Laika Studios Trivia
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49 free Laika Studios trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Laika started as Will Vinton Studios, the Oregon house behind the California Raisins, until Nike co-founder Phil Knight bought it and renamed it in 2005 after the first dog in space. Since then the Hillsboro studio has made exactly one kind of film: painstaking stop-motion features, from Coraline's 3D-printed faces in 2009 to the $100 million Missing Link and the long-gestating Wildwood. These 49 questions cover the studio's history and the Knight family, then walk film by film through Coraline, ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls, Kubo and the Two Strings, Missing Link and Wildwood: directors, voice casts, source novels, technical firsts, awards and box office. Easy questions cover the films everyone has seen; the hard end asks about cancelled projects, 3D-printing partners and Travis Knight's rap career. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, with a one-line explanation attached. Play it solo or print it for an animation-fan quiz night.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Laika's owner, Phil Knight, made his fortune as co-founder of which company?
Nike
Nike's Phil Knight invested in an animation house in 1998, his son Travis went to work there as an animator, and Knight later took control of it and renamed it Laika.
Q 02In which US state is the Laika studio based?
Oregon
Oregon is home because Laika grew out of a local animation house; its films are shot in Hillsboro, where Coraline took a team three years to make.
Q 03What role did Travis Knight, the owner's son, take at Laika after Coraline's release?
President and CEO
President and CEO, yet he kept his hands on the puppets: Travis Knight stayed a lead animator on ParaNorman and The Boxtrolls while running the studio.
Q 04Laika is named after what?
The first dog to orbit Earth
The first dog to orbit Earth was a stray taken off the streets; she flew on Sputnik 2 in 1957 on a one-way trip, because no means of bringing her home had been built.
Q 05Which company was rebranded as Laika in 2005?
Will Vinton Studios
Will Vinton Studios made the singing California Raisins; founder Will Vinton, who trademarked the word Claymation, was pushed out after investor Phil Knight took control.
Q 06Who directed Coraline, Laika's first feature film?
Henry Selick
Henry Selick had already directed The Nightmare Before Christmas, a film so tied to the producer who dreamed it up that its full title begins "Tim Burton's".
Q 07In Coraline, what do the Other Mother and Other Father have in place of eyes?
Buttons
Buttons are the price of staying: the Other Mother will let Coraline live in her brighter world for good only if she lets a pair be sewn over her own eyes.
Q 08Which cancelled CGI project caused Laika's 2008 layoffs?
Jack & Ben's Animated Adventure
Jack & Ben's Animated Adventure was meant to be Laika's second film; shelving it in December 2008 cost 65 people their jobs, weeks before Coraline opened.
Q 09Why is the boy raised by the Boxtrolls called Eggs?
It is written on his box
It is written on his box: Eggs wears the box like a bulky sweater and grows up convinced that he is a Boxtroll himself.
Q 10Which author wrote the novella behind Coraline, Laika's first feature?
Neil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman began the story in 1990 for his five-year-old daughter Holly and took so long that he finished it, about a decade later, for her little sister Maddy.
Q 11Who voices Coraline Jones?
Dakota Fanning
Dakota Fanning voices Coraline, and her younger sister Elle later followed her to Laika as Winnie, the mayor's daughter in The Boxtrolls.
Q 12Who voices the Other Mother, also called the Beldam, in Coraline?
Teri Hatcher
Teri Hatcher, then starring in Desperate Housewives, also voices Coraline's distracted real mother, so the Other Mother's welcome arrives in a voice the girl already trusts.
Q 13Which band wrote and sang the Other Father's song in Coraline?
They Might Be Giants
They Might Be Giants wrote more songs for the film, but this was the only one kept; band member John Linnell sings it in place of the Other Father's actor.
Q 21Who voices the villainous exterminator Archibald Snatcher in The Boxtrolls?
Ben Kingsley
Ben Kingsley's Snatcher hunts the harmless Boxtrolls for one reason: the town has promised him a white hat, and with it a seat among the elite.
Q 22Which Game of Thrones actor voices Eggs in The Boxtrolls?
Isaac Hempstead Wright
Isaac Hempstead Wright played Bran Stark, and Laika went back to the same screen family for its next film: Art Parkinson, the show's Rickon, is the voice of Kubo.
Q 23Which British comedy duo both lend their voices to The Boxtrolls?
Simon Pegg and Nick Frost
Q 14What did Coraline pioneer in stop-motion puppet making?
3D-printed replacement faces
3D-printed replacement faces gave each puppet a library of swappable expressions; one film later, on ParaNorman, the studio was printing them in full colour.
Q 15In ParaNorman, who do the zombies that rise from their graves turn out to be?
The people who condemned the witch
The people who condemned the witch were a judge and six townsfolk, and she was Aggie, a girl of about Norman's age; the seven rise not to attack the town but to see her curse ended.
Q 16What unusual ability makes Norman an outcast in ParaNorman?
He can talk to the dead
He can talk to the dead, among them his own grandmother, who keeps him company at home while almost nobody in town believes a word of it.
Q 17Who voices Norman in ParaNorman?
Kodi Smit-McPhee
Kodi Smit-McPhee voices Norman, the bullied misfit who turns out to be the one person able to save the town that laughs at him.
Q 18Which Pitch Perfect star voices Norman's cheerleader sister Courtney in ParaNorman?
Anna Kendrick
Anna Kendrick's Courtney starts out mortified by her little brother and ends up standing beside him against an angry mob.
Q 19Which novel is The Boxtrolls based on?
Here Be Monsters!
Here Be Monsters! runs to some 550 pages of assorted creatures; the film kept only the box-wearing trolls after a faithful first script proved fun but hollow.
Q 20In which fictional hilltop city is The Boxtrolls set?
Cheesebridge
Cheesebridge worships cheese: its aristocrats flaunt white hats and tasting parties, which is why the town's exterminator will do anything to earn a hat of his own.
Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are on opposite sides here: Frost is one of the exterminator's uneasy henchmen, while Pegg voices the hero's long-lost inventor father.
Q 24Which Beatles song, sung by Regina Spektor, closes Kubo and the Two Strings?
While My Guitar Gently Weeps
While My Guitar Gently Weeps is George Harrison's song; Regina Spektor recorded this version for a film whose hero works his magic by plucking strings.
Q 25Kubo and the Two Strings is set in which country?
Feudal Japan
Feudal Japan shaped every frame: the designers wanted the whole film to look and feel like a moving woodblock print in the old ukiyo-e style.
Q 26What instrument does Kubo play to bring origami to life?
Shamisen
Shamisen, not the magic armour he spends the film collecting, wins the final battle: Kubo defeats the Moon King by playing it.
Q 27Who voices Monkey in Kubo and the Two Strings?
Charlize Theron
Charlize Theron's Monkey starts the film as a small wooden charm that Kubo carries everywhere, then wakes as his sternly protective guardian.
Q 28Who voices Beetle in Kubo and the Two Strings?
Matthew McConaughey
Matthew McConaughey's Beetle, a forgetful half-man, half-insect warrior, is there to lighten a story that puts its young hero in mortal danger from the first scene.
Q 29Who voices the Moon King in Kubo and the Two Strings?
Ralph Fiennes
Ralph Fiennes voices the Moon King, who is no stranger to the hero: he is Kubo's own grandfather, hunting the boy with the help of Kubo's twin aunts.
Q 30Kubo was only the second animated film nominated for which Oscar?
Best Visual Effects
Best Visual Effects had last seen an animated nominee in The Nightmare Before Christmas; Kubo's handmade puppets lost to the computer-generated animals of The Jungle Book.