Letters 2 Numbers

It's easy 4 numbers 2 be substituted 4 letters in chatspeak and it needs 2 be typed quickly. However, in the same vein as Xtreme Kool Letterz, numbers are often used in place of letters 2 be "hip". Most of the time, the number looks nothing like the letter it's meant 2 replace.

A subtrope of Xtreme Kool Letterz. Rel8ed 2 Lucky Charms Title and Leet Lingo.

Examples of Letters 2 Numbers include:

An1me & Manga


C0mic Books

  • WE 3 is a pretty straightforward one.
    • Was it supposed to be anything other than We Three? Wee?


F1lm

  • Often used with sequels to movies, a particular kind of Oddly-Named Sequel 2: Electric Boogaloo:
    • Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa.
    • Also, the horror classic Leprechaun: Back 2 the Hood". Which is a sequel, apparently implied by the number 2.
    • Pokémon 4 Ever
    • Journey 2: The Mysterious Island, a sequel to the 2008 movie Journey to the Center of the Earth, which can also be read without the colon as Journey to the Mysterious Island.
    • And, taking it to a ridiculous level, Two Fast Two Furious .
      • At least the third film wasn't called 3 Fast 3 Furious. Though that didn't stop theatres from marking it as that on their marquees. (Or the inevitable NewgroundsPoop.)
    • Now in pre-production at Disney and Summit, Step Up 4Ever.
  • Cradle 2 the Grave. "Born 2 the life. True 2 the code. Bad 2 the bone."
  • Among the pronunciations preferred for Se7en is "Se-seven-en".
    • Due to L33t Sp33k, it can be read as "Seten", which is disturbingly similar to "Satan".
    • Additionally, some pronounce it "Se-en", skipping the 7 entirely.
  • "Thir-thirteen-en-ghosts" (13 Ghosts). Particularly heinous because the movie is a 2001 remake of the normally-spelled 13 Ghosts.
  • Also to be noted is Lucky Number Slevin, where the L is an upside down 7, though how we're supposed to pronounce that is anyone's guess. Lucky Number Su-sevin, perhaps?
  • 2ge+ her, a comedic film that spoofed the boy band phenomenon. It was the first film ever produced directly for air on MTV.
  • 5iveGirls, presumably pronounced Five-ive Girls, a direct-to-video horror movie about five schoolgirls and Ron Perlman.
  • In Bandslam, the name of one of the main characters is Sa5m (the 5 is silent).
  • Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem.
  • The working title for Tron: Legacy was TR2N, overlapping with Leet Lingo.
  • Scr3am and SCRE4M.
  • An awful lot of sequels will pun off of "2 / Too"; a few more will offer "3 / 3D" (not a pun at all, actually), and a very rare few will utilize "4 / Four."
  • 5nal Destination
  • 5ive Days to Midnight, a 2004 sci-fi miniseries which reads weirdly ("sive?" "five-ive?")


Liter4ture

  • Wyg&, ¼maine, @kins and S&erson: all names from Bester's The Demolished Man (1953).
  • Thre3.
  • A children's book has a character named Susan who changes her name to, well, the title says it all: My Name is Sus5an Smith. The 5 is Silent.
  • Snow Crash has a minor character named Da5id. (Roman numerals, you see.)
  • The Discworld novel Soul Music had a band named "&U", a parody of the rock band U2.
  • Not actually in the book, but on the cover of Thirteen Reasons Why, the title is often spelled "Th1rteen R3asons Why".


Live-Acti0n TV

  • Numb3rs is an example.
  • In the Back to Earth miniseries for Red Dwarf, the license plate on the Starbug automobile reads ST4R BUG. In a bonus webisode, Chris Barrie comments "You know what I always say? Wanna tell people you're a pillock? Get a personalised number plate."
  • abc has Reven8e (Reven-eight-e?)


Mu5ic

You should never (Oh no)
 Write words using numbers
 Unless you're seven, or your name is Prince (Everybody wise up)

  • The album Tr3s Lunas by Mike Oldfield.
  • There was a boyband called 5ive. I think they changed their name to be more sensible.
    • The Jackson Five had their name spelled with the numeral on occasion.
  • They spelled out the number, but in That Thing You Do the band originally called themselves "The Oneders"; their manager made them change it to "The Wonders" because DJs were calling them "The Oh-nee-ders."
  • Avril Lavigne, Sk8er boi. There are no words.
  • Inverted: the band 3OH!3, who replace the number "0" with an interjection.
  • Boyz II Men
  • Tom Lehrer: "I am reminded at this point of a fellow I used to know whose name was Henry, only to give you an idea of what a individualist he was, he spelled it H-E-N-3-R-Y ? the three was silent, you see."
  • The Veronicas: "4ever"
  • MC Hammer: "2 Legit 2 Quit"
  • Nine Inch Nails, Year Zero remix album Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D. This is the official title.
  • Van Canto, One to Ten:

