It seems since the past few years, the years themselves are in competition of being the most controversial. And 2022 was the year when the world properly opened up after coming to a sudden stop due to the pandemic. Call it the enthusiasm of getting back to normalcy or just the race of being the top headline, but 2022 had a lot of controversial moments like Will Smith and his slapgate.

And who better to ask what had our attention this year than everyone’s primary source of information, Google? Each year, Google releases its top searched terms from different categories such as celebrities, events, athletes, food, and culture. And given the incident that took place earlier this year, fans were sure that Will Smith would be the top search this year. However, someone else beat him on it.

Who beat Will Smith on the Most Googled People of 2022 list?

Will Smith may have slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars 2022, but the Men In Black actor was beaten by another celebrity on Google’s most searched list. In March 2022, Smith got on stage and smacked his once close friend and reputed Black comedian Chris Rock on-stage. This led to the host of the night bewilderedly stating, “Will Smith just smacked the s**t out of me.” But things did not end there as Smith proceeded to yell a phrase that became surprisingly more popular than his entire career: “Get my wife’s name out of your f***ing mouth.”

This happened at the Oscar stage, the same one that many actors put in years (decades in the case of Leonardo DiCaprio) of hard work to get up on and shed tears of gratitude when they get there.

But this is a tale that even toddlers can tell you from point to point. Following the incident, fans wanted to know how Chris Rock responded, if Will Smith would make a comeback, if he still has millions in his pocket, and so on and so forth.

This led to a lot of ‘Will Smith’ searches on Google. But Smith lost the race to another actor who made news not for being on the Oscar stage but in the courtroom. Months after the Oscar slap gate, Johnny Depp famously won the defamation trial against ex-wife Amber Heard.

And the world was reminded yet again to never judge a book by its cover and that Amber Heard’s dog stepped on a bee. Johnny Depp may have not taken an Oscar trophy home, but he has won a defamation trial and was also the most searched person of 2022.

Who else do you think is on the list? Let us know in the comments below.