The Good Dinosaur
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49 free The Good Dinosaur trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
The Good Dinosaur is the Pixar film that almost fell apart. Bob Peterson's 2009 idea about an Apatosaurus farm boy lost its director, most of its voice cast and two release dates before Peter Sohn rebuilt it around a simple notion: nature is the villain. What reached screens in November 2015 had some of the most photoreal landscapes ever animated and became the studio's first box-office loss. These 49 questions range across the whole story: Arlo and Spot's journey home, Butch and his T. rex ranchers, Thunderclap's weather-named pterodactyls, the Wyoming and Oregon research trips, the USGS terrain data, the Danna brothers' score, the Frozen and Finding Dory release-date shuffles, and the short Sanjay's Super Team that played ahead of it. Every answer is sourced from the film's Wikipedia coverage, so you can check anything that surprises you. Play through in sets of 10 and see how well you know Pixar's dinosaur western.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In The Good Dinosaur, Arlo is which long-necked species, lumped together with Brontosaurus for over a century?
Apatosaurus
Apatosaurus is Arlo's kind. Pixar's notes size him at 18 feet tall and about 6 tons, huge by our standards yet small for the film: they put Poppa at 46 feet and the T-Rexes at up to 50.
Q 02In The Good Dinosaur, what does Poppa show Arlo in a field at night to coax him past his fears?
Fireflies
Fireflies, which rise glowing out of the dark grass. Later Arlo chases them again with Spot, a bittersweet echo of those nights with the father he has lost.
Q 03Peter Sohn, who directed The Good Dinosaur, later drew on his immigrant parents' lives for which Pixar love story?
Elemental
Elemental grew out of Sohn's New York childhood as the son of Korean immigrants. He had been handed The Good Dinosaur in 2014, after its original director was taken off the stalled film.
Q 04In The Good Dinosaur, what does Arlo do when the critter trap he is guarding catches a wild boy?
Sets him free
Sets him free: told to finish off the thief, Arlo cannot bring himself to do it. A furious Poppa marches him out to hunt the boy down, the trip that changes everything.
Q 05What alternate-history twist sets up The Good Dinosaur's world?
The extinction asteroid misses Earth
The extinction asteroid misses Earth in the opening scene, so the dinosaurs never die out. Millions of years on, the plant-eaters have turned farmer and the meat-eaters rancher.
Q 06What crop does Arlo's family grow on their farm in The Good Dinosaur?
Corn
Corn fills the family silo, which each child may stamp with a mud print only after doing something big. Arlo is the last one still waiting to earn his.
Q 07The Good Dinosaur flips which classic story type, with the dinosaur as the human?
A boy and his dog
A boy and his dog, with the roles swapped: the dinosaur talks and farms while the human sniffs, growls and tracks. When the troubled film was rebuilt, the story was stripped back to that pairing.
Q 08How does Arlo's father die in The Good Dinosaur?
A flash flood
A flash flood roars down the ravine, and Poppa gets Arlo clear before it carries him off. Arlo blames the wild boy for it, and chases him when he comes back to raid the silo.
Q 09What sends Arlo and Spot into a wild hallucination partway through The Good Dinosaur?
Fermented fruit
Fermented fruit does it: the famished pair wolf it down, hallucinate as if drunk, and wake the next morning with sore heads.
Q 10How does the wordless Spot tell Arlo that his parents are dead in The Good Dinosaur?
Burying stick figures in sand
Burying stick figures in sand is how he says it. Arlo plants twigs to stand for his own family, and the boy copies him, then lays two of his flat and covers them over.
Q 11In The Good Dinosaur, which veteran of screen Westerns voices Butch, the scarred Tyrannosaurus rancher?
Sam Elliott
Sam Elliott plays Butch, who uses Arlo and Spot as bait to draw out the rustlers. In the fight that follows it is Arlo who ends up saving him.
Q 12Which X-Men film star voices Ramsey, the rancher Butch's daughter, in The Good Dinosaur?
Anna Paquin
Anna Paquin, Rogue in the X-Men films, plays Ramsey. She and her brother Nash come to the rescue and drive off the pterodactyls chasing Arlo and Spot.
Q 13Which Oscar-winning Coen brothers regular voices Momma Ida, Arlo's mother, in The Good Dinosaur?
Frances McDormand
Q 21Which co-director of Up dreamed up The Good Dinosaur, only to be taken off the film in 2013?
Bob Peterson
Bob Peterson just got stuck, producer Denise Ream said. Peter Sohn, his co-director, took over a third act that he recalled had three storylines to pay off.
Q 22Which Disney film took The Good Dinosaur's original November 2013 release slot?
Frozen
Frozen went wide on November 27, 2013, the date first held for Pixar's dinosaurs. When Disney announced that title in 2011, one film site briefly took it for the dinosaur movie's own name.
