100 Fun Facts About Captain Underpants

Which other children's series about a mouse did Dav Pilkey create?

Ricky Ricotta's Mighty Robot stars a small mouse who is picked on at school until a giant flying robot becomes his friend. Together they take on Dr. Stinky, an evil scientist out to rule the world.

George and Harold, the two fourth graders who create Captain Underpants, have which surnames?

Beard and Hutchins are made up, yet they are credited in real books: Dav Pilkey presents the Dog Man series as the work of George Beard and Harold Hutchins.

In which real Ohio town do George and Harold live?

The aliens Zorx, Klax and Jennifer try to invade it disguised as lunch ladies.

George and Harold's school, Jerome Horwitz Elementary, is named after which real person?

Jerome Horwitz was Curly's real name. The joke fits a series full of silly names.

What does Captain Underpants shout as he charges off to fight crime?

'Tra-La-Laaa!' is his battle cry, and a later villain turns it against him: she builds robots programmed to attack the moment they hear it.

What sound turns Mr. Krupp into Captain Underpants?

Fingers snapping does it every time, whoever is doing the snapping. Over the series a teacher, and even an alien clicking a tentacle, set him off by accident.

How do George and Harold change Captain Underpants back into Mr. Krupp?

Pour water on his head: the boys hit on it in the first book by emptying a flower vase over him. It works so reliably that even toilet water has turned the hero back into the principal.

Captain Underpants wears white briefs and a cape in which pattern?

Red with black polka dots, because the cape is really a curtain: the newly hypnotised principal tears it down from his office window and ties it round his neck.

What mail-order gadget do George and Harold use to hypnotise their principal in the first Captain Underpants book?

The 3-D Hypno-Ring takes four to six weeks to arrive from the Li'l Wiseguy Novelty Company. The boys order it because the principal has their pranks on videotape and is blackmailing them.

The villain of the very first book wants to destroy the Moon with a Laser-Matic 2000. What is his name?

George stops him with a slingshot loaded with fake dog poop.

From the third book on, how does Captain Underpants gain real powers such as flight?

He drinks the aliens' juice, a carton of Extra-Strength Super Power Juice the boys find on the invaders' spaceship. They give it to him as a last resort, when a giant dandelion is about to finish him off.

The three aliens who disguise themselves as cafeteria ladies are Zorx, Klax and who?

Jennifer is the joke: after two names straight out of science fiction, the third invader is just Jennifer. The trio take over the school kitchen and set about turning the pupils into Evil Zombie Nerds.

What turns the villain of the fourth Captain Underpants book against the world?

Jokes about his name mean nobody will take Professor Poopypants's inventions seriously. His revenge is to force everyone else to swap their own names for ridiculous ones.

After his defeat, Professor Poopypants changes his name to what?

Tippy Tinkletrousers was his grandfather's name, so the fresh start George suggested turned out to be no improvement at all. He returns under the new name in later books.

Which teacher is hypnotised into becoming Wedgie Woman in book five?

Ms. Ribble, the boys' homeroom teacher, becomes the villain of their own comic because their hypnosis works backwards on women: she does the opposite of whatever she is told.

Who is the super-smart classmate and inventor who is George and Harold's rival?

Melvin Sneedly is also the class tattletale, and his inventions have a way of backfiring: one failed experiment fuses him with a robot and his own boogers.

Sulu, the boys' pet, is what kind of animal?

A bionic hamster: Sulu was an ordinary pet until his first owner, a classmate of the boys, fused him with a robot in one of his machines. George and Harold adopted him afterwards.

The Turbo Toilet 2000, a giant toilet the boys drew, is brought to life by what?

A modified photocopier, a classmate's entry in the school's Invention Convention, turns any picture into the real thing. The boys' comic goes through it, and their toilet villains come out alive.

The gym teacher at Jerome Horwitz Elementary has what fitting name?

Mr. Meaner sounds like 'misdemeanor', and his full name, Kenny B. Meaner, asks the question out loud: can he be meaner?

What name do the Captain Underpants books give their page-flapping animation trick?

Flip-O-Rama gets a proud introduction in the books as the latest in cheesy animation technology. It takes over for the big fight, which readers animate by hand, two pages at a time.

Which series also began in 1997, alongside Captain Underpants?

Harry Potter first reached British bookshops in June 1997. The two series have something else in common: each went on to top the American Library Association's yearly list of the books people most often tried to have removed.

What is the title of the second Captain Underpants book?

Attack of the Talking Toilets has its monsters beaten by school food: the cafeteria's creamed chipped beef, fired from a slingshot made of underwear, is foul enough to finish them off.

