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50 free The Hunchback of Notre Dame trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame is Disney's 1996 animated musical, loosely adapted from Victor Hugo's 1831 novel and directed by Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise, the team behind Beauty and the Beast. Tom Hulce voices Quasimodo, the bell-ringer hidden in the cathedral by Judge Claude Frollo, with Demi Moore as Esmeralda, Kevin Kline as Phoebus and Tony Jay as the villain. Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz wrote the songs, including Out There, God Help the Outcasts and Hellfire. This quiz digs into how the film got made: the Classics Illustrated comic that inspired it, the ten-day Paris research trip, the gargoyles who were nearly named after Lon Chaney and Charles Laughton, the Mandy Patinkin audition that became a legend, the Crowd software built for the Festival of Fools, and the hair-sniffing scene that earned a PG before Disney resubmitted for a G. It also covers the New Orleans Superdome premiere, the box office, the Berlin stage musical and the stalled live-action remake. Fifty questions, four options each, with a short explanation after every answer. Play on your phone or print it for a Disney movie night.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who wrote the 1831 novel that Disney's Hunchback is loosely based on?
Victor Hugo
His descendants later complained in an open letter to Libération that his name was missing from the film's posters.
Q 02Which duo directed Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame?
Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise
Katzenberg recruited them by telling them Menken and Schwartz were on board, and recruited Menken and Schwartz by saying the reverse.
Q 03Who voices Quasimodo?
Tom Hulce
He was cast after his first audition and was allowed to do his own singing after a demo of Out There.
Q 04Which actress voices Esmeralda's speaking part?
Demi Moore
She was cast for a voice deeper than previous Disney heroines, but after several singing demos told Menken and Schwartz to get someone else.
Q 05Who provides Esmeralda's singing voice?
Heidi Mollenhauer
She was a New York City cabaret singer when she was picked for the job.
Q 06Which actor voices Judge Claude Frollo?
Tony Jay
He called the part his bid for immortality; he had been cast on the strength of a brief turn as Monsieur D'Arque in Beauty and the Beast.
Q 07Which actor voices the captain of Frollo's guard?
Kevin Kline
The filmmakers modelled the character on Errol Flynn and John Wayne, and he and Demi Moore were the only actors offered roles outright without auditioning.
Q 08Which character narrates the film to a group of children?
Clopin
The puppeteer leader of the Roma opens with The Bells of Notre Dame; Paul Kandel got the part after the directors saw him as Uncle Ernie in The Who's Tommy.
Q 09What are the names of Quasimodo's three gargoyle friends?
Hugo, Victor and Laverne
Two honour the novelist; the third was named for Andrews Sisters singer LaVerne Andrews at Kirk Wise's suggestion.
Q 10Why did Disney's lawyers reject the gargoyle names Chaney, Laughton and Quinn?
The actors' estates might sue
The names honoured the three actors who had played Quasimodo in earlier films; the directors' fallback of Lon, Charles and Anthony had the same problem.
Q 11Which pop singer was the first actor cast, only to be released after test screenings?
Cyndi Lauper
She thought she had won Esmeralda, learned she was a gargoyle, and was eventually judged too youthful to be Quasimodo's wise counsel.
Q 12Which performer's death in 1995 meant Jane Withers had to record six remaining gargoyle lines?
Mary Wickes
Laverne was her final acting performance; she died at 85, a year before the film came out.
Q 13Jason Alexander was cast as Hugo largely because of his role in which earlier Disney production?
The Return of Jafar
Katzenberg had also considered Arsenio Hall, David Letterman and Jay Leno for the gargoyles.
Q 21Which song's lyrics were written inside Notre-Dame's bell tower during the research trip?
Out There
Schwartz arranged access before public hours and climbed alone to the tower with a notepad.
Q 22In Hugo's novel, what is Frollo's position?
Archdeacon of Notre-Dame
Disney feared an evil clergyman would antagonise Christian groups, so Frollo became a judge and a separate Archdeacon character was created.
Q 23Which Schindler's List performance did Don Hahn cite as an inspiration for Frollo?
Ralph Fiennes as Amon Goeth
Q 14Which two stars did Katzenberg want for a rock-opera Hunchback?
Meat Loaf and Cher
Talks with Meat Loaf's record company collapsed, and the rock-opera idea went with them.
Q 15Which Broadway star walked out of his Quasimodo audition saying he could not do it?
Mandy Patinkin
Trousdale drew a cartoon of the episode titled The Patinkin Incident; Schwartz called it Battleship Patinkin. He played Quasimodo in a 1997 TV film instead.
Q 16Which actor declined Frollo, though his Hannibal Lecter dialogue was used in an animation test?
Anthony Hopkins
He had received a formal offer before turning the role down.
Q 17Which two releases outsold Hunchback on home video in 1997?
101 Dalmatians and Men in Black
It sold 12.5 million VHS units and the tape's operating income reached $200 million by mid-1998.
Q 18What inspired David Stainton to suggest adapting Hugo's novel?
A Classics Illustrated comic
He pitched it to Jeffrey Katzenberg, who then assembled the creative team.
Q 19Which Disney executive interrupted the story pitch with the quip A time of Euro Disney?
Michael Eisner
Art director David Goetz had just intoned 14th century Europe, a dark and dreary time, a time of hopelessness.
Q 20How long was the production team's October 1993 research trip to Paris?
Ten days
Three of those days were spent inside Notre-Dame, and Schwartz finished the lyrics of Out There in the bell tower itself.
Kirk Wise said the team also drew historical parallels from the Confederate South and Nazi Germany.
Q 24Tab Murphy's early drafts cast Quasimodo as what kind of figure?
A Cyrano de Bergerac go-between
The idea of him secretly facilitating Phoebus and Esmeralda's romance gave way to a love triangle that foregrounded his own loss.
Q 25Which pair of writers, fresh from rewriting The Lion King, were brought onto the script?
Irene Mecchi and Jonathan Roberts
Tzudiker and White followed with further rewrites, and Schwartz chipped in on story as well as songs.
Q 26Which French sibling animators storyboarded The Bells of Notre Dame opening?
Paul and Gaëtan Brizzi
Burny Mattinson's original exposition sequence felt incomplete to Katzenberg until Schwartz suggested setting it to music.
Q 27What did the animators name the Glendale warehouse the production moved into?
Sanctuary
Most of the team had been tied up on The Lion King and Pocahontas, so extra animators were hired from Canada and the UK.
Q 28Roughly what share of the film was animated at Walt Disney Animation Paris?
20 percent
The Paris studio conferred with Burbank over video-conference dailies; the Florida studio also contributed about four minutes.
Q 29What was the name of the software built to animate the Festival of Fools masses?
Crowd
Inspired by The Lion King's wildebeest stampede, it built six character types with 72 programmed movements.
Q 30How many specific movements were the CGI crowd characters programmed with?
72
The characters came in six body types, ranging from jumping to clapping, for the Feast of Fools and the climax.