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    Terminology 
  • As with the musical version of this trope, this can also apply to jargon and terminology within the field as well. Like when people talk about shows "airing" and "being broadcast" on cable networks, or (now) on on-demand streaming services—a term that only makes literal sense for wireless mass television.
  • Soap operas are called that because the earliest examples were radio serials that were sponsored by soap manufacturers. Modern soap operas aren't—though Guiding Light and As the World Turns were produced by soap and detergent manufacturer Proctor and Gamble's in-house production company up until 2008.
  • American Football has aired on a number of telecasts named after a night of the week, including Monday Night Football, Sunday Night Football, and Thursday Night Football. Usually these games actually do take place on the named night, but on occasion (especially during holiday times when schedules are different, or if games are considered to be part of specific rights packages for contractual reasons — such as the Thursday-night NFL Kickoff game and Thanksgiving primetime game, which are part of NBC's package) the network with the rights to one of these nights will air a game on a different night, but still brand it under the same blanket title (although sometimes, if possible, the broadcaster may try to downplay this on-air). This titling was used for quite a few special Sunday and Thursday broadcasts of Monday Night Football in the 80s, where ABC kept the original title, but branded each such broadcast as a special Sunday Night Edition or Thursday Night Edition of Monday Night Football.
  • Despite the fact that more than half of all American households now receive cable TV, many UHF stations are still branded primarily by their over-the-air channel number rather than their cable number. This is largely due to differing cable systems placing the stations on entirely different channels, with no consistency for the UHF station to use in marketing. Furthermore, since the switch to Digital TV most OTA stations actually run on UHF channels but are still branded by their original channel number.
  • As mentioned under the Web Original category, many "tv" shows today run on streaming platforms like Netflix and Hulu, which you can watch on your computer, tablet, phone, etc. Even though there are various ways to watch streaming platforms on your television, you're still accessing a website on the internet rather than watching an over-the-air broadcast. Still, since most shows on streaming platforms are 30 minutes to an hour in length, are produced by major Hollywood studios, and require a subscription fee, they're conceptually close enough to television for most purposes.

    Networks 
  • See Network Decay for examples of television networks. For example:
    • The channel MTV (Music Television) hardly ever plays music these days. In fact, the initials "MTV" now no longer stand for anything.
    • Likewise, its subsidiary VH1, which once stood for Video Hits 1, started focusing more on Reality TV by the mid-2000s.
    • HBO stands for "Home Box Office," and its initial purpose was to be a pay-cable channel that aired theatrical films with no edits or cuts, no bleeping of profanity, or censorship of nudity. There was always some original content—mostly talk shows and comedy programs—but these weren't the network's main draw. Nowadays HBO rarely promotes the theatrical films it gets unless they're blow-away blockbusters. They still take up most of HBO's time, but the days of viewers subscribing primarily because of their film library has long passed. Their streaming services mainly promote their original content: films, hourlong dramas, talk shows, comedy specials, etc.
    • ABC Family's programming became increasingly less family-friendly as its lifespan went on; the most prominent examples include Greek and The Secret Life of the American Teenager. Contrary to popular belief, there was no demand from channel founder Pat Robertson that the "Family" part had to stay in the title, meaning Disney basically allowed the channel to suffer from this trope for many years before finally renaming it Freeform in 2016.
    • Animal Planet became this after largely dropping nature documentaries from its lineup in favor of reality shows about people, some of whom worked with animals but many of whom just did things like build elaborate treehouses (and also started showing reruns of Dirty Jobs).
    • The History Channel now shows reality television more than it does any history.
    • TLC used to stand for "The Learning Channel" back when it aired programs that were actually educational about science and stuff. Now, well, it depends if you consider child beauty pageants and families with large numbers of children to be educational.
  • ITV stands for Independent Television, initially referring to its 'independence' from the publicly-funded BBC (ITV was the UK's first commercial TV network). Nowadays, of course, there are plenty of other non-BBC networks.
  • When Channel 4 launched in the UK, digital television was not yet born and so every TV set had the same channel attached to every number. This is no longer the case - for example, it's still the 4th numbered channel on Freeview, but not on Sky or other satellite packages.
  • The call letters of New York City's PBS station, WNET, is an artifact of when it was part of the National Educational Television network, a precursor to PBS, in the '50s and '60s. Many, many local TV and radio stations also have artifact call letters. You'll have to check That Other Wiki for examples in your area.
  • When MSNBC debuted in 1996, the network was a joint venture between NBC and Microsoft; the name is a portmanteau of MSN (Microsoft's web portal) and NBC. Microsoft's ownership share gradually dwindled until the company ended the partnership in 2012, with NBC now owning 100% of the network.

    Series 
  • @midnight changed its time to 11:30 p.m. but kept its title — host Chris Hardwick lampshaded it by stating that it made sense because they would still be declaring a winner at midnight. Occasionally other programs at 11:30 bumped it back to midnight again.
  • ESPN's 30 for 30 is a double example. The series was intended to run 30 episodes to celebrate ESPN's 30th anniversary, featuring stories from the "ESPN era" (from the time of the network's launch in 1979). Following the last of the original 30 documentaries, there were 13 more episodes under the banner ESPN Films Presents, which expanded the timeframe to pre-1979 stories. In 2012, it was decided to revive the 30 for 30 title with a new volume of 30 documentaries. A third volume began in 2015 and is already confirmed to have a new installment premiering in 2019 - ESPN's 40th year.
    • Another example comes from one of ESPN2's talk shows, Numbers Never Lie; originally debuting as a panel show with an emphasis on stats and analytics, ESPN then felt that the subject matter was too advanced for most viewers, so it got dumbed down into a vaguely number-themed panel show. Even host Michael Smith felt that the title didn't really fit anymore; ESPN eventually corrected this, renaming it His & Hers (after Smith and co-host Jemele Hill's podcast of the same name). The show would later be replaced by a distinct 6 p.m. edition of SportsCenter hosted by the pair in 2017 (which was cancelled only after about a year on-air)
    • A more recent example on ESPN is High Noon, which originally aired at noon Eastern time. There was also some lampshading as the logo also said "(9 Pacific)" in small letters. But the show's name didn't change when it was moved to 4 p.m. Eastern so that it could be peer of a block with ESPN's other "Sports Experts Arguing" shows such as Pardon the Interruption, Highly Questionable, and Around the Horn.
