2022 Pop Culture Trivia
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This pop culture trivia 2022 quiz has 78 free questions with answers about the year everyone was talking about: Will Smith at the Oscars, Elon Musk walking into Twitter with a sink, Kim Kardashian in Marilyn Monroe's dress, Kate Bush back at number one, Wednesday Addams dancing, Taylor Swift owning the whole Hot 100 top ten, and the death of Queen Elizabeth II. It covers film, TV, music, celebrity news, viral internet moments, games and the big sports moments that crossed over into everyday conversation, from Super Bowl LVI to Argentina's World Cup win. Questions run from easy (who did Will Smith slap?) to properly hard (which band recorded the song Wednesday dances to?), so it works for a party round, a year-in-review night or a solo test of your memory. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia and reputable reporting, and each question shows its source, so if something surprises you, you can see exactly where it comes from.
30 of 78 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01At the 2022 Academy Awards, Will Smith walked on stage and slapped which comedian?
Chris Rock
Chris Rock was slapped after a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith's shaved head; minutes later Smith won Best Actor for King Richard.
Q 02For how long did the Academy ban Will Smith from its events after his 2022 Oscars slap?
10 years
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.
Q 03Which film won Best Picture at the 2022 Oscars, the first winner distributed by a streaming platform?
CODA
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.
Q 04Which film won the most awards at the 2022 Oscars, six, all in craft categories such as sound and visual effects?
Dune
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.
Q 05Regina Hall and Amy Schumer co-hosted the 2022 Oscars with which other comedian?
Wanda Sykes
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.
Q 06Which show won Outstanding Drama Series at the 2022 Emmys?
Succession
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.
Q 07At 26, Zendaya became the youngest two-time acting Emmy winner in 2022 for her role in which series?
Euphoria
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.
Q 08Which limited series led all shows with 10 Emmy wins in 2022, including Creative Arts awards?
The White Lotus
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.
Q 09At the 2022 Emmys, Lee Jung-jae became the first Asian to win Lead Actor in a Drama Series, for which Korean show?
Squid Game
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.
Q 10After an Omicron postponement, the 2022 Grammy Awards moved from Los Angeles to which city?
Las Vegas
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.
Q 11Who won Album of the Year at the 2022 Grammys for We Are?
Jon Batiste
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.
Q 12Who recorded 'Leave the Door Open', the 2022 Grammy Record and Song of the Year?
Silk Sonic
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.
Q 13Who won Best New Artist at the 2022 Grammys?
Olivia Rodrigo
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'.
Q 21Johnny Depp's 2022 defamation suit against Amber Heard centred on her 2018 op-ed in which newspaper?
The Washington Post
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.
Q 22Which 1985 Kate Bush song went to number one in the UK after featuring in Stranger Things season 4?
Running Up That Hill
'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.
Q 23Kate Bush's revived 2022 hit was the lead single from which 1985 album?
Q 14Which team won Super Bowl LVI in February 2022?
Los Angeles Rams
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.
Q 15Who joined Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem and Mary J. Blige headlining the Super Bowl LVI halftime show?
Kendrick Lamar
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.
Q 16How much did Elon Musk pay to buy Twitter, a deal that closed in October 2022?
$44 billion
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.
Q 17What did Elon Musk carry into Twitter's headquarters the day before the takeover closed?
A kitchen sink
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'.
Q 18Which engineer built a five-letter word game for his partner and sold it to the New York Times in 2022?
Josh Wardle
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'.
Q 19In Wordle, which tile colour marks a right letter in the wrong spot?
Yellow
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.
Q 20The televised Johnny Depp–Amber Heard trial was held far from Hollywood, in which US state?
Virginia
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.
Hounds of Love
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.
Q 24Kate Bush's 2022 number one made her the oldest woman to top the UK singles chart, a record previously held by whom?
Cher
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.
Q 25In the Stranger Things season 4 finale, Eddie Munson plays which Metallica song to lure the demobats?
Master of Puppets
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.
Q 26What name, borrowed from Dungeons & Dragons, do the Hawkins kids give the villain of Stranger Things season 4?
Vecna
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.
Q 27In October 2022, who became the first artist to hold all ten spots of the Hot 100 top 10?
Taylor Swift
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'.
Q 28Whose album topped Billboard's 2022 year-end album chart, the first all-Spanish record ever to do so?
Bad Bunny
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.
Q 29Which Harry Styles song topped the Hot 100 for 15 weeks in 2022?
As It Was
'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.
Q 30Which Beyoncé album, led by the single 'Break My Soul', was released in July 2022?
Renaissance
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.