2023 Pop Culture Trivia
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50 free 2023 Pop Culture trivia questions with answers — pop culture quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
2023 was the year of Barbenheimer, the Eras Tour, a purple milkshake and a monster-shaped hole in TikTok, and this quiz covers all of it. There are questions on the films (Barbie's billion, Oppenheimer's Oscars, the Super Mario movie, a bear on drugs), the music (Miley's comeback single, Beyoncé's Renaissance tour, a pregnant halftime headliner, an unknown Virginia singer debuting at number one), the TV (the Roy family's farewell, HBO's fungal apocalypse, The Golden Bachelor, Jury Duty, a Netflix road-rage feud) and the news that became memes: the Chinese spy balloon, the Titan submersible, Meta's Twitter rival, Twitter's rebrand, Prince Harry's Spare and the coronation. It works as a year-in-review round for a pub quiz or a New Year's party, or as a test of how much you actually remember of the year that started with the Roman Empire meme and ended with the GTA VI trailer. Easy questions ask who voiced Mario and which club signed Messi; the hard end wants the name of the ghostwriter, the Titan's mother ship and the city where the Renaissance tour opened. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on the events, films, shows and songs, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01On what date did Barbie and Oppenheimer open on the same day, creating the "Barbenheimer" phenomenon?
July 21, 2023
Both opened on July 21, 2023; the combined weekend was the fourth-largest in US box office history, and between them the two films won eight Oscars.
Q 02Who directed Barbie, the highest-grossing film of 2023?
Greta Gerwig
Greta Gerwig directed Barbie and co-wrote it with Noah Baumbach; it grossed about $1.45 billion, the biggest film of 2023 and Warner Bros.' highest-grossing ever.
Q 03Which Barbie song won the Academy Award for Best Original Song?
"What Was I Made For?"
'What Was I Made For?', written by Billie Eilish and Finneas, won Best Original Song at the March 2024 Oscars, beating Barbie's own 'I'm Just Ken'.
Q 04Which actor played J. Robert Oppenheimer and won the Best Actor Oscar for it?
Cillian Murphy
Murphy was the first cast member Christopher Nolan signed, and the film won seven Oscars including Best Picture.
Q 05Why was Oppenheimer the first Christopher Nolan film since Memento not released by Warner Bros.?
He fell out with the studio over its simultaneous HBO Max releases
Universal gave him a $100 million budget, an equal marketing spend and 20 percent of first-dollar gross.
Q 06In which US city did the Eras Tour open on March 17, 2023?
Glendale, Arizona
The Eras Tour opened at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, on March 17, 2023; it ran to 149 shows and became the first tour to gross $2 billion.
Q 07Which fast-food mascot's 52nd birthday was marked by a purple milkshake that spawned a horror TikTok trend?
Grimace
Grimace, the purple McDonald's character introduced in 1971, got a birthday meal with a berry-flavored shake from June 12, 2023; TikTokers filmed themselves collapsing after sipping it.
Q 08Who voiced Mario in The Super Mario Bros. Movie, the first video-game film to gross a billion dollars?
Chris Pratt
Jack Black's Bowser sang "Peaches", and the film ended 2023 as the second-highest-grossing release of the year.
Q 09Which Meta app gained 100 million users in five days in July 2023?
Threads
Threads, Meta's text-based rival to Twitter, launched on July 5, 2023 and passed 100 million sign-ups within five days, beating ChatGPT's pace to that mark.
Q 10Twitter was rebranded to what on July 23, 2023?
X
Musk announced the X rebrand on July 23, 2023; the bird logo went the next day, though twitter.com did not redirect to x.com until May 2024.
Q 11Who replaced Elon Musk as CEO of Twitter in June 2023?
Linda Yaccarino
Linda Yaccarino, formerly NBCUniversal's advertising chief, took over as CEO on June 5, 2023, with Musk staying on as chairman and CTO; she stepped down in July 2025.
Q 12Which company operated the Titan submersible that imploded on June 18, 2023 on a dive to the Titanic?
OceanGate
All five aboard died, including OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush; the debris was found about 500 metres from the Titanic's bow.
Q 13What was the name of the Titan's support ship, which lost contact during the dive?
MV Polar Prince
The MV Polar Prince, a former Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker, lost contact with Titan about an hour and 45 minutes into the dive; the search lasted four days before debris was found.
