Verbed Title
Sometimes when a work wants to sound comedic and edgy, or maybe just easy to remember, it will adopt a title consisting of one word; a verb in the past perfect tense. Occasionally they'll even take a word that isn't a verb and make it into one. This trend seems to go in and out of style, though currently it seems to be in vogue once again.
This trope doesn't always transfer well across languages, and works will often be given more self-explanatory titles overseas. In Russian, for example, it doesn't sound any kind of comedic or edgy. That's why Tangled was released in Russia as Rapunzel: A Tangled Story.
The Verbed Title is a subtrope of One Word Title.
Examples of Verbed Title include:
Anime and Manga
- Catnapped
- S-Cry-ed
- The North American dub of Sailor Moon had an episode entitled "Treed".
Comic Books
Film
- Accepted
- Bamboozled
- Bedazzled
- Buried
- Cornered
- Deceived
- Enchanted
- Exiled
- Freaked
- Frozen
- The other Frozen (2010)
- Hoodwinked
- Marooned
- Outsourced
- Saved
- Screwed
- Scrooged: An example of the made-up-word variant.
- Tangled: Originally titled Rapunzel, it was specifically renamed to invoke this trope, hoping to appeal to a wider audience.
- The other Tangled (2001)
- Wanted
- Unleashed: Originally titled Danny the Dog, probably also changed to invoke this trope.
- Zapped (wiki)
Literature
- Terry Wogan's book Banjaxed.
- Flipped
- Fully half of the titles from Kelley Armstrong's Otherworld series: Bitten, Stolen, Haunted, Broken, Frostbitten, and Spellbound
- The short story "Called" by Desmond Warzel.
Live Action TV
- Bewitched
- Branded
- Charmed
- Chopped
- Delocated
- Infested!
- Justified
- Kidnapped
- Outnumbered
- Outsourced (TV series)
- Pranked
- Privileged
- Punk'd: Creator of the 'd variant that has begun to show up more often.
- When Jeff Bridges hosted Saturday Night Live there was a commercial for his new show Jeff'd, which was a really lame version of Punk'd.
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This isn't my dry cleaning, it's a dress. |
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- Spaced
- Tanked
- Trashed
- Undeclared
- Unwrapped
Magazines
- The now-defunct Cracked Magazine, as well as the current website Cracked.com spawned from its ashes.
Music
- The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band's song "Busted". There's also "Busted" by Harlan Howard, made famous by Ray Charles and Johnny Cash, and don't even get us started on the Phineas and Ferb song "B-U-S-T-E-D".
- And don't forget Busted.
- Son of Svengoolie's last show had the song "Cancelled."
Tabletop Games
Video Games
- Bejeweled
- Condemned
- Toonstruck
- Uncharted
- Uninvited
- The subtitles to Wario Ware games are often named this way. So far there's been: Wario Ware: Twisted!, Wario Ware: Touched!, and Wario Ware: Snapped.
- Whacked