Lousy Alternate Titles


Sometimes titles just don't work. They're too short, too long, too vague, or just plain wrong. So we are glad those aren't the titles for certain tropes.

But What If...

Dun dun dadaldadalduun!

...if they were?

This is where we think of the worst possible titles for existing tropes.

Compare Laconic, Renamed Tropes.

Examples are alphabetized by trope name:

To begin...

  • This trope is called Lousy Alternate Titles because Goofing Around By Spelling Out The Meanings Of The Tropes With Profanity And Bold Inflation is too long.
    • And it's still shorter than What If Encyclopedia Dramatica Wrote Our Trope Titles?.
    • Also, Really, Really Lousy Alternate Titles That Are Way Too Long And Usually Complain About Tropes, Tropers, And Pretty Much Everything is too hypocritical.

A

  • It's called America Saves the Day instead of America! Fuck Yeah! because we try to avoid swearing in titles unless it's absolutely necessary.
  • It's called Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking because Furries Loli-Porn And Dubs is too much of a gratuitous Take That to the anime Fandom. And furries, of course.
  • Artifact Title is much snappier than The Title Used To Make Sense, And Then The Series Changed In A Way That Doesn't Fit With The Title, But We're Sticking With That Name Anyway For The Sake Of Familiarity.
  • It's called Ascended Glitch because We Didn't Mean To Do This, But The Fans Liked It So We Kept It In is a little too honest.
  • It's called Ass Kicks You because Butt Butt would have been too much of a pun, even for this site.
  • It's called Ass Pull because it describes more payloads than Deus Excreta, which in turn would be confused with "Deus ex Creta", which means "god from Crete".

B

  • Better Than It Sounds is called that because Making Good Fiction Seem Like Crap And Making You Guess Which Fiction It Is is a lot to type.
    • And also because Adventure Ho is too specific to one show.
  • They call it Big No because nobody can remember just how many letters are in NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!
    • Ditto with the other Big tropes:
      • Big Yes (YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!),
      • Big "Never!" (NEVERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!),
      • Big "What?" (WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATTTT!!!),
      • Big OMG (OMGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!), and
      • Big "Shut Up!" (Shut UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUPPPPPPPPP!!!).
  • It's called Black Sheep Hit because it's shorter than If We'd Known This Was Going To Be The Only Song You Remember Us For, We Never Would Have Done It.

C

D

  • Damsel Scrappy is the name, since Useless Chick Who Does Nothing But Get Kidnapped And Scream proved to be a tad long-winded, and it's more polite than Dumbass In Distress.
  • Dark World is a better title than The Veil since not everyone has played Wolfenstein 3D and it's far from being a good example.
  • It's called Darth Wiki because on the one hand, someone would have objected to This Is Where We Put Our Answer to /b/tards, and on the other hand, B is too short.
  • It's called A Date with Rosie Palms because it turns out This Hand Of Mine Glows With An Awesome Power isn't actually an example.
  • It's called Demonization because Lying About Shows You Don't Like is only part of it.
  • Directionally Solid Platforms is definitely a better title than The Contra Effect since Contra is known for other things too.
  • Discredited Trope is nicer than Stop Using This Bullshit Trope, You Dumb Fucktards!
  • Remember That Scene In That Disney Movie Where The Chick Sings And Animals Come Out To Join Her? Well Look We're Parodying That! Aren't We Clever? is a little too cheeky for its own good. Disney Creatures of the Farce works a lot better.
  • We went with Dissimile because it's shorter, catchier, and more punny than "And By 'Metaphorically', I Mean 'Get Your Coat.'"
  • It's called The Dog Was the Mastermind because The Dog That You Saw On The Way To The Crime Scene And Was The Least Likely Being To Do It Got You Into This Mess can cause breathlessness by itself.

E

  • Eat the Dog was less punny than Menchi Solution.
  • Ending Fatigue is called that because The Point Where It Becomes Obvious That Someone Was Paying The Writers By The Word may not always be accurate.
    • It also sounded better than You've Already Killed The Bad Guy, Just End The Fucking Thing Already!.
  • Entry Pimp sounds cheerful while Tropers Trying To Shove What They Like And/Or Make Down Our Throats No Matter What is a bit mean.
  • Exactly What It Says on the Tin is preferable to The Name Says It All, Really.
  • Extreme Omnivore is less obscure than Zoidberg Fuel.

