2020 Pop Culture
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7correct to beat the crowd
50 free 2020 Pop Culture trivia questions with answers — pop culture quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Few years have reshaped everyday entertainment as quickly as 2020. With cinemas dark and tours cancelled, pop culture moved onto phones, consoles and streaming queues, and the things everybody watched, played and shared became a kind of common language for a year spent mostly indoors. This quiz covers the whole of 2020: the series viewers binged in the spring, awards-night history, chart-topping singles and surprise albums, viral clips and memes, the games that filled empty evenings, celebrity headlines and the odd news stories that briefly took over every feed. It suits a year-in-review party, a group video call or a classroom warm-up, and anyone curious how much of 2020 has stuck. 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 Netflix true-crime docuseries about zookeeper Joe Exotic became a lockdown obsession in March 2020?
Tiger King
Tiger King was watched by 34.3 million people in its first ten days, helped by arriving just as the pandemic kept viewers at home.
Q 02Which South Korean thriller became the first non-English-language film to win the Best Picture Oscar, in February 2020?
Parasite
Parasite had already won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, and it was the first film to take both top prizes since Marty more than 60 years earlier.
Q 03Which Nintendo game, released in March 2020, let locked-down players hold weddings and graduations on a virtual island?
Animal Crossing
Animal Crossing: New Horizons sold 11.77 million copies in its first 12 days, and Joe Biden's presidential campaign even released yard signs for players' islands.
Q 04A TikTok of a man skateboarding and sipping juice sent which 1977 Fleetwood Mac hit back up the charts in 2020?
Dreams
Dreams soundtracked Nathan Apodaca's ride to work in Idaho after his truck broke down, and it remains Fleetwood Mac's only US number one.
Q 05In which US state did a helicopter crew counting bighorn sheep find a mysterious metal monolith in November 2020?
Utah
Utah lost the pillar nine days later, when four residents of Moab took it away, saying they had heard others planned to destroy it.
Q 06Which insect landed on Mike Pence's head during the 2020 vice-presidential debate and became an instant meme?
A fly
A fly stole the night: it was tweeted about more than 700,000 times in the days that followed, and it turned into a popular Halloween costume.
Q 07Which whipped instant-coffee drink, a 2020 lockdown craze, is named after a Korean honeycomb toffee?
Dalgona
Dalgona coffee got its name when South Korean actor Jung Il-woo tried the drink at an eatery in Macau for a TV show in January 2020 and said it tasted like the candy.
Q 08Which 2018 game about unmasking impostors on a spaceship became a surprise smash in 2020 thanks to Twitch streamers?
Among Us
Among Us had drawn little attention for two years; once it took off, studio Innersloth abandoned a planned sequel to rebuild the original instead.
Q 09Which Broadway musical's filmed stage performance skipped its planned cinema release and landed on Disney+ in July 2020?
Hamilton
Hamilton had cost Disney $75 million for the rights and was meant to reach cinemas in October 2021, before the pandemic shut Broadway.
Q 10Which Hollywood star's COVID-19 diagnosis in March 2020 halted filming of an Elvis Presley biopic in Australia?
Tom Hanks
Tom Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson both tested positive; a month later he hosted the first Saturday Night Live made remotely from the cast's homes.
Q 11Which surprise Taylor Swift album, made in lockdown and released in July 2020, won the Grammy for Album of the Year?
Folklore
Folklore was made remotely with producers Aaron Dessner and Jack Antonoff, and its Grammy made Swift the first woman to win Album of the Year three times.
Q 12Which Canadian sitcom about a once-rich family stranded in a small town swept all seven major comedy Emmys in 2020?
Schitt's Creek
Schitt's Creek was the first comedy or drama to win all seven, including acting awards for Catherine O'Hara, Annie Murphy and both Eugene and Dan Levy.
Q 13Which singer swept all four major Grammy categories in January 2020, the first artist to manage it since 1981?
Billie Eilish
Q 21Which singer received zero Grammy nominations in November 2020 despite the huge success of 'Blinding Lights'?
The Weeknd
The Weeknd answered the snub by calling the Grammys corrupt on social media; his single had topped the Hot 100 for four weeks that year.
