Meat the Family Trivia Quiz

Answer: Cannibal Holocaust

'Cannibal Holocaust' got director Ruggero Deodato into quite a lot of hot water, because of its extremely graphic violence. It's about a (fictional) team of American journalists who go missing while filming a documentary in the Amazon, and a team of rescuers, led by Professor Harold Monroe (Robert Kerman), who go to find them.

They trade a tape recorder for the film footage, which reveals that the crew raped a Yanomami girl, and were killed by members of the tribe in revenge. In 'Cannibal Holocaust', both the Yanomami and a rival tribe, the Shamatari, are depicted as cannibals (some truth in television, as the Yanomami actually do practice ritual endocannibalism in real life, and make the ashes of their dead into soup).

Although no humans actually died during the making of the film, live animals were killed; two monkeys, a pig, a turtle, a boa constrictor, a tarantula and a coati, to be precise.

Some of the American actors were reportedly very upset about this, though the indigenous cast members weren't as bothered and ate the brains of the two dead monkeys.

Answer: Mein Teil

'Mein Teil' is about the true story of Armin Meiwes, a German man who killed and ate another man, Bernd Brandes, whom he met on the internet. Meiwes posted an advert on an internet forum for people with a cannibalism fetish, and Brandes answered it. Meiwes cut off and cooked Brandes' penis ('Mein Teil' literally means 'My Part'); Brandes also tried to eat the organ, but found it too tough. Brandes eventually passed out from blood loss, and Meiwes cut his throat, hung him on a meat hook and ate his body over the next ten months.

He filmed the whole incident. Meiwes was convicted of manslaughter, then murder, and imprisoned for life. The video for the song features Rammstein bassist Ollie Riedel reading out Meiwes' advert: 'suche gut gebauten Achtzehn- bis Dreißigjährigen zum Schlachten - Der Metzgermeister' (translation: 'looking for a well-built 18-30 year old to slaughter - the Master Butcher').

Answer: Mads Mikkelsen

Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen played Hannibal Lecter in the TV version, which is based on a mixture of Thomas Harris' original novels, and features characters from them; for example, Mason Verger (Michael Pitt), originally from the novel 'Hannibal', appears in the series and is the antagonist in part of the second series. Throughout the series, the relationship between Lecter and the FBI profiler Will Graham (Hugh Dancy), who originally appeared in 'Red Dragon', is explored in detail.

The episodes are named after cooking terms, and Hannibal prepares fancy meals with the flesh of his victims, as well as displaying corpses in creative views; for instance, after finding her in his basement, he vertically slices scientist Beverley Katz into pieces and has the slices of her body displayed in glass cases, and puts her kidneys in a pie. (Lawrence Fishburne, incidentally, plays Graham's boss, Jack Crawford.)

Answer: Arya Stark

Arya Stark's pies were an act of revenge for her mother Catelyn, brother Robb, sister-in-law Talisa, and other members of the Stark family who were massacred in the episode known as the 'Red Wedding'. Walder Frey had violated the protocol of Guest Right by murdering the Starks, despite having shared food with them. Arya sneaks into the Twins, the Freys' castle, disguised as a servant girl with a shapeshifting mask.

She kills two of Walder's sons, Lame Lothar (who hired assassins dressed as musicians) and Black Walder (who killed Catelyn), and bakes them into pies.

When Walder wonders where his sons are, the servant girl replies, "Here, sir." He realises she means it literally when he finds a human finger in the pie. Arya peels off her mask and tells Walder that the last thing he sees will be a Stark smiling down at him as he dies, and slashes his throat.

Answer: Radiohead

Scott Tenorman is a teenage boy who pranks Eric Cartman by connig him out of his money and making him sing 'I'm a little piggy'. Knowing that Scott is a fan of Radiohead, Cartman shows the town a video of Radiohead with Cartman's voiced dubbed over them saying they hate Scott, but Scott responds by showing a video of Cartman singing, and Kenny laughs so hard he dies. Never one to do anything by halves, Cartman writes to Radiohead, pretending to be Scott Tenorman and claiming he has 'cancer in his ass'.

He claims that he is going to make a pony castrate Scott at a chilli cook-off, but what he actually does is far worse. Scott plans to give Cartman contaminated chilli, but Cartman swaps the bowls around and eats Chef's chilli instead, while Scott eat's Cartman's. Cartman reveals his real plan: he tells Mr Denkins, the farmer who owns the pony, to shoot Scott's parents, claiming that they are 'pony killers'.

