78 Fun Facts About 2022 Pop Culture

At the 2022 Academy Awards, Will Smith walked on stage and slapped which comedian?

Chris Rock was slapped after a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith's shaved head; minutes later Smith won Best Actor for King Richard.

For how long did the Academy ban Will Smith from its events after his 2022 Oscars slap?

The Academy barred Smith from its events, including the Oscars, for 10 years, announced on April 8, 2022, a week after he had resigned his membership.

Which film won Best Picture at the 2022 Oscars, the first winner distributed by a streaming platform?

CODA was bought by Apple at the Sundance festival for a record $25 million and went on to win all three Oscars it was nominated for, including Troy Kotsur's for Supporting Actor.

Which film won the most awards at the 2022 Oscars, six, all in craft categories such as sound and visual effects?

Dune won six of its ten nominations, all in craft categories from score to visual effects, yet Best Picture went to a film that had only three nominations in all.

Regina Hall and Amy Schumer co-hosted the 2022 Oscars with which other comedian?

Wanda Sykes completed the trio with Regina Hall and Amy Schumer; the Oscars had gone without a host since Kevin Hart pulled out of the 2019 show over old tweets.

Which show won Outstanding Drama Series at the 2022 Emmys?

Succession won for its third season, which the pandemic had delayed by over a year; the show missed the 2021 Emmys entirely, then took the top drama prize again in 2023.

At 26, Zendaya became the youngest two-time acting Emmy winner in 2022 for her role in which series?

Zendaya won for Euphoria's second season, the first Black woman to take the category twice; in her speech she said her greatest wish was that the show could help heal people.

Which limited series led all shows with 10 Emmy wins in 2022, including Creative Arts awards?

The White Lotus took 10 Emmys for its Hawaii-set first season; it began in 2020 when HBO asked Mike White for anything that could be filmed in a Covid-safe bubble, so he set it in one resort.

At the 2022 Emmys, Lee Jung-jae became the first Asian to win Lead Actor in a Drama Series, for which Korean show?

Squid Game also won creator Hwang Dong-hyuk the directing Emmy; he wrote it as a film script in 2009 and Korean studios turned it down for years before Netflix said yes.

After an Omicron postponement, the 2022 Grammy Awards moved from Los Angeles to which city?

Las Vegas's MGM Grand Garden Arena stepped in because the usual Los Angeles venue was booked out with NBA and NHL games; it was the first Grammys telecast from the city.

Who won Album of the Year at the 2022 Grammys for We Are?

Jon Batiste led the field with eleven nominations and won five; four months later he left The Late Show with Stephen Colbert after seven years as its bandleader.

Who recorded 'Leave the Door Open', the 2022 Grammy Record and Song of the Year?

Silk Sonic, the duo of Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak, won all four of their categories for 'Leave the Door Open', then declined to submit their album for the following year's Grammys.

Who won Best New Artist at the 2022 Grammys?

Olivia Rodrigo won three Grammys that night for her debut album Sour and its songs; months earlier she had credited the writers of Paramore's 'Misery Business' as co-writers of her hit 'Good 4 U'.

Which team won Super Bowl LVI in February 2022?

The Los Angeles Rams beat the Bengals 23-20 in their own SoFi Stadium, where they were officially the visiting team; MVP Cooper Kupp caught the winning touchdown with 1:25 left.

Who joined Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem and Mary J. Blige headlining the Super Bowl LVI halftime show?

Kendrick Lamar rounded out the hip-hop lineup with 'Alright'; Eminem then ended 'Lose Yourself' by taking a knee, and 50 Cent turned up as a surprise guest.

How much did Elon Musk pay to buy Twitter, a deal that closed in October 2022?

Musk paid about $44 billion, or $54.20 a share; after trying to back out in July he closed on October 27, tweeting 'the bird is freed' and firing the top executives.

What did Elon Musk carry into Twitter's headquarters the day before the takeover closed?

Musk walked in carrying a kitchen sink on October 26, 2022, captioning the video 'Entering Twitter HQ - let that sink in!' and changing his bio to 'Chief Twit'.

Which engineer built a five-letter word game for his partner and sold it to the New York Times in 2022?

Josh Wardle, a Brooklyn software engineer, named Wordle as a pun on his own surname; the Times bought it in January 2022 for a price 'in the low seven figures'.

In Wordle, which tile colour marks a right letter in the wrong spot?

Yellow marks a right letter in the wrong spot and green a right letter in place; players get six guesses, and the grids of coloured squares they shared made the game spread on Twitter.

The televised Johnny Depp–Amber Heard trial was held far from Hollywood, in which US state?

Virginia hosted the trial because the newspaper that ran Heard's op-ed keeps the servers for its online edition in Fairfax County; the judge let cameras in over Heard's objection.

