Off With His Head Trivia Quiz

Answer: Medusa

A Gorgon whose head contained hair made of snakes, Medusa was one of the foes faced by the Olympian hero Perseus. During battle, he beheaded this horrible female creature to use its power to turn any one to stone if they met its gaze. This was part of the plot of both the 1981 and 2010 versions of "Clash of the Titans", in which Perseus needed to collect the head to stop a Kraken summoned by Poseidon. Medusa has also been seen in art, video games, and architecture because of her prominence in Greek myth.

Answer: Futurama

Apparently invented by the creator of Mr. Microphone, Ron Popeil, this technology allows people from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries to remain alive (at least their heads) in the thirty-first century. Notable heads in jars include Al Gore, Richard Nixon (as President of the Earth), Pamela Anderson, and the Beastie Boys.

The concept of heads in glass jars also appeared in creator Matt Groening's earlier series, "The Simpsons" when, in a flashforward, Bart was on a game show with the head of Kitty Carlisle.

Answer: Amazon rainforest

Although somewhat of a common item in the 'Ripley's Believe It or Not!' archive, the shrunken head is certainly a rare oddity. The practice of shrinking heads was undertaken by tribespeople in the Amazon, specifically different groups in western Brazil, Ecuador, and Peru.

The severed head is shrunken after being boiled and left to dry under ash. More often than not, the head is separated from the body before shrinking, usually by headhunters. A head taken from any old dead body may not be authentic, though.

Answer: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Written in 1820 as part of the "The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent." short story collection, this classic American short story is perhaps Irving's most famous. A man named Ichabod Crane finds himself in a small American town vying for the attention of Katrina Van Tassel. All the while a legend of a certain headless horseman, a specter who roams the trails around the town missing a head, holds prominence through the narrative.

The story has been remade as TV anthology episodes and films over the years, one of the most prominent versions being the Tim Burton adaptation released in 1999 starring Johnny Depp as Crane.

The tagline of said film was "Heads Will Roll".

Answer: The Yeah Yeah Yeahs

The second track from The Yeah Yeah Yeah's third album, "Heads Will Roll" was one of the band's more upbeat, hard-hitting tracks from "It's Blitz!". While the first single "Zero" hit more charts and received more critical acclaim, "Heads Will Roll" appeared in a mash-up with Michael Jackson's "Thriller" on the TV show "Glee" (during the popular post-Superbowl episode). Lyrics from the song include:
"Off, off, off with your head.
Dance, dance, dance till you're dead.
Heads will roll, heads will roll
Heads will roll, on the floor"

Answer: The British Monarch

In 1953, Queen Elizabeth II became the face seen on the back of all Canadian coins, but before she was minted, past kings including George VI, Edward VII, and Queen Victoria were seen on the back side of pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, loonies ($1), and toonies ($2).

The tail sides of Canadian coins typically portray naturally Canadian mammals like beavers, caribous, loons, and bears, but the one cent coin features a maple leaf and the ten cent coin shows the Bluenose, a Nova Scotian schooner. Canadian paper money typically shows past Prime Ministers.

Answer: John Cleese

Played by "Monty Python" member John Cleese, Nearly-Headless Nick is actually named Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington. One of the many ghosts who wander the halls of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Nick is more frequently seen in the books than in the films. Nick first appears in "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone", but plays a more active role as one of the petrified characters who saw the basilisk in "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets". Nick is nicknamed 'Nearly-Headless' because his head wasn't completely decapitated at his time of death.

As such he is unable to join the Headless Hunt in "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire". Nick is the house ghost for Gryffindor.

Answer: Pierce Brosnan

A rather eccentric film (even by Tim Burton standards), "Mars Attacks!" released in 1996 to mixed reviews and ended up barely remaking its $100,000,000 budget. In the film, aliens from Mars literally come to attack the globe leading a large ensemble cast to fight back and save themselves from invasion. Sarah Jessica Parker and Pierce Brosnan are both characters who get captured by the aliens and experimented on. Sarah Jessica Parker, and her pet chihuahua who was also abducted, switched heads while Brosnan's head was merely kept alive.

In the end, both characters crashed along with the alien craft into a body of water.

Answer: The Thing

"The Thing", while not as successful in the box office as anticipated, became a horror classic in subsequent years and one of John Carpenter's signature one-off films. Starring Kurt Russell, the movie featured a group of scientists in Antarctica who came across an aggressive other-worldly being with the ability to mimic other beings entirely.

When the creature became some of the members of their party, tensions grew. In one key moment, one body is discovered to be part of the creature and, in an attempt to escape, the head of the body tears off and tries to crawl away.

The movie was famous for its special effects, many of which were then-groundbreaking in the horror genre.

Answer: The Queen of Hearts

A monarch with serious problems, the Queen of Hearts appeared in both the Disney film version of "Alice in Wonderland" and Lewis Carroll's original 1865 children's story. This character is meant to represent Queen Victoria in Carroll's story (which is rife with parody and satire).

The Queen tends to have a knack for shouting her trademark line as if on a whim, and while very few people ever seem to be beheaded, she is one of the largest dangers Alice encounters on her trip through the topsy-turvy world of Wonderland.

In Tim Burton's version (released in 2010), the Queen of Hearts was portrayed by Helena Bonham Carter.