While the farmer is occupied with the police, Cartman steals the bodies of Scott's parents, grinds them into mince and makes them into chilli, which he feeds to Scott at the cook-off. Scott finds his mum's finger in the bowl and starts crying, and Cartman drinks his tears. To add insult to injury, all five members of Radiohead - played by the band themselves - appear and make fun of Scott, calling him a crybaby.

Answer: The Hills Have Eyes

'The Hills Have Eyes', a film about a family stranded in the Nevada desert and targeted by a family of cannibals, is pure fiction. However, the other three films are all based on historical events. The 1993 film 'Alive' is about the Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 air crash in the Andes in 1972, where survivors ate flesh from the bodies of people who died in the crash or succumbed to the harsh temperatures. 'In the Heart of the Sea' is about the sinking of the whaling ship Essex, which was destroyed by a sperm whale (on which Moby-Dick was based), and survivors having to resort to eating each other while the whaling boats are stranded at sea. 'The Donner Party', a 2009 film starring Crispin Glover, was based on the story of a group of American pioneers who were stranded in the Sierra Nevada during the winter of 1846-47, and resorted to eating each other's corpses when members of the party began to die of cold.

Answer: The Riddle of the Sphinx

'The Riddle of the Sphinx' is about cryptic crosswords, and alludes to the Greek myth of the same name, where the Sphinx - a mythical creature with the body of a lion and the head of a woman - asks people riddles, and eats the ones who get them wrong.

In the story of Oedipus, when he encounters the Sphinx, he gets the answer right and the Sphinx kills herself. In the episode, Nigel Squires (Steve Pemberton) a university professor and crossword writer known as the Sphinx, is coerced by his colleague Dr Jacob Tyler (Reece Shearsmith) into eating the flesh of Nina aka Charlotte (Alexandra Roach), who turns out to be his daughter. Charlotte tries to kill Squires with pufferfish venom, but he swaps their cups and she drinks it instead and becomes paralysed.

As she is succumbing to the poison, Tyler cuts a piece of flesh from her buttock, fries it and makes Squires eat it, as the mythical Sphinx ate her victims. At the end, Squires commits suicide.

Answer: Meat pies

The story of Sweeney Todd originates from Victorian 'penny dreadfuls'; cheap pulp fiction stories which were told in parts, each edition costing a penny. Todd kills the customers in his barber shop by pulling a lever which tilts the chair backwards and drops the victims through a trapdoor and down a hole into a basement, where they break their necks on impact. On the off chance a victim survives the fall, Todd cuts his throat with a razor.

He then sells the bodies to Mrs Lovett, who makes pies with the flesh (in the musical, there is a passage between her bakehouse and Todd's basement).

A film version, directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp as Sweeney Todd and Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs Lovett, was made in 2007. And no, despite what rumours might say, it isn't a true story!

Answer: Titus Andronicus

'Titus Andronicus' is Shakespeare's bloodiest work, and Victorian theatres disliked showing it on grounds of taste. It was Shakespeare's attempt at writing a 'revenge play', a style of play that was popular at the time and which featured a protagonist seeking revenge.

In this instance, Titus Andronicus is a Roman soldier who is at war with Tamora, the Queen of the Goths. Her sons, Chiron and Demetrius, rape and mutilate Titus' daughter Lavinia by cutting out her tongue and chopping off her hands. Titus later has them both slaughtered and their remains baked into a pie, which Tamora eats. Titus kills Lavinia and Tamora, Saturninus (the emperor of Rome) kills Titus and Lucius, Titus' son, kills Saturninus.

Answer: Soylent Green

As Detective Frank Thorn says at the end, "Soylent Green is people!" 'Soylent Green' is set in 2022, where the majority of people cannot afford clean water or natural food, and the Soylent Industries corporation - 'Soylent' being a portmanteau of 'soy' and 'lentil' - controls the world's food supplies. Soylent Industries markets a cheap but flavourful food known as 'Soylent Green', which is supposedly made of plankton.

However, when Thorn investigates the company after William R Simonson, one of its board members is assassinated, he discovers that plankton died long ago, and that Soylent Green is made from human corpses. Simonson had found this out, and was murdered because he knew too much.