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4[[quoteright:349:[[VisualNovel/PlumbersDontWearTies https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/plumbersdontwearties.png]]]]
5[[caption-width-right:349:[[WebVideo/TheAngryVideoGameNerd "What the fuck?! You can't even trust the damn title!"]]\
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11
12->''NOTE: No battle actually takes place at Procyon.''
13-->-- Disclaimer in the credits of the video game ''VideoGame/TreasurePlanetBattleAtProcyon''
14
15Sometimes, a title [[WordSaladTitle makes no sense]]. Sometimes, however, a title will make a sort of sense, but on later [[FridgeLogic ponderings]], will be seen as misleading. Sometimes this is due to the title being an ArtifactTitle or perhaps the writer simply thought it was a [[RuleOfCool cooler name]]. It also sometimes leads to instances of IAmNotShazam.
16
17Compare CompletelyDifferentTitle when it changes the original title to a misleading one. Contrast ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin. By definition, all examples of UntitledTitle have inaccurate titles. See also DeceptivelySillyTitle, SarcasticTitle, TrivialTitle, SecondaryCharacterTitle. {{Subverted|Trope}} by SpoilerTitle, which is so accurate that it manages to give away important plot points. Inaccurate or misleading titles are an essential part of a ClickbaitGag, which mocks online uses of this trope among other manipulative online tropes.
18
19'''WARNING:''' Spoilers are afoot.
20----
21
22!!Examples:
23
24[[index]]
25* NeverTrustATitle/VideoGames
26[[/index]]
27
28[[foldercontrol]]
29
30[[folder:Anime & Manga]]
31* There is a horror manga called ''Anorexia: Shikabane Hanako wa Kyoshokushou''. It has nothing to do with anorexia. It's about cannibalism.
32* ''Manga/{{Basilisk}}'' doesn't include any actual [[BasiliskAndCockatrice Basilisks]]; the title is metaphorical.
33* The fourth ''Manga/BlackJack'' {{OVA}} is called ''Anorexia: The Two Dark Doctors''. The patient does not have anorexia, but a parasite that makes her involuntarily vomit whenever she eats (which is closer to bulimia).
34* In ''Anime/CodeGeass'', Episode 13 is titled "Shirley at Gunpoint". Shirley is not held at gunpoint at any point in the episode, and the ending has [[spoiler:Shirley picking up a gun and pointing it at an injured Zero]].
35* The Japanese title of the fourth ''Franchise/DragonBall'' movie, ''Anime/DragonBallZLordSlug'', is "Super Saiyajin da Son Gokū" (Super Saiyajin/Saiyan Goku), during which Goku takes a form that was ''supposed'' to be a Super Saiyan, but since it was made before the manga reached the point where Goku became one (by only a few weeks, no less), it's not what most people would recognize as such (there's no change in eye or hair color, and it's a completely UnstoppableRage instead of TranquilFury). The form was later {{retcon}}ned by a sidebook to be a "false" Super Saiyan form.
36* ''Manga/DriftingClassroom'' is about a whole school, and it doesn't drift -- it makes one big jump and then stays put.
37* ''Manga/FistOfTheNorthStar'' ostensibly refers to the main character, but Kenshiro's martial art is actually named for the Big Dipper, and official sources tend to leave the Japanese name for it ("Hokuto") [[TooLongDidntDub untranslated]]. The Big Dipper is a constellation often used to ''locate'' Polaris, the North Star, but the star is not a part of the constellation itself (it's in the Little Dipper). A more literal translation of the Japanese title, ''Hokuto no Ken'', would be "Fist of the Big Dipper", but that doesn't sound nearly as cool. "Ken the Great Bear Fist", the localized title suggested by Toei's International Sales & Promotion Department ([[http://tvarc.toei.co.jp/tv/library/series-title.html source]]), is a bit closer - Ursa Major or the "Great Bear" is another name for the Big Dipper - but also doesn't sound all that great.
38* No one in ''Anime/{{Grenadier}}'' actually uses any grenades.
39* ''Literature/HaruhiSuzumiya'': The "Endless Eight" story arc does, in fact, end. Also, the "eight" refers to the loop taking place in August, not the number of repetitions, which is more like ''fifteen thousand''. (The anime confuses this further by showing eight repetitions, one episode each. We only see the final one in the light novel.)
40* ''Manga/HowIBecameAPokemonCard'' does not relate to becoming cards in any way. It's a bunch of SliceOfLife one-shots, and the name comes from the manga being drawn by people who draw the ''TabletopGame/{{Pokemon}}'' cards and the fact each chapter comes with a ''Pokémon'' card.
41* The title of ''I Became a Girl So I Had to Break up With My Girlfriend'' is only half-right. The protagonist [[GenderBender turns into a girl]], but the girlfriend rejects the breakup attempt and insists on continuing the relationship with her girlfriend.
42* The first two ''Manga/InuYasha'' movie titles, ''[[Anime/InuyashaTheMovieAffectionsTouchingAcrossTime Affections Touching Across Time]]'' and ''[[Anime/InuyashaTheMovieTheCastleBeyondTheLookingGlass Castle Beyond the Looking Glass]]'', are rather deceptive. Both of those things have a very small role in the movies. This is quite a contrast to most TV episodes, where the plots are often spelled out quite literally in the title. For example, episode 36 is titled "Kagome gets Kidnapped by a Wolf Demon".
43* ''Literature/IsItWrongToTryToPickUpGirlsInADungeon'': Well... apparently the answer is yes, because the protagonist never does that. His (skeevy) grandfather told him a dungeon would be a good place to [[RescueRomance get a girl]], but this [[DistressedDude happens in reverse]] with his main love interest.
44* Total number of "Crazy Shrine Maidens" in ''Manga/KannagiCrazyShrineMaidens'': 0. The closest thing is Nagi claiming to be a shrine maiden as her cover story. (We eventually meet a real one in the manga, but she's a minor character and not crazy.)
45* Surprisingly few characters are killed in ''Anime/KillLaKill'' ([[WhatMeasureIsAMook unless you count all the cannon fodder that goes flying at every explosion]]). Of the four characters who die, only Suzuki, the student from the opening scene, is directly killed by another character. Two of the others (the BigBad and her [[TheDragon Dragon]]) commit suicide and the fourth dies in a HeroicSacrifice. Most battles are resolved non-lethally with [[TheNudifier Seni-Soshitsu]]. This is a pun because in Japanese the "kill" in the title is written and pronounced like "kiru," a verb meaning "to wear [clothes]."
46* ''Anime/MagicalGirlLyricalNanoha Movie 1st The Comics'' is not a prequel to the Movie, but an AlternateContinuity.
47* ''Anime/MakuraNoDanshi'': For a show about sleeping with the audience, not a lot of sleeping occurs. While the first couple of episodes and almost certainly the last one has the viewer going to bed with the episode's focus, others are more of character studies with only the viewer only going to sleep near or after the end of the shorts. One episode has a guy even bring a sleeping bag, ''at nightfall'', and nobody sleeps.
48* ''Anime/MartianSuccessorNadesico'': The two leads, Akito and Yurika, are from Mars and are on the crew of the Nadesico. TheMovie introduces a faction ''named'' the Martian Successors, which the Nadesico is not affiliated with. Not demonstrated at all by the Japanese characters of the title, reading "''Kidou Senkan Nadeshiko''", which translates to ''[[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Mobile Battleship Nadesico]]''. The constituent words of the title are especially meaningful, given the series being an AffectionateParody of the likes of ''Anime/MobileSuitGundam'' and ''Anime/SpaceBattleshipYamato''.
49* "The Midnight Parasites" is an animated re-imagining of the works of Hieronymus Bosch. Only two of the creatures seen are portrayed as parasites (specifically, reproductive parasitoids), and there's no indication it takes place at midnight.
50* ''Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion'''s episode 24 is titled "''Saigo no Shisha''". Usually translated as "The Final Messenger", [[DoubleMeaningTitle it also means]] "The Final ''Casualty''". While [[spoiler:Kaworu]]'s is chronologically the last character death in the original series, ''The End of Evangelion'' is thought to be occurring at the same time as episodes 25 and 26 and includes multiple on-screen deaths.
51* No legends are ever awakened throughout ''Anime/PokemonGenesectAndTheLegendAwakened'', and Genesect's too ancient and Mewtwo too recent for either of them to have any legends focused on them. Presumably, it refers to Mega Mewtwo Y, but no big deal is made of it in-universe, and the special episode acting as a prequel to this shows that Mewtwo was using it since day one of its life.
52* ''Anime/PuellaMagiMadokaMagica'':
53** The name makes it pretty clear that it's about a magical girl named Madoka. Except... Madoka does not become a magical girl until [[spoiler:the ''last episode'', and even then it's hard to call her a magical girl because she turns into an abstract godlike concept. However, before this happens we do find out that Homura originated from a timeline in which Madoka ''did'' become a magical girl earlier on, meaning that Madoka becoming a magical girl did start the plot in a way.]]
54** The other problem is the "Puella Magi" part, which sounds like a [[CallARabbitASmeerp rebranding]] of "MagicalGirl," but the GratuitousLatin term never appears in-universe--it's only in the title. It does appear once in the sequel movie, as part of the name of a ''group'' of magical girls, but neither Madoka nor anyone else is ever referred to as a "Puella Magi."
55* There is a ''Manga/RanmaOneHalf'' episode titled "[[TonightSomeoneKisses Ranma and Kuno's... First Kiss.]]" Be thankful that you really can never trust a title.
56* ''Manga/RobotXLaserbeam'' must involve {{mecha}} or something, right? Nope. It's about ''golf''. The main character's nickname is "Robo" because he's [[TheStoic absurdly analytical and emotionless]]. He turns out to have incredible innate skill at golf through AwesomenessByAnalysis, launching balls with [[TitleDrop (as the other characters put it)]] laser-beam precision.
57* The ''Anime/SandsOfDestruction'' anime is subtitled ''Sekai Bokumetsu Rokunin'', "The Six People Who are Going to Destroy the World". Well, two of those six are actively working to ''save'' the world, and another three don't ''want'' to destroy the world; they're just stuck with the one girl who ''does''. But even this one girl spends precious little of her screen time actually ''trying'' to destroy the world or figure out how to use the device she believes will do it for her. [[spoiler:And the world isn't destroyed in the end, either - even she decides it's not such a bad place after all.]]
58* ''Manga/SchoolRumble'' is described by Creator/FUNimation as "The absolute funniest show you'll ever see that's not about anything that rumbles... ever!", although admittedly there ''is'' at least a school...
59* This can happen when an author [[GratuitousEnglish does not know as much English as they think they do]] and decides to append an official English version of their work's original Japanese title. For example, one would think that something called ''Stella Women's Academy, High School Division Class C3'' would be about the members of a particular class, right? Nope! It turns out to be about a '''club''' of girls who are of disparate ages and none of whom (as far as we know) are in the same class as one another. The original Japanese title, ''[[Manga/StellaWomensAcademyHighSchoolDivisionClassC3 Tokurei Sochi Dantai Stella Jogakuin Koutouka C3-bu]]'' more accurately translates as ''Preferential Measure Organization Stella Women's Academy, High School Division, C3 Club''.
60* Though the titles do make some sense in context, ''Manga/VirginLove'' and its sequel ''Manga/JunaiNoSeinen (The Young Person's Pure Love)'' do not do a very good job indicating how [[{{Hentai}} smutty]] the works are.
61* There's a manga entitled ''Manga/YandereKanojo'', which you would expect to be about dating a [[{{Yandere}} lovesick girl]], especially due to its female lead's first appearance carrying a bloody baseball bat. Not so, as the "yan" in the title is for "yankee" - his girlfriend is a deredere juvenile delinquent. The female lead's ''mother'', on the other hand...
62[[/folder]]
63
64[[folder:Arts]]
65* ''Art/{{Abaporu}}'': Despite its name meaning [[ImAHumanitarian "man who eats people"]], there isn't anything in the painting itself indicating the Abaporu is a man-eater. Instead, the title comes from the reading Creator/TarsilaDoAmaral's husband had of the then-unnamed painting -- the Anthropophagy movement which postulates that Brazilian artists should "swallow" the dominant European styles and turn them into art that is culturally and aesthetically Brazilian instead of just imitating them. This means shedding off the excessive formal academicism, attention to realistic proportions, and idealization of the past.
66* Stock in trade of Matt Adrian AKA [[http://www.mattadrian.com The Mincing Mockingbird]] some genuinely good pictures of birds along with bonkers titles that are regularly full sentences: "She Drunkenly Approached Me In A Bar, Asked If I Would "Do Her A Rudeness"­­—And Your Mother And I Have Been Together Ever Since" or "If A Leprechaun Appears And Advises You To Get Your Glandular System Checked, Don't Drown Him In A Ditch Like I Did—Get Your Damn Glands Checked".
67* ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laughing_Cavalier The Laughing Cavalier]]'', a 1624 portrait by the Dutch artist Franz Hals, wasn't given an official title of any sort until its arrival in England during the Victorian era, hundreds of years after its creation. As such, the title is very misleading. The anonymous subject of the painting is smirking, not laughing, and it's impossible for him to have been a Royalist supporter of King Charles I, since the English Civil War didn't take place until the 1640s. The subject, whoever he was, was most likely Dutch, and a Calvinist (meaning he would probably not have taken the side of the Episcopalian Royalists even if he had been English).
68[[/folder]]
69
70[[folder:Asian Animation]]
71* ''Animation/HappyHeroes'': Episode 20 is officially titled "Running Away from Home", but doesn't feature anybody actually running away from home. It's actually about Little M. mistaking Big M. mysteriously disappearing as him leaving Planet Xing for Planet Gray, their home planet.
72[[/folder]]
73
74[[folder:Comedy]]
75* Creator/DavidCross released two comedy albums where the track titles have nothing to do with the routines within, being either mockeries of common routines ("You Go, Girl!", "My Daughter's First Date , "Even Though I Am in the Closet, That Won't Prevent Me from Getting Cheap Laughs at the Expense of Homosexuals!") or just absurd ("Shaving the Pope's Pussy").
