Similarly Named Works

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

"There's this bald boy, who can control the wind... Oops! Wrong Avatar..."

—Chester A. Bum's Bum Review of James Cameron's Avatar

This is when several works share a name. They could even be different media. And yet they're completely unrelated.

Essentially, Name's the Same when applied to works. When the names are slightly different, it might be a case of Translation Matchmaking.

Compare Stock Episode Titles.

This trope is so prevalent that The Other Wiki developed the Disambiguation system to address this and similar issues (like common surnames) -- which we use as well. As we create disambiguation pages for these, we'll take them off this list; see Category:Ambiguity Index for the list of existing disambiguation pages.

NO MORE ENTRIES HERE, PLEASE - go ahead and create the disambiguation pages directly, and cut out the middleman.

Examples (alphabetical by title)

A

  • Jean Michel Jarre's track "Aero" from the eponymous 2002 concert in Denmark is mostly unrelated to his track "Aero" from the eponymous 2004 album.
  • All Over the House is the name of a gag-a-day webcomic, and a pornographic rap music video.
  • The Angels were one of Australia's best bands around 1980. They had to change their name to Angel City for the U.S., because there was already a band called Angel. The Angels have broken up some time since, and there's now an electronica act called Angel City.
    • The Angels were a 60s girl group famous for their hit "My Boyfriend's Back".
  • Japanese video game developer Arc System Works (of Guilty Gear and BlazBlue fame) is unrelated to the American video game publisher Aksys Games, although the latter has localized many of the former's works in the United States, to the point that they're mistaken as an subsidiary. There's also Arsys Software, an obscure Japanese company of the 80s and 90s which developed Wibarm and the SNES version of Prince of Persia.
  • How about The Art of War? There is an "Art of War" by:
    • Sun Tzu, an ancient Chinese military thinker, and the one most people will be referring to.
    • Antoine-Henri Jomini, a 19th-century Swiss interpreter of Napoleon.
    • Niccolo Machiavelli, a Renaissance-era Italian strategist.
    • Mao Zedong, a 20th-century Chinese communist revolutionary and politician.
    • This extends even beyond literature, as there's also a completely unrelated Wesley Snipes action film called The Art of War, which was followed by two DTV sequels.
Though this may be a result of translation laziness. For example, Sun Tzu's one is actually "Sun Tzu's Methods of War" in Chinese and Mao's is On War (which is itself not to be confused with Clausewitz's "On War").

B

  • "Big Gun" by AC/DC, which was the inspiration for "I Sawed The Demons" from Doom, and "Big Gun" by Sonic Mayhem, from Quake II.
  • Scott O'Dell's book The Black Pearl has nothing to do with Curse of the Black Pearl, the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie.
  • Skinny Puppy have produced several different short experimental tracks titled "Brap".
  • Brian's Song is a 1971 TV movie about an NFL player who died of cancer, and later a Family Guy episode subtitle. Byron's Song is a 2009 song by Rebekah Ann Curtis dedicated to a friend who also died of cancer.
  • Bust-a-Move was the title of a 1980's hip-hop song, the US version of Taito's Puzzle Bobble, and a Rhythm Game by Enix. The last one had to be retitled Bust-a-Groove in the US, which is also the title of a Paul Oakenfold album.

C

  • "California Girls" is a song by the Beach Boys, later covered by David Lee Roth. "California Girls" is also a song by Gretchen Wilson, although the first line of the refrain is "Ain't you glad we ain't all California girls?" It's also the name of a 1960s-era softcore magazine. "California Gurls" (the typo is intentional) is by Katy Perry with Snoop Dogg.
  • Howl's Moving Castle is the title of both the novel by Diana Wynne Jones and the film adaptation by Hayao Miyazaki. That isn't the example. This is: Castle in the Air is the sequel to the novel. Laputa: Castle in the Sky is an earlier, completely unrelated Miyazaki film. Confused yet?
  • Challenge of the Dragon by Sachen is a pirated engine hack of Double Dragon. Challenge of the Dragon by Color Dreams is a generic hack-n-slash.
  • Children of Eden is a musical based on the book of Genesis. Child of Eden is a trippy Cyberspace Rail Shooter video game that is also the Spiritual Successor to Rez.
  • Cloud Atlas was a 2004 novel by David Mitchell, and The Cloud Atlas was a 2004 novel by Liam Callanan.
  • Cobra Mission is a PC H-game. Mission Cobra is an NES Shoot'Em Up by unlicensed/pirate game mecca Sachen. There's also an NES knockoff of Lethal Enforcers titled Cobra Mission.
  • Coming of Age is the title of an American sitcom from the Eighties and a British sitcom from the Noughties.
  • Conspiracy is a 2001 drama film about the Wannsee Conference of 1942, in which a group of Nazi bureaucrats held a meeting to discuss the implementation of the Holocaust. Conspiracy is also a 2008 action/thriller film starring Val Kilmer.
  • Crack Down is a 1989 arcade game by Sega which has nothing to do with Crackdown, the 2007 Third-Person Shooter for the Xbox 360.

