Parody-maniacs Trivia Quiz

Answer: Checkers

"Unless you have Uncle Wiggily or Candyland!" In the original film, a knight plays chess against Death for a temporary reprieve. Yakko and Dot cheat their way to winning checkers, after which Death proclaims their deal void because he lost. The rule comes from "Robert's Rules of Death", a take-off on the meeting guidelines manual "Robert's Rules of Order in Brief".

Answer: Moby or Not Moby

Peck played Ahab in the film "Moby Dick" from 1956. The Warners perform a song to the tune of "Drunken Sailor" about why Ahab shouldn't kill whales.

Answer: Goodfeathers

All the songs, like "Scorsese", "Egghatcher", "If I Were the Godpigeon" and "Sasha, Squit" are plays on songs from "Fiddler on the Roof". Respectively, they parody "Tradition", "Matchmaker", "If I Were a Rich Man" and "Sunrise, Sunset". The Goodfeathers also have a "West Side Story" parody called "West Side Pigeons".

Answer: Gunga Dot

This cartoon, which uses the same meter and rhyme scheme as Kipling's "Gunga Din", features most of the "Animaniacs" cast. Everyone wants water from Dot, who gets irate and eventually floods the desert to form the Indian Ocean. Tony Jay, the voice of Frollo from "The Hunchback of Notre Dame", narrates.

Answer: Henry V

Their translations are often quite accurate while being funny--for example, for "Hamlet", Dot translates "quite chap-fallen" as "by the way, your lower jaw's missing." Slappy and Hello Nurse help out in the witches scene from "Macbeth", eventually cooking up Mr. Director.

In the opening credits to the show, during the line "the writers flipped," one of the writers appears to be Shakespeare.

Answer: It contains no dialogue.

Very few "Animaniacs" cartoons lack dialogue; "Ragamuffins" and "Babblin' Bijou" are also silent (and appear in black-and-white). "Fantasia" contains no dialogue during the animated segments; the only speaking comes during the host's introductions.

The Brain builds a machine that makes tiny robots that will force the U.S. President to surrender to Brain. Pinky accidentally starts the machine while Brain is away, and the robots go out of control, which is similar to the "Sorcerer's Apprentice" scene from "Fantasia". The whole short is set to a modified version of Dukas' symphonic piece, with a little of the "Pinky and the Brain" theme thrown in.

Answer: She takes him to meet the actress who played Bumbie's mom.

"Bumbie's Mom" was inspired by writer Sherri Stoner's real trauma at seeing the death of Bambi's mother in "Bambi" when she was young. Skippy feels better after he meets the actress until he sees the movie "Old Yellow", a spoof of "Old Yeller", another movie that features the death of a beloved character. Cue the crying again.

Answer: Jokahontas

Gibson voices John Smith in "Pocahontas". Here, Smith is very Mel Gibson-inspired and wears Mickey Mouse shorts over his costume. The cartoon lambastes Disney for continuing with the same formula for film after film with little variation, all for the sake of making money.

Answer: Les Miseranimals

Featuring songs based on the tunes from the musical "Les Miserables", the episode has Rita trapped in a French pound during the Revolution, with convict Runt Valrunt (rather than Jean Valjean) trying to break her out. The composers had to write melodies that sounded like the original songs but weren't, because they couldn't afford the rights to all the songs they wanted to use and didn't want any copyright problems.

Answer: Stop a director from making a movie.

The title is a parody of "Hearts of Darkness", a documentary on the making of "Apocalypse Now". The cartoon parodies both films; they have to go up studio (instead of up the river like in "Apocalypse Now") to find a director (who looks and acts like Marlon Brando in the film) who's gone over budget and still doesn't know how his movie should end. "Hearts of Darkness" shows us that while making the film, director Francis Ford Coppola went over budget and agonized over finding the right ending for his film.