Music and viral songs (easy-medium)
Pop music has produced the most universally recognized cultural moments — Thriller, Born in the USA, Despacito. These questions test broad recall.
Q1.Which singer released the album 1989 in 2014 and then re-recorded it as 1989 (Taylor's Version) in 2023?Tap to reveal
Answer: Taylor Swift
The re-recording project began after the master recordings of her first six albums were sold without her consent.
Q2.Despacito by Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee is sung mainly in which language?Tap to reveal
Answer: Spanish
The 2017 remix with Justin Bieber kept it at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 for 16 weeks, tying the record at the time.
Q3.Which South Korean group's single Dynamite became the first song by a Korean act to debut at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2020?Tap to reveal
Answer: BTS
Dynamite was also the group's first single recorded entirely in English.
Q4.Lil Nas X's Old Town Road set the record for the most weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2019 — how many weeks?Tap to reveal
Answer: 19
The song first spread through TikTok memes before the remix with Billy Ray Cyrus turned it into a chart record.
Q5.What is the title of Psy's 2012 hit that became the first YouTube video to pass one billion views?Tap to reveal
Answer: Gangnam Style
Gangnam is a wealthy district of Seoul whose flashy lifestyle the song was written to mock.
Q6.Which debut single by Olivia Rodrigo topped charts around the world in January 2021?Tap to reveal
Answer: drivers license
Rodrigo was 17 and still starring in Disney's High School Musical: The Musical: The Series when the song came out.
Q7.Which rapper's 2024 diss track Not Like Us won Record of the Year at the Grammys?Tap to reveal
Answer: Kendrick Lamar
The track collected five Grammys in a single night, including Song of the Year, a rare feat for a diss record.
Q8.Beyoncé's 2024 album Cowboy Carter made her the first Black woman to top which Billboard chart?Tap to reveal
Answer: Top Country Albums
Its lead single Texas Hold 'Em had already made her the first Black woman to top the Hot Country Songs chart.
Q9.Which 1977 Fleetwood Mac song re-entered the charts in 2020 after a viral TikTok of a man skateboarding while drinking cranberry juice?Tap to reveal
Answer: Dreams
The video was posted by Nathan Apodaca, and drummer Mick Fleetwood recreated it himself on TikTok within days.
Q10.Which 1985 Kate Bush song reached number one in the UK in 2022 after featuring in Stranger Things?Tap to reveal
Answer: Running Up That Hill
The gap of roughly 37 years between release and reaching number one set a UK chart record.
Q11.Whose 1988 song Fast Car was covered by Luke Combs in 2023, leading to a joint performance at the 2024 Grammys?Tap to reveal
Answer: Tracy Chapman
The cover made Chapman the first Black songwriter to win the CMA Award for Song of the Year.
Q12.Which Sabrina Carpenter song became her first number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2024?Tap to reveal
Answer: Please Please Please
Espresso, released two months earlier, was the bigger streaming hit but peaked at number three.
Q13.Which Billie Eilish song from the Barbie soundtrack won the Oscar for Best Original Song in 2024?Tap to reveal
Answer: What Was I Made For?
The win made Eilish and her brother Finneas the youngest two-time Oscar winners, following their theme for No Time to Die.
Movies and box-office juggernauts
The films that defined decades — Titanic, Avatar, Avengers Endgame. Pop culture trivia about movies focuses on box office records, casting trivia, sequels.
Q1.Which 2009 James Cameron film is the highest-grossing movie of all time worldwide?Tap to reveal
Answer: Avatar
It briefly lost the crown to Avengers: Endgame in 2019 before a 2021 re-release in China put it back on top.
Q2.Who plays Ken opposite Margot Robbie in Barbie (2023)?Tap to reveal
Answer: Ryan Gosling
His number I'm Just Ken was nominated for Best Original Song, and he performed it live at the Oscars ceremony.
Q3.In which 2019 Marvel film do the surviving Avengers pull off a time heist to undo Thanos's snap?Tap to reveal
Answer: Avengers: Endgame
It overtook Avatar as the highest-grossing film ever in July 2019 and held the title until Avatar's 2021 re-release in China.
Q4.What is the name of the fictional African kingdom ruled by T'Challa in Black Panther?Tap to reveal
Answer: Wakanda
Black Panther was the first superhero film ever nominated for the Best Picture Oscar.
Q5.The Barbenheimer craze of July 2023 paired Barbie with which Christopher Nolan film released the same day?Tap to reveal
Answer: Oppenheimer
Oppenheimer went on to win seven Oscars including Best Picture, while Barbie finished as the year's highest-grossing film.