- Once we have been told a secret
- Too risky to know

- Three years we tried to keep silent
—For to save our homes
  • Probably as a nod to Prince's influence, Ween title songs this way on occasion. "Pumpin' 4 The Man" and "Don't Get 2 Close (2 My Fantasy)" for instance.
  • Alice Cooper did the Oddly-Named Sequel 2: Electric Boogaloo variant with his Welcome To My Nightmare sequel Welcome 2 My Nightmare.
  • Sander van Doorn's ELEVE11.
  • Megadeth's Thirteen is styled Th1rt3en on the cover. It's also their thirteenth studio album, and has thirteen songs (not counting bonus tracks for itunes and Japan).
  • "Le7els", the single of Swedish house music producer Avicii.
  • Canadian house music producer Deadmau5.
  • 90s Brit dance pop band 2wo Third3.

Vi2eo Games

  • Left 4 Dead ostensibly has a reason for doing this, but it would be a blatant lie if we said the marketing team didn't use the 4 in the title for this reason.
  • Some pins in The World Ends With You (e.g. Go 2 Hell) use this.
    • The math-obsessed Minamimoto takes this a bit further than usual. "(It's x 2) die!"
    • The chapter titles are not exempt (e.g. Who 2 trust).
  • Wip3out and Driv3r. Pronounced, presumably, "Whip Three Out" and "Driv Three Are"
  • The fourth Thief game has the working title THI4F.
  • THE iDOLM@STER.
  • Dive II Hunt, a flash game featuring a moogle named Sorbet who also appeared in Final Fantasy XII.
  • F3AR.
  • Ready 2 Rumble.
  • Shadow Man 2: econd Coming... errr... Shadowman: 2econd Coming
  • Silent Hill Origins is actually "Silent Hill 0(as in Zero)rigins".
  • The first trailer for Modern Warfare 3 ran on this: "Am3rica, 3ngland, Franc3, G3rmany"
  • Yume 2kki, the fan-made sequel to the identically pronounced Yume Nikki (the Japanese phoneme that represents the number two is "ni").
  • In Godzilla: Monster of Monsters!, most of the cheat codes are phrases with the first letter O replaced with a zero.


We8comics

  • AIs in Schlock Mercenary sometimes use numbers to substitute for letters, and even whole syllables, in their names; for example, "5er0" (pronounced "Ver-None") instead of Vernon.
  • There's a site called Squirrelworks that does this as well as often invoking z for plural s and other text speak especially in their main comic Coz/Effect.
  • Last Res0rt has it right in the title, though Word of God justifies it on the basis of having a hard time securing a domain name in the "correct" spelling.
  • Sequential Art has four Squirrel Girls, who were subjects of a secret lab experiment. Their names all translate to a mix of letters and numbers, which are also color coded. Scarlet = 5C4R137, Jade = J4D3, Amber = 4M83R, Violet = V10L37.
  • Many of the trolls in Homestuck do this, usually in a way that fits into some sort of Numerological Motif.
    • One particular fancomic, A Complete Waste of Time, has a character with an inventive use for this trope. Rick's typing quirk consists of him replacing the first letter of a word with a numeral (from zero to ten) whose initial phoneme(s) most closely resembles the word's. 7o 4or 8xample, 3hese 1ords were most likely written by him.


Web Ori6inal


Wes7ern Animation


R3al Life

  • L3375P34|<, d00D!
  • 7up briefly made a beverage called dnL (look at it upside-down), which was basically 7up with caffeine. Also green in a clear white bottle.
  • Number plates/license plates.
  • There was once a flyer at a videogame store for a "4Play" marketing campaign, which let you know about special offers at that store. This was aimed at the 6- to 15-year-old crowd. Given that this happened in a non-anglophone country, they are probably oblivious to the fact that the word doesn't means what they think it means.
    • Channel 4 (UK) has/had a late night music show named 4Play.
    • G4 (USA) has a not-so-late night show named 4Play, which started out as a game news/review program.
  • The production company 4KidsEntertainment.
  • Skateboard clothing company 323K13(upsidedown)7 (Ezekiel).
  • There is a shirt that has D 1 4 M 0 N 4 5 (Diamonds) written on it.
  • The 2econd Stage Theatre in New York.
  • General language/overseas culture examples:
    • URLs with numbers replacing words are surprisingly popular in China. Probably helps that they're easy to type and remember.
    • In the Japanese language, there's a LOT of ways[1] to replace kanas (and sometimes whole words) with numbers. Remember this when looking at Japanese screen-names and such with seemingly random numbers in them.
    • Often when someone is trying to speak Arabic online without an Arabic language pack, they'll use numbers in the place of letters of the Arabic alphabet. Maybe not a true example though, because those letters don't exist in the English alphabet and are usually represented in print by special punctuation that the computer may also not be able to make.
  1. ↑ due to containing native, Chinese, and English pronunciations of numbers
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