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Comic Book Movies Don't Use Codenames: Difference between revisions
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However, because the producers don't want to ''completely'' alienate the comic fans which supported the character to begin with, they add a little [[Shout-Out]] [[Pandering to the Base|just to appease them]]. "Grass Man" was definitely in the movie, even if that wasn't officially his name. However, sometimes this trope gets taken [[Up to Eleven]] and the superhero name is never used ''at all''.
'''Note: Aversions must be notable. If we try to name every superhero film/media that averts this, [[People Sit in Chairs|we'll
be reading this all day]].'''
{{examples}}
== [[Comic Books]] ==
* When introduced, the [[Ultimate Marvel]] version of Emma Frost did not use the "White Queen" cognomen.
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== [[Film]] ==
* Several examples from the [[Marvel Cinematic Universe]]:
** In ''[[The Incredible Hulk (film)|The Incredible Hulk]]'', "The Abomination" aka Emil Blonsky goes by his given name and there is only an offhand referrence to that title once, by Samuel Sterns, who quickly points out to Blonsky that he didn't call him an abomination but rather, might turn into one if further experiments were used. Lampshaded in the Marvel short "The Consultant", in which the name "Abomination" is brought up but
*** Averted by The Hulk, who is called "Hulk" four times. The first time comes after the Culver University fight, where some college students refer to him as a "big hulk". Later, the military guys chasing the transformed Blonsky through New York mistakenly report that "the Hulk is in the street." Blonsky explicitly uses that name after the Hulk shows up for the final battle and the Hulk himself uses his [[Catch Phrase|patented "HULK SMASH!"]] at the end of the fight.
*** In ''[[The Avengers (2012 film)|The Avengers]]'', Bruce Banner notably takes pains not to call his alter-ego "the Hulk", preferring to call him "the other guy" instead. The one time he ''does'' say Hulk, he immediately corrects himself. But no one else has the same qualms.
**** The second ''Avengers'' movie indicates that the name Hulk is common, but that they don't use it around Banner out of respect for his issues, continuing to refer to him as "the other guy". When Tony needs to find out where his fellow Avenger is, he does a news search for "Hulk".
** ''[[Iron Man (film)|Iron Man]]'' himself doesn't get called that name until the end of the first film and it's only used once or twice in the various movies to follow. It's usually attached more to the suits than it is to Tony himself ("the Iron Man suit, an Iron Man suit").
*** In ''Iron Man 2'', [[Gratuitous Russian|Natasha Romanov's]] handle of "[[Black Widow (comics)|Black Widow]]" never comes up, and the words "War Machine" are only used as an offhanded insult from Tony to James Rhodes. "Black Widow" is used later on in ''[[The Avengers (2012 film)|The Avengers]]'', but only once.
**** War Machine eventually becomes an aversion, since Rhodes has apparently taken it as his callsign. He's referred to specifically as War Machine by the President... just before he's rechristened Iron Patriot. He apparently still prefers War Machine and goes back to the old color scheme (and presumably callsign) by the end of ''Avengers: Age of Ultron''.
*** As for the villains,
** Inverted in ''[[Thor (film)|Thor]]'', as the character once had a civilian identity in the comics, but the movies don't bother. So "Thor" is used all throughout the movie, while the name "Dr. Donald Blake" is the one that only gets [[Mythology Gag|a few token mentions]].
** In ''[[Captain America: The First Avenger]]'', the eponymous hero only has the name Captain America as a stage name but once he makes the transition to war hero, all of the characters call him Steve with a few exceptions (once by Bucky, once by Cap himself, and the other time by the Red Skull). Though, unlike in the original [[The Golden Age of Comic Books|Golden Age]] comics, Cap does officially have the rank of "Captain", and we've got various characters referring to him by that rank, usually either just "Captain" or "Captain Rogers" and it's hard to know if they're using his stage name or military rank.
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*** Johann Schmidt gets called "The Red Skull" (by ''Hitler'', no less) one time as an insult, much to his annoyance. For the rest of the movie, only his real name is used. (Though they do just call him "the Skull" a few times.)
*** Technically, this is also true of Montgomery Falsworth, aka "Union Jack", the British counterpart to Captain America. However, Falsworth is not a costumed hero in this movie so there would be no reason to say the name at all.
