Phil Hartman
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
50 free Phil Hartman trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Phil Hartman spent eight seasons on Saturday Night Live playing presidents, pitchmen, cavemen and crooners, and the rest of the cast leaned on him so heavily that they gave him a nickname for it. Few performers have disappeared into so many characters. This quiz starts with his Saturday Night Live characters and impressions: the recurring sketches, the fake commercials and the political send-ups. It then moves on to his cartoon voices on The Simpsons, his sitcom years on NewsRadio, his film roles and the design career he had before comedy. It is written for fans who can still do the voices and for anyone who mostly remembers the face. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will leave with a few stories worth retelling.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which president did Phil Hartman play eating strangers' food at a McDonald's on Saturday Night Live?
Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton became his best-known impression, built on a wig, brightened eyebrows and a scratchy voice. When the two met in 1993, Hartman joked that he owed the president a few apologies.
Q 02Which washed-up Simpsons actor, voiced by Phil Hartman, hosts cheap infomercials and dubious educational films?
Troy McClure
Troy McClure was Hartman's favourite part, and he used the voice to entertain the studio audience between takes of his own sitcom.
Q 03Which shady attorney did Phil Hartman voice from the Simpsons episode Bart Gets Hit by a Car onward?
Lionel Hutz
Lionel Hutz was meant to be a one-off, but Hartman enjoyed the job so much that the staff kept inventing parts for him, and he ended up in 52 episodes.
Q 04Which Tim Burton comedy about a hunt for a stolen bicycle did Phil Hartman help to script?
Pee-wee's Big Adventure
Pee-wee's Big Adventure was Burton's first feature as a director, and its success changed Hartman's mind about giving up acting at 36.
Q 05What bronzed object did the Saturday Night Live cast and crew give Phil Hartman before his final show?
A stick of glue
A stick of glue stood for his backstage nickname, the Glue, earned by holding sketches together and playing support in five or six parts a night.
Q 06Which Futurama character was written for Phil Hartman, who auditioned for the part a week before his death?
Zapp Brannigan
Zapp Brannigan was his for the asking, yet Hartman insisted on trying out anyway, and creator Matt Groening wrote that the audition blew the producers away.
Q 07Which future president did Phil Hartman become the first to play on Saturday Night Live, back in 1988?
Donald Trump
Donald Trump was then a New York property developer, and Hartman played him five times by 1990, usually beside a castmate as his wife Ivana.
Q 08In which country was Phil Hartman born, before his family moved to the United States when he was ten?
Canada
Canada was home for his first ten years: he was born in Brantford, Ontario, the fourth of eight children, and his family lived in Maine and Connecticut before settling in Los Angeles.
Q 09What profession did Phil Hartman's thawed-out caveman Keyrock take up on Saturday Night Live?
Lawyer
Lawyer was the joke: Keyrock told juries the modern world baffled him, yet he chatted on a mobile phone, drove luxury cars and owned a home on Martha's Vineyard.
Q 10Which band's logo did Phil Hartman design during his first career as a graphic artist?
Crosby, Stills & Nash
Crosby, Stills & Nash used his logo from the mid-1970s on, yet Hartman was never credited for it, which he said he found amusing rather than galling.
Q 11Phil Hartman's obsessively tidy Gene hosted a how-to show on Saturday Night Live as the Anal Retentive what?
Chef
Chef was Gene's trade, though little got cooked: he threw out vegetable peelings wrapped in paper towel, then foil, then a paper bag sealed with tape.
Q 12Which Rat Pack singer ranked beside a president as Phil Hartman's most famous Saturday Night Live impression?
Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra got a sketch of his own in 1991, The Sinatra Group, in which Hartman's singer held court with guests including Chris Rock as rapper Luther Campbell.
Q 13Which president did Phil Hartman send up in his first Saturday Night Live season, reviving its political parody?
Ronald Reagan
Q 21Which fake toy did Phil Hartman's voice advertise on Saturday Night Live with a string of alarming safety warnings?
Happy Fun Ball
Happy Fun Ball looked like a harmless rubber ball in the 1991 ad, which cast Dana Carvey and Mike Myers as delighted children before the ominous disclaimers took over.
Q 22Which Saturday Night Live cereal parody lifted Phil Hartman skyward on a towering pyramid of breakfast bowls?