F

  • Fan Hater is a fairly precise, short and to the point name. It serves the purpose much better than I Can't Believe Anyone Actually Likes This Heap Of Shit! It's The Worst Thing In The World, And If You Like It, You're An Absolute Tool Who Has No Taste And You're Not Worth Any Time, Effort, Love, Pity Or Emotion, So Why Don't You Just Go Away And Die?
  • We call it Fetish Fuel because we couldn't exactly call it Stuff That Is Not Porn But We Still Get Off On.
  • Finger Gun could've been called Finger Bang, until it became a repetitious chorus in a South Park song.
  • It's called Flying Brick because Harder Better Faster Stronger doesn't mention the flying part.
    • Harder Better Faster Stronger Flyer is a better alternate title, but a bit long.
  • It's called Franchise Zombie because I Hate All Of You For Liking This But I Have To Make More Of It! sounds downright insulting.
    • And Oh God, I'm So Tired Of Working On This Show, I Really Want To Move On To Something Else, But I've Still Got Two Years On My Contract, And I Can't Afford To Break It. is simply too long.
  • Funbag Airbag makes a nice rhyme, unlike Clash On The Big Breasts, which would make anyone familiar with Final Fantasy V groan.

G

  • Germanic Depressives is nice and punny. Sour Krauts is equally punny, but pretty offensive. And we really don't want to offend those guys. On account of them being so grim.
  • We call it "Get Known" because This Is A Hell Of A Lot Simpler Than Registering just doesn't have that nice ring to it.
  • We choose Giant Space Flea From Nowhere because What The Heck Is That Boss Doing Here!? would be too hard to use as a noun.
  • It's Giver of Lame Names because Leonard Of Quirm Naming is too obscure for some.
    • And while Self Demonstration is always fun, That Guy Who Always Names Things With Stupidly Long And Overly Detailed Descriptions Of Their Function is just a bit unwieldy.
  • Good Wings, Evil Wings is better than Good Wings Bad Wings since the latter would be confused about wings on mythological creatures being impractical.
  • Gretzky Has the Ball is less confrontational than If You're Going To Write About Sports, Do The Fucking Research Or All The Nitpicky Sports Fans Will Complain About All This Stuff You Got Wrong.

H

  • Hollywood Tactics isn't named Just [A] Bunch Of Droids because not everyone knows what JBOD is and can get the Double Entendre. And besides while Star Wars is major offender, it's not just about how the droids fight.
  • Hollywood Tourette's was used instead of Tourettes Fucking Cunt Shit On My Asshole Syndrome or Tourettes Isn't Just About Swearing, You Idiots.
  • It's called Hype Aversion because You Should Avoid This Like A Plague Or Else You'll Turn Into A Mindless, Drooling Dipshit Like The Masses Who Watch This Shallow, Piece-Of-Shit Show For A Fad With Its Over-Inflated Hype Clogging Up The Networks Like The Hardened Fat In The Arteries Of The Pathetic, Lifeless Losers Who Watch It, aside from just being plain cruel, would make you run out of breath saying it.

I

  • It's called I Am Not Shazam because that's a somewhat less confrontational title than That's The Name Of The Work, Not The Name Of The Character, You Stupid Idiot.
  • Idiot Ball has a ring to it. Characters Acting Like Idiots Because The Writers Could Not Think Of A Plausible Reason To Have The Plot Happen Otherwise doesn't.
  • It's called Innocent Fanservice Girl because Vague Excuse To Have a Naked Girl Stay Naked was too long.
  • We call it Internet Backdraft because Flame Barbeque is a bit too ambiguous.
    • And accurate as Things Which Don't Ultimately Matter Or Warrant Anger But Which Nerds Get Way Too Hostile About Anyway is, it is potentially offensive or alienating to TV Tropes' readership, an audience consisting largely of said nerds.
  • It's called Incest Subtext because Bro Yay came out wrong.
  • I'll Be in My Bunk is short and subtle. That Was So Hot That I'm Going Somewhere Private To Jerk Off is more clear, but way too long, and a bit Not Safe for Work.
  • Intentional Engrish for Funny is shorter than It Funny To On Purpose Make English As Though Translated In Badly Way From Other Language.

J

K

L

M

  • May–December Romance is a good, short title. Its alternate title, Wait, He's How Old? And She's Only A Fucking Teenager? That. Is. Just. WRONG! isn't, and is judgmental as hell, to boot.
  • Oh, and for the last time, it's Memetic Mutation, not I Can Haz Over Nine Thousand Barrel Rolls In SPARTA With An Awesome Face On My Dakka Gun That My Pretty Cool Heavy Carries Till Hell Freezes Over And Gets Chuck Norris To Use The Boost To Get Through The Game Which I Lost So I Have To Burn The Rope Until Stupid Sexy Flanders Flanders And Rickroll Make Brian Blessed Look Like The Love Child Of Flonne And Candle Jack Who Secretly Set Up Us The Bomb
  • Mind Screw is probably a less vulgar name than Oh My Fucking God What The Hell Just Fucking Happened!!??
  • It's called Misaimed Marketing because Complaining About Toys You Don't Like really only accounts for a third of the page.
  • Mondegreen was chosen over Do You Need A Fucking Hearing Aid? Those Are The Wrong Lyrics!
  • It's called Money, Dear Boy because it's more to the point than How On Earth Did They Get That Actor To Agree To Be In That Piece Of Shit?
  • We choose Monster Clown because not everyone is familiar with The Kefka,
    • And This Is What I Saw Clowns As In My Childhood would be somewhat offensive to some people.
  • Mooks could have been called Those Nameless Guys That Are There For The Heroes To Beat Easily.
  • It's called More Popular Spinoff because Did You Know That This Show Is Actually A Spinoff? is too long a title.
  • Most Fanfic Writers Are Girls is called that because nobody had the foresight to call it Oh, Christ, Why Did We Even Start This Page? And naming it Complaining About Fandoms You Don't Like because Yucky Girl Cooties has Ruined Them Forever would just start the mother of all flame wars. It's also very long.
  • It's called Mukokuseki because The Sort Of Art Style That Makes People from Predominantly White Countries Think All Asian Anime Characters Look White Because They're Used To White Being "Default" and Racial Minorities Being Drawn in a Way that Emphasizes How They Aren't White is a paragraph in itself.
    • And Cauc Asian was too punny.