  • 1000-lb Sisters:
    • The reality series documents the attempts of the Slaton sisters to lose weight (the shared weight between the two equaling roughly 1000 pounds), with the intent of the show being to invoke this trope through their mutual weight loss. However, while Amy loses 100 pounds throughout the first three seasons, Tammy gains 100 pounds, ironically keeping the title more-or-less accurate.
    • The spinoff 1000-lb Best Friends plays the trope more straight by featuring a central cast of four women whose combined weight considerably exceeds 1k pounds (although their total weight loss may eventually result in said title being accurate.)
  • An in-universe version on 30 Rock: The TV show Liz writes for was originally called The Girlie Show, a sketch comedy show for women, until Jack added Tracy to the cast and renamed it TGS with Tracy Jordan. Liz and Jenna both keep original Girlie Show memorabilia in their offices.
  • The CBS news show Forty Eight Hours (not that one) began life as a series of documentaries examining certain topics over the course of 48 hours, inspired by the well-received 1985 CBS special 48 Hours on Crack Street (about the US drug crisis). Later it was retooled into a true-crime documentary series under the titles 48 Hours Investigates and later 48 Hours Mystery, eventually reverting to the original title of 48 Hours. The original idea of examining a subject over a time span of 48 hours is long gone, making 48 Hours almost a Word Salad Title at this point.
  • The title of The 100 originally referred to the 100 people sent from an orbiting space station to explore the surface of post-apocalyptic Earth. The title went out the window almost immediately, as an extra person snuck onto the shuttle and then two of them died, so The 100 are now the 99 before the pilot was half over. It's become even more nonsensical in subsequent seasons when hundreds more survivors have come to the surface.
  • The 700 Club is a Christian talk show known for its far-right politics, but the title is actually a reference to the ministry's original 700 donors.
  • Discussed, in a Leaning on the Fourth Wall kind of way, in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.. Since S.H.I.E.L.D. is officially disbanded in "Turn, Turn, Turn" and the team erases themselves from the agency's records in "Providence", they start wondering whether they really can still be considered "agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." or if they're "agents of nothing" now.
  • When Amos N Andy switched from a drama serial to sitcom format — and, later, when it became a TV series — Amos was a peripheral character, and most of the plots revolved around Andy and Kingfish (the latter of whom was voiced on radio by the same actor who played Amos).
  • Series 7 onwards of the UK version of The Apprentice has nothing to do with an apprentice, as the contestants are now competing for £250,000 and Lord Sugar as a business partner. Which mirrors the US version, which since season 7 has been exclusively celebrity versions, with none of the winners becoming a Trump apprentice.
  • Atlanta was still titled that during the third season, which took place during Paper Boi's tour of Europe. Three of the four non-cast anthology episodes that season were set in Atlanta, however, with the fourth in New York City.
  • Auf Wiedersehen, Pet was so-named because it was about British workers (primarily from Newcastle) in Germany ('auf wiedersehen' being German for 'see you later', and 'pet' a Newcastle-area term of affection). Or at least, Season 1 was about British workers in Germany.
  • The Avengers got its name because it was originally a gritty crime drama about a doctor (David Keel) teaming with a government agent (John Steed) to avenge the murder of Keel's wife. This story was resolved after two episodes; this was the last time in the series that any avenging took place. Keel left the series altogether after Season 1, but the title remained for all six seasons. The American opening narration of the Season 4 episodes attempts to justify the title:
    Extra-ordinary crimes against the people, and the state, have to be avenged by agents extra-ordinary...
  • This was a point of contention in Bar Rescue between Jon and the owner of the Canyon Inn since "inn" no longer refers to taverns and such. The manager mentioned they routinely received calls asking what their rates were. Jon tried to change the name to the Canyon Saloon, but the owner switched the name back within days, determined not to admit defeat.
  • The BBC Scotland gardening show The Beechgrove Garden started in 1978 and was named for the location of the garden on the grounds of the BBC studios on Beechgrove Terrace, Aberdeen. When the grounds were sold off in 1996, the show moved to a new location elsewhere in the city, but the name was retained. In 2019 the title was officially shortened to just Beechgrove, thereby dropping everything except the artifact.
  • Better Call Saul was named after Saul Goodman's iconic Catchphrase, but the actual show depicts the periods of his life before and after he uses the phrase to promote himself. In fact, the actual phrase is only said in three scenes in the entire series (two of them coming from the same clip from Breaking Bad). Nevertheless, the phrase is so iconic and so tied with Saul's character there was hardly any other title that could have being given to the show.
  • Blake's 7 no longer had Roj Blake in it after Series 2 (except for the final episodes of both later seasons).
  • Boy Meets World ended after seven seasons with the title character married: very much no longer a boy.
  • By the final season of Brothers & Sisters, a drama following the lives of the Walker family, it has been revealed that neither Sarah nor Rebecca are biological Walkers. With the divorces between Tommy & Julia and Justin & Rebecca, this leaves Kitty as the only technical Walker "sister".
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
    • As the seasons go by, Buffy fights things that are clearly not vampires with so much more frequency that "Demon Slayer" would be more appropriate. In the show, she's formally just the Slayer. This happened fairly early; the first episode past the two-part pilot was deliberately about something other than vampires to make it clear to the viewers, and Giles outright states in the last scene of the pilot that there will be a variety of threats to deal with.
    • Despite the rule that only one Slayer can exist at a time, a second Slayer is called as early as the Season 1 finale due to Buffy's momentary death. This remains the status quo until the series finale, technically making Buffy no longer "the Vampire Slayer" but "a Vampire Slayer".
  • At the beginning of Season 5 of Burn Notice Michael Westen was shown working directly with his former employers and seems to be no longer blacklisted, effectively reverting his Burn Notice that the series was based on. While Michael's personal situation may have changed, the show's Myth Arc became less about his search for the truth and more about the organization that operates by burning spies.
