2017 Pop Culture
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50 free 2017 Pop Culture trivia questions with answers — pop culture quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The year 2017 gave pop culture one unforgettable live-television blunder, a summer song nobody could escape and a toy that teachers learned to dread. It was also the year streaming series began to win television's biggest prizes, and the year social media turned stock photos, fast-food orders and brunch into running jokes. This quiz covers the whole year: chart-toppers and awards-night drama, superhero blockbusters and horror hits, the series everyone binged, viral memes, advertising misfires, toy crazes, video games and the celebrity stories that filled group chats. It works for a year-in-review party, a classroom or pub quiz, or anyone curious about how much of 2017 they still remember. Every question is multiple choice, and every answer comes with a short explanation, so a wrong guess still leaves you with a story to tell.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which toy built around a ball bearing became a 2017 craze that schools banned as a distraction?
Fidget spinner
The fidget spinner was wrongly credited by newspapers to Catherine Hettinger, whose 1993 patent application for a spinning toy had no central bearing at all.
Q 02Which film was wrongly announced as Best Picture at the 2017 Oscars before Moonlight took the award?
La La Land
La La Land's producers were mid-speech when the mistake emerged: presenter Warren Beatty had been handed the envelope for Best Actress, won by the film's Emma Stone.
Q 03Which Spanish-language hit by Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee spent 16 weeks atop the Hot 100 in 2017?
Despacito
Despacito tied the Hot 100 record of the time after Justin Bieber heard it in a Colombian nightclub and asked to record a remix.
Q 04Which mythical creature named a color-changing Starbucks Frappuccino sold for five days in 2017?
Unicorn
The Unicorn Frappuccino started out purple and sweet, then turned pink and tart once drinkers stirred in its sour blue drizzle.
Q 05Which soda brand pulled a 2017 ad in which Kendall Jenner hands a can to a police officer?
Pepsi
Pepsi withdrew the ad after an online backlash accused the company and its star of trivializing Black Lives Matter and police brutality.
Q 06Which 2017 luxury music event in the Bahamas, co-organized by Ja Rule, housed guests in tents?
Fyre Festival
Fyre Festival promised gourmet meals and served cheese sandwiches in foam containers. Co-organizer Billy McFarland was sentenced to six years in prison in 2018.
Q 07Carter Wilkerson's 2017 plea to Wendy's for a year of which free food set a retweet record?
Chicken nuggets
Chicken nuggets were promised if he reached 18 million retweets. The tweet became the most-retweeted of its day within 34 days, and Wendy's handed over the year's supply.
Q 08Which classroom staple is mixed with water and borax to make slime, a craze that peaked in 2017?
Glue
Glue maker Elmer's saw its sales jump 50 percent in December 2016, and its parent company raised production the following March to keep up with demand.
Q 09Which team lost Super Bowl LI in February 2017 after leading the New England Patriots 28–3?
Atlanta Falcons
The Atlanta Falcons suffered the largest comeback the Super Bowl had ever seen, in the first Super Bowl to be decided in overtime.
Q 10Which brunch dish did developer Tim Gurner say millennials should skip in 2017 to afford a home?
Avocado toast
Avocado toast, or smashed avocado as the Australian called it, became shorthand for a generation's spending after his remark, which also took aim at four-dollar coffees.
Q 11Which Ed Sheeran single, first written with Little Mix in mind, was Billboard's top song of 2017?
Shape of You
Shape of You topped the charts in 34 countries and later became the first song to reach two billion streams on Spotify.
Q 12Whose Bodak Yellow made her the first female rapper to top the Hot 100 with a solo song since Lauryn Hill?
Cardi B
Cardi B named the song after Florida rapper Kodak Black, because its cadence reminded her of his 2015 track No Flockin.
Q 13Which animals starred in the silent clips Taylor Swift posted in 2017 to tease her album Reputation?
Snakes
Snakes had been thrown at her as an insult by online detractors, so she made the creature the centerpiece of the album's promotional campaign and stadium tour.
Q 21Which former Miss Israel played Diana Prince in the 2017 superhero blockbuster Wonder Woman?
