Wikipedia:Top 25 Report/October 21 to 27, 2018

The Top 25 Report

This page contains material that is kept because it is considered humorous.
Such material is not meant to be taken seriously.

Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (October 21 to 27, 2018)

Prepared with commentary by Igordebraga

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October and scares rise

The Halloween holiday (#12) inspires the entertainment industry to release scary products in October, and this is reflected by Netflix topping the list with a show about a haunted house (#1, #5), adding in a series starring a teenage witch (#14) - and in a unintended case, there's the equally disturbing subject of miscarriage of the law (#10, #17), along with a fictional assassin (#13) - while Hollywood brings back the Halloween slasher movies (#3, #20, #22), and is still making money out of a questionable comic book movie that evokes more terror than justice (#23). Scares are also provided by terrorism attempts (#11), urban legends (#21), life-threatening disease (#4) and life-ending (#9) manhunts (#6). On less spooky notes, there's movies about musicians (#2, #8, #18) and actors (#19), some sports (#15, #25), video games (#5), Google Doodles (#15) and boneheaded TV moments (#24).

For the week of October 21 to 27, 2018, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 report were:

Rank	Article	Views	About
1	The Haunting of Hill House (TV series)	1,057,068	Seems like Netflix scares will be a constant close to Halloween. Last year, our report was topped by Stranger Things, and 2018 goes from teen horror to adult one, in a series that simultaneously shows Carla Gugino (pictured) as the mother of a family that in 1992 moves into an old house during reforms to their mansion, and present day events showing their stay there was traumatic.
2	Freddie Mercury	996,475	Wembley Stadium hosted iconic performances by Queen and The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, so it's only natural that Mercury's biopic Bohemian Rhapsody (which narrowly missed the list at #26) premiered at nearby Wembley Arena. Reviews have been mixed, deeming the movie too orthodox for such a groundbreaking artist, but it was still topped the UK and Ireland box office. This week, Bohemian Rhapsody will Play the Game in most markets, including the U.S.
3	Halloween (2018 film)	977,862	Taking a page from Superman Returns, the Halloween series decides to ignore most of its sequels (not the first time it happened, as shown by this helpful graph) and instead make a movie where Michael Myers (#22) gets free after 40 years (#20) of imprisonment and again goes on a killing spree during October 31st (#12), with a deeply traumatized Laurie Strode (still played by Jamie Lee Curtis, pictured) deciding to take him down with her own hands. The back-to-basics approach results in a frightening movie approved by both audiences and reviewers.
4	Roman Reigns	947,396	A few weeks before the next wrestling pantomime, one of the headliners had to back out due to real life drama: Roman Reigns revealed he has leukemia, which made a return even after it had entered remission during his 11 year private treatment.
5	Red Dead Redemption 2	865,220	Rockstar Games returns to their "Grand Theft Auto in the Wild West" series, which has already gotten great reviews.
6	Jamal Khashoggi	794,298	The brutal story which captivated the world this week revolves around Khashoggi, a journalist, famed in the West for his work with the Post, disappeared in the Saudi embassy in ~~Byzantium~~ ~~Constantinople~~ Istanbul, leading to (now confirmed) suspicions that he had been murdered by the Arabian authorities. Of course, Saudi Arabia was ostracized internationally owing to their blatant brutality...jk they have liquid gold. Must have been rogue killers. Maybe #22 was involved.
7	The Haunting of Hill House	781,070	Shirley Jackson's 1959 novel, a seminal cornerstone of mid-twenty century horror literature alongside the corpus of literary royalty, has been adapted into a popular Netflix miniseries (#1)
8	A Star Is Born (2018 film)	754,756	Bradley Cooper (pictured) does basically everything in the fourth iteration of this cinematic classic: he stars as the famous musician who discovers a fledgling one played by Lady Gaga (#18), directs, co-writes, co-produces, and even helped make the songs he performs. And it worked out pretty well, with a well-done and touching movie that after critical and commercial success, is certainly expected to be an awards contender.
9	Deaths in 2018	684,074	In the immortal words of our #2: "Too late, my time has come Sends shivers down my spine, Body's aching all the time Goodbye, everybody, I've got to go Gotta leave you all behind and face the truth!"
