Lousy Alternate Titles

    Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


    Sometimes titles just don't work. They're too short, too long, too vague, or just plain wrong. So we are glad those aren't the titles for certain tropes.

    But What If...

    Dun dun dadaldadalduun!

    ...they were?

    This is where we think of the worst possible titles for existing tropes.

    Compare Laconic, Renamed Tropes.

    Examples are alphabetized by trope name:

    To begin...

    • This trope is called Lousy Alternate Titles because Goofing Around By Spelling Out the Meanings of the Tropes with Profanity and Bold Inflation is too long.
      • And it's still shorter than What If Encyclopedia Dramatica Wrote Our Trope Titles?.
      • Also, Really, Really Lousy Alternate Titles That Are Way Too Long And Usually Complain About Tropes, Tropers, And Pretty Much Everything is too hypocritical.

    A

    B

    • Beat the Curse Out of Him isn't called Kirby's Solution because no amount of possessed bosses in the series will save the title from Fan Myopia.
      • And Exorcism Exercise is just a really, really weak pun.
    • Better Than It Sounds is called that because Making Good Fiction Seem Like Crap And Making You Guess Which Fiction It Is is a lot to type.
      • And also because Adventure Ho is too specific to one show.
    • Big Brother Instinct is not called Brother Bear (a snowclone of Mama Bear).
    • They call it Big No because NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! is a little too big and no one will remember how many letters are in it.
    • It's called Black Sheep Hit because If We'd Known This Was Going To Be The Only Song You Remember Us For, We Never Would Have Done It is too long and also a little too honest.
    • Bluenose Bowdlerizer is slightly nicer than F*cking Underage Five-Year-Olds Censoring All the F*cking Curses on This M*therfucking Wiki Either Because They're R*tarded as S*it or Because of Some Stupid F*cking Censorware Installed By Their Clueless Mother...F*CKER, which would just be an insult to five-year-olds.
    • Boomerang Bigot isn't a snowclone, unlike I Can Self-Discriminate.
    • Broken Aesop is called that because Emoji Movie Syndrome would just be beating a dead horse, especially as the trope was around a lot longer than that film.

    C

    D

    E

    • Eat the Dog was less punny, and less obscure, than Menchi Solution.
    • Ending Fatigue is called that because The Point Where It Becomes Obvious That Someone Was Paying the Writers By the Word may not always be accurate.
      • The same goes for Purple Prose.
      • It also sounded better than You've Already Killed the Bad Guy, Just End the Fucking Thing Already!.
    • Entry Pimp sounds cheerful while Tropers Trying to Shove What They Like and/or Make Down Our Throats No Matter What is a bit mean.
    • Evil Feels Good isn't a snowclone, unlike Damn, It Feels Good to Be Bad!.
    • Exactly What It Says on the Tin is preferable to The Name Says It All, Really.
    • Extreme Omnivore is less obscure than Zoidberg Fuel.

    F

    • Fan Hater is a lot shorter and slightly less judgemental than I Can't Believe Anyone Actually Likes This! It's a Worthless Heap of Shit, It's the Fucking Worst Thing in the World, and If You Like It or Think Anything of It Other Than Steaming Hot Garbage, You're an Absolute Tool and a Waste of Time with No Taste and You're Not Worth Any Effort, Love, Pity or Emotion, So Really, Why Don't You Just Go Away and Die?.
    • We call it Fetish Fuel because we couldn't exactly call it Stuff That Is Not Porn But We Still Get Off On.
    • Finger Gun could've been called Finger Bang, until it became a repetitious chorus in a South Park song.
    • Flame Bait could've been called Highly Dangerous Explosive Tropes, but we already have Stuff Blowing Up.
    • It's called a Flame War because Cyberbrawling is a weak pun of "cyberbullying" and an unclear title besides.
    • It's called Flying Brick because Harder Better Faster Stronger doesn't mention the flying part.
      • Harder Better Faster Stronger Flyer is a better alternate title, but a bit long.
    • It's called Franchise Zombie because I Hate All of You For Liking This But I Have to Make More of It! sounds downright insulting.
      • And Oh God, I'm So Tired of Working On This Show, I Really Want to Move On to Something Else, But I've Still Got Two Years On My Contract, and I Can't Afford to Break It. ends with a full stop for no good reason.
    • Funbag Airbag makes a nice rhyme, unlike Clash On the Big Breasts, which would make anyone familiar with Final Fantasy V groan.