  • The "del Ocho (8)" part of El Chavo del ocho was there merely to promote the fact that the show aired on Canal 8 (Channel 8). At some point, the show moved to Canal 2 and the series title was shortened to "El Chavo", but the character was still mentioned with his "last name" in the show and an In-Universe reason was given that it meant he actually lived in the (never seen) Apartment 8, rather than the barrel he uses as hideout. In syndication, the title is always "El Chavo", yet the show is still most commonly known by the full name.
  • Chico and the Man lasted for one more season after the suicide of Chico's actor Freddie Prinze, necessitating his character to die with him and introducing Raul as a substitute — yet the series wasn't renamed to Raul and the Man.
  • Inverted in the Czech Sitcom called Comeback. The main character, a forgotten '80s pop star and a music shop owner, goes on his comeback tour in the second season.
  • Cougar Town:
    • The series Lampshaded this by giving Season 2's title cards extra phrases on them, such as "still Cougar Town", "badly titled Cougar Town." The title was originally a Double Entendre as the town's high school football team was called the Cougars; this never appeared again after the pilot, until season 3 when Travis tried to kidnap the cougar statue on the college grounds and questions what cougars have to do with the town anyway.
    • For the second season, ABC and the producers seriously considered a name change; both proposed renames were rejected for similarities to other shows and movies at the time. Another name change, possibly Friends With Beverages, was being considered for the third season.
  • The first two seasons of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is about the protagonist obsessing over her ex-boyfriend and trying to get him back, and the next half a season is her trying to ruin his life for jilting her. After that, she finally admits that he's neither the solution nor, ultimately, the cause of her problems and spends the remaining season and a half actually trying to fix her life, and her status as anyone's ex-girlfriend becomes largely irrelevant to the story.
  • CSI: Cyber, the third Spin-Off of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, does not actually involve a CSI department. Instead it focuses on the FBI Cybercrime Division.
  • The British sitcom Cuckoo is about a straight-laced med student who returns home to Britain during a gap year having married an American hippie called Cuckoo, played by Andy Samberg. Samberg left the show after the first season, so the show no longer had its namesake character. In season two, Taylor Lautner joined the cast claiming to be Cuckoo's son, which provides a tenuous link back to the title until he inexplicably leaves after the fourth season.
  • The BBC's Medical Drama come Police Procedural series Dangerfield was about a rural doctor, and police surgeon called Paul Dangerfield, who proved to be better at solving the Mystery of the Week than the local police force were. Or rather it was, until the start of series five, when the actor playing the eponymous character decided to quit. A Suspiciously Similar Substitute called Jonathan Paige was brought in to take over, making the show's title completely redundant at the same time.
  • Most of the main characters on Desperate Housewives are no longer housewives - Bree and Lynette are career businesswomen (Edie too for that matter), Susan is teaching, and Susan, Bree, and Gabrielle have all spent time unmarried on the show. Gabrielle gets a job in the last few episodes as well.
  • Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve has kept that title long after Clark's death in 2012. Nowadays it's officially called Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest, as Seacrest took over hosting duties in 2007, but it retains the Dick Clark reference in honor of the tv legend.
  • A Different World, the groundbreaking 80's-90's sitcom about life at a historically-black college, had this happen before the show even premiered. It was originally meant to focus on Maggie, the Token White girl played by Marisa Tomei, and her experience as one of the few white students at the school. In that context, the school being "a different world" made sense. It was later in the show's development that it became a spinoff of The Cosby Show starring Lisa Bonet's character Denise, with Maggie as her roommate. One could argue that the "different world" referred to how the show addressed social issues that The Cosby Show avoided, like racism, gang violence, and AIDS. But both actresses were Put on a Bus after the first season, shifting focus to the quirky supporting cast instead, making the title truly artifactual as there was no "original" world to compare it to.
  • In-universe, the Rowdy Three of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency originally had three members while working for Blackwing. The addition of a fourth member made them uncontrollable but they kept the name. This continues into season two when Amanda and Vogel are the only free members.
  • The title of Doctor Who originally reflected the fact that the two main characters, Ian and Barbara, had been kidnapped by a mysterious old mad time-traveller only known to 1960s Britain as "the Doctor" who could have been anyone or anything (it even gets a Title Drop in the second-ever episode when the Doctor asks "Doctor who?"). Naturally, future episodes explored his identity quite a lot more (not least explaining that he is known only as "The Doctor"), but in the process readjusted the title to be a reference to regeneration — it makes sense that a Doctor who can change his entire face and personality from time to time would have a fairly questionable identity. Then, the reboot's Series 7 began using "Doctor Who" as Arc Words, making the Doctor's real name an important MacGuffin. The title character has also acquired a bevy of nicknames over the years, many of them extremely ominous, but their real name has still not been revealed.
  • Downton Abbey: In-Universe: the name of the titular estate, we learned in the last season, came from the building having been a monastery in the Middle Ages until Henry VIII seized and sold it. It became a residence for the peerage but kept its original name. This is true of several British stately homes in real life.
  • Dr. Pimple Popper: The original web series, also titled Dr. Pimple Popper, has a few clips of Dr. Lee removing those pesky little pimples that make up traditional acne. While the TLC show expands the scope to a larger array of dermatological conditions and their treatments, simple pimples are never featured nor popped.
  • Empty Nest, a spin-off of The Golden Girls. The pilot was about a couple whose children had moved out, but the series flipped it to be about a guy whose daughters move back in after his wife dies.
  • In Escape To The Country, the original format was that people seeking a home in the country would be shown presentations of several houses and then select two to view for themselves, out of the ones they'd been shown and an additional "mystery house" they knew nothing about. However, fairly early in its run, the show was re-tooled so that they would view all the houses offered, including what is still called the "mystery house" even though there is no longer any mystery about it. It is different to the others in that it deliberately breaks from the househunters' original brief — but "mystery" has been a misnomer for well over a decade.
