Wikipedia:Top 25 Report/October 3 to 9, 2021

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 3 to 9, 2021)

Prepared with commentary by Benmite, Mcrsftdog, igordebraga, SSSB

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The Report is usually dominated by whichever celebrities happen to kick the bucket in any given week, but this week, any resemblance to real death is purely coincidental — for the most part. At the top, the Korean sensation that proves the battle royale formula will never die, and right below it, the world's most famous secret agent (kind of an oxymoron, don't you think?) just has no time to die. Elsewhere, we've got some victims and survivors of the aforementioned Korean game (#6, #12, #25), the final nail in the coffin for the reputation of a company (#22) that was barely kicking to begin with, and the death of any hope that rich people were still paying their taxes (#11, #18).

Shockingly enough, only one real death-related article appeared on this week's list, other than the list that shows up every week (#8), as a group of sleuths believe they found the identity of the infamous Zodiac Killer (#3). There's only one problem: he's dead.

Rank	Article	Views	Notes/about
1	Squid Game	5,400,927	Most shows wouldn't attract quite this much attention in the second week after their release—let alone in the third week—even those released on Netflix and especially those not made by and for Western audiences. But just when we thought the K-wave couldn't grow any larger, it turned into a tsunami and engulfed us all with this fascinating, critically acclaimed Korean survival drama about a game show where people down and out and down on their luck play children's games for an enormous cash prize. That's as dark as it gets for the whole show, trust us. If you don't believe us, just watch and see for yourself! Though, based on this week's explosive view count (the largest weekly view count for any television show since the Report started) and the fact that Squid Game is set to become Netflix's biggest show of all time, you probably already have.
2	No Time to Die	1,564,145	Craig. Daniel Craig. His final mission as Bond was finally released in the United States this week after being released in just about every major film market in weeks prior. There may be no time for Craig's Bond to die, but there's certainly 163 minutes worth of screen time to kill him off with a bang.
3	Zodiac Killer	1,088,838	The Case Breakers, an independent team of 40 cold case investigators, claimed they identified this still mysterious murderer who terrorized the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1960s. The police disagrees with their discovery, deeming it too reliant on circumstantial evidence.
4	The Guilty (2021 film)	956,860	After a limited release last month, this American remake of a gritty 2018 Danish crime thriller, about a 911 dispatcher who gets a call from a kidnapped woman, was released on Netflix last week. It stars Jake Gyllenhaal and doesn't seem to be wowing audiences or critics, many of whom feel as though the original was good enough on its own.
5	HoYeon Jung	950,107	When any series reaches the critical mass that Squid Game has, there are two people who are guaranteed to become breakout stars: the show's protagonist (#12) and, if there is one, the (conventionally attractive) female side character. Enter HoYeon Jung, who, after establishing a name for herself in the modeling world as a runner-up on the 4th season of Korea's Next Top Model, made her acting debut in #1. In it, she plays Kang Sae-byeok, who flees North Korea and needs money to pay a broker to find the rest of her family members who didn't make it across the border. As expected, she's essentially become the face of Squid Game, and became the most-followed Korean actor on Instagram this week by a huge margin.
6	List of James Bond films	928,512	A series that survived so many things that could've made it irrelevant - the Counterculture of the 1960s, the end of the Cold War, the War on Terror, PATRIOT Act, the current political correctness - that hopefully by its 60th anniversary next year will have already set on who will be the 007th Bond.
7	Venom: Let There Be Carnage	863,091	Marvel's most toxic hero received a slimy sequel that premiered in American theatres last week, and earned $100 million in just 5 days, tying it with Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings as the fastest film to reach that milestone during the pandemic. Given that again there is Tom Hardy going insane as Eddie Brock and his symbiote partner, only this time joined by the equally unhinged villains Woody Harrelson as Carnage and Naomie Harris (the Moneypenny of #2, only in a Tia Dalma getup) as Shriek, critics and audiences favored this one over the original, although overall reception is still mixed.
8	Deaths in 2021	856,211	For this is the end I've drowned and dreamt this moment So overdue, I owe them Swept away, I'm stolen...
9	Daniel Craig	778,724	Craig's run as James Blond finally comes to a close with the release of No Time to Die (#2), which, because the pandemic caused the film's release to be delayed for over a year, officially makes him the longest-running Bond actor. He managed to imbue new life into a character that's been around for over a half-century, which is no easy feat, and he'll surely be missed as 007.
10	Midnight Mass (miniseries)	697,813	Yet another Netflix series that's bringing in droves, even if its page on here is looking a bit bare. Just in time for spooky season, it's a creepy, existential tale about a man who suffers from a drunk driving accident who returns to his small island community, and a charismatic priest who arrives in said community and begins making miracles happen. Bless up! It's gotten rave reviews from critics and continues to be a hit after being released two weeks ago, but, as illustrated by some of the other entries on here, it's not touching some of Netflix's more popular exports this week.
