Sometimes people come up with a name that is perfectly reasonable for a work but is not reasonable for a franchise and with a new franchise being built, they have to go back and rename the work for all future promotional materials.

This can often come about because the title of the first work depends heavily on an element in that work but not in the others. Possibly, the executives have chosen a theme to market and name the series (such as the lead character's name) and the early installment is the odd man out.

Naturally this can be happening when you have a first work that nobody was sure was going to be popular and so they didn't think of a franchise when naming it. It can also happen during an adaptation process -- book series often only pick up a series name much further down the line, often unofficially, and often don't bother with this process. When they come to being adapted to another medium, somebody will have plans for a franchise but not a name.

Subtrope of {{Retronym}}, can help lead to EarlyInstallmentWeirdness. See also TheOriginalSeries, where the first work has to be renamed because the franchise was named after it.

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!!Examples:
* ''Akalabeth: World of Doom'' was titled ''Ultima 0: Akalabeth'' in the ''VideoGame/{{Ultima}} Collection'', as it is considered a precursor to the original ''[[VideoGame/UltimaI Ultima]]''.
* ''Film/RaidersOfTheLostArk'' is sometimes renamed to ''Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark'' to match later films in [[Franchise/IndianaJones the franchise]], most notably its DVD release. This is somewhat odd since Indiana Jones ''is'' one of the eponymous raiders.
* ''Film/FirstBlood'' led to the sequel ''Film/RamboFirstBloodPartII'' and the third film is called ''Film/RamboIII'', dropping the ''First Blood'' part of the title. Confusingly enough, the fourth film is simply titled ''Film/{{Rambo|IV}}''; the original plan being to mirror what was done with ''Film/RockyBalboa'' and call it ''John Rambo'' (as it was [[MarketBasedTitle in some regions]]).
* The book ''Literature/{{The Lost World|1995}}'' was adapted into the movie ''Film/TheLostWorldJurassicPark''. Not as cheap as it seems, considering there already was a famous dinosaur adventure story called ''Literature/{{The Lost World|1912}}'' -- one which had directly inspired Creator/MichaelCrichton. People could have been forgiven for getting confused.
* The British comedy films ''Follow That Camel'' and ''Call Me A Cab'' were re-titled when the producers realized they were ''Film/CarryOn'' films in all but name. So they became ''Film/CarryOnFollowThatCamel'' and ''Film/CarryOnCabby''.
* ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerTiberianDawn'' was initially released with just the title of ''Command & Conquer'' and either appending ''95'' for the original and ''(Gold)'' for the UpdatedRerelease on UsefulNotes/MicrosoftWindows. However, game files and code revealed the WorkingTitle of ''Tiberian Dawn''. While official re-releases, even in the 2020 ''Remastered Collection'', strictly refer to it as just ''Command & Conquer'', fans (and Website/ThisVeryWiki) prefer to refer to it as ''Tiberian Dawn'' to differentiate it. This may be for the best as otherwise ''Command & Conquer'' could refer to the franchise, the game itself ''and'' the music track from ''[[VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRenegade Renegade]]''.
* Gege Akutami released a four-chapter mini-series on ''[[Magazine/ShonenJump Jump GIGA]]'' titled ''Tokyo Metropolitan Curse Technical School''. Due to the popularity of the series, his sequel series ''Manga/JujutsuKaisen'' started up in ''Weekly Shonen Jump'', and ''Tokyo Metropolitan Curse Technical School'' was subsequently complied into a single volume titled ''Jujutsu Kaisen 0''.
* ''Franchise/StarWars'': The first film was originally called just ''Star Wars''. The 1980 sequel, ''Star Wars Episode V: Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack'', featured an episode number and subtitle in the opening crawl as part of its GenreThrowback nature to give the impression of a long running film serial. When the original film was re-released in 1981, ''Episode IV: Film/ANewHope'' was added above the original opening crawl.