  • The Eurovision Song Contest began as an attempt to foster unity between the nations of Europe post-World War II. The notion of it being limited to geographic Europe soon went out the window with Israel, Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan all being included in the line-up. In 2015 Australia was invited to compete as part of the 60th Anniversary of the contest, prompting many jokes about just how loose the definition of "Europe" has become. Officially, entry is open to all nations with a network that is an Active Member of the European Broadcast Union who fall within the European Broadcast Area. Australia's participation is technically subject to invitation each year, however as of 2021 they have yet to be uninvited. Their contract will expire in 2023, though, so it remains to be seen if they will continue to participate afterward.
  • Extras series one was about Ricky Gervais and Ashley Jensen both working as extras in film/TV, but by series 2, Gervais' character had got a job as writer-star of a sitcom and no longer worked as an extra.
  • Family Affairs was a British soap with the gimmick that, instead of focusing on a particular area, like EastEnders or Coronation Street, it focused on a specific family; the Harts and their in-laws the Gates. In its first Retool (of many), the entire Hart/Gates family was written out.
  • Game of Thrones:
    • The series' title itself. The literary series/franchise's title is A Song of Ice and Fire, A Game of Thrones is only the first book in that series (roughly covered by the first season).
    • Even House of the Dragon has Game of Thrones above its title.
    • In-Universe, the "Seven Kingdoms" is a reference to the political composition of Westeros before Aegon became the Conqueror. The Riverlands were ruled by the Ironborn, and the Crownlands—territory controlled directly by the monarch rather than local nobility—didn't exist yet. Following Aegon's conquest, the name remained, but there was really only one kingdom divided into nine regions.
    • The Histories and Lore segments reveal that the Iron Bank originally stored its assets in an abandoned iron mine. The bank has subsequently branched out massively, but the original mine remains one of its reserve deposits.
  • General Hospital was a Medical Drama almost entirely set at the hospital in its early years, but by The '80s the focus shifted to romance, adventure and Crime Drama, though almost all the characters could still be connected to the hospital in one way or another (for example, with the Super Couple of Luke and Laura, Luke's sister was a nurse and Laura's mother was a cardiologist). By the early 2000s, it really started flirting with this, as the hospital took a back seat and mob boss Sonny Corinthos became the main character. The last decade or so it's recovered a bit, included the revival of the annual Nurses' Ball.
  • Get Shorty: The series is a loose adaptation inspired by the original novel with a new cast and story. However, the title doesn't make a lot of sense given that, unlike the original story, there is no "shorty" that the protagonists are trying to "get." The closest interpretation would be the police trying to arrest Amara, the short crime boss who employs our protagonists. In the second season, main character Miles starts calling his daughter "Shorty," and the season has a significant subplot involving getting partial custody of her.
  • Glee:
    • The series became this halfway through Season 5. Starting in Season 4, the show split its time between the Glee Club in Ohio and the graduates who moved to New York City. Eventually the New York storylines became more prominent, leading to Season 5 where the very Glee Club the show was named after was disbanded, and the last of the original characters graduated from high school. All of the action now takes place in New York focusing on the grads who moved there.
    • Season 6 made the name relevant again when Rachel and Kurt returned as coaches of the newly reinstated glee club. The series finale ends with them moving on again, but with McKinley becoming an arts school and the glee clubs, the original New Directions as well as new glee clubs, becoming permanent fixtures at the school.
  • The Good Place is named after how they call where the show takes place. However, the end of Season 1 reveals that the humans have actually been in a Bad Place the whole time. Chapter 23 takes this a step further with the destruction of this fake Good Place. This may qualify as an inversion, as they only get to live in the real Good Place during the final two episodes.
  • The title of the soap opera Guiding Light originally referred to a lamp in the study of one of its earliest main characters - the Rev. John Ruthledge, local pastor - which served as a sign to the townsfolk that they could come for help when needed. Later on, succeeding preachers carried on Rev. Ruthledge's work, becoming the keepers of the "guiding light." Over time, the show left its original locale - a fictional suburb of Chicago known as Five Points - and other families took over the spotlight. By the time the show moved to television in the 1950s, the meaning of the title had largely been forgotten. It was replaced with a lighthouse, indicating the light that guides one's path in life.
  • Happy Days:
    • There was no Arnold at "Arnold's Drive-In" for the majority of the series' run; it is owned by Al Delvecchio. Previously, it was owned by a man named Matsuo Takahashi, who was nicknamed Arnold because he had purchased Arnold's Drive-In from a man who was named Arnold. Lampshaded on one episode in which the gang learn that Arnold was not his name and Arnold points out how expensive the sign change would be letter by letter.
    • When the original Arnold's burned down, Al and new investor Fonzie rebuild the restaurant. Al wants to call it "Big Al's" and Fonzie wants to call it "Fonzie's." Eventually they compromised by calling it Arnold's. note 
  • Hey Hey It's Saturday, an Australian variety series that originally aired on Saturdays from 1971 to 1999, aired on Wednesdays when it was revived briefly in 2010.
  • Homeland starts out being about an attempted terror attack in America's homeland. But once series 4 rolls around, the main characters are tracking down other terrorist in far-flung countries.
  • Honey, I Shrunk the Kids only has a handful of episodes that involve the shrink ray. Most of the episodes involve Wayne's other inventions.
  • The first episode of the Horatio Hornblower television adaptation is titled "The Even Chance", after the first short story in Mr. Midshipman Hornblower. In the original, the title referred to Hornblower's calculation of the best way to duel Simpson, with only one gun loaded, chosen blindly, and fired point-blank. Thus, an "even chance" that would compensate for Horatio's lack of skill. (Captain Keene then arranged for neither gun to be loaded and sent Horatio to the Indy where he'd do better.) In the film, the duel is fought as a standard Ten Paces and Turn affair. While Horatio does refer to it as an even chance, his meaning here is a more open expression of his internal feelings: that he's fine with dying because it would also mean an end to his misery.
  • An intentional inversion in How I Met Your Mother: the titular mother only appears in the final season of the show, and the entire series (especially the final season) is a slow buildup to the day she meets the protagonist. Lampshaded in the finale where Ted's kids point out that their mother was barely in the story and it was more about his relationship with and feelings for Robin.
  • Recent seasons of the Ice Road Truckers franchise have been set in mountainous tropical regions overseas. Current programs use the "IRT" abbreviation to downplay the fact that the trucks haven't been driving on ice for some time.