** In ''[[The Avengers (2012 film)|The Avengers]]'', Clint Barton is only called by his codename of "Hawkeye" once or twice. During his prior cameo in ''Thor'' it wasn't used at all.
** The same concept can be applied to the [[MacGuffin]] of ''Captain America'' and ''The Avengers''. In the movies, it's called the Tesseract. They never use its comic book name, the "Cosmic Cube".
** Played for laughs when Peter Parker first meets Stephen Strange; when the latter introduces himself as "Dr. Strange", Peter says, "Oh, we're using our made-up names. I'm Spider-man."
* During the live action film adaptation of ''[[Neo-Human Casshern|Casshern]]'', the titular hero only refers to himself as "Casshern" once, and it isn't even near the climax of the movie.
* The original ''[[Hulk]]'' movie also hardly used the term "hulk", the characters preferring to call him Bruce Banner. His father was never a supervillain so he never had a codename to begin with.
** His father was kind of a [[Composite Character]], with powers similar to the Absorbing Man's. He even turns briefly into an electrical humanoid like old Hulk's foe Zzzax. [[Justified Trope|Think about which of those names would have been]] ''[[Justified Trope|less]]'' Camp...
* The ''[[Fantastic Four (
** Which is funny, seeing how "Doctor Doom" would be a perfectly sensible thing to call a person with a doctor's degree, whose last name is "Doom".
*** Interestingly, in some of the dubs his line "Call me Doom" is changed to "Call me Doctor Doom". The Brazilian one, for example.
** It also addresses the inherent [[Fridge Logic]] with Ben Grimm's codename, calling him "The Thing" is seen as unnecessarily cruel.
* In the early 2000s ''[[Spider-Man (film)|Spider Man]]'' film series, the name [[Spider-Man]] was used regularly but his villains weren't so lucky:
** An entire scene was dedicated to naming Doctor Octopus, only for him to mostly go by his real name or the nickname "Doc Ock" for most of the movie.
** [[Venom (Comic Book)|Venom]] is known only by his real name, Eddie Brock, throughout all of ''Spider-Man 3''. Similarly, Flint Marko is generally known by his real name for most of the film until a reporter calls him "the Sandman" during the final battle.
** While [[Norman Osborn]] was called "Green Goblin" multiple times in the first movie, when it came time for his son Harry to adopt that persona, the name was never uttered. In fact, promotional material called him ''New Goblin'', a name that was never used in the comics. The closest Harry comes to being known as the Green Goblin is when Peter mockingly calls him "Goblin Jr.". Harry himself strips most of the goblin styling out of the hardware going for basic armor and a hoverboard in place of the spiky
* This trope is played with all over the place in the ''[[X-Men (film)|X-Men]]'' series:
** Cyclops' codename is mentioned but he mostly goes by Scott throughout all of the movies.
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** The name Nightcrawler is only mentioned when "Kurt" expounds about his time in the circus.
** Angel (Warren) and Beast (Hank) never use codenames in ''[[X-Men: The Last Stand]]''. Hank does eventually use the name towards the end of ''First Class'', however.
** Darwin from ''[[X-Men:
** It gets a bit tricky with Angel (the ''First Class'' member as opposed to the one mentioned above); in the comics, her code name is Tempest, and Angel is her real name, but in the movie she explicitly states that Angel is a stage name.
** Lady Deathstrike is never used. Her real name (Yuriko) is only mentioned in passing.
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** The members of the Brotherhood seem to go mostly by their codenames with the odd exception of Magneto who wants mutants to go by their "real names". He refers to himself as Magneto at the end of ''First Class'' and it is brought up in the first flick but he has no problem being called Erik by Mystique and Xavier, and as they're whom he he has the most meaningful dialogue with, we hear "Erik" ''much'' more than we hear "Magneto."
* Averted ''and'' played straight in ''[[The Dark Knight Saga]].'' Batman and Ra's al Ghul are commonly referred to as such. Oddly enough, in the comics, Ra's al Ghul is a real name but in the movie {{spoiler|it's a false identity}}. Nobody knows the Joker as anything else, but Scarecrow and Two-Face mostly go by their real names. Jonathan Crane briefly calls himself Scarecrow while under the effects of his own gas and in Two-Face's case, it's referring to an old nickname of Harvey Dent's.
