Casper Trivia
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This Casper trivia quiz has 94 free questions with answers and covers the friendliest ghost in cartoons from his 1945 Paramount debut to the 1995 movie and beyond. The film questions take in Whipstaff Manor and Friendship, Maine, Kat and Dr. Harvey, Carrigan and Dibs, the Ghostly Trio, the Lazarus machine, how Casper died, what the treasure really was, the cameo Steven Spielberg cut, the Ghostbuster who turns up, the eight-month CGI scene and the actor who played Casper alive for a single dance. The history questions go back further: the two men who both claimed to have created him, the $175 the rights sold for, the New York accent of the first short, the Harvey Comics redesign that gave him feet, Wendy the Good Little Witch, the Hanna-Barbera series that parodied Charlie's Angels, the Apollo capsule named after him and the sequels that starred Hilary Duff. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia pages for the character and the films, and each explanation adds one detail worth remembering.
30 of 94 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In the 1995 film, Casper haunts a mansion called Whipstaff Manor in which small town?
Friendship, Maine
Friendship, Maine is a real coastal town, but Whipstaff Manor's crumbling interiors were sets built on a studio lot in California.
Q 02Which actress plays Kat Harvey, the teenager Casper falls for?
Christina Ricci
Christina Ricci, fresh from playing Wednesday Addams, took her first leading role as Kat and spent the shoot acting opposite ghosts that were only animated in afterwards.
Q 03Who plays Dr. James Harvey, the ghost therapist hired to clear Whipstaff Manor in Casper (1995)?
Bill Pullman
Bill Pullman plays Dr. James Harvey, a widowed therapist to ghosts who takes the Whipstaff job hoping to reach his late wife; a year later he was the US president in Independence Day.
Q 04Who plays Carrigan Crittenden, the greedy heiress left only a haunted manor in Casper (1995)?
Cathy Moriarty
Cathy Moriarty, an Oscar nominee for Raging Bull, plays Carrigan Crittenden; she came back to the series three years later as a different character, one of the witch aunts in Casper Meets Wendy.
Q 05Which Monty Python member plays Dibs, Carrigan's lawyer, in Casper (1995)?
Eric Idle
Eric Idle plays Dibs, Carrigan's lawyer and sidekick, who is flung out of a window when he tries to double-cross her over the treasure.
Q 06In Casper (1995), what does Casper ask a sleepy Kat, a line he repeats at the dance?
Can I keep you?
'Can I keep you?' is first whispered to a half-asleep Kat; when the boy she is dancing with says it again, she realises he is Casper.
Q 07Which young actor plays Casper in human form for the dance with Kat?
Devon Sawa
Devon Sawa is on screen only for the closing dance and its kiss; months later he and the same co-star shared another screen kiss in the coming-of-age film Now and Then.
Q 08In the backstory the 1995 film gives him, what killed 12-year-old Casper McFadden?
Pneumonia after playing in the cold
Pneumonia after playing in the cold: he begged his father for a sled, stayed out on it all day until dark and fell ill, then lingered as a ghost so that his dad would not be lonely.
Q 09What is the name of the machine Casper's inventor father built to bring the dead back to life?
The Lazarus
The Lazarus was built by Casper's father, who told the newspapers his dead son was haunting him; its formula holds just enough to bring one ghost back.
Q 10In Casper (1995), what does the 'treasure' hidden in Whipstaff Manor turn out to be?
A baseball signed by Duke Snider
A baseball signed by Duke Snider, Casper's favourite player: the map was part of a game with his dad, and Carrigan, her business finished, is swept into the afterlife as she claims it.
Q 11Casper gives up his one chance to live again in order to do what?
Bring Dr. Harvey back to life
Bring Dr. Harvey back to life: the doctor dies in a drunken fall, and seeing Kat's grief, Casper gives him the machine's only dose instead of using it himself.
Q 12In Casper (1995), what do Casper's ghostly uncles call living people?
Fleshies
Fleshies is the uncles' word for the living: one of them greets the Harveys' first breakfast by declaring that he loves the smell of fleshies in the morning, a spoof of Apocalypse Now's napalm line.
Q 13Which future Everybody Loves Raymond star voices Casper's uncle Fatso in the 1995 film?
Brad Garrett
Q 21Who composed the score for Casper (1995), including the track 'One Last Wish'?
James Horner
James Horner knew little about the comic and scored Casper as a modern fairytale about lost youth; the same year he wrote the music for Braveheart, and two years later for Titanic.