  • I Didn't Do It originally had its cast getting into wacky situations and trying to explain their involvement (or lack thereof). This premise was dropped for the second season and now the characters are just off-kilter teenagers.
  • Early in the third season of Jane the Virgin, Jane has sex for the first time. Afterward, when the title is displayed, "the Virgin" is crossed out and sometimes replaced with another descriptor.
  • Late-night talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live! was in fact aired live when it premiered in 2003, but in 2004 it began taping in the afternoon like all other late-night talk shows. The title of the show was not changed.
  • Kamen Rider is called such because the main character of the original series wears a mask ("kamen" being the Japanese word for mask) and rides a motorcycle, but over time the franchise introduced heroes who lacked one or both of these traits. Amazon (and later the Amazons), Shin, and all of Hibiki's Oni transform into monstrous biological creatures rather than costumed/armored heroes, meaning they aren't wearing masks at all — those are their faces. On the other side of the equation, Black RX had both a motorcycle and a car and swapped between the two; Hibiki likewise owns both but prefers his ordinary Honda Civic because he isn't very proficient with the bike. Revi doesn't have a motorcycle but he can transform his demon buddy Vice into a hoverbike and a skateboard, both of which are seldom used due to Coconut Superpowers respectively of the CGI and "needing a professional skateboarder as a series regular stuntman" sorts. Zi-O had both a time-traveling Transforming Mecha and a bike, but the former saw more screen time. Drive, in the meantime, was actually marketed with this ("This Rider...is a Driver!"), using a car and never once touching a motorcyclenote .
    • The franchise as a whole started being hit with this in the 2000s as a result of real life writing the plot: thanks to having fewer places to film and Japanese laws tightening up on what qualifies as "street legal", the number of motorcycle scenes has suffered a noticeable decline; while Riders still have them, they usually only use them for ordinary travel and not the high-speed battles of yesteryear.
    • Kamen Rider Decade the TV show is named for marking the first decade of Kamen Rider's Heisei era and In-Universe, Kamen Rider Decade the superhero's main superpower is Power Copying the Riders of that decade. The character's name became a Non-Indicative Name when return as a supporting character in Kamen Rider Zi-O upgraded his power set so that he can draw from the Riders of the decade succeeding his own show. Granted, "Kamen Rider Two Decades" doesn't have the same ring to it.
  • The Last Man on Earth. At the end of the first episode, Phil Miller, who believes himself to be the last man on Earth, meets Carol Miller, the apparent last woman on Earth. In fact, they later meet several other survivors, all of whom had a period of believing they were the last person on Earth.
  • Last Week Tonight with John Oliver was clearly intended to be a weekly version of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart when it was created and named. The parallel name suggests John Oliver's weekly show was, like its daily predecessor, to feature humorous discussions of current news first and foremost. However, Oliver's episodes are now mostly dedicated to deep-dives on topics of interest that usually (but not always) fall outside the week's news, with current events relegated to quick recaps at the start of the show. John lampshades this from time to time.
    John: We're actually going to dive straight in with our main story this week, which, unusually for us, concerns the week that we just had. It's one of the rare times we're actually living up to our show's title, unlike what should probably be called "28 Minutes on the Corn Tax or Whatever the Fuck with John Oliver".
  • Late Night with Conan O'Brien featured the recurring comedy skit "In The Year 2000"...even after the year 2000. However, it was upgraded to "In The Year 3000" after Conan took over The Tonight Show.
  • Later... with Jools Holland, the popular BBC2 music programme, was so named because it was originally given a slot following The Late Show, an arts magazine programme. Later... has an irregular schedule, but is still going strong. The Late Show stopped broadcasting in 1995.
  • Laverne & Shirley, which saw Shirley leaving the cast in the final season. Since the actor who played Lenny was also missing in action for most of the last season, Gary Marshall jokingly considered changing the show's name to Laverne & Squiggy.
  • Israeli news show London & Kirschenbaum continued running under the same title even after its co-host Moti Kirschenbaum died.
  • Mad TV:
    • The show's references to the magazine started fading fast after the first few seasons.
    • The "Vancome Lady" on (the bigoted lady with the heavy makeup, "tcha, you know what?") is an Artifact Title herself; she is named for the place she worked for in her first appearance (in the first episode of the series), a parody of the Lancome counter, but started hopping from job to job after getting fired from Vancome in that first sketch.
  • Malcolm in the Middle somewhat became this in spite of the fact Malcolm really did become the middle child at some point, he was hardly the main character in later seasons (as the plot went from the misadventures of a child prodigy to showing what crazy scheme the rest of his family would do that week).
  • Brazilian Soap Opera/Teen Drama Malhação. The title means "working out", which fits the gym which was the initial setting. Then, four years later, it changed to a high school (and it continues to be set on schools, only not the same one).
  • The Man from U.N.C.L.E. featured two men in the title role after the first couple of episodes.
  • Narrowly averted with Married... with Children. The show's working title was Not The Cosbys, a Take That! to The Cosby Show. Given that Married With Children began three years after The Cosby Show and continued long after Cosby ended, Not The Cosbys would quickly have become irrelevant.
  • The BBC's soccer highlights show, Match of the Day, was so named because it originally only featured one match per Saturday. After only four years it started showing highlights from multiple matches, and it now shows highlights of every Premier League match played that day.
  • The U.S. version of Match of the Day on NBCSN goes even further into the Artifact Title rabbit hole since the program was adapted from the BBC version after the BBC version began showing portions of every match. Match of the Day II is Match of the Day, but on Sundays - or the occasional Monday - and includes bits of Saturday (or even Friday) matches too. Weekday games, however, have yet to result in incrementing the roman numeral further. And, just to bring things full circle, NBCSN's Match of the Week shows a single match.
  • McLeod's Daughters began its 8-season run with Claire and Tess McLeod being left the family farm by their father Jack. Claire died in Season 3 and Tess left in Season 6. By Season 7, the farm is left to be run by McLeod's nieces, who are technically daughters of his brother Hugh McLeod.