11	List of people named in the Pandora Papers	612,141	#18 revealed that an alarming number of public figures, politicians, and billionaires were putting their money away in offshore accounts, and while some were doing it legally, many were doing it for illegal purposes such as fraud and tax evasion. The most shocking entry on the list is undoubtedly Shakira, who assured us in 2006 that her hips would never deceive us. Et tu, boo-tay?
12	Lee Jung-jae	606,271	The star of #1 (who, like #6, was a model prior to taking up acting), plays Seong Gi-hun, a man down on his luck who hopes that the earnings from the deadly competition can pay off his debts, guarantee a good life for his daughter and pay a surgery for his mother.
13	The Many Saints of Newark	596,584	Been a while since we've seen anything related to the best show of all time, which takes place in the best state of all time (hey, I don't make the rules, I just enforce 'em), make its way into the public consciousness, let alone onto this list. But last week, this Sopranos prequel, starring Alessandro Nivola and Michael Gandolfini as they navigate a violent gang war, was released in theaters and on HBO Max in the US, driving more viewership to the original series than ever before.
14	Maid (miniseries)	576,967	A third Netflix show, and another that appears to not be an easy watch: if #1 is tense and #10 is scary, this one is depressing, following a young mother who leaves her emotionally abusive boyfriend with their daughter while she gets a job working as a maid.
15	What If...? (TV series)	557,077	Marvel's animated alternate history ended its first season by assembling characters from all previous eight episodes... plus a ninth that ended up postponed for a second season, and for a change wouldn't have Iron Man dying. In any case, Disney+ only returns to the Marvel Cinematic Universe next month with Hawkeye.
16	Tyson Fury	491,274	Combine a first name inspired by Mike Tyson and that surname, and this guy just had to be a boxer. He defeated Deontay Wilder again, and maybe now can go for either compatriot Anthony Joshua (a fight that was planned before Wilder asked for a rematch) or the guy who defeated Joshua.
17	Ted Lasso	462,698	Apple TV+ released a second season for the big comedy winner of this year's Emmys, featuring Jason Sudeikis as a gridiron-turned-football coach.
18	Pandora Papers	458,400	Pandora's Box was opened long before the (mostly illegal) offshore dealings of billionaires, world leaders, and other public figures took place. This week, though, we got to peer into some of the evil that it let out thanks to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists releasing 11,900,000 documents worth of material exposing these mostly secret offshore accounts. This is only 5 years after the Panama Papers, 11,500,000 documents that revealed basically the same thing and also started with a Pan-, were released because of one John Doe.
19	Samantha Ruth Prabhu	442,911	India was already speculating on the state of this actress's marriage once she decided to revert to her maiden name in July. Since then, Samantha confirmed that she's divorcing Naga Chaitanya, and once all sorts of rumours started flying because of the split, she had to address those as well.
20	Mark Zuckerberg	439,291	Over the course of this week, the CEO of #22 dropped from 6th to 7th on the Forbes list of billionaires. Oh yeah, and his company's not in great shape. See #22 for more on that.
21	Margaret Qualley	419,871	#14 stars Andie MacDowell's daughter who followed her into the acting business, with a filmography including works such as The Leftovers, The Nice Guys, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
22	Facebook	409,343	Last month, The Wall Street Journal started releasing the Facebook Files, a series of internal studies which allege that Facebook has been acutely aware of how its site has been used (including to tear down teenage girls' self-esteem, spread vaccine misinformation, traffic women into abusive situations, and facilitate communication between organ sellers and members of drug cartels, among other things) for quite some time, and has done next to nothing to fix it. The former employee that released the Files, Frances Haugen, revealed her identity by going on 60 Minutes on October 3. The next day, all Facebook services (which include Instagram and WhatsApp; the chaos led to this amusing thread) experienced a worldwide outage lasting 6 hours. The next day, Haugen testified in front of a Senate committee. So, not a great week for Facebook.
23	Tom Brady	401,480	Sunday was Tom Brady's return to Gillette Stadium, where the Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback faced the New England Patriots he led to five Super Bowl titles.
24	Kyrsten Sinema	398,186	An Arizonian immigrant went after this Senator in the university where she teaches - more specifically, in the bathroom. Add her position not fully going with her party's plans and think pieces have emerged.
25	Anupam Tripathi	391,830	Closing off with a cast member from the show that started this list comes its only non-Korean cast member and an obvious fan favorite, if the pageviews are any indication. Tripathi plays Ali Abdul, AKA number 199, a Pakistani immigrant to South Korea who joins the game after getting stiffed by his boss, whose hand he ends up accidentally mangling in some factory equipment. Despite this, his character is a pure and innocent soul, which ends up being his downfall.

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.