Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

Most prominently noted in ''[[Friends]]'', many shows utilize quirky episode naming conventions. Though the episode title is usually not even broadcast with the show (usually only [[Animated Series]] do this), this information is gleaned from press releases, closed captioning, and the guide information. Of course, in literature it [[In Which a Trope Is Described|can be more obvious]].

[[Pilot]]s are exempt from this, as pilots do not usually have titles, and are usually made before anyone on the production staff comes up with the idea to name episodes idiosyncratically. (Although ''[[Futurama]]'' did call its pilot "Space Pilot 3000", just to be different, and as a nod to [[Mystery Science Theater 3000|MST3K]] since Groening is a fan).

 

 

Compare [[Character Name and the Noun Phrase]] if they're used in a series, [[Unusual Chapter Numbers]], [[Theme Naming]] and [[Title Drop]]. One sub-trope is [[Episode Finishes the Title]].

 

* Many anime series use other words in place of "episode" when ordering episodes (however, some are specific to the original manga versions).

** ''[[07-Ghost]]'' uses "Kapitel," which is German for "chapter".

** ''[[Guilty Crown]]'' uses "Phases".

** ''[[Gundam Seed]]'' and ''[[Gundam Seed Destiny]]'' use "Phase."

** ''[[Hellsing]]'' uses "Order" (alludes to the structure of the organization).

** ''[[Hikaru no Go]]'' (about the game Go) uses "Game."

** ''[[Yumeiro Patissiere]]'' uses "Recette," French for "recipe."

** ''[[Zatch Bell]]'' uses "Level."

* Another very popular trick is using music-related terminology or music piece/song titles in episode naming:

** ''[[Black Heaven]]'' uses the names of famous rock and roll songs as episode titles.

*** Though not an unbreakable rule, ''[[Digimon Adventure]]'' tended to have titles of the form [Sentence!] [Name or reference]. "Lightning! Kabuterimon," "Roar! Ikkakumon," "Clash! The Freezing Digimon." The titles were also mercifully short, whether following the naming trend or not.

** Almost all of the ''[[Digimon Frontier]]'' dub episode titles were clever manipulations of a popular catchphrase, idiom, or song title. Examples include: "Can't Keep a Gumblemon Down" (Can't keep a good man down); "Fear and Loathing in Los Arboles" (after the novel and movie Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas); and "Glean Eggs and Scram" (Green Eggs and Ham). Note the pilot episode is called "All Aboard" and the finale is "End of the Line".

* Each episode of ''[[Nerima Daikon Brothers]]'' starts with "Ore wa" or "My"...and, judging by the dub's translations of the episodes, they're often made to sound like vague innuendo.

* Every episode of the anime version of [[Girls Bravo]] started or ended the title with "Bravo" and included a descriptor ("Bravo From the Bathroom!", "Bravo at School!", and "Cooking is Bravo!", to name the first three episodes). Given some of the titles, it begs the question: just what does Bravo mean...?

** [[This and That|You mean it isn't obvious?]]

* ''[[Dirty Pair]] Flash'' has a different naming pattern for each of its three parts:

** The first part's episode titles are follow this pattern: <English adjective> Angel. (The last episode is titled "[[Lovely Angels]]".)

** Some of the books in the series also have idiosyncratic chapter naming: ''The Rolling Bootlegs'' name chapters by the time ("The First Day", "That Night", "The Second Day"), ''Children of the Bottle'' name chapters after alternating positive and negative emotions (Happiness, Angst, Delight, Anger), and ''Alice in Jails'' has chapters that always start with "Let's ___" ("Let's Go to Prison!", "Let's Eat Our Last Supper", "Let's Just Admit That This Is All Your Fault").

* Since ''[[Michiko to Hatchin]]'' is set in Brazil (or a version of it), the episodes have Portuguese names.

* Each chapter of the manga ''[[Yotsubato|Yotsuba&]]!'' is of the form "Yotsuba to ''X''" ("Yotsuba & ''X''"), where ''X'' is the topic of the chapter. For example, the first chapter, where Yotsuba and her dad move into their new home, is "Yotsuba & Moving."

** The sole exception is Chapter 14, which sees Yotsuba's neighbour Asagi get the title: "Asagi's Gifts". Appropriately enough, it focuses on Asagi and her family.

* ''[[Chi's Sweet Home]]'' begins every episode title with the titualar character's name and a comma, resulting in ungrammatical titles such as "Chi, Frolics About," and "Chi, Goes Outside." The passive voice is often used to shoehorn titles into the naming convention, as in, "Chi, Is Invited In." The English translation of the manga changes it to "a cat [does something]".