  • For the 2015 US TV season, Fox premiered a TV show based on the movie Minority Report. However, it's set ten years after the time of that film, in which the "precogs" have been released to live ordinary lives and are not used in anticipating uncommitted crimes. So that means that the title is an artifact since in both the movie and the Philip K. Dick novel it was based on, the title refers to the idea that one of the three precogs might see a different future, something that can't happen with the changed premise.
  • Miracle Workers went the Genre Anthology route: The first season features angels working on a Celestial Bureaucracy performing miracles, with Steve Buscemi playing God. The second series just took place during The Dung Ages and Buscemi's character was a ditch cleaner. The third, during The Wild West, has him as an outlaw. Satirizing religion is still part of the series.
  • German family show Die Montagsmaler ("Monday's scribblers"). When Executive Meddling moved their time slot around, they rather kept their Alliterative Title than to rename. Uhm, "Dienstagsdrudler"?
  • The title Mystery Road comes from the original movie that the series is a sequel to. Neither season of the TV series takes place anywhere near the eponymous Mystery Road.
  • MythBusters started as a show that checked out urban legends and other, well, myths. The show has over time significantly broadened its definition of "myth" to frequently include things nobody reasonably believes are true, such as movie stunts.
  • The Nanny: During the sixth and last season, Fran Fine is no longer "The Nanny", having married Maxwell Sheffield in the fifth season finale. Although, she had basically stopped working as a nanny long before that.
  • New Girl: In the pilot, Jessica moves into an apartment with three men, and is thus "the new girl" of the apartment. In the very next episode, one of her roommates is swapped out for another person, Winston, meaning that she's no longer the newest person in the apartment. However, this is handwaved when Nick says that Winston used to live there before moving back in, so Jessica is still "the new kid." As the seasons go on, Jessica becomes increasingly established in the apartment and no longer "new."
  • Las Noches del Futbol from the Monterrey, Mexico-based Multimedios sounds like a soccer fan's dream show (the show's title translates to "Football Nights"), but since its premiere during the 2006 World Cup, it slowly and eventually ditched all of the soccer discussion and subjects and has since become a Variety Show hosted by Ernesto Chavana with singing, dancing, a regular segment dealing with the paranormal, and even a Show Within a Show Reality Show involving the family of regular guest/luchador/rap artist Konan Big. The only talk about soccer was limited to the network's sports division cutting in with generic Monday morning training session video from Monterrey and Tigres during sports reports. Eventually Multimedios finally realized the title was a confusing artifact, and in October 2016 moved the title to a new Saturday night show with an actual focus on soccer, while the original show with Ernesto Chavana became Es Show (though the new show also devolved rather quickly into a skit show due to ratings issues).
  • One Tree Hill became "Les Frères Scott" (The Scott Brothers) in France because Lucas and Nathan Scott initially were the main protagonists. It became a bit awkward after Lucas left the series.
  • Paris by Night—a long-running series of Vietnamese-language variety show productions—was originally filmed in Paris; it made sense, as France has a sizable population of Vietnamese expats (because it spends much of its time taking pot shots at the government, Paris by Night is banned in Vietnam itself and is mainly aimed at disapora), and it was effectively a French cabaret. However, it's also been produced in other countries, particularly Canada and the United States. Even worse is the fact that it has not been produced in Paris since 2003.
  • Parks and Recreation: as of Season 7, none of the main cast work in the Parks and Recreation Department anymore, and only three of them work for the regional parks service. Additionally, only a handful of episodes feature any scenes within either the local or regional Parks offices.
  • Primeval became 'Nick Cutter et les portes du temps' in France. While the "doors of time" are still here, it turns out Anyone Can Die. It got shortened to 'Les portes du temps' for season 4.
  • Prison Break: Tthe second season is not about breaking out of a prison. In Australia, the second season was titled Prison Break: On The Run. As if the writers/producers realized the problem too late and got desperate, they implemented two Replacement Artifact devices: in season 3, Michael ends up in another prison, from which he is compelled to escape, and in season 4, Sara is put in prison, and they plot to break her out.
  • The trope is applicable in multiple ways to The Real Housewives franchise:
    • The first series, The Real Housewives of Orange County, was a clear reference to the then-new Desperate Housewives (and possibly also The O.C.). As later iterations were set in other locales, the "Real" became an artifact as there were no corresponding fictional ones in the same area.
    • Like on the fictional show, many of the ladies featured are divorced, widowed, and/or have careers of their own, making the "Housewives" aspect of the title irrelevant too.
    • The show continued long after Desperate Housewives ended its run in 2012.
  • Red Dwarf: The eponymous spaceship was completely absent in the sixth and almost all of the seventh series of the show and had little importance in series 5 and the Back to Earth special.
  • Resident Alien, based on comics by the same name, is called such because the Hugh Mann alien blends in by taking on the identity and job of a human doctor. However, by the sixth episode he has been replaced at the clinic by another doctor and by the eighth, the other most major character on the series knows that he's alien and was never really a doctor.
  • Return of Ultraman, despite its name, does not actually star the original Ultraman, but rather a totally new Ultra who strongly resembles him. This was a leftover from the development process in which the series was originally envisioned as being about Ultraman returning to Earth and merging with Hayata to fight monsters and aliens again. In the final product, however, the hero was instead a new but similar-looking character simply known as New Ultraman (and eventually given the official name of Ultraman Jack in 1984 - nearly 15 years after the series ended).
  • Revenge starts out as a thriller about a young woman seeking revenge against the people who framed and murdered her father. After Emily more or less succeeds in her mission in the Season 3 finale, the show transitions into a more standard-fare soap opera about life in the Hamptons and the rivalry between Emily and Victoria. Further adding to its artifact status is the revelation in the Season 3 finale that David Clarke, the man Emily spent all this time avenging, has actually been alive the entire series.
  • In later seasons of Sabrina the Teenage Witch Sabrina was no longer a teenager and was less focused on using magic. In fact, the producers wanted to shorten the name to just Sabrina after the title character graduated from high school, but at the time Archie Comics required that they keep "The Teenage Witch" in the title.