Johnny Depp's 2022 defamation suit against Amber Heard centred on her 2018 op-ed in which newspaper?

The Washington Post ran Heard's 2018 op-ed, which never mentioned Depp by name; the jury still awarded him $10 million in compensatory damages, and the pair settled for $1 million that December.

Which 1985 Kate Bush song went to number one in the UK after featuring in Stranger Things season 4?

'Running Up That Hill' topped the UK chart in June 2022, 37 years after it first peaked at number three; Kate Bush, who rarely licenses her songs, agreed because she was a fan of the show.

Kate Bush's revived 2022 hit was the lead single from which 1985 album?

Hounds of Love, Kate Bush's fifth album, restored her commercial standing after the low sales of The Dreaming; she began it at home on eight-track tape in the summer of 1983.

Kate Bush's 2022 number one made her the oldest woman to top the UK singles chart, a record previously held by whom?

Cher had held the record since 1998, when 'Believe' hit number one and she was 52; Bush was 63, lifted there by a new generation who found her 1985 single through a Netflix drama.

In the Stranger Things season 4 finale, Eddie Munson plays which Metallica song to lure the demobats?

Eddie shreds 'Master of Puppets' on a trailer roof in a season set in March 1986; the scene sent the song into the Hot 100 for the first time, 36 years after its release.

What name, borrowed from Dungeons & Dragons, do the Hawkins kids give the villain of Stranger Things season 4?

Vecna is unmasked late in the season as Henry Creel, who first appears as a caring orderly in the lab; Netflix's casting notice even hid the role under the false name Peter Ballard.

In October 2022, who became the first artist to hold all ten spots of the Hot 100 top 10?

Taylor Swift filled all ten places with tracks from Midnights, led by 'Anti-Hero', passing the nine Drake managed in 2021; she said the news left her 'in shambles'.

Whose album topped Billboard's 2022 year-end album chart, the first all-Spanish record ever to do so?

Bad Bunny's Un Verano Sin Ti spent 13 weeks at number one; he teased it with a classified ad offering his Bugatti for sale, whose phone number played a snippet of a new song.

Which Harry Styles song topped the Hot 100 for 15 weeks in 2022?

'As It Was' passed the 14-week record for a British act; the child's voice that opens it is Styles's goddaughter, from a message recorded when her bedtime phone call to him didn't go through.

Which Beyoncé album, led by the single 'Break My Soul', was released in July 2022?

Renaissance, a house-and-disco record, and its songs won four Grammys in 2023, making Beyoncé the awards' most-decorated artist, yet Album of the Year went to Harry Styles instead.

At the 2022 Met Gala, Kim Kardashian wore a dress originally worn by which star?

It was Marilyn Monroe's 1962 'Happy Birthday, Mr. President' gown; Kardashian wore the fragile original for only a few minutes on the carpet before changing into a replica.

Who plays the title role in Netflix's Wednesday, released in November 2022?

Jenna Ortega plays Wednesday Addams and choreographed the character's viral dance herself; the show's 341 million hours in its first week set a record for an English-language Netflix series.

Wednesday Addams's viral dance scene is set to 'Goo Goo Muck' by which band?

The Cramps released 'Goo Goo Muck' in 1981; after the scene aired, fans' TikTok re-creations set to Lady Gaga's 'Bloody Mary' pushed that 2011 album track onto radio as a single.

Which director helmed four episodes of Wednesday's first season?

Tim Burton directed four episodes and executive-produced; three decades earlier he had been approached to direct the 1991 Addams Family film and turned it down.

House of the Dragon is adapted from which 2018 book by the creator of Game of Thrones?

Fire & Blood is written as an in-world history that gives several conflicting accounts of the same events, so the showrunners had to settle on a single version of what happened.

HBO's 2022 Game of Thrones prequel depicts the Targaryen civil war known by what name?

The Dance of the Dragons pits Rhaenyra, the heir King Viserys named, against her half-brother Aegon, whom his mother's family schemes to crown instead.

Which talk-show host signed off in May 2022 after 19 seasons?

Ellen DeGeneres ended her show after staff accused it in 2020 of being a toxic workplace; her first-ever guest, Jennifer Aniston, returned for the final episode.

Which title won Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2022?

Elden Ring, FromSoftware's open-world epic, won Game of the Year; a stage-crasher hijacked the acceptance speech to thank his 'reformed Orthodox rabbi Bill Clinton'.

The 2022 Game of the Year winner featured worldbuilding by which fantasy author?

George R. R. Martin wrote the world's ancient backstory and overarching mythos, while director Hidetaka Miyazaki wrote the story players actually meet; the game sold 13.4 million copies in five weeks.

Which 2022 sequel arrived 36 years after its predecessor?

