Cover Drop

...What? It was The Silver Age of Comic Books.

A scene that gives meaning to the image depicted with the title of something, such as the cover art of a book, or the title screen or main menu of a video game. Basically, the graphical version of Title Drop.

Some title screens or covers simply have no alternate meanings to interpret, such as a splash screen or a portrait of the main character. Not this one. This one shows something mind screwy and/or nightmarish that has no discernible meaning to the premise of the series. Or perhaps it depicts something like a weird character or object we haven't seen yet, or a scene that's highly unlikely to happen.

Of course, each time we pick up the book or boot up the game, we see these images, and it becomes burned into our subconscious so much so that we're constantly waiting for it to actually happen and wondering what it means.

...And then comes the Cover Drop, and suddenly it all makes sense. We finally get to see and understand the (usually) profound meaning of the title screen.

This must be executed exactly like a Title Drop. Meaning:

• The cover art is not readily understandable. It has to be more than just a cast picture or a collage, unless it depicts something unusual.
• The meaning or identity of the cover art is suddenly made clear in a moment of revelation.

Examples of Cover Drop include:

Comic Books

• The cover of Watchmen displays a close up of an image which repeats throughout the story, the Comedian's bloodstained smiley button, although it is not readily apparent that this is what is being shown until it appears in the novel.
  • In fact, every cover of the original comics (seen as the chapter screens in the graphic novel) are a close-up of an object featured in the first panel of each respective chapter.

Film

• The green apple on the disc for Stranger Than Fiction. The ending to Eiffel's story is inspired by one.
• The poster art for Jeepers Creepers is taken from the last shot in the movie, when the Creeper peers through a hole in Darry's head Also, the poster for the second film has a the imprint of a face on something membranous; it shows up in the film when the Creeper's wing wraps around a guy and decapitates him.
• The film version of Twilight has a scene where Edward catches an apple in both hands, mirroring the novel's cover.
• As weird as this poster for a Brazilian film is, it actually happens (It's a Long Story, but involves the protagonist going back in time to his prom, which is a costume party, dressed as an astronaut).

Literature

• Eldest had a red dragon on the cover. Those who were eager to see it found that it it didn't appear until the third-to-last chapter in the book, accompanied by some crazy twists and cliffhangers (Some a little too crazy...)
• F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby has a cover image featuring a disembodied woman's face floating above an urban skyline, created by Francis Cugat. It was completed before the novel was, and Fitzgerald liked it so much that he wrote it into the novel, referring to the face of the character Daisy Buchanan.
• The novel Manhattan Transfer shows the titular city encased in a dome and being lifted into the sky. Turns out this quite literally happens around chapter two.
• The covers of all of Lisanne Norman's Sholan Alliance Novels are based on a scene from the book.
• The cover of Man-Kzin Wars III is very nicely based on a scene from one of the stories inside
  • The Poul Anderson Novel Inconstant Star is based almost exactly on the opening scene of the book.
• A notable aversion: Douglas Adams was going to put "a Brockian Ultra-Walrus with an embarrassing past" in So Long And Thanks For All The Fish, pretty much purely because the cover had already been comissioned and it had a walrus on it, but he couldn't get it to work.
• Each of the covers for The Wheel of Time series depicts a specific scene from the book. But early covers went so amiss with the details that they were barely recognisable.

Music

• Nightwish's Imaginaerum album: The song "Last Ride of the Day" contains the lines, "Scent of fresh-mown grass in the morning sun/Open theme park gates waiting for."
• Green Day's American Idiot, "She's A Rebel": "She's a symbol of resistance, and she's holding on my heart like a handgrenade".
  • The music video for "21 Guns" builds up to the kiss that is on the album cover of 21st Century Breakdown.
• The title track of Funkadelic's Maggot Brain: "For I knew I had to rise above it all, or drown in my own shit."
• The Ten Thousand Fists album by Disturbed with the song of the same name. "You will remember the night you were struck by / the sight of / Ten Thousand Fists in the air!".
• The cover image of Katy Perry's Teenage Dream appears in the video to "California Gurls".
• The lyric "return to sender" from Annie's "Anthonio" appears as a stamp on the limited Edition single cover.

Tabletop Games

• Wraeththu is not one of the three worst RPGs of all time, but tends to come up once those have been addressed. Its cover features a broken dagger and some kind of strange ornamental flower. Inside, it transpires that the game is about a post-apocalyptic all-male hermaphroditic race of Bishonen who are better than you at everything, human. Their penises are shaped like flowers.

Theatre

• It wasn't until after the poster art for 1776 was created that "The Egg" was written and added to the show.