76** His DVD ''Let America Laugh'' similarly uses chapter titles that have nothing to do with the content - this time they're all taken from ''ComicBook/ChickTracts''.
77[[/folder]]
78
79[[folder:Comic Books]]
80* Creator/AlanMoore's ''ComicBook/TheBalladOfHaloJones'' is actually incomplete. Moore left ''ComicBook/TwoThousandAD'' before finishing it.
81* ''ComicBook/{{Bionicle}}'':
82** Comic 25: ''Birth of the Rahaga'' is an apt description of the comic's story. The alternative title on its cover, ''The Final Battle'', not really. Unless one means that it's the final battle between these specific characters over this specific artifact. It's also a flashback, which makes the title more bogus.
83** Mahri Nui, the eponymous settlement from graphic novel #6, ''The Underwater City'', only appears on a few stray panels and has little bearing on the plot.
84* ''ComicBook/TheFlash'': ''ComicBook/TheReturnOfBarryAllen'' is, in fact, ''not'' about Barry's return (which wouldn't happen until ''ComicBook/FinalCrisis''), but rather Wally West dealing with an amnesiac Eobard Thawne from ''before'' he came into conflict with Barry.
85* ''ComicBook/SpiderMan'': While Gwen Stacy indeed dies in ''ComicBook/TheNightGwenStacyDied'', it happens during a confrontation between Spider-Man and the Green Goblin in the morning.
86* ''ComicBook/UltimateMarvel'': Many things happen in ''ComicBook/{{Ultimatum}}'', except an actual ultimatum.
87* ''ComicBook/{{Watchmen}}'': The title refers to the [[ArcWords graffiti]], and the philosophical question "Who watches the watchmen", [[IAmNotShazam not a group of superheroes]].
88* ''WesternAnimation/WackyRaces'': The Gold Key run of takes the titles of two episodes and turns them into entirely different stories. "Free Wheeling to Wheeling" was changed into an original story while "Race Rally to Raleigh" was changed into a loose adaptation of "By Rollercoaster to Upsan Downs."
89[[/folder]]
90
91[[folder:Fan Works]]
92* No Boldore appear in ''Fanfic/BoldoresAndBoomsticks'' until a brief appearance 32 chapters in, and nobody uses a shotgun. The title was taken from a pun the author's friend made on ''Film/BedknobsAndBroomsticks''.
93* ''Fanfic/TheBoltChronicles'': As Mittens (and the reader) discovers in "The Party," there is no party to be found during the course of the story.
94* There are no bunnies in ''[[http://knapp-street.org/Missy/Bunnies.html Bunnies]]''. Series/{{Laverne|AndShirley}} makes a reference to feeling as helpless as a bunny in a blender, but that's it.
95* In ''Fanfic/{{Coveralls}}'', only one character wears coveralls, and he's only shown for one sentence.
96* In ''Fanfic/CreamedCherries'', there aren't any actual cherries -- it's just a funny name that WesternAnimation/{{Bambi}} gave to mashed-up apples.
97* ''Fanfic/CupcakesSergeantSprinkles''. This ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' fanfic is ''not'' about making cupcakes! Well... not ''[[ImAHumanitarian just]]'' about making cupcakes.
98* ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mx1EMt_16bo DIGIMON 3: PREDATOR VS DIGIMON]]'': The Franchise/{{Predator}} [[spoiler:isn't the villain; in fact, Digimon has to help him with his dilemma. The actual villains are the FBI.]] Of course, what did you expect with legendary TrollFic author Creator/PeterChimaera?
99* ''Friday Night Funkin' VideoGame/VsSonicEXE'''s main antaonist isn't VideoGame/SonicExe at all. It's actually an impersonator known as Xenophanes. The real sonic.exe does make an appearance as [[VideoGame/SonicPCPort "Lord X"]], but he's buried behind a secret sound test code and only has one song to his name.
100* ''Fanfic/HarryPotterAndTheLackOfLambSauce'': The title of the fic is a spoof of the [[Memes/HellsKitchen infamous Hell's Kitchen meme]], and at no point in the story does the lack of lamb sauce become a plot point. [[spoiler:The quote in the meme is briefly dropped in the final chapter as a gag, however.]]
101* In ''Fanfic/HarryPotterAndThePortraitOfWhatLookedLikeALargePileOfAsh'', no such portrait actually appears.
102* ''Fanfic/InkopolisChaos'': Inkopolis Chaos 3 hardly even takes place in Inkopolis, mostly focusing on Cuttlefish Cabin or Octo Valley. Inkopolis is only visited twice, in parts 6 and 14.
103* ''Webcomic/MargeSimpsonAnime'' doesn't have much, if anything, to do with anime. Most of the art isn't {{animesque}} either.
104* In ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12823680/1/Marshmallow-Pie Marshmallow Pie]]'', there isn't any actual marshmallow pie-- it's just an AffectionateNickname that [[WesternAnimation/TheLoudHouse Leni Loud]] has for Chaz.
105* The title of ''Fanfic/NeitherABirdNorAPlaneItsDeku'' would have you believe that Izuku is going to take up Deku as his Hero Name. He's not. Because he's ComicBook/{{Superman}}.
106* In ''Fanfic/ThePrayerWarriors'', Chapter 10 of ''The Evil Gods Part 2'' is called "Piper and Jerry goes to Washington DC to Find out Who the Tractor is and Defeat them Once and for All so they would not be terrorized by them ever again for as long as God allows Time to go on For." The only thing that happens is the Prayer Warriors going to Washing Dick -- I mean, Washington D.C.
107* ''FanFic/RobbReturns''. While Robb's return does provide the impetus of the story, the major storylines have focused on the North, and eventually all of Westeros, preparing for the imminent invasion of the Others.
108* The first chapter of ''Fanfic/SwimmingInTerror'' is called "Island and Kuma". Monokuma first shows up in the next chapter.
109* ''WesternAnimation/TheLoudHouse'' fanfic ''[[https://theloudhouse.fandom.com/wiki/User_blog:AndrewBrauer/Fanfiction_-_Whipped Whipped]]'' features no actual whipping.
110* The name of the AlternateUniverse ''[[WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic My Little Pony]]'' fic ''Fanfic/SliceOfVelvetAndPear'' comes from the names of Twilight Sparkle and Applejack's mother's, Twilight Velvet and Pear Butter. Who in this universe, meet while they're daughters are still fillies and become best friends. Seemingly setting them and their relationship up to be the main focus of the story. But no. While they are prominent characters, especially [[SparedByAdaptation Pear Butter]], the main focus of the story is the butterfly effect their meeting and their daughters becoming friends early has on the future events of the series.
111[[/folder]]
112
113[[folder:Films -- Animation]]
114* ''WesternAnimation/AsterixConquersAmerica'': Asterix doesn't conquer America, he only visits it. A case of CompletelyDifferentTitle, since the original French title was ''Asterix et les Indiens'' ("Asterix and the Indians").
115* ''WesternAnimation/BatmanAssaultOnArkham'': Batman is featured, but not the central character. It is more of a Comicbook/SuicideSquad film with Deadshot as the protagonist.
116* There is no "New Generation" in ''WesternAnimation/CareBearsMovieIIANewGeneration''. The film is actually a prequel, as we see the origins of the Care Bears. The only generation the title ''could'' refer to is the fact that the Care Bears and their Cousins are all babies and grow up about half way through the movie, but it's a stretch.
117* ''WesternAnimation/DCAnimatedMovieUniverse'':
118** While ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeagueVsTeenTitans'' does see the two titular teams fight, it's mostly due to the League undergoing DemonicPossession and the film is about the Titans fighting Trigon.
119** ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeagueDarkApokolipsWar'' is a borderline example. The first ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeagueDark'' movie was about Batman gathering a team of supernatural heroes to take down a demonic threat. In ''Apokolips War'', even though John Constantine and Raven are central characters, the villain Darkseid relies on tech rather than magic. Also, the film is the SeriesFinale of the entire DC Animated Movie Universe and ''every'' hero ever featured in the movies is given screentime ([[DyingMomentOfAwesome one way or another]]). So even though Raven and Constantine save the day, it's not really ''their'' movie, and there is no specialized team of magic users, leaving it debatable as to whether or not the "Dark" subtitle is warranted. On the other hand, one could argue that this is possibly the darkest movie in the lineup if one wishes to go ''that'' route.
120* ''WesternAnimation/EightCrazyNights'' hardly has anything to do with Hanukkah (outside of a few brief references) and may have very well just been a film set during the Winter season.
121* ''The First Christmas'' from Creator/RankinBassProductions isn't a retelling of the Nativity story. It's the story of an orphan boy who comes to live at an abbey with kindly nuns after being struck by lightning and left blind. The climax is simply a children's play of the Nativity in which the boy plays an angel.
122* An infamous rip-off of ''WesternAnimation/KungFuPanda'' is named ''WesternAnimation/TheLittlePandaFighter''. Except that the titular panda is not "little" but one of the largest characters in the movie. Plus, he only fights for thirty seconds at the end of the movie, and he gets his ass kicked.
123* The ''Toys/MyScene'' movie ''WesternAnimation/MySceneGoesHollywood'' does feature a Hollywood movie and actors, but the whole movie takes place in New York City where the girls live.
124* ''WesternAnimation/ThePrincessAndTheFrog'': Considering the movie takes place in America, the eponymous "Princess" isn't a princess, she's just a waitress who gets mistaken for one. The "Frog" is the one who's of royal descent, and [[spoiler:the protagonist only becomes a princess after marrying him at the end.]]
125* When Creator/{{Nickelodeon}} aired ''WesternAnimation/ShrekFourD'' in 2-D in 2007, they marketed it as ''Shrek's Never Before Seen Adventure'', even though it had been featured at Ride/UniversalStudios since 2003 ''and'' was released on DVD in 2004 as ''Shrek 3-D''.
126* In the Disney film ''WesternAnimation/{{Tangled}}'', Rapunzel's magic hair never gets tangled, in spite of the many things, it is brushed over, tied to, etc.
127[[/folder]]
128
129[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
130* ''Creator/AbbottAndCostello''
131** ''Film/AbbottAndCostelloMeetTheKillerBorisKarloff'': Can you guess who the mysterious killer in this film might be? Could it perhaps be the evil Swami, played by Creator/BorisKarloff? Isn't this a SpoilerTitle?... [[spoiler:Nope. Not even close. The hotel manager did it.]]
132** ''Creator/AbbottAndCostello Go To Mars'': The duo goes to ''Venus'', although they do ''think'' they're going to Mars.
133* ''Film/{{Abduction}}'' has no kidnappings whatsoever.
134* In ''Film/{{Across the Pacific}}'', the Pacific is never seen, let alone crossed. The original plot was supposed to involve a Japanese plot to bomb Pearl Harbor. When the real-life Pearl Harbor bombing occurred, [[DistancedFromCurrentEvents the plot was hurriedly rewritten]] to be about an attack on Panama, but the title was not changed.
135* The titles of Creator/TimBurton's ''Film/AliceInWonderland2010'' and ''Film/AliceThroughTheLookingGlass'' aren't ''completely'' off base, since the first movie is about Alice being in Wonderland[[note]]or rather ''Underland'', as it's called here[[/note]] and the second one does have her passing through a mirror at one point. However, they are somewhat misleading; the first one isn't a retelling of the book ''Literature/AlicesAdventuresInWonderland'', but rather a sequel (of sorts), depicting Alice as a young adult, and includes elements of ''Through the Looking-Glass and what Alice found there''. The sequel has even less to do with the original books.
136* ''Film/AllMonstersAttack'''s [[MarketBasedTitle American name]] is ''Godzilla's Revenge''. Godzilla doesn't get revenge on anyone in the film.
137** ''Film/GodzillaVsGigan'''s widely publicized American title was ''Godzilla on Monster Island'', despite only a couple very short scenes taking place there. The highlight is Godzilla coming to the Japanese mainland to a theme park inspired by his likeness.
138* ''Film/AvengersInfinityWar'': While the title works in the context of the movie (it's about a war fought over the Infinity Stones), it's an adaptation of ''ComicBook/TheInfinityGauntlet'', not ''ComicBook/TheInfinityWar''.
139* In ''Film/BallisticEcksVsSever'', though Ecks and Sever have a very brief scuffle after a chase scene early in the film, they never truly face each other as "enemies". They even end up fighting on the same side by roughly the halfway point of the movie.
140* Webvideo/TheCinemaSnob stated that ''Film/TheBloodyVideoHorrorThatMadeMePukeOnMyAuntGertrude'' lies a lot, given it's not bloody and lacks an Aunt Gertrude, and at most has a puking scene... and lots of video, given it's shot on VHS tapes.
141* ''Film/TheBoxersOmen'' sounds like a boxing movie in the vein of the ''Film/{{Rocky}}'' sequels. It's NOT - it's a MindScrew of a film with voodoo, reanimated animal corpses, female demons, detachable flying heads, alligator monsters and all kinds of weird stuff.
142* ''Film/BlueMonkey'' is about a black bug.
143* ''Film/BruceLeeFightsBackFromTheGrave'' has absolutely nothing to do with Creator/BruceLee returning from the dead, outside of a ColdOpen where someone is seen leaping out of Bruce Lee's grave. Aside from that, the storyline involves a man named Wong Han investigating the death of his friend at the hands of a drug smuggling ring -- with the only other thing to link the film to Lee being lead actor Jun Chong being credited as "Bruce K.L. Lea".
144* ''Film/CanyonPassage'' does not feature a canyon that has any kind of major role in the plot (possibly it was an ArtifactTitle from the novel it was based on).
145* ''Film/TheCarsThatAteParis'': The title might imply that it's a campy AttackOfTheKillerWhatever movie about {{Sentient Vehicle}}s, but it's really a BlackComedy about a remote town, and the "ate" part is more about the conscience of the townspeople than anything else.
146* The 2020 Creator/{{Lifetime}} [[LifetimeMovieOfTheWeek TV movie]] ''Cheer Camp Killer'' doesn’t actually involve a murder plot against cheerleaders, not even one carried out by the film’s AlphaBitch antagonist, Victoria, who engages in various duplicitous schemes to one-up her rival Sophia, but only comes as close to committing murder as [[spoiler:knocking out Sophia with a rock and then tying her to a tree above a short cliff in the woods (Sophia winds up freeing herself)]].
