Corporate Punishment Trivia Quiz

Answer: Blade Runner (1982)

Los Angeles based Tyrell Corp came up with the slogan "more human than human"... now, if they wanted to get humanity off-side, that would certainly do it. Their founder, Dr. Eldon Tyrell, saw himself as a sort of God-like character who created human androids to do the horrible jobs.

These androids, called replicants, were almost indistinguishable to human beings that it required a special test (Voight-Kampff test) to tell them apart. Whilst Tyrell didn't try to rule the universe, they certainly had a fair crack at trying to rule a little corner of it.

Answer: Back to the Future II (1989)

Biff Tannen is the bad guy/goon in the original "Back to the Future" (1985). He is not very smart and tends to think with his fists. Yes, he's a big bully. In "Back to the Future II" (1989), when Doc and Marty travel to 2015, future Biff spots them and realises that they have time-travelled.

He steals Marty's sporting almanac, steals Doc's car and goes back to 1955 to hand the book to his past Biff. Past Biff then makes a fortune betting on every sporting event and sets up BiffCo. He turns Hill Valley into Hell Valley, invests in toxic waste dumping, gets Nixon re-elected again and again... you get the picture.

Answer: Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)

Oh these guys are nasty. It's not just a sales push for these guys, it's a sales push, push, push or we push you out the door. To help their sales team along they send a "trainer" in to help them along. Only thing is, he doesn't teach them anything he simply tries to motivate them by (a) abusing them (b) questioning their manhood and (c) advising them that if any of them were not amongst the top two salespeople by the end of the week, not to bother coming in on Monday. And just to sweeten the deal for the winners, how about a new Cadillac and, wait, there's more, a new set of steak knives. I wonder if the winners had to pull those out of their backs.

Answer: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

Bolivar Trask, played by Peter Dinklage, does not like mutants and so the vision for his great company is that they set out to wipe-out this segment of the population. Personally I don't see that as a good business practice, nor would that kind of statement look too good hanging up on a wall. So his wisdom dictates that he creates a series of giant robots, called Sentinels, that could detect and then proceed to kill our resident mutants.

He has one issue though, he lacks the funding and who better to provide it than government. And who should be in power at this point in time but President Nixon.

Answer: Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2 (2013)

In case you weren't aware, the island of Chewandswallow is now over-run by "foodimals". LIVE's CEO Chester V. introduces the company as being a benevolent one that wants to help the world but, in truth, they're only looking to help themselves. Chester provides a USB stick that will "kill" the machine that was the cause of all the issues on the island of Chewandswallow.

However, the stick is not designed to kill the machine rather, it's designed to take it over. Oh the nefariousness! LIVE wants the machine to continue producing "foodimals" so that it can turn them into cheap food bars they can sell to the world. Can't you see people... flip the company's name on its head and it spells EVIL!

Answer: Michael Clayton (2007)

When Julia Roberts, in "Erin Brockovich" (2000), took on the Pacific Gas & Electric Company, she had it easy... "they're called boobs, Ed" she bragged, but when George Clooney, as Michael Collins, took on U-North he had it a whole lot tougher. You see U-North developed, produced and sold a weed-killer. Nothing wrong with that except, they knew this weed-killer would cause cancer in humans and, after 468 deaths, they were facing a massive class action.

When they discovered that one of the opposition's lawyers had gotten hold of an internal memo that indicated they knew about this, they cut to the chase.

There was no attempt to reason with this lawyer, no attempt at blackmail or even bribery... they hired two hitmen to bump him off and then they put a bomb in Michael Collins' car when he started snooping around. Oh that is downright low.

Answer: "Alien" series (From 1979)

Sometimes, simply, called the Company, their name has also been abbreviated to Wey-Yu. Their company slogan is "Building Better Worlds" but, honestly, they don't really care how they achieve this. They continuously pursue the acquisition of a xenomorph, that they have designated as XX121,and they don't care one bit about how many humans they kill off in this quest.

Their aim is to use the XX121 to make a range of biological weapons but it's not just to make money... we've got them all wrong they tell us... all they want to do is to make sure that humans remain the elite species in the universe.

Answer: WALL-E (2008)

At the time that "WALL-E" is set, Buy-n-Large, essentially, no longer exists, but its presence is everywhere. This is evidenced by their stickers appearing on almost every object. It is highly likely that everyone on the starliner Axiom, has no idea what BnL used to do.

Here's what they did do. They started as a manufacturer of frozen yoghurt with a company called Buy Yoghurt. They then acquired a maker of men's suits called the Large Industries and they grew from there. Eventually they owned so many companies that all the other companies in the world were lining up to have BnL buy them out. But BnL didn't stop there and they kept pushing everyone on Earth to buy, buy, buy... until they turned the Earth into a giant garbage heap.

But wait... there's more. They instigated a project called "Operation Clean-Up", which basically meant that they loaded all of Earth's molly-coddled population onto giant starliners and sent them into space forever so they could continue to buy, buy, buy...

Answer: "The Terminator" series (From 1984)

OK, I will give these guys a little bit of lee-way because they did not start out as an evil conglomerate... just a downright stupid one. Being a lazy mob they created a machine to run the US military's defence system and gave it a mind of its own. All well and good until the machine figured out that what was holding it back was the company's human resources and decided it was time to fire them all. Only problem is that when the machine decided it no longer required people's services, it didn't mean "clean out your desk and we'll escort you out of the door", instead, they gave a whole new meaning to the term "you're fired" and fired nuclear warheads at everyone.

Note: "The Terminator" series commenced in 1984. The building in which the original "Terminator", Arnold Schwarzenegger's T-800, is destroyed is the Cyberdyne Systems factory. At that point it was merely a small manufacturing plant but then it acquired the wreckage of the T-800, which included the machine's CPU chip. From there they built their empire.

Answer: "Jurassic Park" series (From 1993)

International Genetics Incorporated was created by John Hammond (played by Richard Attenborough in the original 1993 film) and they had this brainwave to bring dinosaurs back to life. It worked well until the company's power grid was sabotaged and the dinosaurs went on a rampage. This nearly turned the company into a dinosaur itself (no pardons for the pun). The company then appoints Peter Ludlow (Hammond's nephew) the CEO. He gives his uncle the flick and, not having learnt any lessons from the first fiasco, decides to build a new park. He ended up being an appetizer for a T-Rex.

OK, so far we can only accuse them of being stupid. John Hammond dies and InGen is taken over by Masrani Global. Their CEO, Simon Masrani, promotes Henry Wu and lets him loose. Henry, for the uninitiated, was John Hammonds lead scientist in the original story. Henry has about as much sense as an uncoordinated toddler and he continues cloning. Not only that he is now cross breeding, mixing T-Rex DNA with Velociraptor DNA. He manages to turn Jurassic World from a theme park to an all-you-can-eat buffet.