49 Fun Facts About The Hunchback of Notre Dame

What is the name of Esmeralda's pet goat?

Djali comes straight from Victor Hugo's novel, where a hapless poet grows so fond of the goat that, in the end, he rescues it rather than Esmeralda.

Which earlier film had the same directors as Disney's Hunchback?

Beauty and the Beast was behind them and Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise were months into another project when studio chief Jeffrey Katzenberg rang: 'Drop everything. I got your next picture.'

Who voices Quasimodo in Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame?

Tom Hulce, Oscar-nominated as Mozart in Amadeus, found the first sessions so hard he nearly gave up; early on, his Quasimodo even had a faintly British accent.

Which actress voices Esmeralda's speaking part in Disney's Hunchback?

Demi Moore tried some of the songs, then told the songwriters, 'You'd better get someone else'; she recorded enough for them to find a singer with the same husky sound.

At the Festival of Fools, the crowd turns on Quasimodo and pelts him with what?

Fruit and vegetables fly once Frollo's guards start the mockery; in Hugo's novel the scene is harsher still, with Quasimodo flogged on the pillory.

Which actor voices Judge Claude Frollo?

Tony Jay called the part his 'bid for immortality'; the directors knew his voice from their previous film, where he had a small role as an asylum keeper.

Which actor voices the captain of Frollo's guard?

Kevin Kline was one of only two cast members offered a part without an audition; the directors had modelled the dashing captain on Errol Flynn and John Wayne.

Which character narrates Disney's Hunchback to a group of children?

Clopin, the Roma puppeteer, opens the film with the bell-ringer's story; Paul Kandel, cast from Broadway's The Who's Tommy, had to audition again when the studio wanted a bigger name.

What are the names of Quasimodo's three gargoyle friends?

Hugo, Victor and Laverne were the directors' own invention: two of them split the novelist's name, and all three give the lonely bell-ringer someone to talk to.

Which title does the festival crowd give Quasimodo in Disney's Hunchback?

King of Fools is the crown Disney's crowd gives him; in Hugo's novel he is elected Pope of Fools instead, at a feast that parodied the rituals of the church.

Which pop singer recorded a gargoyle's lines for Disney's Hunchback before being replaced?

Cyndi Lauper recorded the part, but the first gargoyle voices did not work for the studio, and two of the three were recast.

Whose death in 1995 left Jane Withers to record a gargoyle's six remaining lines in Disney's Hunchback?

Mary Wickes, the crabby nun of Sister Act, was cast because the directors wanted an older, wiser gargoyle to give Quasimodo better advice than the other two; she died at 85.

Which Seinfeld star voices one of the gargoyles in Disney's Hunchback?

Jason Alexander voices one of the three, yet said he would not be taking his own four-year-old: 'I wouldn't expose him to it, not for another year.'

Which two stars did Jeffrey Katzenberg want for a rock-opera version of Disney's Hunchback?

Meat Loaf and Cher were to be Quasimodo and Esmeralda; Meat Loaf even rehearsed a song with the composer before talks between Disney and his record company fell apart.

Which Broadway star walked out of his Quasimodo audition saying he could not do it?

Mandy Patinkin, who wanted to play the role 'for real', gave up in the middle of a scene; he later played Quasimodo his own way in a 1997 television film.

Which Welsh actor was offered the voice of Frollo in Disney's Hunchback but turned it down?

Anthony Hopkins passed on the offer; the animators even ran a test of the character using one of his lines as Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs.

According to the opening song of Disney's Hunchback, what does the name Quasimodo mean?

Half-formed is one of two reasons Hugo's novel offers for the name; the other is the day the foundling was left at the cathedral, Quasimodo Sunday, the first Sunday after Easter.

What inspired a Disney executive to propose adapting Hugo's novel as an animated film?

A Classics Illustrated comic of the novel gave story executive David Stainton the idea in 1993, and he talked the studio into it.

Which Disney executive broke up the Hunchback story pitch by quipping 'A time of Euro Disney'?

Michael Eisner, the company's chief, cut in as the art director intoned 'a dark and dreary time, a time of hopelessness'; his new French theme park was off to a poor start.

Which song does Esmeralda sing alone inside the cathedral in Disney's Hunchback?

God Help the Outcasts has her ask help for her people while the well-off worshippers around her pray for things for themselves; Bette Midler recorded a pop version for the album.

Which Hunchback song did its lyricist draft while sitting in Notre-Dame's own bell tower?

Out There took shape as he sat up in the tower with a pad of paper, imagining himself as Quasimodo looking down on the Paris of 1482.

In Hugo's novel, what is Frollo's position?

Archdeacon of Notre-Dame in the novel, he became a judge on screen: Disney did not want to take on the church, and gave the cathedral a separate, kindly archdeacon instead.

Producer Don Hahn named the villain of which film as one inspiration for Frollo?

Schindler's List gave the team a model in Ralph Fiennes's Nazi commandant: a man who murders Jews yet desires his Jewish maid, as the judge hunts the Roma while lusting after Esmeralda.

Early drafts of Disney's Hunchback cast Quasimodo as what kind of figure?

A Cyrano de Bergerac go-between: at first he was the misshapen man with a poet's heart who fed lines to the handsome captain, before the story became a love triangle.

In Hugo's novel, what finally happens to Esmeralda?