147* Only one scene in ''Film/{{Chinatown}}'' takes place in the eponymous neighborhood of Los Angeles.
148* ''Film/{{Deranged}}'' is sometimes marketed with the subtitle ''Confessions of a Necrophile'', which is very misleading as Ezra never engages in [[ILoveTheDead necrophilia]] at any point, although as [[MrExposition Simms]] points out on several occasions, the word can also refer to one with an obsessive level of interest in death and corpses.
149* Anyone expecting an actual 'House of Horrors' in ''Film/DrTerrorsHouseOfHorrors'' will be disappointed. Supposedly, the house of horrors refers to Dr. Schreck's Tarot deck, which constructs horrifying futures for people, but this is never explained anywhere in the film. Even the name Dr. Terror is barely justified, with a brief conversation explaining that Dr. Schreck's name would translate into English as Dr. Terror. Nobody ever addresses him as anything other than Dr. Schreck.
150* In the 1991 {{Farce}} ''The Favour, the Watch and the Very Big Fish'' the favour kicks off the plot and the watch is vital to the backstory, but the very big fish is just an odd side gag disposed of -- by a tertiary character whose idea of cooking is pulverizing stuff into slurry -- within the first 15 minutes.
151* ''Film/FrankensteinConquersTheWorld'' couldn't be farther from the truth in terms of the film's plot since Frankenstein never so much as tries to conquer the world. The original Japanese release title, ''Frankenstein vs. Baragon'', makes sense since the film builds up to the grand fight between the titular monsters.
152* The movie ''Film/FutureWar'' doesn't take place in the future and doesn't have any war.
153* ''Film/GhostWorld'' does not have any actual ghosts nor do the protagonists ever visit a world filled with ghosts.
154* The protagonist of ''Film/{{Gringo}}'' isn't the white American that pejorative usually describes, but a black immigrant from Nigeria.
155* ''Film/GodzillaVsMechagodzillaII'' (1993) is not a sequel to ''Film/GodzillaVsMechagodzilla'' (1974), mainly since the films are in two different continuities. The Mechagodzilla in the 1993 movie, therefore, is usually named "Mechagodzilla 2".
156* ''Film/{{The Grapes of Death}}''. Awesome title, but the grapes themselves don't kill anybody. Farm chemicals applied to the grapes cause people to go berserk.
157* ''Film/GreenBook'': "Green Book" is short for "The Negro Motorist Green Book", a travel safety guide for African-Americans visiting the Deep South on where to find friendly places where they could eat or stay during the period of the film. However, this only gets mentioned briefly in the film, and used once. While the difficulties Don faces as a black person in the South do feature, most of it's not really about that, and this is one source of criticism.
158* ''Film/AHeroNeverDies'' ends with [[spoiler: both the heroes dead]].
159* There are no witches in ''Film/HalloweenIIISeasonOfTheWitch''. The closest there are to witches is a mask that looks like one, but the real antagonist is a novelties company.
160* The characters in ''Film/TheHangover'' (and its sequel) ''do'' wind up with a hangover after a binge-drinking session gone wrong, but its WhatDidIDoLastNight plot isn't the result of a hangover: it happens after they're accidentally drugged without their knowledge.
161* The movie ''Film/HeartsInAtlantis''. This is due, however, to it being an ArtifactTitle from the novella: the original novella was called "Low Men in Yellow Coats" and "Hearts in Atlantis" was an entirely different story (called so because the main character -- avoiding going to Vietnam by being in college and thus it feeling like Atlantis -- played the card game Hearts a lot (ItMakesSenseInContext)). The movie doesn't attempt at explaining the title... Brautigan refers to the sunken continent at some point in the dialogue, but that still doesn't make explicit the "hearts" part.
162* ''Help! I've Shrunk the Family'' appears to be a rip-off of ''Film/HoneyIShrunkTheKids'' if you go off the English title and poster, but it's actually a dub of the Dutch movie ''Wiplala'', which is based on a book that predates ''Honey'' by over three decades.
163* ''Film/TheHillsHaveEyes1977'': There are no sentient eye-possessing hills, just a bunch of hill-dwelling cannibals. Same goes for the remake.
164* While the title may make sense figuratively -- in that the house is responsible for many deaths if Stoker is to be believed--no actual blood appears in ''Film/TheHouseThatDrippedBlood''. (Which is odd for a film involving vampires.)
165* ''I Dismember Mama'' (the alternate title for ''Film/PoorAlbertAndLittleAnnie''): While Albert does attempt to kill his mother, he does not succeed, nor does he actually dismember any of his victims.
166* ''Film/IfLooksCouldKill'' is about a teenager who's mistaken for a spy and sent on a dangerous mission. With that title, you'd expect the kid to have been confused with the spy because they look alike, right? Nope. He's confused with the spy because they both have the same name.
167* ''[[Film/TheIncrediblyStrangeCreatures The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies]]'' is not a campy, counter-culture romp that the title implies. It's a straightforward horror-ish film. The zombies are actually of the traditional "hypnotized" variety and not the undead variety, so they don't "stop living" when they become zombies.
168* ''Film/InvisibleGhost'' (1941) does not have a ghost in it, nor is anyone or anything invisible.
169* Film/TheJerk, the main character Navin Johnson (Creator/SteveMartin) isn't really a jerk, he's more of a well meaning idiot who unintentionally causes problems for people.
170* ''Film/KangarooJack'' is very much a supporting character in the roo's own movie. [[NeverTrustATrailer And it doesn't talk aside from a brief hallucination]].
171* In ''Film/TheKarateKid2010'', the central martial art is kung fu, not karate.
172* ''Film/TheLastKingOfScotland'' is actually about the Last Dictator of Uganda (and the viewpoint character is a Scottish ''doctor''). UsefulNotes/IdiAmin did ''claim'' to be the King of Scotland among his many other self-applied titles.
173* From the title, you might be expecting ''Film/MarathonMan'' to be an inspirational sports film like ''Film/ChariotsOfFire''. The marathon aspect barely factors into the movie (other than justifying why Babe can run like hell so well), though, which is an espionage thriller from start to finish.
174* ''Film/MargaritaWithAStraw'': The title is just a drink order Laila made at one point. It really has nothing to do with the plot overall.
175* ''Film/MaxHeadroom: 20 Minutes into the Future'' is not about time travel. "TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture" refers to the setting of the film: the dystopian near future. The phrase isn't used anywhere in the telefilm, but it does appear as a title card in each episode of [[Series/MaxHeadroom the series]]. The telefilm was released on video with the more straightforward title ''The Max Headroom Story'', but no one bothered to change the title screen.
176* Russian movie ''Mermaid: Lake of the Dead'' is about a water siren of sorts, but it's not a mermaid. Blame it on the Myth/{{Slavic Myth|ology}} of the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rusalka Rusalka]] being often translated into "mermaid" given both are water entities - although the Rusalka is fully human instead of half-fish.
177* ''Film/Mermaids1990'' doesn't contain any actual mermaids; it's a mundane family {{dramedy}}.
178* The bag of money in ''Film/{{Millions}}'' actually "only" contains 229,520 pounds, but there's a TitleDrop when the brothers go through it and think it contains millions.
179* ''Film/MonsterAGoGo'' has a monster ([[ItMakesSenseInContext sorta]]), but he doesn't dance - nor does Go-go dancing figure into the threadbare plot it has.
180* ''Film/MyLifeAsADog'' isn't a human-canine body-swap comedy, but rather a Swedish coming of age dramedy. The closest it gets to literalizing the title is when the main character has a breakdown and pretends to be a dog.
181* ''Film/NightOfTheStrangler'' includes murders by stabbing, shooting, drowning, snakebite, and arrow, but no strangulations.
182* ''Film/NoTimeToDie'' concludes with [[spoiler:''James Bond's death''.]]
183* At least half of ''Franchise/ThePinkPanther'' movies don't involve the Pink Panther jewel. It's an ArtifactTitle. And don't expect to see the character WesternAnimation/ThePinkPanther past the intro credits.
184* ''Film/OrphanFirstKill'':
185** The film starts after Leena has been instutitionalized in the Saarne for murder, so Leena's first kill isn't depicted in ''First Kill''.
186** Also, in this story, her child grift sees her posing as a missing child with a family rather than an orphan, leaving the franchise title ''Orphan'' inaccurate to this story as well, [[spoiler:at least until the ending, when both of her "parents" are dead]].
187* ''Film/RedWolf'' is one of the many DieHardOnAnX-style movies released in the 90s, and doesn't have any red wolves. Nobody has this as a nickname either, nor are wolves referenced at any point.
188* The two old ladies in ''Film/RabidGrannies'' are neither rabid nor grannies.
189* ''Film/{{Rashomon}}'' is NOT a {{Mons}} movie. It's about various people testifying for a murder, each adding different details: a bandit, the victim's wife, the dead man's spirit through a miko, and a woodcutter. The name Rashomon means "city gate" in Japanese, but said murder does not happen anywhere near a city gate. The title refers to the location where the framing device takes place.
190* ''Film/TheRef''. The title implies something sports-related, and the holiday setting suggests something happy, but the movie is about as black a comedy as one will find from mainstream Hollywood. The eponymous character is a cat burglar who kidnaps a dysfunctional married couple in an attempt to evade a manhunt and winds up having to "referee" their bickering while he plots his escape. In retrospect, the title fits, but a first-time viewer would have no idea what to expect.
191** Averted in some countries, where the film went by the more straightforward title "Hostile Hostages" instead.
192* The 1993 film ''Film/{{Rigoletto}}'' isn't actually based on the Music/GiuseppeVerdi [[Theatre/{{Rigoletto}} opera]], and they have very few similarities. It's more like a modern reimagining of ''Literature/BeautyAndTheBeast'' (with a little bit of ''Literature/ThePhantomOfTheOpera'' thrown in) set in America during {{the Great Depression}}. [[IAmNotShazam There isn't even a character named "Rigoletto".]]
193* In ''Film/RiotOnSunsetStrip'', no riots occur onscreen.
194* ''Film/TheRoom2003''. Despite the title, the characters are neither [[ClosedCircle trapped in a room]] nor is there anything particularly strange about their apartment. [[WordOfGod According to director and star]] Creator/TommyWiseau, the title refers to a person's HappyPlace, [[VoodooShark which only makes sense for about three seconds.]] According to Greg Sestero in ''Literature/TheDisasterArtist'' (Oh hai, Mark), it was supposed to be a play that all takes place in the same room, to save money on sets. He just never changed the title when transitioning to screen.
195* ''Film/SantaAndTheIceCreamBunny'' is a perfect example of this trope. Both of the titular characters barely get any screen time in the entire film, plus the Ice Cream Bunny has nothing to do with ice cream!
196* The title ''Film/ScreamAndScreamAgain'' has no bearing on the film at all (and makes it sound like a SlasherMovie rather than the science fiction conspiracy thriller it actually is.
197* The made-for-TV horror movie ''Silent Predators'' is about rattlesnakes, which are actually the loudest of all the snakes.
198* There's an old joke about a little old lady who decides she'd like to watch a nice, peaceful film. So she sees ''Film/TheSilenceOfTheLambs.''
199* ''Film/SodomAndGomorrah'' is set in Sodom. Gomorrah is never so much as glimpsed and only gets a few throwaway references.
200* ''Film/{{Sorcerer}}'' has nothing to do with magicians or even anything supernatural. Instead, it's about a group of men who ship truckloads of nitroglycerin. Sorcerer is the name of one of these trucks.
201* ''{{Film/Sorceress}}'': There isn't a single sorceress in the whole movie. Instead, there's the main villain, a ''[[EvilSorcerer sorcerer]]''.
202* Half of the 1963 Disney film ''Film/SummerMagic'', starring Hayley Mills, actually takes place in autumn, with the film's ending taking place at a Halloween party.
203* Judging by the title, you'd think ''Film/TheSquidAndTheWhale'' is an over-the-top, SoBadItsGood Film/SyfyOriginalMovie, but it's actually a heartfelt comedy-drama about a couple going through divorce; the title is a reference to the Squid and Whale exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History.
204* ''Film/TeenageStrangler'' is a case of AmbiguousSyntax - when it appeared on ''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000'', the characters even briefly debated whether it referred to a strangler of teenagers or a teenager who strangled people. [[spoiler: Ultimately it turns out to be the former, which is the less intuitive interpretation of the title.]]
205* One of Universals' Sherlock Holmes b-pictures [[Film/TheBakerStreetDozen Terror by Night]] is a [[ThrillerOnTheExpress Train set thriller]] set on an overnight London to Edinburgh train. There's a single murder, a fight and a pretty serious assault but the passengers are more annoyed than terrorised (as they might well be). The train even continues its' journey on schedule.
206* In the original four ''Film/TheTexasChainsawMassacre'' movies, very few people are killed with a chainsaw. In [[Film/TheTexasChainsawMassacre1974 the original movie]], for example, only one character dies by chainsaw- two are killed with a hammer (one of whom is later seen being cut up post-mortem), another ends up suffering an UncertainDoom when she's left in an icebox, and yet another, one of the villains, is hit by a truck. The Second and Third films continue this trend with few characters meeting their end at the saw but the fourth film turns into an ArtifactTitle; nobody is killed with a chainsaw.
207* ''Film/TheyClonedTyrone'': The name of the main character being cloned is Fontaine, not Tyrone. [[spoiler:Tyrone doesn’t show up until TheStinger.]]
208* ''Film/TheThinMan'' movies have an ArtifactTitle. The thin man of the original movie referred to one of the prime suspects in the murder case [[spoiler: who turned out to have also been murdered himself]], and not the main character. The third film is called ''Film/AnotherThinMan'' for no reason, setting the precedent for the rest of the series.
209* The movie ''Film/ThreeKings'' actually has four main characters. The name comes from the Christmas carol "We Three Kings", whose opening lyric is changed by one of the characters.