* Following ''Film/{{Twilight}}'', the film adaptations of the novels ''New Moon'', ''Eclipse'', and ''Breaking Dawn'' all carried the supertitle ''The Twilight Saga''. ''Film/TheHungerGames'' and ''Literature/{{Divergent}}'' later followed this trend with their respective film series. Funny enough, some TV airings of the first film call it ''[[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment The Twilight Saga: Twilight]]''
* The sequels to ''VisualNovel/PhoenixWrightAceAttorney'' all carried the "Ace Attorney" name, since some of the sequels (namely ''Apollo Justice'' and ''Ace Attorney Investigations'') don't actually star Phoenix Wright. In Japan, the series is called ''Gyakuten Saiban'' ("Turnabout Trial") with no mention of protagonist names, so they just use simple NumberedSequels.
* In Japan, ''Anime/TheMysteryOfMamo'' was originally titled ''Franchise/LupinIII'', but with two television series, a live-action film, and another movie on the way, they had to retitle it to distinguish what the movie was. It is now officially known as ''Lupin III: Lupin vs. the Clone''.
* Happened briefly with the ''Franchise/FridayThe13th'' series when ''Film/JasonGoesToHellTheFinalFriday'' and ''Film/JasonX'' were named after the central slasher instead. Granted, this was more of a legal thing. [[note]]New Line Cinema had purchased the rights to the CHARACTER of Jason Voorhees, but not the franchise as a whole. They weren't legally ALLOWED to call their films "Friday the 13th," or any varation thereof. [[/note]]
* The yearly Halloween special animations by [[WebVideo/AitorMolinaVs Aitor Molina]] were called The Halloween Revenge and numbered. Since the fourth installment was the first with a solid story and established the SharedUniverse, it was renamed "Infernals & Lemons" after the "Infernals & Lemons" story.
** The tradition of calling "The Halloween Revenge" plus number was stopped because the fifth part was delayed until it became [[BigDamnMovie its own thing]]. "Infernals & Yrions" became the canon fifth installment and [[Recap/AitorMolinaVs17TheFantasiaRevenge The Fantasia Revenge]] the sixth. The numeric system was abandoned to make animations at any moment under the name "The X Revenge".
** The third collaboration between Oscar and Aitor is being announced as "Infernals 3" before giving an official name.
* ''Film/PitchBlack'' spawned the ''[[Franchise/TheChroniclesOfRiddick Chronicles of Riddick]]'' franchise. Some re-releases titled the film ''The Chronicles of Riddick: Pitch Black''.
* The first ''VideoGame/SpaceQuest'' was released with the subtitle ''Chapter I – The Sarien Encounter''. The VGA remake was titled ''Space Quest I: Roger Wilco in the Sarien Encounter'' to more closely match the CharacterNameAndTheNounPhrase title theme starting with ''VideoGame/SpaceQuestIVRogerWilcoAndTheTimeRippers''.
* Since there was already a ''VideoGame/{{Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles|1989}}'' video game on the NES, [[VideoGame/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtlesTheArcadeGame the arcade game of the same name]] was ported to the NES as ''Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game''. Likewise, the arcade sequel,''[[VideoGame/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtlesTurtlesInTime Turtles in Time]]'', became ''Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV'' when ported to the Super NES due to the existence of ''[[VideoGame/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtlesTheManhattanProject The Manhattan Project]]'', the third NES ''Turtles'' game that was developed in parallel.
* The first arc of the ''Literature/WarriorCats'' series simply had the name ''Warrior Cats'' (in the UK) or ''Warriors'' (in the US). To avoid the first six books being confused with the series as a whole, the 2015 reprints gave the first arc the new name ''Warriors: The Prophecies Begin''.
* ''Franchise/{{Persona}}'' used to combine this with MarketBasedTitle. Hoping to create and capitalize on a unified brand for all ''Franchise/ShinMegamiTensei'' spin-off games, Creator/{{Atlus}} USA prefixed ''VideoGame/Persona3'' and ''VideoGame/Persona4'' with "Shin Megami Tensei" for their international releases, whereas in Japan the connection to SMT remained implicit. However, they stopped doing this around 2012 after ''Persona'' became a MorePopularSpinoff.
* The first book in the ''ComicBook/{{Hilda}}'' series was originally titled ''Hildafolk''. It was later changed to ''ComicBook/HildaAndTheTroll'' when it was reprinted in 2015 to maintain consistency with the rest of the series.
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