History Main / UnexpectedlyObscureAnswer

* The french quizz show Burger Quizz always contained a segment where contestants had to choose between three sets of questions : two which were rather normal (for example, questions about then-current president Jacques Chirac, Star Wars, or pop rock) and a final one which was extremely difficult and based around a particularly obscure subject (examples include "the county of Côte d'Or during the years 1870s" or [[OverlyLongName "chemistry so complicated, that even Nobel Prize winners would have trouble answering those questions"]]). Needless to say, the first two sets of questions were always picked.

** Subverted occasionally, as with one impossible question of the category "It's a Dog!": "What has four legs, barks, and is a common household pet?" No tricks here, the answer ''is'' "a dog". Another "Impossible Question" was the not-terribly-obscure "What is it called when winning costs you more than losing would have?" The correct answer is, of course, "PyrrhicVictory". Howevfer, keeping with the theme, if you get it right you lose points.

* It also came into play in the bonus round of ''Clash'', from 1990-91 on "Ha! The Comedy Network" (which merged with "The Comedy Channel" to form Comedy Central in 1991): a representative of the winning team spuns a wheel to determine the category of a final question; get it right, and the team wins a major prize. One wedge is the "Easy Question" (e.g. "Which is bigger: the Sun or your head?"). The other five are categories like "Incredibly Difficult Tax Code Trivia".

* The Labyrinth in the ''Second Son'' trilogy includes a series of gates which can only be opened by answering a riddle engraved on them. Entering the wrong answer triggers a lethal trap. The last riddle is an obscure reference to the architect's favorite ''pancake recipe'' (The correct answer is a series of numbers depicting the ratio of ingredients in the recipe, in the exact order they are to be mixed together). This is quite deliberate, as the architect didn't want anyone he hadn't personally prepped with the answers to be able to make it through.

** Another Python sketch had a British television host a game show with the leading figures of Communism: Creator/KarlMarx, UsefulNotes/VladimirLenin, UsefulNotes/CheGuevara, and UsefulNotes/MaoTseTung. Marx, Che, and Lenin are shot down with obscure English Premier Football questions and to name the Teddy Johnson and Pearl Carr song which won at the 1959 Eurovision Song Contest. ("Sing Little Birdie."), to which Mao unexpectedly knows the answer. In the ''Film/MontyPythonLiveAtTheHollywoodBowl'' version this last question is changed to naming "Great Balls Of Fire" by Jerry Lee Lewis.

** Subverted occasionally, as with one impossible question of the category "It's a Dog!": "What has four legs, barks, and is a common household pet?" No tricks here, the answer ''is'' "a dog". Another "Impossible Question" was the not-terribly-obscure "What is it called when winning costs you more than losing would have?" The correct answer is, of course, "PyrrhicVictory". However, keeping with the theme, if you get it right you lose points.

** Another Python sketch had a British television host a game show with the leading figures of Communism: Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Che Guevara, and Mao Tse Tung. Marx, Che, and Lenin are shot down with obscure English Premier Football and Jerry Lee Lewis questions (oddly Mao knew the Lewis one). That version was on the Live At City Center album. On the show, it was to name the Teddy Johnson and Pearl Carr song which won at the 1959 Eurovision Song Contest. ("Sing Little Birdie.")

* Played for drama in the episode "Quiz Show" of ''BoyMeetsWorld''. A traditional Quiz Bowl-type game show is revamped in order to [[WeAreStillRelevantDammit appeal to youngsters]] by ditching their acadamia-themed questions for pop culture and "stupid question-stupid answer" type questions — much to Feeny's dismay. Naturally, this made goofballs Cory and Shawn (and the not-so-goofy-but-still-on-the-team Topanga) popular returning champions. When the executives wanted Cory and Shawn out of the game, they brought back the academia to force the team to lose (bordering the line of what caused the quiz show scandals), including one question that Feeny answered in a ChekhovsLecture earlier in the episode, which the team wasn't able to answer.
* ''LateNight'''s "Wheel of Game Shows" combined this with a MoonLogicPuzzle: the game "Find the Red Tissue" had the red tissue be on the ''bottom'' of the box instead of inside it, and then on a rebus puzzle, the contestant's seemingly correct guess "[[DoubleEntendre Tickle my balls]]" was rejected in favor of "Play my sports"

