History Main / ArtifactTitle

* The anime adaption of the ''Literature/HaruhiSuzumiya'' light novels gets its title from the first novel, ''The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya''; however, the show adapts from five different books, each one with a different title. Currently it has adapted the first three books plus some short stories of the fifth and sixth novels.
** Averted by TheMovie based on the fourth novel, since it's named after the book.

* After a certain point in ''[[Manga/KaguyaSamaLoveIsWar Kaguya Wants to be Confessed To ~ The Geniuses' War of Love and Brains]]'', Shirogane and Kaguya kind of gave up on that "War of Love and Brains" in favor of dealing with their own feelings, with only chapter 54 being their last major throwback to their early series behavior. Even the "Real War of Love and Brains" as mentioned in the School Festival Arc is just the two becoming more honest with themselves and finally throwing away their pride, which was the exact opposite of why the "War" even started. Lampshaded in the extras, where Aka muses that the subtitle should probably be done away with at that point. [[spoiler:And then the whole "Wants to be Confessed to" part ends when the two of them officially start dating in chapter 151.]]

* ''Manga/Reborn2004'' was originally a comedy manga wherein the title character, a diminutive home tutor who also happened to be a mafia hitman, would tutor hapless teenager Tsuna in hopes of making him tougher and more confident. Most chapters revolved around Reborn's unorthodox and comically violent teaching methods. Over time, the story became more serious and eventually transitioned into an action series about warring crime families, with a newly powerful Tsuna completely taking over as lead character. Before long, Reborn was barely a factor in the series, hardly ever contributing to storylines and barely doing any tutoring. At most, he might provide some exposition before stepping aside to let Tsuna do all the fighting.
** At the start of one arc, Reborn is even explicitly forbidden from participating in any conflicts. He spends the next 30 or so chapters just standing in the background.

* Also ArtNouveau, which hasn't been new since [[TheGay90s the 1890s]].
* ''Art/TheBirthOfVenusBotticelli'': As it turns out, Botticelli never named his painting -- it was art historians from the [=XIXth=] century who did that. And they, well, screwed up. The painting's subject is not Venus' birth per se but the newborn Venus about to step onto the island of Cythera (which was considered the place where she was born). A more fitting title would be ''Venus Arriving from her Birthplace''.

* Creator/AlisonBechdel's ''ComicStrip/DykesToWatchOutFor'' comic strip. In its earliest incarnation, she labeled a drawing "Marianne, dissatisfied with her morning brew: Dykes to Watch Out For, plate no. 27", "as if it were just one in a series of illustrations of mildly demonic lesbians". She drew more and more "plates", and kept the title when it shifted to a strip format about various aspects of lesbian culture, and also when it shifted to the serialized format with recurring characters. As the cast grew to include men and people of other sexual identities, Bechdel lampshaded the title by titling a recent collection of her strips "Dykes and Sundry Other Carbon-based Life-forms to Watch Out For".
** She saw this coming a long time ago, way back in 1992, in fact (The Plot Thickens, #145...one of those "noncanon" ones). Jezanna mentioned the prospect of a transgender character joining the strip, to which Toni replied, "Would we have to change the name of the strip? You know, to 'Dykes and Transgender Persons to Watch Out For?'"

* ''ComicStrip/BabyBlues'' still has a baby, but she doesn't get the spotlight half as often as her first- and third-grade siblings.
** "Baby" referred to Zoe. That she wouldn't stay that way forever was something the creators readily acknowledged (and in fact made the subject of numerous strips).
** According the creators' website FAQ: "The way we see it is that your children are always your babies, no matter how big or old they get. Once a parent, always a parent. And right now we have no plans for having the [=MacPherson=] clan expand. Besides, with the amount of room given comic strips these days, we couldn't fit any more characters in the panels."

* The full title of ''Fanfic/EarthsAlienHistory'' includes the subtitle "or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Mistrust the Xeno". And while the start of the timeline has humanity near constantly at war with the various races that invade Earth, later on they come to have a more nuanced view on alien life, becoming allies with a great many of them.
** An argument could be made for the first part of the title being an artifact too, once the story becomes a SpaceOpera with lots of events happening off Earth.

** In that regard The Undertaker himself stopped being an "undertaker" after the mid-90s. Particularly during his stint as the leader of the Ministry of Darkness, which cast him as a cult leader who was simply obsessed with death and evil forces. The biker thing is even further out than that but at least "The Undertaker" is a fairly intimidating nickname for a BadassBiker.

