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"Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur." Lat. "Anything said in Latin seems profound".
Latin is a mysterious language. It's been effectively dead for one and a half thousand years, yet somehow, it is still being used, even omnipresent in popular culture. Maybe it's that distinct, laconic sound of it. Maybe it's the association with the greatest Vestigial Empire of the Western world. Maybe it's fact that it is still the official religious language of the Roman Catholic Church. Whatever the reason, Latin sounds awesome to most people. And that's enough of a reason to gratuitously stick it onto any work of fiction out there.
More charitably, coining a new word in Latin or Greek allows the creation of a legitimate-sounding new word with a subconscious link to its meaning, since new words trigger our minds to think about similar-sounding words we know already. "Wingardium Leviosa" might be gobbledegook in any language, but the similarity to the words "wing" and "levitate" connects it to flight rather well, without being as obvious as "Wingyup Airyfly".
There's also a significant tendency to mix Latin and Gratuitous Greek together. Someone who is unfamiliar with one or both could easily mistake one for the other just based on sound, which probably has to do with a great portion of Latin vocabulary being derived from Greek in the first place.
See also Canis Latinicus for when Latin- sounding language is used instead of proper Latin.
Subtropes:
Examples of gratuitous Latin in fiction:
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Anime and Manga
- Simoun features a small dictionary worth of Latin and Latin-sounding terms to designate various technologies and concepts: from the deity Tempus Spatium ("Time Space"); through country names Simulacrum ("likeness, similarity
 "), Argentum ("silver"), and Plumbum ("lead"); to pilot roles auriga ("charioteer", the primary pilot) and sagitta ("arrow", the navigator and gun controller).
- In Mahou Sensei Negima the spells are all in Latin. Pretty good Latin, too.
- Or Greek, or Sanskrit. Really, it just depends on who's casting the spells, but it all seems rather well done.
Comic Books
- Asterix has lots of gratuitous Latin phrases, mostly in the form of classical proverbs. Canis Latinicus is averted except in names.
- Yeah, but Asterix fights the Romans on a regular basis, so it's not exactly gratuitous, is it?
Film
- Top Secret!. While Nick Rivers is in prison, he's taken out of his cell and led to an execution room by a priest speaking common Latin phrases such as "corpus delecti" and "quid pro quo".
- Monty Python And The Holy Grail. As a group of Catholic monks are walking along, they repeatedly chant the phrase "Pie Jesu Domine, dona eis requiem" and hit themselves on the head with boards. Watch it here.
- The Running Man. While Richards is being led to the arena, a lawyer reads his contract to him. It includes a meaningless Latin phrase in its legalese, "Ad hoc de facto".
Literature
- In the Dresden Files, sometimes Michael Carpenter starts speaking Latin when he gets the sword out. Yes, I get that he's supposed to be Catholic and all, but really? It would be just as easy to have him say stuff like "In the name of the Father!" in English while slicing the baddies to pieces.
- It's actually played with quite a lot in The Dresden Files. The white council of wizards speaks Latin as their official super secret society language -which of course the titular Harry Dresden can't speak. It's often commented on how he had to learn Latin through a correspondence course and mangles/mistranslates the language every time he uses it.
- Which doesn't seem to stop him from casting spells in pseudo-Latin.
- Discworld often has Latin sprinkled about, usually in situations where people are trying to sound pretentious. Examples include the City Watch's motto (Fabricati Diem, Pvnc) to a joke played by the Unseen University's wizards on a foreign diplomat by awarding him an honarary doctorate in "Adamus cum Flabello Dulci" (sweet fanny adams).
- The spells of Harry Potter, as noted above.
Live Action TV
- In The West Wing, when President Bartlet conducts his Rage Against The Heavens in the National Cathedral, he starts yelling at God in latin.
- Also, from guess which episode:
Bartlet: Twenty-seven lawyers in the room, anyone know post hoc, ergo propter hoc? Josh?
Josh: Uh... post, "after," after hoc; ergo, "therefore"; "after hoc, therefore something else hoc."
Bartlet: Thank you. Next. Leo?
Leo: "After it, therefore because of it."
Bartlet: After it, therefore because of it. It means one thing follows the other, therefore it was caused by the other, but it's not always true. In fact, it's hardly ever true. We did not lose Texas because of the hat joke. Do you know when we lost Texas?
C.J.: When you learned to speak Latin?
- In Lost there's "lle qui nos omnis servabit" which is the answer to the coded phrase "What lies in the shadow of the statue?" It apparently means "He who will save us all"
- Nicely subverted in an X Files episode where a recording(!) of Jesus' prayer when he resurrected Lazarus translates to "I am the apeman, I am the walrus, doob doobie do, Paul is dead!"
Music
- The German neo-medieval band Corvus Corax parodies this trope on one of its shirts with the words, "Omnia dicta fortiora, si dicta latina" which means, "Everything sounds more impressive when said in Latin."
Tabletop Games
- The word "Primarch" from Warhammer 40000 is an example of Latin/Greek mixture: "primus" ("first") is a Latin word root, whereas "archos" ("to rule") is Greek. Still W40k offers a great deal of proper Gratuitous Latin.
- Vampire: The Requiem has a lot of terminology either directly imported from, or inspired by Latin, presumably related to the fact that vampire society is static, at best. Although justified, it is still amusing to note that Ancilla, a word used to refer to "middle-aged" vampires, translates quite readily as "slave woman."
Video Games
Webcomics
- A subversive example from Fluble (mind you, Death's Latin is incorrect: hystrix is not a word in Latin):
Death: As the Romans say, "Caveat hystrix!"
Fluble: "Caveat hystrix"? That means, "Let the hedgehog beware." Why would the Romans want the hedgehog to beware?
Web Original
- In Dept Heaven Apocrypha, the school and its four colleges have Latin names, and Nessiah's spellcasting tends to be in Latin and Greek. (This may or may not be a Shout Out to Negima!.)
- in The Key to Canon part 3: A Wunderkind, Father Christmas is not impressed by Tawaki's greeting him in Latin.
“Your accent could use some work, I have not been a bishop for a long time, and I usually spoke Greek, not Latin. And you do not need to show off, in any case.”
Western Animation
- In Gargoyles, all the mortal spells were in Latin. Because anything said in Latin sounds profound.
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