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  • AI: The Somnium Files has a total of FIVE meanings for the first two letters, all of which are thematically relevant to the game: "A.I.", as in "artificial intelligence", referring to the character Aiba; "Eye", a consistent theme throughout the game; "I", referring to the game's first-person perspective; "Ai", the Japanese word for "love", another major theme; and (mirrored vertically), the Roman numeral "VI", referring to the game's Arc Number.
  • Assassin's Creed: Odyssey refers to not just the hour-long storyline and the massive open world of Ancient Greece but it is a reference to Homer's Odyssey which involves the titular protagonist going on an epic journey amidst the chaos and destruction from the Trojan War much like how the Eagle Bearer participates in The Peloponnesian War and goes from place to place to find their sibling.
  • The first episode in Telltale's Back to the Future: The Game series is titled "It's About Time". The game is about time travel, and the phrase was also the fan reaction to the announcement. It's also Marty's reaction to seeing Doc again. The saying it also a tagline in the trailer for Part II (the movie) — itself coming four years after the original.
  • Black★Rock Shooter: The Game is Black★Rock Shooter's first video game entry, but also refers to White Rock Shooter orchestrating a 'game' to absorb a perfect copy of herself.
  • Bloodborne has not a double, but a Triple-Meaning Title. It, first of all, refers to the bloodborne disease that is plaguing the city of Yharnam. Secondly, it refers to Yharnam being a city borne upon the fame, fortune and success it has enjoyed thanks to the discovery of the Healing Church's holy blood, as well as the blood obsessed culture that has sprung up around it. Thirdly, it refers to the child born of blood that the Great Ones are seeking to sire, as well as the fact that all of their previous attempts ended in bloody stillbirths. There is also this almost-Title Drop in the addage of Byrgenwerth:
    "We are born of the blood. Made men by the blood. Undone by the blood. Our eyes are yet to open. Fear the Old Blood."
  • Borderlands 2 has one mission titled "Rising Action." This refers both to Sanctuary rising out of the ground and part of the traditional Plot Mountain (which this mission is an example of).
  • Rockstar's Bully turns the implied belligerence of the title into a nickname for Bullworth Academy, the school where much of the game is set.
  • The subtitle in Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time refers first and foremost to the game's plot, which takes Crash and company on a time-shifting adventure, but also to the fact that a new Crash Bandicoot platform game had not been seen in the past ten years leading up to its release, making it well overdue and highly anticipated.
  • Colony Wars: Vengeance takes place after the first game, when the League of Free Planets defeated the Earth Empire by sealing the Sol Warp Hole, trapping the Empire in its home star system and cutting it off from the supplies of the colony worlds. After years of civil war, the charismatic Commander Kron has rallied Imperial forces to strike back at the League. However, there is more to the war against the League than one realizes until later, when it becomes clear that Kron's sole motivation is vengeance against the League for sending him on a suicide mission in response to his violent and brutal nature — something that becomes glaringly clear when he opts to continue his vendetta as the League and Imperial Navy form a truce to deal with a common threat.
  • The Interactive Fiction game Degeneracy is set in the castle of an evil noble who engaged in a lot of degeneracy in his life. But after he is killed, a magical spell is triggered and the entire castle starts degenerating back to something primitive and formless.
  • Deltarune:
    • The game's title is both an anagram for its predecessor Undertale, and a reference to the "Delta Rune", the Dreemur family royal crest from the previous game.
    • The music playing when Ralsei explains about The Roaring in chapter 2 is called "The Dark Truth". The truth in question is dark both in the senses of being bad news for the one hearing it and of being related to metaphysical darkness.
    • The theme song for Chapter 2's Superboss is called "BIG SHOT." This refers to both the boss' Character Catchphrase, and an 11th-Hour Superpower that gives you the ability to shoot bullets from your SOUL, including holding Z to fire bigger shots.
  • Detention's English title can refer to both being punished by having to stay in school after class and by being confined in a prison. The protagonist (or is he?) wakes up in a school he can't escape from, and later on the game explores Taiwan's martial law period, with special attention given to dissidents being tortured and imprisoned.
  • The name Deus Ex is both a commentary on typically weakly-structured FPS plots that often employed Deus ex Machina, and also refers to the literal meaning of the phrase "god from the machine", since the story deals with Deus est Machina.
  • Do It For Me: At first, "Do it for me" sounds like a romantic thing a lover would say to another, which is indeed what the girlfriend says to the protagonist. But when the game's context is refitted, "Do it for me" sounds like an order a killer (the girlfriend) would give to their accomplice (the protagonist).