* Certain wrestlers in the Wrestling/WWEHallOfFame never wrestled for WWE, such as Wrestling/AbdullahTheButcher. It also includes wrestlers whose time in WWE is more or less a footnote compared to their accomplishments elsewhere (such as Wrestling/{{Sting}} and Wrestling/DiamondDallasPage) and personalities only tangentially related to the product through brief appearances (like Creator/DrewCarey, whose only noteworthy accomplishment in WWE was eliminating himself from the 2001 Wrestling/RoyalRumble). The Hall of Fame has grown to be more of a shrine to the industry's figureheads more than ones that specifically contributed to WWE.
** It should be noted that WWE has bought up the video libraries and intellectual property of those other promotions, such as WCW, and they are all therefore under WWE's corporate umbrella, if not the wrestling promotion's.

** An inverted situation happened in the DAW software LMMS, whose title originally stands for '''L'''inux '''M'''ulti'''m'''edia '''S'''tudio. Then later versions adapted the software to Windows and [=MacOS=].

* The original Ride/SixFlags theme park was Six Flags Over Texas. The name referred to the six different countries that have governed Texas - Spain, France, Mexico, the Republic of Texas, the United States, and the Confederate States - and the park retains a theming based around the state's history. The Six Flags company has opened many more parks in other states throughout the United States, but needless to say, none of ''those'' states have ever had six flags over them- nor do the parks have any real theming.

** [[Ride/WaltDisneyWorld Epcot]] is an acronym for the "Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow", and was so named in the mid-1960s due to Creator/WaltDisney's intent to build a working city of the future in central Florida. After his death the plans fell by the wayside, and the park that eventually opened as Epcot in the early 1980s was called EPCOT Center, with Disney claiming that the theme park was the center of EPCOT (aka the "official" name for their entire Disney World property) and that a city would come eventually. They dropped this approach in the mid-1980s when Disney's upper management changed, and renamed the park as simply Epcot in the mid-1990s as part of a re-branding effort to move the park away from its "edutainment" roots.

** The 2010 toy named "Piraka" did not actually belong to the Piraka group from 2006, LEGO just called him that because the figure was a nod to the 2006 set-line and the character was the same species. His actual name (Nektann) and species name (Skakdi) would have meant nothing to casual buyers. To justify the naming, they explained that since "Piraka" is a slur for "thief and murderer", Nektann simply took up the title independently from the original Piraka thugs.

* In a sense this has happened twice with ''WesternAnimation/AquaTeenHungerForce''. In the ''WesternAnimation/SpaceGhostCoastToCoast'' episode they originated in, they were a team of mascots for a corporate food chain that Space Ghost sold out to so he could buy a boat. When the spin-off series was made, the characters were heavily changed, the corporate mascot part was dropped, and they were made a detective agency just to have a premise to give to executives rather than calling it a show about food people just... doing stuff. That at least made them a force, but when the detective work was inevitably dropped from the plot, they weren't even that.
** With the yearly [[NewSeasonNewName re-titling of the show between the 8th and 11th seasons]], this does not apply as much. The 10th season of the series is titled ''Aqua TV Show Show'', for example.
** Although technically, the trio are still heavily involved with water: Carl's pool.

* ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'': When the series was first conceived in the early 1930s, it was meant as a showcase for songs in the Creator/WarnerBros music library (and as a [[DuelingShows competitor]] with Disney's ''WesternAnimation/SillySymphonies'' series). Within a few years, that concept was done away with and the "looney" part of the title began to take precedence.
** Its sister series ''Merrie Melodies'' is doubly so, as for most of its run it was essentially the same as the ''Looney Tunes''. At first, it separated itself by being one-off cartoons, whereas the ''Tunes'' used recurring characters (originally Bosko, then Buddy, later WesternAnimation/PorkyPig). Then the ''Merrie Melodies'' went color, shortly after which they phased out the song-based format (though one-off cartoons with musical themes continued to be produced sporadically, with ''WesternAnimation/TheThreeLittleBops'' being a late example). By the time ''Looney Tunes'' converted to color, the only difference between the two series was the opening theme music. This wiki doesn't even give them separate pages.
*** In the Tunes' case, it helps them the fact that "tunes" and "toons" are homophones in some dialects, leading some to believe the name is just an artistic misspelling.
** To this end, there are some people who insist on referring to the series as a whole as "classic Warner Bros. shorts" or something similar.
** To further confuse things, there has been merchandise where ''Looney Tunes'' characters such as WesternAnimation/BugsBunny and Taz are branded with "Merrie Melodies".

