History Main / UnexpectedlyObscureAnswer

** Played for laughs in the "Bridge of Death" segment of ''Film/MontyPythonAndTheHolyGrail''.
*** The page quote has part of this exchange. Ultimately, the trope gets inverted when Arthur's third question requires him to know [[CallBack the airspeed of an unladen swallow]]. He doesn't know, since it wasn't covered in the SeinfeldianConversation about swallows earlier in the movie, so he asks whether the question is about African or European swallows. Since the bridgekeeper doesn't know the difference, ''he'' gets tossed off the bridge.

* Parodied in ''Series/MontyPythonsFlyingCircus'' where John Cleese's game show host asks a housewife (played by Terry Jones) a very obscure question about philosophy ("Which great opponent of Cartesian Dualism resists the reduction of psychological phenomena to a physical state and insists there is no point of contact between the the extended and the unextended?") . When she protests she has no idea, Cleese nudges her to take a guess, which she does, correctly guessing Henri Bergson (despite never having heard of him). She has more difficulty with the second question, What do penguins eat?

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* In one of the stories in ''Joker's Asylum'', SelfDemonstrating/TheJoker takes over a game show and presents the contestants with ridiculously difficult questions. To their surprise and relief, failure to answer correctly results in harmless joke penalties rather than the expected lethal ones � the ''real'' target of the joke is the show's executives, who are [[IfItBleedsItLeads cynically exploiting the incident for ratings]] (in a control booth bugged by the Joker).

* Played for drama in the episode "Quiz Show" of ''Series/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.

** Played straight in the second game, where Sam must [[ItMakesSenseInContext answer an employee questionnaire to gain access to an executive washroom key]]. The questions range from easy to impossible-to-answer-wrong, except for the last one, where Sam is asked a difficult economics question. Once again, all four answers are variants of "I don't know." The secret is to locate [[ItMakesSenseInContext a friendly carrot who has been studying economic theory]], and bring him to the question. He answers the question for you, making the next MacGuffin reachable and teaching the player what Giffen's Paradox is. [[note]](Situations in which people consume more of a good, the higher it is priced, in apparent contradiction to the usual dictates of supply and demand. The classic, though apocryphal, example is potatoes during Ireland's Great Famine � as the price of potatoes {the basic staple of the Irish diet} rose, families could no longer supplement their diets with even more expensive meat or bread. Therefore, they began buying and consuming even more of the pricier, but still relatively affordable, potatoes.)[[/note]]

* Done deliberately in the late 1950s thanks to ExecutiveMeddling, and hence part of the reason for the quiz show scandals � if contestants weren't given answers in advance or told to take a dive, but the execs wanted them gone anyway for whatever reason (''especially'' if the contestant said ScrewTheMoneyIHaveRules), the show would feed answers to their opponent(s) and/or go this route.

* This is the MO of the PhoneInGameShows that went through a brief amount of popularity amongst the television money-men from 2005-10, as [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZu9Sdj_OjA this]] clip shows � the host isn't even able to ''pronounce'' the big answer.

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* In one of the stories in ''Joker's Asylum'', SelfDemonstrating/TheJoker takes over a game show and presents the contestants with ridiculously difficult questions. To their surprise and relief, failure to answer correctly results in harmless joke penalties rather than the expected lethal ones — the ''real'' target of the joke is the show's executives, who are [[IfItBleedsItLeads cynically exploiting the incident for ratings]] (in a control booth bugged by the Joker).
* ComicBook/DisneyDucksComicUniverse:

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* Played for drama in the episode "Quiz Show" of ''Series/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.

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** Played straight in the second game, where Sam must [[ItMakesSenseInContext answer an employee questionnaire to gain access to an executive washroom key]]. The questions range from easy to impossible-to-answer-wrong, except for the last one, where Sam is asked a difficult economics question. Once again, all four answers are variants of "I don't know." The secret is to locate [[ItMakesSenseInContext a friendly carrot who has been studying economic theory]], and bring him to the question. He answers the question for you, making the next MacGuffin reachable and teaching the player what Giffen's Paradox is. [[note]](Situations in which people consume more of a good, the higher it is priced, in apparent contradiction to the usual dictates of supply and demand. The classic, though apocryphal, example is potatoes during Ireland's Great Famine — as the price of potatoes {the basic staple of the Irish diet} rose, families could no longer supplement their diets with even more expensive meat or bread. Therefore, they began buying and consuming even more of the pricier, but still relatively affordable, potatoes.)[[/note]]

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* Done deliberately in the late 1950s thanks to ExecutiveMeddling, and hence part of the reason for the quiz show scandals — if contestants weren't given answers in advance or told to take a dive, but the execs wanted them gone anyway for whatever reason (''especially'' if the contestant said ScrewTheMoneyIHaveRules), the show would feed answers to their opponent(s) and/or go this route.

* This is the MO of the PhoneInGameShows that went through a brief amount of popularity amongst the television money-men from 2005-10, as [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZu9Sdj_OjA this]] clip shows — the host isn't even able to ''pronounce'' the big answer.

** For one team, the final question required them to correctly identify which happened first: the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana, or that of Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne. [[note]](Charles and Di were married on 29 July 1981, whereas Ozzy and Sharon were married on 4 July 1982.)[[/note]] They got it wrong, losing £525,000.