210* ''Film/{{A Time for Drunken Horses}}'' is a notable aversion. You'd swear it was a metaphor, but it really does have drunken horses.
211* ''Film/{{Tron}}'' isn't really about the supporting character Tron so much as it's about Flynn. ''Film/TronLegacy'' even more so.
212* ''Film/TheVampireDoll'': The vampire is not a doll.
213* At no point in ''Film/VisionQuest'' does anyone embark on a {{vision quest}}; rather, the title metaphorically refers to Louden's coming of age and his mission to drop two weight classes in order to wrestle Shute.
214* ''Film/WarOfTheGargantuas'' was originally made to be a loose sequel to ''Frankenstein Conquers the World'' but the English version acts more like a standalone film with all references to Frankenstein removed and the monsters dubbed as Gargantuas instead. Additionally, compared to the Japanese title ''Frankenstein's Monsters: Sanda vs. Gaira'', the English title is misleading because, between the titular monsters, Gaira gets the most screen time while Sanda doesn't appear until the midpoint of the film. Besides this, the first fight between them doesn't occur until the last third of the film so the film isn't technically about a war between them.
215* The question of ''Film/WhoKilledCaptainAlex'' is never answered, and after a very cursory investigation, the issue is dropped entirely from the film, despite [[BigBad Richard's]] obvious frustration. Even the ''director'' [[ShrugOfGod doesn't know who killed Captain Alex]]. Smart money's on this oft- abused rat.
216* ''Film/WillyWonkaAndTheChocolateFactory'' and ''Film/CharlieAndTheChocolateFactory'' are both misleading about their actual central characters. Wonka has a major presence in the former film but Charlie's character arc is ultimately more important to the plot, whereas the latter film focuses on and develops Wonka much more than Charlie. While the original novel was also titled ''Literature/CharlieAndTheChocolateFactory'', ''Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory'' was sponsored by a confectionery company with the idea of [[{{Defictionalization}} defictionalizing]] Wonka candy, so it was decided that Wonka should become the title character for the sake of brand recognition.
217[[/folder]]
218
219[[folder:Literature]]
220* ''Literature/OneThousandAndOneMoviesYouMustSeeBeforeYouDie'' contains a list of [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin 1001 movies the author considers must-see movies]], with each entry accompanied by a short essay explaining why. Except it's not 1001 movies, it's 1001 ''entries'' — ''Film/{{Olympia}}'' parts 1 and 2 are combined in a single entry, as are the two parts of ''Film/IvanTheTerrible'', the three films in ''Film/TheLordOfTheRings'' trilogy, and the four ''Franchise/ToyStory'' films. Moreover, two of the entries are Creator/KrzysztofKieslowski's ''Film/TheDecalogue'' (a 10-episode miniseries) and Creator/LarsVonTrier's ''Series/{{Riget}}'' (an 8-episode, 2-season TV series), aren't movies to begin with. Also, the book is updated annually (and has been since 2003), with the total number of works included numbering 1235 as of the 2020 edition.
221* ''An African Millionaire: Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay'' by Grant Allen has an accurate title, but an untrustworthy subtitle. The African millionaire who is the central character of the novel is named Charles Vandrift; Colonel Clay is a conman who repeatedly targets Vandrift with scams designed to expose his corrupt dealings, leading to the novel's conclusion that the career criminal is no less respectable than the millionaire.
222* In ''Alice the Fairy'', Alice is actually only pretending to be a fairy.
223* In ''Literature/AliensTookMyDaughter'', aliens didn't really take the man's daughter-- he just ''thought'' they did.
224* Some of the later ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'' books got really bad about this. Titles like ''The Suspicion'' (where nothing is suspicious), ''The Prophecy'' (which features no prophecy), and ''The Hidden'' (which features a bizarre morphing buffalo that is definitely not hidden) come to mind. Strangely, these are all books from Cassie's point of view; make of that what you will. There's also the first ''Megamorphs''[[note]] The ''Megamorphs'' books were four extra-long installments narrated by all six of the Animorphs in turn, instead of by just one of them.[[/note]] book ''The Andalite's Gift'', which has absolutely nothing to do with the Morphing Cube, the titular gift that the kids receive from the Andalite soldier Elfangor at the start of the series.
225* ''A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian'' is neither a history of tractors nor in Ukrainian.
226* ''Literature/BasLagCycle'': ''Literature/PerdidoStreetStation'' has almost nothing to do with the eponymous station, beyond a scene in the climax. On the other hand, it's hard to find a title that would fit with a book like that.
227* ''Toys/{{BIONICLE}} Chronicles #3: Makuta's Revenge''. [[BigBad Makuta]]'s sole presence are two short monologues at the beginning and around the middle, and the rest of the story doesn't concern him, nor is he responsible for releasing the enemies, the six Bohrok-Kal. Their awakening was an automatic response to the heroes' victory over the regular Bohrok swarms and the Bahrag queens, from the previous book. Now, Makuta ''did'' release those, so technically he's indirectly responsible for unleashing the Kal as well, but the title's still a stretch. Later story material then RetConned out the "revenge" part, too.
228** ''Chronicles #4: Tales of the Masks'', bearing the subtitle ''A New Quest...'', makes it seem like it's about the Toa Nuva (featured on the cover) re-enacting the tedious [[GottaCatchThemAll mask-collecting]] from the first book, but with [[MacGuffin new masks]]. The real focus is on exploring the relationships between the Toa and Turaga priests, through the FramingStory of the six Turaga reciting the tales of the mask-hunt, which is of lesser importance overall.
229** ''Legends #11: The Final Battle'', though the last of the ''Legends'' series and the climax of the original 2001-2008 saga, was by no means the final battle the heroes had to endure.
230* ''Series/{{Blackadder}}: The Whole Damn Dynasty'': a book containing scripts of the series, does not cover the whole dynasty. It doesn't contain ''The Cavalier Years'' and ''Blackadder's Christmas Carol'' (and was released before ''Back & Forth'').
231* ''Literature/BridgeToTerabithia'' is notorious for this. The book isn't so much about Terabithia than it is about the friendship between Jesse and Leslie.
232* "The Six Suspects", the original title of one of Isaac Asimov's ''Literature/BlackWidowers'' stories. [[spoiler:The killer is not among the eponymous suspects.]] In its book publication, the story was renamed "Out of Sight".
233* ''Literature/BurntOfferings'' has no offerings, burnt or otherwise.
234* In the ''WesternAnimation/DocMcStuffins'' book ''Chilly Catches a Cold'', Chilly doesn't actually catch a cold. He just gets the toy equivalent of hypothermia and needs to be warmed up by the fire.
235* ''Literature/AClockworkOrange'' is a WordSaladTitle that only makes sense in a variety of metaphorical senses, depending on which of the conflicting stories that Burgess has given to explain it that you believe. Suffice it to say that there are no literal clockwork oranges in the story.
236* In ''The Day I Lost My Superpowers'', the girl never actually had any superpowers to lose-- she just pretended to have them.
237* ''Literature/TheDeclineOfTheWest'' is a non-fiction book by [[UsefulNotes/DichterAndDenker German philosopher]] Oswald Spengler which inspired many people to grief about the coming end of civilization. Spengler wasn't completely happy with the title (which seemed to imply that the western world had to fall, like the Roman empire) and commented that he could've changed the title to "The fulfillment of the West", which would be closer to his intention - i.e. the west transforming to a stable but stagnant empire in the end. The fact that many fans only knew the title and didn't care to read the book didn't help.
238* The ''Dinosaur Art'' books are collections of paleoart in general, and several featured artists mainly or exclusively produce artwork for prehistoric mammals. However, this is par for the course for books on prehistory aimed at the general audience -- the word 'dinosaurs' is more marketable, so all sorts of unrelated animals get to be lumped together with them.
239* In ''Literature/DirtyBertie'', the story "Burp!" doesn't feature burping. The school meals change, but they don't give anyone gas.
240* The ''Series/SesameStreet'' book "Ernie's Little Lie" - Ernie doesn't actually lie. While he is tempted to pretend that he painted the painting his cousin sent him, he immediately decides that that would be wrong, and Bert merely mistakes the painting for one Ernie did, without giving Ernie a chance to explain.
241* While ''Literature/EverybodyLovesLargeChests'' does have boobs in it, those are not the chests that the author means.
242* ''Literature/FearStreet'' has a book called ''The Mind Reader'' which focuses on a teen who has visions of the future. You can see the problem with the title.
243* In Creator/AgathaChristie's short story "The Four Suspects", the killer turns out to be [[spoiler:a fifth character not counted among the so-called suspects]].
244* ''Literature/{{Goosebumps}}'' has a few offenders, such as ''The Birthday Party of No Return''. The birthday party in question has little bearing on what is actually going on.
245* The Goblet of Fire has a relatively brief appearance in ''Literature/HarryPotterAndTheGobletOfFire'', and merely serves to ''trigger'' the events of the book, after which it's pretty much never seen or mentioned again. "....and the Triwizard Tournament" would've been significantly more descriptive.
246* ''Literature/JohnDiesAtTheEnd'': John "dies" a short way into the book and then gets better. The title is due to the book's origins as web serial.
247* Lampshaded in ''Literature/JurassicPark'': it's noted by at least one character that the dinosaurs in the park aren't from the Jurassic [[note]]The only dinosaurs from the Jurassic Period in the novel are ''Apatosaurus'', ''Dilophosaurus'', and ''Stegosaurus''. The Compys are from the Triassic and all the others are from the Cretaceous[[/note]]. Evidently, the park's creators went for "sounds good" rather than "accurate".
248* No mockingbird is killed in ''Literature/ToKillAMockingbird'', nor are instructions on doing so stated in the book. The closest it comes is a Title drop, mentioning that it's a sin to do so.
249* Creator/JRRTolkien conceived ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'' as a single work, divided into six "books", or sections--each of which would have its own title. When the decision was made to split the work into three separate volumes, each containing two of the originally-conceived "books", Tolkien had to make up new titles on the fly. His choice for volume II, ''The Two Towers'', was meant to be deliberately vague, to represent the divergent subject matter covered by books III and IV; Tolkien himself admitted that it was anyone's guess ''which'' pair of towers the title referred to. (The film ran with the idea that it refers to Orthanc and Barad-Dur.) He later came to regret the choice, however, feeling that if anything it was better suited to the ''third'' volume:
250-->''I am not at all happy about the title ''The Two Towers''. It must if there is any real reference to it in Vol II refer to Orthanc and the Tower of Cirith Ungol. But since there is so much made of the basic opposition of the Dark Tower and Minas Tirith [in ''Return of the King''], that seems very misleading.''
251* ''Literature/MaxHavelaar, [[EitherOrTitle of de koffiveilingen der Nederlandsche Handelsmaatschappy]]''. The subtitle means 'or the coffee auctions of the Dutch Trading Company', but neither the company nor its auctions are mentioned anywhere in the book. [[PenName Multatuli]] did this deliberately to get as many people as possible - particularly those interested in the coffee trade - to read his AuthorTract.
252* ''Literature/{{Mog}}'': In "Mog on Fox Night", there is no occasion actually named "Fox Night". The foxes just came in to eat Mog's uneaten food.
253* ''Creator/MontyPython's Big Red Book'' has a blue cover.
254* The third and final installment of ''Literature/TheMysteriousBenedictSociety'' has the title ''The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Prisoner's Dilemma''. The PrisonersDilemma is only featured at the beginning of the book and has nothing to do with the overall plot of the story.
255* ''Literature/MyNextLifeAsAVillainessAllRoutesLeadToDoom'''s title is a "lie" on many levels:
256** Catarina may have been reborn into the body of the villainess of a game, but the moment that she regains her PastLifeMemories, any sort of villainy becomes [[NiceGirl an impossibility for her]].
257** Despite the statement that "all" of the routes end with doom, there are actually only six of ''twelve'' that do.[[labelnote:Spoiler]]Both of Geordo and Keith's routes end with Catarina's death or exile. Raphael's secret bad end causes ''everyone'' in the main cast to die, and the Reverse Harem ending also leads to bad things for Catarina.[[/labelnote]] The routes for Alan and Nicol have nothing to do with Catarina at all, and neither do [[spoiler:Raphael's good end or the Friendship route]]. That means that there's an even six-six split between good endings for Catarina and doom endings, even ignoring said reincarnation's potential to throw things entirely OffTheRails.
258* ''Literature/NakedLunch'' is not about naked people eating lunch. The writer, Creator/WilliamSBurroughs, said that he meant 'naked' more as in 'exposed': "a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork." However, that doesn't happen either in the book - at least not literally. However, being the absolute MindScrew that the novel is, it would be hard to come up with a more descriptive title for it.
259* ''Literature/TheNeverendingStory'' ends. Well, the book has a bunch of subplots left with NoEnding, apparently to inspire children to become writers by actually encouraging them to write their own fan fiction. It's very meta. Of course, it's technically not possible to have a neverending story even if it has NoEnding. It will simply stop eventually. Still, you'd think a book with that name would at least be a {{Doorstopper}}.
260* The second book in ''Literature/TheNightmareRoom'' 's "Thrillogy" is called ''What Scares You the Most?'', implying the protagonist will have their face their worst fear. This is not the case, unless her worst fear happens to be witches.
261* The book ''Literature/OfMiceAndMen'' has no mice anywhere in the story. The title is a reference to the old proverb "the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry", referring to how a major running theme in the story is the dream of the protagonists to get enough money for a farm of their own--which, naturally, does not go as they'd hoped.
262* ''Literature/OldMortality'': The title character appears only once and has nothing to do with the plot. A more accurate title would have been "Henry Morton" (the actual protagonist), "The Covenanters" (the people Henry reluctantly joins), or even "The Battle of Bothwell Bridge" (the defeat that ends the Covenanters' rebellion).
263* ''One Fine Day'' is a children's book with a very misleading title. While that is the opening line of the book, the entire story is a depressing tale about a fox who gets his tail cut off and goes out of his way on a frustrating journey just so he can get it sewn back on. There is certainly nothing fine about this fox's day at all!