  • Saturday Night Live:
    • The Spanish version was this from the beginning since it aired on Thursdays. No wonder it got canned so fast. The Brazilian one, on Sunday, had a similar end.
    • Even the real SNL will, from time to time, air clips show specials (or even original-content specials) on Thursdays but still call them "Saturday Night Live primetime specials." In 2008 and 2009, the original specials "Saturday Night Live Weekend Update Thursday" became a double artifact title, as it aired neither on Saturday nor on the weekend. Traditionally, such specials preserve the SNL style of having an opening segment that ends with somebody saying "Live from New York, it's Saturday night", even though it's Thursday night and the segment could be pre-recorded.
    • Towards the end of the 2019-20 season, the COVID-19 Pandemic forced SNL to produce sketches from the homes of the cast and crew, titling these shows Saturday Night Live at Home. However, for the first time in the history of the series, all these segments were pre-recorded rather than staged live. Kate McKinnon lampshaded this, opening the April 11, 2020 show with "Live, from Zoom, it's sometime between March and August.".
  • Scrubs refers to both the clothing worn in a hospital and to the main characters being inexperienced newbie doctors, but the latter lost its meaning when J.D., Turk, and Elliot eventually became full-fledged attending physicians (they started the show as lowly medical interns). The 9th season, subtitled Med School, brings a new generation of newbies. The German version is even worse, being subtitled "Die Anfänger" - The Beginners.
  • Search Party initially centres on the search for a missing girl conducted by a group of aloof millennials with passing connection to her. This premise is swiftly discarded after the Season 1 finale where said girl is finally located. The repercussions of this search lead the show further and further away from its initial premise, going from psychological thriller in Season 2, to courtroom drama in Season 3, to horror in Season 4, to cult apocalypse in Season 5.
  • Sesame Street:
    • When the show was dubbed into German (renamed Sesamstraße) there were complaints that the "street" scenes didn't appeal to German children so they were taken out and replaced with the antics of a boy named Bumfidel and his mother. Since these stories did not take place on a street, the show's title was temporarily rendered incomprehensible. In 1978, a street set and new characters that would be more relevant to German children were introduced.
    • Telly Monster was originally a television-obsessed Flat Character. His personality changed to the neurotic monster he's better known as but his name stuck.
    • The general shop on the street is still named "Hooper's Store" several decades (and three owners) after Mr. Hooper died as a tribute to the character.
  • Siete Vidas:
    • The long-lived Spanish sitcom Siete Vidas ("Seven Lives") was named for its premise of "Hormone-Addled Teenager falls in a coma the day before he expected to lose his virginity, wakes up 18 years later, and has to get used to the current world. Hilarity Ensues."note  Not only was this premise dropped halfway into the first season, but said main character was eventually Put on a Bus. Word of God later claimed that the title referred to the seven main characters since there were 7 mains at the time... but afterwards there were seasons with 6 or 8 mains.
    • The Spin-Off Aída had the eponymous character going to jail and disappearing when her actress had to leave. They attempted to remedy this by introducing Aída's granddaughter, also named Aída, but she was a tertiary character with comparatively barely any screentime or importance to the plot.
  • Sleepy Hollow becomes this in Season 4, as the action moves from the titular town to Washington D.C.
  • Smallville was set in Smallville, Kansas for the first five seasons. Starting from season 6, the action largely takes place in Metropolis. The title could be interpreted as referring to Lois' nickname for Clark, alluding to the main character rather than the former main locale.
  • British Sketch Comedy Sorry, I've Got No Head got its name from a series of segments it showed, which featured Headless Bill, who has no head. The Headless Bill segments did not appear in Series 3; despite this, the show kept its name.
  • Soul Train began featuring more than just soul artists by the late 1970s as disco began to assert itself, and as hip hop came into the picture by the late 1980s and soul and R&B largely faded, those artists dominated the show. Yet the title was never changed throughout its entire run.
  • Space: 1999 begins in September 1999, but after the Moon passes through several space/time warps, the year on Earth is 2120.
  • Star Trek:
    • Star Trek: The Next Generation came out from under the shadow of Star Trek: The Original Series not only surpassing it in terms of episode count (178 episodes to the original series' mere 78), but also evolving the Star Trek universe in ways never seen before with countless spinoffs following it. The "Next Generation" part of the title was probably Fair for Its Day back in 1987 when the new series really had to prove itself, which it eventually did. Although the subtitle was definitely dropped when they started their own movies, the 24th century era is still colloquially referred to as the TNG or "Next Gen" era, for lack of a better name.note 
    • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine takes place in a space station around the planet Bajor. A stable orbit does not quite qualify as a "trek." This was one reason the writers gave the crew the starship Defiant, but even afterwards, there isn't a lot of trekking going on.
  • The Suite Life of Zack & Cody referred to the fact that the first series was set in a hotel suite in Boston. When the spinoff, The Suite Life on Deck began (which continued into The Suite Life Movie), with most of the major characters (including Zack and Cody Martin) returning, the events were set on a luxury cruise liner, rather than a hotel, but the "suite life" pun in the title remained.
  • The classic Superman comic story For the Man Who Has Everything is set on Superman's birthday, with the Black Mercy as an ironic "present" from one of his villains. The title is obviously a reference to the phrase "What do you get for the man who has everything?" about gift-giving. The Supergirl (2015) adaptation is called "For the Girl Who Has Everything", but it's not Kara's birthday and the Black Mercy is not shown as being a gift, even ironically.
  • On the first season of Survivor, the contestants were referred to as "castaways" since the show was set on a desert island and began with them being "shipwrecked". They've continued to be called "castaways" ever since, even in seasons that take place in locales where the term doesn't fit—such as the African savanna, the Australian Outback, the Amazonian jungle, etc. The whole focus of "surviving" in the wilderness was quickly dropped when it became clear that viewers were more interested in the contestants scheming than doing basic survival tasks.
  • Taggart no longer had a Taggart in it after the actor, Mark McManus, died and The Character Died with Him. In fact there were far more episodes without its title character than with him.
  • Tales of the Gold Monkey only featured a single episode - The Pilot - where the monkey statue was the focus of Jake and Sarah's adventures, and at the end, it's found to be made of brass. It's relegated to the background for the remainder of the series's run.