Gal Gadot
Gal Gadot's film became the highest-grossing movie by a solo female director up to that point, overtaking Mamma Mia! and Kung Fu Panda 2.
Q 22Which 2017 horror hit about a visit to a girlfriend's family was Jordan Peele's directorial debut?
Get Out
Get Out won its writer-director the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, making the former sketch comedian the first African-American winner of that award.
Q 23Which 2017 run-and-gun video game mimics the rubber hose style of 1930s Fleischer cartoons?
Cuphead
Cuphead was such a challenge for its small team that the brothers behind it, Chad and Jared Moldenhauer, remortgaged their house to finish it.
Q 14Which rapper's 2017 album Damn, with the chart-topping single Humble, later won a Pulitzer Prize?
Kendrick Lamar
Kendrick Lamar became the first musician outside classical and jazz to receive the music prize, and the single gave him his first number one as a lead artist.
Q 15To which singer did Adele dedicate her Album of the Year Grammy on stage in February 2017?
Beyoncé
Beyoncé had been nominated for Lemonade, and earlier that month her post announcing twins had become the most-liked image on Instagram up to that time.
Q 16Which singer opened her 2017 Super Bowl halftime show by leaping from the roof of NRG Stadium?
Lady Gaga
Lady Gaga's rooftop opening was prerecorded, with a fleet of 300 drones forming a US flag in the night sky behind her.
Q 17Which pop star organized One Love Manchester two weeks after a 2017 bombing followed her concert?
Ariana Grande
Ariana Grande's benefit brought the British Red Cross more than £10 million in donations within 12 hours, for a fund supporting the victims and their families.
Q 18Which artist's mixtape Coloring Book became the first streaming-only album to win a Grammy?
Chance the Rapper
Chance the Rapper first released the mixtape exclusively on Apple Music, and on the same Grammy night in February 2017 he was also named Best New Artist.
Q 19Which rap group's Bad and Boujee hit number one after Donald Glover's 2017 Golden Globes shout-out?
Migos
Migos scored a first chart-topper with the song, which had already spread as a viral meme before Glover thanked the trio from the awards stage.
Q 20Which act became the first K-pop group to perform at the American Music Awards, in November 2017?
BTS
BTS had become the first K-pop group to win a Billboard award that May, taking Top Social Artist, a prize they kept winning in the years that followed.
Q 24Which 2017 release became the first animated film ever to win the Razzie Award for Worst Picture?
The Emoji Movie
The Emoji Movie took four Razzies in all, adding Worst Director, Worst Screenplay and Worst Screen Combo to its haul.
Q 25Which tiny hero voiced by Vin Diesel dances through the opening of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2?
Baby Groot
Baby Groot stayed small because director James Gunn chose to keep him that way, one reason the 2017 sequel is set only a few months after the first film.
Q 26Which robot toy monkeys, modeled on the pygmy marmoset, did reseller bots snap up in late 2017?
Fingerlings
Fingerlings wrap around a child's finger and react to touch and sound by blinking and blowing kisses, and they had reached US stores only that August.
Q 27Which Superman actor's mustache, grown for another film, was digitally erased from Justice League?
Henry Cavill
Henry Cavill was called back for 2017 reshoots while making a Mission: Impossible sequel for Paramount, whose executives refused to let him shave.
Q 28Which director reshot scenes of All the Money in the World to replace Kevin Spacey before release?
Ridley Scott
Ridley Scott reshot 22 scenes with Christopher Plummer about a month before the 2017 Christmas release, and Plummer's J. Paul Getty earned an Oscar nomination.
Q 29Which country won Eurovision for the first time in May 2017, after 53 years of trying?
Portugal
Portugal ended what was then the longest wait for a victory in the contest's history, with a ballad that singer Salvador Sobral's sister Luísa wrote for him.
Q 30Which pop star became the first person to reach 100 million Twitter followers, in June 2017?
Katy Perry
Katy Perry passed the milestone in the same month that she live-streamed herself on YouTube for four days to launch her album Witness.