264* Creator/DrSeuss' ''One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish'': It may be the opening line of the book, and the first few pages may be about fish, but the rest of the book has nothing to do with fish at all. A more representative title would have been "Funny Things Are Everywhere" since that is the recurring theme of the book.
265* Creator/NeilGaiman's short story "Other People" [[spoiler: has only one character. The title is, presumably, a reference to the saying "hell is other people."]]
266* Creator/RobertEHoward's most highly regarded horror story has the unfortunately hilarious title ''Pigeons from Hell'', and is not actually about demonic pigeons. At the start of the story, a flock of pigeons is described as a bad omen, but the birds don't play any significant role in the horrific events that follow.
267* ''Literature/ThePrincessBride'' isn't technically a princess; Buttercup was the daughter of a dairy farmer, but as she was almost inhumanly beautiful, Prince Humperdinck had insisted on her being his bride. His advisors, troubled by the idea of him marrying a non-royal, quietly arranged for her to be known as the Princess of Hammersmith (a tiny portion of the realm) and shipped her off to royalty school for training. (The film version makes no attempt to hide the fact that she was born a commoner.)
268** According to Creator/WilliamGoldman, the title came first -- he asked his two young daughters what his next story should feature, and one said "princesses" and the other said "brides," so he built the story around the title.
269* ''Literature/ReignOfTheSevenSpellblades'': The Seven Spellblades are actually a rather minor feature of the setting rather than a major driving force; also, there's initially only six. Newcomers to the series also sometimes have to have it explained to them that the title does not refer to the six main characters, either: their proper collective name is "the Sword Roses" (which is only coined in volume 2), whereas a "spellblade" in the lore of the series is an UnblockableAttack.
270* ''Literature/RoysBedoys'': In “Roys Bedoys Saves the Day”, he never actually does any grand-scale heroism; he just does kind, but relatively mundane, acts such as cleaning his brother’s grazed hand.
271* The Literature/SilverJohn story "Why They're Called That" is John describing a monster called a [[LivingStructureMonster gardinel]], its appearance and eating habits, but in the end, he admits he doesn't know where the name comes from.
272* Most of books in ''Literature/SpaceMarineBattles'' fall under ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin or even SpoilerTitle, but some are pretty non-indicative:
273** In ''Death of Antagonis'', planet Antagonis is blown up one third into the book, and the story itself focuses on rise and fall of Taharan rather than anything connected to Antagonis.
274** In ''Purging of Kallidus'', the eponymous harbor is purged off-screen by PDF {{Red Shirt}}s, while the heroes go around purging power plants.
275* The second omnibus of ''Literature/TheSpiritThief'' novels is titled ''Revenge of Eli Monpress'', and while there is some revenging going on, Eli's not the one doing it.
276* Harry Harrison's gamebook ''You Can Be Literature/TheStainlessSteelRat'': Actually, not really. You are assuming the role of a new recruit in the Special Corps. But Stainless Steel Rat Slippery Jim Digriz is your mentor. He sends you on the mission and assumes a role not too dissimilar to [[Series/QuantumLeap Al Calavicci]]. So it's the next best thing to being The Stainless Steel Rat himself.
277* ''Franchise/StarWarsLegends'': The CompletelyDifferentTitle of the German translation of ''[[Literature/XWingSeries X-Wing: Rogue Squadron]]'' is ''X-Wing: Angriff auf Coruscant'', i.e. "assault on Coruscant". However, the novel is merely about the beginnings of the New Republic campaign to eventually take over Coruscant – the actual assault on Coruscant itself doesn't happen until later.
278* In ''There are No Cats in This Book'', there actually ''are'' cats-- they just wish they weren't in a book and want to enter reality.
279* ''Literature/TheThreeMusketeers'' is actually about the ''fourth'' musketeer who meets and joins the original three. While the main characters are members of the historical "musketeers", the plot focuses on their private dueling and brawling with swords rather than their wartime fighting with muskets.
280* ''Literature/TimeToOrbitUnknown'': The time to orbit is one of the few things that ''is'' known for sure.
281* ''The Wakefields of Sweet Valley'', a prologue novel to the ''Literature/SweetValleyHigh'' series, is about a family of women not named Wakefield who do not live in Sweet Valley.
282* ''Literature/WarriorCats'' usually averts this, generally having titles that are either vaguely ominous (''Dark River'', ''Forest of Secrets'') or Mad Lib Fantasy Titles](''Bluestar's Prophecy'', ''The Last Hope''). However, in ''[[Literature/WarriorCatsNovellas Cloudstar's Journey]]'', there is no literal journey. Not odd unless you know about the character: he was famous for taking his entire group of cats away from their home and journeying for days to find a new one. You'd think the novella would be about that. You'd think...
283* ''Literature/TheWidowOfDesire'' seems like a romance story, but while it is about a widow, the desire isn't for her as much as taking over [[PrettyInMink her fur coat company]] or finding [[TheCoup Soviet takeover secrets]] her murdered husband had found out and hidden.
284* ''Literature/WinnieThePooh'':
285** In "Piglet Meets a Heffalump", Piglet doesn't actually meet one-- he just mistakes Pooh with a jar of honey on his head for a Heffalump.
286** In "Tigger is Unbounced", Tigger is never actually "unbounced", i.e. made less bouncy-- Rabbit, Pooh, and Piglet ''attempt'' to unbounce him, but they fail.
287[[/folder]]
288
289[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
290* ''24 Hours in A&E'': This show technically stays within the premise that all the events of an episode (barring the WhereAreTheyNowEpilogue) occur within 24 hours... but few, if any, episodes cover that ''long'' a period - most just follow a single day or night shift.
291* ''Series/{{Angel}}'' is not a show about an angel, nor does it feature any angels, although there are unseen [[ThePowersThatBe Powers That Be]] who guide the hero by sending visions to one of his sidekicks. The main protagonist is a [[VampireDetectiveSeries vampire detective]] ''named'' Angel (which goes back to his little sister mistaking him for one after he died; his original name was Liam).
292* ''Series/TheBigBangTheory'' is mainly about the social misadventures of three socially-awkward scientists [[RunningGag and one not-scientist]]. The titular theory may be mentioned occasionally in passing, but it's hardly the focus of the show.
293* ''Series/DarkAngel'' is likewise not about an angel, neither the regular kind nor a FallenAngel, but rather a genetically engineered PhlebotinumRebel whose beauty makes her the figurative "dark angel". And although Max is essentially [[NotWearingTights an uncostumed superhero]], she never uses the name Dark Angel or any other hero codename. The name was also likely influenced by ''Manga/BattleAngelAlita'', which is known to have been one of Creator/JamesCameron's inspirations in making the show.
294* ''Series/DoctorWho'':
295** "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E10TheDoctorDances The Doctor Dances]]" could be seen as this. While the Doctor ''does'' dance at the end of it, it has nothing to do with the central plot of gas-mask zombies in Blitz-era London.
296** "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E14TheNextDoctor The Next Doctor]]" centers around a man who seems to be a future incarnation of the Doctor. It turns out he only thinks he's the Doctor because his brain was scrambled by a Cyberman cartridge carrying information ''about'' the Doctor.
297** "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E8LetsKillHitler Let's Kill Hitler]]", in which the Nazis and the genocidal dictator himself have little to no influence on the real plot. They either [[TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot wasted a perfectly good plot]] or [[TheyPlottedAPerfectlyGoodWaste plotted a perfectly good waste]], depending on your perspective.
298** "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS33E6TheBellsOfSaintJohn The Bells of Saint John]]" is just a joke about what medieval monks call the phone incorporated into the TARDIS, which has the "St John Ambulance" logo on it, but is not a plot point.
299* The ninth episode of ''Series/GilligansIsland'' is named "Goodbye Island". Of course, this being the series it is, the castaways don’t get off the island in it.
300* ''Series/HappyDays'': In "The Fonz is Allergic to Girls", Fonzie is not actually allergic to girls; he just thinks he is.
301* ''Series/TheHoneymooners'': Both of the main couples have been married for a significant period, so no honeymoons are depicted.
302* ''Series/ICarly'': The episode "iCarly Saves TV". They don't save television, the gang [[SelfParody gets the opportunity to turn]] ''[=iCarly=]'' [[SelfParody (the in-universe webcast) into a TV show]], it gets massive ExecutiveMeddling and they [[StatusQuoIsGod give up and go back to the Internet]].
303* ''Series/IdolXWarriorMiracleTunes'': Sometimes the titles of the episodes only touch upon a minor plot point in the episode. For example, episode 6 is titled "Mai's Cooking Trouble" and Mai being a LethalChef only took place within the first 5 minutes of the episode.
304* ''Series/ItsAlwaysSunnyInPhiladelphia'' episodes will often have a title "The Gang X" that suggests the Gang does something that actually doesn't happen during the episode.
305* Only three of the twelve episodes of ''Series/JurassicFightClub'' involve the Jurassic period in any way. Its European-Australian title ''Dinosaur Secrets'' is more on point, though two episodes don't feature dinosaurs. The host acknowledged the title's problem, but the final say wasn't his.
306* ''Series/KyoryuSentaiZyuranger'': [[MarketBasedTitle In some markets]], this show was [[CompletelyDifferentTitle localized as]] ''Galaxy Rangers'', even though the only characters who are outside the Earth are the main villains.[[note]]Furthermore, these [[SimilarlyNamedWorks "Galaxy Rangers"]] (which is just Toei's suggested international name for the show) are not [[WesternAnimation/AdventuresOfTheGalaxyRangers outer space Texas Rangers who ride robot horses protecting the]] [[SpaceWestern "last frontier"]].[[/note]]
307* Invoked in an episode of ''Series/{{Maury}}'' entitled "I'm Praying My Brother Isn't My Baby's Father!" The title implies BrotherSisterIncest, but it turns out the woman cheated on her boyfriend with ''his'' brother, thus the line is spoken from the boyfriend's perspective. And because this is a daytime talk show, it turned out neither man was the father.
308* PlayedForLaughs in the Netflix reboot of ''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000'' episode featuring ''Film/{{Avalanche}}''. Kinga develops a device called the "Don La Font-aine 3000", which converts phrases into genre logos and they don't match at all. ''I Wanna Do One'' is done up in a style meaning for a "Ladies-weepy" movie, ''A Lighthearted Neil Simon Project'' is done up in the style of a "balls-to-the-wall action flick" and ''Okay, We Get It'' is the next ''Franchise/StarWars'' title!
309* Many episode titles in ''Radio/OurMissBrooks'' are ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin. Others are deliberately misleading. For example, "The Hurricane" does not have Miss Brooks and the gang survive a hurricane. Miss Brooks and Harriet mistakenly think there's a hurricane coming when they hear the storm warning on Walter Denton's homemade radio. They fail to listen to the rest of the broadcast, missing the reveal that they were listening to a station broadcasting from Bombay, India.
310-->'''[[UsefulNotes/TheRaj British Radio Announcer]]''': Tether your elephants! I repeat, tether your elephants!
311* ''Series/PowerRangersSamurai'': The first episode aired is titled "The Team Unites". Yet there is no [[AvengersAssemble uniting]], at least not in a RecruitTeenagersWithAttitude sense. The Rangers ''already'' have their powers[[note]]In fact, the members of this team already know they're going to be rangers.[[/note]], and the episode is primarily focused on the Green Samurai Ranger, Mike, who technically could be said to "rejoin" the team in the latter part of the episode. It's all but confirmed that it was supposed to be Episode 3, and the ''true'' "first episodes" of ''Samurai'' came in the form of {{Origins Episode}}s mid-season.
312* The DIY Network series ''Rehab Addict'' is about a woman who's addicted... [[spoiler:to rehabilitating old homes.]]
313* ''Series/{{Revolution}}'': "[[Recap/RevolutionS1E14TheNightTheLightsWentOutInGeorgia The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia]]". The title implies we'll see events during the Blackout, but the episode proves to be anything but.
314* ''Series/RuyisRoyalLoveInThePalace'' provides an English-only example. Its original title, ''Legend of Ruyi'', follows a frequent pattern for titles of Chinese period dramas. Someone somewhere decided a direct translation wasn't good enough, so when choosing the official English title they picked one that's nothing like the original. Worse, it gives the impression this is a cute, romantic series. ''It isn't.''
315* ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'' is a downplayed example, since it's mostly live but has included filmed sketches going back to its earliest days (i.e. commercial parodies, animated shorts, and the Digital Shorts), and these often become breakout skits. Also, over half of the episode takes place after midnight on the East Coast and is thus technically aired on Sunday there. A few sketches also have misleading names, such as the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2aRjL34hA0 "Rosie the Riveter"]] sketch, which is about the search for the factory woman to serve as the model for the iconic poster. Rosie is there, but most of the focus is on the three crude "slug thumper" women who also work in the factory.
316* ''Series/TheSpencerSisters'': The title characters are actually a daughter and mother duo who are mistaken for sisters due to their StrongFamilyResemblance.
317* ''Series/StargateSG1'' and ''Series/StargateAtlantis'': Beyond the first few seasons, these shows would often go entire episodes without mentioning or showing a stargate, with spaceships becoming the more common method of travel.
318* ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' is primarily set on a SpaceStation. There is very little "trekking" involved, especially for the first two seasons. It's named that solely because it's the same universe as the previous ''Star Trek'' shows.
319* ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' isn't about the original characters' kids, nor is it set one generation into the future. It's actually set a whole century later. It's not even the next ship to be called ''Enterprise'' after the one the original crew were last seen using in the movies (the ''Enterprise''-A), with two others coming between that one and this one (the ''Enterprise''-D).
320* ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'': In "The Disease", no one actually gets a disease-- Seven of Nine makes an analogy that compares romantic love to a disease, that she later even denounces as inaccurate.
321* In the ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'' series finale, "Carry On", rather than the AndTheAdventureContinues ending suggested by the title, the episode brings the series to a very definitive close.
322* In ''Series/TrueBlood'', the blood is actually fake.
323* ''Series/ZeroZeroZero'': The miniseries centers on an international shipment of pure cocaine from Mexico to Italy. The phrase "zero zero zero" is never uttered, and its meaning isn't apparent from watching the show. It's the nickname among Italian narcotraffickers for the highest quality of cocaine, referencing the highest grade of pasta flour.