Q 21Which Friends star died on October 28, 2023, at the age of 54?
Matthew Perry
Matthew Perry, Friends' Chandler Bing, was found dead at his Los Angeles home on October 28, 2023; his 2022 memoir had laid out his long struggle with addiction.
Q 22In which city did Beyoncé open her Renaissance World Tour on May 10, 2023?
Stockholm
The Renaissance World Tour opened at Friends Arena in Stockholm on May 10, 2023, and closed in Kansas City that October as the highest-grossing tour ever by a Black artist.
Q 23Which podcast does Travis Kelce co-host with his brother Jason?
New Heights
New Heights, launched in September 2022, pairs Travis and Jason Kelce, who faced each other in Super Bowl LVII in February 2023 as the first brothers to play against each other in the game.
Q 14On what date were Charles III and Camilla crowned at Westminster Abbey?
6 May 2023
The coronation took place on Saturday 6 May 2023, the first in Britain since 1953 and the 40th at Westminster Abbey since William the Conqueror in 1066.
Q 15Which Miley Cyrus single, released in January 2023, became the best-selling global single of the year?
"Flowers"
'Flowers' was IFPI's Global Single of 2023 with 2.7 billion subscription-stream equivalents; it spent eight weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100.
Q 16At the 2023 Grammys, Beyoncé passed which conductor as the most-awarded artist ever?
Georg Solti
Beyoncé's 32nd Grammy, for Best Dance/Electronic Album, took her past conductor Georg Solti's 31; Harry Styles took Album of the Year for Harry's House.
Q 17Which film won seven Oscars, including Best Picture, at the March 2023 ceremony?
Everything Everywhere All at Once
Everything Everywhere All at Once won seven Oscars, including Best Picture and three acting awards, a feat only A Streetcar Named Desire and Network had managed before.
Q 18Who was the 72-year-old lead of the first season of The Golden Bachelor?
Gerry Turner
Gerry Turner, a 72-year-old widower from Indiana, was announced in July 2023; the season premiered on September 28 and ended with him proposing to Theresa Nist.
Q 19The 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike ran from July 14 to which date?
November 9
SAG-AFTRA's strike ended on November 9, 2023, after 118 days, with a deal covering AI protections and streaming bonuses; the writers had settled on September 27.
Q 20Which HBO series based on a video game premiered on January 15, 2023 with Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey?
The Last of Us
The Last of Us, adapted from Naughty Dog's 2013 game, premiered on HBO on January 15, 2023; its first season earned 24 Emmy nominations.
Q 24Which singer headlined the Super Bowl LVII halftime show in 2023, her first live performance in five years?
Rihanna
Rihanna headlined Super Bowl LVII on February 12, 2023, her first live show since the 2018 Grammys, and revealed her second pregnancy on stage.
Q 25Which unknown singer debuted at number one on the Hot 100 in August 2023 with "Rich Men North of Richmond"?
Oliver Anthony
Oliver Anthony, a Virginia singer, was the first artist ever to debut at number one with no prior chart history; the song opened that month's Republican debate.
Q 26Off which state's coast was the Chinese surveillance balloon shot down on February 4, 2023?
South Carolina
An F-22 shot it down off South Carolina near Myrtle Beach after it had crossed the continent; three more unidentified objects were downed within days.
Q 27Who ghostwrote Prince Harry's memoir Spare, the fastest-selling non-fiction book ever on its release day?
J. R. Moehringer
J. R. Moehringer, the Pulitzer-winning journalist who also ghostwrote Andre Agassi's Open, wrote Spare; it sold 1.43 million copies on its first day in January 2023.
Q 28Who was Time magazine's Person of the Year for 2023?
Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift was named Person of the Year in December 2023, the first entertainer chosen for achievements in the arts, in the year of the Eras Tour and its concert film.
Q 29Which band opened the Las Vegas Sphere with a residency on September 29, 2023?
U2
U2:UV Achtung Baby Live ran 40 shows inside the world's largest LED screen; the venue cost more than $2 billion.
Q 30Which 2023 Larian Studios RPG first won Game of the Year at all five major awards shows?
Baldur's Gate 3
Baldur's Gate 3 swept Game of the Year at The Game Awards, the Golden Joysticks, DICE, GDC and BAFTA; Larian had moved its PC release up four weeks to dodge Starfield.