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50 free Tom and Jerry trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
42 free Tom and Jerry trivia questions with answers. Tom and Jerry have been chasing each other since 1940, when a scruffy cat named Jasper cornered an unnamed mouse in Puss Gets the Boot and MGM's management advised the two young directors not to make any more. A studio contest renamed the pair, seven Academy Awards followed, and the cartoons are still running on channels around the world. This quiz covers the whole story: the Hanna-Barbera golden age and its Oscar winners, who screamed for Tom, why the composer's scores were so hard to play, Spike and Tyke, Butch and Toodles, Nibbles the French-speaking orphan, the rare times Tom actually talks, Jerry's dance with Gene Kelly, the surreal Gene Deitch shorts made behind the Iron Curtain, the Chuck Jones years, the 1992 movie, the 2021 hybrid film and the edits later made for television. Easy questions for kids, hard ones for animation buffs. Everything is family-safe. Every answer was checked against a documented source and the citation sits under each explanation.
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Q 01Which two animators created Tom and Jerry at MGM in 1940?
William Hanna and Joseph Barbera
The pair went on to found Hanna-Barbera, home of the Flintstones, Scooby-Doo and Yogi Bear.
Q 02What was the title of the first Tom and Jerry short, released in February 1940?
Puss Gets the Boot
It earned an Academy Award nomination even though the credits named only producer Rudolf Ising and left out Hanna and Barbera.
Q 03In that first short the cat was not yet called Tom. What was his name?
Jasper
The mouse went unnamed on screen; Hanna said he was called Jinx in pre-production, and a magazine referred to him as Pee-Wee.
Q 04How were the names Tom and Jerry chosen?
A studio contest won by an animator
Animator John Carr won $50 for the suggestion; the names may trace back to a popular Christmas cocktail and an 1821 London stage play.
Q 05How many Tom and Jerry shorts did the original creators direct in the first MGM run (1940–58)?
114
The full theatrical count reaches 161 once the Gene Deitch and Chuck Jones eras are added, and 166 with shorts made since 2001.
Q 06How many Academy Awards for Best Animated Short did Tom and Jerry win?
Seven
That ties Disney's Silly Symphonies for the most in the category and is more than any other character-based theatrical series.
Q 07Which 1943 short was the first Tom and Jerry cartoon to win an Oscar?
The Yankee Doodle Mouse
A wartime cartoon full of home-front gags, it broke Disney's winning streak in the category.
Q 08In The Cat Concerto, Tom performs which piece at a formal concert while Jerry sabotages the piano?
Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2
Warner Bros. released the near-identical Rhapsody Rabbit with Bugs Bunny the same year, and the two studios accused each other of plagiarism at the 1947 Oscars.
Q 09The last of the seven Oscar winners (1953) is set in the Vienna home of which composer, whose waltzes make Jerry dance?
Johann Strauss
Jerry cannot help dancing whenever Strauss plays, so Tom learns piano to lure him out.
Q 10Who provided most of Tom's screams and Jerry's gulps in the classic shorts?
Co-director William Hanna
Tom's famous yell was made by recording Hanna's scream and cutting off the start and end, leaving only the loudest middle section.
Q 11Scott Bradley made life hard for MGM's musicians by weaving in which avant-garde technique?
Twelve-tone serialism
His scores mixed jazz, classical and pop, quoting MGM songs from The Wizard of Oz and Meet Me in St. Louis along the way.
Q 12Tom's bulldog nemesis Spike has a son. What is the puppy's name?
Tyke
The pair even got a short-lived spin-off series called Spike and Tyke, and Tyke did not speak until Tom & Jerry Kids in 1990.
Q 13Spike's speaking voice was modelled on which comedian?
Jimmy Durante
His catchphrases include 'Listen, pussycat!' when threatening Tom and 'That's my boy!' when praising Tyke.
