Famous Mikes and Michaels
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50 free Famous Mikes and Michaels trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Michael was the most popular boys' name in the United States for most of the second half of the twentieth century, so it is no surprise that the name turns up everywhere: on basketball courts and racetracks, on film sets, in laboratories, in recording studios and even on the first mission to land on the Moon. This quiz gathers the best-known Mikes and Michaels in one place. You will meet sporting champions, Oscar winners, pop stars and politicians, along with fictional namesakes such as Michael Scott, Mike Wazowski and Michael Myers. A few questions step sideways to things that simply carry the name, from a hurricane to a university mascot to a very determined chicken. It suits anyone who likes general knowledge with a theme: pub quiz regulars, party hosts looking for a round with a twist, and every Mike or Michael who wants to find out how well they know their namesakes.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Michael changed his surname because the actors' union already had a Michael Douglas?
Keaton
Keaton was born Michael Douglas, a name already taken twice over: by the film star and by daytime host Mike Douglas. He says the new surname was a tribute to nobody.
Q 02Which Michael, born Maurice Micklewhite, took his stage surname from a film showing in Leicester Square?
Caine
Caine came from The Caine Mutiny, which was on at the Odeon while he phoned his agent from a booth in the square. He was later knighted under his birth name.
Q 03Michael Jackson's pet chimpanzee, who once took tea with the mayor of Osaka, had which name?
Bubbles
Bubbles was bought from a Texas research facility and joined the 1987 Bad tour in Japan. Quarantine laws kept him out of the United Kingdom and Sweden.
Q 04Michael was America's top boys' name almost every year from 1954 until which name took over in 1999?
Jacob
Jacob then held first place from 1999 through 2012. Michael's only slip in those 45 years came in 1960, when David edged ahead.
Q 05Mike Wazowski, the one-eyed green monster of Monsters, Inc., is voiced by which comedian?
Billy Crystal
Billy Crystal took the part after regretting that he had turned down Buzz Lightyear in Toy Story. He has called Mike his favorite role.
Q 06Which Michael left basketball in 1993 and spent a season batting .202 for the Birmingham Barons?
Jordan
Jordan signed a minor-league deal with the Chicago White Sox, whose owner Jerry Reinsdorf also owned the Bulls and kept paying his basketball salary.
Q 07The white mask worn by Michael Myers in the 1978 film Halloween was made from a mask of which actor?
William Shatner
William Shatner's face, cast for a 1975 horror film, became a Captain Kirk mask that the crew bought on Hollywood Boulevard and spray-painted white.
Q 08Which Mike became boxing's youngest heavyweight champion at 20 by stopping Trevor Berbick in 1986?
Tyson
Tyson took the WBC belt inside two rounds, aged 20 years and 4 months. He had turned professional only the previous year.
Q 09Michael Scott manages the Scranton branch of which paper company in the American version of The Office?
Dunder Mifflin
Dunder Mifflin's manager was offered to Ricky Gervais, who had played the equivalent boss, David Brent, in the British original. He turned the part down.
Q 10Which Michael won eight gold medals at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, beating Mark Spitz's record of seven?
Phelps
Phelps had come close four years earlier in Athens, where he left with six golds and two bronzes while still a teenager.
Q 11Which Michael wore golden spikes to win both the 200 and 400 meters at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics?
Johnson
Johnson was the first man to win both events at one Games, and his custom Nike shoes earned him a nickname as the man with the golden shoes.
Q 12Which Michael won five Formula One drivers' titles in a row for Ferrari from 2000 to 2004?
Schumacher
Schumacher won 72 Grands Prix in red and helped turn a struggling Ferrari into the most successful team in the sport's history.
Q 13Which Michael circled the Moon alone in Columbia while Apollo 11's other two astronauts walked on the surface?
Collins
Collins lost radio contact with Earth for 48 minutes of every orbit, behind the far side of the Moon. He said he felt not loneliness but something close to exultation.
Q 21Mike Myers plays both Austin Powers and which arch-enemy, owner of the hairless cat Mr. Bigglesworth?
