A real question worth $500,000 on Who Wants to be a Millionaire?
Air date: November 18th, 1999the end of this clip is the perfect punchline
For added context: Pokemon, both the game and the anime, released in the US in September 1998, a little over a year before this clip. And it was firmly aimed at kids, not adults.
Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, starring Elijah Wood as Frodo, was in production at the time of this clip but would not be released for two more years, until December 2001.
So this guy is not quite as stupid as he appears to us here in the year of our lord 2023 - none of these things are household names and memes in his time the way they are today.
Regis has writers who should be able to at least look up which Baggins is in the Hobbit, though, so no excuses for him.