The Best...and the Worst Trivia Quiz

Answer: The Dark Knight

"The Dark Knight", the second film in Nolan's "Batman" trilogy (after "Batman Begins" and before "The Dark Knight Rises") received over one billion dollars in box office receipts to become the sixth-highest-grossing movie ever to be screened. It would be beaten out by another dozen movies (including "The Dark Knight Rises") in the next five years. Starring Christian Bale, Aaron Eckhart, Gary Oldman, and the late Heath Ledger (who received a posthumous Oscar for his role as The Joker in the movie), the story followed Batman's continued vigilante justice in Gotham City, forcing him to question his ethics while facing off against two of the canon's most notorious villains-- The Joker and Harvey Dent (Two-Face).

Online outlets like IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, and Metacritic all gave the film high scores based on user feedback and, in with latter two, official critical feedback. Nolan later directed "Inception" (2010), furthering his acclaim with mind-bending visuals and amazing stories.

Answer: Birdemic: Shock and Terror

While all four of these films have appeared in the Bottom 100 (heck, the Bottom 10) of IMDb's listing, "Birdemic: Shock and Terror" is the newest of them, and perhaps the most misguided. While the film bases its premise on Hitchcock's classic thriller, "The Birds", director Nguyen literally splits the film in half, opting to tell a romantic story in the first hour and pushing into utter carnage (brought on by clip-art eagles exploding, spitting acid, and crashing into people). The movie was, allegedly, a commentary on environmentalism and the destruction of fossil fuels, but what came across was so much worse.

The film became a cult classic almost instantly and was accompanied by a remarkably bad marketing promotion (in which Nguyen handed out fliers sending people to BIDEMIC.COM). Of course, a sequel, "Birdemic 2: The Resurrection", was made shortly after.

Answer: Michael Jackson

Jackson won 'Album of the Year' for his best-selling "Thriller" record in 1984, beating out Billy Joel, David Bowie, and The Police for the honour; he also won 'Record of the Year' for "Beat It", from the same release and Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for "Thriller". "Thriller" was, by far, Jackson's bestselling release and has been known for smashing sales records worldwide. It was his only win for 'Album of the Year' (though "Bad" was nominated in 1988, losing to U2's "The Joshua Tree").

Pink Floyd was nominated for the 'Album of the Year' in 1981 for "The Wall", losing to Christopher Cross. Likewise, Eagles was nominated twice in the 1970s, coming up short both times. Other recipients of 'Album of the Year' include Billy Joel, Frank Sinatra, Fleetwood Mac, The Beatles (including Lennon and Harrison in solo ventures), Alanis Morissette, Adele, Carlos Santana, and Daft Punk.

Answer: Rebecca Black

Appearing on a number of comedy/news TV shows and, subsequently, all over the internet upon its release in 2011, "Friday" ended up becoming an unfortunate cultural meme. Rife with autotune, banal lyrics, and severely unenthused acting, the music video was considered the pinnacle of internet trash, and yet it became popular enough to catapult young teenager Rebecca Black onto the top of the Billboard Heatseekers Chart and to number fifty-eight on the Billboard Hot 100.

The single and video were produced by ARK Music Factory, known since for similar videos starring teenagers with a bit too much money to waste.

Answer: Seinfeld

Receiving accolades for its nine season run, "Seinfeld" started off slow for NBC, only gaining steam as a popular sitcom in the fourth season at which point it rarely suffered faults in quality for its remaining five years. Starring Jerry Seinfeld (as a fictional version of himself), Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jason Alexander, and Michael Richards, the show, set in New York City, followed the never-banal everyday occurrences in the lives of four neurotic people. Often, little things would escalate into big deals, the main characters would be depicted as horribly selfish, and the absurd would become the norm; "Seinfeld" has since been celebrated for all of these things-- so much so that it would be years after the finale until any of the stars would find success in other ventures.

Answer: The Will

"The Will" joined only a handful of TV shows canceled after airing a single episode when it debuted (and flopped) in 2005. The premise was simple: an American millionaire would have his friends and family compete to see who would become the heir to his fortune through a series of challenges over the course of six episodes. Ultimately the grand prize went to the wife of the benefactor (and not his son or, more absurdly, his mother-in-law) in the unaired finale.

Despite being critical failures ending in their first season, the FOX late-night talk show "The Chevy Chase Show", the NBC drama "The Playboy Club", and the animated series "Family Dog" lasted much more than their first episode.

Answer: To Kill a Mockingbird

GoodReads receives millions of votes on specific books, and "To Kill a Mockingbird", being the classic that it is, has received some of the most, likely due to it being a widespread 'required reading' novel in North America. Written by Harper Lee, the novel follows Atticus, Scout, and Jem in Maycomb, Alabama, and the depictions of racial intolerance which take place there in the time of the Great Depression. The novel has since been adapted into an Oscar-winning film and the author, Lee, has received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her invaluable contribution to American history (and her impact on generations to come).

All of the other options were also important works of the 20th century; "Heart of Darkness" (actually released in 1899) was one of the seminal works of the Modernist era which ran for, give or take, another forty years. It was written by Joseph Conrad. "For Whom the Bell Tolls" was a Hemingway novel and "Brave New World" was Aldous Huxley's most famous dystopian sci-fi book (akin to George Orwell's famous "1984").

Answer: Twilight

"Twilight", and the three main-canon books to follow it, were immensely popular best-selling teen titles in the 2000s and they generated a wave of vampire fiction. Five movies were made to adapt the four books and, love it or hate it, the whole thing was an amazingly successful venture for U.S. author Stephenie Meyer. While the series was praised for its ability to turn teenage girls onto reading, there were the typical criticisms for its lack of content; the series seemed to be about the importance of marrying a vampire at all costs.

Although most of the characters in the books were vampires, the series has also come under fire for hollow characters. Can't argue with results though.

Answer: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

While many later-released games have had more reviews to their name due to the the broadening of the market in the new millennium, none matched up to the acclaim of "The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time", a hack-and-slash adventure/RPG for the Nintendo 64, so much so that it's remained a benchmark for Nintendo's long-standing quality since its release.

The game followed Link, a boy who would become the hero of Hyrule, as he spent seven years saving the realm from the evil Ganondorf. The universal acclaim of "Ocarina of Time" was nearly matched by the series' Gamecube and Wii releases, "Wind Waker" and "Twilight Princess".

While Metacritic scored the first at 99/100, "Wind Waker" received an average score of 96/100 and "Twilight Princess" received an 95/100.

Other games in the series like "Skyward Sword", "A Link Between Worlds", "A Link to the Past", "Majora's Mask", and "Phantom Hourglass", all received average scores over 90%.

Answer: E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

While the benchmark for game design achievement may have been much lower in the early 1980s than it is today, "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" was considered the bottom of the barrel. Essentially unfinished in every way, the game was released and was subsequently returned by many unhappy players. Atari, in an attempt to fix the problem, buried them in a landfill in New Mexico (where they were unearthed in 2014). Considering the market at the time the game was single-handedly blamed for causing a crash in the industry in 1983, something that video gaming wouldn't overcome for half a decade until the rise of Nintendo in the late '80s.