  • One of the climax missions of Dragon Age: Inquisition is "What Pride Had Wrought," which is a line from the Chant of Light (just like the title of every other main mission). The difference here is that Solas, one of your companions, goes by a name that means "Pride" in Elvhen... and all the events of the game, especially this mission, were caused by his mistakes.
  • The subtitle of Dragon Quest VIII is "Journey of the Cursed King". This obviously refers to King Trode, who has been transformed into a troll-like creature because of a curse. But it also refers to the main character, as it can eventually be revealed that he has been cursed since he was a child, and is the rightful heir to a kingdom.
  • One of the entries in the fourth installment of Dread X Collection is called The Fruit. Not only does it refer to the titular fruit that's causing the Lovecraftian crisis in the town of Ravenhollow, but it also refers to the fact that the protagonist is gay and is trying to find his partner.
  • In Earthworm Jim, the first section of Buttville is also known as "Use Your Head". In this section, you must skydive through an enormous serpentine tunnel composed entirely of razor-sharp thorns while using your face as a helicopter-thingy, which means you must literally use Jim's head to progress and think fast with your own head in order to avoid the thorns.
  • The Elder Scrolls series has a few In-Universe books which use this trope:
    • Confessions of a Khajiit Fur Trader. The narrator is a fur trader and a Khajiit, and he has no problem trading the skins of his kinsmen (or any other sentient being) if he can get his hands on them.
    • The Importance of Where is the story of a warrior learning where he must strike his blows. He can kill a monster by aiming for its weak spots, but he also needs to chase the monster to his village before landing the final blow if he wants the glory associated with killing it.
  • Fatal Frame has its original Japanese title, 零, pronounced "rei". It normally means "zero", which eventually became its European title, but it also means "ghost".
  • Final Fantasy:
  • Fire Emblem Engage is named after the Invocation used for its Summon Magic, "Emblem, Engage!" It's also, according to developer interviews, a reference to the developers hoping to avoid Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game this time and create "engaging" gameplay. But given that, later in the story the protagonist becomes an Emblem called "the Fire Emblem", the title could also be read as "Fire Emblem, Engage!"
  • The Five Nights at Freddy's franchise is fond of using these:
    • Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location: The game takes place at an actual sister location of Freddy Fazbear's Pizza called Circus Baby's Entertainment and Rental. The main animatronic, Circus Baby, is female. And the game is about discovering the location (and fate) of Michael Afton's sister.
    • Part of Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator's gameplay is a business tycoon simulator. However, the title also refers to the true ending, in which it's revealed that the restaurant is actually a simulation meant as a trap to destroy the animatronics once and for all.
    • Five Nights At Freddys VR Help Wanted's title, obviously, is a play on a commonly used phrase for hiring businesses. However, it can refer to either the tapes' events, which detail the Sanity Slippage and untimely death of the previous beta tester. Or, it can refer to William Afton's consciousness inside the game, who has the goal of escaping via a specific kind of help. It can also refer to Vanny, who by the end of the game is Brainwashed and Crazy.
    • Five Nights at Freddy's AR: Special Delivery's title alludes to the game's premise of animatronics being delivered straight to your door. However, the game's lore focuses on Vanny's increasingly odd online orders, the warehouse employees' various mishaps, and a data packet being slipped through by overriding safety proctocols, all of which fit the definition of "special delivery."
    • Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach refers to the fact that the player character, Gregory, is a child trapped inside the Pizzaplex after hours who is being hunted down by the animatronics and a nightguard for being a trespasser. Or, it can refer to the animatronics themselves, who are acting abnormal as a result of being hacked. Or, it could refer to Vanessa, the aforementioned nightguard who had her psyche, well, breached in Help Wanted and is now an enemy.
  • The game Hack 'N' Slash is a hack and slash game about hacking NPCs' source code.
  • Hades obviously refers to the Greek god of the Underworld himself, who serves as the main antagonist towards Player Character Zagreus, but the name has also been used to refer to the Greek underworld in general. Thus, the title can serve as both an Antagonist Title and The Place.
  • In Horizon Zero Dawn, the first mission as teenage!Aloy is called "The Point of the Spear". On the surface, this has an obvious meaning: The literal point of a spear, which Aloy now uses as a weapon after the Time Skip. However, it also carries a more metaphorical meaning: Rost sent Aloy on the quest so that she would learn that the purpose of being a Brave is to protect the tribe rather than pursuing one's own goals. In other words, he was teaching her the point of carrying a weapon.
  • Inazuma Eleven SD is a game which features chibi versions of the characters (hence "super deformed"), but the "SD" also stands for "Sakka Daisuki" (love soccer).