  • The Terror is a miniseries with a Double-Meaning Title, being a terrifying story that involves a ship called The Terror. When the series was turned into a Genre Anthology with a new story every season, the second season was named The Terror: Infamy even though the ship The Terror or anything else from the first season is not involved; it's now just a show title informing that it's an horror series.
  • Today's Special: Set in a department store, the series originally involved learning about whatever product was on special when the store opened, with each episode's title literally being "today's special". As the seasons progressed, the storylines got more varied, and by the final season, the episodes' titles rarely had anything to do with the store's merchandise, so the series title had lost its meaning.
  • Total Divas: WWE haven't called their female performers "Divas" since April 2016, yet the show's title remains intact.
  • Partway through its run, the game show Trivia Trap had its rules changed. It originally had teams playing trivia questions and working to omit all the wrong answers while avoiding the "trap" of the right one. Host Bob Eubanks didn't like the format, so it was just changed into a generic Q & A game with no real "traps" to speak of.
  • Two and a Half Men:
    • The "half" originally referred to Jake, who was just a boy when the series began. Jokes from fans and critics about how this would become an Artifact Title began almost immediately, but they did their best to deflect it for most of the show's run. In Season 9, Charlie was replaced by Manchild Walden Schmidt, the implication being that Walden was the new "half." However, both Walden and Jake went through significant Character Development during that season and came into their own as men, so the title briefly fell victim to the trope. (Some have made the case that the "half" could refer to the emasculated Alan.) When Angus T. Jones left the show, Jake was replaced by Jenny, a 20-year-old lesbian Distaff Counterpart of Charlie, possibly an attempt at keeping the title relevant, with the idea that Jenny's youth and womanizing ways qualified her as half a man. However, by the time the show ended, it was only about Walden and Alan and the title had no real meaning.
    • The show's name in France is "Mon oncle Charlie" which menats My uncle Charlie. Guess what happened to the title when Charlie Sheen left?
  • Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place was changed to just Two Guys and a Girl after the Two Guys quit the Pizza Place, thus averting that artifact. The rest of the title would still be an artifact, as by the end the cast consisted of three guys and two girls.
  • Intentionally invoked with Ugly Betty. Many fans expected a long-awaited makeover of the title character (as per the original telenovela on which the show is based) and were even surprised when this transformation failed to occur in earlier seasons. Over the course of Season 4, however, Betty gradually loses her "unattractive" qualities until she can by no stretch of imagination be considered "ugly" anymore. This change is even explicitly lampshaded in the series finale, where the closing title fades from "Ugly Betty" into just "Betty".
  • The Vampire Diaries ended up Zig Zagging this once it dropped the device of Elena and Stefan reading from their diaries as a narrative lodestone. The first three seasons include various historical journals and documents linked to the town's history which kept the title relevant, but as the backstory went further back in time they eventually stopped appearing. Other arcs found ways for Elena's diary to make an appearance, but it rarely figured into the actual plot. The final season brings back the narration, this time in the form of other characters writing entries for Elena, who is in a magical coma, and functions as a "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue in the final episode, with Elena Book Ending the series with one final diary entry.
  • Veep becomes this at the end of its third season, when President Hughes resigns and Selina moves up from the vice presidency to the presidency, meaning she's no longer the "veep." The writers tease the title becoming relevant again when the vicissitudes of Selina's political career cause her to be offered the vice-presidency slot on a later ticket, but she immediately and aggressively refuses.
  • In the first season of Vigil (BBC), DCI Amy Silva was investigating a mysterious death on a Royal Navy submarine, HMS Vigil. By the second season, she's moved on to investigating murders perpetrated using a Royal Air Force drone in a fictional Middle Eastern country and, aside from the drone in question having "VL-1" on the side, there's no further connection to the title.
  • The Walking Dead:
    • Cable channel AMC has aired various after-shows hosted by comedian Chris Hardwick. The first, which concerns Walking Dead, is called Talking Dead. With such an obvious play on words, there's no ambiguity about what show that title refers to. Next came the Breaking Bad final season after-show, Talking Bad. This makes sense considering it's the same host and format as Talking Dead, but it's not much of a pun on "Breaking Bad". Recently, AMC announced a new show to discuss Better Call Saul — naturally, its title is Talking Saul. It's not that it doesn't make sense — it's a talk show about a show with "Saul" in the title — but it's interesting that continuing the "Talking _______" title format quickly became more important than cleverness or clarity.
    • Fear the Walking Dead had an interesting evolution with its Foreign Language Title in Czech, where it is known as Živí Mrtví: Počátek Konce (The Walking Dead: The Beginning of the End. While this was an appropriate title in its first three season which took place during the initial months of the apocalypse, it quickly became obsolete once it caught up to the main series (for a bit at least, time skips in these series' are weird). This was eventually subverted with Season 6, which heavily used the motto The end is the beginning, accidentally perfectly matching the Czech title.
  • The award-winning NBC News magazine Weekend began as a once-a-month program, hosted solo by Lloyd Dobyns, airing late on Saturday. When Saturday Night Live became a hit and NBC started begrudging the one night a month when SNL couldn't air, the magazine was "promoted" to weekly prime-time status... with no definite time slot. New co-anchor Linda Ellerbee found herself introducing one broadcast with "This show is called Weekend. Yes, we know it's Wednesday..."
  • In its final season, the namesake character of Welcome Back, Kotter was written out of the show, with the spotlight going to his wife instead.
  • The Wizards of Waverly Place special "The Wizards Return: Alex vs. Alex" is actually one. With Jerry already mortal when the series began, Max losing his powers and becoming mortal in the series finale, and David Henrie not reprising his role as Justin, Alex Russo is the only wizard returning for the special.
  • In 2021, it was announced that Yo! MTV Raps would receive a revival... on Paramount+.
  • Croatian soap-opera Zabranjena ljubav (translated, Forbidden Love) focused on two twins separated at birth who unfortunately fell in love with each other...and at one point one of the twins dies. The show goes on focusing on the other twin and other characters until that twin gets left out...and the show still went on.

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