Q6.Which 2022 sequel became the first Tom Cruise film to gross over one billion dollars worldwide?Tap to reveal
Answer: Top Gun: Maverick
It arrived 36 years after the original Top Gun, one of the longest gaps ever between a film and its direct sequel.
Q7.Which Disney animated film features the song Let It Go?Tap to reveal
Answer: Frozen
Let It Go won the Oscar for Best Original Song, and the 2019 sequel actually out-grossed the original at the box office.
Q8.In Pixar's Inside Out, the emotions Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust live inside the head of a girl with what name?Tap to reveal
Answer: Riley
The 2024 sequel introduced Anxiety and briefly held the record for highest-grossing animated film before Ne Zha 2 passed it in 2025.
Q9.What was the first film in history to gross one billion dollars worldwide?Tap to reveal
Answer: Titanic
Its 11 Oscars tied the record set by Ben-Hur, a tally later matched by The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
Q10.Which 2025 Chinese animated film became the first animated movie to gross over two billion dollars worldwide?Tap to reveal
Answer: Ne Zha 2
Nearly all of its takings came from China alone, the biggest gross any film has ever earned in a single market.
Q11.Which actress won the Best Actress Oscar for Everything Everywhere All at Once?Tap to reveal
Answer: Michelle Yeoh
The film took three of the four acting Oscars that year, with Ke Huy Quan and Jamie Lee Curtis winning the supporting categories.
Q12.Which 2023 film became the first video game adaptation to gross over one billion dollars?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Super Mario Bros. Movie
It was produced by Illumination, the studio behind Despicable Me, with Chris Pratt voicing Mario.
Q13.Which Indian director's 2022 epic RRR won an Oscar for the song Naatu Naatu?Tap to reveal
Answer: S. S. Rajamouli
Naatu Naatu was the first song from an Indian film to win the Academy Award for Best Original Song.
TV phenomena and streaming
Television trivia in the streaming era. Stranger Things, Squid Game, Game of Thrones, Bridgerton. These shows became cultural events — trivia tests how invested you were.
Q1.Which Netflix series set in Hawkins, Indiana, features a girl with psychokinetic powers known as Eleven?Tap to reveal
Answer: Stranger Things
The Duffer brothers originally pitched the show under the title Montauk, after the Long Island town where it was first set.
Q2.In Squid Game, contestants risk their lives in children's games for a prize of how many South Korean won?Tap to reveal
Answer: 45.6 billion won
The 2021 series became Netflix's most-watched show ever within a month of release.
Q3.Which HBO series based on George R. R. Martin's novels ended in 2019 with a widely criticized final season?Tap to reveal
Answer: Game of Thrones
Its prequel House of the Dragon premiered in 2022 and centers on a Targaryen civil war set about two centuries earlier.
Q4.Which 2023 HBO series adapted from a video game stars Pedro Pascal as Joel and Bella Ramsey as Ellie?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Last of Us
Its cordyceps outbreak is inspired by a real fungus that hijacks the bodies of ants.
Q5.In The Bear, chef Carmy Berzatto leaves fine dining to run his late brother's sandwich shop in which city?Tap to reveal
Answer: Chicago
The fictional shop was inspired by Mr. Beef on Orleans Street, a real Italian beef stand that also appears on screen.
Q6.Which Disney+ Star Wars series introduced Grogu, the character fans nicknamed Baby Yoda?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Mandalorian
Disney deliberately kept Grogu toys off shelves at launch so the character would not be spoiled before the show aired.
Q7.Netflix's Bridgerton is set during which era of British high society?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Regency era
Queen Charlotte, played by Golda Rosheuvel, proved popular enough to get her own prequel series in 2023.
Q8.Which Apple TV+ comedy follows an American football coach hired to manage an English Premier League soccer club?Tap to reveal
Answer: Ted Lasso
Jason Sudeikis first played the character in 2013 promos for NBC's Premier League coverage, years before the series.
Q9.What is the name of the media conglomerate the Roy family fights over in Succession?Tap to reveal
Answer: Waystar Royco
Creator Jesse Armstrong originally wrote an unproduced screenplay about Rupert Murdoch before fictionalizing the dynasty.
Q10.Which 2020 Netflix miniseries about a chess prodigy triggered a global surge in chess set sales?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Queen's Gambit
Its heroine Beth Harmon is entirely fictional, taken from Walter Tevis's 1983 novel rather than any real player.