  • A Just Cause? Just (Be)Cause? YOU MAKE THE CALL! The games also deal with freeing countries from oppressive dictatorships, and the US invasion of Panama in the late 1980s was codenamed "Operation Just Cause".
  • Killer Frequency: At least four interpretations. A killer stalking callers who are live on a radio frequency. The frequent scenarios of having to deal with the killer. The killer seemingly returning after many years, thus being habitually frequent. And the killer themselves being literally frequent (as in occurring multiple times), since there are actually two of them.
  • Kingdom Hearts:
  • The King of Fighters can refer to both the in-universe tournament, and Kyo Kusanagi, the franchise's overarching protagonist.
  • The level "Manifest Destiny" in L.A. Noire, which has two meanings. The most obvious is that it's a stock phrase about claiming the west, and the game takes place in Los Angeles. The double meaning is that many, many characters are murdered because their names are on the shipping manifest of the Army ship that was robbed prior to the game's events.
  • The Legend of Zelda:
    • The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past: The title can mean either "link" as in "connection", or "Link" as in The Protagonist. Same with the sequel, The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds.
    • The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening has several meanings. It can refer to Link awakening in Marin's house at the beginning of the game, it can refer to Link awakening the Wind Fish, or it can refer to how the game is All Just a Dream, and therefore Link awakens from the dream at the end.
    • In The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap, the title either refers to Ezlo, a Minish who became a cap or the magical cap created by Ezlo that empowers the villain.
    • The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker: In addition to the title artifact, the title can refer to Link as its wielder. He's called "Wind Waker" and "waker of the winds" in-game.
    • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: The title can refer to both Zelda, the princess of a realm which has been overtaken by Twilight, and Midna, whose actual royal title is Twilight Princess.
    • The Japanese subtitle of The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks is Daichi no Kiteki, which means "train whistle of the land". When you remove one of the kanji from "kiteki", it becomes Daichi no Fue (flute of the land), the Japanese name of the Spirit Flute.
    • The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword: In an interview, the devs mentioned that in addition to "Skyward" meaning "towards the sky", they picked up from the American team that "ward" means "to defend", giving it the double meaning of "Protector of the/from the sky".
    • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: The title is meant to refer to the After the End version of Hyrule with its relative lack of civilization. The "breath" part of the title is also meant to sound like "breadth," in reference to the massive Wide-Open Sandbox nature of the game world compared to previous games. Lastly, the Divine Beasts, constructed to look like wild animals, use a Breath Weapon attack on Calamity Ganon right before Link faces him.
    • The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom: Not only two possible meanings, but two different pronunciationsnote . Massive chunks of the overworld have been ripped out of the ground and sent skyward in an event that gets referred to as "the Upheaval". However, there is also a Main Quest revolving around eleven geoglyphs, in which Link must seek out a filled teardrop shape upon each pattern on the earth. These turn out to hold the memories of Zelda, preserved in her tears when she underwent draconification after being flung into the past.
  • Lenna's Inception can mean both the start of Lenna's journey as the new hero and how Lenna came to be, transforming from an Archangel into a normal human.
  • Each episode of Life Is Strange: Before the Storm is named after a line from The Tempest which echoes the scene it's taken from (with Rachel and Chloe playing a character in a school production) and the events of the episode.
  • Mario & Luigi:
  • Mass Effect refers to the eponymous phenomenon, the "Mass Effect," harnessed by humanity and other advanced civilizations to alter mass and the incredible technologies based upon it. It also refers to your decisions and actions, which have lasting consequences for the entire galaxy, i.e. a mass effect.
  • The "Vanguard" section of Medal of Honor: Vanguard's title refers to the fact that at the start of the game, the 82nd Airborne Division is a completely untested unit in warfare, as well as Paratrooping in general being relatively new in World War 2, and that the 82nd Division is being sent into battle first in each operation, before the rest of the US Army.
  • The title of Rockman Mega World, the Japanese version of Mega Man: The Wily Wars (a compilation of the first three Mega Man (Classic) games for the Mega Drive), can be considered as an allusion to the Mega Drive itself, as well as the title character's name in the English versions (Mega Man). It can also be seen as a nod to the Rockman World games for the Game Boy, which were pseudo-compilations of the original Famicom games. (Western gamers will better recognize this sub-series as the games Mega Man: Dr. Wily's Revenge, Mega Man II, Mega Man III, Mega Man IV, and Mega Man V, with some retroactively referring to them as the "Mega Man World" series.)
  • A "solid" in geometrical terms refers to a three-dimensional figure. The original Metal Gear Solid happens to be the third Metal Gear game and the first one in 3D. Also, the protagonist is codenamed "Solid Snake".
  • Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater refers to the name of the operation the protagonist takes part of, the fact that he may have to eat snakes while on the mission or the Final Boss chewing the protagonist (codenamed: Naked Snake) out of his naivety. He's also a Green Beret, who are called "snake eaters" for their survival training.
  • Metal Gear Solid V:
    • Ground Zeroes: The name is about both the "ground zero" for the destruction of MSF that 'resets' everything for Snake, and also alludes to 9/11 and the Gitmo-like setting. The term technically refers to the point above a mid-air explosion, and the game ends with a devastating explosion in midair. (Ironically, over the sea.)
    • The Phantom Pain refers to both the literal phantom pain of losing an arm, and the metaphorical phantom pain from losing loved ones, exhibited by many characters.
  • Metroid:
  • The game No Delivery seems to be referring to the haunted pizza parlor setting. However at the end of the demo the weird puppet thing mentions that there is no delivery from this place as in no escape.
  • The No More Heroes series toys a lot with its themes and approach to "heroism", and with each entry, it has a new context that its title can be applied to:
  • no-one has to die. can be read as both "No-one has to die" and "No, one has to die". For most of the game, you need to pick one person to die each round. At the end, you gain the power to save everyone.
  • Ōkami has a triple meaning. The name (assuming long o) can mean "great god". It can also mean "wolf". Your character, naturally, is both. In addition, Kami by itself means both god and paper, and one of the game's mechanics involves using a Celestial Brush on "Celestial" Paper.
  • OMORI being an pun of Hikikomori considering the titular character's role. In japanese, Omori means 'weight' considering the feelings Sunny's endure after his Accidental Murder of his sister Mari. With another spelling, it also means "large forest", which is referring the world that he created to escape from that weight. And in Romanian, omori means "to kill", and this is how Sunny saw himself all that time, as a killer. It also doubles up as Mari's Piano brand, and Omori's design is monochromatic, similar to piano keys.
  • Pedestal (2021): Pedestal refers to the pedestal that Aoi put Shiori on for being the perfect School Idol beloved by everyone, and how her supposed suicide threw her off it, to the point that Aoi is investigating her death specifically to prove that such a popular girl who had everything could not have possibly killed herself and thus preserve the pedestal. But Stage 2 outright explicitly says that there was another person Aoi put on a pedestal that gets broken by the end - Akari, Aoi's best friend, who turns out to be The Sociopath who drove Shiori to despair for her amusement.
  • Fans of the first game had long been waiting for Pop Cap's Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time, in addition to the game focusing on Time Travel.
  • For Ratchet & Clank, Insomniac Games makes a point of making the subtitles refer to two or more elements: Gameplay, Story and a Double Entendre.
    • Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando refers to Ratchet becoming a commando, which gives him advanced gameplay like strafing, and refers to not wearing pants.
    • Up Your Arsenal sounds like a threat of rectal invasion, and acknowledges that the game has the largest amount of weapons for any Ratchet game at the time (helped by having weapons upgrade four times).
    • Deadlocked refers to the Deadlock collars given to our heroes that puts them in a bind, constrains the players in co-op, and sounds like a bondage kink.
    • Going Mobile refers to the game being played on phones, as well as the duo having to cross large distances in a digital mainframe over the course of the game.
      • The cancelled Ratchet & Clank: Clone Home has two: cloning was a focal part of the plot, and the game was essentially a Mission-Pack Sequel of Going Mobile.
    • Size Matters references the Shrink-o-matic being a focal point of the story with the Technomites, that some levels are on a miniature scale, the size of one's package and that it was the first game in the series on a handheld, the PlayStation Portable.
    • Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction refers to the new Combat Devices, the Dimensionator that threatens the galaxy and your package again.
    • Quest for Booty refers to the pirate theme of the game, Ratchet's search for Clank, and liking people's butts.
    • A Crack in Time refers to abuse of the Great Clock threatening the fabric of time, the new portals that allow travelling to past versions of a level, and butt cracks.
    • Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One's is an obscured version of its original subtitle: 4Play. This would refer to Ratchet, Clank, Qwark and Nefarious being forced to work together, it being the first Ratchet game to feature four player co-op, and romantic prelude before sex.
    • Full Frontal Assault is about the game's tower defense mechanics, and exposing oneself in public.
    • Into the Nexus is the first Insomniac entry to completely avert this. It was attempted with the subtitle Into the Nether Regions, referring to the cross-dimensional story and gameplay, and people's crotches.