Video Games

• Spore. The main menu screen depicts a galaxy from which you can select planets to play on, giving it the appearance of just a cool-looking file select screen. However, when you get to the space stage, you will find that the galaxy is very real; you've been playing in it the entire time, and it really is that big!
  • which file you select actually changes what planet you start on.
• Metroid Prime. The title screen depicts something that looks like some kind of cancerous, tentacle-sprouting growth floating in a bloodstream. Then, at the very end of the game, you find out that it's the inside of the final boss's brain.
  • And again with Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. The Main Menu screen depicts something like a freaky-looking microscopic organism floating in blue plasma. On the final level of the game, you find out that it's the baby form of a Leviathan, which are the huge meteor-like creatures which have been crashing into planets and infecting them with Phazon for the past three games. Also, the shiny blue planet on the title screen is Phaaze, a living planet that is the source of all Phazon, which is also the final level.
• The title screen of Metal Gear Solid 4 depicted the beginning of the final end-of-game cutscene. Snake stands in front of Big Boss's grave, then he puts a gun in his mouth, ready to kill himself in order to eradicate the degraded and soon-to-become-a-global-epidemic FOXDIE virus inside him.
• Final Fantasy does this a lot:
  • Final Fantasy VI's logo shows a figure riding Magitek Armor, shown during the opening scene to be the female protagonist. The logo is also red and when the game begins descends among thunderclouds and rises up in flames. That should be your first clue the game's first half does not end well.
  • Final Fantasy VII's logo show Meteor streaming down to hit the planet with the Black Materia in its wake.
  • Final Fantasy VIII shows Squall and Rinoa embracing which occurs once Squall rescues Rinoa from imprisonment late in the game. The broad brush strokes also slightly resemble wings, Rinoa's thematic icon and a reference to her Sorceress powers.
  • Final Fantasy IX has a glowing crystal in its logo which appears in the final dungeon as the source of all life in the world.
  • Final Fantasy X's logo shows Yuna performing the Sending, a ritual seen throughout the game. The title screen also shows the party camping in the ruins of Zanarkand, due to the first 2/3s of the game or so being told in a How We Got Here fashion.
  • Final Fantasy XI's is a bit nebulous, but a good interpretation is that it depicts a full alliance in combat, which many long-time players will tell you is a definite Crowning Moment of Awesome.
  • Final Fantasy XII's logo shows Gabranth with his head thrown back and his swords held out to the side. Though the scene doesn't appear in-game exactly, Dissidia Final Fantasy has Gabranth assuming the pose at the end of his EX Burst as a Mythology Gag.
    • A similar thing occurred with Final Fantasy II. The original Nintendo logo had Firion holding his Blood Sword in front of his face. This never appeared in the game, but during his final confrontation against the Emperor in Dissidia, he assumes this exact same stance.
  • Final Fantasy XIII's logo shows the ending, a destroyed Cocoon suspended in free-fall stopped by pillars of crystal consisting of Vanille, Fang and Ragnarok. It shows up even earlier, too, in the form of the pendant Snow gives Serah.
• The title screen of Super Mario World showed an Attract Mode demo of "Groovy", a super-secret optional level that's difficult to get to.
• Variation: Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow's game-over screen is an exact match to one of the paintings in the castle.
• All three Xenosaga games show confusing images during the attract loop. The first one turns out to be the Zohar. The second one shows the E.S. Asher being built. The third shows the titular Zarathustra.
• The cover of Kingdom Hearts shows a heart-shaped moon in the background with the main characters sitting atop a tower. The significance of the moon doesn't become apparent until the third game, where it is revealed to be the entity "Kingdom Hearts". The city also resembles the World That Never Was, the world in which the Kingdom Hearts moon is seen.
• In Hitman: Blood Money, the main menu shows Agent 47 lying in statee in a church, apparently dead. This turns out to be the last mission of the game.
• The title and Game Over screens of BlazBlue display an odd seal that seems to be a fusion of Ragna's seal and Nu's. Why such a seal would appear on the Game Over screen becomes obvious after clearing Ragna's story. But it's not until Ragna activates his Azure Grimoire in the true ending that its exact meaning is revealed.
• When released on the SNES, Chrono Trigger had a cover that did not at all reflect the game's content for a few reasons ^{[dead link]} . It has Crono, Frog, and Marle batting the Heckran on top of Death Peak. The problem is that the Heckran is fought in a cave at a time when Frog is not in your party, Marle is shooting a fireball (when she is An Ice Person), and Crono is dead when you go to Death Peak. In the DS re-release, however, there is an added snow area much like Death Peak, and a Heckran recolor can be found and fought there. The party in question's Triple Tech will let Marle use something similar in appearance to fire... and does 1 damage against said enemy.
• Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne depicts the Demi-Fiend in front of an army of silhouetted demons in the title screen. In the True Demon ending, the game ends with that same shot as the Demi-Fiend leads his army of demons to war against God.
• All three of the God of War games did this. In the first two, the title screens turn out to be the first frame of the opening cutscenes, and in the third one, it shows Kratos silhouetted against the world after it's been plunged into eternal chaos, which just so happens to be the last cutscene of the game.
• The box art for Uncharted 2 shows Nathan Drake bleeding, beaten, and dangling by his fingertips from a derailed train that's gone off a cliff. Guess what happens to him halfway through the game.
  • The box art of Uncharted 3 shows Nathan in a desert holding a assault rifle, with behind him a crashed plane still on fire. the same scene happens around around the last few chapters of the game. The game's title screen is an assault rifle sticking of the desert, which is the same assault rifle that Nathan is holding in the box art and picks up in the same scene of the game.
• Seen very briefly for Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, the photo on the cover can be found later when you go back to your own house. It's not frozen over, however.

Webcomics

• The Sluggy Freelance storyline "bROKEN" has a cover that shows a silhouette of the main character Torg, standing over another character bent over on the ground. That pose crops up subtly at least four times with different characters in the role. The image's importance turns out to be that it's part of a memory Torg is repressing to cope with the deaths of his friends.
• A few Gunnerkrigg Court chapter covers. The face on Chapter 9 belongs to a statue in Eglamore's office. The wall from Chapter 16 is from Annie's old bedroom at the hospital.
  • In a combination with Title Drop, the chapter title "Fire Spike" depicted only a stylised symbol of fire, leaving its exact meaning unclear until it turned out to be, indeed, an enormous spike of flame created by a very upset Annie.
• The El Goonish Shive arc Sister II begins with a cover that has a shadowed crouching figure with angel wings behind it. In the second storyline the figure is revealed to be Abraham encased in stone and in the ninth storyline the wings are revealed to belong to Nanase using her, just acquired, Guardian Angel spell.