D

  • Dam Busters: The nickname of 617 Squadron; a novel, 1954 radio drama, and 1955 film all based on 617 Squadron's most famous mission; a 1980's arcade Shoot'Em Up similar to Scramble; and a game involving beavers on the infamous Action 52 cartridge.
  • Dark Angel: Vampire Apocalypse for the PlayStation 2, and the Dark Angel TV series, which also had a PS2 adaptation.
  • Dead@17 is a comic about teenage girls fighting the living dead. Dead at 17 is a TV movie about the mother of a dead teenage boy.
  • The Defenders is another Marvel team book with no relation to another 60s TV show, this time an American court room drama which you might remember being referenced in a episode of Mad Men.
    • And another show called The Defenders debuted on CBS in September 2010.
  • Die Motherfucker Die: One such song is by Dope, another by Suicide Commando.
  • A short film called Dodgeball came out in 2001, a few years before DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story. If you got your info off the internet and are wondering which character Senta Moses played in the big movie, the answer is: She didn't.
  • The song "Dr. No" by Systems in Blue has nothing to do with the James Bond story, although someone made a Fan Vid for the song using clips from the film.
  • Aerosmith's first big hit, "Dream On", and Nazareth's "Dream On" are two different songs, even though they do sound a bit similar. Neither should be confused with the HBO comedy series of the same name.
  • Around the time of Duke Nukem Forever's release, Duke University tweeted to clarify that people using the hashtag "#alwaysbetonduke" were not referring to them.
  • Dungeon Magic: Sword of the Elements (aka Dungeon & Magic), a first-person dungeon crawler released in 1989 for the NES, has nothing to do with the 1993 arcade game Dungeon Magic (aka Lightbringer), despite the fact that both were published by Taito.
  • Capcom's 1989 arcade game Dynasty Wars (a localization of the first Tenchi o Kurau arcade game) has nothing to do with Koei's later Dynasty Warriors (Sangoku Musō) series, although they're both based on Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
  • E/R was a short-lived 1980s sitcom on CBS, while ER was a long-running 1990s-2000s medical drama on NBC. Oddly enough, George Clooney was a regular on both shows.
  • The Driver video game series is unrelated to the 1978 crime film The Driver or any of the other works listed on The Other Wiki's disambiguation page. They all have at least tangential connection to the trope The Driver.

E

  • Earth Defense Force is either a sidescrolling arcade and SNES shmup, or an anime released in North America as The Daichis. Earth Defense Force 2017 is an Xbox 360 third-person shooter.
  • There was a four-player Asteroids-like video game for Windows 3.1 from 1995 titled Escape Velocity, completely unrelated to Ambrosia Software's Escape Velocity (which at the time was only available for Mac OS, but a long time later was ported to Windows as a total conversion for the Escape Velocity Nova engine). Also the title of a Chemical Brothers song.
  • Exile, the 1988 BBC Micro/Commodore 64/Amiga/AtariST Metroidvania game with a surprisingly good physics engine. Exile, the 1995 Windows/Macintosh RPGs remade into Avernum. And there's also the XZR series of action RPGs by Telenet, which was called Exile in North America. And there's the comic series Exiles, which involves a team of superheros exploring The Multiverse.
    • Exile, the 70's pop band turned 80's country band.