    • Rift Apart references the rift-based gameplay, the fact that Ratchet and Clank get separated for a good chuck of the plot, and for the first time it's also not a double entendre, but a spoonerism of sorts.note 
  • In the world of the game, a Receiver is a person (like the player character) who can hear the messages of the people who made the tapes, but the word can also mean the functional part of a firearm. Given that the primary hook of the game is the detailed simulation of the mechanics of firearms operation, this double-meaning is quite fitting.
  • Redemption Cemetery has every game so far in the series have different meanings. For example: Grave Testimony has the "Grave" either mean how the situations where each of the characters died be serious, or rather how their witnessing to supernatural events sent them to their graves.
  • Resident Evil had some fun with this across regions. The seventh title is called Resident Evil 7: Biohazard in English, and Biohazard 7: Resident Evil in Japanese. Both combinations make perfect sense in context, as the setting is a residence corrupted by a biohazard.
  • There are two minigames in the Rhythm Heaven series titled "Built to Scale", and while they share the same primary meaning (both games involve building widgets in a factory), their secondary meanings are slightly different: In the DS game, your audio cue is a rising "do-re-mi" scale. In Fever, the backing track is a short melody that goes through a major scale and then repeats one key higher (first in C major, then in D major, then in E major, etc.).
  • The title of Sayonara Wild Hearts is a combo of this and Bilingual Bonus: the game uses "wild hearts" as synecdoche for the cycle of falling in and out of love, so an average English-speaking audience member would see the title and think "Goodbye, heartbreak!", which does tie with the main plot of fighting enemies who represent the protagonist's past troubles. However, "sayonara" translates more literally to "that's the way it is", which also ties in with how the story is also about accepting heartbreak as a fact of life, and learning how to grow strong from it.
  • Sniper Elite V2. V2 is the abbreviation of a second version of something, meaning Sniper Elite V2 is basically Sniper Elite only improved. The plot of V2 revolves around the German V2 rockets.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • Lead writer Walt Williams has acknowledged several ways the title of Spec Ops: The Line can be interpreted. It is typically taken as a reference to the line which, once crossed, there is no going back; but Williams also argued that it could equally refer to the line between expectations and reality, when players of a game expect one thing but end up getting something quite different.
  • The Stellaris DLC Utopia. Your species can now live in a Utopia, with limitless energy provided by a Dyson Sphere, living space not being an issue anymore thanks to giant artificial planets and even a Ring World, a true Post-Scarcity Economy which would qualify as a Utopia... But as we all know, Utopia Justifies the Means, and if said means are using other species as Slave Mooks, livestock, servants, phasing out species through forced sterilization or straight up building huge concentration camps to extract just a tiny bit of extra labor from the Final Solution you have enacted... The Utopia your species will live in justifies the sacrifices made along the way...
  • Touhou Project:
  • Uncharted:
    • Uncharted: Drake's Fortune can mean the fortunes of either Drake: both chased after El Dorado's location, and at the end Nate does in fact walk away with a crate full of gold.
    • Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception refers both to Sir Francis Drake concealing his trip to Yemen (and decieving Elizabeth I that he found nothing), and the revelation that Nathan Drake isn't actually his descendant. Deception is also a core theme of the game overall, with Marlowe and her crew using it frequently to unnerve their opposition, and drug influence being a focal point of several scenes.
    • Uncharted 4: A Thief's End is a triple meaning title. It refers to the fact that it is the last game with Nathan as the protagonist in a much darker and life-threatening adventure, the fact that the game ends with him selling the pirate gold he finds so he can stop being a thief and go into legitimate archeology, and what ultimately happened to Libertalia, the pirate colony. Two of the founders stole everyone else's money, killed the settlers, and then killed each other over it, meaning no one got the money.
    • Uncharted: The Lost Legacy refers four different lost legacies. One being Chloe's dad getting much further into his search for ruins of the Hoysala empire than she had realized, the second being Chloe following in his footsteps, both literally and figuratively by being an archaeologist. The third is that the capital of the Empire wasn't where the King hid the tusk against the invading Persians and was merely a diversion from the real hiding place in the other capital. The fourth is Nadine, who has been outed from Shoreline - her father's company - since the events of A Thief's End.
  • The soundtrack playing during the fight against the True Final Boss of Undertale is called "Hopes and Dreams/SAVE the world". SAVE the worlds refers that you are in fact saving the world from the boss, but also to the fact that, In-Universe, you SAVE the world each and every time you practice Save Scumming.
  • The title of Yo-kai Watch can refer to either the actual watch that The Protagonist receives, or the fact that you're constantly on the "watch", or hunt, for Yo-kai.

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