* ''[[Black Butler]]'' episode titles are all "His Butler, _______"

* Although it's not apparent from the English translation, all episodes titles of ''[[Kemonozume]]'' contain references to taste and various flavors. (The first episode is titled "The First Taste" and the last one is "The Flavor Doesn't Matter.")

* ''[[I My Me! Strawberry Eggs]]'' does this on two levels: Each episode title has something to do with makeup ([[Wholesome Crossdresser|appropriately enough]]), and each DVD volume is called a "Quarter".

* Every chapter in ''[[Ame Nochi Hare]]'' is suffixed with hPa, which stands for hectopascal, and is used by meteorologists as a unit of measurement for air pressure. This is relevant to the [[Gender Bender|plight]] of the five protagonists who will [[Involuntary Shapeshifting|transform into girls]] whenever it [[Hostile Weather|rains]].

* ''[[A Channel]]'' has a regular title in Japanese, and a [[Either or Title|second title]] in English that always starts with an "A".

* ''[[Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai]]'' uses the characters for the show's own canonical portmanteau name -- "Haganai" (はがない), itself derived from "Boku '''wa''' Tomodachi '''ga''' Suku'''nai''' ("wa" and "ha" are interchangeable in Japanese) -- on its episode titles, followed by a ShiftJIS [[Emoticon]] frequently seen on Japanese [[Message Board]]s.

* ''[[Rosario + Vampire]]'' uses the hella predictable + sign in the name to make it's episodes. X + Vampire.

* The anime adaptation of ''[[Daily Lives of High School Boys]]'' have all skits' names start with "High School Boys and..."

* ''[[Ben-To]]'' uses the name of a bento box featured in its respective episode, followed by its calorie count. For example, Episode 1 is called "Sticky Natto Okra Rice with Cheese Topping Bento, 440kcal"

* ''[[The World God Only Knows]]'' has every title be some sort of reference, with the topic changing every few chapters. For example, part of the Ayumi re-capture arc used the names of Westerns.

* ''[[To Love Ru Darkness]]'' has every title fit into "Topic in English~A Flowery Description About Said Topic in Japanese~", except for the first four chapters (which repeat the same thing in English and Japanese) and the prologue (which is called "Prologue[[Prologue and Activation]]"). An example is "Past[[Memories Leading to Tomorrow]]".

* Each chapter of ''[[My Lovely Ghost Kana]]'' uses the word "Life" rather than "Chapter." It also has a title with no particular pattern. ''[[Omamori Himari]]'' uses "Menagerie" the same way, and ''[[Tasogare Otome x Amnesia]]'' similarly declares each of its chapters to be "The _th Mystery."

 

* Marvel series by [[Jeph Loeb]] & Tim Sale all have the protagonist's name followed by a color represented in the story. Examples are Spider-Man: Blue (after the character's emotions), Daredevil: Yellow and Hulk: Gray (after the protagonists' early colours).

** The Yellow also refers to cowardice, as Daredevil is The Man Without Fear; Gray refers to the Hulk's status as a wildcard straddling the line between good and evil.

* Four of the ''[[Cerebus the Aardvark]]'' graphic novel collections have titles that could be seen as forming a sentence: ''Women'', ''Reads'', ''Minds'', ''Guys''. (Cerebus's belief in female telepathy is discussed at some point during the story.)

 

* ''[[Hunting the Unicorn]]'' names its chapters after characters in ''[[The Last Unicorn (novel)|The Last Unicorn]]''. The three exceptions so far are "The Midnight Carnival," "The Quest," and "The Clock." The last two are ''very'' important, plot-wise.

* In ''[[Winter War]]'', the chapter titles are of the format "[POV character]: [Title]", or "Ensemble: [Title]" if there are several POV characters- e.g., "Nanao: Winter", "Ensemble: "The Day Before". The few exceptions are things like "Karakura: Waiting" (actually the first ensemble chapter) and a very few chapters that list multiple narrators in the heading, like "Momo, Isane: We Have Met The Enemy".

* ''[[Drunkard's Walk]]'': Each story has a different convention for chapter naming:

** ''DW13'' uses [[Titled After the Song|lines from songs]].

** The [[Sequel Series]] [[Fanfic]] ''Legend of Galactic Girls'' uses misquoted titles from various anime series.

 

* ''[[Star Wars]]'' has had each film, on top of a title for each, also designated by Episode, with the 1977-1983 trilogy Episodes IV-VI and their prequels from 1999-2005 I to III and their sequels from 2015-2019 VII-IX.

* ''[[Kill Bill]]'' has Volumes 1 and 2.