* In the WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes short "The Ducksters", Daffy is the host of a radio game show (a parody of ''TruthOrConsequences''), and Porky is the hapless contestant. Daffy throws quite a few of these at Porky throughout the cartoon, including asking for the maiden name of Cleopatra's aunt, or asking him to name an opera from a ''single note'' ("C-C-Cavalera Rusticana?" "Audience?" "''Rigoletto!''"). Porky gets even after winning the $26,000,000.03 (...yep) cash prize and buying the radio station with it, giving Daffy the same treatment Porky got after the question "At what latitude and longitude did the wreck of the Hesperus occur?"

* Played with on the Comedy Central show ''Vs.'' Winning teams would be given two choices for categories, one hilariously obscure, and one hilariously gamed to their advantage. For instance, a team of Grateful Dead fans would be given the choices of "International Grandmasters of Chess" or "Jerry Garcia Songs". Occasionally the teams would spring for the obscure category, for which they did indeed have a question prepared.

* Both ''Series/{{Debt}}'' and ''Idiot Savants'' made use of categories based on a contestant's selected field of pop culture expertise. During each game's bonus round, questions would come from these categories, but would be extremely obscure to anyone but absolute experts. For example, one ''Debt'' question about ''WesternAnimation/TheFlintstones'' asked who gave the voices for the adult Pebbles; an ''Idiot Savants'' question about the ''Film/BackToTheFuture'' series involved the ''exact time'' Marty woke up when he returned to 1985.

** Except this one time when third set was about [[CalvinAndHobbes some obscure and supposedly boring comic named after a theologian and a philosopher]]... that was picked and aced.

* In order to win anything at all on the British game show ''TheMillionPoundDrop'', contestants must face a final AllOrNothing multiple-choice question at the end of the game, picking from two choices. Picking the right answer means they get to keep their winnings, while picking the wrong one wipes out their winnings at the last second. For contestants who reach this final question, it usually ends up being an unexpectedly obscure piece of pure trivia that may as well be a coin flip. Examples:

** The three-answer questions can fall into this, by having one answer that's fairly easy to dismiss, and two which are so close together it has to be a guess. One question asked the contestants which of three famous Peters ([[DragonsDen Peter Jones]], Peter Andre, and PeterKay) was the shortest. [[note]](Peter Jones is about a foot taller than the others. The correct answer was Peter Kay, by ''one inch''.)[[/note]]

** In a Series 3 episode, Helen Atkinson-Wood correctly answers a question "so impossible that Stephen Fry shall award a gigantic 200 points if anyone gets the answer right." After she answers, the other contestants, rightly astonished, ask "How the hell did you know that?" For the curious, the question was "What does this chemical equation: "[=C6H12O6=] + 6O2 --> 6CO2 + 6H2O", represent?" Her answer: "An explosion in a custard powder factory."

* A ''Series/ThirtyRock'' episode had "Homonym", an unfair game show in which a contestant has to define a word's homophone, but always ends up incorrectly giving the answer for "the other one". The CreditsGag of its episode features a contestant learning somehow getting a second chance on "Sent" wrong because of "the third one", and then is told that the correct answer for "Au pair" was "Oh, pear!", an exclamation about a fruit.

* A ''Series/{{30Rock}}'' episode had "Homonym", an unfair game show in which a contestant has to define a word's homophone, but always ends up incorrectly giving the answer for "the other one". The CreditsGag of its episode features a contestant learning that the correct answer for "Sent" was "the third one", and then is told that the correct answer for "Au pair" was "Oh, pear!", an exclamation about a fruit.

* ''LateNight'''s "Wheel of Game Shows" combines this with a MoonLogicPuzzle: the game "Find the Red Tissue" had the red tissue be on the ''bottom'' of the box instead of inside it, and then on a rebus puzzle, the contestant's seemingly correct guess "[[AccidentalInnuendo Tickle my balls]]" was rejected in favor of "Play my sports"

* In the ''VideoGame/BorderLands2'' [=DLC=] ''Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep'', Tina asks Torgue three geeky questions to prove he's a real geek. Torgue gets the first two right, but the third is for a very specific piece of in-universe geek trivia, and Torgue doesn't know the answer. Therefore, according to Lilith, [[NoTrueScotsman Torgue isn't really a geek]].