Q11.In Severance, employees of which company undergo a procedure that splits their work and personal memories?Tap to reveal
Answer: Lumon Industries
Its exterior scenes are filmed at Bell Works in Holmdel, New Jersey, the former Bell Labs research complex designed by architect Eero Saarinen.
Q12.The first season of Shōgun (2024) won a record number of Emmys for a single season — how many?Tap to reveal
Answer: 18
Hiroyuki Sanada became the first Japanese actor to win the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series.
Q13.What is the stage name of the Oklahoma zoo owner at the center of Netflix's 2020 documentary Tiger King?Tap to reveal
Answer: Joe Exotic
The series dropped a week into the March 2020 lockdowns and drew over 34 million US viewers in its first ten days.
Internet culture and memes (hard for older audiences)
TikTok dances, Reddit lore, viral memes, YouTube creators. This is where generational divides show up in trivia. Younger players dominate; older players struggle.
Q1.Which short-video app owned by ByteDance popularized viral dance challenges such as the Renegade?Tap to reveal
Answer: TikTok
Outside China it absorbed the lip-sync app Musical.ly in 2018, inheriting that app's huge teenage user base.
Q2.What is the name of the daily five-letter word puzzle that went viral in early 2022 and was bought by The New York Times?Tap to reveal
Answer: Wordle
Creator Josh Wardle built it for his partner, and the name is a pun on his own surname.
Q3.The Doge meme features a dog of which breed?Tap to reveal
Answer: Shiba Inu
The original dog, Kabosu, lived in Japan and inspired the Dogecoin cryptocurrency launched in 2013.
Q4.Rickrolling tricks people into watching the video for which Rick Astley song?Tap to reveal
Answer: Never Gonna Give You Up
The prank grew out of an earlier 4chan gag called duckrolling, where links led to a picture of a duck on wheels.
Q5.What was the name of the viral 2014 fundraising challenge in which people dumped ice water over their heads for ALS research?Tap to reveal
Answer: Ice Bucket Challenge
The money raised helped fund the 2016 discovery of NEK1, a gene linked to the disease.
Q6.What is the name of the cartoon frog created by Matt Furie that became one of the internet's most used meme faces?Tap to reveal
Answer: Pepe the Frog
Furie has repeatedly gone to court to reclaim the character after it was co-opted by political groups.
Q7.A viral 2015 photo split the internet over whether a garment was blue and black or white and gold — what was the phenomenon simply called?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Dress
The real garment, sold by Roman Originals, was blue and black, and scientists linked the split to how brains assume lighting.
Q8.What was the real name of Grumpy Cat, the perpetually frowning feline meme star who died in 2019?Tap to reveal
Answer: Tardar Sauce
Her famous scowl came from feline dwarfism and an underbite, not from a bad temper.
Q9.What is the name of the tall, faceless, suited horror figure invented in a 2009 Something Awful forum contest?Tap to reveal
Answer: Slender Man
Creator Eric Knudsen made him by doctoring two ordinary photographs for a thread about fake paranormal images.
Q10.What is the real name of MrBeast, the most-subscribed individual creator on YouTube?Tap to reveal
Answer: Jimmy Donaldson
His 2021 real-life recreation of Squid Game with a $456,000 prize became one of the most-viewed videos on the platform.
Q11.Which internet slang term for charisma was named Oxford's Word of the Year for 2023?Tap to reveal
Answer: Rizz
Oxford followed it in 2024 with brain rot, a term describing the effect of consuming too much low-quality online content.
How pop culture trivia stays fresh
Pop culture decays faster than most trivia categories. A trivia question about a 2010 meme lands differently in 2026. Best practice: separate evergreen (Michael Jackson, Star Wars, classic Friends) from timely (recent viral moments) into different rounds.
Trivio.NET's Entertainment & Pop Culture category has 46+ quiz packs covering both evergreen and timely subjects. Daily quizzes rotate fresh material.
Frequently Asked Questions
What's the best pop culture trivia for mixed-age groups?
Mix decades — questions from the 80s, 90s, 2000s, 2010s, 2020s. Each generation gets to shine.
How often should pop culture trivia categories refresh?
Evergreen categories never. Timely (memes, viral moments) need refresh every 3-6 months because relevance fades fast.
Where can I find pop culture trivia packs?
Trivio.NET's Entertainment & Pop Culture category has 46+ packs by decade, theme, and subject.
What's the most-missed pop culture trivia category?
Music videos. Most people remember songs but not the videos. Visual trivia in music is underrated and rewards careful viewers.
