Excited Show Title!

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

"The exclamation point in the title scares me. Y'know, it's not just Freud, it's Freud!"

—Phoebe, Friends

Excited Show Title! It's a title ending with one or more exclamation points! Some comedy movies show they're comedies by having an excited title! Lots of musicals have excited titles! Often just the exclaimed first name of the lead character! So many, that it's become a Discredited Trope!

Slightly less grating when the title is an actual exclamation! Like "Help!"

Compare Excited Episode Title!, Title Scream! See also Lucky Charms Title and Questioning Title?

Examples of Excited Show Title! that aren't yet confirmed to be Excited Show Titles and to have Category:Excited Show Title! include:

Played Straight!

Cut out the middleman! Add Category:Excited Show Title! directly to the work page! Don't list it here!

Anime! and Manga!

Comic Books!

  • 1970s British comic book Cor!! has two exclamation marks. Sister publications at IPC/Fleetway included Whoopee! and Oink! (humour titles like Cor!!) as well as Smash!, Pow! and Wham! (action titles that eventually all merged together). There was also the very short-lived horror title Scream!
  • Comic book artist Scott Shaw! always has his name spelled like this. So does Tracy Yardley!, as a tribute.
    • And then there's Elliot S! Maggin.
  • French comic series Lou!
    • Whose Animated Adaptation is known as Lou! in English-speaking countries (why, yes, the spelling isn't identical[1]).
  • Teen Titans Go!!
  • 1990s British comic Toxic!, published by Apocalypse Ltd.
  • The Batman Strikes!

Film!

"He likes his whiskey hard... His women soft... And his west all to himself!"

Literature!

Live-Action TV!

  • ¡Rob!
  • Combat!
  • Democracy Now!—which is rather sedate due to the smooth jazz intro and Amy Goodman's soothing voice. The excitement is attributable to the political radicalism of the program's guests.
  • Help! I'm a Teenage Outlaw
  • Emergency
  • Fuun! Takeshi-Jo [2] when it's not an overseas release.
  • The Persuaders
  • WWE Smackdown until 2008.

Music!

  • The band Los Campesinos! takes this a step further by renaming the band members' last names Campesinos!, too. So you get Gareth Campesinos!, Aleksandra Campesinos!, and the like.
  • The Beatles:
    • The album, song and movie Help!
    • As well at the song "Oh! Darling" off Abbey Road.
    • John Lennon's "Instant Karma!"
  • The band Panic! at the Disco. They have since dropped the exclamation point, before putting it back.
  • Wham!
  • In 1981, Bow Wow Wow gave one of its albums the memorable title See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang, Yeah. City All Over! Go Ape Crazy.
  • Rave On!! by The Kentucky Headhunters.
  • System of a Down's "Chop Suey!" and Steal This Album!
  • Sufjan Stevens has five excited song titles from his album Illinois. One that comes to mind is "They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back from the Dead!! Ahhhh!"
    • When it was released on vinyl, a few tracks were retitled and made more excited. For example, "Chicago" became "Go, Chicago! Go! Yeah!" Of course, the cover of the album itself gives the title as Come On, Feel the Illinoise!
    • When his first album was rereleased, an exclamation mark was added to the title: A Sun Came!
  • The Aquabats! have a lot of excited titles. Notably every song on "Fury of the Aquabats!" and "Charge!!"
  • Grand Funk Railroad's album All the Girls in the World Beware!!!
  • Van Halen's song "Everybody Wants Some!!!"
  • Godspeed You! Black Emperor. And correspondingly, the documentary film from which they took the name.
  • ¡Forward, Russia! has a faux-Spanish, faux-Cyrillic version of this.
  • Cameo's "Word Up!" (later covered by Mel B and Korn)
  • Shania Twain loves these. Come On Over has four songs with exclamation marks in their titles, including her hit "Man! I Feel Like a Woman!" Up! has eight.
  • Hello! Project
  • El-Creepo! -- the name of Todd Edward Smith's solo project and its debut album.
  • Porno For Pyros combine this with a bit of Lucky Charms Title with the song "Good God's://Urge!". Oddly enough, the album it's technically the title track to is just called Good God's Urge.
  • Somewhat related is Jane's Addiction's "Stop!".
  • Half Man Half Biscuit opined in "Third Track Main Camera Four Minutes" that "If ever an album title was in dire need of an exclamation mark, it surely had to be Frampton Comes Alive!"
  • Jazz pianist Jon Jang has a fondness for this. He's released CDs titled Self Defense!, Tiananmen!, and Never Give Up!
  • Speaking of jazz, Ornette Coleman's Something Else!!! and Tomorrow Is the Question!
  • Another jazz performer who enjoyed these was the late pianist Andrew Hill. He released albums named Judgement!, Andrew!!! and Compulsion!!!!!
  • Calexico has "Attack, el Robot! Attack!"
  • Jaga Jazzist has "Music! Dance! Drama!"
  • A CosMo song is "Let's Play with Hatsune Miku!!"
  • Ligabue's album Arrivederci, Mostro!