F

  • Fables is a comic book about storybook characters. Fable is a video game (series) about God knows what. Oh, and Aesop's Fables.
  • Before the Colin Firth and Jimmy Fallon/Drew Barrymore films based on the book, there was the 1985 film Fever Pitch starring Ryan O'Neal.
  • There are two different musicals titled Freedom Bound. The first, written by Michael and Jill Gallina, is about an immigrant family, the second, an original production by Mad River Theater Works, is about an escaped slave on the Underground Railroad.
  • Full Throttle, the LucasArts adventure game, should not be confused with Full Throttle, another name for the racing game Top Speed.

G

  • There are two oddly similar yet also wildly different manga called Gakuen Heaven. One is an adaptation of a Yaoi dating sim series set in an all-boys school, the other is an ecchi series about a ronin teacher at an all-girls school.
  • Gasoline Alley is a long-running newspaper comic strip, and a 1970 album (and song) by Rod Stewart. And an antique toy shop in Seattle.
  • There was a short-lived live action series from the 1970s called The Ghost Busters. There's a blockbuster movie from the 1980s called Ghostbusters which inspired a song by Ray Parker, Jr. There's a syndicated cartoon called Ghostbusters and there's a Saturday morning (and later syndicated) cartoon called The Real Ghostbusters. Two of the above had two guys and a gorilla, and two of the above had four guys and a green blob named Slimer. Have a guess which one's which!
  • The Great Train Robbery was a 1903 film which was one of the first Western movies and also one of the first motion pictures to tell a story. It was also a 1979 heist film with Donald Sutherland, Sean Connery, and Lesley-Anne Down, directed by Michael Crichton and based on his own novel. Both were Very Loosely Based on a True Story in which some guys try to rob a train- except one involves some villanous bandits breaking into a train and stealing things from the passengers in the middle of the Old West, while the other sees three loveable rogues scheming to steal a shipment of gold from a moving train in Victorian England.
    • In all fairness, the 1979 film (possibly due to this trope) is sometimes known as The First Great Train Robbery. Nonetheless, The Great Train Robbery is the title printed on the DVD and used in promotional material.
    • Also the real life Great Train Robbery of 1963 in Buckinghamshire, England.
  • "God is a DJ": either a Faithless song, or a song by P!nk.
  • The Good Life was a short-lived American sitcom from the early '70s about a middle-class couple who quit the rat race and become live-in servants to a wealthy couple - and also a British sitcom from the mid-'70s about a middle-class couple who quit the rat race and start a self-sufficient agrarian life in their suburban home. When the latter was shown in the US, it was retitled The Good Neighbors.
    • Also, "The Good Life" was a 2010 rock hit for Three Days Grace and "Good Life" was a 2011 pop hit for One Republic.
  • There's Grown Ups, a British sitcom from the '90s; Grown Ups, an American sitcom from the '90s; and Grown Ups, a 2010 American film with Adam Sandler. There's also another British sitcom named Grownups.

