The Good, The Bad & The Donald

Let’s be real – it’s been a rough year. Like, really rough. So much so that when director Matt Oswalt tweeted, ‘Is 2016 being directed by Quentin Tarantino?’, it went viral. Here are just some of the stories that made headlines this year.

- Liesl Robertson

Pokémon Go

The nineties kids’ TV show found a new incarnation this year: in July, a mobile phone game called Pokémon Go was released. Using the phone’s GPS, players could locate, capture, battle, and train virtual creatures, seen onscreen as if they were in the same real-world location as the player. Which basically led to people traipsing through parks and backyards in search of Charizards and Bulbasaurs. The app was downloaded more than 500 million times worldwide, making it one of the most used and profitable apps of the year. It also got couch potatoes moving – on average taking an extra 194 steps a day! (Does that make it a fitness app, do you think?)

Rainbow everything

Rainbow cakes have been around for a while, but this year the multi-coloured food trend reached fever pitch when a bakery in Brooklyn debuted the rainbow bagel, and gooey ‘unicorn cheese toasties’ went viral online. 2016 was officially the year when all we wanted to do was make our food look like a My Little Pony.

Leo finally won an Oscar

Sixth time’s the charm! Leonardo diCaprio finally landed the little gold statuette for his role in The Revenant, beating out Matt Damon, Bryan Cranston, Michael Fassbender, and Eddie Redmayne and finally putting an end to all the ‘sad Leo’ memes.

Brexit