Which villain is named in the title of the final Captain Underpants novel, published in 2015?

Sir Stinks-A-Lot is one of the school's own teachers, turned into a giant blob by an egg salad sandwich. To beat him the boys travel into the future and fetch their grown-up selves.

Which Dav Pilkey book did his publisher withdraw in 2021, saying it perpetuated passive racism?

Ook and Gluk, a Captain Underpants spin-off about two kung-fu cavemen, was pulled after a reader's petition. Pilkey apologised publicly and promised his earnings from the book to charity.

Captain Underpants topped America's 2012 list of most-challenged books, ahead of which adult bestseller?

Fifty Shades of Grey came fourth, drawing fewer complaints than a principal in his underpants, and the same thing happened in 2013.

Where did Dav Pilkey first invent Captain Underpants as a boy?

At a desk in the school hallway, where an exasperated teacher had put him for disrupting class. He says the desk moved down the hall with him each year, and he filled the time drawing comics.

Dav Pilkey's first name lost its final 'e' on a staff name tag when he worked at which restaurant chain?

Pizza Hut's label-maker jammed on the letter when his supervisor made the tag, and the misprint stuck for good. He still says it 'Dave'.

As a child, Dav Pilkey was diagnosed with dyslexia and which other condition?

ADHD made him a handful in class, and one teacher ripped up a comic of his, telling him he could not spend the rest of his days making silly books. He has done exactly that ever since.

Which studio made the 2017 film Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie?

DreamWorks Animation made it for about $38 million, a fraction of its usual budgets, by having the animation done at outside studios in Canada and France.

Who voices George in the 2017 film Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie?

Kevin Hart was 37 when the film came out, playing a fourth-grader. Thomas Middleditch plays Harold, and Ed Helms is the principal the two of them hypnotise.

In the 2017 Captain Underpants movie, Professor Poopypants comes from which made-up country?

New Swissland's professor arrives with a German accent and a ray that can shrink or enlarge anything. It is turned on him in the end, and he makes his escape riding on a bee.

Who wrote and sang the theme song for Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie?

"Weird Al" Yankovic was a fitting choice: in the very first book, one of George and Harold's pranks is to rig the school intercoms to blast his songs for six hours straight.

The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants TV series originally streamed on which service?

Netflix ran it for four seasons from 2018, sending the boys to summer camp and then into outer space. Dav Pilkey later agreed to a Dog Man film only on condition that the series' showrunner directed it.

What prank do George and Harold play on signs in the Captain Underpants books?

They rearrange the letters until the sign says something rude. In the first book a flower shop's 'Pick your own roses' becomes 'Pick our noses'.

In the Dog Man books, which villain calls himself 'the world's most evilest cat'?

Petey clones himself hoping for a partner in crime, but the kitten turns out pure-hearted. Raising Li'l Petey slowly turns the villain into a good father.

In Dog Man, what is the name of the police dog whose head is sewn onto Officer Knight?

Greg and his officer are hurt in the same explosion, and a nurse suggests the operation when the doctors cannot save both. The result has a policeman's skills and a dog's personality.

Which Saturday Night Live alumnus voices the villainous cat in the 2025 Dog Man movie?

Pete Davidson plays the cat. The hero himself never speaks, so writer-director Peter Hastings, who had run the Captain Underpants TV series, supplies Dog Man's barks.

Banned by Mr. Krupp from writing another Captain Underpants comic, George and Harold invent which hero instead?

Super Diaper Baby was their loophole. Ordered to write a 100-page essay on good citizenship, and told not to make it a Captain Underpants comic, they handed in a comic about a brand-new hero.

In 2026 the first Captain Underpants book was re-released in which format?

A manga, redrawn by the Japanese artist Motojiro from a script Dav Pilkey adapted himself. Unlike most manga, it still reads left to right.

Which company publishes the Captain Underpants books?

Scholastic also sells the books at its school book fairs. In 2015 a Michigan school kept the twelfth one out of its fair because it shows a grown-up Harold with a husband.

Which comedian voices George and Harold's nerdy rival in the 2017 Captain Underpants film?

Jordan Peele signed on as the school tattletale in 2014. By the time the film opened he was better known for something else: Get Out, his horror hit of a few months earlier, which won him an Oscar for its screenplay.

The Robo-Boogers are living snot, so which cold-fighting food turns out to be their weakness?

Oranges, because of their vitamin C. One thrown by Captain Underpants fells the first Robo-Booger, and a shower of juice from crushed crates finishes off the other two.

