43 The NeverEnding Story Trivia Questions & Answers

Answer: Youth

After losing his faithful horse Artax to the depressing nature of the swamp, Atreyu finally finds the wise, ancient, giant tortoise Morla and manages to talk to her to get further clues for his quest, although, during that time, he is twice thrown back into the swamp by a massive sneeze from the poor tortoise who is allergic to youth - and, given her age, that pretty much means everyone who doesn't measure his age in centuries.

Answer: Unicorns

At the start of the movie Bastian and his father are eating breakfast. The father tells Bastian they need to talk about what he is doing in his math book. The teacher says Bastian has been drawing horses in the book, but Bastian tells his father they are unicorns.

Answer: Michael Ende

He was born on November 12th, 1929 in Germany. Mr. Ende decided he was not happy with the film's version of the story and did not want to have his name in the opening credits. A small credit does appear at the end of the movie with his name in it. Michael Ende passed away on August 29th, 1995 due to stomach cancer.

Answer: Moon Child

This is the same name he gives to her in the book.

Answer: Gmork the Werewolf

After being swept from Falkor's back in a storm, Atreyu wakes up at the shore and finds he has also lost the invaluable Auryn amulet. On his search for Falkor, he ventures into the ruins, finding centuries-old, crumbling paintings of his past adventures. The last tableau shows a black, fierce werewolf Atreyu has not encountered before - but he soon will. With the creature chained and half starved, it is still dangerous to the unarmed warrior boy, but when it charges at the story's hero, he grabs a sharp shard of stone and the wolf impales itself on it during its attack.

Gmork is shown in the movie as a black, large but otherwise anatomically normal wolf.

Answer: Three

At the beginning of the movie, when Bastian is walking to school, three bullies start to chase him. They end up throwing him into a garbage can, but Bastian get them back at the end of the movie!

Answer: Wolfgang Petersen

Wolfgang Petersen was born March 14th, 1941 in Germany. Mr. Petersen also directed such hits as "The Perfect Storm", "Air Force One", and "Troy", just to name a few. This was director Wolfgang Petersen's first English-language film. Did you know that Steven Spielberg has the Auryn from the movie hanging in an enclosed case in his office, because he liked the movie so much.

Answer: Germany

This is where the author of the book was from! Some scenes were also shot in Canada and Spain.

Answer: A hand

While, in the first movie, the main villain was the impersonal Nothing, the second one has a classic evil witch, portrayed by Clarissa Burt, as the villain. While her motives and methods somewhat differed in the book - mostly in the fact that in the film, Bastian's gradual loss of memories was her doing, while in the book, it is an inevitable side effect of using the Auryn - escaping her influence was an important step in finding the way back to reality in either medium. The depiction of her castle remains true to the book, as a black hand with fingers stretched out to the sky. Her metal servants, more prominently seen in the movie than the novel, also keep the key aspect that she can mentally control them because they are hollow.

Answer: Red

After chasing Bastian down an alley the three bullies end up puting Bastian in the garbage, because he has no lunch money. He jumps out after they leave, only to see them again when he emerges from the alley. This time, after another small chase, Bastian ducks into Mr. Koreander's book store.

Answer: Luckdragon

Falkor was a Luckdragon. Did you know the Night Hob says a profanity in the opening scene? It's where the rockbiter appears to be running down everyone in its path. The profanity is usually recorded over with the rumble of the rockbiter's scooter.

Answer: Michael Ende

He was unhappy with the outcome of the movie and refused to have his name credited in the opening credits. He does however have a small credit in the end credits.

Answer: The Will-o-the-wisp

In the novel, the four beings who meet in the Hauling Woods come from the four compass directions and find that the strange, impersonal, Nothing is encroaching from all sides. With one of them missing (it would have been a quite difficult effect to do right in 1984), there are only three, but they still come from very different regions of Fantasia and, true to the novel, decide that the Empress needs to know immediately - but by the time they do arrive at the Ivory Tower, they discover they are hardly the first to do so and pretty much every other area of the limitless world has seen the same.