** Ra's Al Ghul isn't a real name in the comics; it means "The Demon's Head", the Demon being the name of his international terrorist organization (the League of Assassins
* ''[[Kamen Rider the First]]'' and ''[[Kamen Rider the Next|The Next]]'', [[Darker and Edgier]] modernized retellings of [[Kamen Rider (TV series)|the original series]] and ''[[Kamen Rider V 3|V3]]'', never use the name "Kamen Rider"; Takeshi Hongo and Hayato Ichimonji are called Hopper 1 and 2 respectively, while Shiro Kazami is simply called V3 (which, in the movie's universe, stands for Version 3).
* ''[[Ghost Rider (film)|Ghost Rider]]: Spirit of Vengeance'' never refers to {{spoiler|Carrigan}}'s character as [[Walking Wasteland|Blackout]], which was his name in the comics.
* Utterly averted by ''[[Deadpool (film)|Deadpool]]'' and ''[[Deadpool 2]]'', starting with Deadpool himself and continuing on to the members of X-Force and the Juggernaut in the secon film -- but also played with in the first when Deadpool refuses to refer to <s>Ajax</s>Francis by the codename he prefers.
=== Scripts ===
* In the 1989 ''[[Watchmen (comics)|Watchmen]]'' [[Watchmen (Script)|script]] by Sam Hamm, all the superheroes in the [[Cold Opening]] are referred to with codenames except Adrian Veidt (A.K.A. Ozymandias). In the main action, when Nite Owl and the Silk Spectre come back into superhero action, they are still respectively named Dreiberg and Laurie in descriptive actions and dialogue headers. The name Ozymandias goes unused.
== Literature ==
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** Jack has the codename of "Jackrabbit" because of his jumping ability, but has no real way to conceal his identity. So the nickname proves to be useless and everyone calls him Jack anyway.
** Inverted with the Chinese spies, whose real names were not revealed [[All There in the Manual|until they were published to the wiki in 2011]]. Black Rat, Tin Dragon, Teal Hog, and Stung Hornet are known almost exclusively by their codenames, even to each other. Possibly justified in that they're spies.
== [[Live-Action TV]] ==
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== Notable Aversions ==
=== Comic Books ===
* Played with in the ''[[Hellboy (film)|Hellboy]]'' movies. Hellboy's real demonic name is not known to him until towards the end of the first movie. He grew up with the name Hellboy and since his other name is tied with the destruction of all mankind and wasn't known until he was about 70, he kept it.▼
* ''[[Ultimate X-Men]]'' goes to some trouble to justify ''why'' these kids should have codenames, beyond "because it's a basic trope of the genre". Apparently, these are their "mutant names", as distinct from the "homo sapiens names" their parents gave them.▼
=== Film ===
▲* Played with in the ''[[Hellboy (2004 film)|Hellboy]]'' movies. Hellboy's real demonic name is not known to him until towards the end of the first movie. He grew up with the name Hellboy and since his other name is tied with the destruction of all mankind and wasn't known until he was about 70, he kept it.
** While on cases, the BPRD paranormal agents usually use names such as "Sparky" and "Blue". His is "Red".
** It should also be noted that in Hellboy, demons have the whole "[[I Know Your True Name|bound/released by their names]]" deal going on; going around calling himself Anung Un-Rama would be the equivalent of legally changing your name to your social security number.
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** This trope is justified for the Penguin in ''[[Batman Returns]]'', as even he doesn't know his human name and is an urban legend to the public. When he reveals himself and discovers his true name (Oswald Cobblepot) he begins to use it and is known by both depending on who you talk to, only to angrily go back to Penguin after his [[Villainous Breakdown]] when Batman foils his scheme.
*** Actually, Batman believes he already knew who his parents were and just wanted to make a scene out of "discovering" their identity, in order to be granted private access to Gotham's public records. His ''real'' goal was to get a record of all the first born children of Gotham so he could murder them, but this goal was sidetracked when Shreck offers him the chance to be Mayor.
▲* ''[[Ultimate X-Men]]'' goes to some trouble to justify ''why'' these kids should have codenames, beyond "because it's a basic trope of the genre". Apparently, these are their "mutant names", as distinct from the "homo sapiens names" their parents gave them.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]▼
[[Category:Media Adaptation Tropes]]
[[Category:Superhero Tropes]]
▲[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
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