    G

    • Gainax Ending was on this site longer than Fandom Gank, which is why it'll never be renamed to Intentional Fandom Gank.
    • Gannon Banned is called that because His Name Is LINK, You Uncultured Swine! is unnecessarily rude and already a trope.
      • And also because Our Quick and Simple Guide to Not Cause an Internet Backdraft is simply too long.
    • Gender Bender is definitely better than Alex and Bo.
    • Germanic Depressives is nice and punny. Sour Krauts is equally punny, but also pretty offensive. And we really don't want to offend those guys. On account of them being so grim.
    • We choose Giant Space Flea From Nowhere because What the Heck Is That Boss Doing Here!? would be too hard to use as a noun.
    • It's Giver of Lame Names because Leonard Of Quirm Naming is too obscure for some.
      • And while Self Demonstration is always fun, That Guy Who Always Names Things with Stupidly Long and Overly Detailed Descriptions of Their Function is just a bit unwieldy.
    • Godwin's Law is called that because Everyone Is Hitler in Nazi Germany just doesn't roll off the tongue so well.
    • Good Wings, Evil Wings is better than Good Wings, Bad Wings since the latter would be confused about wings on mythological creatures being impractical.
    • Gretzky Has the Ball is less confrontational than If You're Going to Write About Sports, Do the Fucking Research or All the Nitpicky Sports Fans Will Complain About All This Stuff You Got Wrong.

    H

    • For the Love of God Why Do Those Lazyheads at Nintendo and SEGA Always Have the Same Final Boss All the Time? is just a tad more opinionated than Hijacked by Ganon.
    • Hoist by His Own Petard could've been called Wile E. Coyote Syndrome, but let's face it, as cool as it would be to name something after a Looney Tunes character, naming it after something that William Shakespeare wrote is cooler.
    • Hollywood Autism isn't an unclear pun, unlike Autistic License.
    • Hollywood Tactics isn't named Just [A] Bunch Of Droids because not everyone knows what JBOD is and it can get the Double Entendre. And while Star Wars is a major offender, it's not just about how the droids fight.
    • Hollywood Tourette's was used instead of Tourette's Fucking Cunt Shit On My Asshole Syndrome or Tourette's Isn't Just About Swearing, You Idiots. We've already had it called "Tourettes Fucking Cunt Syndrome" before and we renamed it for obvious reasons.
    • It's called Hype Aversion because You Should Avoid This Like a Plague or Else You'll Turn Into a Mindless, Drooling Dipshit Like the Masses Who Watch This Shallow, Piece-of-Shit Show For a Fad With Its Over-Inflated Hype Clogging Up the Networks Like the Hardened Fat in the Arteries of the Pathetic, Lifeless Losers Who Watch It, aside from just being plain cruel, would make you run out of breath saying it.

    I

    J

    K

    L

    M

    N

    • It's called Narm because Totally Fucking Up A Dramatic Moment would just be misused to refer to any scene that fails at being dramatic.
    • Nightmare Fuel has a better ring than How Bad Does Horror Have to Be That We Need a Trope Page for When It Actually Works?.
    • Nightmare Retardant sounds better than You Call This Shit Frightening?.
    • No Endor Holocaust could be named Jossified Killing, but it wouldn't reflect its usual scale and how glaring it sometimes happens to be.
    • We call it No Indoor Voice instead of THE TRADITIONAL ROYAL CANTERLOT VOICE, because we don't want to scare off Fluttershy again.
    • Nothing Butt an Index is a cute pun for a title. Indexed In the Butt would just be nasty.
    • We called it N-Word Privileges because many of us don't have the privileges to write Nigger Is A Four Letter Word properly.