H

  • The recent Lady Gaga song "Hair" is in no way related to the musical.
  • Halo is the name of a popular First-Person Shooter series, a Beyonce song, and a Nine Inch Nails album.
  • The Happening: A 2008 apocalyptic horror film by M. Night Shyamalan about an outbreak of mass suicide, and a 1967 comedy film about a group of hippies kidnapping a retired Mafia boss. Also, a song by The Supremes based on the latter movie.
  • If you're going to go see Samuel Beckett's play Happy Days, keep in mind that you will most definitely not see The Fonz (or hear a certain Pratt and McClain song).
  • In 1965 two biographical films about Jean Harlow, both simply titled Harlow, were released within weeks of one another.
  • "Haunted" by Type O Negative, "Haunted" by Gary Numan, "Haunted" by Taylor Swift, Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk, Haunted by James Herbert, three "Haunted" television shows (1960s, 2002 and 2009), six albums titled "Haunted", "The Haunted" (two bands), and that's not all of them.
  • As far as The Haunting goes, you'd already expect there to be two to watch out for, namely the original 1963 film and its 1999 remake. If you live outside North America, however, then you have three to deal with -- The Haunting '63, The Haunting '99, and another film called "The Haunting", which in actual fact is a retitled version of the Roger Corman film The Terror. Corman's film was released in the same year as the first Haunting film, and so he took advantage of the fact that studios could be incredibly lax about releasing their films outside of North America (assuming they even bothered at all) to pass his own film off as The Haunting.
  • Heaven Can Wait (1978) is unrelated to Heaven Can Wait (1943) except for the title. Or the We The Kings song.
    • Or, indeed, the Jim Steinman/Meat Loaf song.
  • In 1957, it was announced that writers Elwood Ullman and Edward Bernds were nominated for Best Screenplay for their script to the movie High Society. Ullman and Bernds were surprised, since their movie was a lowbrow Bowery Boys farce. As it turned out, the actual nominee was John Patrick, who wrote the screenplay for the High Society movie that starred Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, and Frank Sinatra.
  • The High Cost Of Living (2010) and Death: The High Cost Of Living (Development Hell) are about women dealing with death, but only one has Death herself.
  • House is a TV series about a doctor played by Hugh Laurie and a Japanese Horror/Comedy film from 1977. Also, it's a dance music genre.
  • There's Ciem: The Human Centipede from Dozerfleet Comics. Then, there's Tom Six's The Human Centipede. One's a Sims Machinomics about a superheroine who is pretty much an Alternate Company Equivalent of Marvel's Spider-Girl, just with different animal-themed powers. The other is a gross-out D-grade horror film. When the gross-out horror film got more attention from Google, the creator of the machinomic pretty much revolted and declared that his work would get adapted/rebooted into an Ultimate Universe with a slightly changed title (Ciem: Vigilante Centipede) and a LOT of Adaptation Distillation and Broad Strokes being planned.

I

  • "I Don't Wanna Miss a Thing" is the title of Aerosmith's Award Bait Song from the film Armageddon, and an unrelated song from Vanities (the 2000's musical adaptation of the Jack Heifner play, not to be confused with the 1920's Earl Carroll musical series).
  • The movie The Indestructible Man should not be confused with the Past Doctor Adventures novel The Indestructible Man, about a Captain Ersatz Captain Scarlet. Or with DC Comics' Steel: The Indestructible Man.
  • Insomnia is a 2002 remake of a 1997 Norwegian suspense film of the same title. It's also the title of a completely-unrelated novel by Stephen King.
    • Then there's Insomniac, a Green Day album.
    • And let's not confuse either of those with the song by Faithless.
  • Warrior Cats shares a couple similar titles: it has books called Into the Wild and Into the Woods, not to be confused with Jon Krakauer's Into The Wild and the musical Into the Woods.
  • So you're interested in a movie called "Invasion U.S.A.", about a Soviet invasion of America. Do you mean the 1952 film starring Gerald Mohr, or the 1985 film with Chuck Norris?
    • The album "Invasion U.S.A." by the punk rock band The Riverdales isn't a soundtrack to either film.
  • Invincible is a comic about a young superhero. It's also the title of a movie about Vince Papale, and another movie about a Jewish strongman in the 1930s and 1940s.
    • It's also a 2009 rock hit for Las Vegas band Adelitas Way.
  • The Island: A 2005 Michael Bay film based on Parts the Clonus Horror, or a 2006 Pavel Lungin film about a monk?
  • The Video Game Subarashiki Kono Sekai: It's a Wonderful World had to be re-titled to The World Ends With You for the English localization, because it shares its title with a 1930s Screwball Comedy. It also sounds similar to the name of the Louis Armstrong song "What a Wonderful World".
  • "I Wanna Be Your Star", a trance/happy hardcore song by Melody & Mezzo, "I Wanna Be A Star", a Hyper Techno song by Water Queen, and I Wanna Be The Star, a Platform Hell game inspired by I Wanna Be the Guy.

J

K

  • Kamichama Karin, a manga about a girl who can transform into a goddess, and Karin, a manga about a vampire girl. This is apparently why Tokyo Pop changed the title of the latter.
    • Kamichama Karin Chu, a sequel to a manga about a girl who can transform into a goddess, and Kamichu!, a manga about a girl who, uh, becomes a goddess.
  • The number of movies named The Kid is insane. As a sampling, there's Charlie Chaplin's 1921 entry about his Little Tramp character taking care of an orphan; a 1997 Canadian movie about a boxer; a 2000 feature (titled Disney's The Kid) starring Bruce Willis, turned into a kid, and a vulgar 2001 animated film. Then there are the dozen or so others.
  • The Kids Are All Right was a documentary on a former Muscular Dystrophy Association poster child who protested the organization after being abandoned by them. It's not to be confused with the more recent comedy-drama The Kids Are All Right about the children of a lesbian couple. Or the 2008 game show The Kids Are All Right hosted by John Barrowman. Or with The Kids Are Alright, a concert documentary of The Who, or their song of the same name. Confused yet?