** A similar thing happened with the Spanish dubs for Spain: ''[[Airplane!]]'' became "Aterriza Como Puedas" ("Land The Way You Can"); afterwards, ''[[The Naked Gun]]'' became "Agárralo Como Puedas" ("Catch [him] The Way You Can"), ''Jane Austen's Mafia!'' became "Mafia, Estafa Como Puedas" ("Mafia, Con [someone] The Way You Can"), et cetera.

 

* All of the titles in [[The Belgariad]] are a reference to chess: Pawn of Prophecy, Queen of Sorcery and Castle of Wizardry all refer to chess pieces, while Magician's Gambit and Enchanter's End Game are strategic terms.

** Eddings is on record as saying these weren't his idea and he didn't like them: they were his editor's titles. He wanted to publish a trilogy, but the books would have exceeded the publisher's size limit.

** The first book kind of fits the "main character's rank/title" pattern. "Calderon" is what Kitai calls Tavi throughout the book.

* The French translation of the first ''[[Discworld]]'' novel, ''The Colour of Magic'', was called ''La Huitième Couleur'', ("The Eighth Colour"). This was followed by ''The Light Fantastic'' becoming ''Le Huitième Sortilège'' ("The Eighth Spell") and ''Equal Rites'' becoming ''La Huitième Fille'' ("The Eighth Daughter"; not strictly accurate, as Esk's elder siblings are all brothers). Then they gave up, and just called ''Mort'' ''Mortimer''.

* Lindsey Davis's [[Marcus Didius Falco]] books started out this way, with ''The Silver Pigs'' being followed by ''Shadows in Bronze'', ''Venus in Copper'', ''The Iron Hand of Mars'' and ''Poseidon's Gold.'' At which point, she ran out of metals that were known to the Romans and sounded promising in a title. Titles from then on follow no particular pattern, though several play with a well-known phrase (''Three Hands in the Fountain'', for example.)

* Nearly all the ''[[Stephanie Plum]]'' novels by Janet Evanovich include a number in the title, and the numbers are sequential. The only four exceptions to the "title includes the number of the book in a chronological listing of the series" pattern so far are four holiday-theme entries, all of which include the word Plum in the title.

* ''[[Fafhrd and The Gray Mouser]]'' book names contain "Swords", some "Swords Against X".

 

* ''[[Supernatural (TV series)|Supernatural]]'' often names its episodes after classic songs—for example, an episode where a town's local children are being possessed is called 'The Kids Are Alright', and the episode where {{spoiler|John Winchester dies}} is called 'In My Time Of Dying'. Many such songs are also played in various episodes.

* Most likely because the fans will probably refer to the episodes this way anyway, most episodes of ''[[Friends]]'' follow the pattern "[[The One With...]] ____" or "The One Where ____". The only exception is the finale ("The Last One"), and to some extent, "The One That Could Have Been" (the what-if ep) and "[[Milestone Celebration|The One Hundredth"]].

* ''[[Power Rangers]]'' occasionally uses a set formula for a season's episodes.

** ''[[Power Rangers Zeo]]'' used mangled song, movie, or book titles, such as ''[[wikipedia:Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?|Brother, Can You Spare an Arrowhead]]'', ''[[Pulp Fiction|Bulk Fiction]]'', ''[[wikipedia:The Spy Who Came In From the Cold|The Ranger Who Came In From the Gold]]'', and ''[[wikipedia:A Brief History of Time|A Brief Mystery of Time]]''.

* Almost every episode of ''[[Dragnet]]'' used a title of the form "The Big ______".

* Every episode of ''[[Love, American Style]]'' used a title of the form "Love and the ______" or "Love in the _____".

* The pilot episode for ''[[Caroline in The City]]'' used the same title as the series itself, but every subsequent episode title used some variant of "Caroline and the _____".

* Every episode of the short-lived sitcom ''Alright Already'' had a title of "[[Oh God With the Troping|Again with the _____]]".

* Each episode title in ''[[Harper's Island]]'' is onomatopoeia associated with a death that occurs in that episode. They are also all one word, except for one episode, which is three ("Thrack, Splat, Sizzle").

* Every episode of ''The [[George Carlin]] Show'' was a sentence in the form of George (Predicate): "George Goes Too Far", "George Helps a Friend", etc.

* In arguably the most bizarre naming convention on this page, all the post-pilot episodes of ''[[Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23|Don't Trust The B—— In Apartment 23]]'' have titles which end in an ellipsis...

