Episode Finishes the Title

A title convention. The show's name is the first half of a sentence, and is completed by whatever is featured in the episode. For example, "The Troper's Guide to... Random Trope".

These titles frequently use ellipsis (but not dramatic ones) or colons.

A subtrope of/related to Idiosyncratic Episode Naming. Compare This Trope Is X and The One With......, examples on This Very Wiki. Contrast Character Name and the Noun Phrase, where there might be some overlap.

Examples of Episode Finishes the Title include:

Advertising

• There was a UK campaign for the soft drink Tizer which was a variation on this trope. Each commercial would always end with an enigmatic word, e.g. "Hypno", "Bap", or "Trauma". The key to these ads was that all the words could be suffixed with the word "Tizer" to make a longer word.

Anime and Manga

• Each chapter of Yotsuba&! is called "Yotsuba & [whatever]".
• Kore wa Zombie Desu ka? (Is This a Zombie?) has every episode title answer that question. Such as "No, I'm a Vampire Ninja", etc.

Comics

• The full title of every one of Alan Moore's D.R. & Quinch stories for 2000 AD followed this trend with such tales as "D.R. & Quinch Have Fun On Earth," "D.R. & Quinch Get Drafted," "D.R. & Quinch Go To Hollywood," etc.
• Marvel's "What If..." series.

Literature

• Shows up in many Do-It-Yourself book series, like:
  • The Complete Idiot's Guide To...
  • ... For Dummies (which actually goes the other way)
• Also fairly common in children's book series. For example, The Berenstain Bears, which have title like The Barenstein Bears Count their Blessings or ...and Too Much TV.
  • The quintessential series in France that fits the trope is Martine.
• The Hitchhiker's Guide To... was a series of travel books for those relying on the transport of strangers. While seeing Europe this way, Douglas Adams imagined extending the book a very long way out.
• Other such travel guide titles include ... on x Dollars A Day (also mentioned in HGTTG) and The Rough Guide To...

Live Action TV

• Two episodes of Lost are called "...In Translation" and "...And Found".
• In Search Of...
• Inverted by the first episode of Angel, named "City of..."
• The new Australian talk show, A Quiet Word—sample episode "A Quiet Word with Bill Bailey".
• A series of sketches on A Bit of Fry and Laurie parodied talk shows with titles like this. Instances include "Trying to Borrow a Fiver Off ...", "Introducing My Grandfather To ...", "Realising I've Given the Wrong Directions To ...", "Photocopying My Genitals With ...", and "Flying a Light Aeroplane Without Having Had Any Formal Instruction With ..."
• Every episode of Bottom has a title that can be prefixed with "Bottom": "Smells", "Gas", "Apocalypse", "'s Up", "Accident", "Digger", "Burglary", "Culture", "Holy", "'s Out", "Hole", "Terror", "Break", "Dough", "Finger" and "Carnival".
• Each episode of Chuck is titled "...vs. [something]".
• Two Broke Girls starts each of its episode titles with "And...".
• The title of each episode of Everybody Hates Chris starts off with the phrase "Everybody Hates".
• The Funny Side Of..., a BBC show in which Clive Anderson looks at bloopers and funny moments in a different TV genre.
• The Monk episodes were always titled Mr. Monk and the ... or Mr. Monk goes to ... and so on. The books follow this trend.
• Eric Sykes' BBC sitcom, Sykes and...

Music

• Album titles from Me First and the Gimme Gimmes often (but not always) are or start with a verb, forming a sentence where the band name is the subject: ...Have a Ball, ...Are a Drag, ...Turn Japanese, ...Ruin Johnny's Bar Mitzvah (a live album).
• D Ream's albums On Vol.1 and World.

Radio

• Frank Muir Goes Into..., where Frank Muir looked at humorous quotes and archive clips on a given subject.

Web Comics

• Zombie & Mummy has all its titles in the format of "ZOMBIE & MUMMY [do stuff]".

Web Original

• Technically Let's Plays are a genre, but this shows up often enough to get a mention. Most LPers follow the convention of naming their LPs "Let's Play: Something"; for example, "Let's Play: The All the Tropes Wiki Drinking Game."
• The Cinema Snob has a series called "Brad Tries...," wherein Brad drinks various unsettling things. The episodes names go, "Brad Tries Cocaine," etc.
• The So You Want To namespace on This Very Wiki.

Western Animation

• Most of the episodes of The Magic School Bus form a complete sentence with the show title. Mostly of the "[verb]s [object]" form, like "Plays Ball" or "Spins a Web," but many others still form a descriptive phrase: "Inside Ralphie," "Wet All Over." In the case of "Cold Feet" an apostrophe would have to be added to make it fit, as a possessive. Only one episode fully deviated from this pattern: "The Busasaurus."
• Dan Vs., obviously, names each episode after whatever it is that's ticked off Dan in that episode, like "Canada" or "The Dentist".
• Wonder Pets. Usually "The Wonder Pets Save the [Animal in Trouble]".
• All the Nickelodeon episodes of Doug have titles beginning with Master Funnie's first name, as do most of the Disney-produced ones (exceptions: "Judy, Judy, Judy," "Judy's Big Admission," "Patti's Dad Dilemma" and the Quailman episodes).
• Similar to the Dan Vs. example above, episodes of The Tick (animation) almost always follow the naming formula "vs. (insert villain, inconvenience or random plot point here)". The DVD releases have followed this pattern by naming the sets "vs. Season (number)"

Other

• The drinking game "Never Have I Ever".