* The French quiz 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.

* Played with on {{MTV}}'s ''Series/RemoteControl'' with the "Public Television" channel/category, which consisted entirely of obscure scientific facts, etc. One contestant selected the channel and [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPi2GMMbzTE got the question right]], however, leading to a MomentOfAwesome.

* This is the MO of the phone-in quizzes that went through a brief amount of popularity amongst the television money-men from 2005-10, as [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZu9Sdj_OjA this]] clip shows — the host isn't even able to ''pronounce'' the big answer.

* In volume 3 of ''VideoGame/YouDontKnowJack'' (a series of PC games that play like a game show) there are "impossible questions", worth a ridiculous $20,000 (normal questions go from $1,000 to $3,000 in Round 1 and from $2,000-$6,000 in Round 2), like "I'm Thinking of a number between One and Nine, what is it?", "Within two years, how much time was there between the invention of the can and the invention of the can opener?", or "If you travel at a constant speed of 10 knots, at how many bells will you have to lift anchor in order to arrive at exactly 11:00 AM and get the last delicious Fiesta Breakfast Burrito?" What's even weirder about it is that it's either multiple choice or fill in the blank (in either case [[spoiler:five, 48 years, and four Taco bells]], respectively).

* One ''DonaldDuck'' story has him and his nephews participate in a television quiz, hoping to win a (literal) barrel of money. The nephews each successfully answer their question, but to Donald's dismay they pick a new bicycle instead of the cash. When it's finally his turn, the quizmaster decides that since Donald has been such a JerkAss throughout the show, he gets the most difficult question ever: how many drops per hour fall from the Niagara falls? [[spoiler:He knows the answer! But the stress of reciting it causes him to go mad and ''also'' pick the bicycle as his prize.]]

* The university in the ''{{GURPS}} IOU'' setting has an "Advanced Cheating" class, in which the final exam is nominally a series of impossibly obscure trivia questions. The ''real'' test is to [[NotCheatingUnlessYouGetCaught cheat on the test without getting caught]].

* After a string of correct answers, ''[[DoubleDare1986 Double Dare]]'' would throw in a few questions that no child could be expected to know, such as "What does DNA stand for?" [[note]](Deoxyribonucleic acid)[[/note]], to try and force a messy Physical Challenge (one of the main draws of the series) to be played. As could be expected, it didn't always work.

** On ''The $64,000 Question'', these kinds of questions were used in an attempt to force losses from contestants Charles Revson (head of show sponsor Revlon) didn't like, going so far as to swap out the questions that had been secured in a bank vault prior to the show. Dr. Joyce Brothers was one such target, but she managed to win the $64,000 legitimately.

* A ''Series/ThirtyRock'' episode had "Homonym", an unfair game show in which a contestant has to give the correct definition for a word that has homophones, [[LuckBasedMission but always ends up incorrectly giving the answer for "the other one"]]. The CreditsGag of the relevant episode features a contestant 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. Later episodes featured celebrity and Iranian versions.

* 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-Cavalleriana Rusticana?" "Audience?" "''Theatre/{{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?"

* Happens frequently on ''{{QI}}'', which has an explicit policy of asking questions that nobody's likely to know, and awarding points for how ''interesting'' a contestant's answer is, regardless of whether it's ''correct''.

* Played straight with a twist in British quiz ''{{Pointless}}''. Given a category, the aim is to name the most obscure member. But even though giving obscure answers is the point, it's still unexpected when it happens. Also, sometimes it's the fact that a given answer ''is'' obscure that's unexpected; sometimes the 100 people surveyed will simply miss an answer that you'd expect to be obvious.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Undertale}'', Mettaton starts throwing some bizarre and improbable questions at you during his deadly quiz game. You can probably guess "what are robots made of" for yourself; while the game has never mentioned that the answer is [[spoiler:metal and magic]], the other three answers are ''obviously'' wrong. But when he throws [[http://lparchive.org/Undertale/Update%2021/11-1701.png this]] TrainProblem at you, you're probably going to resort to guessing. [[spoiler:Or cheating; the intended solution to this quiz puzzle is to notice that Alphys is showing you the correct answer with her fingers.]]

*** The equation is for the combustion of glucose (a key element of said powder). According to those behind the show, "an explosion in a custard factory" is the standard example used when the combustion of glucose is taught at school (it's also a common example of the effects of static electricity), hence how she knew it.

* 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 ''Franchise/BackToTheFuture'' series involved the ''exact time'' Marty woke up when he returned to 1985.

* A ''Series/ThirtyRock'' episode had "Homonym", an unfair game show in which a contestant has to give the correct definition for a word that has homophones, [[LuckBasedMission but always ends up incorrectly giving the answer for "the other one"]]. The CreditsGag of the relevant episode features a contestant 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.

* Subverted in the first ''PajamaSam'' game, in which one of the questions of an in-game quiz concerns the response of a young French duke when he was presented a question on policy. All four possible answers are variants on "I have no idea," "That's too hard, I'm just a kid," or simply, "Huh?" All four answers are correct (except, of course, the duke said it in French).

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