Q 22Which pop star's first major film role was Wendy the Good Little Witch in Casper Meets Wendy (1998)?
Hilary Duff
Hilary Duff was ten when she played Wendy the Good Little Witch; the direct-to-video follow-ups, though, helped kill off a planned cinema sequel to the 1995 film, its director says.
Q 23Which 1997 direct-to-video Casper film opens with him thrown off a ghost train into Deedstown?
A Spirited Beginning
Brad Garrett, a year before he began playing Robert Barone on Everybody Loves Raymond, voiced the gluttonous Fatso; all three uncle voices returned for the animated spin-off series.
Q 14Which Ghostbuster makes an uncredited cameo in Casper (1995), fleeing the haunted manor?
Ray Stantz
Ray Stantz, played once more by Dan Aykroyd, bolts from the house with the line 'Who you gonna call? Someone else', after an exorcist has already failed to shift the ghosts.
Q 15Who directed Casper, in his feature debut?
Brad Silberling
Brad Silberling had only directed television; he was hired on the strength of one half-hour episode of Brooklyn Bridge, and protested that he knew nothing about animation.
Q 16Despite its haunted-house story, Casper (1995) opened in US cinemas over which holiday weekend?
Memorial Day
Memorial Day weekend launched Casper at number one in May 1995: the ghost story was sold as a summer blockbuster, and it went on to take almost $300 million worldwide.
Q 17Which future executive producer of Lost did an uncredited rewrite of the Casper script?
J. J. Abrams
J. J. Abrams, a young screenwriter with Regarding Henry and Forever Young behind him, spent the first two weeks of the shoot in the director's trailer, turning out new pages.
Q 18Besides Clint Eastwood, Mel Gibson and Rodney Dangerfield, who appears in Dr. Harvey's mirror transformations in Casper (1995)?
The Crypt Keeper
The Crypt Keeper, the cackling host of Tales from the Crypt, ends the gag as a real puppet, worked on set by the puppeteer who also operated Chucky in Child's Play.
Q 19Which effects house created Casper's CGI ghosts, making it the first film with a fully computer-generated lead?
Industrial Light & Magic
Industrial Light & Magic had made Jurassic Park's dinosaurs, but those only had to look real; Casper and his uncles had to act, joke and cry beside live actors in far more scenes.
Q 20Which flamboyant rock and roll pioneer recorded the Casper theme song for the 1995 film's soundtrack?
Little Richard
Little Richard gave the old cartoon theme a rock and roll makeover; the director says he simply contacted him directly, and that the singer drank a lot of coffee before recording.
A Spirited Beginning (1997) has Casper kicked off a ghost train into Deedstown, where he befriends a lonely boy, Chris Carson; it ignores the origin story the 1995 film gave him.
Q 24Casper made his debut in a 1945 Paramount short with what title?
The Friendly Ghost
The Friendly Ghost (1945) went out as a single Noveltoon; it was well enough received that a sequel, There's Good Boos To-Night, followed in 1948 and a full series after that.
Q 25Which Paramount cartoon unit produced the original Casper theatrical shorts?
Famous Studios
Famous Studios, Paramount's in-house unit formed in 1942 after it took over Fleischer Studios, produced the Casper theatrical shorts from 1945 to 1959.
Q 26Roughly how much was Joe Oriolo paid when he sold the Casper rights to Paramount, with no royalties to follow?
About $200
About $200 is all Joe Oriolo received: accounts give $175 or $200, a single payment with no share of the films, comics and toys that followed.
Q 27Which comics publisher took over Casper in the 1950s and later bought the character outright from Paramount?
Harvey Comics
Harvey Comics gave Casper what his cinema cartoons lacked, a supporting cast: a ghost horse, three bullying uncles and a good little witch for a friend.
Q 28Why does Casper's night as a human end at ten, not midnight?
He's too young
He's too young: when Casper protests that Cinderella got until midnight, the angel replies that Cinderella wasn't twelve, and when the clock strikes ten he turns back into a ghost in front of the whole party.
Q 29Which 'tuff little ghost' with a Brooklyn accent spun off from the Casper comics into his own title?
Spooky
Spooky's accent is why his girlfriend Pearl is always 'Poil' and his derby hat a 'doiby'; much of the comedy is his scheming to scare people without her catching him.
Q 30Casper's cartoons reached television in 1959 on a show named after the mascot of which toy company?
Mattel
Mattel sponsored Matty's Funday Funnies and named it for its cartoon boy mascot, Matty Mattel, who introduced the old Casper shorts between commercials for the company's toys.