L

  • "Lady Double Dealer" is the name of a song by Krokus. There's no way it could have escaped their attention that Deep Purple had done a song of the same title a few years earlier, but Krokus were a bunch of lovable street urchin thieves when it came to songwriting ideas.
    • Krokus also has two completely different songs titled "No Way", the first one from their first (self-titled) album (1976), the second one from the same album as the aforementioned "Lady Double Dealer" (Metal Rendez-vous, 1980). (The first one of these is easy to ignore, because the album it's from had very few copies printed and is therefore almost impossible to find.)
  • Land of the Lost wasn't always a Sid and Marty Krofft series (and a later remake) about a family who gets stranded in another world with dinosaurs and various weird creatures. It was previously a radio series about a boy and girl who regularly went on trips to an underwater "land" where things that get "lost" eventually turn up. The latter was even adapted into an animated short by Fleischer Studios.
  • The Indian movie Lagaan and the anime series Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.
  • Nada Surf put out an album called Let Go the same year Avril Lavigne called her debut the same thing. Reportedly, Nada Surf had that title in mind for a while, found out there was a major hit release with the same title, and decided to stick with it anyway.
  • "The Look of Love": A 60's blues song by Dusty Springfield, or an 80's post-disco electro song by ABC?
  • Lost is a 2004 mind screwy television program created by J.J. Abrams. But there was also a short-lived reality-TV show by that same name in 2001, as well as a pair of movies, three books, four albums, and a partridge in a pear tree.
  • There's Lost Continent (a sci-fi movie from Robert L. Lippert), The Lost Continent (a fantasy/adventure movie from Hammer Films) and Atlantis: The Lost Continent (a fantasy movie from George Pal). And those are just the movies.
  • Lucky Star is a comedy manga and anime, while Lucky Starr is a series of science-fiction novels. "Lucky Star" is also a 1929 romantic drama film, a Madonna song, and many other things...

M

  • Mad Money is a 2008 movie with Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah, and Katie Holmes. It is also a CNBC investment show hosted by Jim Cramer.
  • Mammoth is a 2009 drama about a man's relationship with an Asian sex worker. Mammoth is also a 2006 SyFy Channel Original Movie starring Summer Glau.
  • Mega Force was a 1982 motorcycle action film that had an Atari 2600 Licensed Game, and also the international Market-Based Title of the arcade version of Star Force. Also, Mega Man Star Force.
  • Men in Black is the title of a science fiction movie with Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith. Men In Black is also the name of a 1935 Three Stooges short.
  • Merlin, a 2008 miniseries based on Arthurian Legend, and Merlin, a 1998 miniseries based on Arthurian Legend. There's also the opera by Isaac Albéniz based on... you guessed it.
  • The Messenger is a 2009 drama. The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc is a 1999 film starring Milla Jovovich as Joan of Arc. There are various other films titled The Messenger or The Messengers.
  • Metamorphoses (Ovid) or Metamorphosis (Kafka)? Indeed, there are many more examples Older Than Steam, radio or television... To mark the difference one would have to check the author.
  • MOD artist Mysterium produced a remake of Dr. Awesome(Bjorn Lynne)'s "Bridge to the Universe Part 2" titled "Into The Void". Later, Bjorn Lynne made an original song with the same name. Also, not to be confused with the Nine Inch Nails song.
  • Monolith Soft, the Japanese developer of Xenosaga, is not to be confused with Monolith Productions, the American developer of No One Lives Forever and F.E.A.R., nor with Monolith Corp., the company that developed the Super NES ports of various Neo Geo games such as Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting.
  • Princess Mononoke: Comparatively dark Miyazaki film with (shock) an environmental theme. Mononoke: supernatural horror Mind Screw anime series.
  • The coin-op Monster Bash is not to be confused with the PC platform game Monster Bash. Neither of them are to be confused with the pinball machine.
  • M.A.S.H. is a popular game in which someone creates a hilariously outrageous fantasy life for another player, and then there's M*A*S*H a 1970's comedy/drama about a group of doctors in a mobile hospital during the Korean War.
  • Monster Farm: cartoon about a young man who inherits from his great uncle, or an anime adventure.
  • Mother Night, the 1961 novel by Kurt Vonnegut, should not be confused with 'night, Mother, the 1981 play by Marsha Norman.
  • There is more than one fanfic called My Immortal. The wiki page leads to a Harry Potter fanfic. This one is a Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Torchwood crossover, in which The Immortal (from the Angel episode "The Girl In Question") turns out to be ... Captain Jack Harkness.
    • Outside of Fan Fiction, it's the name of an Evanescence song, and may have been the inspiration for the Harry Potter fanfic's title.