N

  • It's called Narm because Totally Fucking Up A Dramatic Moment is a bit much to type.
  • Nightmare Fuel has a better ring than How Bad Does Horror Have To Be That We Need A Trope Page For When It Actually Works.
  • Nightmare Retardant sounds better than You Call This Shit Frightening?
  • No Endor Holocaust could be named Jossified Killing, but it wouldn't reflect its usual scale and how glaring it sometimes happen to be.
  • We call it No Indoor Voice instead of THE TRADITIONAL ROYAL CANTERLOT VOICE, because we don't want to scare off Fluttershy again.
  • Nothing Butt an Index is a cute pun for a title. Indexed In The Butt would just be nasty.
  • We called it N-Word Privileges because many of us don't have the privileges to write Nigger Is A Four Letter Word properly.

O

P

Q

  • Quieter Than Silence is shorter than True Silence Is Indistinguishable From The Speakers Not Working.

R

  • We ended up going with Rambling Old Man Monologue because its a little bit more concise than the title we wanted to use, which was Stories Old Men Tell To Youngsters Which Don't Really Go Anywhere But For Some Reason Nobody Interrupts. Why I Remember One Of These Stories... Boy It Was A Doozy... It Started When My Uncle Sammy, Or Sambo As We Used To Call Him, But You Can't Call Him That Anymore Because Of Those Damn PC Police... Anyway Sambo Was Riding A Chicken Down To The General Store Because Our Horse Was Laid Up With The Flu...
  • Reality Ensues is a little more polite and way shorter than They May Use This Trope a Million Times in Fiction, But This is What Would Really Happen in Real Life.
  • Refrain From Assuming is much better, shorter, punnier, and more polite than I Know They Repeat That Phrase A Thousand Times In The Chorus, But For The Last Time, It's Not The Name Of The Fucking Song!
  • Renamed Tropes gets the point across better than What Were The Tropers Smoking When Naming These Tropes!?. Besides, we don't want to wantonly accuse people of smoking.
  • It's called Rhyming with Itself because honestly, Instead Of Using A Word That Rhymes, They Just Repeated The Original Word takes way too much time to type out.
  • Ridiculously-Human Robots is less judgemental than Stupid Scientists Who Make Robots Impractical In The Name Of Humanlikeness.
  • Rule 34 is shorter than Are You Kidding Me? People Actually Draw Dirty Pictures Of My Little Pony And Care Bears? Really?
  • We call it Rule-Abiding Rebel, because Writer Who Doesn't Have The Balls To Tell The Story He Really Wanted To In The First Place is just mean. And it's not always the writer's fault, anyway.
  • Running the Asylum is less rude than Who The Fuck Hired These Fanboys?.