The "Free Parking" spot on my board shows Atreyu and Artax taking a break at the stream from the first movie, leading over to the next set of properties.

Answer: 186

When Mr. Koreander tries to tell Bastian he doesn't know what books are, Bastian tells him just how many books he has, and he even names a few.

Answer: Alan Oppenheimer

He is thought by many to be one of the greatest animated voice artists ever. He has done many famous cartoon voices including Mighty Mouse, Skeletor, and Ming The Merciless, among many others.

Answer: Steven Spielberg's Office

Who else would get to keep that beloved piece from the movie?

Answer: The production could not come up with a convincing make-up.

Any of the wrong answers would likely have made for a great story in the tabloids, but the reason the green skin was dropped is far more prosaic - the producers could simply not manage to come up with a make-up that would consistently look realistic under the many different lighting conditions required for shooting the movie, so that plan was scrapped early in favor of casting a boy who had some native American ancestry and dropping the "greenskin" in favor of a simple "plains warrior" background for the character.

On my board, I picked "The Spires", "Crystal Canyon" and "Rainbow Beastlands" as the most memorable the many beautiful locations from the riding montage seen in the movie just after Atreyu got picked as the last possible savior of Fantasia.

Noah Hathaway, the actor ultimately chosen to portray Atreyu, performed many of his stunts himself in spite of being only 12 at the time of shooting.

Answer: The south

We find out where everybody is from when Rock Biter (the big rock guy), Night Hob (the guy that looks like kind of like a goblin) and Teeny Weeny (the guy that rides the racing snail) are talking about the Nothing.

Answer: The boy who played Atreyu broke his back.

There is a longstanding rumour that the horse died, but that did not happen. Entertainment.com has a story in December of 2019 with the director and the three child actors, that discusses this.

Answer: 1984

It was filmed in 1983 which was the hottest summer to date in Germany at the time!

Answer: Silver City

"City Gates". "Harbor" and "Bridge" are the locations I chose from Silver City, a location much more central to the second movie than it has ever been in the book. In the novel, it is a city of extreme beauty floating on the lake of tears and built by the ever-depressed Acherai. Bastian uses a wish to turn them into a new, ever-happy, carefree race that only destroy their previous work. In the movie, Silver city serves mostly as a battleground where Bastian and Atreyu first encounter Xayide's hollow giants. Bastian later returns to the city for the final climactic moment in which he uses his last remaining memory and wish to give Xayide a heart, which destroys the evil sorceress and saves Fantasia.

In terms of production and stage design, the sequel could not live up to the elaborate first installment and especially Silver City felt more like a theme park decoration than a mythical city built of a valuable metal.

Answer: Three

When Atreyu is talking to the ancient turtle it keeps sneezing. Morla says it's because "they" are allergic to youth. Morla always talks about herself as two people. She says it is because she has not talked to anyone in ages.

Answer: Night Goblin

There was no Night Goblin; there was, however, a Night Hob played by Tilo Prückner. He had the stupid bat. Sydney Bromley played Engywook; he helped Atreyu with the Southern Oracle. Mr. Koreander, played by Thomas Hill, was the old man in the bookstore that Bastian "borrowed" the book from. Cairon, played by Moses Gunn, spoke to all the individuals about what was happening with Fantasia, and the Childlike Empress' failing health.

Answer: Swamp of Sadness

He couldn't bring himself to believe and therefore the swamp consumed him.

Answer: Urgl - she healed Atreyu's wounds

While the Oracle scene takes a few liberties from the novel in the depiction of the gates and the Oracle itself, it stays rather true to the lovable gnome couple of Engiwook and Urgl. Engiwook is a self-proclaimed scientist who wants to research the Oracle but only does so via its visitors; he never actually went there himself so he can only use what he can see from his cave (the first of the gates) and second hand accounts by travelers. Urgl, on the other hand, is a slightly overbearing motherly figure who treats Atreyu's and Falkhor's wounds sustained in the Swamps of Sadness with ointments and a soup that Atreyu finds, to put it mildly, less than appetizing.