The Fantastic Trope of Wondrous Titles



There's a tendency in media to create very long titles full of rare (or fake) multisyllabic words that paint a picture of whimsy, fun, and adventure, especially when the work is set in the past. This is almost a Dead Unicorn Trope as most of the titles are homages to works that never existed at all. It's often associated with pseudo-Victorian throwbacks and Steampunk.

Not to be confused with (but may overlap with) Character Name and the Noun Phrase. A sub-trope of Long Title. See also The Adjectival Superhero.

Anime and Manga

 * JoJo's Bizarre Adventure

Comic Books

 * The Grievous Journey of Ichabod Azrael (and the Dead Left in his Wake).

Fan Works

 * Harry Potter:
 * How I Spent My Winter Holidays, Starring James Who Is Brill (And Not Fancying Evans)
 * The Adventures of Icarus, The Invisible Poltergeist
 * The Late Night Visit, Or, Why Jo Decided To Kill Off Someone Else Instead
 * Teen Titans: Evil Beast Boy's Fanciful Exploits in Perdition. According to the author, if it weren't for Fanfiction.net's title character limit, it would be called The Fanciful and Mildly Grotesque Exploits of Evil Beast Boy in Perdition. It should be noted that this is a companion piece to another story of his, and contains spoilers for it.
 * Pokémon:
 * The Surprising Adventures of a Glaceon in Unova

Film

 * The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
 * Another movie from those wacky late '50's - early '60's days was Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, Or How I Flew from London to Paris in 25 Hours 11 Minutes. Possibly the origin of the trope.
 * Of course the success of Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines (the eventual re-release title) led the director to revisit this trope with Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies.
 * It also lead to the comedic adaptation Jules Verne's Rocket to the Moon being retitled Those Fantastic Flying Fools by the American distributor.
 * Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amelie Poulain (The Fabulous Destiny of Amelie Poulain)
 * Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
 * The Wonderful Ears of Johnny McGoggin
 * Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium
 * The Magical Time Traveling Thugtastic Jug
 * The Completely Remarkable Utterly Fabulous Transformation of a Regular Joe
 * The Magnificent Magical Magnet of Santa Mesa
 * Wee Sing in The Marvelous Musical Mansion
 * The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living And Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!?
 * Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow
 * The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
 * The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man In The Moon Marigolds
 * Spinal Tap's 1969 "concept album," The Incredible Flight of Icarus P. Anybody

Literature

 * The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles
 * From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
 * The Incredible Adventures of Professor Branestawm
 * Another classic kids' book: Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.
 * The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents
 * Gulliver's Travels, officially known as Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships.
 * Andre Norton's Scarface: Being the story of one Justin Blade, late of the pirate isle of Tortuga, and how fate deal justly deal with him to his great profit—which harks back to the same era as Gulliver
 * The Transformation of Miss Mavis Ming (Return of the Fireclown)
 * The Adventures of Una Persson and Catherine Cornelius in the 20th Century
 * The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl
 * "The Deadly Mission of Phineas Snodgrass"
 * Parodied in Good Omens with the book within the book "The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter; Being a Certaine and Precise History from the Present Day Unto the Endinges of this World. Containing therein Many Diuerse Wonders and precepts for the Wife; More complete than ever yet before published; Concerning the Strange Times aheade and Events of a Wonderful Nature"
 * The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making

Live-Action TV

 * Stephen Colbert claimed that Felicity Huffman and William H. Macy starred in The Splendiferous Zeppelin Escapades of Filliam H. Muffman.
 * Mr. Show and the Incredible, Fantastical News Report
 * Subverted in a series of Saturday Night Live skits with Michael Palin about a supposed Charles Dickens novel, The Wretched Birth, Miserable Childhood, Agonisingly Painful Adolescence, and Appallingly Vile and Degrading Death of Miles Cowperthwaite.

Music

 * Music from the unrealized film script Dusk at Cubist Castle, debut LP of The Olivia Tremor Control. To a lesser extent, the band's name (and the loosely-structured "Elephant 6 Collective" of bands, of which they are a member) are also examples of the trope.

Video Games

 * There's an indie game called The Wonderful End of the World
 * Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-slick Precipice of Darkness
 * Yahtzee created an adventure game called Adventures in the Galaxy of Fantabulous Wonderment.

Web Comics

 * The Dresden Codak one-shot Traversing the Luminiferous Aether with Rupert and Hubert.
 * Some week-end specials in Narbonic: "The Astonishing Excursions of Helen Narbon & Co."
 * The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob
 * I Was Kidnapped by Lesbian Pirates from Outer Space
 * The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage
 * The Non-Adventures of Wonderella

Web Original

 * Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual: The Toaster With Two Brains
 * The Remarkable Journey of Higgins Von Higgings

Western Animation

 * On The Simpsons, Troy McClure starred in a film called The Contrabulous Fabtraption of Professor Horatio Hufnagel.
 * The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack
 * The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello
 * The Transcredible Exploits of Zapp Brannigan from Futurama.
 * The Amazing World of Gumball
 * Cheyenne Cinnamon and The Fabulous Unicorn of Sugar Town Candy Fudge on Adult Swim.