Top Gun: Maverick followed the 1986 original; first due in 2019, it waited out the pandemic because Tom Cruise insisted on a cinema release, even as streaming services tried to buy it.

Which 2022 release went on to gross the most worldwide, over $2.3 billion?

Avatar: The Way of Water opened only in mid-December; James Cameron had said it needed to rank among the three or four biggest films ever just to break even, and within weeks he confirmed it would.

In 2022, Everything Everywhere All at Once became the highest-grossing film to date for which studio?

A24's multiverse comedy opened in only ten US cinemas, then spread nationwide and became the studio's first film to gross $100 million worldwide.

Who played Bruce Wayne in The Batman, released in March 2022?

Robert Pattinson's Bruce Wayne was modelled on Kurt Cobain: director Matt Reeves wrote the first act while listening to Nirvana's 'Something in the Way', which plays twice in the film.

A 2022 meme saw groups of teenage boys attend Minions: The Rise of Gru dressed in what?

The 'Gentleminions' trend had teenage boys turning up in suits like Gru's; several UK cinemas banned groups in formal wear after rowdy screenings.

Which artist's 'Bad Habit' went from TikTok favourite to Hot 100 number one in October 2022?

Steve Lacy, guitarist of the band the Internet, scored his first number one with 'Bad Habit'; he started out producing whole songs on his iPhone using GarageBand.

Which 'Unholy' co-singer became the first openly transgender soloist to top the Hot 100?

Kim Petras, the German singer featured on Sam Smith's 'Unholy', made history again when the song won a Grammy; accepting it, she thanked the transgender artists who came before her.

Rihanna's 'Lift Me Up', her first solo release in six years, was recorded for which 2022 film?

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever features 'Lift Me Up', written with Tems and director Ryan Coogler as a tribute to Chadwick Boseman, the first film's star, who died in 2020.

In September 2022 the NFL named Rihanna as halftime headliner and which company as new sponsor, replacing Pepsi?

Apple Music took over from Pepsi as halftime sponsor; Rihanna's February 2023 set was her first live show in five years, and she revealed her second pregnancy on stage.

Britney Spears's first new music in six years, released in August 2022, was a duet with which artist?

'Hold Me Closer', her duet with Elton John, blends his 'Tiny Dancer', 'The One' and 'Don't Go Breaking My Heart'; it was her first release since a court ended her 13-year conservatorship.

Queen Elizabeth II died on 8 September 2022 at which residence?

She died at Balmoral Castle in Aberdeenshire, her Scottish summer residence; a death in Scotland triggered Operation Unicorn, the Scottish variant of the long-planned Operation London Bridge.

Which former England football captain queued for 12 hours with the public to see the Queen lying in state?

David Beckham stood in line with everyone else, telling reporters the experience was 'meant to be shared'; at its longest the queue stretched about 10 miles, with waits of over 24 hours.

The Queen's state funeral was the first held in Britain since whose, in 1965?

Winston Churchill's 1965 state funeral had been planned since his stroke in 1953, under the codename Operation Hope Not; the Queen broke with protocol by attending it herself.

Which country won the 2022 Eurovision Song Contest in Turin?

Ukraine's Kalush Orchestra won with 'Stefania' and a record 439 televote points; because of the war, the 2023 contest was staged in Liverpool on Ukraine's behalf.

Which French player scored a hat-trick in the 2022 World Cup final and still ended up on the losing side?

Kylian Mbappé scored twice inside two minutes to wipe out Argentina's 2-0 lead and completed the first final hat-trick since Geoff Hurst in 1966, but Argentina won on penalties.

Who captained Argentina's last World Cup winners before 2022?

Diego Maradona captained the 1986 side and scored the 'Hand of God' goal against England on the way; he died in 2020, two years before Lionel Messi's team ended the wait.

Who was Time magazine's Person of the Year for 2022?

Volodymyr Zelenskyy had played a president before becoming one: in the sitcom Servant of the People he starred as a history teacher who is unexpectedly elected to the job.

Whose 40-game Jeopardy! streak, then the second-longest ever, ended in January 2022?

Amy Schneider's run ended when librarian Rhone Talsma knew that Bangladesh is the only country whose English name ends in H; she won the Tournament of Champions that November.

Who wrote 'We Don't Talk About Bruno', the Encanto song that topped the Hot 100 for five weeks?

Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote all of Encanto's songs; 'Bruno' was only the second Disney animated song to hit number one, after 'A Whole New World', yet Disney submitted 'Dos Oruguitas' for the Oscar instead.

Which rapper died in Los Angeles in September 2022 aged 59?

Coolio won a Grammy for 'Gangsta's Paradise' and bristled when 'Weird Al' Yankovic parodied it as 'Amish Paradise', saying he had refused permission; years later he apologised and called his reaction stupid.