Q 21Which swimming star shared an animated dream with Tom and Jerry in Dangerous When Wet?
Esther Williams
It was the duo's second live-action feature appearance after Anchors Aweigh.
Q 22Who was credited as producer on nearly every classic Tom and Jerry short until 1955?
Fred Quimby
As head of MGM's cartoon studio, Quimby had reluctantly green-lit the first short and collected the Oscars.
Q 23In which Iron Curtain city were 13 Tom and Jerry shorts made from 1961 to 1962?
Prague
Director Gene Deitch anglicised his Czech crew's names in the credits to avoid any link with Communism, and the location was left off entirely.
Q 14Butch, the black alley cat who rivals Tom for the same girlfriend, is usually seen doing what?
Smoking a cigar
Butch and Toodles were introduced in Hugh Harman's 1941 short The Alley Cat and folded into Tom and Jerry rather than getting their own series.
Q 15Nibbles, the little orphan mouse, speaks in what accent when he appears as the second Mouseketeer?
French
Six-year-old Francoise Brun-Cottan voiced him in The Two Mouseketeers, which won the 1952 Oscar.
Q 16The Two Mouseketeers spoofs which classic novel?
The Three Musketeers
Tom guards the French king's banquet on pain of the guillotine, and the short has one of the darkest endings in the series.
Q 17Which unusual thing happens in the 1956 short Blue Cat Blues?
Jerry narrates in voiceover
Paul Frees provided Jerry's inner monologue; the short ends with both characters sitting on railway tracks as a train approaches, and it is now withheld from some channels.
Q 18When something declared impossible promptly happens, a battered Tom says which 1940s radio catchphrase?
Don't you believe it!
The line turns up in Mouse Trouble and The Missing Mouse; the pair otherwise speak English only on rare occasions.
Q 19In The Mouse Comes to Dinner, Tom, sitting on a lit stove, asks Toots 'Say, what's cookin'?' What does she reply?
You are, stupid
It is one of the very few exchanges of dialogue Tom has in the whole series.
Q 20Jerry danced with which star in the 1945 MGM musical Anchors Aweigh?
Gene Kelly
MGM had wanted Mickey Mouse for the scene, but Disney would not lend him out; Tom appears briefly as a butler.
Q 24Gene Deitch admitted he was never a fan of the original cartoons, calling them what?
Needlessly violent
Working on a $10,000 budget having seen only a handful of the originals, his team produced shorts now prized by some fans for their surreal quality.
Q 25Which ex-Warner Bros. director produced 34 Tom and Jerry shorts between 1963 and 1967?
Chuck Jones
His studio, Sib Tower 12 Productions, gave the pair a slightly psychedelic look and thick eyebrows; MGM stopped production in 1967.
Q 26What is the housekeeper who owns Tom in the early Tom and Jerry shorts commonly known as?
Mammy Two Shoes
Voiced by Lillian Randolph, she appeared in 19 shorts; the name was actually borrowed from a Disney model sheet and never spoken on screen.
Q 27Which actress voiced the housekeeper until 1952, when she left for a role in Amos & Andy?
Lillian Randolph
Hanna and Barbera retired the character when she left; Turner later redubbed her lines with Thea Vidale for television.
Q 28Which media mogul bought MGM in 1986 and kept the film library, bringing Tom and Jerry to TBS and Cartoon Network?
Ted Turner
Turner Entertainment still holds the rights via Warner Bros., which is why the duo turned up on Boomerang and HBO Max.
Q 29The 1990 spin-off with the pair as youngsters debuted in March 1990 on which network's children's block?
Fox Kids
The show gave Spike and Tyke, and Droopy and his son Dripple, their own back-up segments and ran until 1994.
Q 30Tom and Jerry: The Movie (1992) is the only instalment in which the pair do what regularly?
Speak
Richard Kind voiced Tom and Dana Hill voiced Jerry, with songs by Henry Mancini and Leslie Bricusse.