by Stephen Hillenburg that seeded SpongeBob called?
The Intertidal Zone
The Intertidal Zone was a tide-pool comic Stephen Hillenburg drew for the marine institute where he taught; its host, Bob the Sponge, became SpongeBob after a writer on Rocko's Modern Life urged him to pitch a series.
Q 22Which instrument does SpongeBob's neighbour Squidward Tentacles play?
Clarinet
Clarinet recitals are Squidward's pride and his neighbours' torment; despite his name he is an octopus, drawn with six limbs because Stephen Hillenburg found eight too awkward to animate.
Q 23The Flintstones was the first animated sitcom to air in what slot?
Prime time
Lend a Paw gives Pluto a shoulder angel and devil who argue over the kitten Mickey has adopted; the angel wins by flattening the devil, and Pluto hauls the kitten out of a well in the bucket.
Q 14In 1978 Mickey Mouse became the first cartoon character to receive what honour?
A star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
A star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame marked Mickey's 50th anniversary in 1978; the only fictional names there before him had been laid when the Walk opened in 1960, among them the screen dog Lassie.
Q 15Which Looney Tunes character's rallying cry is '¡Ándale! ¡Ándale! ¡Arriba! ¡Arriba!'?
Speedy Gonzales
Speedy Gonzales first appeared in 1953 as a scrawny mouse with a gold tooth; Friz Freleng and Hawley Pratt redesigned him, sombrero and all, for the 1955 short that made him a star.
Q 16Mel Blanc called Bugs Bunny's voice a blend of the Bronx and which other borough?
Brooklyn
Brooklyn and the Bronx gave Bugs his street-smart voice, by Mel Blanc's account; director Tex Avery remembered it differently, saying he had only asked for the sound of the actor Frank McHugh.
Q 17In Tom and Jerry's 1940 debut short Puss Gets the Boot, Tom was called by what name?
Jasper
Jasper was the cat's name in Puss Gets the Boot, and the mouse went unnamed on screen, though the studio called him Jinx; both were renamed when the short's success led to a series.
Q 18The Simpsons began as shorts on which variety programme in April 1987?
The Tracey Ullman Show
The Tracey Ullman Show had wanted Matt Groening's comic strip Life in Hell; unwilling to sign away its rights, he sketched a new family in the producer's lobby and named them after his own.
Q 19Scooby-Doo's name is said to come from the scat syllables Frank Sinatra sings at the end of which hit?
Strangers in the Night
Strangers in the Night fades out on Sinatra's 'doo-be-doo-be-doo'; by the writers' account, network executive Fred Silverman heard it on an overnight flight and renamed the show's dog, until then called Too Much.
Q 20Scooby-Doo, the cowardly mascot of a gang of teenage sleuths, is what breed of dog?
Great Dane
A Great Dane, but a deliberately bad one: designer Iwao Takamoto asked a breeder what made a prize-winning dog, then gave Scooby the opposite, with bowed legs, a double chin and a sloping back.
Prime time drew adult viewers too: The Flintstones was at first sponsored by Winston cigarettes, and the characters themselves appeared in the adverts.
Q 24Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble belong to which lodge?
Water Buffaloes
The Water Buffaloes, in full the Loyal Order of Water Buffaloes, began the series as the Loyal Order of Dinosaurs; the lodge and its Grand Poobah spoof real fraternal orders such as the Moose.
Q 25The Looney Tunes title was inspired by which rival studio's cartoon series?
Disney's Silly Symphonies
Disney's Silly Symphonies set the pattern, and the 'Tunes' was meant literally: Warner Bros. launched the cartoons to plug songs from the music publishers and record label it had just bought.
Q 26Popeye first appeared on January 17, 1929, in which comic strip?
Thimble Theatre
Thimble Theatre had run for nine years when E. C. Segar brought Popeye in as a minor character; readers took to the sailor so strongly that he displaced the original leads, and the strip was eventually renamed after him.
Q 27Which friend of Popeye promises, 'I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today'?
Wimpy
Wimpy never does pay: the diner's owner explains that he simply never comes round on a Tuesday, and since the 1930s the moocher has had a hamburger chain named after him.
Q 28When Betty Boop was redrawn from a poodle into a woman, what did her long, floppy ears become?
Hoop earrings
Hoop earrings: Betty Boop began in 1930's Dizzy Dishes as a nameless dog, girlfriend to the studio's canine star Bimbo, and her black button nose was redrawn as a girl's when she turned human.
Q 29Betty Boop was toned down in the mid-1930s because of what?
The Hays Code
Enforcement of the Hays Code from 1934 forced Fleischer to lengthen Betty Boop's skirt and tame her flirtatious manner; singer Helen Kane's 1932 lawsuit over the 'boop-oop-a-doop' style failed.
Q 30A spinning Felix the Cat doll was the 1928 test image for which new technology?
Television
Television had an early test star in a Felix doll turning on a record-player turntable: it could sit unharmed for hours under the fierce heat of the studio lights while RCA's engineers tuned the picture.