324[[/folder]]
325
326[[folder:Music]]
327* The first song on Twelfth Night's self-titled album is entitled "Last Song."
328* The sixth song on Music/FooFighters' ''In Your Honor'' is called "The Last Song", though ItMakesSenseInContext of the song itself.
329* Music/AFlockOfSeagulls' "The End" is the next-to-the-last track on ''The Story Of A Young Heart''.
330* "[[Music/TheRollingStonesBand Sympathy For The Devil]]" doesn't portray him very sympathetically at all.
331* Music/{{Vocaloid}} song ''[[https://youtu.be/POy0RvJeaqM SHANTI]]'' by wotaku; the title is a [[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/shanti Sanskrit word]] meaning "peace/tranquility" in Hinduism, but the track is an upbeat, powerful UsefulNotes/{{Bollywood}}-inspired VillainSong about TheMafia.
332* Intestinal Disgorge's "I'm Going to Fuck Your Kid." They even acknowledge this partway through:
333-->This song has nothing to do with fucking kids, by the way...
334* The song called ''Long Happy Life'' by Soviet-Russian PunkRock singer Yegor Letov describes (in a very bizarre way) his AndIMustScream state of anhedonia, depression, and anguish during abstinent syndrome after numerous alcohol and drug overdoses.
335* Throbbing Gristle's ''20 Jazz Funk Greats''. The genre is way off and the number of songs falls short by 9. If you include the bonus tracks on the latest reissue, it overshoots by 2.
336* Ween's ''12 Golden Country Greats''. Unlike the Throbbing Gristle example, the songs do belong to the indicated genre; however, there are only ten of them. There ''were'' two {{B Side}}s, so the number of songs produced during the sessions adds up to 12, but neither of those tracks ever appeared on any official release of the album itself. A popular theory holds that the the album title isn't describing the songs themselves, but Dean and Gene Ween's backing group for the album, which consisted entirely of veteran country session musicians - however, even if you count vocal quartet The Jordanaires as one entity, a total of ''thirteen'' backing musicians were credited.
337* Though the chorus of Music/WeirdAlYankovic's "This Song's Just Six Words Long" indeed contains just six words, the lyrics have far more than six words in them.
338* Invoked by original [[Music/TheBeatles Beatles]] drummer, Pete Best, who infamously named his first album [[EpunymousTitle ''Best of the Beatles'']], confusing fans of Music/TheBeatles expecting a GreatestHitsAlbum.
339* "Jack the Ripper" by Music/NickCave is (unlike a huge amount of his songs) not a MurderBallad. It has nothing to do with the historical serial killer but is about a dysfunctional relationship in which, among other things, the protagonist's woman accuses him of being a sex maniac whenever he makes advances to her.
340* ''Music/JazzFromHell'' by Music/FrankZappa: The music is not {{Jazz}} at all, but computer music with one live guitar solo, recorded during a concert.
341* ''[[Music/RobertJohnsonTheCompleteRecordings The Complete Recordings]]'' by Music/RobertJohnson. It is the most complete collection of Johnson's work around, that's true, but it's not entirely complete. There is one alternate take of "Traveling Riverside Blues" missing.
342* ''Music/BrianJonesPresentsThePipesOfPanAtJajouka'' is an album that was merely produced by Music/BrianJones and doesn't feature him on vocals or instruments at all. Instead, we hear the wonderful performances by the Master Musicians of Jajouka, a Moroccan folk group.
343* Music/ElvisPresley: Arguably the most notorious, yet atrocious concert album in his career is ''Music/HavingFunWithElvisOnStage'', a 35-minute collection of nothing but Elvis cracking jokes with the audience, without any music or context of what is going on. Not only is the record painfully unfunny, but a lot of it also is technically not even a joke, just Elvis saying random things in interaction with his audience. Half of the time he is just rambling, before deciding his jokes are falling flat or his story isn't going anywhere.
344* Music/JohnZorn: Several tracks on ''Music/MusicForChildren'' are too difficult, noisy or scary for children to appreciate them.
345* Music/DanielAmos played with this on their album ''Music/VoxHumana''. The title is Latin for "voice of the human"--but it's an album of NewWaveMusic and SynthPop and the least-human sounding album in their discography. The irony was intentional since a major theme of the lyrics is discerning "the voice of the human" among the background noise of 1980s society.
346* Many of Music/FallOutBoy's song titles prior to their hiatus prioritized clever phrasing and pop culture references over actually having anything to do with the lyrics or genre. Examples include "A Little Less Film/SixteenCandles, A Little More Touch Me", "The Carpal Tunnel of Love" and "[[Music/JayZ The Take Over, the Breaks Over]]" have nothing to do with the songs. From Save Rock and Roll onward, this tendency has lessened as more of the song titles show up in the lyrics themselves.
347* "Punkrocker" by Teddybears is electro-pop, not PunkRock, even though [[LyricalDissonance the lyrics are meant to be about punk rock]], and actual punk rocker Music/IggyPop provides the vocals.
348* The second song on Music/PainOfSalvation's ''Remedy Lane'' is called "Ending Theme".
349* A majority of the songs by Music/SystemOfADown have titles that are completely irrelevant to the subject matters of the songs.
350* [[http://lyrics.wikia.com/wiki/The_Muppets%3AThe_Rhyming_Song "The Rhyming Song"]] by Franchise/TheMuppets [[SubvertedRhymeEveryOccasion doesn't]] [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin rhyme]] at all. This is lampshaded at the final chorus, where Scooter says, "This is not The Rhyming Song." Fozzie replies, "I know it's not the Rhyming Song!"
351* Music/BenFoldsFive is a trio.
352* Darius Rucker has repeatedly stated that he is not "Hootie", and that his (now former) band Music/HootieAndTheBlowfish doesn't have anyone named Hootie.
353* Music/TheJGeilsBand: J. Geils is the guitarist, not the singer. Not only that, but from 2012 through 2015, the band toured under that name without Geils himself participating. (The band no longer performs as "The J. Geils Band", and Geils died in 2017.)
354* [[Music/{{Genesis|Band}} Mike Rutherford]]'s band "Mike + the Mechanics" plays with this. He did try singing lead at first, but then he decided to have other people sing lead instead.
355* This trope has been known to happen to [=artist/producer=] duos. One example is "Loggins and Messina". Kenny Loggins (later of Film/{{Footloose}}, and [[Film/TopGun Danger Zone]] fame) originally intended to be a solo artist from the start, but producer Jim Messina contributed so much to what would have been his debut album, that it was called "Kenny Loggins with Jim Messina Sittin' in". As a result, the act was called "Loggins and Messina" from that point forward until 1976 when they broke up (on good terms).
356* Music/{{ABBA}}'s compilation ''Thank You For The Music: A Collection Of Love Songs''. Even being very generous and allowing songs about platonic and parental love to qualify, love songs still don't make up even half of the album.
357* ''Music/{{Songdrops}}'': In "Striper the Kitty", Striper is actually a skunk that was mistaken for a cat.
358* While the Music/BobMarley song "Three Little Birds" does indeed have three birds in it, the focus is mostly on the message of not worrying.
359* The Irish rebel song "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwjiGDobJqs Come Out Ye Black and Tans]]" is not actually about challenging the infamous and brutal police units who were often called the Black and Tans (due to wearing patchwork uniforms at the start of their existence, with the dark green of the Royal Irish Constabulary and khaki of the British Army), but rather the writer's loyalist neighbors, who the lyrics are likening to the Black and Tans due to their continued loyalty to an oppressive foreign government. While it might be tough to tell that with no context or from just a surface understanding of the lyrics, the big clues are when the singer refers to their opponents as ''Seoinín'', an Irish word meaning [[CategoryTraitor an Irish person who hates their own people and tries to emulate the English upper class]], and calls out deeds of theirs (like cheering for the executions of the leaders of 1916 Easter Uprising), that happened before the Black and Tans came to Ireland. (Indeed, one thing the song decries is "how you slandered great Parnell", as in Charles Stewart Parnell, who argued for Irish Home Rule in the 19th century and died in 1891... almost ''thirty years'' before the Black and Tans came into existence in 1920.)
360* ''Music/{{Train}}'': "50 Ways to Say Goodbye" is actually about ways to die, and only eleven are listed. Granted, the song was supposed to be called "50 Ways to Kill Your Lover"…
361* ''Music/{{Monody}}'' by TheFatRat at no point consists of a single melody line — there is always a harmony line.
362* ''Thirteen Unlucky Numbers'' by Wax is sort of a PunBasedTitle, playing off the ThirteenIsUnlucky trope and "numbers" as in the vaudevillian term for "songs" - however, the album only has ten actual songs on it; they put three short tracks of silence at the end of the album, just so the total number of tracks on the CD would still be 13.
363[[/folder]]
364
365[[folder:Pinball]]
366* ''Pinball/TheMachineBrideOfPinbot'': Except for the title, no one ever refers to the titular Machine as "Bride".
367* ''[[Pinball/NoFearDangerousSports No Fear: Dangerous Sports]]'' has the "No Limits" Major Challenge, where the value of each shot starts at 20 million points, and each one collected adds another million... only to cap out at 70 million.
368[[/folder]]
369
370[[folder:PuppetShows]]
371* The ''Series/{{Oobi}}'' episode titled, "Sleepover". This episode mostly focused on Uma missing Oobi while he's at Kako's sleepover, the titular sleepover isn't even shown until the end of the episode.
372[[/folder]]
373
374[[folder:Radio]]
375* ''Creator/TheBrewingNetwork'' with The Sour Hour. It is theoretically an hour-long, but more episodes are an hour and a half or longer than those with times closer to an hour. There's also the fact it isn't exclusively about sour brewing but goes into all types of funky brewing such as the use of brettanomyces.
376[[/folder]]
377
378[[folder:Tabletop Games]]
379* ''TabletopGame/AllFleshMustBeEaten'' -- you spend the game working to avoid that.
380* TabletopGame/ChineseCheckers is neither Chinese (it was invented in Germany) nor a variation of TabletopGame/{{checkers}}.
381[[/folder]]
382
383[[folder:Theatre]]
384* ''Four Saints in Three Acts'' has four acts, and fifteen Saints in the DramatisPersonae having different names (there are two Saint Teresas). This is lampshaded in the Prologue to Act Four of this MindScrew.
385* ''Theatre/FunHome'' is a diminutive ''Funeral'' Home, which is the family business. Their actual home life is dysfunctional at best.
386* The 1946 Broadway musical ''Park Avenue'' was set entirely on Long Island.
387[[/folder]]
388
389[[folder:Theme Parks]]
390* ''Star Tours: The Adventures Continue'' is an updated version of the original ''Ride/StarTours'' attraction at the Disney parks. The title could imply this is supposed to be a sequel to the ride, but it is a prequel since it is supposed to take place before the events of the original ride.
391* The former ''Ride/TwisterRideItOut'' attraction at [[Ride/UniversalStudios Universal Studios Florida]] was a special-effects show, not a ride as its title would imply.
392[[/folder]]
393
394[[folder:Visual Novels]]
395* No murders take place in ''VisualNovel/DramaticalMurder'', although [[spoiler:the villain Toue plans to brainwash people to the point of being brain-dead, which is the mental equivalent of murder]].
396* ''VisualNovel/MilkInsideABagOfMilkInsideABagOfMilk'': The sequel shows that the girl bought a carton of milk, not a bag.
397* ''VisualNovel/MysticMessenger'': While the "Messenger" part of the title is accurate as the game takes place almost entirely on a chat messenger service, the "Mystic" part is misleading because there is absolutely nothing mystical or supernatural about the messenger or anything else in the game. ''Mysterious Messenger'' would have been a much more appropriate title for the game... but it's hard to deny that ''Mystic Messenger'' [[RuleOfCool just has a better ring to it]].
398* ''VisualNovel/NineHoursNinePersonsNineDoors'': As the title suggests, the game feature nine people that have nine hours to find their way through nine doors. However while they start out with nine people, the ninth member of the party is killed off before the opening cutscene is even over, meaning that the game only has eight participants. And while [[spoiler:his bracelet can still work and thus participate, later on it's revealed there's more people stuck with them with their own bracelet, pushing the participant number higher than nine]]. There are also more than nine doors, with [[spoiler:the reveal that the "9" door found is not the true one, and the second one is the one that really leads to the exit.]] Finally, [[spoiler:the True Ending actually lasts longer than the allotted nine hours, with the final puzzle happening as the group tries to escape the apparent sinking. The reveal that there was never any danger of drowning proves that there was actually no time limit at all.]]
399* ''VisualNovel/PlumbersDontWearTies''. In one scene early on in the "game", John is seen playing air guitar with a plunger while wearing a tie (which, admittedly, his mother expects him to wear despite his insistence that [[TitleDrop plumbers don't wear ties]]). The only reason why the game is likely called this is that in the end, Kate says that plumbers don't wear ties when John tells her he's a plumber.
400[[/folder]]
401
402[[folder:Web Animation]]
403* Each episode of ''The WebAnimation/CyanideAndHappiness Show'' has a title that's completely unrelated to any of the sketches within it. For example, Episode 2 is called "Why I Hate Summer Camp"; the sketches are a Moby Dick parody, a guy in the bath, and a guy trying to propose to his girlfriend. Summer camp isn't mentioned once. Averted with the [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin depressing episode]].
404* ''WesternAnimation/HappyTreeFriends'': While most of the characters are indeed friends with one another, the show [[SubvertedKidsShow is definitely not a very happy one]] and despite being set in a forest, trees aren't that big a part of it.
405[[/folder]]
406
407[[folder:Webcomics]]
408* ''Webcomic/OneHundredAndEightyAngel:''[[spoiler: The title of Episode 12, Cookies!, makes it sound like a happy, light episode, right? '''Wrong''', it is the episode that reveals that Chloe's parents were murdered in front of her by a demon when she was a little kid.]]
409* Despite the main cast being [[KidHero teenagers]], nobody in ''Webcomic/TheGodOfHighSchool'' is actually shown attending school.