    O

    • Although I Cannot Self-Pollinate actually is a redirect, we prefer to call it Only You Can Repopulate My Race because that isn't a snowclone.
    • It's called The Other Darrin because it's shorter than We've Secretly Replaced Your Favorite Actor with Folger's Crystals; Let's See What Happens.
      • Which is a pity, because that would've been a great name.
      • And Folgers Crossover has a better claim on it anyway.

    P

    Q

    • Quieter Than Silence is shorter than True Silence Is Indistinguishable From The Speakers Not Working.

    R

    • We ended up going with Rambling Old Man Monologue because it's a little bit more concise than the title we wanted to use, which was Stories Old Men Tell to Youngsters Which Don't Really Go Anywhere But for Some Reason Nobody Interrupts. Why I Remember One of These Stories... Boy It Was a Doozy... It Started When My Uncle Sammy, or Sambo as We Used to Call Him, But You Can't Call Him That Anymore Because of Those Damn PC Police... Anyway Sambo Was Riding a Chicken Down to the General Store Because Our Horse Was Laid Up with the Flu...
    • Reality Ensues is a little more polite and way shorter than They May Use This Trope a Million Times in Fiction, But This is What Would Really Happen in Real Life.
    • We went with "The Reason You Suck" Speech because Roast Person for Dinner wouldn't make sense to anyone who doesn't know what "roasting" is and could easily be taken literally.
    • Refrain From Assuming is much better, shorter, punnier, and more polite than I Know They Repeat That Phrase a Thousand Times In The Chorus, But For The Last Time, It's Not The Name Of The Fucking Song!
    • Renamed Tropes is more to-the-point than What Were They Smoking When Naming These Tropes!?. Besides, we don't want to wantonly accuse people of smoking.
      • And I Can't Believe It's Not an LAT!, obtuse acronym aside, is equally bitchy-sounding.
    • Although Reviews Are the Gospel and He Panned It, Now It Sucks are both short and concise, using the latter would mean having to redirect to it from He Praised It, Now It Rocks as the trope works both ways. Also, it's only one different pronoun from He Panned It, Now He Sucks.
    • It's called Rhyming with Itself because honestly, Instead Of Using A Word That Rhymes, They Just Repeated The Original Word takes way too much time to type out. Also, not everyone would get I Used Underpantski Three Times.
    • Ridiculously-Human Robots is less judgemental than Stupid Scientists Who Make Robots Impractical in the Name of Humanlikeness.
    • Rule 34 is shorter than You're Telling Me People Actually Draw Dirty Pictures of My Little Pony and Care Bears? Really?.
    • We call it Rule-Abiding Rebel, because Writer Who Doesn't Have The Balls To Tell The Story He Really Wanted To In The First Place is just mean. And it's not always the writer's fault, anyway.
    • Running the Asylum is less rude than Who The Fuck Hired These Fanboys?.