N

O

P

  • Ghostland Observatory's song "Piano Man" is totally unrelated to Billy Joel's song.
  • Also including Similarly Named Bands; "Piece of Heaven" by A7 and "Little Piece of Heaven" by Avenged Sevenfold (sometimes abbreviated A7X).
  • "Please Don't Go" by KC & The Sunshine Band, later covered by KWS, and "Please Don't Go" by No Mercy, whose chorus sounds similar.
  • Point Blank would be a name of a 1967 film, a name of Namco's Lighter and Softer shooting gallery light-gun game Point Blank, or Point Blank, a Korean MMOFPS (which is very popular in Indonesia) also known as Project Blackout in North America. Or the second book in a series about a teenage spy. Also a Bruce Springsteen song, and a Southern Rock band.
  • Portal is a name of a 1980's interactive novel game and somewhat better known completely unrelated 2007 video game.
  • Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Jennifer Rush, and Huey Lewis and The News, released three totally different songs named "The Power of Love" onto the same markets within a few months. All three became big hits (the most famous, of course, is the Huey Lewis song). There was also a later early 90s song by Celine Dion (which was a cover of the Jennifer Rush song).
    • Arguably, the Huey Lewis version isn't the most successful one- in the UK the Frankie & Jennifer Rush ones were much more successful, both hitting Number 1 on the charts (Huey Lewis only reaching number 9), and Jennifer Rush's was the biggest selling single of 1985.
  • Primeval the British TV series about time anomalies and prehistoric beasties, and Primeval the horror/thriller film about political unrest in Africa.
  • To avoid confusion with the British series The Prisoner, the Australian series Prisoner was renamed Cell Block H when it aired in the UK.
  • Does The Producers sound like A Good Name for a Rock Band? Well, it was, and had nothing to do with Mel Brooks.
  • The Protector could refer to a 1979 novel by Malcolm Braly, a 2003 novel by David Morrell, a 1985 action film starring Jackie Chan, a 2005 Thai martial arts film, and a 2011 Lifetime TV series starring Ally Walker
  • Push is a novel about an abused black woman, a film about drugs, and another film about societal outcasts with superpowers living in Hong Kong.

Q

  • The song "Que Sera Sera" on the Katamari Damacy soundtrack is an entirely different song from the more famous one that was made famous by Doris Day and first recorded over half a century ago.