->'''Bridgekeeper:''' STOP! Whoever approacheth the Bridge of Death must answer me these questions three, ere the other side he see.\\
'''Sir Robin:''' Ask me the questions, Bridgekeeper. I'm not afraid.\\
'''Bridgekeeper:''' What... is your name?\\
'''Sir Robin:''' Sir Robin of Camelot.\\
'''Bridgekeeper:''' What... is your quest?\\
'''Sir Robin:''' To seek the Holy Grail.\\
'''Bridgekeeper:''' What... is the capital of Assyria? [[note]](It's Assur. Or Dur-Sharrukin {which was also called Khorsobad}. Or Nimrud {aka Kalhu}. Or Ninevah. Or Harran if you're being generous. Or none at all, since Assyria ceased to exist as a country in around 614-605 BC. Which one is correct depends on what time period you're talking about. In the fifth and sixth centuries, the Persian state of Asuristan, of the same etymology as "Assyria," contained most of its area, and its capital was the Imperial capital Ctesiphon.)[[/note]]\\
'''Sir Robin:''' ...I don't know that!\\
(''Sir Robin gets flung off the bridge'')
-->--''Film/MontyPythonAndTheHolyGrail''.

* Parodied in ''SamAndMax: Situation: Comedy'', where you have to win "Who's Never Going to Be a Millionaire?". The questions are just as ridiculously arcane as you'd expect with a title like that. [[spoiler:To win, you have to switch the question cards with questions (actually song lyrics) that are insanely simple.]]

* A huge number of ''UniversityChallenge'' questions have very obscure answers, but there have been some that take the cake. One picture round required the contestants to identify ''nuclear power stations'' from photographs. What university students are spending their spare time admiring nuclear power stations!? [[note]](Nuclear engineers.)[[/note]]

-->'''Contestant:''' [[note]](Coulomb's Law.)[[/note]]

* Subverted in ''VideoGame/SuperPaperMario'', a minigame to get through a living doorway has the door asking you extremely complex math questions, then giving you answer that relate to the game or franchise and are significantly easier. The only hard question he asks is what number question the current question is.

* In the WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes short "The Ducksters", Daffy is the host of a radio game show (a parody of ''TruthOrConsequences''), and Porky is the hapless contestant. Daffy throws quite a few of these at Porky throughout the cartoon, including asking for the maiden name of Cleopatra's aunt, or asking him to name an opera from a ''single note'' ("C-C-Cavalera Rusticana?" "Audience?" "''Rigoletto!''"). Porky gets even after winning the $16,000,000.03 (...yep) cash prize and buying the radio station with it, giving Daffy the same treatment Porky got after the question "At what latitude and longitude did the wreck of the Hesperus occur?"

* Questions in ''Series/OnlyConnect'' tend to be fairly difficult at the best of times, but some stand out as being unanswerable by anyone except a human manifestation of {{Google}}. In one such question, contestants had not only to identify the category of Chief Medical Officers of England, but also to provide the fourth in the sequence. And to get the maximum points, not only must you get it right, but you must get it in one clue! Possibly inverted by the tendency to shove in ''less'' obscurist topics which invariably loses players who wind up over-thinking.

** Played for laughs in the "Bridge of Death" segment of ''Film/MontyPythonAndTheHolyGrail''. Watch it [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMxWLuOFyZM#t=53s here.]]

* Both ''{{Debt}}'' and ''Idiot Savants'' made use of categories based on a contestant's selected field of pop culture expertise. During each game's bonus round, questions would come from these categories, but would be extremely obscure to anyone but absolute experts. For example, one ''Debt'' question about ''WesternAnimation/TheFlintstones'' asked who gave the voices for the adult Pebbles; an ''Idiot Savants'' question about the ''Film/BackToTheFuture'' series involved the ''exact time'' Marty woke up when he returned to 1985.

* Following the 2010 ReTool of the US version of ''Series/WhoWantsToBeAMillionaire'', a recent trend in questions seems to ask what celebrities did before they became famous (or which of four celebrities had a specific job). These are almost always the hardest in Round 1 and frequently [[{{Lifelines}} jumped]] or walked away from, and none have been answered correctly.