Olivia Newton-John, who died in August 2022, played which character in Grease?

Sandy was rewritten as an Australian so that Newton-John need not fake an American accent; at 28, she had insisted on a screen test before agreeing to play a high-schooler.

Which Australian soap aired a farewell episode in 2022, only to be revived by Amazon Freevee?

Neighbours aired its finale on 28 July 2022 after Channel 5 in the UK pulled its funding; Amazon Freevee revived the soap in September 2023.

Which series ended in 2022 and finished with 53 Emmy nominations without a single win?

Better Call Saul went 0 for 53 across six seasons, a record at the time for a show that never won; its parent series Breaking Bad had collected 16 Emmys.

FX's The Bear, which premiered in June 2022, is set in a sandwich shop in which city?

Chicago's real Mr. Beef, an Italian beef shop in River North, inspired the show's restaurant; scenes were shot inside it and its kitchen was rebuilt on a soundstage.

Which French app, with a daily two-minute window for a front-and-back photo, was Apple's 2022 iPhone App of the Year?

BeReal's idea was copied by a far bigger rival: in September 2022 TikTok launched 'TikTok Now', its own daily prompt to post a photo using the front and back cameras.

Which company bought Heardle, the Wordle-style song-guessing game, in July 2022?

Spotify bought Heardle in July 2022; the game asked players to name a song from up to 16 seconds of its intro, and Spotify shut it down in May 2023.

After Kanye West pulled out of Coachella 2022, Swedish House Mafia closed the festival with which artist?

The Weeknd stepped in beside Swedish House Mafia, with whom he had released the single 'Moth to a Flame' months earlier, after Kanye West dropped out eleven days before the festival.

Which sportswear company ended its Yeezy sneaker partnership with Ye in October 2022 after his antisemitic remarks?

Adidas ended the Yeezy partnership on October 25, 2022, stopping production at once; it was left with a stockpile of unsold sneakers, which it began selling off in 2023.

Adnan Syed, freed in 2022 after 23 years, was the subject of which podcast's first season?

Serial's first season, hosted by Sarah Koenig, questioned Syed's conviction for the 1999 murder of Hae Min Lee; courts later reinstated the conviction, but in 2025 a judge ruled he would stay free.

At the Venice premiere of Don't Worry Darling, Harry Styles was accused of spitting on which co-star?

Video seemed to show Styles spitting toward Chris Pine as he took his seat; Pine's representative called it 'a ridiculous story', one more twist in a press tour dogged by rumours of an on-set feud.

Which YouTube group announced in September 2022 that member Ned Fulmer would no longer work with them?

The Try Guys cut ties with Ned Fulmer on September 27, 2022, over his affair with an employee; the four founders had begun making videos together at BuzzFeed in 2014.

Which group began a London concert residency in May 2022 as digital avatars of their 1979 selves?

ABBA's four members spent five weeks being filmed in motion capture so Industrial Light & Magic could build the 'ABBAtars', which appear alongside a live ten-piece band.

Which AI tool opened to the public on 30 November 2022?

ChatGPT was released by OpenAI with little fanfare as a 'research preview'; it reached an estimated 100 million monthly users in two months, the fastest-growing consumer app until Threads.

Taylor Hawkins, who died in March 2022, drummed for which band?

Foo Fighters cancelled the rest of their tour after Hawkins died hours before a festival set in Bogotá; at a Wembley tribute concert that September his teenage son Shane played drums with the band.

Which singer completed her EGOT in 2022 by co-producing the Tony-winning A Strange Loop?

Jennifer Hudson became the 17th EGOT winner, adding the Tony to an Oscar for Dreamgirls, two Grammys and a Daytime Emmy; she first found fame by finishing seventh on American Idol.

Which series won Outstanding Comedy Series at the 2022 Emmys for the second year running?

Ted Lasso repeated as Outstanding Comedy Series; Jason Sudeikis first played the coach in 2013 adverts for NBC Sports' Premier League coverage, years before the character got a show.

What was the title of the Lizzo album released on 15 July 2022?

Special, Lizzo's fourth studio album, was led by the number one 'About Damn Time'; weeks before release she re-recorded the track 'Grrrls' to remove a lyric that disability advocates called an ableist slur.

In which magazine did Serena Williams announce in 2022 that she would 'evolve away' from tennis?

Williams wrote the essay for Vogue's September 2022 issue; at the US Open that followed she upset world No. 2 Anett Kontaveit before losing to Ajla Tomljanović in the third round.

Which K-pop group announced in June 2022 that its members would pause group activities to focus on solo projects?

BTS made the announcement at a dinner marking their ninth anniversary; their label Hybe then insisted it was neither a break-up nor a hiatus.