R

  • The old Roguelike game Ragnarok has no relation to Ragnarok Online.
  • The Raiden Project was a PS1 compilation port of Raiden and Raiden II. The Raven Project was an FMV Rail Shooter similar to Star Wars Rebel Assault.
  • Two movies have been titled The Rainmaker. The 1956 one was adapted from a play by N. Richard Nash (which was later musicalized as 110 in the Shade). The 1997 one was originally a novel by John Grisham.
  • Rec is a cutesy slice-of-life anime about a voice actress. [REC] is a Spanish horror film.
  • Red Baron is the title of an old Vector Game by Atari, predating by a decade the Red Baron series of flight simulators by Dynamix. Both were named after Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen's sobriquet.
  • Renegade - a 1986 side-scrolling beat-'em-up by Technos Japan Corp (a localization of the Japanese game Nekketsu Kōha Kunio-kun)? Or a 1992 TV series starring Lorenzo Lamas?
    • Or the Italian original title of a 1987 movie starring Terence Hill and his son Ross?
  • "Rent" the Pet Shop Boys song, and Rent the Rock Opera musical.
  • It's probably best not to confuse Rifts (that ultra-eclectic postapocalyptic tabletop game) with Rift (that MMO involving a conflict between blind faith and reckless science and dragon-things tearing big holes in the world). There's already been a minor legal fuss over it, after all.*
  • Riot are a band from New York City whose Fire Down Under has been referred to as the first speed metal album. Quiet Riot were a bubblegum-ish band from Los Angeles with rather undistinguished material, but whose management was interested in actually promoting them. It's now difficult to speak of Riot without it being taken as meaning Quiet Riot.
    • It's also a Paramore album.
  • Data East's 1984 laserdisc FMV game Road Blaster should not be confused with Atari Games' 1986 racing game RoadBlasters. The Sega CD port of the former was renamed Road Avenger, presumably to avoid confusion.
  • Robot Wars is a successful British combat show and an American robot tournament. Super Robot Wars is a Japanese video game series which people confusingly abbreviate to Robot Wars.
  • The pinball video game Rollerball by HAL Laboratory, has nothing to do with the movie Rollerball.
  • "Run to the Sun" was the title of a song by Erasure, as well as an earlier italo-disco song by Mauro Farina as Max Coveri, which in turn was later one of the many artist names used by Maurizio de Jorio.
  • Rush Hour: Film series, not to be confused with the sketch show of the same name, or the hit song by Jane Wiedlin.

S

  • Safe was a 1993 British TV movie about homeless people and a 1995 American movie by Todd Haynes about Julianne Moore going mad. As both got a lot of critical acclaim particularly in the UK, this was very confusing, though the latter is often written [safe].
  • There's Sanctuary, a Live Action TV show about a group of people who hunt down monsters, and Sanctuary, a manga[1] about two survivors of the Khmer Rouge takeover of Cambodia, acting as a politician and a Yakuza to reform Japan.
  • Saturday Night Live, a mid-Seventies sketch comedy show on NBC that featured Bill Murray in its cast. No relation, of course, to Saturday Night Live, a mid-Seventies sketch comedy show on *ABC* that featured Bill Murray in its cast.
    • In fact, the existence of the ABC show prevented NBC from using the desired title until 1976, which is why the first two seasons of the REAL Saturday Night Live shorten the title to "Saturday Night".
  • The Second Reality demo is not to be confused with The Second Reality Project, a Game Mod of Super Mario World.
  • Seek and Destroy is the name of two different games, both involving tanks: a 1996 MS-DOS and Amiga Shoot'Em Up and a 2002 Playstation 2 ActionGame.
  • The Real Time Strategy game Sengoku shares its title with an unrelated series of Beat Em Ups by SNK.
  • Shift 2 is either the second in a series of Puzzle Platformer games, or the divorced sequel to Need for Speed: Shift.
  • Simple Man was used as a title by Lynyrd Skynyrd (and later Shinedown), The Charlie Daniels Band, and Klaus Nomi.
  • "Somebody to Love" by The Great Society, also played by Jefferson Airplane, and "Somebody to Love" by Queen haven't got much more in common than the title.
  • When most people think of "Space Ace", they think of the laserdisc arcade game made by the same people who made Dragon's Lair. However, "Space Ace" can also refer to the very first show Tatsunoko ever made: "Uchuu Ace" (which literally translates as "Space Ace").
  • In 1936, long before the film Speed about a bomb on a bus, there was a film of the same name about a race car driver setting the land speed record. Also the name of a Covenant song.
  • The manga Spriggan has nothing to do with the Spriggan series of Shoot Em Ups by Naxat/Compile.
  • Star FOX is completely unrelated to Star Fox, an almost universally derided Atari 2600 game released a decade before. And it was that which was why Nintendo had to market the first two games involving Fox and the crew under different titles in Europe. The irony is, of course, the other Star Fox wasn't released in Europe.
    • Actually, there was an unrelated third Star Fox game released in Europe on the Commodore 64 and other home computers, the real reason for the name change.
  • The original arcade version of Defender II was released under the name Stargate. No relation to that franchise of movies and TV series, of course.
  • There was a coin-op called Star Wars ("starw" in MAME) which was a bootleg of Galaxy Wars, released in 1979, 2 years after the first Star Wars film, but before the arcade Licensed Game.
    • There's also Exidy's Star Fire, a loose adaptation of Star Wars that also predates the official arcade game.
  • Still Alive, the ending song from Portal, is completely unrelated to Still Alive (The Theme from Mirror's Edge).
    • Or Still Alive, the song by Finnish band The Crash.
    • Or even Still Alive, the song by Chilean industrial band Vigilante.
  • Covenant produced a song called "Storm" in 1996, then in 2006, Eskil Simonsson of that group sang vocals on a Front Line Assembly song titled "The Storm".
  • Strange World is the name of three different songs by Iron Maiden, Ke, and Push / M.I.K.E.
  • The Street Fighter, a series of 1970s grindhouse films starring Sonny Chiba, and Street Fighter, a series of fighting games (which even spun off some movies of its own).