Dr. Evil
Dr. Evil was a part Myers first hoped to hand to Jim Carrey, who had to pass because of a clash with Liar Liar.
Q 22Michael Douglas won his Best Actor Oscar for playing which ruthless trader in the 1987 film Wall Street?
Gordon Gekko
Gordon Gekko was stitched together from several real financiers, among them Ivan Boesky, who was later convicted of insider trading.
Q 23Mike the Tiger, a live mascot renamed in 1936 for an athletic trainer, lives on a campus in which state?
Louisiana
Louisiana State University's first tiger arrived under the name Sheik. He was renamed for trainer Mike Chambers, who did most to bring him to Baton Rouge.
Q 14Which Michael wrote the novel Jurassic Park and also created the television hospital drama ER?
Crichton
Crichton earned a medical degree at Harvard in 1969 but never practiced, and ER grew out of a pilot script he had written back in 1974.
Q 15Which Canadian Michael, a crooner of old pop standards, topped the Billboard 200 with a Christmas album in 2011?
Bublé
Bublé got his break singing at the wedding of a former prime minister's daughter, where he was introduced to the producer David Foster.
Q 16Which Michael, a bookbinder's apprentice who became a scientist, discovered electromagnetic induction in 1831?
Faraday
Faraday joined the bookbinder's shop at 14 and read many of the books that passed through it. In 1813 the chemist Humphry Davy, his eyesight damaged in an accident, hired him as an assistant.
Q 17Which Soviet leader of the 1980s had a first name that is the Russian form of Michael?
Gorbachev
Gorbachev was a Mikhail, the Russian and Belarusian form of the name, which the first Romanov tsar and the poet Lermontov also carried.
Q 18Which rock frontman, knighted in 2003 for services to popular music, was born Michael Philip?
Jagger
Jagger, the Rolling Stones singer known to everyone as Mick, received the accolade from the Prince of Wales a year and a half after the knighthood was announced.
Q 19Michael Corleone, the youngest son who takes over the family in The Godfather, was played by which actor?
Al Pacino
Al Pacino played him in all three films and was twice Oscar-nominated for the part, which Empire magazine ranked the 11th greatest movie character.
Q 20Michael J. Fox launched a research foundation in 2000 to find a cure for which disease?
Parkinson's
Parkinson's disease was diagnosed in the actor in 1991, after his finger began twitching on the set of Doc Hollywood, and he kept it from the public for seven years.
Q 24In the NATO phonetic alphabet, Mike stands for M; which code word follows it for the letter N?
November
November took over from Nectar in 1956, after trials showed Nectar was too easily confused with Victor.
Q 25Ivy Mike, set off on a Pacific atoll in 1952, was the first full-scale test of which type of weapon?
Hydrogen bomb
Hydrogen bomb testing began with a blast of 10.4 megatons that erased the island of Elugelab, leaving a crater 1.9 km wide where it had stood.
Q 26Hurricane Michael hit which state's Panhandle at Category 5 strength in October 2018?
Florida
Florida had never recorded a Category 5 landfall on its Panhandle, and no hurricane that strong had hit any US coast since Andrew in 1992.
Q 27Michaelmas, the feast of St Michael held on 29 September, is traditionally celebrated by eating which bird?
Goose
Goose fattened on the stubble of the harvested fields was the dish, and an old saying promised that eating it would keep you in money all year.
Q 28Mont-Saint-Michel, the tidal island abbey dedicated to the archangel Michael, belongs to which region of France?
Normandy
Normandy's famous island is said to owe its church to a vision: in 708 the archangel told Aubert, the bishop of Avranches, to build on the rock.
Q 29The 2012 film Magic Mike was loosely based on which actor's own time as an 18-year-old stripper in Tampa?
Channing Tatum
Channing Tatum also played the title role. Matthew McConaughey asked for a strip scene the script had not given him, and it became the final number.
Q 30Which Michael won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature with Bowling for Columbine?
Moore
Moore partly funded his first film, Roger & Me, with a $58,000 settlement for wrongful dismissal and with money raised at bingo games.