She is hanged after Frollo hands her over; later two skeletons are found together, Quasimodo's wrapped around hers.

What did the Hunchback animators name the Glendale warehouse their production moved into?

Sanctuary: the crew borrowed the right Quasimodo claims for Esmeralda when he carries her up into the cathedral.

In Disney's Hunchback, which song do the gargoyles sing to assure Quasimodo that Esmeralda loves him?

A Guy Like You sends his hopes soaring just before he learns she loves the captain instead; the number was dropped when the show reached the American stage.

Which technique filled the Festival of Fools in Disney's Hunchback with thousands of onlookers?

Computer animation: drawing a throng of thousands by hand would have been prohibitive and looked cheap, the co-director said, so computers animated the tiny figures in the crowd.

In Disney's Hunchback, which order from Frollo does the captain of the guard refuse to carry out?

Burning a family's home is too much for him: he douses the torch in water instead, and Frollo orders his execution on the spot.

To win its G rating, Disney's Hunchback lowered the volume of Frollo doing what?

Sniffing Esmeralda's hair sounded 'too suggestive' to the ratings board, the co-director recalled; a quieter sniff was enough to secure the G.

In 'Hellfire', the villain's song in Disney's Hunchback, to whom does Frollo address his prayer?

The Virgin Mary hears him call himself 'a righteous man', then insist that his desire for Esmeralda is not his fault but hers.

Which Latin prayer is chanted beneath the song 'Hellfire' in Disney's Hunchback?

The Confiteor is the prayer of confession: the hooded monks chant 'through my most grievous fault' while Frollo sings that the fault is not his.

Who wrote the lyrics to the Hunchback songs, with Alan Menken composing?

Stephen Schwartz had just written Pocahontas with Menken; offered several films, the pair chose this one for its theme of the outsider and for Quasimodo's struggle to break free of Frollo.

Which song, cut from Disney's Hunchback, ended up over the end credits?

Someday was written to take the place of Esmeralda's song in the cathedral, but the team went back to the original, and the newcomer was kept for the credits.

Which R&B group sang the end-credits song of Disney's Hunchback for North America?

All-4-One sang it for North America and the British group Eternal for the UK: Disney recorded its credits ballad market by market, chasing radio hits as well as ticket sales.

Which Mexican star recorded the Spanish-language end-credits ballad for Disney's Hunchback?

Luis Miguel sang it as 'Sueña' for Latin America, and France got a version of its own, 'Un Jour', as Disney re-recorded the ballad for one market after another.

Under what title did Victor Hugo publish the novel behind Disney's Hunchback?

Notre-Dame de Paris means 'Our Lady of Paris': Hugo named his novel for the cathedral, and it was the English translation that put the hunchback in the title.

In Disney's Hunchback, what does the pendant Esmeralda gives Quasimodo contain?

A map to the Court of Miracles, the Roma hideout: Frollo later bluffs that he has already found the place, then simply follows Quasimodo to it.

Who saves Quasimodo when he and Frollo fall from the ledge at the climax of Disney's Hunchback?

Phoebus catches him as Frollo plunges to his death, and the bell-ringer goes on to give his blessing to the captain's romance with Esmeralda.

Where did Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame have its premiere?

The Louisiana Superdome showed it on six giant screens hung over the football field, after a parade from Jackson Square through the French Quarter of New Orleans.

Which film beat Disney's Hunchback to the top of the box office on its opening weekend?

Eraser, Arnold Schwarzenegger's thriller, took about $25 million to Hunchback's $21 million, a figure that included some $1 million of tickets Disney had sold in its own stores.

The only Oscar nomination for Disney's Hunchback was for what?

Its musical score lost to the music for Emma, and none of the songs was nominated, though one New York critic had called the cathedral ballad 'a sure thing' for the Oscars.

Which critic called Disney's Hunchback 'a whirling, uplifting, thrilling story'?

Roger Ebert admitted the trailers had made him fear Disney had gone too far in softening the story: 'I was wrong to doubt, and wrong to fear.'

Which Russian author accused Disney of vulgarising Hugo's novel?

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn mocked Disney for having 'rectified Victor Hugo's blunder', in an essay lamenting what he saw as the cheapening of culture for the box office.

Which religious body voted in June 1996 to urge a boycott of Disney?

The Southern Baptist Convention objected to Disney's health benefits for employees' same-sex partners and to gay nights at its parks, not to the film that opened that month.

In which city did the stage musical Der Glöckner von Notre Dame open in 1999?

Berlin got the musical first, in German, with a book and direction by James Lapine; its American professional premiere came only in 2014, in California.

Which singer-actress's new ballad delayed Disney's direct-to-video Hunchback sequel?

Jennifer Love Hewitt also voiced a new character in the sequel, which Variety called a test of whether a film that 'was not a blockbuster' could carry a video follow-up.

Which actor-producer was floated in 2019 to play Quasimodo in Disney's live-action Hunchback remake?

Josh Gad was attached as a producer and reported as a possible lead; by 2023 the composer said the project sat 'in limbo' over how to handle dark material such as 'Hellfire'.

Which Kingdom Hearts game features La Cité des Cloches, a world based on Disney's Hunchback?

Dream Drop Distance, a 2012 Nintendo 3DS game, sets it beside worlds from Pinocchio, Fantasia and Tron: Legacy, each played through twice, once as Sora and once as Riku.