A field trip to what kind of plant triggers the growth of the Bionic Booger Boy?

A tissue factory: offered a pack of tissues on the tour, the Booger Boy panics, swells to giant size and wrecks the place.

What is the name of George and Harold's homemade comic-book company?

Treehouse Comix, Inc. is named for its headquarters, the treehouse between the two boys' backyards where every issue is made. Copies sell at school for 50 cents.

Which comedian did Dav Pilkey once say he had pictured playing Captain Underpants?

Chris Farley died in 1997, the year the first book came out. When a film finally arrived twenty years later it was animated, which Pilkey had said was the only kind he wanted.

Kipper Krupp, the bully from the boys' kindergarten days, is the principal's what?

Nephew: Kipper calls for his uncle whenever he is caught, so nobody can punish him or his gang for long. It takes a prank by the kindergarten-age George and Harold to scare them straight.

Instead of the usual evil-twin goatee, what marks out Captain Blunderpants from the heroic Captain Underpants?

A toupee: in his mirror world everything runs backwards. The kindly principal there is bald, and the hairpiece appears only when he turns into the villain.

When George and Harold make their Captain Underpants comics, what is Harold's job?

Drawing the pictures is Harold's side of the partnership, while George writes the stories. They run off copies and sell them to schoolmates for 50 cents each.

In the 2017 Captain Underpants movie, how does Mr. Krupp plan to end George and Harold's friendship?

Put them in separate classes: the paperwork is ready to sign when the boys hypnotise him to stop it. When their plan falls apart, he signs it anyway.

Which of the boys' robots beats the Turbo Toilet 2000?

The Incredible Robo-Plunger rams itself into the giant toilet's mouth, then repairs the wrecked school and carries the defeated toilets off to Uranus.

A 2018 double bill of the Captain Underpants film and The Emoji Movie ended a 35-year cinema ban in which country?

Saudi Arabia chose the two cartoons for its first official public screenings since the early 1980s. The kingdom's first new cinema opened in Riyadh that April.

To win the screen rights to Dav Pilkey's superhero books, a Hollywood studio gave him a tour with staff wearing what?

Underpants over their pants was the dress code for the tour, and it made him laugh. He still held out until 2011, having said any film of his books would have to be animated.

Which star of the US sitcom The Office voices both Mr. Krupp and Captain Underpants in the 2017 film?

Ed Helms plays the grumpy principal and the cheery hero he turns into. He was cast in January 2014, long before the film reached cinemas in June 2017.

In the second Captain Underpants book, George and Harold's giant robot carries the beaten monsters off to which planet?

Uranus is where the robot dumps them, under orders never to return. The planet is a running joke: a kindergarten lesson about it once left George and Harold in giggles.

Which garden weed becomes a giant monster when George and Harold tip alien growth juice out of a school window?

A dandelion soaks up most of the spilled carton and swells into the Dandelion of Doom. The boys had stolen the carton to stop it being fed to their classmates.

Which superhero blockbuster beat the Captain Underpants film to first place at the US box office on its opening weekend?

Wonder Woman opened the same June 2017 weekend and took $103.3 million. Captain Underpants settled for second place with $23.9 million, on a budget of only $38 million.

Before turning him into Captain Underpants, George first orders the hypnotised Mr. Krupp to act like which animal?

A chicken came first, as a joke, and then Harold made the principal act like a monkey. Only on the third go did the boys pick the hero of their own comics.

In the Captain Underpants books, what does George's mother make him wear to school for a good first impression?

A necktie went on George the morning he started kindergarten in a new town. On the walk to school he rescued Harold from a gang of bullies, and the two became best friends.

The real Ohio town where George and Harold live was reportedly chosen for its yearly festival celebrating what?

Underwear was the town's big industry for about a hundred years, with 14 firms in the trade. From 1988 to 1998 a two-day festival had locals out in public in theirs.

Dav Pilkey set Captain Underpants in small-town Ohio, but in which big Ohio city was the author himself born?

Cleveland is where he was born in 1966, the son of a minister and a church organist. He went to elementary school in nearby North Ridgeville.

The Squishy, a prank George and Harold demonstrate to their class, hides packets of which sauce under a toilet seat?

Ketchup squirts out when someone sits down. In the sixth book a teacher springs a Squishy on Mr. Krupp, and George and Harold get the blame.

George and Harold are barred from which school event for having glued everyone to their seats the year before?

The Invention Convention is off limits, so the boys are sent to study hall instead. They sabotage the entries in secret anyway, and the whole show has to be called off.