Q 22Which BTS single, the group's first recorded fully in English, debuted at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2020?
Dynamite
Dynamite made BTS the first all-South Korean act to top the chart, and brought the first Grammy nomination for a Korean pop act.
Q 23Which British singer's album Future Nostalgia was rushed out a week early in March 2020 after leaking online?
Dua Lipa
Dua Lipa had planned an April release until the whole record leaked; it went on to win the Grammy for Best Pop Vocal Album.
Billie Eilish was 18, the youngest artist to win the big four in one night, and her brother Finneas went home with even more trophies than she did.
Q 14Which ESPN docuseries about Michael Jordan's 1997–98 Chicago Bulls was moved up to April 2020 for sports-starved fans?
The Last Dance
The Last Dance had been scheduled for June 2020, but ESPN brought it forward to April 19 because the pandemic had shut down live sport.
Q 15Which online game hosted rapper Travis Scott's five virtual 'Astronomical' concerts across three days in April 2020?
Fortnite
Fortnite drew more than 27 million viewers to the shows, whose visuals drew on Scott's Astroworld stage shows.
Q 16Which singer co-headlined the Super Bowl halftime show with Jennifer Lopez in Miami in February 2020?
Shakira
Shakira and Lopez were reportedly chosen to reflect the Latin culture of host city Miami, and their set drew 103 million US viewers, more than the game itself.
Q 17Which rapper ran for US president in 2020 under the banner of a newly formed Birthday Party?
Kanye West
Kanye West made the ballot in only 12 states and conceded the morning after the election, his biggest haul of votes coming in Tennessee.
Q 18Which Regency romance from producer Shonda Rhimes premiered on Netflix on Christmas Day 2020?
Bridgerton
Bridgerton, adapted from Julia Quinn's novels, was Netflix's most-watched series launch until Squid Game overtook it in October 2021.
Q 19Which country music legend's $1 million donation helped fund early research on the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine in 2020?
Dolly Parton
Dolly Parton gave the money to Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and later marked her own jab by singing a reworded version of Jolene.
Q 20Which rapper teamed up with Megan Thee Stallion on 'WAP', the first female rap collaboration to debut atop the Hot 100?
Cardi B
Cardi B earned her fourth US chart-topper with the August 2020 single, which opened with 93 million streams in its first week.
Q 24Which Houston-born star joined Megan Thee Stallion on a chart-topping 2020 remix of 'Savage' for COVID-19 relief?
Beyoncé
Beyoncé's verses carried the song to number one, Megan's first chart-topper, with all proceeds going to a food-relief charity in Houston.
Q 25Which singer became the first man to appear solo on the cover of American Vogue, wearing a blue Gucci dress, in 2020?
Harry Styles
Harry Styles, who had modelled in Gucci campaigns since 2018, fronted the magazine's December issue.
Q 26Which Puerto Rican rapper was Spotify's most-streamed artist of 2020, the year he released the album YHLQMDLG?
Bad Bunny
Bad Bunny also had the service's most-streamed album that year, and he took the top-artist title four times between 2020 and 2025.
Q 27Which singer had a son with Elon Musk in May 2020, giving the baby a name that broke California naming rules?
Grimes
Grimes and Musk first chose X Æ A-12, then changed it to X Æ A-Xii because the original would have violated state regulations.
Q 28Which Euphoria star became, at 24, the youngest winner of the Emmy for lead actress in a drama in 2020?
Zendaya
Zendaya won for playing the drug-addicted teenager Rue Bennett, and later took the same award a second time for the role.
Q 29Which real name for The Mandalorian's 'Baby Yoda' was finally revealed in a November 2020 episode?
Grogu
Grogu had officially been called only 'the Child' until 'Chapter 13: The Jedi', which also revealed he was raised at the Jedi Temple on Coruscant.
Q 30Which Apple TV+ comedy, launched in August 2020, grew out of Jason Sudeikis's promos for NBC's Premier League coverage?
Ted Lasso
Ted Lasso sends an American college football coach to manage an English soccer club, and it won the Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series in 2021.