Q 23The Good Dinosaur's final November 2015 release date had first been reserved for which Pixar sequel?
Finding Dory
Frances McDormand, of Fargo, was the only parent Pixar kept when the film was rebuilt, producer Denise Ream said. Almost everyone else was recast, and the story was left with far fewer characters.
Q 14Which actor from Daniel Craig's James Bond films voices Poppa, Arlo's father, in The Good Dinosaur?
Jeffrey Wright
Jeffrey Wright, Bond's CIA ally Felix Leiter, plays Poppa. Though Poppa dies early, he returns late in the film as a vision, after which Arlo goes back for Spot.
Q 15What kind of dinosaur is The Good Dinosaur's Pet Collector, whose critters perch along his spiked frill?
Styracosaurus
Styracosaurus, whose name means spiked lizard, wore long spikes around its neck frill. Pixar's Pet Collector recruits forest critters to protect him, and director Peter Sohn supplies his voice.
Q 16In The Good Dinosaur, what do Thunderclap's pterodactyls really do with the storm survivors they claim to rescue?
Eat them
Eat them: Thunderclap gulps down a critter moments after Arlo helps free it. Steve Zahn voices the leader, whose flock lets storms do the dirty work and then picks over the wreckage.
Q 17In The Good Dinosaur, Thunderclap and the rest of his pterodactyl flock are all named after what?
Weather
Weather: Thunderclap flies with Downpour, Coldfront, Frostbite and Windgust. The names suit a flock that worships storms and lives by the mantra "The storm provides".
Q 18Unlike Jurassic Park's scaly raptors, the rustlers of The Good Dinosaur sport what?
Feathers
Feathers, worn in mullet-like tufts that give the raptors a country look. Butch calls them rustlers, and though each is puny beside a T-Rex, as a pack they are a real threat.
Q 19Which Cheers star kept his run of voicing a character in every Pixar feature alive as Earl in The Good Dinosaur?
John Ratzenberger
John Ratzenberger, Cliff in Cheers, voiced Earl, one of the raptor rustlers. His run from Hamm in Toy Story ended after 22 films, when Soul in 2020 used his likeness but not his voice.
Q 20What are Butch's family herding in The Good Dinosaur?
Longhorns
Longhorns, which Butch, Ramsey and Nash drive across the plains. The herd has gone missing when Arlo meets them, and it is Spot's nose that tracks it down.
Finding Dory gave up November 25, 2015, and moved to the summer of 2016. Pixar president Ed Catmull shrugged: nobody remembers that you slipped a film, but they will remember a bad film.
Q 24Weeks after delaying The Good Dinosaur in 2013, what did Pixar do at its Emeryville headquarters?
Laid off staff
Laid off staff: with no film now due in 2014, Pixar let dozens of its 1,200 people go. The delay made 2014 the studio's first year without a feature since 2005.
Q 25Which Shrek voice actor recorded the whole role of Arlo's father in The Good Dinosaur before Pixar recast it?
John Lithgow
John Lithgow, Shrek's Lord Farquaad, said in 2014 that he had recorded the entire role before Pixar dismantled the film and completely reimagined it. He expected to record it again, but the final cast left him out.
Q 26The Good Dinosaur's makers called which part of its landscape the Yellow Brick Road that leads Arlo home?
The river
The river washes Arlo away in the first act and then guides him home. Production designer Harley Jessup called it the film's visual spine, choppy when Arlo and Spot fight and glassy once they are friends.
Q 27What did Pixar's team treat as the main antagonist of The Good Dinosaur in place of a traditional villain?
Nature
Nature is the enemy here, with no bully like Toy Story's Sid or Finding Nemo's Darla to outwit. One reviewer called Mother Nature as much an enemy as any of the film's bad dinosaurs.
Q 28Which US region did Pixar's team explore to research the landscapes of The Good Dinosaur?
The American Northwest
The American Northwest: the crew went riding and rafting through Wyoming, whose Teton range shaped the scenery. They also studied Montana grasslands and the Red Desert, and folded all of it into Arlo's journey.
Q 29Pixar built The Good Dinosaur's landscapes from terrain height data published by which US agency?
The Geological Survey
The Geological Survey posts height data for the whole country, and Pixar downloaded Wyoming and combined it with satellite images. Director Peter Sohn could then shoot in any direction he liked, as if scouting a real location.
Q 30Pixar usually paints its skies onto the set, so what did The Good Dinosaur use in every shot instead?
Three-dimensional clouds
Three-dimensional clouds could be lit like anything else in a shot, which painted skies never allowed. Producer Denise Ream said the effects house ILM called the plan crazy, so Pixar built a whole library of clouds.