** The show's yearly Halloween specials are called "WesternAnimation/TreehouseOfHorror" because the first one had the FramingDevice of Bart and Lisa telling each other scary stories in their treehouse. The following three installments would use different framing devices, before they were dropped all together. They'd also start drifting into non-horror parodies, like ''Film/MrAndMrsSmith2005'', ''Literature/SherlockHolmes'', and a spoof of ''Film/AClockworkOrange'' that degenerates into a general tribute to Creator/StanleyKubrick. "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS27E4HalloweenOfHorror Halloween of Horror]]", the series' first canon Halloween episode, states that spooky (and otherwise) stories still are told in the Simpson treehouse every Halloween season, retaining part of title in a meta sense. On a lesser note, [[OutOfHolidayEpisode scheduling conflicts have meant that they don't always air in time for Halloween, instead broadcasting in early November]] (something they'd lampshade from time to time). Additionally, the first 12 specials had featured the onscreen title "The Simpsons Halloween Special", e.g season 6's "Treehouse of Horror V" was titled "The Simpsons Halloween Special V" onscreen, before "Treehouse of Horror XIII" began giving the specials that official onscreen title. Though these specials were always titled "Treehouse Of Horror" in the official episode guide.

* ''WesternAnimation/StarTrekTheAnimatedSeries'', following the release of ''WesternAnimation/StarTrekLowerDecks'' and ''WesternAnimation/StarTrekProdigy'', is no longer the only animated ''Franchise/StarTrek'' series. Granted, this is a {{Retronym}} used for marketing purposes; the original title (simply ''Star Trek'') is not an artifact.

* ''Billboard'' - The major trade publication of the music industry started in 1894 as a trade paper for the billboard advertising industry. But the publication shifted its focus to the entertainment industry (which, at the time, was a major user of UsefulNotes/{{billboard}} advertising) before the ''19th century'' even ended. Before becoming music-centered it dealt heavily with things like circuses and {{Vaudeville}}, but kept the original name all the while.

* The [=DirectX=] UsefulNotes/ApplicationProgrammingInterface was named because its components all had a "Direct" prefix, like [=DirectPlay=], [=DirectDraw=], and [=Direct3D=]. Many of these old components have been retired in favor of newer standards that don't use the prefix, or opt to use an "X" prefix instead like Xinput or XACT. The "Direct" prefix still occasionally gets used, but it no longer follows the nomenclature that strictly and as such the name [=DirectX=] isn't as meaningful as it once was.

* ''Webcomic/MSPaintAdventures'': Only the first panel of the first adventure is done in UsefulNotes/MSPaint. The rest are done in Photoshop and [[UsefulNotes/AdobeFlash Flash]].

* A WhatCouldHaveBeen example with ''WesternAnimation/TheLegendOfKorra'', the SequelSeries to ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender''. When it was found that they couldn't call the show ''Avatar: The Legend of Korra'' due to a trademark dispute with Creator/JamesCameron's burgeoning ''Film/{{Avatar}}'' film series (which also prevented the [[Film/TheLastAirbender live-action film adaptation]] from using the word years prior), a new title of ''The Last Airbender: The Legend of Korra'' was briefly considered. This supertitle was deemed to have been clunky and inaccurate, as in-universe, Korra isn't "the last airbender"; the final title would simply be ''The Legend of Korra'' as a result.

* ''WesternAnimation/ThePenguinsOfMadagascar'' is, as its name suggests, centered around the minor [[AscendedExtra penguin characters]] of the movie series ''Franchise/{{Madagascar}}'', but is primarily set in New York's Central Park Zoo. The lemurs native to the island in the first film are now depicted as zoo animals as well. Ironically ''WesternAnimation/AllHailKingJulien'', doesn't have Madagascar in its title despite being one of the few parts of the franchise to happened entirely on the island.

** While the title PlotCoupons are the driving force of ''[[Manga/DragonBall the first third or so]]'', once the story is done with Namek in ''Anime/DragonBallZ'' it becomes centered entirely around Villain Arcs, featuring [[InactionSequence long-winded]] bouts against said villains. The aforementioned Dragon Balls are relegated to little more than a plot device the protagonists [[DeathIsCheap customarily fall back on when too many of their own die]], and the obstacle of gathering them up is either done off-screen or made trivial with Goku's [[{{Teleportation}} Instant Transmission]]. This comes full circle in ''Anime/DragonBallGT'', where the Dragon Balls are the central focus again (at least until the producers realized that they couldn't make the new story work and fell back on Villain Arcs again).