10	Steven Avery	545,655	An American prisoner whose sad story of being framed by the police - after serving 18 years in prison for a sexual assault he plainly did not commit, the subsequent civil lawsuit had him charged for a murder and convicted again, this time with his underage nephew (#17) being roped along - was told in the Netflix series Making a Murderer, which had a second season released on October 19 exploring the aftermath of the conviction.
11	George Soros	522,490	This successful and liberal investor was the first target of a series of attempted mail bombings once a suspicious package was found in his mailbox.
12	Halloween	508,385	All Hallows Eve is such a beloved holiday it always enters the list the week before it actually happens. And this year, with the Halloween movies also in theaters (#3).
13	Bullseye (comics)	502,562	Season 3 of Daredevil introduces another archnemesis the blind superhero has in the comics, a psychopath whose impressive throwing abilities enables him to turn any object into a murder weapon. In the Netflix series Bullseye is changed from a mercenary to corrupt FBI agent, and is played by Wilson Bethel.
14	Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV series)	492,250	Two decades after her first go on television, Sabrina Spellman got the Riverdale treatment (she originates from an Archie Comics title, after all) from Netflix, who took the darker version of her comic and turned into a series starring Kiernan Shipka (pictured) of Mad Men fame.
15	Tyrus Wong	496,226	A Google Doodle homaged the birthday of this Chinese-American artist (who died quite recently, a few days before 2017 begun) whose long and widely recognized career included work for Hallmark Cards, Works Progress Administration, Walt Disney Pictures and Warner Bros.
16	Virat Kohli	451,647	While baseball shows why it's not so much America's Pastime with a game that lasted for seven hours, cricket gives more and more reasons for Indians to love it as one of the sport's stars joined the List of players who have scored 10,000 or more runs in One Day International cricket (whatever that means)
17	Brendan Dassey	447,495	The conviction of Steven Avery (#10) had another victim of the law: his nephew Brendan Dassey, just 16 at the time, was coerced into delivering a confession that sent him to prison as a co-conspirator. The second season of Making a Murderer explores the aftermath of Dassey's conviction and the numerous appeals that have taken place.
18	Lady Gaga	445,595	Our #2 could never imagine that "Radio Ga Ga" would one day inspire quite an unique musician, whose acting turn in #8 has been acclaimed and might lead to an extension on this list.
19	Hervé Villechaize	420,828	My Dinner with Hervé, a HBO original movie where Peter Dinklage plays this dwarf actor (famous for fighting James Bond and shouting "The plane! The plane!"), premiered on October 20.
20	Halloween (1978 film)	417,864	Director John Carpenter (pictured) kickstarted the slasher film by telling the story of a serial killer (#22) who spends Halloween (#12) killing teenagers, being stopped by a final girl. And its 40th anniversary is celebrated with a new movie (#3) where both the killer and the girl have aged accordingly.
21	Edward Mordake	416,641	In the lead-in to Halloween (#12), people decided to uncover a scary urban legend about a 19th century man born with an extra face in the back of his head.
22	Michael Myers (Halloween)	414,395	AKA The Shape, the nigh-unstoppable killer (unlike Mike Myers, whose film career is mostly stopped) who wears a painted William Shatner mask is back to slaughter in our #3 - and even played by the same Nick Castle of the original (#20).
23	Venom (2018 film)	413,329	Venom is far from good, being only watchable because Tom Hardy gives a fun performance even if the writing is terrible and the whole thing is hollow and uninspired. And yet audiences are flocking to theatres as if it was still Eddie Brock's heyday back in the 90s, with box office that has just broken $500 million worldwide.
24	Megyn Kelly	395,778	In a moment you'd expect from Fox News, or at least a veteran of that channel, Megyn Kelly defended the appropriateness of blackface as part of Halloween costumes (relevant link). She apologized, but NBC News cancelled her show anyway.
25	Patrick Mahomes	394,101	Halfway through the regular season, the Kansas City Chiefs are 7-1 thanks to record-breaking performances by their quarterback.

Exclusions

This list excludes the Wikipedia main page, non-article pages (such as redlinks), and anomalous entries (such as DDoS attacks or likely automated views). Since mobile view data became available to the Report in October 2014, we exclude articles that have almost no mobile views (5–6% or less) or almost all mobile views (94–95% or more) because they are very likely to be automated views based on our experience and research of the issue. Please feel free to discuss any removal on the talk page if you wish.

Note: If you came here from the Signpost article, please take any discussion of exclusions to this article's talk page.