Before meeting Harold in kindergarten, George moved with his parents to Ohio from which neighbouring state?

Michigan was home until George was five and three-quarters. The move made him Harold's next-door neighbour, and the pair soon made their first comic together.

Harold cures the zombie nerds of the third Captain Underpants book by mixing antidote juice into which drink?

Root beer carries the Anti-Nerd Juice that turns the whole school back to normal. The pupils had been zombified by new lunch ladies who were not what they seemed.

Which actress voices Edith, the shy lunch lady created for the 2017 Captain Underpants film?

Kristen Schaal plays Edith, who was written for the film as a love interest for Mr. Krupp. She is partly based on a far grumpier member of staff from the books.

To save money, the 2017 Captain Underpants film was animated by an outside studio based in which Canadian city?

Montreal's Mikros Image did the work, with help from a team in France. The cheaper route also let the film keep the look of Pilkey's own drawings.

In the final Captain Underpants book, the jailed gym teacher turns into a giant blob after eating which sandwich?

Egg salad with pickle relish does it, swelling him into an enormous blob. In that form he works out how to turn Captain Underpants back into a powerless principal.

Which folk tale, read aloud in class, inspires George and Harold to make a comic about Professor Poopypants?

The Pied Piper of Hamelin gives the boys the idea for a comic in which their new science teacher tries to take over the world. He finds a stray copy, and it tips him over the edge.

Why did Captain Underpants fans have to wait six years between the eighth and ninth books in the series?

Pilkey nursed his dying father, who passed away in November 2008, and wrote nothing new for a few years. In 2009 he agreed with his publisher to deliver four more books.

In the 2017 Captain Underpants film, what gives the hero real superpowers after he is thrown into it?

Toxic lunchroom leftovers, cooked up by the school's lunch lady, also fuel the villain's giant machine. Until that dunking the film's hero has no powers at all, only confidence.

Which comedian gives Professor Poopypants a German accent in the 2017 Captain Underpants film?

Nick Kroll voices the mad scientist, whose full name in the film runs to Professor Pee-Pee Diarrheastein Poopypants Esquire. He recruits the school's brainiest pupil as a sidekick.

Dav Pilkey published his Dumb Bunnies picture books of the 1990s under which pen name?

Sue Denim is a play on the word pseudonym, a joke one early reviewer guessed only adults would notice. The rabbit family's four books became a cartoon series in 1998.

Where do George and Harold spend the third season of the animated series The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants?

At summer camp the boys find that Mr. Krupp has followed them as the camp instructor. The fourth and last season then sent them off the planet altogether.

At the end of the 2017 Captain Underpants film, the shrunken Professor Poopypants escapes by riding away on what?

A bee carries the tiny professor off after Captain Underpants and the boys defeat and shrink him, so the villain is still on the loose when the film ends.

Harold, voiced by Thomas Middleditch in the 2017 Captain Underpants film, has a fondness for which sea animals?

Dolphins are the film Harold's soft spot. The film paints him as the cautious worrier of the duo, while George is the one who stays calm in a crisis.

Which Dav Pilkey picture book won a Caldecott Honor in 1997, the year Captain Underpants first appeared?

The Paperboy follows a boy and his dog delivering newspapers before sunrise, drawn from Pilkey's own days on a delivery round. He said he wrote it in fifteen minutes.

Director David Soren said the friendship in the 2017 Captain Underpants film was modelled on which filmmaker's comedies?

John Hughes films such as Ferris Bueller's Day Off were the model: very funny, Soren said, but with a great friendship at the centre.

Which Dav Pilkey book series, painted with supermarket watercolours, became a stop-motion children's TV show in 2004?

Dragon began as five gentle books in the early 1990s, years before Captain Underpants. The clay-animated show based on them ran until 2007.

The 2017 Captain Underpants film was the last from its studio to be released by which Hollywood distributor?

20th Century Fox bowed out because the studio behind the film had been bought by Universal's parent company in 2016. Its films have gone out through Universal ever since.

In the Captain Underpants books, the time machine George and Harold travel in is a potty of which colour?

Purple is the colour, and it gives the eighth book its title, The Preposterous Plight of the Purple Potty People. The machine breaks down at the end of book seven and strands the boys in a back-to-front world.

An allergy to which animals makes the school genius sneeze mid-experiment, turning him into the Bionic Booger Boy?

Cats set off the sneeze just as his machine is merging him with a robot, so a noseful of snot goes into the mix as well. After the first shock he rather enjoys the result.

In the first Captain Underpants book, Mr. Krupp films George and Harold's pranks ruining which school sporting event?