New Media!

Puppet Shows!

Theatre!

The popularization of excited titles for musicals might be traced back to the late 1910s, when the influential series of "Princess" musicals by Guy Bolton and P. G. Wodehouse included Oh, Boy!, Oh, Lady! Lady!!, and Oh, My Dear!

  • Fiorello!
  • Honk!
  • Oh! Calcutta (not a musical)
  • Terrence McNally's Love! Valour! Compassion! (also not a musical)
  • Sherry!
  • In The Seventies, it was Grease. In The Nineties, it became Grease!
  • Aida!, the musical based on the Aida opera by Verdi.
  • Snoopy!!!

Video Games!

Web Comics!

Western Animation!

Real Life!

  • Groen! ("Green!"), the Belgian Green Party.
  • The Swedish feminist party, Feministiskt initiativ ("Feminist Initiative") is properly abbreviated Fi. However, since they chose to put the lowercase i upside-down in their logo, most people use F!
  • In the Swiss city of Basel, there is an environmentalist party called BastA!, whose name is an abbreviation for "Basel's Strong (i.e. cool/awesome) Alternative". "Basta" is also an Italian interjection, common in colloquial German, meaning "enough!". The exclamation mark adds emphasis.
  • There are at least two villages/towns in the world with an Excited Show Title!: Westward Ho! in Devon, Britain, and the doubly-excited Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha! in Quebec, Canada.

Parodies! and Shows-Within-a-Show!

Anime! and Manga!

  • Big Shot!, the show targeted at bounty hunters in Cowboy Bebop.

Film!

  • Songbird!, an extremely tacky musical adaptation of Tennessee Williams' Sweet Bird of Youth, which we see a number from at the beginning of Death Becomes Her.
  • Jeff Goldblum's character in The Tall Guy gets cast in a musical version of The Elephant Man, entitled Elephant!
  • Not just a show-within-a-show but an example within an example: Spectacular! Spectacular! in Moulin Rouge

Literature!

  • In Good Omens, it's mentioned that Brian and Pepper favour comics "with a lot of exclamation marks in the title, like WhiZZ!! or Clang!!"
  • In The Dresden Files there is a horror movie convention called Splattercon!!!

Live-Action TV!

  • On Friends, Joey is in a musical, and Phoebe comments on how she's scared that the title isn't just Freud, but Freud!
  • The IT Crowd had a episode where the main characters went to see a musical named Gay! (a gay musical about gays).
  • Referenced in Grumpy Old Men, where the complainer complains that musicals made after bands are taking over the stage, and that sooner or later we'll all be going to see Autobahn!
  • On Mad Men, the day after Don and Betty go to the theater, her friend Francine asks how they liked "Fiorello-exclamation-point."
  • Wormhole X-Treme!, the Show Within a Show in Stargate SG-1.

Video Games!

Web Comics!

Western Animation!

  1. ↑ That's because in French, one is to put a non-breaking space before exclamation marks, question marks, and colons
  2. ↑ Turbulence! Takeshi's Castle
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