    S

    T

    • Take It to the Forums isn't rude, unlike This Is Not a Trope, You Dumbass, and We Have a Fucking Message Board.
    • It's only called Take That instead of Completely Unwarranted and in Some Cases Extremely Cruel Insult Directed Towards a Specific Work That Is Often Actually Quite Good That Only Serves To PO Fans And Make The Insulter Look Like Nothing More Than A Petty Jerkass because not everyone understands exactly what PO means in that context.
      • While shorter, Fuck You Other Show, Let's Make Fun of You! isn't very nice.
    • Take That, Audience! isn't called King Olly Syndrome because that's way too much of a Take That itself for one line he said. And while it may be satisfying to deliver a Take That back to the creators, it's not the kind of thing we do for trope titles. Not to mention it'd probably spark a bit of discussion...
    • It's generally believed that Take Over the World is a better title than Dr. Wily's Resolution due to the latter being a character-named trope.
    • Tenchi Solution has a ring to it, unlike Threesomes Solve Everything.
    • The "The" Title is a better title than either The or The Most Common Word In Any Title. Ever.
    • It's called There's No B in Movie because Return of the Attack of the 50 Foot Killer Ghost of the Bride of the Son of Whatever's Curse is too long a title.
    • We chose This Loser Is You over The Writers and Producers of This Show Think That You Are [insert slew of various negative qualities here] due to length.
    • This Troper was chosen because I Can't Fucking Believe These Fucking Selfish Fuckheads Are Trying to Fucking Shove Themselves and Their Fucking First-Person Pronouns Into Every Single Fucking Example They Type Like the Fucking Egotistic Retarded Freakfucks They Are! See What I Fucking Mean!? is plain cruel and hypocritical with its own use of "I". Plus, it's so full of F-bombs that at a glance it's easy to mistake for Cluster F-Bomb.
    • Title Drop is very intuitive and clear. Not so much TITLE.
    • Although Too Much Information does get the point across, Oh My Fucking God I Did NOT Need To Know That! kinda sounds good, too. Too bad it's a bit long.
    • Too Dumb to Fool isn't Hoist by His Own Retard because it's an unnecessary snowclone, and because casually using the word "retard" in a title wouldn't go down well with some people.
    • Trapped by Mountain Lions has a better ring to it than Why Should We Care About This Sub-Plot Again?.
    • Troll is called that, partly because it's known by that term, and partly because calling it Complete Asswipe Who Likes To Start Needless Arguments On The Web and Should Die Horribly would ironically be trolling itself (although a great self demonstrating title).
    • All the Tropes Wiki Drinking Game is a Just for Fun page. Complaining About Edits You Don't Like wouldn't say so.

    U

    V

    • Viewers are Morons was more concise than Most Writers and Media Executives Think the Collective IQ of Your Demographic Is Somewhat Lower Than That Of A Retarded Slug.
    • Voodoo Shark is called that because Your Plot Point Sucks, Your Explanation For Your Plot Point Sucks, And Your Face Sucks is just mean.
      • And it's still shorter than I Still Say You Pulled That Chekhov's Gun Out Of Your Ass.
        • We could've called it Hoist by His Own Hand Wave, but that one's just dumb.

    W

    • Wangst is shorter than You Don't Understand. Nobody Understands. WAAAAAAH!!.
    • Wanting Is Better Than Having is shorter than Whining About How Your Long-Sought Goal Wasn't As Awesome As You Thought It Would Be.
    • Weak-Willed is not called King Dedede Syndrome for obvious reasons.
      • And it's more polite than Good God, Could You Not Get Fucking Mind Controlled for Five Minutes!?!.
    • Welcome to Corneria is the name, as no one had the foresight to call it (or the bitterness to rename it to) Animal Crossing: New Horizons Syndrome.
    • What Happened to the Mouse? beat Well I Guess I'm The Asshole For Caring About This Plot Point in a runoff.
    • We have Wild Mass Guessing because Off-The-Cuff Predictions and Obsessively Detailed Fanwank puts rather too fine a point on it.
    • It's called Word Cruft because it should be noted that Actually, It Should Be Noted That This Example Is Actually Basically Filled With What Some Say Is Arguably Needless Extra Words That Slow Down The Reader, Never Mind The Fact That That Is All, Case In Point. Enough Said. To Boot, while a good self-demonstrating title, is basically simply too long, to the point of making anyone who reads it run out of breath.

    X

    Y

    • It's called YKTTW Bump, because Please Don't Forget This, Everybody sounds kind of desperate.
    • We say YMMV because These Are Just Individual Tropers' Opinions So Don't Go Making an Assload of Justifying Edits Just Because You Disagree With a Given Entry, You Opinionated Shithead is not only way longer, but needlessly accusatory.

    Z

    • The reason Zany Scheme was chosen is that Can't You Think of Something Easier to Solve Your Problem? is too long, and isn't a noun.

    And finally...

    • The parent of this site is called TV Tropes instead of A Reader-Maintained Database of Frequently-Seen Elements and Patterns in Many Forms of Human Communication because, dude, they started out by talking about stuff on TV.


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