Famous monkeys picture round: name the ape, the band or the character

A themed picture round does something a general one can't: it gives teams a way in. Once they know every answer is a monkey or an ape, the cartoon they half recognise becomes a process of elimination rather than a shrug. This one mixes animated characters, a couple of bands and one gorilla who became a news story, so there's something for every table.

Tap a picture to check the answer, or build the round in the quiz builder with the button under the grid.

How to score it

Say the rules before the clock starts: the answer is the character's name, or the band's name where the picture is artwork. Naming the film without the character gets half a point. That keeps the round fair for teams who know the film but not the sidekick, and it stops the inevitable "we said Jungle Book, that should count" conversation at the marking table.

Three minutes is plenty. These are either known or not, and the two bands near the end are there to catch out teams who assumed every answer would be a character.

Notes for the reveal

The first picture is a mandrill, not a baboon, which is a correction the host should be ready for because someone at every quiz will make it. The character's name means "friend" in Swahili.

The fourth has been played in the recent films by Andy Serkis through motion capture, the same technique he used for Gollum. Mentioning this tends to start a side argument about whether motion capture performances deserve acting awards, which is fine, it's a pub.

The fifth is the one real animal in the set, a western lowland gorilla from Cincinnati Zoo who died in 2016 and then had an unexpected second life as an internet meme. Keep the tone light here; the story behind it was a sad one. The BBC's report is a reasonable source if you want the facts straight.

The sixth belongs to Captain Barbossa, who named him after the hero of the films out of spite, and the shared name confuses teams every time. Writing down the hero instead of the monkey is wrong but understandable, and half a point for the film is already covered by your rules.

The seventh and eighth are both bands. One is a virtual band whose animated members are drawn by Jamie Hewlett and voiced by Damon Albarn's music. The other is a very real band from Sheffield whose debut album, released in 2006, was at the time the fastest-selling debut in British chart history.

Make it your own

The theme is the format here, and almost anything works in its place: famous dogs, famous cars, famous hats, famous bridges. The trick is to pick a theme wide enough to span film, music, sport and news, so one table's blind spot is another's specialist subject. Our picture round ideas post has more themes to steal, and if you'd rather test geography than pop culture, the flag picture round runs the same way.