A football game is wrecked, and the principal has it all on tape. He threatens to hand the footage to the furious team unless the boys obey his every rule.

What has Miss Singerbrains, the school librarian in Captain Underpants, done to nearly every book on her shelves?

Banned them: only a single title survived, and in the end she shut the library altogether. The joke lands harder given how often people have tried to pull these very books from libraries.

Which British comedian voices Flippy the Fish, the telekinetic villain of the 2025 animated film Dog Man?

Ricky Gervais plays the cyborg fish, who is won over in the end by a kitten's homemade comic. The film is a spin-off of the 2017 Captain Underpants movie.

George and Harold made their very first comic, starring Dog Man, while stuck where as kindergartners?

In detention is where it began, after Mr. Krupp wrongly punished the pair for bullying a much bigger boy. They called the comic The Adventures of Dog Man.

In the final Captain Underpants book, George and Harold visit the future and find their adult selves working as what?

Graphic novelists is what the boys grow up to be, and famous ones, each with a family of his own. The grown-up pair then travel back to help save the world.

In the eighth Captain Underpants book, which superhero does Harold's grandfather turn into to rescue his grandson?

Boxer Boy flies into action beside George's great-grandmother, who becomes Great-Granny Girdle. Together the two pensioners defeat an evil double of Captain Underpants.

In book eleven of Captain Underpants, the school genius extracts superhero DNA from which discarded bit of Mr. Krupp?

A clipped toenail supplies the DNA that gives him superpowers of his own. Fame soon wears thin, though: people keep interrupting his experiments with trivial requests.

The three flying hatchlings born in the eleventh Captain Underpants book are named Tony, Orlando and what?

Dawn completes the set, so the three names together match the 1970s pop group Tony Orlando and Dawn. The babies hatch just in time to smash a giant monster and rescue the boys.

Professor Poopypants arrives in America with two size-changing gadgets: the Goosy-Grow and which other device?

The Shrinky-Pig makes things tiny, just as its partner makes them huge. He hoped the pair would help the world, and ends up using them to hold a whole school hostage.

Which Jerome Horwitz teacher resigns in the fourth Captain Underpants book, convinced the job has driven them mad?

Mr. Fyde, who taught science, sees his colleagues coated in glue and foam like abominable snowmen and decides he is going insane. His exit leaves a vacancy that a villain fills.

At which Ohio university did an English professor urge the future Captain Underpants author to write children's books?

Kent State is where Dav Pilkey got the push. In 1986 his first book, World War Won, took first place in a national contest for student authors.

Which canteen dish is slung at the teacher-eating monsters of the second Captain Underpants book?

Chipped beef, slung by Captain Underpants and the boys, makes the monsters throw up every teacher they have swallowed. The school's lunches are notorious for being inedible.

Which Oscar-winning screenwriter voices the hero in the series The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants?

Nat Faxon, who shared an Oscar for co-writing The Descendants, took over the double role of principal and superhero for television. His writing partner Jim Rash turns up in the show too, as Mr. Jerry Citizen.

In the first Captain Underpants book, what do two robots steal from a shop to power a moon-destroying laser?

A large crystal is the prize, and George and Harold trail the thieves to an abandoned warehouse. Harold ends the scheme by pulling the machine's self-destruct lever.

Professor Poopypants's silly-name chart renames George as Fluffy; which name does the same chart give Harold?

Cheeseball is Harold's new name, while Captain Underpants is told to answer to Buttercup Chickenfanny and flatly refuses. Everyone gets their old names back once the villain is beaten.

In the 2017 Captain Underpants film, the villain powers his ray with a classmate's brain because it cannot produce what?

Laughter is beyond that brain, which lacks the part that causes it. The ray it powers turns the rest of the school into dull, humourless zombies.

After a failed surprise test in the eleventh Captain Underpants book, what threatens to split George and Harold up?

One of them is held back: both boys sleep through the test, but George's grades scrape him into fifth grade while Harold must repeat fourth. Rather than be parted, the pair travel back in time.

Shrunk along with their school in book four, George and Harold take off aboard what, enlarged by George?

A paper airplane, folded by Harold and blown up to full size with the villain's growing gadget, gets the boys airborne. Captain Underpants has to rescue them from the dangers that follow.

In the third Captain Underpants book, a fake cupcake recipe floods Jerome Horwitz Elementary with what?

Green goop swamps the school after the cooks bake the bogus recipe for everyone as a birthday surprise for Mr. Krupp. When he will not punish the boys without proof, the lunch ladies quit.