 

* The score for ''[[Batman Begins]]'' is titled idiosyncratically: the first track, ''Vespertilio'', is the Latin word for bat, and the other titles are all scientific names for different genera of bat. This is not the case for ''The Dark Knight'''s music; however, many of the track titles are either taken from lines of dialogue in the film, or a slight variation on them: I'm Not A Hero, Blood On My Hands, And I Thought My Jokes Were Bad, Like A Dog Chasing Cars; etc. However, it's noteworthy that the lines of dialogue spoken do not correspond to the scenes in which the music plays. For example, "Like A Dog Chasing Cars", an energetic treatment of one of the main themes, is not played over the scene where the line is spoken, which is a quiet conversation with the Joker. In fact, it's not even played over any of the scenes involving high-speed vehicular chases, which mostly go without score.

* The band New Order frequently have song titles that do not appear in the lyrics and have nothing to do with the song such as True Faith, Blue Monday or Bizarre love triangle

* All of the tracks on Miles Davis' album "Aura" (except for the first track, Intro) are named after colors: White, Yellow, Orange, Red, Green, Blue, Electric Red, Indigo, and Violet.

 

* BBC radio comedy ''[[The Burkiss Way]]'', being originally conceived with the conceit of being the radio version of correspondence course "The Burkiss Way to Dynamic Living", used the form "Lesson X: ______ The Burkiss Way": "Lesson 1: Peel Bananas The Burkiss Way", "Lesson 4: Solve Murders The Burkiss Way", "Lesson 12: Make Short Comedy Programmes The Burkiss Way", etc. As the show drifted away from the original format to a more surreal form, they began playing with the format: "Lesson 19: Replace The Burkiss Way", "Lesson 21: Get Cut Off The Bur-", "Lesson 23: Son Of The Burkiss Way", etc. This was lampshaded with "Lesson 28: Ignore These Programme Titles The Burkiss Way". The penultimate episode of series 4 is called "Lesson 33: The Last Burkiss Way"; the actual final episode is then called "Lesson 34: The Next To Last Burkiss Way". There are two Lesson 39s, both called "Repeat Yourself The Burkiss Way"; the second starts the same as the first, before stopping with an apology for putting the wrong tape on. Lesson 45 is usually referred to as "Write Extremely Long Titles The Burkiss Way"; The full title as given in the Radio Times is "Lesson 45: Write Extremely Long Titles With Lots And Lots Of Words In, Like This, So That The Radio Times Will Have To Allot More Space Than The Measly Half A Centimetre Of Billing Space We Usually Get And At Least It'll Look A Bit More Prominent On The Page, Although Still Nowhere Near The 50 Column Inches They Give To [[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy|The Hitch-hiker's Guide To The Galaxy]] The Burkiss Way".

* ''[[Adventures in Odyssey]]'' has used a few. The 1993 season used verses from the Lord's Prayer as titles for individual episodes: "Our Father","Hallowed Be Thy Name", "Thy Kingdom Come","Thy Will Be Done", "Our Daily Bread", "Forgive Us as We Forgive", "Into Temptation", "Deliver Us from Evil", "For Thine Is the Kingdom", "The Power", "And the Glory", "Forever...Amen". These episodes were later released in a compilation titled "On Earth as it is in Heaven."

* ''[[The Roman Mysteries]]'' has all its novels using a [[The X of Y]] format, with the X always being a group of people and the Y always being a place in the Roman Empire.

* As in the TV show that succeeded it, the ''Dragnet'' radio show episodes were all of the format "The Big ____"

 

== Software ==

* Major releases of Google's mobile operating system Android are named after desserts, e.g. "Cupcake", "Donut", "Eclair", "Frozen Yogurt" ("Froyo")"Gingerbread", and now "Ice Cream Sandwich" First letters of current and upcoming releases' names' also follow the alphabet.

** The next version is all but confirmed to be called "Jelly Bean".

 

== [[Tabletop Games]] ==

* The code names of ''[[Magic: The Gathering|Magic the Gathering]]'' expansions always have some kind of theme to them, ranging from Mexican words to food; recent examples have included "Rock/Paper/Scissors" (for ''Shards of Alara''/''Conflux''/''Alara Reborn'') and "Live/Long/Prosper" (for ''Zendikar''/''Worldwake''/''Rise of the Eldrazi'').

* Many genre supplements for the original ''[[Big Eyes, Small Mouth]]'' RPG used the "(adjective) (noun), (adjective) (noun)": ''Big Robots, Cool Starships'' (mecha and science fiction), ''Cold Hands, Dark Hearts'' (gothic and horror), ''Big Ears, Small Mouse'' (talking animal cartoons), "Hot Rods & Gun Bunnies'' (modern action; bends the convention a bit).