410* ''Webcomic/GunnerkriggCourt'': "Faraway Morning and Three Short Tales" is the title of Chapter 34, which does have characters telling [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin three short tales]]. It sounds like a short chapter, right? It's actually one of the longest chapters to date thanks to all of the CharacterDevelopment and plot revelations going on between each of the tales.
411* ''Webcomic/MSPaintAdventures'' is only 3 stories and 1 OrphanedSeries and the current one hasn't been an adventure [[note]]IE, written by user suggestions[[/note]] in years. And nothing aside from the first panel of the first adventure has been made in UsefulNotes/MSPaint.
412** Also, ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}'' is only about a kid stuck in his house for about a few dozen pages out of several thousand. Apparently, Creator/AndrewHussie was going to name it ''Sburb'', the name of the [[TheGamePlaysYou game]] on which the story is based, but thought it was too boring.
413* One page of ''Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick,'' set while [[TheSmartGuy Vaarsuvius]] is fighting a dragon, is called "A Dragon's Victory." [[spoiler:Vaarsuvius wins by turning into a dragon]].
414* While petri dishes do crop up in ''Webcomic/ThePetriDish'', they're not the main focus.
415* ''Webcomic/QuestionableContent''
416** It doesn't have much questionable, i.e. risque/pornographic, content. There's a decent quantity of sex jokes -- the protagonist's mom is a [[AmazinglyEmbarrassingParents dominatrix]], and his pet robot is a pervert -- but there are hardly any sex/nudity scenes (none at all for the first thousand or so comics) and naughty-bits are always kept out of sight. The entire compendium is less questionable than any random ''Webcomic/{{Oglaf}}'' comic.
417** In an in-universe example, the ShowWithinAShow "Ass Swordsman Tetsuo", about [[AdjectiveNounFred a guy named Tetsuo who can pull swords out of his ass]], goes at least 22 episodes without Tetsuo pulling a single sword out of his ass. Marigold "can't tell if it's a brilliant deconstruction of shonen anime tropes or it's just garbage".
418* ''Webcomic/SleeplessDomain'': Ironically, unlike most cases of [[TripleShifter schoolkids having nightly superhero adventures]], the {{magical girl}}s of ''Sleepless Domain'' attend a special school that starts late in the day so they can get a full eight hours of sleep (from 2 AM to 10 AM). The only chronically "sleepless" character is Rue, who goes to normal school because she [[ConspiracyTheorist doesn't trust the government]]. The title [[http://www.sleeplessdomain.com/comic/chapter-1-cover apparently]] comes from an in-universe [[CelebritySuperhero magical girl celebrity magazine]], though this never comes up in the story. [[http://www.sleeplessdomain.com/comic/chapter-7-page-3 This page]] pokes fun at the inconsistency:
419-->'''Kokoro:''' A good night's sleep is the first step to kicking ass.\
420'''AltText:''' It's called SLEEPLESS DOMAIN! You're all doing it wrong!
421[[/folder]]
422
423[[folder:Web Original]]
424* Website/TVTropes itself.
425** The website focuses on storytelling devices rather than figures of speech.
426** If a page is listed in ThisIndexIsNotAnExample, you shouldn't take a page title at face value. If it gets so far out of hand that it ''only'' confuses tropers and readers, however, this often leads to a [[Administrivia/RenamedTropes rename]].
427** The site discusses [[ArtifactTitle other media besides television.]]
428** [[SelfDemonstratingArticle This very page]], if you decide to take the title literally and not trust that it's about misleading titles.
429** StuffyOldSongsAboutTheButtocks, which are neither stuffy nor old, and rarely do they make use of the term "buttocks" in full.
430* IGN's [[http://ca.ign.com/articles/2012/08/13/6-video-game-titles-that-lied-straight-to-your-face 6 Video Game Titles That Lied Straight to Your Face]].
431* Kiwi Farms ({{NSFW}}), a forum notorious for their harassment and stalking campaigns against neurodivergent and LGBTQIA+ individuals on the Internet, has fooled plenty of people into thinking it's a site about farming literal kiwi fruits/birds. The original title was [[Webcomic/{{Sonichu}} CWCki]] Forums, but the title was changed allegedly to mock someone with a speech impediment attempting to pronounce it.
432* One of the most baffling non-indicative titles is a story about Ricochet, a would-be service dog that instead became a surfing dog that helps disabled children (a website dedicated to her can be found [[http://www.surfdogricochet.com/ here]]). Logically, a clickbait title would play up the dog's change in career, but instead the story could be found with a completely unrelated title: "Mom Delivers 10 Babies, But There's Something About Her NINTH That Stuns Everyone". Ricochet's story has nothing to do with mothers or unusual ninth of ten babies, human or dog.
433* Chinese Troper Teslashark wrote a webfic that's called ''Time to Shoot Down the Moon''. The rock-satellite of Earth suffers nothing in the story. In fact the author did it on purpose, to mock sci-fi series and war fictions [[JustForFun/IThoughtThatWas with outrageous names]].
434* ''Literature/TheDayTheMusicDied'' has absolutely nothing to do with the fatal plane crash immortalized in "Music/AmericanPie". It is, however, about how a fictional fandom experienced every possible drama bomb at once. "American Pie" does show up, but only at the tail-end of the story.
435[[/folder]]
436
437[[folder:Web Videos]]
438* When WebVideo/TheAnnoyingOrange heard about ''WesternAnimation/InsideOut'', his first thought was that [[LiteralMinded people's heads would turn inside out]]. Pear had to tell him it wasn't that kind of movie.
439* The ''WebVideo/AtopTheFourthWall'' arc [[spoiler:"[[Recap/AtopTheFourthWallTheCloneSaga The Clone Saga]]", while dealing with copies of Linkara, really doesn't have the clone Linksano made play any role. Its title, as it was during the series's tenth anniversary, is ultimately an homage to the fact the first episode was a review of an issue of the ''ComicBook/SpiderMan'' [[ComicBook/TheCloneSaga storyline of the same name]] with the clone having been killed off even before the story began and the copies being {{Mirror|Universe}}kara and a CameBackWrong Mechakara.]]
440* Creator/BishopBarron's video "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wp3vbgU8HR4 on The Doritos Commercial]]" is only about Doritos at the beginning. The rest of the video is spent discussing the philosophy behind abortion advocacy, the separation of truth and will in the thought of William of Occam to Renee Descartes, and UsefulNotes/ThePope Benedict XVI's theology.
441* ''WebVideo/CLWEntertainment'':
442** The now-cancelled [[Creator/FujikoFujio Fujiko F. Fujio block]] was going to have episodes of ''Manga/{{Doraemon}}'', ''Manga/{{Perman}}'', and ''Manga/NinjaHattori''. However, ''Ninja Hattori'' is made by Fujiko A. Fujio, not Fujiko F. Fujio, meaning the title is not entirely correct.
443** The video [[https://youtu.be/VhtxxAfzxLE "Thumbs"]] has nothing to do with thumbs.
444* One of ''WebVideo/{{Defunctland}}'''s Creator/JimHenson videos is named ''The Curse of Series/SesameStreet''. No mention of TheProductionCurse is made there. It actually refers to Henson's fear of ending up in a "children's show ghetto", which led him to create ''Series/TheMuppetShow''.
445* ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQkEGnV3Cwc Dumb Lawyer Quotes IRL but in Ace Attorney]]'' is, [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin as the name implies]], ''Franchise/AceAttorney'' characters re-enacting lawyers asking stupid questions in court. However, in some of the later videos, the witnesses are sometimes the ones who are saying the stupid things, while the lawyers are reasonably intelligent.
446* ''Series/TheWeather'': The work is called "The Weather", episodes are named after weather terms like "Sunny", and there are transitional-segments of people living their life in whatever weather is presented... but the actual skits are only loosely based on the weather at best, and completely unrelated at worst.
447* Jay Bauman of ''WebVideo/RedLetterMedia'' has a personal Youtube channel that is one long RunningGag. Every video purports to be part of a vlog about prosaic pop culture topics but is instead a short, ominous still life. During a ''WebVideo/PreviouslyRecorded'' stream, he [[HypocriticalHumor criticized the concept]] of deliberately mislabeling Youtube videos.
448* ''WebVideo/ScreenRantPitchMeetings'' isn't an example in and of itself, since [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin it shows the creator's imaginings of the pitch meetings for the films and TV shows it covers]], but it does sometimes discuss this trope.
449** In the pitch meeting for ''Film/AvengersAgeOfUltron'', the Producer is surprised to hear that the film takes place over "a couple of days," and asks the Screenwriter if he knows what "age" means.
450** In the pitch meeting for ''Film/ClashOfTheTitans2010'', the Producer notices that there are no titans in the movie- just humans, Greek gods and some monsters.
451* ''WebVideo/VGMyths'' isn't about solving or investigating [[UrbanLegendOfZelda video game-related rumors]], but rather doing SelfImposedChallenge runs. This is lampshaded in one of the {{couch gag}} introductions:
452--> "Welcome to VG Myths, the online internet video game TV show that doesn't solve mysteries, has never solved mysteries, and is shocked and appalled by the accusation of ever having associated with busters of the myth variety."
453[[/folder]]
454
455[[folder:Western Animation]]
456* ''WesternAnimation/OneHundredAndOneDalmatiansTheSeries'' may have 101 Dalmatians, but a majority of the show focuses primarily on three pups and a chicken.
457* An in-universe example happens in ''[[WesternAnimation/RockyAndBullwinkle Aesop and Son]]''. Aesop tells his son a fable called "The Aardvark and the Lion", which was really about a cruel lion dealing with a pesky moth. At the of the fable, when Junior tried to inquire where the aardvark came in, Aesop brushed it off.
458* There's a ''WesternAnimation/TheAdventuresOfJimmyNeutronBoyGenius'' episode called "Raise the Oozy Scab" in which Jimmy, Carl, Sheen, and Cindy look for a treasure called ''The Oozy Scab''. Despite the title, ''The Oozy Scab'' isn't raised at all.
459* ''WesternAnimation/TheAngryBeavers'': Only one of the beaver main characters, Daggett, was angry; Norb was fairly easy-going at the beginning, and even when he TookALevelInJerkass, he was more of a smug, self-centered kind of jerk than actually angry.
460* For ''WesternAnimation/AquaTeenHungerForce'', the title of the show itself. The show is about a group of AnthropomorphicFood. It has no focus on water, none of the main characters are adolescents (or have any confirmed age). The hunger is only slightly relevant, due to them being food, but the fact that they are edible is rarely brought up. The force part was relevant for the first three episodes as a plot to simply get the show airing, as the actual premise of the show would sound ridiculous otherwise.
461* The ''WesternAnimation/AroundTheWorldWithWillyFog'' episode "Shipwreck". Despite its title, this is a BreatherEpisode in which Fog and his companions relax onboard ship; it's also the episode where Fog and Romy take a stroll among some exotic flowers in Singapore. The travellers do become caught in a typhoon towards the end, but they don't get shipwrecked and the following episode reveals that they made it to Hong Kong safely.
462* ''WesternAnimation/{{Arthur}}'':
463** Arthur is barely even in the episode "Arthur and the True Francine" (which was adapted from the book ''The True Francine''); he's only in the title because he was in ''every'' episode's title back then, and this happened to be the only episode so far that wasn't about him.
464** In "Emily Swallows a Horse", she doesn't; the title comes from a dream she has in the episode, wherupon the SnowballLie she tells is likened to "There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly" as both involve SerialEscalation.
465* The ''WesternAnimation/TheAvengersEarthsMightiestHeroes'' episode "Iron Man Is Born" does not retell the origin of ComicBook/IronMan, nor does "The Man in the Ant Hill" show [[ComicBook/AntMan Hank Pym]] exploring an anthill. These titles come directly from the heroes' first comic book appearances. Many other episode titles are homages of this sort, but they still sound relevant to the plot; it's these two that stick out.
466* You would think that the ''WesternAnimation/BabyLooneyTunes'' episode "I Strain" would involve Petunia developing a bad eye condition, especially since the plot of it involves her watching a lot of television. Not once is it ever brought up, nor is she ever warned about it,
467* ''WesternAnimation/BigCityGreens'' had an episode called "Bleeped"; ironically, the swear words were ''not'' bleeped out; they use made-up swear words such as "blort".
468* In the ''WesternAnimation/{{Caillou}}'' episode "Caillou Joins the Circus", he doesn't. Instead, the episode involve Caillou being grouchy because he got ready all by himself to go to the circus, only to realize he was a day early. To cheer him up, the family has a pretend circus themselves at the house. The closest thing to the title in this episode is Caillou having a dream at the start where he's a tiger tamer.
469* ''WesternAnimation/TheCasagrandes'': "No Egrets" actually ''does'' feature three egrets.
470* The Acme Hour on Creator/CartoonNetwork was 2 hours long on Saturdays but was otherwise inverted.
471* ''WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddParents'': Despite the name of "Married to the Mom" and the title card of Crocker seemingly marrying his mother, nothing like this happens in the episode. Instead, the plot is about Timmy and Chloe wishing up a perfect girlfriend for Crocker so he'll stop hounding them.
472* In ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'':
473** The episode "Chitty Chitty Death Bang" sounds as though it is about a vintage car, which, like the titular car of Ian Fleming's (1908-1964) book ''Chitty Chitty Bang Bang'' (©1964; it was published two months after Fleming's death), can fly through the air and float on the water, and has a mind of its own, and has been programmed for crime by a criminal network, and the Griffins somehow thwart it, getting the criminals arrested in the process, and reprogram the car for good uses. In the original book, the villains, Joe the Monster and his gang, drive a black 1950s Rolls-Royce convertible; the "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" car resembled a green 1920s racing Bentley convertible.
474** Neither title of the two-part episode "Stewie Kills Lois/Lois Kills Stewie" is accurate. In part 1, Stewie appears to kill Lois, but she turns out to be NotQuiteDead. In part 2, Stewie does get killed, but it's Peter who kills him. And to top it all off, [[spoiler:''both'' episodes [[AllJustADream turn out to be a computer simulation.]]]]