T

  • Terra Nova Strike Force Centauri is an obscure 1996 Looking Glass Studios FPS. The 2011 TV series Terra Nova is completely unrelated.
  • That's What Friends Are For: a 1982 song written by Burt Bacharach and Carole Bayer Sager, or the Vulture Song from The Jungle Book.
  • The Thin Red Line was a number of things. Aside from World War II novel that was adapted into two different movies, it was also a real-life military battle during the Crimean War. It was also the debut album by Canadian rock band Glass Tiger, plus the title track which was based on the real-life battle, and it was also another single performed by Saxon.
  • Time Killer, a 1959 Hugo Award-nominated novel, is not Time Killers, a fighting game from the '90s.
  • There are at least 12 different films about the sinking of the Titanic, and out of those, at least nine are simply called Titanic (the two exceptions would be A Night to Remember and the horrible The Legend of the Titanic). Are we talking the 1954 film, the 1996 film with Catherine Zeta-Jones, the 1997 James Cameron film, or even the horrible animated movie Titanic: The Legend Goes On (often abbreviated as Titanic- The Animated Musical).
    • The TV drama to mark the centenary is also named simply Titanic.
  • Toad the Wet Sprocket was a 1990s band. The NWOBHM Metal for Muthas compilation included a song from a different band named Toad the Wet Sprocket.
  • Top Gear: Popular automotive programme on BBC Two which shares its name with an old BBC radio show and a racing game series from the '90s and early '00s.
  • 20 years after the original "Tour de France", Kraftwerk produced a completely different tune titled "Tour de France 2003". The Tour de France Soundtracks album included both that and a re-recording of the original.
  • There is an obscure MSX2 game called Twinkle Star that was released on a magazine disk. It has no apparent relation to Twinkle Star Sprites, despite also being a Cute'Em Up.

W

  • There is a porno flick called What's Love Got to Do With It? that is entirely different from the (non-porno) movie of the same name about Tina Turner, starring Angela Bassett. The porn film came out first, so it has the right to use the name and the producer of the other film can't do anything about it.
  • Wipeout is the title of two American gameshows. The BBC did versions of both, and the British version of the second one was renamed Total Wipeout to avert confusion. It's also the name of a futuristic racing video game series.
    • It's also The Surfaris's biggest hit.
    • And to make things even more confusing? The latter Wipeout game show has had a video game made of it.
  • Rednex (Yes, the same band who did "Cotton-Eyed Joe") named their only ballad hit single "Wish You Were Here" although that was already the title of one of Pink Floyd's most famous songs. There was also the once-popular title song of the 1952 musical Wish You Were Here.
    • In 2001, Incubus had a hit by that name.
    • And a bunch of other works called "Wish You Were Here", many listed at Wikipedia.
  • Wonder 3 is a compilation of three arcade games, two of which are action games while the third is an unrelated puzzle game by Capcom. It has absolutely nothing to do with an Osamu Tezuka work also called Wonder 3 in Japan, but is known elsewhere as The Amazing 3.
  • At World's End, the 3rd Pirates of the Caribbean film, and World's End, an entry in the Sandman comic book series.
    • There's also The World's End, the planned third film in Edgar Wright's Blood and Ice Cream trilogy.
  1. ↑ adapted into both an anime and a live action film
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