** And then [[Random Name Generator|it was automated]]. Behold the ''[http://chaoticshiny.com/whitewolfgen.php Whitewolf Game Generator]'' from Chaotic Shiny:<ref>amount of accidental irony in different batches may vary</ref>

{{quote|Reaver the Decadence

Cultist the Hasty

Guard the Impious

 

== Theatre ==

* ''[[Pokémon]]'' games have either a color or precious stone or metal theme in each generation. The Gen I games were originally [[Pokémon Red and Blue|Red And Green]], which are complimentary/opposite colors. However, it was changed to Blue for international release. ''[[Pokémon Yellow]]'', the third game, means that the four games were named for each of the four primary colors: red,green,blue and yellow. The Red/Green pairing was returned for the remakes, Fire Red and Leaf Green. The later ones were all precious metals or stones...[[Pokémon Gold and Silver]] plus Crystal, (rereleased as Heart Gold and Soul Silver),[[Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire]] plus Emerald, and [[Pokémon Diamond and Pearl]] plus Platinum. [[Pokémon Black and White]] broke with that trend and went back to the color opposites. Black 2/White 2 breaks the 'third game' tradition and sticks with the same two colors as the previous installments.

** Many of the games also represented the colors of the starter elements in gen 1 and in many games the Pokemon themselves. Blue/Green, Red and Yellow had green for grass and Bulbasaur, red for fire and Charizard, blue for water and Squirtle, plus yellow for Pikachu's color and for electricity/lightning. Gold for the golden Ho-oh and silver for the mostly silver Lugia. Ruby and Sapphire have the ruby red Groudon, the sapphire blue Kyogre and the emerald green Rayquaza. Black and White have the black Zekrom and white Reshiram. Diamond and Pearl are the exceptions. Palkia is kind of pearl-colored, but Dialga is bluish green rather than diamond colored. Giratina, the Platinum mascot, does have a grayish white lower body like the metal, but has other colors as well.

 

== [[Web Animation]] ==

* [[Awesome Series]] has all the titles named after the work being parodied, but with one word replaced with "Awesome".

** Or mashed into the title when it's only one word, such as [[Tetris|TetrAwesome]] and [[Cloverfield|Awesomefield]].

 

== [[Web Comics]] ==

* In ''Triquetra Cats'' each Chapter is refered to a Period

* ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'' sometimes has part names themed within each book, often punny or setting up a punchline. E.g. Book 11: [[Literal Metaphor|Massively Parallel]] - "High Olympus Command", "Barsoom Circus Command", "Credomar Command", "Mallcop Command" and... "Command and Conquer". Book 13: [[Fun with Acronyms|Random Access Memorabilia]] - "Read", "Write", "Execute".

 

== Web Original ==

** His play-though of Super Mario Bros X goes meta (and [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8zxhPGOoV0 recursive]) into this trope as each episode name is a Trope Title from this site.

* ''[[Psycomedia]]'' uses this for the Frankenpodcasts, which are named after the [[Frankenstein (film)|Universal film series.]]

 

== Western Animation ==

* Every ''[[Pink Panther]]'' short made in the 1960s and 1970s has the word "Pink" in the title. Similarly, every short in DFE's ''The Inspector'' series has some French wordplay in the title.

* Sav! The World's series ''[[Oban Star-Racers]]'' names most of its episodes in the form "X Like Y", where Y is the name of the [[Monster of the Week]]. X is always an adjective that begins with the same letter or sound as the antagonist's name -- "Playful Like Para-Dice", "Agile Like Aikka", et cetera. Unfortunately, this meant they were forced to use the word "Cruel" twice.

* ''[[Skunk Fu!]]!'' uses "The Art of ____". There was even an episode where they did "The Art of Art".

* Almost every episode of the first season of ''[[Sonic Sat AM|Sonic the Hedgehog]]'' had the word 'Sonic' in it, despite how little it would have to do with the actual plot. This was discarded in season 2.

* The majority of the episode titles for ''[[Charlie and Lola]]'' are essentially statements from Lola, often in a humorously protracted fashion. Examples include "I Will Not Ever Never Eat a Tomato", "We Do Promise Honestly We Can Look After Your Dog" and "I Do Not Ever, Never Want My Wobbly Tooth to Fall Out".

* [[Kid vs. Kat]] has episodes that feature the name of main character, Coop, or a word that explains the plot added to existing phrases. For example "Coop D'Etat," "The Incredible Shrinking Coop," and "Kat to the Future."

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Title Tropes]]

[[Category:Creator Speak]]