475* The ''[[WesternAnimation/TheFantasticFour1967 Fantastic Four]]'' (1967) episode "The Menace of the Mole Man" adapts a comic titled, "The Return of the Mole Man!", while "The Return of the Mole Man" adapts a comic titled, "The Mad Menace of the Macabre Mole Man". The former episode's title doesn't match its comic because Creator/HannaBarbera had yet to adapt the first ''Fantastic Four'' issue. (When they finally did so, they left out Mole Man's scenes to boot.)
476* Played with by the title of the ''WesternAnimation/FostersHomeForImaginaryFriends'' episode "Foster's Goes to Europe". Given the way this type of title is typically used, you'd think it's about things the cast do while they're in Europe. It's actually about the trip ''to'' Europe, specifically, everyone trying to get ready to leave the house, which in a sense makes it ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin. [[spoiler:And even though most of the cast miss their flight, ''Madame'' Foster, who stole their tickets, [[KarmaHoudini actually manages to get to Europe]].]]
477* ''WesternAnimation/FredAndBarneyMeetTheThing''. [[WesternAnimation/TheFlintstones Fred and Barney]] do not meet [[ComicBook/FantasticFour the Thing]], [[InNameOnly if you can call him that]]; they're in segments that never cross over.
478* ''WesternAnimation/TheGrimAdventuresOfBillyAndMandy'': "The Incredible Shrinking Mandy" has Billy attempting to shrink Mandy, but he accidentally makes her giant instead. (This was likely done intentionally.)
479* The animated short ''Hector's Hectic Life'' doesn't feature any character named Hector. The main character is named Princie, his owner is a woman, and the three puppies are unnamed.
480* ''WesternAnimation/LetsGoLuna'': Mukandi herself doesn't appear for much of "Mukandi's Farm."
481* ''WesternAnimation/LittlePrincess'': In "I Want My Treehouse", the Princess spends most of the episode ''not'' wanting her treehouse.
482* In ''WesternAnimation/TheLoudHouse'' episode "Cheater by the Dozen", there are no actual cheaters; Bobby was MistakenForCheating.
483* ''Literature/MillyMolly'': The animated adaptation has several of these:
484** In "Sock Heaven", there is no such place, Milly's dad just joked that lost socks might go to sock heaven.
485** In "Aunt Maude is an Alien", Maude isn't really an alien; the girls just lied that she was.
486** In "Magic Muffins", the muffins aren't really magic, it's just what Maude calls them.
487* In the ''WesternAnimation/{{Milo}}'' episode "Milo's Sore Tummy", Milo only fakes having a sore tummy.
488* ''WesternAnimation/{{Minuscule}}'' episodes usually have titles that are ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin, but some titles are vaguely related metaphors or complete non-sequiturs:
489** Episodes featuring buzzing insects usually have "ZZZZZ" meshed into their title, but "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTc4OXWZn5M Zzzepplin]]" focuses entirely on [[ButtMonkey the spiders]].
490** "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqNmb5F7UPg Go Blue Go]]" has blue and green dragonflies competing in what can only be described as bug-Quidditch. The blue team ''loses''.
491** One would assume the series' BizarroEpisode "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTCoaIbENGI&t Night of the Mandibles]]" centered around the cast fighting off an army of undead insects. What they actually face is [[HumansAreCthulhu MUCH worse]]. Plus the episode takes place almost entirely in broad daylight.
492* "How to Say I Love Roo" from ''WesternAnimation/MyFriendsTiggerAndPooh'' is about Roo trying to find an "I Love You Day" gift for Kanga, rather than the reverse.
493* The "my" in ''Franchise/MyLittlePony'' stopped meaning anything the second it made the hop from a toy line to a cartoon; only the first iteration has featured any human characters, and not only were they not the ponies' owners, they didn't even live in the same part of the world. Even before that, it was really only relevant in the sense that the toys themselves [[ShapedLikeItself belonged to the kids that owned them]], which is kind of true of all toys.
494* None of the aliens in ''WesternAnimation/PetAlien'' are actually Tommy's pets, and are actually more akin to roommates or houseguests. Scruffy is the closest thing to a "pet alien", but he's Dinko's pet, not Tommy's.
495* ''WesternAnimation/ReadyJetGo'': You would think that the episode "Asteroid Patrol" would be about the kids trying to look for asteroids from the treehouse. In the episode, Sean does set up an asteroid watch station in the treehouse and gets the rest of the group involved, but most of the episode revolves around Jet trying to fix Sean's telescope.
496* The ''WesternAnimation/RickAndMorty'' episode "The Ricklantis Mixup" only features the prologue and epilogue of Rick and Morty's Atlantis adventure. The bulk of the episode is instead a VignetteEpisode focusing on the Citadel of Ricks. At the end of the episode, Rick taunts the audience for [[OffscreenMomentOfAwesome missing out on the Atlantis plot.]]
497** ''The Vat Acid Episode'' actually subverts this. [[BaitAndSwitch It starts off by making it look like the whole episode will be about Rick and Morty in a vat of acid.]] This plot is dropped after a few minutes. At the end however, [[spoiler: the vat of acid becomes a ChekhovsGun meaning the episode really ''was'' about the vat of acid after all.]]
498* ''WesternAnimation/Rugrats1991'':
499** The spinoff ''WesternAnimation/AllGrownUp'' features the characters as tweens.
500** Angelica doesn't actually break a leg in "Angelica Breaks a Leg", she just pretends to.
501** Spike doesn't actually become a dad in "Spike's Babies", he just looks after some stray kittens temporarily.
502** In "Cynthia Comes Alive", she doesn't come alive. The babies just think Cynthia has come alive after seeing a girl who looks like her.
503** In "Chuckie Grows", he actually only thinks he's grown because his clothes have shrunk.
504* ''WesternAnimation/TheSecretShow'': In [[Recap/TheSecretShowS1E11AlienAttack "Alien Attack"]], the titular aliens never attack at any point in the episode. In fact, they actually try to tell humanity how to revert the side effects of eating them. [[spoiler:The solution is to let the humans eat them since they will be reborn when they burp, [[BizarreAlienReproduction as it's part of their lifecycle]]]].
505* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'':
506** In "The PTA Disbands", the PTA most emphatically does not disband (though at one point, a guy mistakenly believes it did, panics and jumps out a window. And jumps back in when informed of his mistake). The episode got its title because writer Jennifer Crittenden thought that that was the worst thing that could happen to a school.
507** In "Bart On The Road", after Bart, Milhouse, and Nelson finish seeing a film named ''Film/NakedLunch''.
508--->'''Nelson:''' I can think of at least two things wrong with that title..."
509** "Homer vs. the 18th Amendment": Homer's actual dispute is with a city statute and the 21st Amendment, ending national Prohibition but allowing local jurisdictions to continue to ban alcohol, by proxy.
510** "22 Short Films About Springfield" only has 19 segments (17 if you count Lisa's three segments as one short). WebVideo/TheRealJims, in his 60 Second Review of the episode, resorted to counting [[https://frinkiac.com/gif/S07E21/234783/242791/ two transitional]] [[https://frinkiac.com/gif/S07E21/906621/909291/ scenes]] and the show's standard TitleSequence as short films to get up to 22 "without any sort of cheating".
511** "A Milhouse Divided" is about Milhouse's parents separating, but Milhouse himself isn't focused on in the episode.
512* The Season 1 finale of ''WesternAnimation/SmilingFriends'' is titled "Charlie Dies and Doesn't Come Back". [[spoiler: [[LikeYouWouldReallyDoIt He comes back.]]]]
513** There is also the later episode titled "Smiling Friends go to Brazil" where in the whole episode, the characters are stuck in the Brazilian airport becuase Pim didn’t book a hotel. So they hardly get to experience Brazil at all, and just fly back home.
514* ''WesternAnimation/TheSmurfs1981'' episode "Hefty And The Wheelsmurfer" is called "Fortachon y Pitufina" ("Hefty And Smurfette") in the Spanish dub, although the episode isn't ''exclusively'' about Hefty and Smurfette in any sort of relationship.
515* ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'':
516** Nickelodeon has a bad habit of advertising certain episodes with different titles. One particularly misleading example is "Goons on the Moon" being advertised as a Christmas special called "[=SpaceBob MerryPants=]", even though Santa Claus plays a relatively minor role, and the episode doesn't take place during Christmas anyway.
517** "Gary Takes a Bath": The entire episode centers around Gary avoiding taking a bath and [=SpongeBob=] going to increasingly elaborate measures to get him to do so. In the end, [=SpongeBob=] is the one who takes a bath, and Gary never does.
518** "Shuffleboarding": Despite the title, Shuffleboarding itself is ''never'' seen in the episode as [=SpongeBob=] and Patrick won the game off-screen in a very short amount of time. The main plot of the episode is [=SpongeBob=] and Patrick dressed as Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy arresting random people of Bikini Bottom.
519** In "Bossy Boots", the title of the episode can be seen as quite misleading as the conflict/theme was never about Pearl being over-controlling or bossy (she was a reasonable boss) but more on the Krusty Krab undergoing dramatic changes that the employees didn't enjoy.
520** "To Save a Squirrel". The episode is about [=SpongeBob=] and Patrick joining Sandy on a wilderness expedition. Based on the title, you'd expect the plot to include them needing to save Sandy from some kind of danger while on the trip. Instead, [=SpongeBob=] and Patrick fall off the truck just seconds in. The episode is about them getting stranded in a cave, going insane and trying to eat each other, egged on by a mysterious survivalist who turns out to be Sandy in disguise.
521* ''WesternAnimation/StevenUniverse'':
522** "[[Recap/StevenUniverseS1E16StevenTheSwordFighter Steven the Sword Fighter]]", in which Steven never once touches a sword. The closest he gets is imitating a sword move in a movie with a mop handle.
523** Kiki is only seen delivering one pizza in "[[Recap/StevenUniverseS3E13KikisPizzaDeliveryService Kiki's Pizza Delivery Service]]", with the episode focusing on Steven helping Kiki fight her nightmares caused by doing her sister's delivery route for her. Though with a character named Kiki delivering pizza, the pun on ''Anime/KikisDeliveryService'' was irresistible.
524** "[[Recap/StevenUniverseS5E5DeweyWins Dewey Wins]]" is about Beach City's Mayor Dewey running for reelection. Guess how that ends for him. This is seemingly a reference to the famous false "[[AssumedWin Dewey Defeats Truman]]" newspaper headline.
525** The show has episodes where the title is ''technically'' accurate to what happens but still misleading. For example: "[[Recap/StevenUniverseS3E5HitTheDiamond Hit the Diamond]]" sounds like it's referring to the [[BigBadEnsemble Diamonds]], when it's a BaseballEpisode. "[[Recap/StevenUniverseS4E1KindergartenKid Kindergarten Kid]]" sounds like it's about something being born in the Kindergarten, but it's actually about Peridot trying to catch a Gem monster in the Beta Kindergarten. "[[Recap/StevenUniverseS4E8GemHarvest Gem Harvest]]" sounds like it's referencing Peridot's throwaway line where she was worried about being harvested, but it's really a [[ThanksgivingEpisode Thanksgiving special.]]
526** ''WesternAnimation/StevenUniverseFuture'' is a reference to the TimeSkip past the original series and [[WesternAnimation/StevenUniverseTheMovie the movie]], and stays its own present for the entire duration. This is explicated by the hook in its theme song, "Here we are in the future".
527* ''WesternAnimation/TamagotchiVideoAdventures'' clearly has the word "Adventures" pluralized in the title, and in the actual program there's a ''Tamagotchi Toons'' logo at the beginning - again, with "Toons" pluralized. This implies there's more than one "adventure", but it's only one VHS program. It's thought to be a pilot for a direct-to-video ''Franchise/{{Tamagotchi}}'' cartoon [[FailedPilotEpisode that never got greenlit]].
528* ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitansGo'':
529** "Serious Business" is about [[ToiletHumor rules on how to use the toilet]].
530** "The Return of Slade" is not about Slade at all. Slade is only mentioned at the beginning of the episode, cut away to a non-existing fight with a title card that says "Three episodes and a made-for-TV-movie later" it cuts back to them winning, explaining stuff that would have happened if they showed it. And that was the last time he was mentioned. The rest of the episode is about Cyborg and Beast Boy wanting a clown, which quickly devolves into another one of the show's mean-spirited [[TakeThatCritics jabs at its haters]].
531** "Batman vs. Teen Titans: Dark Injustice" is the April Fools' Day episode, so of course it's about April Fools' Day pranks, with Batman not appearing to fight the team at any point.
532** "Breakfast Cheese" is not about breakfast or cheese. It's about Starfire trying to get the Titans to be less violent. There's mention of Breakfast Cheese at the end of the very end of the episode by Starfire after she finishes singing but it doesn't even make sense there.
533* The ''Franchise/TransformersGeneration1'' episode "A Decepticon Raider in King Arthur's Court" conspicuously does not feature King Arthur's court. Even the wizard isn't called Merlin. There ''is'' a character called Nimue, but she has virtually nothing in common with the Arthurian character beyond also being female.
534* In ''WesternAnimation/TransformersPrime [[Recap/TransformersPrimeTVMBeastHuntersPredaconsRising Beast Hunters: Predacons Rising]]'', the Predacons are very minor side characters who have little to no impact on the overall plot. Technically, some Predacons ''are'' [[spoiler:risen, however, they are zombies who fight ''against'' the real Predacons.]] The title probably came to be because Hasbro wanted to advertise their beast-themed ''Transformers'' figures, [[AdvertisedExtra even if the movie's story barely focused on them]].
535* A ''WesternAnimation/{{Visionaries}}'' VHS released in the UK was given the title "The Final Conflict" which appears to suggest that it featured a final showdown between the Spectral Knights and the Darkling Lords. It actually contained the episodes "Honor Among Thieves", "Sorcery Squared" and "Dawn of the Sun Imps", but the only thing "final" about these is that they are the last three episodes in the series.
536* ''WesternAnimation/YoureNotElectedCharlieBrown''. Yes, Charlie Brown isn't elected, but he's not even running. It's about Linus campaigning for StudentCouncilPresident.
537
538[[/folder]]

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