S

  • Sarcasm Mode and Sincerity Mode are better names to make Pot Holes to than We Must Know If What You Said Is The Exact Opposite Of What You Mean.
  • We chose Scam Religion because Fast-Food Faith sounds just much more offensive. Not to mention it would be confusable with an actual religion involving fast-food.
  • Shark Pool is called that because You Could Just Shoot Him, Y'Know is kind of already a trope.
  • Shockwave Stomp is a better name than Night Terror's Fury due to Fan Myopia.
  • We went with Slouch of Villainy because Chillin' Like A Villain wasn't specific enough
  • We can't rename Smashing Hallway Traps of Doom PION since the short form of mispronunciation Piston by the protagonist's sidekick isn't familiar to these who have played the Ultimate Platformer 3.
  • It's called The Smurfette Principle because we couldn't stop giggling after reading Fella Ratio.
  • It's called SNK Boss because some would object to Total Bullshit Boss Who Uses Cheap Moves All The Time.
  • Somewhere a Palaeontologist Is Crying was chosen because Somewhere A Paleontologist Is Standing On A Chair, Giving The Middle Finger, And Screaming "FUCK YOU!" was deemed a little too manly.
  • Spell My Name with a "The" was chosen because The, being too common a word, would be a horrible title for a trope.
  • Springtime for Hitler is a little more poetic than You Fail Failing Forever, especially after the big Artistic License rename.
  • "Stop Having Fun!" Guys is a little less loaded than Stop Acting Like Your Stupid Game Matters And Let Us Play However We Want To.
    • Also, No Items Fox Only Final Destination wouldn't make sense to those unfamiliar with Super Smash Brothers or that meme.
  • The trope is called Summer Blockbuster because it's way shorter than Immensely Budgeted Film That Throws Everything Except Special Effects Out The Window To Attract Mainstream Moviegoers And Big Money.
  • Suspiciously Similar Substitute is shorter and less defensive-sounding than The Old Actor Left And We Didn't Want To Pull An Other Darrin Cause That Would Be Lame, But At The Same Time, We Already Had All These Scripts Written And We Didn't Want To Have To Rewrite Them.

T

  • Take It to the Forums isn't rude, unlike This Is Not A Trope, You Dumbass, And We Have A Fucking Message Board.
  • It's only called Take That because Completely Unwarranted And In Some Cases Extremely Cruel Insult Directed Towards A Specific Piece Of Media (That Is Often Actually Quite Good) That Only Serves To PO Fans And Make The Insulter Look Like Nothing More Than A Petty Jerkass wouldn't fit.
    • While shorter, Fuck You Other Show, Let's Make Fun Of You! isn't very nice.
  • It's generally believed that Take Over the World is a better title than Dr. Wily's Resolution due to the latter being a character-named trope.
  • Tenchi Solution is probably a better name than Threesomes Solve Everything.
  • It's called The Other Darrin because it's shorter than We've Secretly Replaced Your Favorite Actor With Folger's Crystals; Let's See What Happens.
    • Which is a pity, because that would have been a great name.
  • The "The" Title is a better title than either The or The Most Common Word In Any Title. Ever.
  • It's called There's No B in Movie because Return Of The Attack Of The 50 Foot Killer Ghost Of The Bride Of The Son Of Whatever's Curse is too long a title.
  • We chose This Loser Is You over The Writers And Producers Of This Show Think That You Are [insert slew of various negative qualities here] due to length.
  • Title Drop is very intuitive and clear. Not so much TITLE.
  • Although Too Much Information does get the point across, Oh My Fucking God I Did NOT Need To Know That! kinda sounds good, too. Too bad it's a bit long.
  • Trapped by Mountain Lions has a better ring to it than Why Should We Care About This Sub-Plot Again?.
  • Troll is called that, partly because it's known by that term, and partly because calling it Complete Asswipe Who Likes To Start Needless Arguments On The Web And Should Die Horribly would ironically be trolling itself (although a great self demonstrating title).
  • All the Tropes Wiki Drinking Game is a Just for Fun page, Complaining About Edits You Don't Like wouldn't say so.

U

V

  • Viewers are Morons was more concise than Most Writers And Media Executives Think The Collective IQ Of Your Demographic Is Somewhat Lower Than That Of A Retarded Slug.
  • Voodoo Shark is called that because Your Plot Point Sucks, Your Explanation For Your Plot Point Sucks, And Your Face Sucks is just mean.
    • And it's shorter than I Still Say You Pulled That Chekhovs Gun Out Of Your Ass.

W

  • Wanting Is Better Than Having is shorter than Whining About How Your Long-Sought Goal Wasn't As Awesome As You Thought It Would Be.
  • What Happened to the Mouse? beat Well I Guess I'm The Asshole For Caring About This Plot Point in a runoff.
  • We have Wild Mass Guessing because Off-The-Cuff Predictions And Obsessively Detailed Fanwank puts rather too fine a point on it.

X

  • Xenophone has a better ring than You'd Have To Be High To Think That Could Actually Make Music.
  • X Makes Anything Cool would've been named Everything's Better With X, but we don't need to add to the snowclone family. Plus, it's already a redirect to the index it's a snowclone of.

Y

  • It's called YKTTW Bump, because Please Don't Forget This, Everybody sounds kind of desperate.
  • We say YMMV because These Are Just Individual Tropers' Opinions And Your Mileage May Vary, So Don't Go Making An Assload Of Justifying Edits Just Because You Disagree With A Given Entry is not only way longer, but needlessly accusatory.

Z

  • The reason Zany Scheme was chosen is that Can't You Think Of Something Easier To Solve Your Problem? is too long, and isn't a noun.

And finally...

  • The parent of this site is called TV Tropes instead of A Reader-Maintained Database of Frequently-Seen Elements and Patterns In Many Forms of Human Communication because, dude, we started out by talking about stuff on TV.
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