Colon Blow
Colon Blow spoofed high-fibre cereal ads: a voice tells Hartman he would need 30,000 bowls of his usual brand to match the fibre in a single bowl of it.
Q 23Which conservative pundit did Phil Hartman play in Saturday Night Live's send-ups of The McLaughlin Group?
Pat Buchanan
Ronald Reagan was the first of two sitting presidents Hartman played; Dana Carvey's George H. W. Bush joined the show's political sketches the following season.
Q 14Which TV personality did Phil Hartman play opposite Dana Carvey's Johnny Carson on Saturday Night Live?
Ed McMahon
Ed McMahon's chair was nearly Hartman's for real: Jay Leno offered him the sidekick job on The Tonight Show, but he chose to stay in sketch comedy.
Q 15Which horror icon did Phil Hartman play growling through songs beside Tonto and Tarzan on Saturday Night Live?
Frankenstein's monster
Frankenstein's monster moaned his way through We Are the World and Christmas carols, while his two partners sang the words in broken English.
Q 16Which Saturday Night Live writer created Phil Hartman's thawed-out caveman character?
Jack Handey
Jack Handey stayed off screen in Deep Thoughts too: he read each one-liner himself after Hartman's voice announced the segment over soothing scenery.
Q 17Which castmate co-starred with Phil Hartman in Love Is a Dream, a 1988 short later re-aired as a tribute to each?
Jan Hooks
Jan Hooks played an ageing woman who slips into her imagination to sing and dance with a long-lost lover, played by Hartman.
Q 18Which 1992 running mate did Phil Hartman caricature on Saturday Night Live after a televised debate?
James Stockdale
James Stockdale, Ross Perot's running mate, was a Medal of Honor recipient who spent over seven years as a prisoner of war; the sketch helped fix an image of him as slow-witted.
Q 19Which Mission: Impossible star did Phil Hartman play as the baffled host of a science show on Saturday Night Live?
Peter Graves
Peter Graves really did host the PBS science series Discover, and Hartman's version read the script without understanding a word of the subject.
Q 20On which Saturday Night Live sketch did Phil Hartman play Beev, a regular's father named for his teeth?
Wayne's World
Wayne's World gave Hartman two jobs: he played Beev, the father of Wayne's sidekick Garth, and voiced the Cable 10 public access introduction.
Pat Buchanan was a regular on the real panel, whose host John McLaughlin had a loud, forceful delivery that Dana Carvey turned into one of his own impressions.
Q 24Phil Hartman's Russell Clark quizzed teen heart-throbs on Saturday Night Live as editor of which real magazine?
Sassy
Sassy supplied the running gag: Clark worked the magazine's name into his reply to every guest, among them Mike Myers as a monosyllabic Joey Lawrence.
Q 25For which craft did Phil Hartman win his only Emmy, shared with the Saturday Night Live team in 1989?
Writing
Writing brought him the statuette, not the impressions he was famous for: his two Emmy nominations as a performer, in 1994 and 1998, both went unrewarded.
Q 26Which producer persuaded Phil Hartman to stay at Saturday Night Live when he planned to leave in 1991?
Lorne Michaels
Lorne Michaels argued that staying would raise his profile, and the presidential impression Hartman began the following year did just that.
Q 27Which doomed ship did Phil Hartman say he felt he had escaped when he left Saturday Night Live?
Titanic
Titanic was his verdict in a TV Guide interview that criticised the sketches of the mid-1990s, after most of the castmates he started with had gone.
Q 28Which director recommended Phil Hartman to Saturday Night Live after casting him in her film Jumpin' Jack Flash?
Penny Marshall
Penny Marshall was one of three people who put his name forward, and her film's credits list him under his original spelling, Phil E. Hartmann.
Q 29Which Los Angeles improv troupe did Phil Hartman join after climbing on stage on impulse during a show?
The Groundlings
The Groundlings took him on while he was still a graphic designer, and he paid for his training by redesigning the troupe's logo and merchandise.
Q 30Which comedian's bow-tied man-child character did Phil Hartman help create at an improv theatre in the late 1970s?
Paul Reubens
Paul Reubens and Hartman turned the character into a midnight stage show that HBO filmed in 1981, with Hartman playing a gruff sea captain.